Pick The Cat's Eyes Out

2008-12-29T13:51:00.001-08:00

Sparkadia unravel those knots brought on by sticky, gooey love. On New Year's Eve you play their "Space & Time," because the song's protagonist talks about how his love traipsed all over Europe, even through those tiny microstates nobody gives a shit about, and yet she returned home to dance with him once again. (Maybe one of those impromptu, fervent, we-didn't-even-push-the-furniture-out-of-the-way jaunts, where the twirls and touches are just part of one long, choreographed dance the two have been performing since he first laid a hand on her waist many years back.) It's a nice image to clutch as you fish for confetti in your plastic cup of beer, and fight indigestion brought on by vegetable egg rolls and the Jonas Brothers performing in the cold with fingerless gloves.

2008-12-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

So there's a trivial but tingly moment in David (DM) Stith's "Hoarse Sorrows and the Whole Blind Earth" (from his EP, Curtain Speech) where the piano sounds lifted from a silent film. As the notes rise and fall, providing vital emotional cues, you can imagine the sepia-toned imagery and frantic, sped-up gesticulations of a pretty damsel being lowered into a lake full of fire-breathing bears. "The heroine is in peril!" Then the piano suddenly picks up in intensity. "Now she is being saved. The hero has arrived on horseback. Huzzah!"

But here's the thing: Stith would likely be more comfortable working within the silent film medium. On tracks like "Around the Lion Legs," his mouth sounds dry as he sings, like he's trembly nervous over expressing himself in such a manner. On "Just Once" he whispers the following couplet: "Just once, just once, just once / I could love you once." For Stith, words are an obstruction, a hurdle that must inevitably be cleared during the creative grind.

Lo-fi noodling, psych-folk trappings, bi-polar pop -- it's my hero at the moment.

2008-12-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

I suppose I'm akin to Jason Pierce when it comes to spiritual music, in that I'm drawn to a particular artist's ability to strengthen resolve, invoke peace, uplift, polish the soul, etc., rather than their inevitable message about our relationships with God. This is partly why I'm enjoying the Welcome Wagon so thoroughly. "He Never Said a Mumblin' Word" sounds like a lost folk ditty Alan Lomax would have catalogued. It's a narrative about the crucifixion ("They nailed him to a tree / And he never said a mumblin' word"), but it's the core themes of courage, steadfastness, and self-sacrifice I'm truly digging on.

On a side note, I recently read that there are over 800 references to music and its use in the Bible -- roughly a quarter of which detail Jesus' days as a teenage roadie for the Lemon Pipers.

2008-11-17T07:48:00.001-08:00

I swear on Heaven's Gate's black-and-white Nikes, I'm From Barcelona are a cult. It's not so much their roster size (two dozen, give or take a few), their like-minded fashion sense, or their unchecked ebullience. It's this hint of secrecy, this sense of us being on the outside of some knowledge only they are privy to. They are eternally happy and comfortable in their black-rimmed glasses and wool sweaters, and we will never know why.

Do I sound jealous? Good, because I am. It's why I emailed Emanuel Lundgren and told him I want in. They're looking for new members; cults always are. Hear "Andy" and the lyrics, "We could need someone like you in our band / No audition and you don't have to pretend." Or "Orphelia," which reads like something you'd find in a cult's literature, a case study along the lines of "Look what our cult did for poor Johnny!": "He didn't believe in anything / He didn't believe in joy."

Then again, the Barcelona Temple really doesn't need pamphlets and colorful buttons and what not. They have pop songs, which are infinitely more powerful. And thanks to the music, you'll be one of them before the night comes. La-la-la-la-la-la-la . . .

2008-11-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde once said that. Smart man.

2008-11-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

As the years accumulate, Astral Weeks becomes less and less of a leisure grab. It's not for a lack of appreciation; it's for the crushing sense of nostalgia. Morrison wrote "Ballerina" after meeting his first wife following a gig at the Fillmore. After first meeting -- this is crucial. The song focuses upon her physical sorcery, which Morrison deftly conveys with his reoccurring image of an elegant, graceful ballerina. Celebrating the allurement of a Helen is an ancient songwriting trick, but Morrison isn't doing this because it's custom. Really, he's got nothing else to latch onto -- he has yet to discover her vices, her quirks, her charms. He only knows her face. And this is what pains. Years from now, that striking physical beauty -- which sent Morrison into a sort of "hallicunatory ecstasy" (not my words; two of Lester Bangs' 3,700 from his legendary Astral Weeks review) -- will have fled, with only aged photographs and words to venerate it. So pay homage while it still exists, while it still enchants, while it still forces you to pen the following couplet: "And I'm standing in your doorway / And I'm mumbling and I can't remember the last thing that ran through my head."

2008-11-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

Artists who have mentioned Steve Reich as an influence: Brian Eno, Kevin Shields, and Jason Pierce. That's one holy-shit triumvirate, no? Maybe I'm naive and indulging in too many priggish-classical-musician stereotypes, but after recently watching an infinity of Reich interviews, I was struck by how affable and humble and approachable he is. How he touched upon those individuals who regularly indulge in Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms, and how wonderful this is, yet: "We don't want them to be the only ones." Then a laugh. This seizes me, when it shouldn't really, since this is an artist who penned something as casual and unconventional as "Clapping Music." In speaking about that particular piece of music, Reich commented on those slight variations on traditional canons or rounds that don't tell you how to sound, but help you to think. But what I truly enjoyed hearing: How the classical music establishment thought Reich had gone crackers when he started doing performances, only to re-assess the artist in the late 1970s and decree, he's not crazy -- he's actually pretty good. "If you do something in life, you want other people to appreciate it." When do creative giants ever admit as much?

2008-10-27T14:20:00.001-07:00

Michael Zapruder: brother of poet Matthew Zapruder. Makes sense. The lyrics on Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope are ambitious, formless, penetrating, focused. They are personal without being overly sentimental. His characters fight, seek, and reconcile. From "Ads for Feelings": "When the wholesome has married the loathsome / Can you tell me what gift I should bring?" From "White Raven": "More footsteps on the walk, then the doorbell / More coats on the rack / Good people making heaven out of hell." From "Harbor Saints": "May the tangle of your footsteps / Leave you where you feel at home." Zapruder's words are tinged with an introspective quality that only proper solitude and contemplation can bring. Two years ago, the San Francisco native recorded an album as Rain of Frogs, a collective featuring a cast of 20 musicians, including members of Camper Van Beethoven and the Decemberists. Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope is less collective and more a collection of uncompromising thoughts.

2008-10-13T19:32:00.001-07:00

If there's one good thing to come out of all the hubbub surrounding the production on Metallica's new album, Death Magnetic, it's this: We've officially been introduced to Pixelated Rick Rubin. Be honest (you're among friends here): You've also been anxiously awaiting the day when the Wall Street Journal would run a piece featuring a quote from Rick Rubin, just so you could meet his dot-matrixed alter-ego. My only disappointment with the headshot is that it ratchets up the already present Grizzly Adams vibe by like 75 percent. Oh shit -- where's Nakoma?

2008-10-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting little tidbit I wasn't able to work into a piece I recently wrote on German DJ Frank Gossner, who spent three years in West Africa trawling for rare 45s and LPs of African funk, Afrobeat, Nigerian disco, and Ghana highlife from the 1970s. Gossner talked about African pop's role as gatherer and narrator when it came to information (in a way, I suppose, that's akin to hip-hop or even English punk). "Music means much more in African than to the average Western consumer," he told me. "Music is the main ingredient of native, African religion. Music also doubled as books and as newspapers to transport news and history."

One of the examples he pointed to was a track named "Nama" that was included on his blog's Deeper and Deeper mix. It's a classic Mandingue standard about a ferryboat sinking on the way to an independence celebration. The accident occurred in 1971 and killed 14 passengers: 13 young girls and the driver, who was named Nama. Roughly 90 seconds before the song concludes, an eerie, distorted electronic sound cuts in; the noise was recorded to mimic the metal gurgle of the boat's dying engine as it slowly sank.

It's evidence of Frank's earlier point (pop music as storyteller), with the end result being a pointed sentimentality that crosses both language and cultural divides.

2008-10-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Remember the color Prussian blue?"
"Remember? What happened to it?"
"They retired it."
"Nah, they renamed it for being too insensitive. The Prussians were rather upset at having a certain quality of melancholy attached to their culture and country. The color is now called midnight blue."
"Ah, what a neat picture."
"It is."
"But you can't blog about crayons."
"I could write about The Colourfield . . . or A Blaze Colour or The New Colours or maybe even Ocean Colour Scene."
"Nobody writes about Ocean Colour Scene."
"What about their mum?"
"Their mum had her Internet and cable turned off. Overdue bills."
"One word, pal: MIX TAPE."

"The Color of Love is Blue" - Apollo Heights [Ed. note: Not Prussian blue or midnight blue. Just blue.]
"The Color of the Fire" - Boards of Canada
"Self-Portrait in Three Colors" - Charles Mingus
"All My Colours" - Echo & the Bunnymen
"Trails of Colour Dissolve" - Felt
"Love is a Wonderful Colour" - Icicle Works
"Turning Colours into Greys" - Paper Moon
"Thomson Color" - The Pastels
"Colors" - Pharoah Sanders
"Darkness & Colour" - The Railway Children
"Colours" - Teenage & The Wildlife
"Tri Coloured Ribbon" - The Wolfe Tones

2008-09-24T07:43:00.001-07:00

Gushing that Band X sounds like Band Y is what we do best. It's why we adore Pandora so intensely. (Side note: I just went on Pandora and typed in "The Loch Ness Mouse" and only got song titles in the results. Okay, so Pandora can suck my bubblegum.) I've long been fond of Deerhoof because their mutty, mixtured pop makes playing such games of connect-the-dots so easy. I listened to their album, Offend Maggie, with a notepad and pen in hand, and the following acts sprung to mind: Wire, Desperate Bicycles, Swell Maps, Fire Engines, The Fall, Delta 5, Half Japanese -- pretty much every post-punk act Simon Reynolds took a scalpel to in that book. The best part is their approximating never sounds calculated. In keeping with this particular time period: It's not DIY, it's DID -- Do It Deerhoof. Clever? Never. I could have told you it's all about their extensive vamping and vocal-centric aesthetic, but Pandora has that shit copyrighted.

2008-09-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

John Lennon's primal therapy sessions with Arthur Janov in 1970 were the alleged catalyst in him baring a little soul (both kinds) for the album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Basically, the English being in Northern Ireland and the conflict in Vietnam and the imprisonment of John Sinclair got Lennon's dander up because his father was an asshole.

"In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life," Lennon said in an interview. "It's excruciating. You are forced to realize that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment."

The sessions went something like this:

2008-09-15T09:26:00.001-07:00

"Blew me away," Tricky said of Martina Topley-Bird's voice. "Drove me crazy. A naturally wicked voice. I actually lost a girlfriend over it, because I listened to the track so much."

Gowns' "White Like Heaven" may cause similar damage. I listen to it over and over again, till I'm out of breath and my chest feels constricted. Like Tricky, I'm feeling melancholic. Not melodic. Only I have no one to plop me in the middle of a room, and force me to listen to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Thus, I compensate with Gowns; their heaven is as white as the light boxes I surround myself with during the autumn months.

Remember when Tricky said "switch on / switch off" in the song "Black Steel?" This is crucial. The light boxes switch on / switch off, but as much as you wish you could, it's impossible.

2008-09-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

In the late 1960s, English journalists were told to stay away from the Biafran War and turn their keen eyes to Vietnam. "Cover America's howler, not ours." At Earth Summit 2002 in Johannesburg, Namibia's President Sam Nujoma said, "We here in southern Africa have one big problem, created by the British." They drew lines on a map when they had no business ever clutching the quill.

I can't imagine the public bore witness to the famine that resulted from the Biafran War as intimately as folks bore witness to the Ethiopian famine in the 80s; nevertheless, the images were there in late '60s Britain, so it's laugh-inducing when I read the following excerpt from an article on Paul McCartney and his Wings, who zipped away to Lagos in 1973 to record Band on the Run.

How were the McCartneys received in Nigeria?
"We enjoyed it eventually. We're all a bit British y'know."

Of course, as all the narratives go, Paul and company were cornered by a nondescript local and accused of filching African music, and then mugged by Fela Kuti at knifepoint. Or vice-versa. Hey Macca, I guess you weren't all a bit Brit. Whatever the case, tonight I fell into the laid-back groove of King Sunny Ade's "Easy Motion Tourist" and thought of Paul. Somewhere he's still drawing lines on a map.

2008-08-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

When you're eight turning nine and rather green when it comes to all this, then "Seven Ages of Rock" has a purpose. It's Pop Music for Dummies watered down, now with 50 percent more mythology!, and without the 5,000-word foreword from Bono. "I filled the great holy void that Ian Curtis' untimely death created." Sorry, Bono -- Joy Division isn't mentioned in "Rock of Ages." Yeah, I checked.

Anyway, my oldest enjoyed it, blissfully unaware, naturally, of how the series packaged the history of pop music -- or in the case of the episode we watched, punk -- into nifty, toteable, timeworn anecdotes. Most of this imagery left iconic status long ago and is now approaching the cartoonish. If I caught one more shot of the dirt-encrusted Bowery with the Empire State Building teasing and gleaming in the background like some sort of sex toy gherkin . . .

Journalist: "I saw the Ramones play their first show. They did 12 songs in 16 minutes. Or maybe it was 16 songs in 12 minutes."

Glen Matlock: "John wore a T-shirt that said 'I hate Pink Floyd.'"

Johnny Lydon: "I had this Pink Floyd tee and I wrote 'I hate' on it. It was madness, really."

Mick Jones: "There was like, this row at a gig and we were like, 'We want in on that!'"

Journalist: "Yobs! The 'hole lot of 'em!"

2008-08-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

I put on a download from Frank Conakry's wonderful blog, Voodoo Funk: "Cooked from Scratch," which I discover contains C.K. Mann's "Funky Hi-Life," a rapidly ascending favorite of mine. I've gone and accumulated a summer's worth of soil in the cracks of my toes (the price of wearing flip-flops), so I slowly soak them in a foot spa. Happy feet bubbles, vintage African records from the 1970s -- only one thing is absent.

So I have a Boddingtons close by and when I open it, the beer spouts everywhere (as those magical widget cans so often do). I hold the pint can over the foot spa and the beer falls into the water. In no time at all my feet are cured. Something should occupy the eyes: The light at this end of the room is good and I'm re-reading The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes just got his knob polished. "Sent him for champagne. He loves to go for champagne." Then later: "Do you feel better, darling? Is the head any better?" "It's better."

It's a simple life, really, but we get on.

2008-08-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes 225 words just aren't enough. Further panning what needs to be panned further: In The Studio With Martin Hannett is a Joy Division legacy cash-grab that would make even Tony Wilson blush. Martin Hannett madness imagery is so threadbare it's nearly see-through; putting him in that pantheon of gone-crackers producers like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson is a sin against laziness. Even worse: Because Hannett was eccentric and daft and constantly making drummers take their kits apart for noise that only he heard!, we're led to believe his studio offcuts and engineering experiments are, I don't know, important to clutch and study. Sure, there's an alternate version of "Digital" that's so obviously Mancunian in the way it sounds recorded from the other end of a crumbling, red-brick railroad tunnel. And there's another track where Hannett noodles around with the broken glass we recall from "I Remember Nothing." But these aren't so much highlights, as much as they're mildly interesting, one-off material amid track after track of relative dross. In The Studio With Martin Hannett was touted as one of the most important Joy Division discoveries ever, which only leads me to believe that there's a special ring in Hell for label publicists.

2008-08-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

You post a picture and attach very few words to it because you're undeniably lazy, or because the boss is extra demanding today, or because you've spent too much time weighing the merits of your nattily trimmed beard. But sometimes pictures need very few words, or in more rare cases, no words at all. And so you go searching for said pictures, partly intent on covering up your laziness, industriousness, beardiness, etc., but mostly intent on delivering some sort of bold pronouncement your words aren't qualified to make. This is one of those pictures. One night I listened to "Atmosphere" and stared at this photo, splashed across Paul Morley's book, and wondered if the step ladder needed to change the industrial bulbs in that dank tunnel would have been tall enough to tie a proper rope for a hanging. I often feel like only the most morbid of queries haunt the curious. Ian also pondered this in my company, but only after I had turned him off and gone to bed.

2008-08-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

"I suppose I was about twelve years old. We used to go to a place called Ballystockart to fish. We stopped in the village on the way up to this place and I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water. He gave us some water which he said he'd got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this 'other dimension.' That's what the song is about."

"And it stoned me to my soul / Stoned me just like jelly roll."

You don't take Bear Notch Road . . . (wait for it, Yakov) . . . it takes you. While the idling SUVs with green canoes strapped to the roofs teemed with unbuckled impatience, I hugged corners and my elation. But I didn't share my secret; while companions inched behind consumers, I drank local beer and debated internally whether Van forges stronger bonds while one is grounded or in transit. And we were all better for it.

2008-07-23T07:42:00.001-07:00

Randy Newman's "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" contains the first eight bars of "Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean." Newman inserts a snippet of this sentimental, patriotic ballad to remind us all of what makes America rather swell and why we should tune into the Republican National Convention in a few weeks. It's all pretty sly: Like previous Newman efforts, "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" is a trifle critical of the United States. One could lift some of the song's more forceful lines and drop them into the dialogue bubble of a political cartoon. "Now it seems like we're supposed to be afraid / It's patriotic in fact and color coded." "The end of an empire is messy at best / And this empire is ending."

Newman says he isn't fond of penning "Tom Lehrer-like songs" because being too topical and timely means you date your material. But it's rather fun to skim backwards and re-visit albums like Sail Away, and realize his political rhetoric hasn't changed much in 30 years because the political landscape hasn't changed much in 30 years. I suppose that same sense of eternalness is what makes Newman such a qualified candidate to speak on what reeks politically. He went Disneying, but returned without a pair of mouse ears. He won an Academy Award and melted the trophy down for the revolution's bullets. He hasn't changed much either.

2008-07-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

When I glance at this album cover, I often think the gentleman is holding a rifle. Quite possibly it's because what little I've read of Nigerian history is typically blood-soaked: pogroms, coups, civil war. According to director Ruggero Deodato, the mini-documentary featured in the horror cult classic Cannibal Holocasut consists of actual firing-squad footage from Nigeria. Men, women, and children are shown being executed.

Of course, this is just a tiny, dark chapter in Nigeria's history. Lagos' status as an ever-bloated mega-city -- a place likely on the precipice of some urban/eco disaster -- is what garners much attention today: It's depicted rather vibrantly in George Packer's New Yorker piece on the former Nigerian capital: "In many African cities, there is an oppressive atmosphere of people lying about in the middle of the day, of idleness sinking into despair. In Lagos, everyone is a striver."

I've read how the period between the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970 and the military coup in 1975 was a golden age for Nigerian music, particularly in Lagos. From a May issue of The Guardian: "The country's oil boom briefly promised to bring prosperity. Many middle-class Nigerians were travelling and studying abroad, appetite for rock music was growing and British labels EMI and Decca saw a fertile market."

And then: "By the time [EMI producer Odion] Iruoje left EMI in 1978, the good times were already over. As oil money was siphoned off by corrupt politicians, crime and unemployment rose. The 7in single market dried up. Bands who once earned a crust playing hotels and clubs were squeezed out by singers with cheap synthesisers. Most groups split out of frustration. 'Berkley Jones, the guitarist for BLO, is now a property developer,' said Soundway's Miles Cleret. 'He hasn't picked up a guitar in 10 years and yet he was one of the most talented guitarists in Lagos. He was a pin-up -- a real star.'"

Despite such a tumultuous fall, Packer's piece describes the immediate, visceral power Nigerian music still has upon newcomers. Fifteen million strong now -- more squalid, more dangerous, more competitive, more desperate. In Lagos, there are still good times to be had. "Upon arriving in the city, he went to a club that played juju -- pop music infused with Yoruba rhythms -- and stayed out until two in the morning. 'This experience alone makes me believe I have a new life living now,' he said, in English, the lingua franca of Lagos. 'All the time, you see crowds everywhere. I was motivated by that. In the village, you're not free at all, and whatever you're going to do today you'll do tomorrow.'"

2008-07-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

"The Casio, Korg MS 10, and Arp Omni became the new paraphernalia of the NOVO generation -- ideal conveyors of their retro-futurist elegance and self-professed cold arrogance."

2008-06-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

My wife and I get dressed behind a single boudoir screen. We pee in each other's company. We don't share mirror-time and floss together, mainly because we're typically out of floss, but if floss was in cinnamony abundance in our household, we would likely make this yet another ADL gone communal.

John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard once shared mirror-time. But as the story goes, they split up -- only to reconnect to share stage-time as the Submarines. Their latest, Honeysuckle Weeks, is inconsistent, but I'm digging on the album's keen sense of self-awareness -- as in, the pair are frequently evoking moments and words connected with childhood, but are ever-aware of their status as individuals with nearly graying tones, weakening eyesight, and more cynical viewpoints.

In "Thorny Thicket," Hazard sings about "prickers and briars" -- the former being a word I haven't heard since traipsing through overgrown, empty lots as a kid -- and how she used them to encircle and protect a once-broken heart. "Swimming Pool" is summertime, childhood leisure mixed with a bit of danger-tinged adult thrill: "When you kiss me in ways I've forgotten / Love is a swimming pool with no bottom."

When you're all grown-up, you notice the subterranean darkness below your kicking feet as much as the smooch. But that's cool. When you're also all grown-up, no one asks you what part of your body the pool water comes up to.

2008-06-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Digging the fact that Kevin Shields is being recorded without stacks of Vox amplifiers, or that he can't pluck from a line of Jaguars and Jazzmasters leaned against the walls, or that he can't instruct a trusty engineer to fetch him new mic poppers or Rotovibe pedals. Shields is here, taped and ever twisted ("I'm crazy, but not mentally ill"), without his usual array of studio playthings and that alone makes this record worth checking out. The MBV completist sect will be all over this like white indie kids on Ricemilk -- and will certainly grouse after hearing it. "The strings of music tightening around him," Patti Smith says over Shields' "chordal architecture," quoting from the poem she wrote for dear friend Robert Mapplethorpe, "forming a cocoon within." That's what those folks ever-yearn for. I think it's a nice palette cleanser before the long-awaited My Bloody Valentine release sees the light of day.

2008-06-13T11:01:00.001-07:00

I can't conjure up the exact Bill Bryson quote or even the book (must have been Notes from a Small Island), but I seem to recall him saying something along the lines of, "If you ever see an Englishman on holiday, chances are he's one of the following: hot, thirsty, or sun-burned." I thought of this when I learned David Gedge has picked up and moved south from Seattle to Los Angeles. Wasn't one of the go-to whines during England's lethargic crawl in the 2006 World Cup the oppressive heat? Imagine what the SoCal sun would render our favorite love-obsessed Leedsman? A puddle? Blisters? A puddle of blisters?

El Rey bounds with energy, so the heat hasn't sapped him of that. Now he just makes observations like, "I thought I saw a shooting star, but it was just another satellite." If you told me years ago that of the 22 bands on the C86 tape only the Wedding Present and Primal Scream would still be alive and kicking in 2008, and that one of their lead singers would have settled in California, I would have bet Stephen Pastel's lisp that it was Bobby Gillespie.

But I would have been wrong. I would have been wrong about Gedge withering out there and I'm probably going to be wrong about England having a solid chance in the 2010 World Cup thanks to South Africa's "cooler," winter temps.

2008-05-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

I make this list for no one's benefit other than my own. My go-to tracks from each disc in Series Two Records' recently issued four-disc compilation.

Series Two Records, Vol. 5
All Our Relatives - "Numbers"
Ellen Beach - "Roaring Fields"
Slowmotion Club - "Parliament Square"
Sweden Japan Foundation - "Atari Gunfighters"
The Mustonens - "A Festival is Here"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 2
The Harvest Ministers - "Just a Boy"
Electric Needle Room - "Nobody Cares About Me Anymore"
The Endless Bummer - "Itacan of Lakota"
The Secret Ink - "Neverafter"
The Ruling Class - "Flowers"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 3
Allt ar Musik - "Jag Har Det Bra"
Elenette - "Att Gora En Hit
The Faintest Ideas - "Mountain of Tics"
The Honeydrips - "Wait for the Grief to Come"
Vit Pals - "Wu Tang Clan"

Series Two Compilation, Vol. 4
Afternoon Naps - "Postcard"
The Airfields - "Quiet Nights in June"
The Atom Miksa Reservation - "We're Sorry"
The Gladeyes - "Damien and Monika Party at Yours"
The Jealous Sea - "All Over Town"

2008-05-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

In The Plague, Camus told us the citizens of Oran spent their Saturdays "love-making, sea-bathing, going to the pictures." In Nausea, Satre's Saturdays were composed of children playing ducks and drakes, and tossing stones into the seas. But I like Proust's Saturdays the most. It consisted of characters frequently blurting out, "Have you forgotten that it's Saturday?" It wasn't a condescending question, but a reminder to one's self and others of what Saturdays promised and relieved one of (labor and well, any thoughts of labor), as the whole concept of leisure was a fairly new one in late 19th century Europe.

M83's "Skin of the Night" is like a Saturday anthem from adolescence. The vocals remind one of Liz Frasier, though back then I had no idea who Liz Fraser was. She could have been the Roll-On America employee who never wiped her hands in between serving Greek-style pizza and ice cream. "Skin of the Night"'s cheesy, post-chorus guitar stabs are like something from the ballads they played loudly while we skated. I wore Vuarnet; she feathered her hair. And the songs were so synth-heavy and impenetrable, the colors from the disco lights flashing overhead bounced right off them.

But you always found a way to wring the emotion from such works and afterwards, as you stood outside waiting for a ride, your feet still tingling from cramped, beige skates, you quoted a verse and got a kiss in return.

2008-05-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

The other day I washed my eight-year-old's hands. He typically does such a task on his own, but I was in a hurry (always) so I grabbed a face cloth and did it myself. In a moment only parents catalog, I noticed how coarse his hands were. He plays baseball and messes around with drum sticks and dabbles in dirt, so naturally the disappearance of any sort of baby-softness is expected. But it still surprised me; it's almost like he totes the hands of an adult now. It got me rolling on some sort of internal rumination about the transition from childhood to adulthood. When I reached the end point, I put on the new Spiritualized album. I wonder if Jason Pierce's mother ever wished to put her son in some sort of stasis, to preserve him from all the bad things he injected/inhaled. To preserve his track-less, fleshy, pink hands. If she ever lectured him, maybe the words are finally coursing through his veins as this new disc seems to stress what the low points can be from indulging a little too freely. Or maybe all the time he spent with Kate Radley's father, the behavioral psychologist, and Kate Radley's father's books are freeing his mind, allowing him to discontinue his demystification of narcotics and reconnect with humanity. Or maybe I'm just getting old and want my heroes to exhibit their age as well.

2008-05-04T18:34:00.001-07:00

I'm gobbling up Shallow Grave. I'm especially digging the way Swede Kristian Matsson (The Tallest Man on Earth) deftly conflates images of purple mornings and heathery meadows and anything else that would make Thoreau's dick hard with simple, big-boy themes. On the album's title track, we find him poised before a body of water, pockets filled with stones. Maybe the tossed stones will discover the water's dark secret; they also hint at the stones used to weigh the buoyant secret down. Or maybe it's just a standard nostalgia exercise, an adult reflecting on the passing of his childhood -- the referenced "shallow grave" reserved for his days of peach-fuzzy cheeks, rock-throwing idle (idyll), and cheese macaroni. You know, those cheese macaroni suppers enjoyed on paper plates, when you were camping and sitting under the trees and the pine needles fell onto your plate, forcing you to pick through the molten cheese to dig out the needles.

During this song's opening, we hear pretty birds chirping. Other tracks like "The Sparrow and the Medicine" rise and fall to bass-drum accents provided by a tapping foot. Such DAT-machine touches give the album even more of an organic flair. Matsson's earthy mountain folk is quite a departure from the recent product to come off the ever-churning Swede pop assembly line. Among his songwriting countrymen and cheese macaroni eaters, Matsson casts a long shadow.

2008-05-01T19:22:00.001-07:00

I have money again, so I can eat and drink, and buy albums. Like Series Two Records' recently issued four-disc compilation. Ninety songs from 90 artists with names like Eggnog and Doggy and Fairytalors and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. My teeth are rotting out of my skull just thinking of it. There's just something so right about an obscure, bedroom Swedish pop band having its stuff released on an obscure, bedroom pop label from Columbus, Nebraska. The four discs are hand-numbered and limited to just 100 releases. There's an accompanying written missive from Christoper B., the individual who sweated his way through this project. It's on notebook paper, too, with scrawl that inches along like my cousin's, which I suppose adds to the comfortable feeling this purchase is lending me. I'm a sucker for such DIY packaging.

2008-04-24T13:05:00.001-07:00

My new job has me downtown. Actually, "uptown" is more apt. Like when we would visit my dad's family in Clinton and all the boys would say we're heading out to buy soda and baseball cards, and the parents would respond, "Oh, you're going uptown." Uptown has gaggles of teenagers, cloudy storefront glass complete with the residue of Scotch tape, gum spots on the sidewalks, no corporate brandname jostling, less honking traffic, yellow brick buildings stamped with names ("Acquilla Building"). Where I am now is uptown.

Me: It's kinda neat having all these little mom 'n' pop stores around.

New boss: You mean like the just-out-of-business luggage repair shop across the street?

There's an independent record store here, located next door to the office. My boss is friendly with the owners, who are ever-willing to accomodate him with a near endless supply of Lloyd Cole releases. I recently spent a lunch hour in the store's used CD section and returned with a clutch of albums. Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 Live -- in black Sharpie is the letters "WNEC," written in big, blocky text on both the disc itself and the CD booklet. If you're from my neck of the universe, you know that likely stands for Western New England College. Jason Pierce being vivisected for the benefit of scholarship -- a rather mind-fucking possiblity I like to consider.

Well, now "Think I'm in Love" is playing on the boss' stereo system. I've never been to Rugby, but I imagine it has an uptown. No downtown. And over there -- under that dirty, red awning over there -- is where someone like Pierce would busk. And I would bang on the thick office windows here trying to get his attention.

2008-04-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

It's funny, fitting, whatever you want to call it, that Liam Finn is captured in mid-air upon the cover to his solo debut, I'll be Lightning. His brand of retro/original indie pop makes you walk on air. If Liam was living in dad Neil's heyday (yes, that Neil Finn), songs like "Lead Balloon" would have a giddy accompanying music video featuring paper airplanes and band members doing cartwheels and smashing crockery. And it would be shown every morning on MTV while you sat home on summer vacation, eating sugary cereal.

What I'm really digging at the moment is "Lullaby," which finds Liam sounding nasally, amateurish, aching, organic. There's no accompanying instrumentation -- save for a touch of strings -- just overdubbed "ahs" and "ohs" in the background, all while Liam sings of simple things like finding rest and the proper roads to take. And it feels like the one being serenaded isn't a child fighting sleep, but a big person at the end of their rope. It's Robert Frost meets Jason Pierce.

Then there's the bottled-up pep of "Second Chance," with its plastic drum loops and what sounds like lap steel guitar, Liam ever willing to add bits and bobs to the basic indie pop template. Or the bibulous, unrestrained "Music Moves my Feet," with its nifty, hits-a-little-too-close-to-home couplet, "Drown your dreams in alcohol / Underneath the breath you hold." Ironic, that song title is, since Liam works best at stirring hearts, not feet.

2008-04-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

I forgot how unfuckablewith Meadowland's "white trash" vibe was. Okay, maybe that's coming on a tad strong (though the track "She Sends Kisses" does include the term "white trash" in its rather wayward narrative). The characters in the Wrens' songs aren't morally rubbished or for the most part, spiritually rubbished; but there is the sense they've been left at the end of life's driveway.

They're hometown loiterers who say things like, "All's well in hell and all here's hoping." They busy themselves with activities like writing letters, or better yet, imagining themselves writing letters; they remain in Jersey and the (imagined) recipient of their letters are anywhere but. They hold onto the keepsakes that casually remind of better days. They're 9-to-5 worn ("tied to work / splitting rocks"). They're pigeon-holed ("I can't type / I can't temp"). They're trapped by economics and ennui ("bored and rural-poor, lord, at 35, right?"). They've wasted on ("I've wasted on"). I'm still shocked Zach Braff never soundtracked a song from Meadowlands, as that album and Garden State pick at the same 30-something uneasiness (though Meadowlands does it more deftly, of course): reflecting on what-could-have-beens, resisting life's determinedness to have you surrender and "settle in," fighting this realization that Jersey (or, fill in the blank) chose you, and not vice-versa.

"You keep saying Jersey’s not a home" goes a line in "Thirteen Grand." Well, they were correct: it's a furnace. A big, God-damn furnace that only remains alight when the loiterers climb inside and burrow down into the embers. "Someone's got to remain behind," they say, and watch over the old beach house rented at Cape May or make certain the next generation still plays spin the bottle and takes bad drugs or be sure there are girls still cheesy enough to sign love letters with "Hope & Hearts," inadvertently granting someone the belief they will one day harbor the ability to make that hometown "flight." But at their core, the loiterers know this is all just busywork until the inevitable burn-down to ash.

Meadowlands is like someone wafted the smoke away with their hands so you can get a better view of the smoldering.

2008-04-11T09:00:00.001-07:00

Fillmore in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer has a really acerbic (enjoyable?) rant against the French. "I use to rave about them," he spit, "but that was all literature." He dubs them cruel and mercenary, selfish to the core, self-righteous, ever guilty of avarice.

But here's the rub: The French are quite deft at masking their matchless cynicism with beauty. The written word, architecture, fucking pastry. Or synth pop. Lately, So Young But So Cold: Underground French Music 1977-1983 has been occupying much of my free time. I play Nini Raviolette's "Suis-je Normale" on repeat. It's rather minimal in structure: heart-monitor beeps, languid, mood-setting background synths, and Raviolette's breathy inner-scrutiny ("Am I normal?" she keeps asking in French). There's no rhythm section to speak of: the song just floats along, occupying the blurry moments between self-analysis and self-revelation.

The (Hypothetical) Prophets' "Person to Person" is like a diametric opposite, the pretty pealed away to reveal a gritty surface. Lyrics focus on a personal ad complete with a laundry list of "need not apply"'s: no boozers, no smokers, no neurotics, no cancers, no losers, no phonies. The love-seeker is interested in securing absolute perfection and as a result, constructed a search doomed to be a failure right from the get-go. What makes it original, wholly French, is that one gets the feeling such a set-up was purely intentional -- and not the result of some subterranean neurosis.

2008-04-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

The intro to WLVI's "Creature Double Feature." Music was Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Toccata." Shit blew my seven-year-old mind.

2008-04-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

I don't plan on making a habit of this, but a message board post I made warrants repeating here. At least, my ever-loving Jason Pierce fanboy-self thinks so . . .

Spiritualized, Songs in A&E

Not in line with earlier efforts, but not Amazing Grace either. Of course, I've long been on board with Jason Pierce helping to soundtrack the rest of my life (at least until one of us croaks; my money is on me going first), so my opinion may not be all that valid.

In some sense, it's a continuation of Let it Come Down. Only, in the way that album was regarded as some sort of "aftermath" (hear: "Out of Sight," "The Twelve Steps," "The Straight and the Narrow"), this is the "aftermath" to the "aftermath." I remember a story where Pierce mentioned the title to Let it Come Down was taken from Macbeth: Banquo saying, "It will be rain tonight" and the response being, "Then let the rain come down." (I think he later rescinded that derivation in the same interview.) Well, Songs in A&E exists in the period after the rain has fallen and collected in pools and then evaporated.

Maybe it's all the song titles employing the word "fire," but for the first time, I'm feeling . . . I don't know, consequence in a Jason Pierce record. He's never blushed when talking about his drug habit, but here I feel like rather than talking about his nadir being an infrequent habit of taking his breakfast right off of a mirror, the lowpoint is the ultimate physical ruin: comas and scars and actual, real-live death. Old age bring such keen perspective, of course; I just never expected to hear it in someone who's expounded so freely about the stimulants he's indulged in. In some ways, I considered him forever lost, but I suppose this proves that even the most indulgent can be rescued.

Pierce has already had his "break-up" album and his "rehab" album. I'm not sure what this one will be lazily labeled as. But listening to it again, the moniker "spiritualized" never sounded so apt.

2008-04-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

I swear to God, Scottish pop is so fucking terrible right now. I hate delivering such wide-reaching damnations because there's always something that's gone uncovered, but general frustration, ennui, and the Cinematics have brought me to this precipice. I got an email today: PR for the Edinburgh band Broken Records. I listened a few times while I worked. The verdict: it's like a conflation of Sons & Daughters' boozy, frenetic energy and My Latest Novel's puffed-up emotional tropes. I got a tad excited about it, but then realized, during more fertile times this probably wouldn't even be a blip on my tartan radar.

Scotland's popsmiths are typically at their finest when reacting to England's Next Big Thing. Hear Screamadelica or If You're Feeling Sinister or, I don't know, maybe Lubricate Your Living Room. Now there's just lots of piggybacking, lots of regurgitating, lots of Scottish artists content with their neighbors to the south doing the lion's share of the work (not that they're ever-diligent at the moment either). Lampreys like the Fratellis just latch onto that giant Libertines fish and suck the body dry of all its fluids. Admittedly, I did find that Fratellis' record to be rather cheeky and fun, but again . . . fertile times, blip on radar, blah blah blah. It wasn't like the first time you heard Cocteau Twins or The Man on Your Street or Billy Mackenzie's voice. Jesus Christ -- Billy Mackenzie's fucking voice.

Right now, my favorite Scottish pop track is Frightened Rabbit's "Music Now": because its title just reeks of a product brand name being bandied about in a thickly carpeted board room; because the chanting in the background reminds of the "No more rock 'n' roll for you!" ebullience from Orange Juice's "Poor Old Soul (Part Two)"; because the lyrics ("So love London, love me / But don't love me I don't mind / You can take it or leave") make me think some Scottish acts still do care what London thinks. That it's not just about leaving Caledonia behind and moving down there (which was a big fucking deal back in the day; just ask the Jolt), but gaining acceptance. (I'm not Scottish, not of Scottish descent even, but I imagine part of being Scottish means you always have this nagging, irritating desire to be at least viewed as an "equal" by those wanker English; Rents' diatribe from Trainspotting is echoing in my brain.) And that acceptance came when a Scottish act was not only reframing the English genre/movement they were immersed in, but advancing it as well.

2008-03-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

It's a long drive to Jackson. One's throat becomes raw from the repeated singalongs to Phil Wilson's version of "Jackson" ("Well, go on down to Jackson / Go ahead and wreck your health"; thanks, I will). Travel companions flinch at the infinity of country radio stations. And there's patience for the one that specializes in swing music, but only for several exits.

So we lean on Great Lake Swimmers' Ongiara. It's become the go-to album for these journeys. Sonically, it's hardly akin to the folk music indigenous to this corner of New Hampshire or the watered-down blues-rock one winces through at local bars, but GLS frontman Tony Dekker is playing with a rural aesthetic that's perfectly at home in places like Jackson. Where woodland beauty outvalues all the plastic playthings we left behind. Where nature's patience becomes your own. Where you like the trees -- the way the trees are on the mountains, all different.

As I once scribbled for Stylus, "Tapping into a childhood spent in the rural, southern reaches of Ontario (Wainfleet, to be exact), Dekker explores mankind's kinship with nature and our most vexing conundrum in the modern age: travel the road to technology or travel the road to spirituality?"

I listened to Ongiara on my iPod in my automobile. What does that say about my choices?

2008-03-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

I digest Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' "More News from Nowhere" (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!) and I burp, "how bizarre." Or more like, "How Bizarre." The connection is probably tenuous and one no else has grasped; it's two men playing the role of wry, observational sideline reporter: OMC frontman Pauly Fuemana conflating children's storybook imagery with urban color; Cave updating Lou Reed's "A Walk on the Wild Side" with the Burroughs handbook (my second favorite bit: "Now Betty X is like Betty Y minus that fatal chromosome"). Judging by the gory details, Cave's got more reason to distance himself from the characters in his narrative, but it's Fuemana who sounds more detached. I like that; detachment is cool, and so for one brief moment in time, Pauly Fuemana ends up sounding more cool than Nick Cave. Go figure.

"How Bizarre" reaching level red on the ubiquitous pop song scale (in '97? '98?) forever tainted my opinion of it. But I always remember my dad coming back from a day at Old Orchard Beach that summer (more a people-watching exercise than anything else; you have to know my dad). He was sitting outside, having a beer, surveying the legions of pasty Québécois on the prowl for real shark's teeth trinkets and this song came on, and he thought: how neat, how perfect. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing . . . even when it's not mine to dole out.

2008-03-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

In college, everyone has a friend named "Jim." Mine had unruly hair, perpetually failed French, and confessed to being the lead singer in a garage garage rock band named Eat! He also played the Dead Milkmen's Beelzebubba on a loop during newspaper deadline nights.

Jim's place frequently sourced the kind of house party din ensnared on the opening to Dead Milkmen's "Bad Party": chats about required texts, beer on the carpet, standard college bullshit self-loathing manifesting itself in the form of lots of eye makeup and drunken hook-ups. Bad parties were a required part of your everyday 18-to-21 existence.

When I hear the house party din on "Metronomes" from Cassettes Won't Listen's new EP (Small-Time Machine), I can't deduct if it's one of the bad variety or otherwise; I merely believe Jason Drake is saying something about those "bedroom" artists who partake in a sort of pop solitaire, handling all the writing, instrumentation, recording, releasing, etc., related to their work. It's not really much of a statement, but the gist is that human interaction can be pretty swell, despite how detestable we generally are at stop signs and in line at banks and in crowded grocery stores. Not so much for the in-direct/direct effect on the creative process, but more for the way it can wash away that accumulating hermit's stink. Or how it can bring that unchecked ego of yours to its knees.

At Jim's bad parties, you could walk from one end of the place to the other upon the greasy heads of hipsters and never once touch the floor. I don't know if they would dig "Metronomes," however.