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october 2008

10.1.08
"A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger" is the only song from the two albums I own from of Montreal that I've currently given a 5 star rating. I'm ridiculously pleased to see that my friend Sliced Tongue is similarly taken with it.


10.2.08
I haven't rated a single song on Conor Obert's self-titled solo debut (although, really, we all know that solo debut is a nomenclature thing only), but I know that I like it as a whole entity much better than I liked his last Bright Eyes release. Although I do wish at least a couple of the tracks had lit enough of a fire under me that I felt compelled to immediately give them 4 or 5 stars.


10.3.08
The Walkmen's You & Me is making me fall for them all over again. This makes me happy.


10.6.08
I'm pretty sure my wife doesn't read my music blog——not that she doesn't know about it, she's just not that into music and doesn't know which bands I'm talking about most of the time even though she hears them constantly by association——but when I had Ra Ra Riot playing in the study the other day, she made a comment about them sounding like Vampire Weekend that was pretty similar to an entry I wrote a week or so ago.

Not only was I surprised that she had a sense of Ra Ra Riot's sound, but it was shocking that she could remember Vampire Weekend even though they haven't been in the regular rotation for a couple of months. Weird.


10.7.08
If I ever get a tattoo, it's absolutely going to be the symbol from the Hold Steady's Stay Positive:



10.8.08
There's not a whole lot to dislike about Los Campesinos' Hold On Now, Youngster (you'll pardon me if I drop the ! from their name and the ... from the title——I'm just not in the mood for superfluous punctuation today). A song from the record ended up in one of my shuffle playlists, which prompted me to listen to the whole album again, and I didn't listen to anything else the rest of the day.


10.9.08
I'm still dubious about the new Genius feature that Apple introduced with iTunes 8, but yesterday at work I wasn't in the mood for any of the playlists I had loaded on my iPhone, so I picked the first song that caught my eye and decided to let the Genius build me a playlist based on that. Here's the result:
  1. "Absolutely Cuckoo"
    The Magnetic Fields

  2. "My Wandering Days Are Over"
    Belle & Sebastian

  3. "Ghost Mountain"
    The Unicorns

  4. "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby"
    Islands

  5. "Black Cab"
    Jens Lekman

  6. "King Of Carrot Flowers Part 1"
    Neutral Milk Hotel

  7. "The Owls Go"
    Architecture In Helsinki

  8. "I Don't Believe You"
    The Magnetic Fields

  9. "Here Comes The Summer"
    The Fiery Furnaces

  10. "So Begins Our Alabee"
    of Montreal

  11. "A Postcard To Nina"
    Jens Lekman

  12. "Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl"
    Broken Social Scene

  13. "Slow Show"
    The National

  14. "Sea Ghost"
    The Unicorns

  15. "Soldier's Grin"
    Wolf Parade

  16. "I Think I Need A New Heart"
    The Magnetic Fields

  17. "Jogging Gorgeous Summer"
    Islands

  18. "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
    Neutral Milk Hotel

  19. "A Sweet Summer's Night On Hammer Hill"
    Jens Lekman

  20. "Raised By Wolves"
    Voxtrot

  21. "Tropical-Iceland"
    The Fiery Furnaces

  22. "Swimmers"
    Broken Social Scene

  23. "Water Curses"
    Animal Collective

Even though there were a few artists with multiple entries (and part of that could have been because of the relatively small size of the library that I can load onto my iPhone), this playlist really fit my mood, and I didn't once think about selecting another. I'm still not completely sold on all aspects of the Genius features, but on this day, at least, it worked pretty well to build me a new playlist.


10.10.08
With a name like of Montreal, you'd think that the people in this band might be from Canada. And their music feels very Canadian in a way that I can't explain. But they're from Georgia. Go figure.


10.13.08
Over the weekend, I picked up TV on the Radio's Dear Science (I know I've been railing agains unnecessary punctuation lately, but I was really fond of the ending comma that was cut from this album title shortly before release), Okkervil River's The Stand Ins, and the Streets' Everything Is Borrowed.

I like what I've heard from all three so far, particularly the TVOTR——they started to lose me a bit on their last album because it felt like they were trying real hard to live up to their press-designation of the saviors of rock, but this one feels very intimate and genuine in a way that I didn't get very much from Return to Cookie Mountain (despite the presence of some really great songs on that record).


10.14.08
The Streets' "Everything Is Borrowed" should be a massive global hit, even here in the US where I think there's some resistance on the airwaves to even the concept of a white British rapper. Some of the lines on the song are real clunkers, and even the catchy chorus comes dangerously close to bumper sticker territory, but listen to it and tell me you don't want to immediately listen to it again.


10.15.08
I'm enjoying the new Okkervil River disc, The Stand Ins, which is billed as a sequel to last year's amazing The Stage Names, but it really should have been billed and released as a companion EP and not a free-standing album that touches on the same themes as The Stage Names. First off, these songs are not new in the way that songs on a proper sequel would be——they were all recorded during the same sessions that produced The Stage Names.

And of the eleven songs on the album, three are short (less than a minute) instrumentals, and one was released as a bonus track on certain releases of The Stage names. So really we're getting seven new songs, which seems a lot more like an EP than a full album to me.

Still, it's a pretty good release, even if the music on a couple of the tracks borrow heavily from songs on The Stage Names (almost like they were early versions that got reworked into new songs later). You might wish you'd spent a couple bucks less on it, but if you liked The Stage Names, you'll undoubtedly like The Stand Ins.


10.16.08
The Notwist's The Devil, You + Me is getting a ton of bonus plays, because it just happens to be the next album in my current playlist after TV on the Radio's Dear Science. I've been starting out almost every session listening to Dear Science, and when I'm involved in something and don't restart it right away, I get at least four or five songs into the Notwist. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's interesting to compare the playcounts for the first half of Devil with the second half after the past few days..


10.17.08
Today is the fifth anniversary of this site. Sometimes I struggle with keeping a separate music blog to go along with my regular blog and wonder if it wouldn't be smarter to just combine them (because there are days when I struggle to come up with content for both), but I think I'll give it at least one more year.


10.20.08
It was my intention to buy all of the singles and b-sides that the Cure has released on iTunes over the past few months as part of the build up to their next album, 4:13 Dream, but now the album is right around the corner and it would feel like a waste of money. I'll probably still get the b-sides eventually if the album is any good though.

On a related note, I can't believe that The Head on the Door hasn't made its way into my iTunes yet.


10.21.08
Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark isn't as bad as I originally thought it was, but I still don't think it's great. But it might have edged past The Dirty South as my least favorite effort from them.


10.22.08
Ra Ra Riot have another thing in common with Vampire Weekend besides some of the musical signatures: they are slowly growing on me and showing up more and more frequently in my playlists.


10.23.08
Picked up a few new things last night: Deerhoof's Offend Maggie, of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping, the Notwist's Neon Golden, and Okkervil River's deluxe edition of Black Sheep Boy, which includes the eight song EP, Black Sheep Boy Appendix.

I'm afraid we're nearing the end of the new release season for this year, and while it's been an okay year for music, there's been nothing that's really knocked me out (although I'm eager to hear what Kevin Barnes has for us on Skeletal Lamping). It's been a solid year, but not a spectacular one, and I have a feeling shaping this year's top ten list is going to prove challenging simply because of the glut of pretty good records and the death of amazing ones.


10.24.08
I really like Deerhoof, but I can't make them one of my favorite bands because there is always at least one song on each of their records that outright annoys me. The same is true for their latest, Offend Maggie, and even though I like a bunch of the songs on it, there are a few tracks that kill it for me. In fact, most of the last third is at best pointless and at worse grating, with "Family of Others" taking the prize for most irritating.

This could have been a great record if "Numina O" had been moved to slot nine, taking the place of "Family of Others" and if everything else after "Fresh Born" had been cut. I've always resisted deleting tracks or renumbering the tracklist in iTunes, but I'm seriously tempted to take the plunge here.


10.27.08
Best versions of the theme song to The Wire, "Way Down in the Hole", originally written and recorded by Tom Waits:
  1. Tom Waits——It's hard to beat the original, but this didn't get used by the show until season 2.
  2. The Neville Brothers——I'm not a big fan of these guys, but the percussion here is incredible.
  3. Blind Boys of Alabama——These top three are pretty close; this is like losing to Michael Phelps by 1/100 of a second.
  4. Steve Earle——I expected to like his version more, but meh.
  5. Domaje——Don't know who this is, and don't much care. This is the only real stinker of the bunch.


10.28.08
I hope sometime next year, after Animal Collective releases their upcoming record Merriweather Post Pavillion, the band can somehow finagle it to actually play that venue as a headlining act on a pleasant summer evening.


10.29.08
Favorite of Montreal quote: "Physics makes us all its bitches."

Which pairs nicely with one of my favorite lyrics of all time from Robyn Hitchcock: "The universe is based on sullen entropy."

I also like this mini prayer from Mr. Barnes:

May we never be stripped of anything we love
May we grow so gentle, never go mental
May we never go mental
May we always stay gentle



10.30.08
Dear Science is the record I've been waiting for TV on the Radio to make ever since I heard their Young Liars EP, with its twin killer tracks of "Staring at the Sun" and "Blind". Don't get me wrong, every record they've made has been worth owning, but this one brings it all together and doesn't have a single weak track.


10.31.08
When I get around to making a best-of-decade list in a couple of years, I don't know how I'm going to keep the Unicorns' Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? from taking the top spot.

When I first heard this record, I only liked four or five songs on it, but that didn't last long, and I periodically return to it and leave it on a loop for a day or two. I love this album more and more every time I listen to it, and although I've given every track on it at least four stars, I know someday I'm going to end up uprading them all to fives (two thirds of the tracks are already at that level).