December 2011
45 posts
One More Thing About This Year
Here, for posterity and in many ways to remind myself that I did actually accomplish things this year, is a small collection of stuff I wrote in 2011 that I’m not embarrassed to have people read again:
- The White Stripes - “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” - Feb. 3 - An ode to my first-and-favorite song by that band that broke up this year
- Cold Pizza Friday LIII:...
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The Dreaded List, 2011 Edition
I realize the irony in saying this when just a few months ago I moved to Brooklyn, home of the perpetually post-grad, but I like to think that I’ve done some growing up this year. Maybe not “growing up” in the sense of figuring out where I’m going or what to do with myself or how life even works at age 26, but certainly in the sense of gaining a bit of perspective. First of...
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Top Tunes 2011: The Full List
I’ve been working my way through a list of 20 favorite songs of the year this month and today marks the end of it. Here’s the full list in a convenient package, with links to the little things I wrote about each song. Also, I made a (slightly incomplete) Spotify playlist with all the available songs, if that’s something you’re into. Stay tuned for a Top Albums list next...
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Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Ni**as in Paris”
Though Watch the Throne covers more ground than most people want to give it credit for, the gold-plated operative word on the marquis is still king-making (or, if you prefer, superhero-making). The double-edged mass appeal of it can not be overstated—love them or hate them, our collective jaws sit agape at the spectacle of Jay-Z and...
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Twin Sister - “Gene Ciampi”
“If you like Gene Ciampi, you will love his movies!” sings Andrea Estella on a standout track (one of many!) from Twin Sister’s In Heaven. So who the hell is Gene Ciampi, you ask? According to Google, Wikipedia, and IMDb: nobody. Whether so obscure he’s escaped the eye of the internet or (far more likely) just a figment of her...
"Commercial radio—a free alternative to buying... →
marathonpacks:
At the Atlantic, I briefly respond to xkcd’s Christmas-canon-as-boomer-nostalgia comic.
The lesson here: don’t jump to conclusions whenever a graph floats across your dashboard.
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Bill Callahan - “Drover”
We’ve all seen enough movies to know that the cowboy, the lone horseman, the cattle driver (‘drover’ in the old parlance) is one of the most classically conflicted characters in American literature. He’s a grizzled man—hardened by years of life on the move, he carries with him a vague cynicism that spurs him to seek solitude, yet...
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Forest Fire - “They Pray Execution Style”
Most songs on Staring at the X, the slept-on sophomore album from Brooklyn’s Forest Fire, exist in a comfortable place between rough-hewn folk rock and crunch-leaden spaciness. But here, on the record’s standout centerpiece, they deviate furthest from their comfort zone and in so doing stumble upon perhaps the most dangerous and...
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Phantogram - “Don’t Move”
Where they once worked in dark, hard-boiled beats largely inherited from Portishead, Phantogram are now taking steps toward the livelier end of the night. The collage of clipped little samples that litter “Don’t Move”—watery orchestra hits, luxurious soul horns, an impassioned vocal wail—create a swirling effect that...
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Big K.R.I.T. - “Dreamin’”
In the grand tradition of songs like “Juicy,” this is a self-contained origin story paired with a light kiss-off to everyone who ever doubted Justin Scott, a.k.a. Big K.R.I.T. But rather than harp on his success (in part, perhaps, because he’s still something of an up-and-coming figure) “Dreamin’” finds K.R.I.T....
Brian Wilson Reunites With the Beach Boys for New... →
In the spirit of the holidays, I react to this in My Best Jimmy Stewart Impression: Aw…aw n-naw, naw-naw-naw!
The Beach Boys have been a perennially-touring joke for at least half of the 50 years they’re celebrating. I remember seeing that they were coming to Florida a few years ago, only to recoil in horror when I realized they were playing at Cypress Gardens, which was a theme park...
JAKE CLELAND: 52 Albums: #37 →
jakec:
popcornnoises:
jakec:
Do you ever consider that the positive contrarianism that’s led to greater pop appreciation brings with it a pressure to find greatness in all pop music while denying that you just might be totally indifferent to it?
Replace “positive contrarianism” with “culture” and “pop” with “[any genre of music.]” BOOM! Minds blown.
Personally I think exaggerated cynicism...
JAKE CLELAND: 52 Albums: #37 →
jakec:
Do you ever consider that the positive contrarianism that’s led to greater pop appreciation brings with it a pressure to find greatness in all pop music while denying that you just might be totally indifferent to it?
Replace “positive contrarianism” with “culture” and “pop” with “[any genre of music.]” BOOM! Minds blown.
Gain Damage →
mactra:
Today’s Atlantic piece adds some interesting new research nuggets to the shitpile of evidence that da yoots are deafening demselves with dose damn iPods!
Audiology doctoral candidate Cory Portnuff used an electronic monitoring device to see the actual gain levels and timespans of people’s headphone use. It has long been known that volume x time = extent of damage, but people don’t...
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Battles - “Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo)”
At their best, Battles sound like a happy kid with a new set of Legos. The finished product—in this case, a scratchy, lank-limbed groove that boogies like the world’s pinkest sugar high—is cool and fun, but the real delight is in building the thing, in sorting out the right pieces and savoring the uniquely tactile pleasure...
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I Made You a Mix Tape →
Because I like you. But also because I wanted to try out this Spotify thing everyone’s so keen on. Plus, I needed a mental break from year-end list things. The songs on this mix are ones I’ve enjoyed recently that—for the most part—are either older than one year or aren’t really in consideration for listing / blurbing. A few songs here border on cheese (Huey, Alessi),...
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Dum Dum Girls - “He Gets Me High”
I never quite bought into Dum Dum Girls’ leather-clad, switchblade-carrying shtick. Save for one or two songs on their debut album last year, that vintage sense of toughness rarely comes through in the music. Which is okay! Framing their sound against the backdrop of their image is a big part of what makes them a charismatic band. But if...
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Destroyer - “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”
Maybe “Suicide Demo” isn’t the ideal song to pick from Kaputt—not the catchiest, most concise, or most redolent of the compositional shifts Destroyer has undergone—but it’s the first time on the album that Dan Bejar intentionally halts his momentum and allows his band to wander through the pale, smoky,...
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Wye Oak - “Holy Holy”
Is it just me or should a day at an amusement park look more fun than this? Over the course of their roller-coasting clip for “Holy Holy,” Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack remain strictly po-faced, even while swinging and swooping high off the ground, as if something were eating away at their minds and distracting them from all the lights and calliope....
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tUnE-yArDs - “My Country”
Since it’s the first track on w h o k i l l, “My Country” acts as a declaration of fearlessness (though fearlessness is the primary attribute of all of her music), conflating Merrill Garbus’ performance with the social imbalance she decries. Her voice gains intensity as she navigates the verses, slipping into a near-screech on lines...
Tom's final Poptimist column →
marathonpacks:
dubdobdee:
Plus his useful three-part FE guide to how and why (1, 2 and 3): exemplary exploration of tactics, strategy, aims achieved and (occasionally) not, in all an opportunity seized and very well used first to last.
If you’re a music-writing geek, a plain old music geek, or a geek who likes to geek out about others’ geekdoms, you have to check these links. Tom Ewing...
“If I ever give up on pop music, I suspect that it will not be due to having lost...”
– Glenn McDonald, quoted by Katherine St. Asaph in her Singles Jukebox entry on, uh, Rebecca Black. Wow.
desnoise:
Shabazz Palaces - Are you… Can you…...
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Toro Y Moi - “How I Know”
Like it or not, Chaz Bundick is pretty much stuck with the chillwave label, being one of the biggest acts the non-scene/non-movement has produced. “How I Know,” like much of Underneath the Pine, even sees him steering toward sounds that don’t fall under that umbrella term (because, duh, no one wakes up with “chillwave artist”...
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Purity Ring - “Ungirthed”
Purity Ring’s not a bad name for a band, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with how this music sounds, does it? I’d suggest something along the lines of Megan James The Friendly Ghost. See, James and bandmate Corin Roddick are always fiddling with human voices—pitching them up/down and EQ-ing them into bass lines and...
Does anyone remember who wrote about how they thought of chillwave and witch-house as two sides of the same aesthetic coin? I am interested in this idea but can’t for the life of me recall where I saw it. (It appears my brain, like Tumblr, needs a better ‘search’ function.) Help?
small immunities: rubyvroom replied to your post:... →
imathers:
rubyvroom replied to your post: Top 5 Beach Boys songs
lol at the beatles track. But seriously, the Beach Boys are amazing.
Well, here’s the thing. I love harmonies (who doesn’t?), and I love voices, but there are certain kinds of harmonies and ‘good’ voices that rub me the wrong way. Teenage Fanclub? Low? But of course. The Beach Boys? Or even Brian Wilson’s voice on its own? The...
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Shabazz Palaces - “An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum”
That’s one hell of a moan, isn’t it? The pitched, mangled wail that forms the backbone of this track would quickly turn grating in lesser hands, but Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire not only shape a fantastic beat to it, they give it a verse-less mid-song spotlight, wringing every last drop of dark,...
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Julian Lynch - “Terra”
Just like the rough-hewn painting that adorns the album to which this song lends it name, “Terra” pivots on the muddling of textures and sensory vagueness. There are the earthy browns and greens suggested by loose acoustic strums and loping hand percussion, sure (‘terra’ means ‘earth,’ after all), but this is far from a...
cukeasaurus asked: I just found your blog through your swingin' party review. very insightful and entertaining. are you looking forward to the new gbv?
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James Blake - “The Wilhelm Scream”
I think James Blake is lying. I think he does know about his dreams and his love, and that the resignation of his soul-inflected lines here are, in many ways, a self-pitying cop-out. Taken on their own, they’re the songwriting equivalent of bleary, inebriated pre-dawn sobs. But Blake also knows a thing or two about using textures to body...
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Widowspeak - “Hard Times”
Like good design or comfort food, “Hard Times” is deceptively simple. It’s an exercise in perfectly arranging the most basic elements so that what would for most bands be (at best) a sketch becomes a gorgeous guitar pop gem. Notice how the lead guitar provides the perfect counter-melody to Molly Hamilton’s voice, trading every two-note...
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You've had such a great time on tour this... →
"The fine line between a tricked-out GTO and... →
This review is incredible, as is Ian Cohen’s smack-down on Childish Gambino. Fun reads!
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Handsome Furs - “When I Get Back”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but nothing’s really been the same since Apologies to the Queen Mary. Together, the members of Wolf Parade tried with mixed results to recapture the ineffable spark of their first record, while apart they’ve worked to redefine and transcend their own limitations (with the ostensible halt of Sunset...
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A Friendly Reminder
I’ve noticed that the music I listen to early in my day—Bill Callahan’s Apocalypse at the moment, but this applies to less meticulously-recorded albums too—sounds clearer and more spacious than it does in the afternoon/evening, at which point I am surely experiencing mild ‘ear fatigue.’ Some of it is due to me listening through small in-ear buds (which, if I had...
Anonymous asked: Hey, love the blog -- been reading since last year. Similarly super excited about all top songs/albums lists that come out around about now. Just want to say that I hope you're considering Sandro Perri's latest album, 'Impossible Spaces'. That sounds like some kind of viral advertisement, reading it back to myself, but anyway if you haven't come across it yet it's my...