Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield wrote a great memoir called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about that, and some other things. Here’s part one and here’s part two.

Rob Sheffield: “International Airport” is very Charlottesville. When I moved there James McNew had the only fanzine in town, And Suddenly.

Matthew Perpetua: I wish that I could read a lot of those old fanzines. It would be great if there were books reprinting them, like big telephone book sized things, sorta like the zine equivalent of those Hyped2Death compilations.

RS: I don’t understand why those don’t exist yet. Somebody could scan them into a website, I guess. Did you ever read Conflict, Cosloy’s ’80s zine?

MP: Only fragments that I’ve seen reprinted here and there. I really like Cosloy’s writing.

RS: The entire run should be a DVD or something. No, a book’s better, more fun to read on the subway or under a tree, the way I used to obsessively read fanzines.

MP: Yeah, there’s a limit to the length of something that I can comfortably read on a computer screen.

RS: Phil Dello’s Radio On, in the 1990s… literally the best zine ever. Reading computer screens is more like watching TV, less like reading.

MP: Since you have the frame of reference, how do you think music blogs rate compared to that scene?

RS: Well, I’m from a fanzine frame of mind so I’m definitely biased. I liked reading them over and over, and blogs aren’t meant to be read twice. Not putting them down or anything — they’re supposed to be immediate, like the UK pop press or something. I’m always surprised how little fanzine stuff gets reprinted now. It amazes me so many people haven’t had the chance to read Conflict or even Forced Exposure. Why Music Sucks, Chickfactor, Teenage Gang Debs, Swellsville, Too Fun Too Huge…those were different times.

MP: I mostly just know Gerard Cosloy from Matador, and Forced Exposure as being these nice people who send me weird records.

RS: Before Cosloy was a mogul or a sports writer, he was the funniest writer-about-music ever. He compared Jandek’s harmonica solos to watching a man with no arms climb a hill in a wheelchair…and MEANT THAT AS A COMPLIMENT, which is why it works.

MP: Did you ever make one yourself?

RS: I never did a zine. I wrote for friends’ zines. You would wait six months for the new one, and then spend six months reading it. The type was always too small to save on Xerox costs.

MP: Did you use a magnifying glass?

RS: I will probably need glasses someday because of the zines. Frank Kogan’s book has amazing stuff from his zine, and other people’s zines. Usually with blogs I like, I print them out and read them at a coffee shop. Life’s short. “Eyesight is precious,” as Gert Stein used to say. Blogs can do stuff zines couldn’t do… like move fast.

MP: Yeah, I think I would never have lasted long in zines because to me, the thing I enjoy is the daily routine, and moving on through things and not lingering on anything for too long. I like the challenge of having to constantly find new things.

RS: You write like a zine guy. (That’s meant as a compliment.) You know the Great Plains song “Letter to a Fanzine”?

MP: Nope.

RS: “Isn’t my haircut really intense, isn’t Nick Cave a genius in a sense…” Source of the eternal question: “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?”

MP: Who do new wave guys go out with?

RS: Lydia Lunch.

MP: Man, who is the modern Lydia Lunch?

RS: Chrissie Hynde…is she a punk rock girl or a new wave girl? Not that any new wave guy would ever get to go out with her. The modern Lydia Lunch, that’s a tough one.

MP: I’m thinking that Chrissie Hynde is ultimately just the Rocker Girl, which transcends punk or new wave.

RS: True that. I love Karen O because she has the new wave heart and the punk rock voice. “Cheated Hearts” proves that “Pretty Vacant” is the same song as “Into the Groove.” I never noticed that before. She is Lydia’s Lunchbox.

MP: I like Karen O the best when she’s comfortable enough to just be herself. I feel like she’s too often trying to impress us with antics and she never gets that people like her for stuff like “Maps” and “Our Time.”

RS: She kills me. See, “Maps,” that proves that Jerry Butler’s “For Your Precious Love” is the same song as Siouxsie’s “Spellbound.”

MP: “Maps” sounds like a song that was written especially for mix tapes.

RS: Yes yes yes. It would be the first song on Side 2, right?

MP: It’s the kind of song that says the kind of thing people feel like they can’t verbalize.

RS: Funny, though, it says it with the guitar and the voice, not so much the words.

MP: Yeah, the lyrics are like subtitles. I mean, that’s really the job of artists, but especially musicians. To provide that service, to express those things we just can’t say.

RS: I have no idea what I would do

without them to provide that service for me. I feel like I’m still learning how to talk from musicians. James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar, you know? It always sounds like his guitar is calling and her voice is responding. I always wished I had a cool name like James Honeyman-Scott. Rob Honeyman-Sheffield.

MP: Is his name actually Honeyman?

RS: It was his middle name I guess?

MP: People always ask me if my surname is real, and it is.

RS: Perpetua’s a righteous name. Catholic much?

MP: Thank you for catching that! Most people are not up on their Catholic saints.

RS: Perpetua was hardcore.

MP: I should marry some girl named Felicity.

RS: My God, that would be great. Or maybe some girl named Help, Our Lady Of. The record collector/taper/blogger mentality is really close to Catholicism in many people. Collecting relics, obsessing over hagiography. Show me an altar boy and I’ll show you a potential record geek. Isn’t doing a music blog kind of a pastoral calling? You’re offering up daily bread! The text is like the parish newsletter. You get the regulars who come every morning, then the casual ones who just show up on your blog for Christmas and Easter.

MP: I never really had any strong Catholic upbringing — I went through religious instruction and got confirmed, but my family wasn’t especially religious, and I didn’t go to Catholic school. I don’t have a Catholic Block inside of my head.

RS: But you had all those years of CCD, right?

MP: Yup. I played CYO basketball, the whole thing.

RS: You can still say the Act of Contrition, I bet. Do you cross yourself on planes?

MP: Nope.

RS: Me neither. Why ask for trouble? But I do cross myself in mosh pits, that shit’s just scary.

MP: I’m such a wuss, I’ve never really been in one. I just get out of the way. I saw the Blood Brothers last year and just moved to the side.

RS: Ok, shit, I loved that Blood Brothers show. What would go on the other side of the Blood Brothers album? Drum’s Not Dead?

MP: Mmm. Probably something really intense that I don’t listen to. Lightning Bolt? Something to make the Blood Brothers sound poppy. Wolf Eyes?

RS: Morrissey.

MP: That works!

RS: It’s funny, I remember my Pazz & Jop ballot in 1988, I had the Pet Shop Boys number 1, followed by Morrissey, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth, Scritti Politti… and the weird thing is all 5 of them had new records LAST year! That’s just strange. The rest of my 1988 top ten is harder to remember…EPMD, Stetasonic, a Fairport Convention BBC thing, and I’m also pretty sure I voted for a bloody-curdlingly awful Brit-psych record by the Bounty Hunters, who were a spin off of a Swell Maps spin off. Or a spin off of a spin off of a These Immortal Souls spin off. I was a barrel of laughs back then. I’m accustomed to being the only Scritti Politti fan in the room (or the area code), now they’re so huge!

MP: They have a nice little cult now.

RS: Maybe it’s that great Simon Reynolds book…it made me play my old Pop Group tapes! It’s funny, Scritti Politti went through all these principled contortions to finally decide, hey, you know what? Indie rock! I’m gonna play indie rock! Wry, literate, rueful indie rock! Kind of like…Aztec Camera?

MP: And do a bit of rapping, on the side.

RS: Cupid & Psyche taught me so much about pop, about the connections between disco and eros. Now he’s worked hard to forget everything he taught me! And of course more respect to him for trying something different, but it’s funny he was so into the tawdry disco and now it’s just fingers strumming catgut.

MP: When you first heard that, were you totally aware that was what the songs were about? I came to those records having read about the content and ended up wanting more from the songs.

RS: Lucky me, I loved the Scritti songs first. “Perfect Way” was an actual radio hit. Better than R.E.M.’s “Perfect Circle,” maybe even better than Husker Du’s “Perfect Example.” Definitely better than Talking Heads’ “Perfect World” or Jermaine Jackson’s theme from “Perfect.” That Cupid & Psyche album is just like honey.

(Click here to buy a Great Plains retrospective from Amazon, and here to buy Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85 from Insound.)

Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield has a lovely new book called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about it, and other things. Here’s part one of the interview.

Matthew Perpetua: How did you get into writing about music?

Rob Sheffield: I always wrote about music, even when I was a little kid. I started sending out clips and freelancing. My first published piece was a Spin review of the second Tiffany album in 1988, in an issue with Nick Cave on the cover. Not as good as the first Tiffany record, but still pretty great.

MP: Was Renée also doing this, or did you encourage her to get into that game? I remember you both being in the Spin Alternative Record Guide, which was a big deal to me when I was a teenager.

RS: Renée caught the cooties from me, I’m afraid. Poor girl. She was a fiction writer, she was also a huge music fan, so it came naturally for her. She was a much better writer, funnier, she had that “casual easygoing” vibe. She did a lot more writing on the West Coast, something about her southern sensibility, I guess. She wrote for Option a lot, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

MP: Is this the first time you’ve written a full book?

RS: Yes. The Spin guide was the first book project I was involved in, and it was loads of fun. Renée did a particularly fine essay on Everything But The Girl, and MC Lyte too, and Marshall Crenshaw. It’s probably weird for somebody who didn’t grow up in the ’80s to realize how much we all loved Marshall Crenshaw. The dB’s are like that too. Everybody had their minds blown by the dBs, and today nobody under 35 has even heard of them. “Wine in plastic cups, listening to the wind, I would tell you everything, where do I begin…”

MP: See, that’s how I think a lot of bands from this era are going to be. “Really, you all loved the Decemberists?” Not that the Decemberists totally suck, but it’s hard to make a strong argument for them being this great band.

RS: Last fall I walked into a friend’s room and said, Why are you playing Emerson Lake and Palmer? It was the Decemberists.

MP: Oh wow, it must have been the new one, right? “The Island.”

RS: Yes indeedy.

MP: I always feel like the people I hate are the ones I’m doomed to live with forever. I’ll be hearing all about Sufjan in the afterlife.

RS: It’s surprising how temporary some of the people you hate are, like Wilson Phillips. I assumed those girls would be annoying me the rest of my life, but they were gone in two years. And I missed them! If I knew how temporary they were gonna be, I would have enjoyed them more. You know, this might sound weird, but the Talking Heads were in that Wilson Phillips category too.

MP: How so?

RS: In the mid ’80s, when the Heads were running out of ideas, we all figured they’d hang around and keep annoying us forever. If I knew how temporary they would be, I would have enjoyed them more, but they were so inescapable.

MP: I remember being sorta surprised when I first found out that the Talking Heads were this critically respected band. I always thought they were this corny 80s pop group, at least until I was 14 or 15. I think I found out in that Spin book. I just knew that I liked “Once In A Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “And She Was.”

RS: Well, on behalf of the Spin book, let me apologize for your having been recommended to purchase Naked. Or Little Creatures.

MP: I never did, no worries.

RS: But Fear of Music and Remain in Light? BEYOND GREAT.

MP: Definitely those two. I like the live record a lot. I bought a tape of that when I was 14 and that was good enough for me until I was 20.

RS: The live record is phenomenal. And it is SUCH a tape. Everybody had that on tape. It SOUNDS like a tape. Everybody had a tape with Remain in Light on one side and Fear of Music on the other. Everybody in 1985 had a tape with Little Creatures on one side and Fables of the Reconstruction on the other. In 1983 it was War and Murmur. You always like one side better. Summer ’83, everybody had a tape with Speaking in Tongues/Synchronicity. In 1986, everybody had a tape that was split Lifes Rich Pageant and True Stories, but everybody taped over it with Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill. In 1988, it was Nation of Millions and Lovesexy. I taped a Sonny Rollins record over Lovesexy, it just didn’t fit. You’re Living All Over Me and Sister, that was another universal one. I miss that–like, what would be the right album to put on the other side of Boys and Girls in America?

MP: There’s a few songs that you mentioned in the book that you sent over — how did you first get a hold of that Grenadine song, “In A World Without Heroes”?

RS: It was the “slow one at the end of Side 1” A million times better than the rest of the album.

MP: Those are the best songs for mix tapes! You’ve got to give those orphans a good home.

RS: They came up with this brilliant, breathtaking, mind-crumplingly great song and they had NO IDEA, they didn’t even give it a real title. They had no idea. Grenadine wasn’t even their real band. We went to see Mark Robinson play and yelled for it and he had no idea what we were talking about. So you DO have to give those orphans a home. I am Angelina Jolie, this song is Maddox. Mix tapes, like blogs, are perfect for rounding up strays. As Uncle Jesse would say “shepherd to lost sheep.” I put “In a World Without Heroes” on a million tapes for people, and never got a single person to like it, or even pretend.

MP: How did you find Dump’s “International Airport.” You say that it’s your favorite song. It was a lot…longer…than I had expected.

RS: I first heard “International Airport” driving in the hills, late at night, summer 95. Most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I wanted it to NEVER END, and it didn’t! It sounds like somebody compressed Pet Sounds and Wild Honey into one song. Everybody tries shit like that but nobody, NOBODY gets it right — the way it builds from tender little jangle strums and then gets monstrously loud and noisy without ever losing that tenderness.

MP: Where do you normally sequence it when you put it on tapes for people? It sounds like one of those songs that only work at the beginning, or the end.

RS: First song on Side 2, definitely. Easy to skip!

MP: That makes sense. First song on side 1 should be really accessible. Something that says “hey, welcome to the show!”

RS: “International Airport” answers the question, what would Pet Sounds sound like as a guitar solo. Not Pet Sounds with a guitar solo, but what if the guitar solo WAS Pet Sounds? Kind of like “Marquee Moon.” I’m always obsessed with that song because it answers the question what would “Visions of Johanna” sound like as a guitar solo? Not a guitar solo in the middle of “Visions of Johanna,” but what if a guitar solo had all the emotional chill and sinisterness and twistiness of “Visions of Johanna”? “International Airport” is like that for me — what if a guitar solo had all the emotional range of Pet Sounds?

MP: I’ve put “Marquee Moon” on so many mixes. It’s such a staple. I remember this one that I made that I liked a lot, I made a bunch of variations on it, and it was called “The Darkness Doubled.”

RS: “Marquee Moon” is maybe the only song where you can fill a whole tape with different versions! I have never heard a version I didn’t love. The Portland ’78 version, 18 minutes long, just builds and builds…

(to be concluded…)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Lemon Party, Calvin Johnson, and Lee Hazlewood.

Rob Sheffield’s witty, thoughtful, and heartbreaking new book Love Is A Mix Tape is technically a memoir, but more accurately, it is a passionate testimonial about the way art is meaningless without life, and life is meaningless without art. Rob tells his story in the context of a series of mix tapes accumulated since his childhood, and in examining the selections and motivations behind each cassette, he digs deep into the music, the culture of his youth, and his own history. At first, he’s a lonely, awkward young man, but he eventually meets a sassy Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renée Crist, and his previously monastic existence is suddenly filled with joy, excitement, and love. They get married, build a life together, and on one horrible day in 1997, she dies suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. Music brought them together, and later, it carried him through his loss.

In this three part interview, Rob and I mainly talk about mix tapes and writing, but along the way we go off on a number of tangents about bands, songs, blogs, zines, and the ’90s. Rob happens to be a fan of this site, and sometimes he’s the one asking me questions, and so it might be better to read this as being more of a conversation than a traditional interview.

Matthew Perpetua: How and when did you decide to tell this very personal story? I mean, music and pop culture critics are seldom required to reveal all that much about themselves in their writing, so was this a deliberate move to put more of yourself into your work?

Rob Sheffield: I started writing it when I moved into a new apartment four years ago. It had this old-fashioned china cabinet built into the wall, and naturally I thought, at last, a place to store all my tapes. Before that, I just had rattly metal Elfa shelves that weren’t any fun at all. Unpacking all my tapes, stacking them together, playing them back to back, it just made me want to write about them. There was no chance it wouldn’t get into personal memories, but I didn’t really worry about that. As Oscar Wilde said, “Criticism is the only civilized form of autobiography.”

MP: How often were you listening to these tapes before this point?

RS: In my previous apartments, I didn’t have so much shelf space, so the tapes were all over the floor and at any given moment I was blasting a tape I just stepped on, which was usually one I just made. In terms of organization, it was pretty deplorable.

MP: So you really kept the faith with tapes, you never really phased them out like most everyone else. Is there any particular reason why?

RS: There’s no sound-bearing medium I DON’T like… but cassettes are my favorite. They have the hum. I love my iPod but it doesn’t hum. Where do you stand on cassettes?

MP: I like tapes, but at a certain point I just gave up on them because I got a discman. I was still making tapes for other people up through 2000, but once I had regular access to a cd burner and a computer, it was all over. CD mixes are so unsatisfying though, so I really don’t make mixes for people anymore, only once in a while.

RS: I do love making CD mixes. (You get to make a 5 x 5 cover, which is nice…) Making tapes is so much more work, but you get a real artifact that way. You make a tape for somebody, you prove you spent 90 minutes thinking about them. Almost any tape I’ve played a lot, I can remember making it. Sometimes, you make a mix tape and it’s stressful or dull to make, and you have to just tape over it or it’ll ruin all the songs on it. I’ll always remember September 4, 1999, because I made a really excellent walking tape that day. (Moby Grape’s “Fall On You,” The Monkees’ “What Am I Doing Hanging Round,” Cornershop’s “Looking For A Way In,” Tom Verlaine’s “Breakin’ In My Heart,” Can’s “Father Cannot Yell,” Buffalo Springfield’s “Out Of My Mind”…)

MP: One of the things I immediately noticed in your book was that your approach to making tapes was a lot more sentimental or whimsical than my own. With mixes for myself or others, I always had strict rules about having an artist only appear once per tape, and some artists that I loved dearly, like R.E.M. and Pavement, were seldom featured on mixes because they were better suited to single artist ‘greatest hits’ compilations. When I made tapes for other people, it was less about communication and more about trying to convert them to a band, or get them to like a set of songs. I was always really obsessed with having really tight flows, and having perfect beginning and ending songs on each side. I still hear new songs and think “oh, that’s a great song #2” or “that would make a great final song on side A.” I’d make variations on the same tape for different people until I settled on the perfect sequence, and then I’d retire them completely. I’m probably making myself sound like a profoundly uptight guy.

RS: Beginning and ending songs for each side are SO important. I rarely made a tape without a Pavement song; in fact, I had to instigate a one-Pavement-song-per-tape rule. Nowadays, do you make mixes at all? For yourself or others? or is Fluxblog filling that role for you?

MP: The last cd mix I made deliberately aped the style of a tape — it was two discs with distinct but complimentary moods, and I had this gatefold double disc cardboard cd package that I redecorated with art from bad comic books. But yeah, doing the blog every day has replaced the impulse to share music on tapes and cds — it’s more effective, reaches lots of people, it has the written component. Fluxblog is basically all the songs I’d be putting on tapes if this was 1998 instead of 2007.

RS: It’s probably easier to hook people up with songs one track at a time, the way you do on Fluxblog.

MP: Was it hard at all to get into the extremely personal things that you discuss in the book? In my own experience, I have to talk myself into going into any sort of detail, I’m very paranoid and nervous about that sort of thing.

RS: For me it’s usually hard to listen to (or write about) music without getting personally involved. Like I was writing last week–I love the way you write about these songs that have meant something to you, and you write about the song in a way that expresses where you’re coming from, even if you’re not getting into personal narrative details. I never noticed that Malkmus song “Malediction” until you wrote about it.

MP: I’ve been trying to do more of that as I go along, but there’s still this feeling that my life is so boring and uneventful that it would just bore the hell out of the readers if I indulged in that too often. There was one part in your book that I identified with very strongly — it’s when you’re writing about your life in the time just before you first met Renée, and you’re stuck in these monastic habits and lamenting that all of the romance and excitement in your life is vicarious. But at that point, you’re a few years younger than I am now. Do you feel like you ever really got over that? It seems l

ike you kind of went off on another course once you met Renée.

RS: I definitely did go off on another course. It’s funny, when I was 24, I felt so old and used up. I thought life had passed me by and I was going to have to be ok with that. I don’t ever think I’ll feel older than I did when I was 24. I was lucky that I had music, and that music led me to people, specifically to Renée. I really learned to write by listening to her talk. Do you know the Kinks song “Waterloo Sunset”?

MP: Yup.

RS: When I was in my teens, I totally identified with the old guy who narrates the song. And then when I was in my late 20s, I realized I’d turned into Terry-and-Julie, and I missed being the old guy, on some level. But then in my mid-30s, I felt like I’d turned back into the old guy, and I was like, shit, well, that’s fine, I had my Terry-and-Julie window of time, and it was grand, and I’m glad I appreciated it while I had it, and now I’ll just stare out the window and look at the train station, etc. And now I’m in Terry-and-Julie mode again. It’s weird, there’s no way to predict these things.

My natural inclination is definitely to be monastic. I have to really force myself to get out of the door sometimes. I am hardwired to stay in and listen to records and wonder whether the Yardbirds were better than I thought they were but why they didn’t make Jeff Beck play bass more often and why his post-Yardbirds records were so bad and why they influenced so much post-punk and then I look at the clock and a couple of years have gone by. I really have to push myself out of the house and when I do I am almost always glad. My natural inclination is to be a hermit but I’m just not satisfied that way. When I was 19 and my favorite song in the history of the world was “Waterloo Sunset,” I felt really superior to the Terry-and-Julies… but I had a lot more to learn from them than they had to learn from me. At least that’s my opinion now.

MP: There was a really good line about the Yardbirds in the book — something to the effect of Jeff Beck being the kind of guy who controlled every situation and produced very little great work as a result. I think there’s some kind of universal truth in there somewhere.

RS: It’s funny, Jeff Beck was somebody I just noticed a few years ago, a guitarist friend of mine convinced me Beck was a genius, but he never got to the point where he could play with other people. The way he plays bass on “Over Under Sideways Down” — phenomenal. But here I am getting off on a tangent. Bill James has a funny essay about why left fielders are bigger jerks than third basemen–the skills of the position reflect different personality types. I wonder if that’s why bassists tend to be the likable ones, as opposed to lead guitar whizzes?

MP: Unless you’re in Fall Out Boy. Or the Police.

RS: This ain’t Synchronicity, it’s a goddamn arms race. Ron Wood would be the counter example to Beck–he can barely play guitar, but he’s a famously friendly and nice guy, and as a result, he’s gotten to play on (and add to?) a lot of phenomenal music. Keith Richards had a funny line about how Ry Cooder was a much better guitarist than Ron Wood, but nobody would want to be in a band with Ry Cooder. Having Ron Wood around, even if he was no great shakes instrumentally, made everybody around him more relaxed and increased the quality of the music, the will to work, etc.

MP: He’s the Bob Nastanovich of the Stones.

RS: YES!

MP: Who wouldn’t want to be in a band with Bob Nastanovich?

RS: Renee called Bob Nastanovich the “lurker.”

MP: It’s no joke, sometimes you really need there to be this friendly guy who cools everyone out. Sometimes they are a good musician in their own right — Ringo, for example.

RS: I’m a hardcore Ringo fan. That break on “Drive My Car”!

MP: Yeah! I distrust people who put down Ringo. How many other drummers have such a distinct, instantly recognizable sound like that?

RS: It was the sweater tucked in the bass drum! (Supposedly.)

MP: Well, that, and he had these great, easygoing fills. He made everything sound casual and easy.

RS: He was also the only one who’d ever SEEN the band. As Christgau used to say, “Ringo is our man in the Beatles.” Remember the first Malkmus solo tour, when Nastanovich was at the merch table and people were lining up to shake his hand and take photos? He made the whole room hum. I can’t believe that isn’t an essentially musical skill.

(to be continued…)

(Click here to buy the Kinks album, and here to buy the Yardbirds record, both from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: I have a brief review of the new album by Arcade Fire up on the Artistdirect site. I also wrote a review of the new Dean & Britta, but I can’t seem to find it.

Joss Stone “Put Your Hands On Me” – Joss Stone never inspired any enthusiasm from me before — her voice is strong but generic, and she seemed to be going out of her way to win cred points with the dullest sort of mainstream pop fans. Her music was inoffensive and generally dull, the sort of thing that you can hear and tune out, or maybe enjoy just enough to ask “hey, who is this?,” get the answer, and then totally forget about it the next day. This song, on the other hand, is quite fun. It’s extremely corny and not especially original, but Stone is utterly unashamed, and embraces its cheesiness wholeheartedly. Her collaborator Raphael Saadiq is clearly mimicking Rich Harrison’s “1 Thing” and DJ Premier’s “Ain’t No Other Man,” and though the track and the vocal performance do not reach the incredible heights of either song, it’s a worthy tune, and I’m glad to hear another song in the style much in the same way that I’m likely to enjoy any reasonably successful copy of the Pixies’ formula. Aside from the obvious affectations, she reminds me a lot of early ’90s Mariah Carey on this recording. She sounds completely overwhelmed by infatuation, and totally amped to be singing. Her pure pleasure in the act of performing is obvious and it elevates a song that would otherwise just be pretty good to something kinda thrilling and special. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

The Clientele “Joseph Cornell” – You can listen to this song during the day, and because it is an exceptional composition it will sound just fine, but it will only really make sense at night. (This is also the case for the vast majority of the Clash’s discography, most of which sounds as though it was recorded in a world illuminated only by the moon, street lamps, neon signage, and fluorescent light leaking out the windows of buildings.) The lyrics are fully aware that the music is about the night, and more than that, a feeling of emotional absence accompanying physical presence as two people make their way home in the wee hours. The words set the song in London, but the mention of Delancey Street and quiet late night train rides keeps my mind in Manhattan, in part because I can’t help being a bit provincial, but more in that the Lower East Side is a place that I associate with this type of scene, and this particular sort of loneliness. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Grachan Moncur III “When” – The song walks in aimless circles, somehow lost in a place it knows too well. It doesn’t matter what the other instruments do — if they pull off in another direction, if they whine and moan and protest, if they cool out and nod gently — they can’t escape the gravity of that unchanging piano motif. It’s an anchor, and even if its chords are calming, by the end of the piece, it becomes clear that it has kept the song contained within a stifling perimeter. It grinds down on hope, and reinforces pessimism. It’s a beautiful performance full of inspired improvisations, but that just makes the piece more terrifying and seductive. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Tiger Tunes “The Walk” – This song would’ve been on the next Tiger Tunes album if…well, if they didn’t just stop being a band sometime over a year ago. The key personnel have moved on to a new band called Beta Satan, but I’ll come back to them another time. Today, I just want to lament the passing of what was most likely the best Danish band of this decade. Or maybe ever. There’s really not a lot of Danish bands that are well known to Americans, so I can’t be certain. Let’s just call this a hunch and chalk it up to well-meaning hyperbole, okay?

Tiger Tunes maintained a balancing act that unfortunately very few bands ever manage. They played hyperactive keyboard-driven new wave without sounding wimpy or self-consciously retro, and basically sounded as though they learned everything they new about playing punk rock music from video games. Their lyrics were witty but full of angst, and even when they sounded like they were about to totally wig out, they didn’t seem as though they were taking themselves very seriously. They respected their emotions and experiences, but clearly regarded them as being inherently absurd. They sang about getting bullied by a “fuckmachine” named Kirsten, attempting to smooth out relationship problems with pancakes, and in this case, a party so awful that it, as they put it, undermined their very existence. It’s easy to hear “The Walk” as a vague explanation for why they called it a day, but who knows. I just wish they at least finished the record, or kept going. It’s too bad, really. (Click here for the official Tiger Tunes website.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with music from Mutual Appreciation, Shortbus, and Stranger Than Fiction.

Also: Mike Barthel on hardcore punk, hardcore porn, Sarah Silverman, conservatism, and transgression.

And: Tom Ewing thinks that recent changes in the Marvel and DC Universes may be tied in with their ambitious MMORPG projects.

Mark Ronson featuring Santo Gold “Pretty Green” – The original version of “Pretty Green” by the Jam is hardly a sleepy tune, but in comparison to this super-kinetic cover by producer Mark Ronson, it seems stiff and comatose. Is there even a proper genre name for this thing, other than “classy dance-pop stuff with horns that Mark Ronson makes” or um, “modern Ze“? Santo Gold has a prissy, bratty voice similar to that of Cristina, though her delivery is more playful than caustic and ironic. Not to say that there isn’t some irony in this record; it’s just that it’s not the kind that is meant to make you feel bad. (Click here for Mark Ronson’s MySpace page.)

Bonde Do Role “Gasolina (Radioclit remix)” – Things we lose by not listening to the original mix of “Gasolina”: a great blurting horn hook, a fantastic drum break that kicks in just before the first minute is up. Things we gain by listening to this remix by Radioclit instead: a jumpy electro beat, a slightly devious synth lead, and vocals that pop out a bit better, especially when she chants the name “Afrika Bambaataa.” I mean, this really shouldn’t be an either/or situation, but the Radioclit mix wins today. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)

Elsewhere: R.I.P. Charles Gocher from the Sun City Girls.

Also: Sean Michaels didn’t die.

And: Craig Ferguson explains why he is not going to mock Britney Spears.

Santa Maria “Lalalalalaaa” – Maria Eriksson’s voice may not be as memorable and unique as that of her fellow ex-Concrete Victoria Bergsman, but they are both the musical grandchildren of Nico, and as such smuggle a great deal of warmth and humanity in a voice that seems lethargic and aloof on the surface. “Lalalalaaa” recalls the sound of the Concretes, but even more so the most tuneful tracks in the Electrelane catalog, or going back to a more obscure reference point, the better songs by Quickspace. The song feels like a train of thought taking form and then drifting away, and as it goes on, it seems as though they are trying to draw out an idea that’s already begun to fade away. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Robyn “Robotboy (UK Version)” – It’s been a long time, but Robyn is finally releasing her self-titled album in the UK. Two of the songs have been re-recorded, two other songs have been added, and the running order has been shuffled around so that “Konichiwa Bitches” is the first proper tune on the record. It’s funny how the character of the album shifts so much with these changes even though it’s mostly the same thing. “Bum Like You” and “Robotboy” are both faster and thoroughly electro now, and as a result the albums feels considerably less eclectic and more focused on being this super modern Europop thing. I prefer the original version of “Bum Like You,” but “Robotboy” has definitely been improved by its faster pace and sweeter production. As a whole, Robyn is better — the kinks have been ironed out, and it suddenly sounds more like a greatest hits compilation than a regular album. (Click here for Robyn’s official site.)

Sonic Youth @ Webster Hall 2/16/07
Candle / Reena / Incinerate / Bull in the Heather / Skip Tracer / Do You Believe In Rapture? / What A Waste / Silver Rocket / Rats / Turquoise Boy / Jams Run Free / Pink Steam / Or // The Neutral / Shaking Hell /// Expressway To Yr Skull

At long last, after twelve years of seeing them play at least once on every tour, I finally got to see Sonic Youth play “Silver Rocket”! This means my list of Sonic Youth oldies that they play live but I have never seen has been reduced to just “Brother James” and “Inhuman.” (It’s sort of amazing how common “Brother James” is — it is played with some regularity on virtually every tour — and yet it remains so elusive!) This is not counting songs that were performed frequently before 1995 – other key songs that I would love to see but have not been performed since before I started seeing them live include “Theresa’s Sound-World,” “Stereo Sanctity,” “Tuff Gnarl,” “Pipeline/Kill Time,” “I Love Her All The Time,” “Dirty Boots,” “Flower,” “Hey Joni,” and “The Sprawl,” but who knows if they will do any of those ever again.

Honestly, I would’ve been happy enough just to see them play “Candle” and “Skip Tracer” again, since they both rank among my top five or six favorites in the Sonic Youth catalog. Really, there isn’t a lot to say about this show aside from remarking on the setlist — like Radiohead, their performances are of a freakishly consistent and high level of quality, and after a certain number of shows, all you can do is offer yet another reverent WOW.

Sonic Youth “The Neutral” – This is how they introduced this song on Friday night:

Thurston: “Hey Kim, why don’t you tell us what this song’s about? You told me once, but I forgot.”

Kim: “It’s about the modern dude.”

One of the most interesting things about Sonic Youth’s lyrics over the past decade is the way that songs about people and their relationships are always strictly observational. They aren’t entirely emotionally detached, but definitely stand at a distance from their subjects, and they never do much to hide that — if anything, the vicarious drama and benign voyeurism becomes the real topic. “The Neutral” is sung to a friend about some mysterious and alluring “modern dude,” but the song isn’t really about him; it’s about the possibility that her friend might end up with him, and how that fills her with excitement, pride, and mild envy. As the song ends, Kim sings “he’s neutral, and he’s weary, and he’s so in love with you,” and it’s the single most heartbreaking line she’s written since she sang “I’m so happy we’re just friends” at the end of “Creme Brulee” on Dirty. It’s not because she’s actually interested in the “modern dude,” but that she’s acknowledging the ways in which she is cut off from these sort of possibilities, for better or worse. She wants the best for her friend, and she’s hopeful that this crush works out, and in some small way she knows it’s because she wants to be in on this magic, even if she’s just on the periphery. (Click here to buy it from AmpCamp.)

A Sunny Day In Glasgow @ The Delancey 2/17/07
Our Change Into Rain Is No Change At All / Lists, Plans / A Mundane Phone Call With Jack Parsons / Ghost in the Graveyard / C’mon / The Best Summer Ever

A Sunny Day In Glasgow “Our Change Into Rain Is No Change At All” – A Sunny Day In Glasgow’s evolution as a live band continues to stray from the muted, ethereal effect of their studio recordings without sacrificing their appeal. If anything, their show at the Delancey foregrounded their most appealing and accessible aspects — the melodies, the guitar textures, and the voices of Lauren and Robin Daniels — and highlighting things that aren’t so strongly emphasized on the album, i.e. the lyrics and the beats. The girls sound like shy apparitions on Scribble Mural Comic Journal, but in person, they are outgoing, flirtatious, and bold. Their drummer is tight and energetic, and was key in translating music designed for headphones into something physical and urgent. “C’mon” was played with a disco beat, “Best Summer Ever” was played like a rock hit, and “Lists, Plans” was sped up considerably, and transformed into an arty funk song not unlike Stereolab’s “Metronomic Underground.” (Click here to buy it from Notenuf.)

Coin-Op “Favourite Subjects” – If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you may remember Coin-Op as the band from England who wrote “Hey Uri!,” a song that inexplicably tore into the spoon-bending, long-ago disgraced faux-psychic Uri Gellar. “Favourite Subjects” is no less bitter and abrasive, but its subject matter is more timely, if not timeless: Arrogant self-absorbed drug-fueled pricks. The song has a great momentum and a memorable scream-along chorus, and sounds kinda like a dancey version of McLusky, though the singer affects a slightly bizarre twang on its verses. (Click here for the Coin-Op website.)

The Knife “Marble House (Rex The Dog mix)” – The original version of “Marble House” is a romantic melodrama pushed to such an aesthetic extreme that its solemnity is nearly absurd. Its sentiment is super-concentrated, and so its emotional potency is overwhelming, basically redefining the word “hyperballad.” It’s not exactly a natural candidate for a dance remix, but Rex The Dog has outdone himself, speeding up the melody and amping up its dynamics without doing much to diminish its essential grandeur. Once it gets going, it actually begins to resemble Ace of Base, a group commonly invoked as a damning comparison by kneejerk anti-pop Knife detractors, but that’s no bad thing in this case. (Click here to buy it from AmpCamp.)

Elsewhere: “Indie rock NOW is a cult of marginalized success.” (Thanks to Carl.)

Also: “Wow, that’s so weird, like, I’ve never gotten along with someone that played all six strings on a guitar before!” – Watch a brief documentary about James Rabbit.

Alton Ellis “You Make Me Happy” – Studio 1 reggae from the 60s and 70s is easily some of the most perfectly recorded music in history, most especially in the way that it sounds so loose and easy, and every sound is transformed from a representation of a performance to something more sublime and abstract. For example, can music possibly sound more comforting than the bass line in this song? It’s not just the notes or the phrase, it’s this ideal texture, tone, and mix that makes it all sound as though you’re hearing it from within a womb. Everything in the track feels like bliss, but that bass brings us back to the greatest peace we’ll ever know. (Click here to buy it from Soul Jazz Records.)

Feist “My Moon, My Man” – Snap, thump, snap, thump — it’s a glam beat, and more or less on the same wavelength as Goldfrapp on their last two albums, but whereas their sound is dominating, mechanical and aloof, Feist’s song is submissive, muted, and colored by soft washes of blue moonlight. The lead guitar on the break is especially lovely, and sounds as though it just wandered in from some hopelessly romantic 80s UK alt-rock tune that we’ve never heard before. (Click here for the Feist MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Photocall, Jay Reatard, and the Marcia Blaine School For Girls.

Arcade Fire @ Judson Memorial Church 2/13/07
Keep The Car Running / Antichrist Television Blues / Black Mirror / Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son / No Cars Go / Haiti / Black Wave/Bad Vibrations / My Body Is A Cage / Neon Bible / Power Out / Rebellion (Lies) / Intervention // Windowsill / The Well and the Lighthouse

This was my first time seeing the Arcade Fire, mainly because it took me about two years to come around to liking their first album. I now agree with the consensus — Funeral is very good — but I’m finding that I’m in a minority at the moment for believing that their new album Neon Bible is about twenty times better. On one hand, it’s an inevitable backlash, the sort of thing that invariably happens when a debut album is so successful and meaningful to its fans. On the other, it’s some very strong evidence that a large portion of the indie yuppie nation simply have no taste for brilliance.

I probably don’t need to tell you that the Arcade Fire are a compelling live act. They hit the stage as a ten piece ensemble, in part to honor their detailed arrangements and specific textures, but mostly to hit the audience with an overwhelming wall of sound. For a band known for their bombast, the songs never seemed over-arranged, and the performance was always disciplined and focused, save for the hit single “Power Out,” which dumbed down their sound for the effect of sheer blunt force. At their best, the clever details of the arrangements were noticeable but not distracting — a bit of subtle horn skronk on “Black Mirror,” the low moan of a bowed upright bass on “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations” (which was, for me, the highlight of the show), the sound of paper being torn used as a percussive effect on “Neon Bible.”

Unavoidably, Win Butler was the focal point of the performance, even when he was not singing lead. The man has an odd temperment for a rock frontman of either the indie or arena persuasion. He is stoic but not humorless, and intense without being ponderous or pretentious. He has a sort of gravity that cannot be easily faked, and a charisma that does not seem forced or even intentional. He falls somewhere in the middle of a scale with Bono circa Achtung Baby on one side, and Johnny Cash on the other. His wife Regine has a different but complementary character — her tone and demeanor is more playful, but she also seems more worldly and cynical.

Arcade Fire “Antichrist Television Blues” – I’ve been listening to songs from Neon Bible since they’ve been leaking, and biting my tongue for weeks despite feeling as though I could write endlessly on the topic of just “Intervention” and “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations.” By the time the record leaked in full and I heard “Antichrist Television Blues” for the first time, I’d become convinced of the album’s apparent themes well enough to assume that it was another song about a sympathetic character desperately praying for deliverance from poverty and its attendant miseries. I wasn’t exactly wrong about that — this is indeed a song sung from perspective of a troubled man pleading with God, but I did miss the crucial details of his prayer.

As it turns out, “Antichrist Television Blues” has a few alternate titles, and one of them is “Joe Simpson,” as in the father and manager of Jessica and Ashlee. If you follow the words, it is clear that the song is based on him, and even though it’s rather damning, it’s still more generous than you could ever expect given that Butler writes his character as a devout believer corrupted by his hubris and ambition rather than someone who is merely creepy, exploitative, and opportunistic.

If Neon Bible is mainly dealing with faith as a way of bargaining for a way out of disastrous situations and a lack of opportunity, “Antichrist Television Blues” is a necessary part of that continuum, examining the selfishness of a delusional, dogmatic man who can’t see the cruelty and deranged logic of his ways. The humble, luckless souls of “Intervention,” “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” and “Windowsill” may suffer a futile hope for escape from their circumstances, but the character in “Antichrist Television Blues” nearly destroys himself with the perversity of his convictions, and it only serves him right. (Click here to pre-order it from Merge.)

Elsewhere: J. Edward Keyes has finally found the holy grail of mash-ups: Malcolm McLaren’s mix of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

This is intended to be a Valentine’s Day post, but since I have other plans for tomorrow, you get his one day early.

Erasure “Victim of Love (Live in Nashville, 2006)” – This is ostensibly a country version of “Victim of Love,” but in actuality it is a glorious totem pole of kitsch. The country and western signifiers are in full force, but there’s also a vague Hawaiian luau theme, some Elvis Presley inflections, a twee female back-up singer, a general lounge vibe, and well, let’s not skip over the very fact that this is an Erasure song. I’ve always thought that Andy Bell sounded a bit like Cher on this particular tune, and that impression is even stronger on this version. Every day in every way, Andy Bell becomes a better diva. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Mika “Billy Brown” – Mika may not top Erasure today in terms of sublime campiness, but he comes close with this jaunty tune about a bored suburbanite whose life becomes a directionless mess when he realizes that he’s fallen in love with another man. For a song about the ramifications of sexual confusion, it’s remarkably cheery and devoid of angst, but you can chalk that up to the fact that it’s sung from the perspective of an omniscient narrator and not its tragic character. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

The Smashing Pumpkins “Beautiful” – It took me ten years to develop the frame of reference to realize that this is Billy Corgan’s ersatz version of Prince circa Sign O The Times. It’s an oddball pop song, and certainly one of the weirder compositions in the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, but it makes perfect sense in the context of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The beauty of that record comes from how perfectly it emulates the mindset of suburban teenagers, with each of its 28 songs falling on a gray scale of exaggerated, hormonal emotions. There are several types of crush songs on the record, but “Beautiful” is the one that totally nails the ridiculous, naive purity of unrequited love. The object of his affection is idealized in the first verse but just after he lets it slip that he’s not actually with that person (“with my face pressed up to the glass / wanting you”), the song shifts into a daydream scenario in which they are together, his love is returned tenfold, and everything is perfect and lovely forever and ever and ever and ever. But forever doesn’t last even in his fantasy, and we’re back to him acknowledging that they really don’t know each other very well, and that “you just can’t tell / who you’ll love and who you won’t.” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: “Like a spider, crawling up inside your body and laying a thousand eggs of cancer…I killed you.”

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks @ Irving Plaza 2/10/07 (Plug Awards)
Baby C’mon / Dragonfly Pie / It Kills / Pennywhistle Thunder / Hopscotch Willie / Jo Jo’s Jacket / Walk Into a Mirror

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks @ Maxwell’s 2/11/07
Pencil Rot / Water and a Seat / Merry Go Round / Dragonfly Pie / Real Emotional Trash / Freeze the Saints / Walk Into a Mirror / Baltimore Again / Animal Midnight / Baby C’mon / (“Psychopath” improv) / Pennywhistle Thunder / Hopscotch Willie / The Hook // Mama / (band intros, including a bit of “School” by Nirvana) / Wicked Wanda / Oyster

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks “Dragonfly Pie (One Music session, 10/3/05)” – This early version of “Dragonfly Pie” was recorded back when John Moen was still the drummer in the Jicks, and though it is quite good, you just have to take my word for it that it’s about ten times better with Janet Weiss behind the kit. Since the Jicks started up, I’ve been excited about John Moen, not just because he’s a cool, funny talented dude, but because his presence in the band meant that Stephen Malkmus finally had a kick-ass drummer rather than someone who was just adequate and/or exceedingly charming. Finally, I thought, Malkmus is collaborating with an equal!

In retrospect it seems that for all his chops, Moen was still subordinate to Malkmus’ style — they were on the same wavelength, but SM called all the shots. Not so with Janet Weiss. She’s an unstoppable force with a distinct, hard-hitting, fill-heavy style that complements Malkmus’ post-Pavement songs so well that it seems as though they were made to play together, and pose creative challenges to one another.

The older songs were pumped up with a level of kinetic energy alien to Malkmus’ career to date, as though the skinny, lanky compositions had all gone off to a gym for two solid years and emerged as buff, toned behemoths without losing any of their melodic grace. “Merry Go Round” and the lovely “Walk Into a Mirror” were tight, poppy, and harmonic, but the majority of the new tunes were epic in structure, but placed a greater emphasis on rhythmic shifts and instrumental passages than meandering solos. I’ve seen people refer to Pig Lib as being almost pornographic in the way that it panders to the taste of Malkmus fanboys such as myself, and this new material is the same way, though also for Janet Weiss. Whenever the album comes out later this year, it’s going to sound like the musical equivalent of indie rock slash fiction. (Click here for the official Malkmus site.)

If you were wondering, the Plug Awards was a total mess. I’ll let Idolator cover the details, but let’s just say that they were damn lucky that a guy as skilled at making fun of stupid shit as David Cross was the host, and was able to salvage its many poorly planned, ill-conceived bits and the generally haphazard nature of the production. The bands were a mixed bag — El-P was good but only performed two songs, Deerhoof sounded like 1993 on stage whereas they sound like 1997 on their new album, and the Silversun Pickups were so bad that I wanted to slap some sense into everyone I saw in the audience who was visably enjoying their set. I’d only skimmed over their music before, listening to enough to know that I had no interest in writing about them, but seeing them live shifted my apathy to outright disdain. Basically, the Silversun Pickups sound like the Afghan Whigs if Greg Dulli had somehow lost his genitals in a horrible accident when he was 8 years old. I’ve seen people compare them to the Smashing Pumpkins, and that just seems totally preposterous to me — they could only sound like the Pumpkins to a person who has never heard any of their albums but is nevertheless convinced that they hate the music based on the fact that Billy Corgan is kind of a douchebag.

Elsewhere: Slate’s Jim Lewis suggests that Factory Girl is actually a mean-spirited homophobic allegory.

Bright Eyes “Four Winds” – I’m not sure why I downloaded this song. Morbid curiosity? A well-intentioned desire to give Conor Oberst another chance? Aimless boredom? All of the above, I guess. The first surprise was that the first minute went by without any vocals, and it’s not half bad, basically “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” done up as fakey country rock, but it’s actually a pretty good melody to nick, and the strings sound kinda nice. It’s a happy, pleasant minute.

The second surprise is that when Oberst starts singing, it doesn’t make me want to immediately erase the file. One of my major problems with Oberst has been that he sings everything in a deeply unappealing whine which makes him come off like an entitled, petulant teenage boy telling his dad to get out of his room when he’s angry, or like a kid about to eat some worms when he’s sad. Simply put, he doesn’t sound that much like a douchebag on this song. He can’t stop being himself, but he can apparently rein in his excesses and sing like an adult when he’s in the mood. His rhythm on the verses mimics that of America’s “A Horse With No Name,” and again, stealing from that tune isn’t such a terrible idea. Maybe Oberst is growing up! I mean, he’s in his mid-20s, that’s a good time to start, but when people have been telling you that you’re great and cute smart girls from all over the world have been pining for you since you were 15, you really never have any good reason to change.

The other big problem I’ve had with Conor Oberst is a more personal hang-up. Much of his music, but most especially the Lifted album, sounds like the sort of thing I would have thought would be the best thing ever back when I was a teenager — bombastic, overwrought, whiney, smug, over-arranged. If I could figure out by age 20 that this was in fact a recipe for some of the worst music imaginable, why couldn’t this dude? I can’t help but associate this guy with emotional and intellectual immaturity when almost everything he does reminds me of a period of my life in which I totally hated myself, and with good reason.

Cutting to the chase, “Four Winds” doesn’t sound like anything I would have imagined when I was 18, and I guess neither does I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning, though I definitely dislike that record. It’s a lot easier for me to be okay with Oberst when he’s not symbolizing anything to me, and it certainly helps that much more aggravating musicians have since replaced him in my mind as the straw man representing everything that I hate about contemporary indie rock. (Conor, if you’re reading and at all flattered by this, send a nice thank you card to Sufjan Stevens, okay?)

So, yeah, “Four Winds.” It’s a Bright Eyes song that I don’t dislike. Um, enjoy? (Click here to buy it from Saddle Creek.)

Say Anything “Every Man Has A Molly” – I’m ideologically opposed to the concept of “guilty pleasures,” but I can’t think of any better way for me to describe my relationship with this song. As Rob Harvilla noted in his recent feature about the band in the Village Voice, “Every Man Has A Molly” is the ultimate example of the sort of emo misogyny described by Jessica Hopper in her essay “Emo: Where The Girls Aren’t.” It’s also actually a fantastic pop song with lyrics that are intentionally nasty, over-sharing, insufferably indulgent, and above all else, extremely self-aware. Max Bemis knows that he’s being a total dick, and so he plays it for laughs without diminishing his emotions, and the result is something that comes off as being a true, if extremely unflattering portrait of a wounded, entitled asshole. Basically, this sounds like Weezer circa Pinkerton if Rivers Cuomo was ten times more of a jerk, and had no illusions about romantic love at all whatsoever. It’s well-constructed and fun, and I just really love the way the name “Molly Connolly” sounds in the song. I feel like such a creep for being way into this, and that’s kinda screwed up and hypocritical for me if just because there are loads of other records with lyrics that are just as questionable if not a whole lot worse that I don’t feel too bad about at all. (Like, for example, that entire Clipse album.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: You can listen to my segment from last night’s episode of Fair Game right here. It’s nice, but I’m definitely a little nervous and you can tell in my speech patterns. I kept using the same words for some reason, and even though I actually kinda coached myself to say “thanks for having me” on the way to the station, my brain made me say “thanks it was good to see you” TWICE, even though it’s radio. If you were wondering, A Sunny Day In Glasgow’s song was cut for time, and so it’s just Charlotte Hatherley, the Child Ballads, Of Montreal, and Noonday Underground.

Also: If you’ve been reading this site on RSS or whatever and missed the big banner up top, you might want to know that I’m DJing between sets for a show at Galapagos in Brooklyn tonight featuring A Place To Bury Strangers, Sh-sh-sh-shark Attack!!!, the Vandelles, and Mofos. I’m not familiar with Mofos and Sh-sh-sh-shark Attack!!!, but I’ve seen the Vandelles and A Place To Bury Strangers before, and they were both quite good.

And: I’m really glad that Choire Sicha is back at Gawker.

Arthur Russell “Hiding Your Present From You” – If you made a list of the components of this composition, it may seem awkward and unlikely that they would gel, much less come together as a thing of great beauty, but Arthur Russell pulled it off with an uncommon grace, which is probably the best way to describe the essential quality of his music in general. “Hiding Your Present From You” (Present as in a gift, or present as in tense? I prefer the latter.) radiates intense good will and love without seeming even remotely cloying, and a lot of that comes through just in the way Russell’s reedy voice seems to glow throughout the mix. (Click here to buy it from Amp Camp.)

The Freelance Hellraiser “We Don’t Belong” – In a convoluted sort of way, there’s a good chance that I might not be doing this blog if it weren’t for the Freelance Hellraiser, aka the dude who kick-started the mash-up trend earlier in this decade, and had me addicted to Boom Selection, which was the primary inspiration for putting mp3s on my site in the first place. It’s an interesting thing to hear him making music as a proper solo artist, not just because it’s sort of brave for him to step away from his main gimmick, but that his music skews noticeably toward the elements of “Stroke of Genie-us” derived from the Strokes rather than the Christina Aguilera bits. The guy still has a knack for constructing exciting tracks, though some of the cuts on the album have this sort of soggy Britishness to them that’s not entirely appealing, and I’m not just talking about the song with the guy from Snow Patrol. “We Don’t Belong” is the best of the set, mainly for the way it zooms off like a shoegazer race car during the chorus, and shamelessly echoes a bit of “Hey Jude” in its intro. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Clinic, the Postmarks, and Dust To Digital’s Sacred Harp compilation.

Also: I’m going to be on tonight’s episode of Fair Game on Public Radio International. They are going to be talking to me about songs by Of Montreal, Charlotte Hatherley, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Noonday Underground. and the Child Ballads.

Times New Viking “Love Your Daughters” – Times New Viking’s lo-fi style may be an affectation in the age of Pro-Tools, but it’s an aesthetic choice that works well for them, and pretty much anyone else who plays this sort of raggedy, fuzzy pop rock — the kind of music that used to be synonymous with the category “indie rock” before that phrase ended up getting corrupted by overuse. A lot of the beauty in lo-fi comes from its distinct, informal textures, and the way it makes every sound seem lived-in and familiar, like a crappy yet sturdy jacket you’ve been wearing every winter for the better part of a decade. I’m not convinced that these guitar parts would sound better recorded any other way, and the blur of vocals and keyboards fill the arrangement out without sounding fixed in any position, like bits of scenery in memories that might be a bit off, but aren’t exactly essential to the feeling. (Click here to buy it from Midheaven.)

Elsewhere: I have a paragraph of comments in this year’s Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll. Here they are for you if you hate to click links:

Passionate fandom is a bonus and may grant you some longevity, but your average flash-in-the-pan only needs to get enough people to provide some sort of risk-free, superficial endorsement — downloading your songs for free, adding you on MySpace — to build up enough buzz to generate a backlash before anyone outside your tiny cultural bubble ever learns your name, much less hears your music. On the bright side, burning through a seemingly complete career arc in the span of six months is still better than to have no recognition at all, and even when first-year bloggers are pimping bland, conservative acts such as the Cold War Kids, they are still collectively far more adventurous than the overwhelming majority of print and broadcast media.

Matthew Perpetua
Astoria, New York

Also: Here is my ballot, which is a little different from the one that I did for Idolator’s poll.

And: A Merry Marvel Musical Atrocity, courtesy of Rachelle Goguen.

Liz Phair “Nashville” – Maybe I’ve been reading the wrong writers or speaking to the wrong people since the early 90s, but it seems that almost no one ever mentions that the guitar parts on Liz Phair’s first two albums are more often than not as poetic as her words. The tone in “Nashville” is drowsy and nearly serene, but its churning rhythm is nervous and unsteady in a way particular to feeling terrified about losing something in which you’ve invested too much. It’s an interesting subtext for a song that depicts a relationship in its most uneventful yet most emotionally loaded moments, and proclaims “I won’t decorate my love” at the end like a mantra, a promise, and a manifesto.

Of course, when she sings those words, the arrangement contradicts the notion with some sentimental adornment in the form of a few faded saxophone notes and some distant twinkling sounds, presumably an echo of the sweetest thing that Phair sings in this, or possibly any other, song: “They don’t know what they like so much about it / they just go for any shiny old bauble / and nobody sparkles like you.” It’s a genuinely beautiful thing to say, but it’s grounded in an elitism that I find to be human and true, and it speaks to the reality that who you fall in love with is a matter of taste, and some people have better taste than others. Ultimately, this is a song about pride, and the way that it makes love both more difficult in that it keeps you from opening up to just anyone, and more rewarding when you find someone with whom you can feel safe enough to drop your defenses. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

The Breeders “London Song” – The song moves along in fits and starts without ever stopping in place. Sure, there are moments of dramatic silence, but those are there to indicate that the music has hit a peak and is about to roll backwards or drop suddenly in mid-air, rendering its lyrical themes of depression and lapsed sobriety as Sisyphean slapstick. Kim Deal has done many, many rad things in her career, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that the bridge of this song ranks among her top five all-time best moments — “I thought I’d know better….I thought I would knoooooooow!” And right then, on cue, she tumbles back into the chorus like it’s a bad habit. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: Pageblank on work, Bjork, and Matthew Barney, Indexed makes some sense of the world with little hand-drawn charts, and Random Panels presents the four types of Bat-conflict.

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt @ Tonic 2/3/2007
Cryin’ / Teenage Extreme / You Can’t Kill Us, Man, We’re Already Dead / Sunday Morning / Your Best Won’t Be Enough / Makin’ Love in the Sunshine / That’s How The Story Goes / The Love I Lose / Please Remember Me / Strange Sensation // Artist’s Lament

Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine (Album Version)” – The band played this show with a trio of girls from NYU called the Maxi Dancers, who performed an awkward but highly appropriate jailbait burlesque act throughout the set, starting off with some over the top vamping to the Skinemax guitar licks of “Cryin'” and a glam schoolgirl striptease for “Teenage Extreme.” By the time they came around to the extended dance version “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine,” the room exploded into a fantastic dance party for artsy New Yorkers of three different generations. It was a pure, perfect concert moment in which the audience became an equal part of the performance, and the song became complete. Later on, after an enthusiastic call for an encore, “Artist’s Lament” came close to matching the magic of “Makin’ Love,” with its angst-ridden chorus “Oh Christ, do you know what it’s like / to be long on ideas / but short on time?” becoming the anthem that it deserves to be before hitting its climax and ending as a sort of slow dance at a prom. It drives me mad that this band can consistently pack venues in New York City and put on these lively, thoughtful spectacles without attracting the attention of too many people outside of the art world, but trust me, if you’re sleeping on this, it’s your loss. (Click here for the Maxi Geil website.)

David Vandervelde “Nothin’ No” – “Nothin’ No,” as in “nothin’, no, is gonna keep us apart.” Which is, of course, something you only say when every goddamn thing in the world is going to get in the way of the thing you want, and the only way to keep sane and focused and possibly overcome your obstacles is to persevere with relentless, stupid optimism and fidelity. The entire song sounds as though it is cheerfully swimming against the tide of bad odds and negativity, and it’s just sort of ridiculous and inspiring. I really hope that things worked out for this dude. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: Chris Conroy on comic books, Anthony Miccio on the twenty albums that he kept in their entirety from 2006, Funeral Pudding begins the game of Of Montreal, and Ed Shepp recites a post from the Cold Inclusive.

James Rabbit “The Whole World Sleeps In Your Bed” – Whereas pretty much every other indie band of their generation is out working a tiresome hustle, James Rabbit display a refreshing lack of careerism. There’s no James Rabbit MySpace page, they barely tour, and they have no record label, much less a PR company. They just churn out a few albums every year, gradually building up an extensive discography for no one in particular, sort of like Bob Pollard in his pre-Bee Thousand days. Each James Rabbit record is better than the last, with incremental improvements in every aspect of its conception, performance, and production. “The Whole World Sleeps In Your Bed” may be their finest song to date, rocking merrily along with a memorable Beatlesque guitar hook and a typically exuberant lead vocal that careens from one killer lyric to the next. The song eventually drifts off from its hyperactive main body into a gentle reverie, but unlike other James Rabbit tunes that follow a similar trajectory, the song crashes in its final moments, tripling its angst as if to make up for the brief period of calmness. (Click here to get a free copy of James Rabbit’s new album Colossuses.)

Elsewhere: Michael Barthel’s new version of Clap Clap Blog is up and running, kicking off with a lengthy post that touches on the death of both James Brown and Gerald Ford.