Top 25 Albums of 2011

ACCORDING TO ME, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Holy shit. Last time I wrote in this blog, it was barely 2011, I wasn’t a dad yet, and Facebook timeline was only a glimmer in Mark Zukerberg’s beady little eyes. So, sorry to all my fans out there (all one of you). I’ll try (maybe?) to write some more shiz in the future. For now, though, feast your eyes on a list of my favorite records from 2011 - it only took me 10 days, 32 diaper changes, 20 bottles, and 17 attempts at getting Emitt to take a nap to complete it.

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1. Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip

My Bloody Valentine references are nothing new in today’s indie rock sound palette. More reverb than church, whirly-bird guitar flourishes, seagull-cry keyboard squawk’s… these characteristics are featured on almost every one of Pitchfork’s non hip-hop picks for albums of the year. Except. None of those bands really rock; nor do they go full-MBV like Austin, TX’s Ringo Deathstarr. Sure, it might be overtly My Bloody Valentine (or Jesus and Mary Chain), but you know what? I don’t give a fuck. They do it well; not since the Swirlies & All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors (how’s that for some deep references, eh?) has somebody come this close to totally aping Kevin Shields and co. in such a tasteful, respectful, fuzzed-out, and tuneful way that it somehow all just seems ok. And i don’t mean “ok” as in “average”… I mean “ok” as in “completely acceptable” and, frankly, inspiring. And considering MBV and Shields don’t seem to be in too much of a rush to follow up an album that was released, oh, I dunno, MORE THAN 20 FUCKING YEARS AGO, I’ll take Ringo Deathstarr’s imagination of what a new MBV record might sound like over one never existing any day. I listened to this almost more than anything else this year.

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2. Wild Flag - Wild Flag

I don’t think I looked forward to a record more this year; and for all intents and purposes, this hot little number lived up to my expectations. The hype engine works in mysterious ways, and it seemed that Wild Flag were one of the few “rock” bands that actually got people worked up - and with good reason, considering all parties involved (members of Sleater Kinney, Helium, the Minders, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Uriah Heap, Deep Purple, Death Angel, etc… right?). Only one real clunker in the bunch (the annoyingly sung “Boom”), and the rest, especially Mary Timmony’s songs, show off the guitar like no other record this year. I love guitars.

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3. Yuck - Yuck

Fizzy, fuzzy, fucking great. Yuck must have direct access to my brain, record collection, and iTunes library, because I’m pretty sure they made this 90s-obsessed rock record just for me. So many jams on this one - “Get Away,” “Holing Out,” “Georgia,” “The Wall” - that it almost rivals Weezer’s The Blue Album in listenability, hit quotient, and volume. Makes me wish I still had a paper route, my sweet GT trick bike, and a Walkman to listen to this album on cassette.

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4. Fucked Up - David Comes to Life

When does loud music with screaming stop getting pegged as “hardcore” and just become “music.” If there ever was a record to do it, it’s David Comes to Life - a sort of end-of-the-world love-story rock opera that has about a million guitar tracks on each song, and some of the best drumming you’ll hear all year. It makes American Idiot look idiotic.

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5. Minutes - Minutes

I wrote about this record for Ferndale Patch, so I’ll just repeat here what I said there: “Quite frankly, I’m almost rendered speechless when trying to come up with ways to describe how much I love this record. Based in Kalamazoo, with lineage between tons of west-side-of-the-state post-hardcore bands like Trocar and Hornet - as well as a DC connection (geographically, as well as in sound) in Ryan Nelson (of the long-lost Most Secret Method) - Minutes play the kind of workman-like punk that can only come from dads in their mid-30s that are old enough to have seen Fugazi play their first Michigan dates, but young enough to still have a fire in them to keep doing it. Honestly, there isn’t a record I’ve heard all year that I can relate to more. Kills on the treadmill, too.”

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6. Big Troubles - Romantic Comedy

Part of me wants to call this record a guilty pleasure - if only because Big Troubles’ first album sounds so harsh and noisy compared to Romantic Comedy’s pristine take on dreamy Brit-pop. Before, they focused on layered MBV-style fuzz to cover up their melodies; this time around, they strip almost all of it away, coming up with a more lush, classic take on British influenced pop music. Most of the time, I’d lean more towards their abandoned shoegaze approach, but it’s clear on Romantic Comedy that this new style suits the band much better, and the songs are too good to deny. Where Pains of Being Pure at Heart swung and missed this year, Big Troubles hit a home run.

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7. Real Estate - Days

A band I thought I hated (if only because Friendly Foes played with them in NYC once, and they showed up right before they played, and split right after), I’m totally impressed by the consistency of this album - I could listen to Days for days. If Yo La Tengo weren’t still making viable music, I’d call them the new Yo La Tengo. 

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8. Sloan - The Double Cross

My boys! Still going strong, 20 years later. Still making mostly good-to-great records, this time with a briskness of early Buzzcocks and Ramones records (brevity wise, anyway). There’s forays into power pop crunch, disco-ish detours, and even a little pop-punk on side B, all of which are a bit hit-and-miss; but side A’s first 5 tracks are yet another example of how Sloan can brilliantly meld music made by 4 distinct songwriters into one cohesive movement. Easier said than done, especially after this long.

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9. Telekinesis - 12 Desperate Straight Lines

If I could get in a time machine and do a few things over again, musically that is, and stuck to following the path of my early teenage influences (Sloan, Weezer, Teenage Fanclub, etc.) I probably could have been Telekinesis’ Michael Benjamin Lerner. It took me 30 years to make my first solo album - it took Lerner 23, so he wins I guess. He’s also a kick ass drummer, has a great sense of melody, and considering his age, he could be making horrible Fall Out Boy-influenced emo, instead of name dropping Flin Flon in interviews. Power pop is usually a total nerd’s genre, but Lerner makes it cool by being young and fearless. I’m excited to see where he’ll take the band next.

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10. Stephen Malkmus - Mirror Traffic

Honestly, I don’t know why this made the top ten. I guess it’s because I listened to it a lot, I love the artwork, Janet Weiss plays drums, and I’ve been a fan of ol’ Malk since before I could drive. Wordy, funny, sweet guitar licks… I mean, it’s all here; it’s a Stephen Malkmus I can trust. And it’s always good to have somebody you trust rounding out the list, like an indie rock Sam Bernstein or something.

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So that’s my top ten. Here’s the rest…

11. Obits - Moody, Standard, & Poor

12. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

13. Title Tracks - In Blank

14. Washed Out - Within and Without

15. Mr. Dream - Trash Hit

16. Hospital Garden - Haunter

17. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo

18. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

19. Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

20. Cloud Nothings - Cloud Nothings

21. REM - Collapse Into Now

22. Bazan - Strange Negotiations 

23. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

24. The Men - Leave Home

25. Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong

Where You Been?

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry I neglected you. I haven’t written on you in awhile. There’s really no excuse. I promise, it will never happen again (until the next time it happens, which will probably happen really soon).

Anyway, I had the day off today, so I had the luxury of jamming records all day. This is what I listened to*:

Black Tambourine - Complete Recordings

Super-fuzzed out jangle pop from future members of Velocity Girl. An indie classic that everybody should own, but probably don’t. Rereleased last year, but thanks to the wifey, we have the original on 10”. We rule.

Check out “For Ex-Lovers Only”

Dinosaur Jr. - Green Mind

This record has already been written about on this blog. Today I picked up on some of J Mascis’ probably unintentional, um, “funky-ness” in his guitar playing. It kind of bugged me. Honestly, there’s better Dino records than this one, although “The Wagon” is a classic jam.

Check out “Green Mind”

Olivia Tremor Control - Music From The Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle

A totally underrated and insanely long double album that gets sort of overshadowed by Black Foliage - their other insanely long double album. Listening to this instantly transported me back to last year’s Elephant Six show at the Pike Room, one of the best show’s I’ve ever seen, where Jeff Mangum played a song and I cried real tears.

Check out “Define a Transparent Dream”

Redd Kross - Born Innocent

I’ve been checking out that band OFF!, recently - a no-bullshit new punk band with Keith Morris of Black Flag/Circle Jerks, as well as Steven McDonald of Redd Kross on bass. Today, they inspired me to pull this guy out. Born Innocent is Redd Kross’ debut, and is a sloppy mess of glam/punk steez that makes their power-poppy later records seem like Beatles albums in comparison. The wax on the vinyl rerelease is blue, and has a sweet Raymond Pettibon print on one of the labels.

Check out an awesome video of Redd Kross playing live in 1982

Velocity Girl - Copacetic

I’m such a huge fan of Simpatico!, the second Velocity Girl record, that I sometimes forget about this one. There’s a lot more fuzz and MBV-styled guitar stuff going on on Copacetic, and that’s quite alright with me. I might be the only person in the world who still listens to this band on a regular basis. 

check out “Crazy Town” (not the band)

* Tumblr won’t let me embed any Youtube videos for some reason. Sorry. I’m mad now.

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There’s also some newer stuff that I’ve been getting into lately that I wanted to mention, and might go into in more depth later on… I’ve really liked newer records by The Corin Tucker Band, Yuck, Toro Y Moi, Apex Manor, Cloud Nothings, and Lower Dens. So, now you know that.

TOP 25 RECORDS of 2010

*UPDATE*

Thanks to the lovely and talented Laura Witkowski, who pointed out that Polvo’s “In Prism” - my #3 album of the year - actually came out in 2009! I must have come down a case with indie rock amnesia or something. Anyway, because of this, my list has been updated, if only slightly! Thanks Laura!

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No fancy intro or storytelling here. Rather, this is a list of the 25 albums I liked the most in 2010 that actually came out in 2010… and why.

01. Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

The Chunk basically disappears for 9 years, only to reemerge as themselves from 15 years ago, yet somehow much, much better. The energy that the band manage to cram into punch-packing jams like “My Gap Feels Weird” and “Slow Drip” is impressive, and the hooks that populate “Digging For Something” and “Everything At Once” is amongst some of their best. Let’s just hope there isn’t another 9 year gap between another record, because this band is on a hell of a roll.

02. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

The record starts slow and beautiful, then drifts into chiming jangle pop and haunting, skeletal exercises in restraint. There’s also saxophones, Lilys soundalikes, and one of the creepiest songs ever about being held captive (the plinking, rain-water-in-a-bucket sounding “Helicopter”). Is this seriously the same band we heard a few years back?

03. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

I thought this record would wear thin on me, and it has, but I can’t think of an album that I’ve gone back to more than this. A fine example of how power-pop can find new legs when infused with more eclectic influences (hipster-appoved Afrobeat, tasteful violin flourishes, and enough reverb to make Phil Spector jealous). Pretty good for a bunch of chubby babies.

04. Jaill - That’s How We Burn

The addictiveness of this record caught me off guard. First time I heard it, I was bummed; for some reason I expected more. But with vice-grip like hooks on jams “Everyone Is Hip” and “The Stroller,” Jaill eventually had me on lockdown. Also, friend them on Facebook, and you will discover that the only they really care about is weed.

05. Les Savy Fav - Root For Ruin

Older. Balder. Better? The Favs return with teeth gnashing, and make a wild record that pays homage to the 90s in a way that I could only dream. With lyrics begging to “show us your teeth and show us your tits,” Root For Ruin finds the Favs in a full-on heat, sweating their way through 11 songs ripe with Harrington’s whip-smart lyrics and whiplash guitar leads that give their heros Polvo a run for their money. RIFFS FOR DAYS!

06. No Age - Everything In Between

Sub Pop’s resident vegan skate-punks embrace finally melody, make a record worthy of the hype. Quick, somebody call the Credibility Cops! No Age’s world is an intriguing one — a place where Dinosaur Jr’s loud jangle collides with ambient soundscapes that nod to Brian Eno. Somewhere in there, there’s Husker Du-styled guitar shredding, Black Flag’s straight ahead pummel, and then, on the drop of a dime, shoegaze-y elements that most “punk” bands would be afraid to attempt. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, No Age is a band that completely transcend their influences into something all their own. 

07. The Soft Pack - The Soft Pack

Almost every song is fast and their drummer plays standing up, so you have to assume these guys are just using the band as an excuse to get their cardio in for the day. RIYL Hot Snakes, fast things, and stand-up drummers.

08. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Win Butler grew up in a suburb and rode his bike a lot. Then he wrote an incredible album about it. The Suburbs feels like a record Arcade Fire really needed to make, especially since Neon Bible seemed to over promise but under deliver. That albums expensive church organs and dark tones are replaced with punk fortitude (“Month of May”), Cyndi Lauper-ish 80s dance (“Sprawl II”), and a few certified anthems (“Ready To Start” and “We Used To Wait”) that rightly characterize them as our generations U2. Just no Pop, please.

09. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks

Just when you thought ol’ Teddy forgot how to make good records (man, did Living With The Living suck or what?) he comes out with this all killer, no filler (except for that shit acoustic song that I skip every time it comes on, ala “The Butcher” from Odessey and Oracle) rock record that sounds like a “Ted Leo, This Is Your Life”-type collection. Welcome back, Theodore. 

10. Versus - On the Ones and Three

If there was an album that I was looking forward to this year only slightly less than Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding, it was this one. Versus have been one of my favorite groups since high school, when I bought the now classic Secret Swingers at Repeat the Beat in Dearborn simply because I thought the cover art looked cool. Fast-forward to now, and I still find myself listening to them on a consistent basis. Their latest album could be charactarized as their “come back”, as they haven’t released anything since 2000’s underrated Hurrah, but still, they’ve managed to do something fresh and new - at least for them. This record, simply, is quite dark, and often morbid, but never lacking in beauty. The tempos take their time, and all out rockers are few and far between, but they make up for it with their signature male/female vocal harmonies and interloping guitar lines that remind me of why I loved them in the first place — except this time, seen in a slightly dimmer light.

and all the rest…

11. Beach House - Teen Dream

12. Spoon - Transference

13. Title Tracks - It Was Easy

14. Caribou - Swim

15. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

16. The Thermals - Personal Life

17. Arranged Marriage - Dearly Beloved

18. Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

19. Field Music - Measure

20. Copper Thieves - II

21. The National - High Violet

22. Free Energy - Stuck on Nothing

23. Wolf Parade - Expo 86

24. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

25. Vampire Weekend - Contra

Coming soon, before the end of the year, will be my top 25 albums of 2010 NOT released in 2010 (unless it was reissued, which I decided counts)… keep an eye out.

I Bought These Today

Any Trouble - Where Are All The Nice Girls

Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Joe Jackson had a baby and named it Any Trouble. It is very well behaved. It writes good songs, but your mom and dad would like them. This is not punk, and that’s totally ok. An underrated Stiff Records gem if there ever was one.

Fugazi - Red Medicine

It always seems so weird to me that Fugazi has only made six full-length albums, but their influence is felt so far and wide, that you’d think they made six hundred. This is probably the album that alienated the most punks, with it’s upped production value and attempt at incorporating other styles into their sound like dub and noise. It’s also my favorite Fugazi album cover, which is a tough contest for sure. It may be passe, but i’ve always been a huge fan of the last few Fugazi records, End Hits and The Argument, but never really spent much time with this album ‘til now. Red Medicine is the sound of a band reacting to the idea of what a Fugazi record should sound like, and while, in my opinion, they may have done it better on their last two records, this album is where the wheels started to turn.

Husker Du - Flip Your Wig

Flip Your Wig was the second album Husker Du released in 1985, which seems totally insane, since New Day Rising, their first shot fired that year, already stood at 16 songs. The record, their last on SST, features one of my very favorite Husker songs in “Makes No Sense At All” but doesn’t necessarily rank as high on my list of must-have Husker records. But if you can find it (it’s pretty easy, now that all of Husker’s catalog has been reissued) it’s probably going to be ten times better than most anything released this year.

The Rezillos - Can’t Stand the Rezillos

The Rezillos, led by howler Faye Fife predate pretty much every awesome female-led loud rock movement, and have influenced everybody from Bikini Kill and Bratmobile to the Donnas and Pretty Girls Make Graves… so, I’m not really sure why you wouldn’t want to listen to this.

THE BAND OF TOMORROW, TODAY, ONE LAST TIME.

Webster’s defines the word “new” as “not of long duration; having just (or relatively recently) come into being or been made or acquired or discovered. Raw. Fresh. Original and of a kind not seen before.”

I got that definition by typing the word “new” into Google. 11 years ago, when the rock and roll band New Grenada started, there was no Google. If somebody told you to “Google it” they may have been requesting some kind of circus performance, or perhaps suggesting some kind of sexual favor. In 2000, there was no Myspace. There was no Facebook. There were no iPhones. There was no Skype. The dizzying social web that we are all entangled with now didn’t effect us yet. We were all just getting used to Altavista, Hotbot, and Angelfire for fuckssake.

Back then it was mixtapes and magazines, word of mouth and words printed on the inside of our favorite records. And, for a lot of us, we were lucky enough to be socially connected by something that lived and breathed. Something raw. Fresh. Something original and of a kind not seen before. Our original social network was a band called NEW GRENADA.

You could make the joke that Mark Zuckerberg may have been a New Grenada fan; maybe he got the idea for Facebook by seeing how many drummers have come and gone from the band’s lineup (maybe they wanted to keep in touch?). But, seriously, have you ever seen another band before or since that just kept, well, being “NEW”? Lineups changed, and they were constantly reinventing themselves. Their shows became legendary. Brass knuckles and exercise bikes were as common as guitars and drums. Smashed keyboards, shattered microphones, demolished bass guitars… all casualties of their reinvention. At one infamous show, New Grenada conducted a panel discussion on how to be a band. It was done as a tongue in cheek, snarky “FUCK YOU” to all the posers in town that actually believed there was a formula for success.

But here’s the twist: New Grenada were actually teaching a lot of us, myself included, how to be in a band. Or more importantly, how to become interesting people. Their shows were exciting and unpredictable. Their records were smartly produced, whether they did it themselves, or had some dude who recorded Nirvana help them out. And then, the songs. New Grenada songs were anthems. They were punk without having to say it. They were tough, and mean, and sweet, and sad, with lyrics that were designed to call you out. To weed out the posers. But they were also vulnerable, and heartbreaking sometimes. The word gets totally overused when describing music, but I’ll say it anyway: New Grenada’s formula for success was honesty.

I know that the definition suggests that something new will eventually get old (yeah, that “not of long duration” part); but to me, sticking the word in your band name implies immortality. Yet here we are, on the last day New Grenada will actively exist. But, there’s no reason to be sad. The great thing about music is that it can always be discovered. It can always be acquired, fresh, and raw. Band’s won’t last, but music is forever; and with that, so New Grenada will be. 

Please listen to New Grenda’s music:

http://newgrenada.bandcamp.com/ 

Does Dave Pirner Still Have Dreads?

I’ve discovered a new pastime: Have a day-off, solo record is done, and nothing else is going on? Go to the record store. Hang out. Look at records. Buy records. Come home. Listen to records. It’s pretty fun. Here’s what I’ve picked up recently, and what I think about ‘em.

Harry Nilsson: Ariel Ballet & The Point!

There’s been quite a bit of talk about Nilsson lately, mostly due to the fact that the 2006 documentary Who’s Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him) has just been released on DVD. I haven’t seen it yet, but from what I hear it’s fantastic. I’ve been a passive Nilsson fan, and he’s been on my radar ever since Jay from Sloan said I should check him out, and I’ve had these two albums on my iPod for a few years, but figured that it was about time to finally grab these two on wax. My brother Scott is a massive Nilsson fan, so part of the inspiration for my purchase was just to make him proud… but really, I do love Nilsson. His voice is one of the greatest of the era, and it’s amazing to me how many people love him, from punks to Dads, and everybody in between. To be honest, I’ve always been a “hits” guy, and these two records feature some of Nilsson’s most-famous gems, including “Me and My Arrow,” “Everybody’s Talkin’” and “One.” If you’ve slept on Nilsson, these are two great introductions to a vast and elaborate catalog from one of music’s most intriguing singers.

Magazine: Magic, Murder and The Weather

Magazine’s 1981 offering sounds almost nothing like their spike-y punk-meets-a-carnival sound heard on their earlier records Real Life, Secondhand Daylight and The Correct Use of Soap. By the time Magic, Murder and The Weather was released, ex-Buzzcock Howard Devoto — a man that claimed punk was basically dead right around the time that, to most, it was just getting started — was already beyond his band’s synth-y punk attack, trading that in for something slightly more elaborate and funk-infused. The keyboards are still there, of course, but, sadly, the virtuoso guitar playing of John McGeoch was a thing of the past; he’d left the band before the recording of this album, and is sorely missed. Ironically, Devoto must have realized the band had worn it’s welcome, because he left Magazine shortly after the album’s release. If you’re a fan of jagged post-punk, I highly suggest checking out Magazine… just leave this one on the rack.

Nation of Ulysses: Plays Pretty for Baby

Radical punks from DC hyped up on Beat-era poets and jazz. It’s a weird combination, but NoU made it work, concocting a political hardcore-punk hybrid that was less about masculine aggression, and more about revolution through noise. But, anybody who is familiar with NoU’s Ian Svenonius (the Make-Up, Cupid Car Club, Weird War, David Candy, etc) knows that his moves are always done with tongue-in-cheek nostalgia. NoU’s aesthetic always seemed to cheekily pay homage to a late 50s, early 60s version of American ideals, and was often masked by their aggressive sounding music. Having met and spent a little bit of time with Svenonius, I know him to actually be a pretty hilarious guy, and in knowing this, Nation of Ulysses’ approach seems less menacing and more of an intellectual commentary on a white-bread culture, that honestly, still seems square. I was never a fan of the band when they were first making noise, but I’m glad I’ve come around to this, and on Plays Pretty for Baby (as well as on 13-Point Program to Destroy America) you can hear the band lighting the fire for what would eventually inspire the likes of Refused and At The Drive-In. An important record in punk’s evolution, without a doubt.

Pete Shelley: XL1

I’ve been on a pretty big Buzzcock’s kick as of late, and I’m also a big fan of Pete Shelley’s Homosapien album. It’s a great combination of Buzzcocks-ian guitar and Shelley’s fascination with technology. XL1, the 1983 follow album, continues in Homosapien’s tradition, yet is even more technology obsessed. In fact, the album just sounds like 1983. Synths are prevalent, almost to a degree that just screams “THIS IS A NEW WAVE ALBUM!” It’s not as strong as Homosapien, but you have to respect Shelley’s integrity and devotion to try to evolve a patented sound, while also attempting to embrace what was currently happening in American and English popular music. Also, I just read this on Wiki: “The album included a computer program for the ZX Spectrum, which featured lyrics and graphics which displayed in time with the music, an innovative precursor to the visuals of today’s media players.” So, uh, there’s that, too.

Soul Asylum: Made To Be Broken

Yep. “Black Gold” Soul Asylum. “Runaway Train” Soul Asylum. Wynona Ryder Soul Asylum. Same band. Did you know they had records before Grave Dancers Union? Because they do. And they’re all really, really good. This one in particular was produced by Husker Du’s Bob Mould, and released on Twin/Tone in 1986. It’s wild and ragged, in the same way the Husker’s and the Replacements were. It’s punk in that bar-band way that other band’s from the Midwest perfected. It’s relentless. You should probably get it, just so you know that sometimes bands who go triple-platinum had to start somewhere and slave their way through to get to the top… only, sadly, to be knocked down again, regaled to summer-time tours with the Gin Blossoms and the Spin Doctors. But fuck, they were good once, and this record proves it.

You’re The Most Beautiful Thing

I was never a huge Helium fan when I started coming up as a cardigan-clad indie rocker, but the older I get, I find myself wanting to hear music that sounds like Helium sounded back then. So, really, the easiest thing to do is just listen to some Helium. Mary Timony got pretty Renaissance Fair into their later years, but I tend to prefer the more Sonic Youth-informed string-strangling heard on their early releases. “Pat’s Trick” - video below - is one of their most essential jammers, and easily wins points for it’s totally-90s technicolor color treatment, and also for the fact that it features Polvo frontman, Helium bassist, and former Timony boyfriend Ash Bowie looking completely dour the entire time. Nobody was all that happy back then, I guess. 

I should also mention that I’m really psyched to hear Wild Flag, Timony’s new band with Janet and Carrie from Sleater-Kinney. Their first tour is coming soon, so I’m gonna keep my eyes on YouTube, and hopefully post something when some clips become avails, ya’ll.

Also, because I feel like this has to be seen, is the same video as critiqued by Beavis and Butthead, where they call Timony a “ho” and talk about masturbating.

And lastly, I’ve been really digging on Dinosaur Jr.’s Green Mind as of late. It’s something I slept on in the 90s, possibly because it came out in ‘91 and I was 11 years old and was still trying to decide if Nirvana was better than Kriss Kross, but also because I was perhaps intimidated by the smoking kid on the cover. I’m sure he could have, and probably still could, beat my ass. 

But yeah, there’s some rad songs on that record, and nothing really encapsulates Dinosaur Jr. more than lead-off cut “The Wagon.” So here’s the claymation-ified video for that jammer, which I’ve never seen until this very moment.

Under the Gun

Hey dudes.

I haven’t posted in awhile, and I do not apologize for this, because I am a busy boy and can’t live my life chained to ze Internet all day. But, I just heard this new track from a new band on my favorite record label Merge Records, and thought you should hear it.

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if Wilco was all, “You know what dudes? Let’s just go back to being a sweet guitar pop band that writes upbeat, catchy songs, and call it a day. This whole Dad Rock thing is getting a little tired.” Yes, indeed, I’m sure you’ve wondered this. So let me introduce you to Apex Manor, a new band from Ross Flournoy from a band you probably have never heard of called the Broken West (who were also on Merge, and were once on some popular TV show once, but I can’t remember which one). Anyway’s, this is a rad song, and it’s got kind of a neat story to go along with it, though I really don’t feel like paraphrasing it right now (NPR does a better job than I ever could)… So you should just click the link to listen to the track, called “Under the Gun,” and have high hopes that a song with a couple guitars, a great melody, and a simple-yet-effective arrangement will never go out of style, no matter how hard dudes in tank tops with laptops try to prove otherwise.

“Under the Gun” by Apex Manor

Let Me Turn You On: Number One Cup

Welcome to a new feature here at How Sound Affects called “Let Me Turn You On.” This is where I expose you to the catalog of who I believe to be an essential, yet mostly ignored band of the past or present, and where you repay me by showering me with elaborate gifts and by mailing me bars of gold. I thank you in advance.

For today’s inaugural installment, I have chosen a band that, in my never-humble opinion, have gone criminally unrecognized, yet have made three records that have not only stood the test of time, but have also proven to be a constant source of inspiration. I speak only of spiky and wiry Chicago outfit Number One Cup.

Go ahead and do a Google search for Number One Cup, and you aren’t going to find much. Actually, you’ll probably find a picture of that Seth guy from “The O.C.” before you find much about the band (one of NOC’s members is named Seth, btw). It’s no matter, though, because — THANK GOD — I am here to tell you about them. Rejoice!

I can’t specifically remember when I first heard the slacker-ish indie rock of Number One Cup. I have memories of mowing the lawn and listening to them, so I was certainly young enough to let my parents boss me around. The thing that drew me instantly to the band was the pretty obvious Pavement influence happening, at least on some of their first few releases. At the time, Pavement were the line in the sand for me. I have a particular memory of buying “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” the same day I bought Silverchair’s “Frogstomp.” I took them both home, listened to them both a lot, and decided after a few weeks that I was going to travel down the road marked “Out of tune guitars and a guy who can’t sing” rather than one marked “Australian surfers obsessed with Pearl Jam.” When Number One Cup became a blip on my radar, I was heavily submerged in indie rock’s throes, and their combination of likeIgiveafuck vocal style and crunchy guitars was all I needed to say, “Yes. This is one of MY bands.”

Back then, I was very concerned with establishing a like-list of groups that seemed next to impossible for anybody else I knew to care about (save for Chris O.; dude’s always had my back when it comes to this kind of stuff). My first exposure to the Chicago quartet was with 1997’s “Wrecked by Lions,” and it was packed with all the stuff that I loved so far about indie rock (and, subsequently, what most of my peers at the time would have hated, i.e. it wasn’t Cypress Hill) — fuzzy guitars, cryptic lyrics, and mid-tempo pace that suggested they could have been into staying in and watching weird VHS tapes as much as, say, maybe skateboarding. Upon retrospect, Number One Cup is the kind of band that totally encapsulated 90s indie rock at the time, and they were often compared to some of the kingpins, including Guided By Voices and Sebadoh. But there was something elusive about the band’s early work, especially with their first record “Possum Trot Plan” — one I distinctly remember lucking out and buying on vinyl  at Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor. 

Elusive in the sense that the band seemed to enjoy sabotaging themselves (something that they never lost sight of ‘til the end, in fact). “Possom Trot” stands at 20 tracks, many of which are akin to Lou Barlow’s Sentridoh side-project. There’s abrasive blasts and toy instrument tracks that seem shambolic. Plus, in addition to the usual suspects of bassist and guitarists, they let their drummer sing (not a bad thing at all) But, for every indulgence into lo-fi, there’s a track like “Divebomb” (a minor hit in the UK, and something I recently picked up on 7”) that proved the band could master a hook with ease. 

And it’s the spirit of “Divebomb” that they carried through to “Wrecked by Lions.” Kicking things off with the sharp blast of “Ease Back Down,” you can almost imagine the science professor-looking men of Number One Cup having their Pete Townsend moment. In fact, the guitars roar quite a bit on the record — “The Black Choppers Cry” has an angularity close to Big Black gone pop, and “Astronaut” drops huge power chords louder than bombs. But, the band often found themselves conjuring moments of amazing restraint and beauty as well, coming closer to Yo La Tengo’s prettier moments on “Maybe There’s a Thread” and “So Inclined.” It’s a varied record, and a great one — one of the few that I own that stands at 15 songs and never once gets stale.

Following a stop-gap EP in “Kim Chee Is Cabbage” (featuring a few tracks from “Wrecked by Lions”), the band returned in 1998 with what would be a pretty distinct and stylistic about face. The band began experimenting with electronics, as well as started following a serious post-punk muse, and found themselves creating tracks that started living less in Pavement’s lanky shadow, moving into their own treeless field. Whereas “Wrecked…” seemed to stop just short of indulging any true experiments in noise, “People People Why Are We Fighting?” seemed to revel in it. Sonic Youth, Wire, Gang of Four, and Aphex Twin were now being added to the band’s still melodic palette, and the result is quite obviously their crowning achievement. It’s also the kind of record a band makes that almost guarantees them obscurity, as it seems totally ahead of it’s time. Starting off with the sound of in-time clapping, it almost sounds like the band is congratulating themselves for even attempting to pull an album likes this off. But, it’s hardly alienating, and with paranoid anthems like “Who Awaits the Countdown” and “High Diver,” alongside forward thinking achievements in mixing with “What Does It Mean?” and “Unison Bends” and slow-burners like “Canada Disappears,” “People People…” could very well be one of the more interesting indie rock records released in the 90s, and with no doubt one of my very favorites.

Sadly, the band couldn’t make it too far into the decade that “People People…” seemed destined for. Ironically, the next few years of indie rock brought on new bands that would be mixing noise, melody, and post-punk’s aggression with varied amounts of success. A few of the members of Number One Cup continued on with the extremely art-y Fire Show, and another has followed his electronic muse as Resplendent… to my knowledge, neither are very active (in fact, I know the Fire Show called it quits, but please do attempt to find their various releases, as they are a pretty fantastic journey in listening).  Either way, Number One Cup has always been, to me, overlooked to a disappointing degree, though knowing their records as well as I do, I feel like the band would have it no other way. Just when you thought you had them figured out, they’d throw you off your path — which is why their records still stand up today.

Moved blog//What I’ve been jamming

I’ve decided to move the How Sound Affects blog away from Blogspot to the more aesthetically rich Tumblr. I was instantly attracted to Tumblr for not only it’s ease and more pleasing collection of themes, but also for their decision to omit the letter “E” from the word “tumbler.” It’s always seemed unnecessary to me.

Anyway, all the old stuff has been moved over, with only a few minor bruises amassed along the way. I’ll probably need more time to figure out how the images and Youtube clips should lay in there properly, but the way it looks as is will have to do for now. 

So, where have I been? Well, I’ve been busy, fuckyouverymuch. I haven’t had much time to listen to many records, but since I’ve neglected posting for a few weeks, I’ll catch you up to speed on the few records I’ve had the chance to spend a little time with.

No Age: “Everything In Between”

Previous to the release of this record, the music was always the last thing I seemed to like about No Age. From the simplicity of their name and their hippie/skate-punk aesthetic to their laundry list of influences, artwork, and their ability to somehow get endorsement deals like they were Jay-Z, they’ve always come off as completely appealing. But, No Age’s records seemed to always lack, well, something. I could never quite put my finger on it, and when I saw them play a few years ago at SXSW, their songs blurred together in such a way that melodies and such weren’t what drew me to them at all — it was their punk spirit that seemed to rise above all the glittery bullshit that other band’s seem to pile on, looks and sound wise. They seemed like rad dudes getting stoked on the fact that they were even able to pull off being a band in the first place, and back then, perhaps they were still just finding a way to make all their influences work on the same canvas. Often times they gave valiant efforts (“Nouns” certainly had it’s shining moments), and often times their tendency to meander off into space came off as an uncomfortable come down to their jagged punk side.

“Everything In Between” however, has proven to me what this band has been missing all along — SONGS. Good songs. Great songs, even, seen through the canon of what they are trying to do. On “Everything In Between,” they’ve managed to find a way to become more experimental and, yet, more accessible at the same time. Maybe it’s all the time they’ve been spending with Bob Mould. Maybe there is some transcendent power applied when each band member puts on a pair of his very own No Age sneakers. I’m not really sure. Either way, No Age has kickflipped over the crusty dirge-y hump, and are now making tracks that swath together melodic bliss, punk grit, true space-d out beauty, and hardcore’s brut force into concise little indie rock gems that, finally, could only come from them. This is my current obsession right now. 

Deerhunter: “Halcyon Digest”

Much in the same way as No Age, Deerhunter’s hype always seemed to accelerate beyond their actual potential. 2008’s “Microcastle” had tons of highlights — in fact, it was my favorite record that year — but upon revisits, it sometimes comes off as a sum of it’s influential parts. And yeah, I realize that’s a pretty weak criticism — nothing is original anymore, and short of combining Meringue music with Death Metal, it’s pretty hard to explore unchartered territories. But Deerhunter always seemed like they had more in them than simply revamping My Bloody Valentine’s catalog. On last year’s Atlas Sound album — helmed by Deerhunter singer Bradford Cox — we got a glimpse of a guy who was attempting to mine new territory. His collaborations with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox seemed to push Cox’s boundaries, and now, back with a new Deerhunter release, those boundaries are getting stretched even further. Now, instead of simply rehashing his shoegaze fantasies, Cox and his ‘Hunters are taking strides in slowing down to folk’s glacial pace (opening tracks “Earthquake” and “Don’t Cry”), and testing the waters as 2010’s version of my much beloved Lilys, crafting echo-y odes to 60s pop and psyche with tracks like “Revival,” “Memory Boy,” “Fountain Stairs” and “Coronado” (the last of which jams some serious sax — do I predict a trend, indie rock?). People might find the lack of true muscle disappointing on this release (we never quite get a “Nothing Ever Happened” moment), but Deerhunter’s exercises in restraint and precision may have yielded a classic — perhaps not obvious right now, but one that could grow on our ears like the moss on the side of our childhood homes that seemed to have been there all along.