7.1.09
Well there's a surprise. I didn't even know Sunset Rubdown was working on another record, much less that a new one has already been released. I guess it shouldn't be surprising given that frontman Spencer Krug is easily the most prolific songwriter of past few years, with 10 records between Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, and Frog Eyes since 2005. I was beginning to think he was running out of material——the most recent releases from Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown felt a little wan to me——but I like what I'm hearing on the iTunes clips for Dragonslayer despite the terrible title.

7.2.09
"Wilco (the song)": pretty good. Wilco (the album): only okay. But I'm still a pretty big fan of Wilco (the band).

7.6.09
Picked up a few new things this weekend: Dinosaur Jr.'s Farm, Stuart Murdoch's new project God Help the Girl, Sunset Rubdown's Dragonslayer, Marnie Stern's This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (yes, that's really the title), and the first solo effort from former Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle, Yours Truly, The Commuter.

Still absorbing most of it, but the Sunset Rubdown is probably my favorite thing from Spencer Krug since Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary, and the Dinosaur Jr. sounds like it might be their best work since Green Mind.

7.7.09
I was worried that I wouldn't like Stuart Murdoch's new project, God Help the Girl, because it seemed like it was essentially Belle & Sebastian with a female singer. There's already a band that's basically Belle & Sebastian with a female singer called Camera Obscura, and I don't like them much even though I'm a big Belle & Sebastian fan.

But I actually really like it. Maybe it's because the production is bolder than the Camera Obscura stuff I've heard, or because the main female singer has more of a 60s/European vibe than a twee vibe, or maybe because the music is actually written by the main songwriter for Belle & Sebastian, but I started out liking most of it (I like the two Belle & Sebastian covers better than the original) and it's just getting stronger with each listen.

Sure, Stuart's obsession with this project (he's still working on the film for which this album is supposed to be the soundtrack) means that we're unlikely to have a new record or tour from Belle & Sebastian anytime soon, but this record is proving much more satisfying than typical vanity side projects from frontmen taking breaks from their main gigs.

7.8.09
Given that Jason Lytle was clearly the voice for and the main songwriter behind Grandaddy (the final album from that group was really his first solo project since the band broke up before the album was finished), you have to wonder why he abandoned an established band name for his actual name, especially seeing as how Yours Truly, The Commuter sounds just like the last few Grandaddy releases.

7.9.09
Although I've never been able to keep up with his full output (I haven't bought anything by Frog Eyes or Swan Lake), but Spencer Krug has always my favorite songwriter from Wolf Parade——that is, until their last album, which was extremely lackluster overall, and on which co-frontman Dan Boeckner (who has his own thriving side project, Handsome Furs, with his wife) had the strongest work.

Couple that with a serious decline from Shut Up I Am Dreaming to Random Spirit Lover, and I needed to be convinced before buying Sunset Rubdown's latest, Dragonslayer. But after listening to some clips on iTunes and hearing a rave review from the girl behind the counter at the record store, I was willing to take a chance, and it was completely worth it. Aside from "Nightingale/December Song", which I'm still figuring out, there's not a bad track on this album, including the 10 1/2 minute closer (I have a low tolerance for anything over five minutes generally, but this one's not bad as far as that goes).

I'm not sure if Krug will ever write another song as good as "I'll Believe In Anything", but that's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal anyway. Dragonslayer is a welcome return to the kinds of songs that made me love his work in the first place——hopefully it's a sign of what's to come on the next Wolf Parade album.

7.10.09
Marnie Stern can be a little manic and overwhelming, but I keep coming back to This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That. I don't really know what to make of it or why I like it, but it's sticking with me.

7.13.09
I'm not normally a fan of extended guitar solos, but the one on Dinosaur Jr.'s "I Don't Wanna Go There" is pretty incredible. The guitar solo consumes basically all of the second half of the 8 minute 43 second track, and it is fucking epic. If anything, these guys have gotten even stronger since 2007's Beyond (the band's first record in 10 years, and the first record with the original lineup in nearly two decades); there's hardly a misstep on Farm, and I don't know any fans who wouldn't rank this along with their best efforts from the late 80s and early 90s.

7.14.09
The new Wilco album (cheekily titled Wilco (the album)) is growing on me. The obvious standouts are "Wilco (the song)", "You and I" (featuring Feist on backup vocals), and "I'll Fight". "Bull Black Nova" is pretty powerful, and "You Never Know" and "Sonny Feeling" are decent tracks, but the rest I'm still undecided about (although just about every song has some nice moments). Overall I'm putting this one above Sky Blue Sky but below the first disc of Being There (which makes it pretty low on the overall scale; above Being There are Summerteeth, A Ghost Is Born, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

This might be one of those records, like A Ghost Is Born, that I would grow to love and understand better if I saw the band perform the songs live (even though I can already appreciate "Bull Black Nova", I'm pretty sure a live rendition of this song would kick the ass of the recorded version), but I've already missed their only summer date in my area, so I have to hope for a fall extension to the tour supporting this record (presumably titled Wilco (the tour)).

7.15.09
There are days when all you need in your iTunes library is Tom Waits.

7.16.09
Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a pretty great record, but the six minute instrumental fourth track, "Love Like a Sunset Part I" and its two minute companion that immediately follows it, "Love Like a Sunset Part II" (which isn't a bad track on its own and would be a nice interlude later in the album), totally kill the momentum. Substitute a more typical track for "Part I" and move "Part II" to seventh or so in the lineup, and you'd have a perfect little pop/rock album.

But Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix has some killer singles (most notably the first two tracks, "Lisztomania" and "1901"), and it looks like it's charting reasonably well——it's still at number 3 on CMJ's college music chart and in the Billboard top 100 after eight weeks in release. It would be nice to see Phoenix catch on in a bigger way, but those numbers aren't bad for a little-known French band with limited mainstream exposure. I'm sure their SNL appearance when Seth Rogen hosted the show back in April didn't hurt (that's where I first became aware of them), but I'm guessing it's mostly word of mouth and the college stations that are responsible for their current success.

7.21.09
Cake was the headlining band on Saturday at this year's Artscape, but thankfully our booth was far enough away from the main stage that we couldn't hear them.

Actually, I've never really listened to them, but man I hate that one big hit song of theirs, "The Distance". And sometimes one song is all you need to have a serious dislike of a band.

7.22.09
New Fiery Furnaces out today, and it's being hailed as a return to their early sound, which is pretty much the same thing they said about the last record, Widow City. That wasn't a bad record, and it was certainly easier to digest than Rehearsing My Choir or Bitter Tea, but it never really took hold of me the way Blueberry Boat or even Gallowsbird's Bark did.

It's going to be a long time before I stop buying Fiery Furnaces records because if there's even one song on a record that's anywhere near as good as their best songs, it's worth it (see: Bitter Tea's "Benton Harbor Blues"), but I'm not holding my breath for a return to their early years when they seemed so much less self-conscious about the kind of music they were making.

7.23.09
Wire's "A Serious Of Snakes" got into my head somehow, and that led me back to The Ideal Copy, which is still my favorite album of theirs (it's also the first album of theirs I ever bought, and I haven't really explored their catalog before that record in depth and I know I'm missing some of their seminal early work). Besides "A Serious Of Snakes", there are a couple of other five star tracks, "Ahead" and "Ambitious", and even the few songs that don't stand up well on their own fit very well in the context of the album as a whole. I own most of their albums from The Ideal Copy onward, nothing else speaks to me the way this record does. I don't consider myself a serious Wire fan, but The Ideal Copy was one of my favorite records for years, and it still sounds great more than two decades after its initial release.

7.24.09
Okay. I've been meaning to write about the Decemberists show at Merriweather Post that we saw back in June, but it keeps slipping my mind. I think all the details are intact, but I've probably forgotten a few things waiting this long to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

We had great seats for this show——I got a fan club email for a presale and was able to buy the tickets within 10 minutes, so we ended up in the orchestra pit about seven rows from the stage. The closest I've ever been to the stage for a big show was second row for a Cure concert at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium way back on the Disintegration tour, but the seats for this Decemberists show were pretty impressive.

The first opening act was Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, which includes members of R.E.M. (Peter Buck, who also plays with the Minus 5 and Young Fresh Fellows), the Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows (Scott McCaughey, who is also a member of R.E.M.'s touring lineup), and Ministry(!) (Bill Rieflin, yet another member of R.E.M.'s touring lineup. Hitchcock also produced the recently released Young Fresh Fellows disc, so these are musicians who clearly have a lot of appreciation for one another's talents and who are used to playing together in a variety of formats.

Further adding to the incestuousness, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy contributed vocals to Robyn Hitchcock's most recent release and to both of the last two Minus 5 albums, and Hitchcock played guitar on a track on the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love. So it was no surprise when Colin came out halfway through the set to sing along for a song, which was a nice treat, especially because very few people had gotten to their seats yet, so it felt even more intimate being seven rows back than it did later in the concert.

Robyn's set consisted mostly of material from his most recent effort, Goodnight Oslo, although he snuck "Adventure Rocket Ship" in there, which I was pleased about not only because I like the song but because I swiped that title for one of my photos. He only played about 40 minutes or so, which was to be expected given the restrictive noise statutes in Columbia (concerts have to end by 11 p.m. on weeknights) and the fact that Andrew Bird still had to play his set before the Decemberists took the stage.

This entry is getting rather long, so I'll save the rest of it for a second installment next week.

7.27.09
Went to the record store this weekend with a long list and came back with about half of it: the Fiery Furnaces' I'm Going Away, the Minus 5's Killingsworth, Young Fresh Fellows' I Think This Is, Sonic Youth's The Eternal, and the Cribs' Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever. I think the items on the remainder of my list are numerous enough and have been collectively released long enough for me to buy them off Amazon rather than hoping that one of the stores in the local indie chain will decide to stock them at some point. I know they have to balance their purchases with what they think will sell in a reasonable amount of time, but when I can't find releases from major labels or big indies from bands who are getting serious airplay on college radio and playing well-attended shows in Baltimore and DC, that's a problem.

Honestly, it would be easier for me to just order everything off Amazon at this point (since I'm still not ready to transition to digital exclusively), and although I hate the idea of not having a brick-and-mortar record store nearby, I also hate not being able to get new music as soon as it's released.

7.28.09
So maybe my local record doesn't suck quite as much as I thought yesterday: when I went to Amazon to order the five CDs that the record store didn't have, I found that two of them haven't been released on CD yet (Patrick Wolf's The Bachelor and Japandroids' Post-Nothing) and one of them is apparently not going to be released on CD at all (Cymbals Eat Guitars' self-titled debut).

I was confused about the first two because Pitchfork reviewed them weeks ago, presumably either when they were released digitally or released overseas. That's a bad habit of theirs that I still find incredibly irritating given that their primary audience is American and the American release date should be the determining factor as to when a review is posted. But I doubt they're going to change.

Even though the record store can be forgiven for not having these three items in stock, there's absolutely no excuse for them not having the Gossip's major label Music for Men, produced by Rick Rubin. And it's not that they had it in stock at some point and just sold out; they apparently have no intention of stocking this release at any of their outlets.

I think I'm going to wait for the Patrick Wolf and Japandroid releases and order those (along with the Gossip and the Rural Alberta Advantage) from Amazon, and just buy Cymbals Eat Guitars from iTunes.

7.29.09
The early reviews of Sonic Youth's The Eternal led me to believe that it was much more abstract and noise-oriented than their last few records, but that's not really the case. In fact, it's remarkably in line with the sound they've been developing since their return to more traditional song structures on Murray Street. It's certainly got more in common with the grit and heavy, low-end guitar textures found on Rather Ripped than it does the more pristine sound from Murray Street, but it's not an album of "difficult" material by any means (at least not by Sonic Youth standards).

Sonic Nurse is still probably my favorite record from this period of their career because it was the first record of theirs that I truly loved since Goo, but both The Eternal and Rather Ripped are strong efforts——in fact, this sequence of releases might be the strongest run of their career.

7.30.09
I'm not sure where I heard about the Cribs——their most recent album, Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever, came out in 2007——but sometime in the past few weeks something prompted me to listen to clips of their songs on iTunes, and I liked what I heard there enought to add them to my shopping cart (I don't actually buy very much on iTunes, but I use my shopping cart as a list of stuff I want so I can write out a list before I head to the record store).

I dutifully checked for their record on my last trip, not expecting for the store to have them in stock, but not only did they have Men's Needs, they had it used, so I got it for only $6. Their sound is what you would expect from a British pop punk outfit produced by a member of Franz Ferdinand, and the first half is pretty strong if you like that sort of thing (which I do). It falls off a bit in the second half though——as an EP that included only the best songs, this would have been brilliant, but as it stands, this record would have been much better with some editing and a couple more songs as good as the first few.

7.31.09
The new Fiery Furnaces, I'm Going Away, still has its fair share of goofiness, but it's the kind of goofiness that made me fall in love with them. The lyrics are more straightforward——the complex narratives of their masterwork, Blueberry Boat, are not in evidence here——and the songs are similarly streamlined, with fewer midsong eruptions and lurching starts and stops. Overall it's pretty mellow, with the piano as the dominant instrument on many tracks, and it's about as accessible as Gallowsbird's Bark or EP.

You can never tell what this band is going to do next, and it's probably not a good idea to wish for something more interesting (because, you know, we could end up with another Rehearsing My Choir), but if they ever do spend more than one album in a particular stylistic groove, the mood they've created on I'm Going Away wouldn't be a terrible one to choose.