At the risk of sounding like I'm 100 years old: I like this "new" video by Vampire Weekend. It makes me smile a lot and want to share it with friends. The song, which I hated on first listen, has also grown on me.
And as I may have mentioned before, I've really become a YouTube playlist nerd. This playlist of bands on the Letterman show is pretty sweet. Might come in handy if we ever get around to hosting that poll for best latenight TV performances.
The Letterman list also led me to an incredible THEN and NOW for Kings of Leon. I really really hate them and I like some of their songs. How can they be such tepid tapioca?
But what I really came to write about is The Airborne Toxic Event, recipients of one of the most scathing music reviews I've ever come across. More on that in a moment.
Like Kings of Leon and other fancy bastards, Toxic Event has a song that I shamefully like and for which I slightly turn up the volume in my car when it comes across those rad waves. I'm talking about "Sometime Around Midnight." Despite liking it, I also hate it.
Lately it's been fun for me (annoying for Katie) when I make a point to mock radio hits for their formulaic pandering. Like how XX is tapping into some car commercial, female-led indie synth thing. Or how anyone with some sparse piano, guitar, and "oohs" and "la la las" can make it big. And how Toxic Event efforts to convey the epic emotions of ... going to parties ... you know, what it's like to be 25 to 35 these days and wearing skinny black ties to work.
So I had to Wikipedia these fellas to find out which record label created them out of thin air.
Boy was I surprised:
During a one-week period in March 2006 while working on a novel, [lead singer Mikel Jollett] learned that his mother was diagnosed with cancer, experienced a break-up, and was diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease which led Jollett to develop two cosmetic conditions: Alopecia areata and Vitiligo. Spurred by these events in his personal life, Jollett turned from writing prose to writing songs as he realized he was composing an album instead of a novel.
Jollett met drummer Taylor in the summer of 2006 and the two established an immediate rapport.
The entry goes on. It's as epic as Jollett's lyrics. In fact, Katie and I think Jollett wrote the entry. Talk about rah rah. Anyone ever seen a "live performances" section like that of this 2-year-old band?
In a way, The Airborne Toxic Event is something of a landmark record: This represents a tipping point where you almost wish Funeral or Turn on the Bright Lights or Is This It? never happened as long as it spared you from horrible imitations like this one, often sounding more inspired by market research than actual inspiration. Congrats, Pitchfork reader -- the Airborne Toxic Event thinks you're a demographic.
In ode to M. Squints Palledorous of Sandlot fame, I've been sayin' that for years about indie sensations like Napoleon Dynamite and 500 Days of Summer (the latter of which I ended up liking).
I just get scared when things I consider genuine turn to formulas then get gobbled up. Um.
It has become a weekend ritual to tune in to one local radio station just to grimace and howl and change the station when a particular DJ makes his appearance. He's especially easy to find because the "commercial free" station is so full of DJ-read commercials.
Listen in for his signature Surfer-Slick Epic Pregnant Pause delivery style, like at 2:18: "... ... ... and good luck."
That's right, I'll drop some Chaucer references on our fuckin blog. You a-holes can nerd out about fonts and I'll do so about really liking to read the C-Tales in their original Middle English.
I'd like to throw my dissenting hat in the ring, most because I disagree with the title "unworthy" for this years' release schedule. All of these listed "noteworthy" albums fall short of "worthy" because, well, most of 'em aren't even in the top ten.
+ Battles – Mirrored + Black Lips – Good, Bad, Not Evil + LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver + Gogol Bordello – Super Taranta! + Justice – Cross + Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover + !!! - Myth Takes + Daft Punk – Alive 07
James Murphy has released 2 albums in the past 18 months. One was a single track (45:33 minutes long) of beats, blips, and bombast. It's a workout mix, but it is also sweet. The other one was Sound of Silver.
Gogol Bordello is authentic Eastern European stomp/ punk/ dub reggae/ a drunken night on the town with some Ukranian sailors (as opposed to Beirut, who just sounds like Stephen Merritt anyway).
Justice said "Let there be rock and roll, and then once they created it and called it good they actually renamed it dance.
Sunset Rubdown IS BETTER THAN WOLF PARADE. Which might not be a legitimate criticism, but considering how much all of our friends love it, begs the question WHY HAVEN'T ANY OF THEM BESIDES ME HEARD IT?
!!! debases rock'n'roll to sexual urges and impulses. Yes, this has been done before (see: Chuck Berry, Elvis) but !!! do it in such a way that you feel like fucking, dancing, taking mushrooms AND playing air guitar. Eat your motherfucking heart out, Jimi.
And Daft Punk takes all of their already awesome songs and combines them. Like, not just one after another. But into one another
But wait. That's only 8. What's left?
+ Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? + Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Self-parody, maybe. Cell phones and Outback steakhouse, yes. But the most fun I have ever had listening to an album on repeat without getting old? Yes. 12 minute dance epics about depression? Yes.
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is not Kill the Moonlight. No. Of course not. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a different record than Kill the Moonlight. That's the point. KIll the Moonlight was sexy, immediate, sparse. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is romantic, a gradual incinerator - full. Did you hear those horns?If you listen close, you can hear him talking and them humming the guitar line before the guitar line starts.
An album came out this year, "Some Loud Thunder." Sound unfamiliar? That's because it was the new release by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and for some reason, nobody listened to it, my friends and myself included. We enjoyed their self-titled debut, but this year, we just didn't get around to the new release.
So come December, my Top 10 List would be, in short, an incomplete sham.
But professional critics get bins of music and still manage to enshrine mediocrity. Largheartedboy has the comprehensive list of this year's lists (which at least reveals the parity of listing). The listener-generated NPR Top 10 is here (and it's got a tinge of indie!).
Note to varying degrees of praise, the presence of the following albums, annotated here with my opinion:
+ Modest Mouse, "We Were Dead..." (pale) + Radiohead, "In Rainbows" (drowsy) + The White Stripes, "Icky Thump" (confusing, tasteless; icky) + Beirut, "Flying Club Cup" (stompless) + Of Montreal, "Hissing Fauna..." (self-parody; fallen) + Wilco, "Sky Blue Sky" (underachieving)
In a year of unworthy releases, even efforts from Jens Lekman, Andrew Bird, and Deerhoof produced "not their best album, but it's still pretty good," to quote Beta Band. Spoon too, but that's not an insult.
Perhaps Feist made progress, but she really should consider wielding her guitar in a video instead of dancing in that awkward and honest way of hers.
