Neck Deep In It And Starting To Drown

Girls Aloud “Swinging London Town” – I think that a lot of people have been trying to write this song over the past decade, this sort of precisely calibrated techno rock thing, and in retrospect it now seems as though there are entire discographies that are like rough drafts for this one perfect composition.

“Swinging London Town” is sung from the perspective of a spoiled young socialite who is all too aware of the toxic nature of her lifestyle. She is already seduced by the excess and decadence, but can barely mask her contempt for virtually everyone and everything in her life. Status symbols are alternately desired and derided for being ridiculous cliches, evidence of nonexistent imaginations and mindless trend-hopping. The character is on the outermost limits of our sympathy, but she earns some small measure of it in the context of the arrangement. As the track intensifies, the vocals initially recede into the mix, making her seem overwhelmed and tiny as she is consumed by her world. When the bridge hits, the bottom drops out and it suddenly seems like happy hour at a trendy nightclub on the ocean floor. When the song comes back up for air, the vocals grow more confident, though the lyrical tone is more defensive than anything else. It’s the sound of pride swallowing a person whole, and desperation being trumped by aimless ambition. Think of this as being like the “kicking squealing Gucci little piggy” section of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” fleshed out into a proper character study. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Celebration “China” – I saw Celebration perform last night, and I’m left with one big question: How is it that the indie world is not losing their shit over these people? Is it just that the record is still fairly new and not a lot of people have seen them live just yet? If we’re at the point when the Animal Collective can be indie stars, there’s no excuse for this band not to find its audience. The performances on the album certainly did little to prepare me for the brilliance of their live act, with the hyperkinetic percussion and minimal keyboard parts providing a surprisingly powerful backdrop for charismatic frontwoman Katrina Ford, who is rather like an interesting, more imaginative version of Karen O. The band was at their best with the addition of a two-man horn section, which allowed them to approximate moves from old James Brown live performances as shot through the prism of art rock in the style of Siouxie and the Slits. The name suits them – everything in their performance felt cathartic and celebratory, vivid, vibrant and alive. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: The Knife’s One Session version of “Heartbeats” is a must-have. Said The Gramophone has it. Go get it.

The Currency We’ve Spent

Marit Bergman Vs. Justus Köhncke “Rentcode” – Swedish singer-songwriter Marit Bergman singing a British dance classic by the Pet Shop Boys over German electronic producer Justus Köhncke’s biggest hit – it’s like a delicious Neopolitan of European pop! This was recorded by Bergman for the Swedish club Smet after having performed the vocals live over the music as part of her regular set. Köhncke’s track is essentially untouched — she simply sings “Rent” over the top, and it fits as though it was always meant to be there. (Click here for the Smet website.)

What Is In Her Mind?

Light Bulb Project “If I Liked Sports, I’d Be One” – From what I can tell, this appears to be an unreleased song from a recently defunct Swedish girl group. The music itself is enjoyable if not very distinct Euro pop, but the lyrics about making a futile attempt to enjoy sports put it over, especially when the girls deliver lines like “the worst thing that I tried was archery / it felt wrong” with charm and just the right measure of self-awareness. It’s also very amusing that the sports in question are not organized team sports, but rather things like figure skating, fencing, sailing, tennis and golf. What sort of effete country club guy are they trying to impress? (Click here for more songs on what seems to be their official site.) (Thanks to Jessica!)

Angel Corpus Christi “Caroline Says II” – I’d say that this is a brilliant arrangement for the song, but it’s more like excellent casting. The vocals and accompaniment are ideally suited for Lou Reed’s character – sympathetic and damaged, but strangely upbeat while lost in a self-medicated haze. Contrast this with Antony and the Johnson’s maudlin take on “Candy Says,” and you can hear the difference between a nuanced, thoughtful realization of a character and vain, ham-fisted Oscar baiting. (Click here to buy it from Gulcher.)

Elsewhere:

The Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll for 2005 is online. If you are interested in how I voted, my ballot is right here. Something that you ought to take into consideration when examining my singles ballot is that it is not intended to be understood as a list of my favorite songs from 2005. When I filled out the ballot, I was following a few self-imposed rules in order to narrow down a few hundred songs that I loved from the year to a tiny list of ten. The criteria for the list were as follows:

1) The song must have been released as a single or pushed by the label to radio and video outlets in 2005. (Without the option of album tracks, several amazing songs were disqualified.)
2) No songs from artists on the albums list.
3) Only one song per artist. (This is why Mike Jones’ “Back Then” did not make the list.)

I wanted to include R. Kelly’s “Trapped In The Closet” for the singles list, but there was a rule stipulating that each part of that song was to be counted as a discrete entity, and since I couldn’t single out a favorite chapter and had no desire to split the song’s vote, I opted to omit it from my list entirely.

Overall, I’m actually somewhat pleased with the results of this year’s poll. Several of my own picks scored very highly, with four of my top ten albums landing in the top 15. I am absolutely thrilled that Kanye West and M.I.A. beat out Sufjan Stevens, though I am still a bit aggravated by the fact that he scored so highly with an album as awful as Illinois. However, I feel a bit vindicated by the high placement of Fiona Apple. I’m also happy to see that several records that I would have voted for if my ballot could extend up to twenty or thirty did just fine without my vote – The White Stripes, LCD Soundsystem, Kanye West, and Sleater-Kinney, for example. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have assumed that lots of people were going to vote for Missy Elliott in the albums poll, since that clearly was not the case. (She hit #95, well below loads of mediocre albums by unremarkable artists.) Though I quite like “1 Thing” and “Gold Digger,” I feel that Kelly Clarkson was robbed on the singles chart. Nevertheless, #3 is pretty spectacular for the winner of a televised singing competition in a critics poll.

Make A Connection To The Connection

Lilys “A Diana’s Diana” – The signifiers of funk and disco are present in this track, but it’s not quite appropriate for actual dancing so much as a perfect song for zoning out on public transportation. As your mind and body settle into numbing routine, your thoughts can cut loose and bounce around to a groove that sounds as though it submerged in a tub of gelatin backlit with strobe lights. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

The Shorebirds “Born Undefeated” – Maxi Geil & Playcolt guitarist Mark “Hiatt Regency” Ephraim steps into the spotlight with a remarkable confidence, delivering a cryptic rock sermon name-checking M.I.A., Smog, and Maxi Geil like a strung-out hip priest in a cathedral made of surf guitar licks and reverb. (Click here for the Shorebirds’ MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: Stephen Malkmus fans ought to check out the complete Jicks BBC session from last year on Rbally. The session includes a new Jicks song as well as a rather obscure cover.

The Lights On The Ceiling Don’t Know

Sophie Rimheden (featuring Kajsa Grytt) “It’s Your Head” – Riding a gentle, bouncing beat and bassline, the vocals ponder the head and the heart, with the feelings and thoughts mixing together so that it’s hard to tell them apart, literally or musically. It’s never quite as ecstatic as I would like it to be, but the coolness of the vocals speak to a rational cautiousness that feels a little too familiar to me lately. (Click here to buy it via Sophie Rimheden’s official site.)

Young People “Dark Rainbow” – When I made mix tapes all of the time, I was always very anal retentive about making sure that my sides had perfect endings. This was not just about song selection — it was about craft and absolutely refusing to just let a track cut off because the tape ran out a few seconds before the song finished. I remember several occasions of eyeballing the leftover tape and sitting anxiously through my final song, hoping that it would fit just so and I could move on to the next thing. If things went wrong, it was time to backtrack and re-edit – songs that came previously in the sequence had to be deleted and shorter songs had to be added, etc. This song reminds me quite a bit of all that not just in how it’s a rather good ending song (more for a side a than a side b, but whatever), but in that it sounds like it’s about to end for most of its duration. It feels as though it could lose its grip and fall off the side of the planet at any moment, and it’s doing everything that it can to stay as calm as possible. (Click here for Too Pure’s Young People mini-site.)

Service Interruption

I’m currently dealing with some kind of horrible multi-front flu-like ailment, so I am going to take another day off today. Sorry. There are some days when I can keep this going even when I’m not up for it, but today is not one of them. Hopefully things will be back to normal tomorrow morning.

The Strange Towns Where We Will Party Together

Figurines “Silver Ponds” – Somewhere in Denmark, there is a dude who sings exactly like Doug Martsch from Built To Spill and writes elegantly crafted songs of muted melancholy as though he’s mainlining the essence of the best European indie rock of the 80s. This is his band, though I suspect it might actually be the result of some advanced computer program designed by a label to yield high scores on Pitchfork. (Click here for the official Figures site.)

Pompey “I Have A Tail” – Pompey’s album is restless and deliberately scattered, abruptly shifting from Animal Collective-ish electronic textures to fragments of rhythm and melody and occasionally sounding roughly like Jandek trying to make his own Pet Sounds. This relatively straight pop-ish track comes late in the sequence, almost as though to tap the listener on the shoulder and remind them that they’ve been in total control all along. Much of the record feels like a headache, but this cut is like when the PM Tylenol kicks in and you’re about to nod off. (Click here to get the rest of the album for free from Pocketclock.)

My God, How Beautiful!

The Knife “We Share Our Mother’s Health” -The Knife’s previous LP Deep Cuts is a hard act to follow, if just because it contains a song (“Heartbeats”) which could very well be the most sublime single of this decade to date. The Knife pretty much shrug off the pressure on Silent Shout, making a lateral move away from the skewed, romantic pop of that album towards a sound that takes their distinctive production aesthetic to a much darker, creepier place. Nearly everything on the record sounds eerie and unnerving, if not outright malevolent. Imagine chopped and screwed Siouxie and the Banshees or Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” reworked for a goth disco, and you’re about halfway to the general feel of the record. (Click here to visit the official website of The Knife.)

The High Violets “Cool Green” – I was walking down an unfamiliar street in Astoria last night listening to this song, and just after the 120 Minutes-in-1988 intro, right when Kaitlyn ni Donavan says “My God, how beautiful!,” a gorgeous, unobstructed shot of midtown Manhattan came into view in the space between two buildings. It’s fairly easy to walk around here and not see the skyline, so when it pops out of nowhere like this, it can seem even more magnificent than usual. Everything about this moment of synchronicity was ideal, right down to the level of light in the sky. Set against a deep, starless navy blue backdrop bracketed by two mundane lowrises in the foreground, the white lights of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings appeared to burn with an unreal intensity. (Click here to buy it from Reverb Records.)

When We Were Twelve or Twenty-Two

Miranda! “Don” – I don’t understand much Spanish, but I do get the gist of “es un
soooolo / es un guitara de Lolo!,” or at at least I do when it’s followed by a sweet little guitar solo. Lyrics are almost entirely besides the point with a melody bomb like this – if anything, not knowing the words is only a detriment in that it makes it a little harder to sing along. But only a little bit! (Click here to buy it from Ce Musica Latina.)

Enon “Conjugate The Verbs” – When this song was released, I was 20 and in the middle of the worst period of depression that I’ve ever experienced. The specific reasons are very embarassing and I’m going to avoid bringing them up if you don’t mind, but the lyrics of this song had a strong resonance for me at the time, which is very strange if you take into account that these words are, to put the positive spin on it, extremely cryptic. I remember what I was feeling, but I’m not sure what I was thinking. There is almost no connection between what the words are actually saying and what I forced them to mean to me. (Well, except for “she’s on an unconscious mission to destroy you,” I guess.) It’s pretty clear now that I was mostly just responding to the arrangement and the way the song’s dynamic structure feels like falling through a series of trap doors, plunging to new low with each chorus. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

It Makes Me Smile And It Keeps My Teeth Clean

Thank you to everyone who came out for the Fluxblog/Stereogum event last night. I realize that it was a work/school night and that DJ sets by a bunch of bloggers doesn’t quite match up to the entertainment value of a brand new (and very key!) episode of Lost, so I’m very grateful for everyone who showed up, and especially for the people who were still around by the time I started. I went on a little late. Sorry!

Spektrum “May Day” / Cristina “Mamma Mia” / Ludus “Breaking The Rules” / Dolly Parton “Baby, I’m Burning” / ABBA “You Owe Me One” / Girls Aloud “Biology” / Art Brut “Good Weekend” / Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine” / Beyonce with Slim Thug and Bun B “Check On It” / Fox “SSSingle Bed” / Hey Willpower & Annie “Chewing Gum” / Los Super Elegantes “Dance” / Rachel Stevens “I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)” / Hollertronix “Tippin’ Toxic” / Hank “Ferox” / Love Is All “Motorboat”

Hey Willpower with Annie “Chewing Gum” – Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story a homemade mash-up: Will (Imperial Teen) Schwartz’s pop group have teamed up with Annie for a duet version of “Chewing Gum,” resulting in a track that seems almost strategically designed to appeal to me. At this rate, we can expect a Stephen Malkmus/Eleanor Friedberger duet before the end of the year. (Click here for the official Hey Willpower site.)

Fox “SSSingle Bed” – Here’s another old family favorite for the newer readers. This brilliant glam-funk track is just a little over thirty years old right now, but it still feels a little bit ahead of its time. Unfortunately, this track is entirely out of print at the moment as far as I know, though the first two Fox albums were recently reissued in the UK. A reader just informed me that this song is indeed in print as part of a compilation titled Guilty Pleasures Rides Again. I kinda resent the implication that anyone should feel like this song is a “guilty pleasure,” but whatever. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Look Out, Argentina Just Score Another Goal!

Last night I played a DJ set at an invite-only party along with the band Los Super Elegantes and Senior from Junior Senior. This should give you some indication of what to expect for tonight’s Fluxblog Vs. Stereogum event at Luke & Leroy, though I am planning on playing a fairly different group of songs.

The Silures “21 Ghosts” / Ce’cile “Hot Like We” / M.I.A. “10 Dollar” / Vanesshina & Allesandra “Gira” / Edu K “Popozuda Rock and Roll” / Wir Sind Helden “Guten Tag” / Girls Aloud “Models” / ABBA “You Owe Me One” / Cristina “Mamma Mia” / Ludus “Breaking The Rules” / Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine” / Beyonce with Slim Thug and Bun B “Check On It” / Fox “S-s-single Bed” / Goldfrapp “Ride A White Horse” / Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” / Junior Senior “Take My Time” / Out Hud “It’s For You” / Gene Serene and John Downfall “U Want Me” / Ladytron “Destroy Everything You Touch” / Celestial Choir “Stand On The Word (Larry Levan Mix)” / The Meters “Cabbage Cosby Alley” / Zalatnay Sarolta “Hadd Mondjam El” / Prince “Controversy” / The Slits “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” / The Make Up “Pow! to the People” / Mia. “Heroes” / David Wrench “World War IV” / Hank “Defreeze and Top Gal” / Fox and Wolf “Youth Alcoholic” / Johnny Boy “15 Minutes”

Many longtime readers will notice that I pulled out a lot of old Fluxblog classics from ’03 and ’04 for this set. For newer readers, here are two of those golden oldies:

Mia “Heroes” – Not to be confused with M.I.A.! This Mia is a German pop band, and this is their cover of the David Bowie song, though it’s probably more accurate to call it a “reimagining” or somesuch since they take some rather drastic liberties with the song and sing the entire thing in German. I recently rediscovered this song after about not hearing for about a year or so, and I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. This track was originally posted here on February 18, 2004. (Click here to buy it from Amazon Germany.)

The Silures “21 Ghosts” – Though I do enjoy sharing music with you all, I ultimately do this site for fairly selfish reasons – if I didn’t work within this artificial structure, I would probably get lazy about seeking out new songs and then I wouldn’t have amazing obscure gems like this in my life. This is undoubtedly one of the best songs that I’ve ever featured on the site and probably my favorite way to open a DJ set, but since I’ve written about this song at least twice before, here’s a bit of testimonial from James at Green Pea-Ness:

“21 Ghosts” may well be the most stupefying jump-around-like-an-idiot hammer-of-the-gods not-actually-a-rock song I’ve ever heard in my life, with the possible exception of a certain song dedicated to determining the placement of bitches on one’s 99-strong list of problems. Honestly, I feel a little funny even giving credit to Pascal “Vitalic” Arbenz (one-half of the Silures along with Linda Lamb) for this one simply because it out-rocks everything he’s ever done, no small feat considering we’re talking about motherfucking VITALIC here. I’m thinking that this must have just been a lightning-in-a-bottle moment; all I can say is thank Jebus someone had a bottle handy.

This track was originally posted here on March 11, 2004.
(Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: Eppy begs God to explain the existence of the new television series Love Monkey.

Now That’s What I Call Holy Writ

Sugababes “Push The Button (Acoustic Mix)” – If you were wondering what this song would be like if the Sugababes were to perform it at your local open mic night, your curiosity should be relieved by this alternate mix. The arrangement is cut down to a spare acoustic guitar, piano, and some subtle percussion and keyboard effects, though the vocals seem to be entirely unchanged. Though this doesn’t quite match up to the sublime electropop of the original studio version, the song holds up very well to reinterpretation and should serve to encourage others to cover the tune in the future. (Click here for the official Sugababes site.)

Loose Fur “Thou Shalt Wilt” – Strangely, I never noticed that the name of this Wilco side project was a play on name Lucifer until I had to say it out loud this morning. They are pushing for irony pretty hard, given that the name of the new album is Born Again In The USA and this song is basically the Ten Commandments set to a jaunty Steely Dan-ish classic rock tune. (Click here for the Drag City Loose Fur mini-site.)

The Weekend Stretches Out Infinitely

I’m Chareth, and John Cei Douglas is the Maximalist.

James Rabbit “United States Cooldown” –

Just another West Coast maximalist: this James Rabbit song is so manic
Just another West Coast maximalist: it sounds like kids who have ADD taking speed
Chareth, The Flirt: what kind of images are you getting?
Just another West Coast maximalist: jelly and ice cream
Just another West Coast maximalist: balloons and streamers
Chareth, The Flirt: James Rabbit is a strange band. There’s always something just a little off about their music, like it would seem sort of normal if other people played the same thing.
Just another West Coast maximalist: yeah, i get that!
Just another West Coast maximalist: it sounds sort of skewed
Chareth, The Flirt: He always sounds like he can’t wait to get to the next lyric, he has this impatient excitement in his voice.
Just another West Coast maximalist: like they were given the wrong drugs
Chareth, The Flirt: actually I think it sounds like music by people who never ever take drugs
Just another West Coast maximalist: i meant medicine
Chareth, The Flirt: same thing!
Just another West Coast maximalist: sort of
Chareth, The Flirt: it sounds like their main motivation is interminable boredom
Just another West Coast maximalist: it definitely has a sort of manic childish enthusiasm, that almost doesnt make sense with what he’s singing about
Just another West Coast maximalist: and like he wants to play everything at once
Chareth, The Flirt: I really like the keyboard solo
Just another West Coast maximalist: i can’t for the… and then the – oh and then we – BUT THEN – KEYBOARD SOLO – OH GOD
Just another West Coast maximalist: that’s James Rabbit’s mind, right there

(Click here for Tyler from James Rabbit’s blog. He’ll send you a free copy of the album if you email him!)

Seth Kauffman “Get Your Love Stole” –

Just another West Coast maximalist: this Seth Kauffman song sounds really odd to me
Chareth, The Flirt: really?
Just another West Coast maximalist: i keep expecting it to sound like something else
Chareth, The Flirt: how would you draw this song?
Just another West Coast maximalist: on an open road, in a bar
Chareth, The Flirt: would Earl be in it?
Just another West Coast maximalist: no, hes not swinging enough
Just another West Coast maximalist: it would romanticise drinking alone
Chareth, The Flirt: and how would Earl be bad for that?
Just another West Coast maximalist: he’s not romantic enough
Just another West Coast maximalist: he’s too cheeky
Chareth, The Flirt: it’s weird, this song feels so right and yet it’s really difficult to write about
Just another West Coast maximalist: it sounds really old
Chareth, The Flirt: it’s not old, it’s brand new! that’s the magic of lo-fi, son
Chareth, The Flirt: I was just walking around Astoria, and it’s really cold and there’s bits of ice and snow all over, and the song sounded perfect for that moment, but I really couldn’t form any coherant thoughts about it
Just another West Coast maximalist: ha! it makes me think of hot, summer nights
Just another West Coast maximalist: really stifling
Chareth, The Flirt: I guess it could work that way too
Just another West Coast maximalist: it reminds me of the Stones
Just another West Coast maximalist: end of the night songs
Just another West Coast maximalist: like 3am
Chareth, The Flirt: this sort of lo-fi always says “winter” to me, especially the high end of the percussion and the low end of the bass
Just another West Coast maximalist: i think this is possibly because one summer i listened to “let it bleed” all the time
Chareth, The Flirt: that would do it

(Click here for Kauffman’s empty website.)

Imagine This Post As Being “Fun Size,” Like A Miniature Milky Way

Edu K (featuring Deize Tigrona) “Sex-O-Matic (Original Mix)” – This song makes sexuality seem almost entirely inextricable from combat, with every beat sounding like a shot aimed at the hips and every come-in in the vocals annunciated more like a taunt. (Click here to buy it from Soul Seduction.)

Stereo Total “Bad News From The Stars” – This glitchy cover of a Serge Gainsbourg reggae song could very well be the weirdest thing in the Stereo Total discography, but in a roundabout sort of way, it’s almost the most obvious thing they could do given their general aesthetic. (Click here to buy it from Disko B.)

For You Right Here It’s Awesome

Johnny Boy “Fifteen Minutes” – The wall-of-joycore sound of “You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve” was no fluke. Almost every song on Johnny Boy’s debut album reaches a similar sort of ecstatic peak, and most of them reach those dizzying heights and never quite come back down to earth. Taken one song at a time, it’s a magical thing, but listening to one after the other is overwhelming and can numb a person to the brilliance of the material. (Click here for the official Johnny Boy site.)

Aziz Ansari – Excerpt from “Invite Them Up” – Comedy Central’s cd compilation documenting material performed at Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale’s weekly Invite Them Up showcase on the Lower East Side is usually quite funny. The album’s three discs generally tip in favor of strong material from the likes of Mirman, Jon Glaser, Andy Blitz, David Cross and Jon Benjamin, and Jessi Klein, with only a few brief detours into lameness and unnecessary musical interludes. The highlight of the set comes from fellow blogger and comedy newcomer Aziz Ansari, who offers up a solid nine minutes of stand-up on the topics of turtle-fucking, Kayne West’s work ethic, hitting on M.I.A., and beating a cop with a brick. (Click here to buy it from Comedy Central.)

No One Will Dance With Us In This Zany Town

Stephen Malkmus @ Knitting Factory Tap Room 1/10/2006
Shoot The Singer / Church On White / We Dance / Box Elder / Ramp Of Death / Frontwards / Witch Mountain Bridge / Freeze The Saints / Major Leagues / Vanessa From Queens / Gold Soundz

Pavement “Shoot The Singer (Live @ St. Louis 1999) – I now live in eternal debt to the Brooklyn Vegan, who kindly hooked me up with a ticket to this show at the last minute and pretty much made my year. As you can see, this was a very special set, especially for a longtime hardcore Pavement fan such as myself. Malkmus performed the entire set alone with an acoustic guitar and without a setlist – everything played was an audience request. I was lucky enough to get two of the songs that I shouted for – “Shoot The Singer” and “We Dance” – and the One Louder dudes were treated to a lovely version of “Box Elder” that was played on strummed chords rather than the arpreggiated notes as per usual.

As you can imagine, the performance was a bit ragged as he attempted to play several songs that he clearly hasn’t practiced in a while – “Frontwards” was especially shambling, and the audience had to help him remember the words of “Gold Soundz,” even the “we’re coming to the chorus now” bit! Either way, he carried it off with his typical charm and no one in the room was about to complain, since he hasn’t publically performed Pavement songs in NYC since 1999. “Ramp of Death,” “We Dance,” and “Major Leagues” were especially well suited to solo performance, though I’m sorta mystified as to why anyone would call out for “Major Leagues” (much less “Freeze The Saints”) at an all-request Malkmus show. Songs that were called out but rejected for one reason or another: “Grave Architecture,” “Shady Lane,” “Old Jerry,” “Jo Jo’s Jacket,” “Father To A Sister Of Thought,” “Summer Babe,” “Ell Ess Two,” “Here,” “Range Life,” “Harness Your Hopes,” “No More Kings,” “Civilized Satanist,” and “Candylad,” the last three being particularly ambitious and obscure.

I can’t emphasize enough how big of a deal it is to me that I finally got to see the guy play “Shoot The Singer.” I’ve been wanting this for about twelve years now, and it’s easily among the highest percentile of my favorite songs in the world. I was convinced that I would only ever get to see it live if Pavement were to go on a reunion tour, and even then if I was very lucky. So yeah, yesterday was a very lucky day for me. (Click here to buy the studio recording from Amazon.)

Lashio Thein Aung “You Got What You Want” – More so than any other record that I’ve heard from the label, Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol. 2 lives up the name Sublime Frequencies. The album collects a string of uniformly great Burmese psychedelic pop songs from the early 70s that were previously hopelessly obscure and almost entirely unheard outside of Burma. This gorgeous duet credited to Lashio Thein Aung is a major highlight from the compilation, and fairly representative of the set’s relentless catchiness and beautiful reverb. (Click here to buy it from Sublime Frequencies.)

Send Me Someone Else To Love

Lee Rogers “I Want You To Have Everything” – Simultaneously jubilant and down to earth, this song captures the exhilirating rush of new love better than most any other song that I’ve ever heard, though I must say that my memory is getting hazier on the subject every day. If I’m way off the mark, please let me know and feel free to gush about your good fortune. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Smiley Lewis “That Certain Door” – Poor bitter Smiley – burned by “that one-sided love affair” but still somehow ready to tumble right back into love, even if he’s still picking himself up from the previous disappointment. His voice is warm, optimistic, and big hearted, but it is his words and most especially his chilly guitar solo that speak for his doubts and apprehension. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

My Zine Was Called “The Gift”

John Cale “Outta The Bag” – At this point, it’s a bit of a cliche for respected middle-aged actors to go on a talk show and explain that part of their motivation for being in a superhero movie or lending their voice to an animated feature was so that they could be in something that their kids could watch and enjoy rather than the same old grim Oscar bait. I like to think that John Cale made Black Acetate for similar reasons, although he is far less likely to achieve commercial success with this album than if he had, say, composed and performed a score for Pixar. And this is funny, because the album is almost frighteningly commercial, ranging from not-quite-there-but-close homages to The Neptunes, Outkast, and the Scissor Sisters to full-on late period alt-rock tunes that (musically if not vocally) resemble the work of rock radio staples such as Switchfoot and the Foo Fighters. In the context of his career, it seems almost as though Cale has followed a similar arc to that of Scharpling & Wurster’s “The Music Scholar,” pushing at the margins of art rock and the avant garde for decades before finding a new inspiration in contemporary Top 40. In the case of “The Music Scholar,” it’s sort of grotesque, but for Cale, it’s inspiring to see the guy try his hand at modern pop style. Even when the songs are duds, it’s not for a lack of craft and enthusiasm. (Click here to buy John Cale’s Black Acetate from Amazon and here to buy Scharpling & Wurster’s Chain Fights, Beer Blasts, and Service With A Grin from Stereolaffs.)

Can’t Tear Yourself Away, Can You?

There won’t be a new post today, but rather than bring in a fill-in writer or skip the day entirely, I’m rerunning one of my favorite entries from the archives. This nostalgia-fest was originally posted on April 22, 2004.

Letters To Cleo “Rimshak” – What this song reminds me of:

1) Being 15/16, mostly. This band hit around 1995 or so, they were all over Alternative Nation and 120 Minutes and their single “Here And Now” was on the Melrose Place soundtrack. I don’t think anyone took them very seriously, mostly because of silly ideas about “indie cred,” but also because they only had two or three really good songs (this being one of them, though it was never a single.)

2) When I was a teenager, I was very involved with my (tiny) high school’s literary magazine, and they used to send us to these writing conferences two or three times every school year. By far, these conferences are the best memories from my adolescence. Oh man, I loved these things – it was good for my ego, because I could show off in writing seminars, but the best thing was getting to be around kids from other schools. Meeting new people in general was a huge novelty for me at this point in my life, since my school district was so small and peculiar that I had basically been stuck with the same 50 or so people in my age group from Kindergarten up through senior graduation. I had to assume that since I wasn’t completely happy there, it was probably because I wasn’t around enough people like myself, and these conferences (as well as some classes which I took on the weekends at Pratt in my junior and senior years) gave me the feeling that I was correct. There was a whole world of smart, cool kids just outside of where I lived – in neighboring towns, across the river, in lower Westchester, in Long Island, in New York City. Of course, I was always too shy to actually make friends with anyone at these conferences, but just chatting a bit for an hour or having any exposure at all was enough for me.

3) Now let’s be very honest about this: I’m talking about how great it was to be around new cool people, but what I really mean is that it was great to be around new cool girls. I’m thinking about it right now, and I can’t even remember what the guys were like at these things. I’m sure there were others, because I would certainly remember the discomfort of being the only male at something like this. What I do recall are the girls – I still remember what a lot of these girls looked like, even though I only saw them for an hour or two nearly a decade ago. It’s funny what sticks in your memory, because I’m having trouble getting a solid mental picture of people that I saw every day as a teenager. Anyway, this was my first contact with actual indie girls, and it kinda blew my young mind. These young women set the template for what I thought I wanted from a girlfriend for the next three or four years. I’m a bit embarassed by this, because it certainly was not mature or healthy to fixate on appearances like this, much less to assume that I could understand the personality of someone based solely on their style and tastes. Of course, I’ve never actually dated anyone like the cute indie girls from my memories, not then and not now. (Though I’m open to it!) More than anything, thinking about these girls as a teenager was a comfortable fantasy. It was just a design for a life I wanted at the time – I didn’t have any specific interest in any of these people (in fact, I was probably more terrified of them than anything else), but they gave me an idea of the kind of people I wanted to be with.

4) I bought a copy of the Letters To Cleo tape a few days before going to a conference at Westchester Community College. I’m not clear on the specifics of what happened on that particular day, but I remember bits and pieces (mostly images), and it was obviously a pretty good day for me. On the bus ride home, I must have listened to “Rimshak” a dozen times over. When I got home, I listened to it some more in my room, while looking out of my window in a general southern direction. This became a weird habit for me. Whenever I’d want to just think about how great things could be, I’d just stare south (which was really just down the street, looking at a bunch of trees) while listening to something which reminded me of either the conferences or NYC – “Rimshak,” Sonic Youth, “Old To Begin” by Pavement (which I listened to on the subway whenever I was in NYC in 1997 for reasons I still do not understand), the Lynn Samuels radio show on WABC. It was a pretty weird thing to do, but I was a pretty weird kid.

5) This song also reminds me of this one strong visual image of a street someplace in lower Westchester (possibly in Mamaroneck?) that is burned in my memory for no apparent reason, but is closely associated with these memories. If I hear the “Rimshak” chord progression, I immediately envision a semi-urban street with brownstones, trees, and newspapers on the street to be recycled. I have no idea how this image ever got in my head, or why it seems to have any significance.

6) I remember seeing the band interviewed on 120 Minutes, and the guitarist explained that this song was called “Rimshak” because it reminded them of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” so they just reversed the title. Well, almost. They transposed the h and the s. But still.

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We’ll Watch Our Heroes Trip And Fall

Archers of Loaf “Nevermind The Enemy” – No, I’m not posting this to complete the 90s indie trifecta along with Malkmus and Pollard, but it doesn’t hurt. I’m mostly featuring this track out of the realization that in the four years that I’ve been doing this site, I’ve never written anything about this song even though it’s a pretty big deal to me. For one thing, there’s a strong nostalgia factor – I bought this when I was 15, and I have a lot of vivid teenage memories tied in with it, almost all of them quite positive. On a lyrical level, this song and pretty much the rest of the Vee Vee album holds a strong appeal to me for its unabashedly competitive sentiment, even if it’s laced with cynicism and pessimism. Virtually all Archers of Loaf songs were about scrappy underdogs fighting for their fair share, and in retrospect, the 90s was the perfect time for them, at least much more so than the Goliath-favoring decades bracketing their era. More than any of that, my enduring love of this song is rooted in that it’s like a sort of Platonic ideal of indie rock guitar for me. With its casual artiness, raw exuberance and impressionistic effects, “Nevermind The Enemy,” illuminates exactly what I dislike about the drab, uncreative style and guitar tone of the overwhelming majority of contemporary rock bands. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Vivien Goldman “Launderette” – Unfortunately for the world, this brilliant a-side from 1981 accounts for a massive chunk of music writer Vivien Goldman‘s discography as a performer. It’s a shame given Goldman’s charismatic vocals and sharp lyrics about a love that begins, ends, and lingers on in an uncomfortable sort of afterlife at a tiny launderette. The bassline is particularly great, evoking both the churning of a nervous stomach and the gentle rumbling of a washing machine. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)