Jens has been on a bit of a roll with these tracks recently, so he can be forgiven a mediocre late night lounge parody that gets awkward when you realize he's approaching it with sincerity.
10.6.15
Still processing Chvrches' sophomore album, Every Open Eye, but my initial impression is that it's good but not quite as good as The Bones of What You Believe——it's a continuation of that record's sound and style without being a complete rehash of its ideas.
There aren't any songs that immediately blow me away (there were several on Bones), but many are immediately likable. The strongest is probably "Clearest Blue", the song that's the closest thing the album has to a title track (the title is embedded in the lyrics); what really puts it over the top is the higher gear it kicks into about halfway through; that moment is as compulsively listenable for me as the sudden shift in Surfer Blood's "Anchorage" or the sudden full stop in the Strokes' "Hard to Explain".
Also: as on Bones, the guy should never sing. His tracks are total momentum killers, no matter how hard I try to give them a chance.
10.7.15 The Decemberists' Florasongs EP is just about what I expected it to be: a fans-only collection of fairly middling songs, none of which really leave an impression. As a fairly completionist fan, I guess I'm glad I own it, but I was hoping for a hidden gem or two after a fairly average full length in What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World.
10.8.15 El Vy have shared another song from their upcoming Return to the Moon, this one called "Paul Is Alive":
I don't like this one quite as much as "Return to the Moon", but it's got a nice, subtle, slinky groove, and honestly I could listen to Matt Beringer sing just about anything. I'm getting some high hopes for this album.
10.9.15
The new Wavves record, V, is only okay. It's more consistent and a little more listenable than the joint album Nathan Williams released with Cloud Nothings earlier this year, but the rough edges that used to make Wavves so charming have been polished flat, and a lot of depth has been lost in the process. It's hard to find a bad song on here, but on the other hand, I can't think of a single melody that has stuck in my head longer than 10 minutes after listening to it.
10.12.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #40":
I don't care for the music on this one very much, but I like the lyrics and the vocal melody. Also love the femle guest vocalist. So, Jens, let's keep those parts and start over with the backing track.
10.13.15 Eleanor Friedberger has shared a new song called "False Alphabet City":
Very much in Eleanor's solo style, and I like it pretty well. However, this song isn't accompanied by an announcement of a new album even though her last one was released in 2013. So I don't know if this is a one-off thing or a harbinger of more to come; I hope it's the latter——especially after getting used to how prolific she was with her brother Matthew in Fiery Furnaces, even an album every two years is too long to wait.
10.14.15
Okay. So I dislike Miley Cyrus as much as anyone who spent their formative musical years in the 80s and 90s and who preferred the indie/alternative scene to Miley's pop precursors, and I dislike even more her attempts to become relevant to publications like Pitchfork and worthy of Serious Critical Consideration as a grown up artists by collaborating with the Flaming Lips, recently going so far as to rename them the Dead Petz and use them as her backing band.
And as that same child of the 80s and 90s who fell in love with the Flaming Lips on The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, I've been very disappointed with the bands output this century——the only new material I've bought since Yoshimi was its immediate successor, At War With the Mystics, which had a few likable songs but was starting to drift off into the realms of psychedlic noise that were a hallmark of the band's early years.
So I have to tell you that it was with no small amount of surprise that I found myself genuinely moved by the recent performances by Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz (i.e., the Flaming Lips) of "Karen Don't Be Sad"
and "Twinkle Song" on Saturday Night Live (I haven't been able to figure out how to embed videos of these performances, but here's a link to a Rolling Stone page that includes both of them).
The music is very much in the style of The Soft Bulletin, when the Lips were dealing with death and dissolution and they seemed to open themselves up and be more vulnerable than they had been before. And Miley does this justice by not overselling the vocals; she's hushed and subtle in ways that I would not have expected given the public persona she's tried so hard to force on us for the past few years. Even her tears in the middle of "Twinkle Song" seem true and real, and I can tell you, I tried my best to believe they were just showmanship.
After seeing these performances, I even sought out the full double album, which was supposed to be free to download but which is apparently now only available to stream from Miley's web site. I've tried to listen to as much of it as I could take, but a lot of it unlistenable——sometimes unlistenable because it's Miley's over the top pop persona, sometimes unlistenable because it's as scattered and unstructured as the Lips' recent output, but still generally unlistenable.
Those two songs, however, and in particular the way they were performed on SNL, are genuine keepers, as much as I hate to admit it. But I guess that means I'm still actually capapble of having an open mind when it comes to music, right?
10.15.15
Attention Kanye West and Frank Ocean: at least one of you has got to quit messing with us and release a new album already. If Kanye's record gets pushed to 2016 or beyond, that will mark the longest period between releases for him in the history of his career, and he's been on such a roll that I'd hate for him to lose that momentum.
And Frank Ocean has been teasing the follow up to his official debut for nearly three years now; reports of him recording a new album were in the press only months after the July 2012 release of his debut, Channel Orange, and earlier this summer he posted pictures to social media of himself holding what looked like an album cover for a record titled Boys Don't Cry, but since then, there has been no release of new music or official announcements about a new record.
Stop driving us crazy. Give us something already.
10.16.15
Speaking of people we haven't heard from nearly recently enough: Tom Waits hasn't put out an album of new material in nearly four years, and it was seven years between that one, Bad As Me, and its predecessor, Real Gone. I don't know exactly how old Waits is at this point, and I'm open to the very real possibility that he's an immortal ancient, but just in case his years on this planet are as limited as everyone else's, it would be nice to hear some more music from him before writing songs is no longer in his sphere of immediate concerns.
10.17.15
Twelth anniversary of the site, and no further progress on the year mixtape series. Still stuck in 1989. But I guess that's not such a terrible place to get stuck, despite Taylor Swift's recent cultural appropriation.
10.19.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #41":
Jens versus the broken robots. I honestly expected that a lot more of the songs in this series would be throwaways like this one, but given the very low ratio so far after over 40 weeks, he's allowed a few of these to finish out the run if he needs them.
10.20.15
I was prepared to be disappointed with Yacht's new record, I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler, after some lukewarm reviews from critics who usually gush over the band, especially given that I really love certain songs, but find the albums as a whole pretty up and down.
But after several listens, I think it might be my favorite Yacht record so far. It doesn't have any killer singles like "I Believe in You" or "Pyschic City", but it's their most consistent and listenable outing——I start listening and the time just flies by until it's over. And this despite an 8 minute opening track, which I usually take as a sign of open hostility by a band towards their fans.
10.21.15
The weak part of me that is eternally hoping for another decent Ryan Adams record is very tempted to listen to his cover of Taylor Swift's1989. But the other part of me——the rational part of me that has a semblance of musical taste——is scared to even listen to a snippet of a single song for fear that the other part will take over and make me buy yet another Adams record that will end up being a huge disappointment. Or, even worse, one that will make me have to consider whether or not I should actually give Taylor Swift's music a chance. Either way, it's a no win for me.
10.22.15
As part of an art project in Cincinnati, Jens Lekman is meeting with people to hear their stories so he can write a song about them. I would totally do this if I were anywhere near Ohio; I just wish he was throwing in some stateside dates along with his trip to Cincinnati so I might have a chance to see him live again.
10.23.15
I got briefly excited when I was on the iTunes store main site and glanced down at the "New from Your Artists" section and saw a listing for Beulah, a band that I totally love but who broke up over a decade ago (was it really that long?) after releasing four brilliant albums.
Alas, this was simply a name-matching algorithm misuderstanding;
this Beulah is apparently a dance music female singer, and iTunes isn't smart enough to know that it's not the same artist as the band whose complete catalog I own and virtually every song of which is rated highly. Disappointed, but not really surprised——if this band had really gotten back together and released a new single, I would have heard about it from many vectors in the indie music echo chamber.
10.26.15 Jens Lekman, "Postcard #42":
Sleepytime with 80s saxophone. Don't wake me when it's over.
10.27.15 Grimes has shared a video from her just-announced Art Angels, the long-awaited follow-up to her breakthrough Visions. The video actually includes two songs from the album, "Flesh Without Blood" and "Life in the Vivid Dream":
"Flesh Without Blood" is the main attraction here——"Life in the Vivid Dream" seems more like a bridge track to add some texture to the record and transition between two proper songs. It's more of a song thought or sketch that a fully realized track.
"Flesh", on the other hand, is a strong single that mines the same veins of Visions' strongest tracks, while drawing some influences from both the contemporary Chvrches and the retro New Order (the guitar line is particularly what I'm thinking of). If these two tracks are a representative sampling of the record, then it will have been worth waiting for, and a good way to round out a year whose second half has played out in somewhat lackluster fashion so far.
10.28.15 Chance the Rapper shared a new track, Angels, and of course it's free to download. Because why would he ever charge for anything?
I don't get the business model, but I dig the song.
10.29.15 Eleanor Friedberger shared another new track, "This Time He Didn't Mention His Mother", and also announced a new album to go along with it called New View. Here's the new song:
Another strong midtempo offering from Eleanor that is completely expected for anyone who is already a fan of her music (and as one of those fans, I'm saying this as a positive thing).
Strangely enough, the album will not include her other recently released track "False Alphabet City"; that's apparently just going to be a one-off single, so I went ahead and bought that one separately off iTunes.
I also prepurchased New View, which isn't out until January, but oddly enough, you can preview all of the tracks on iTunes now. Which sort of begs the question: if all the tracks are ready now, and I've already prepurchased them, why do I have to wait another three months until I can hear them in full? Isn't one of the selling points of digital distribution that you don't have to worry about manufacturing timelines and distribution logistics?
I get that for marketing reasons and synergy with a tour they might want to do a big splash and officially launch the record in January, but for those of us who have already committed to buy it because we're already huge fans, why make us wait, especially in this age of multiple pre-release singles that could see up to half the album available for free streaming prior to the release date?
It's frustrating having access to only 90 seconds worth of songs that I've already paid for; it would almost have been better if they just hadn't made the previews available so they wouldn't be so tantalizingly close and it would be easier to be patient while waiting for January to come.
10.30.15
After revisiting the middle part of the Flaming Lips catalog in the wake of my surprisingly positive reaction to their SNL appearance with Miley Cyrus a few weeks, I decided to also go back to the works that immediately preceded my entry point to their catalog.
I started my relationship with the band with The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, so I decided to purchase Transmissions from the Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic, records that I'm certain I must have heard a couple of times through friends but which I never owned.
I
somehow had the impression that these records were more in the vein of their psychedelic freakout leanings, especially because Transmissions contains their first hit (and probably the song they're still best known for among non-fans), "She Don't Use Jelly", a song that I never learned to love (or even like) after becoming a fan of the group a few years later.
But surprisingly, the material generally has a lot more in common with The Soft Bulletin than I previously remembered; rather than that record being some revolutionary sea change in their career that was completely different than what they had done before, there's a very natural progression in the songwriting and production from Transmisssions to Clouds to Bulletin.
And needless to say, I like both of these records a lot, and I now find myself wondering how many years I could have been enjoying them had I given them an honest listen instead of just assuming that "Jelly" was in any way representative of that part of their career and that nothing they did before Bulletin could possibly be of any interest to me.
