Here’s a running list of things I wish was in iTunes.  Inspiration comes mostly from discogs.com who understand what music lovers need & want.  I use playlists to add most metadata I need (not just mixtapes, but from where, when I listened to music, what series it came on, covers, etc.).

But for the uses below, playlists are weak at best.

1. Label field – I use composer to store which Label a release came from because it is searchable.  I’ve been wanting a dedicated field for years and years, should act just like composers do (searchable, grid category, used in smart playlists, etc.)
2. Mix/Remix field – These are common enough they should have their own field, should come up in a search.
3. Featuring field – ditto as #2
4. Multiple Label fields – Sometimes a single release comes out on more than one Label (ie. 4ad & Teenbeat). Bonus points to add the corresponding catalog number.
5. Secondary Titles on Tracks – sometimes tracks have 2 names (usually in parenthesis, His Name is Alive, Flaming Lips are notorious for this)
6. Secondary Titles on Albums – albums have subtitles too (often my comps)
7. Album Section names – this happens often on deluxe re-releases/re-masters.  The original album plus the extras. Sometimes, groups of songs just have names.  I use grouping for this but it’s not useful, just informational.
8. Ordering & Grouping Discs – multi-disc/boxsets sometimes name their CDs and are in some order.  I have to prefix the name with something like “Cloud Box 1:” to get them to stay together in the right order or not use their names at all (Disc 1 of 2, 2 of 2).  I’d like a better way.
9. Sort Year – I want albums (usually anthologies or deluxe discs) that sort chronologically based on oldest song. For instance, The Cure’s Join the Dots has b-Sides and Rarities that go from 1978 to 2001.  It get’s sorted with albums at 1978.
10. Sort within Year – I want to sort chronologically albums from an artist that is released in the same year.  Not alphabetically.  This happens alot with singles and The Beatles.  Let me also specify release month or day in addition to year in these cases.
11. Album Artist vs. Compilations – I use album artist to specify alternate band names for the same artist. This happens more than you’d think: Final Fantasy vs. Owen Pallett, Manitoba vs. Caribou, The Beat vs. The English Beat.  Occur for legal and other reasons.  Discogs has to mechanisms to deal with this, Artist Name Variants and Aliases.  But Album Artist works fine, except with compilations where it breaks the album up. Please fix.
12. Style vs. Genre – I use genre more generically than most people.  Other music fans put the style in the Genre field or use grouping (see issues above). Allmusic and Discogs both have style, I want that too.  I could have better smart playlists.

1. Muscle with Large Collections – Think Apeture vs. iPhoto.  I’m locked into iTunes because of the playlists-as-metadata thing where I lose information if I archive music by moving it out of iTunes (and in turn lose which playlists the tracks were in).  So I want a little more muscle to handle my 30K song collection.  But even with enough RAM, iTunes sputters alot more than I’d like it to.  You got me here, help me out – I’m guessing it will only get worse.
2. Music Only – I’ve already split my books/movies into their own iTunes library, I cannot quite split my apps and iPhone syncing without a big hassle. Maybe separate, dedicated apps makes sense.  Also, it has an added benefit that it will match up to the apps on the iPhone (Music, Videos, iBooks, etc.)
3. Music Store plugins – I buy rarely from iTunes but sometimes I do.   I also have an eMusic subscription, I download from Daytrotter, I sometimes buy mp3s from Amazon. I have an application to download from each of these, do I really need them?  I know they’re competitors and to allow a plug-in architecture to download from their stores would compete with iTMS, but guess what? I’m still buying from them and they are still your competitors.
4. Specify bitrate/kind for iTunes Matching – iTunes will use iCloud to “matche[s] plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.” This is cool considering I started ripping my collection in the ’90s when space was sparce (128 Kbps, *shiver*).  But, 256-Kbps AAC? And really, no DRM, please.  Let me specify and I’ll pay you the $25.

Please take a peak at my Top 10 for 2010.

Also, I’ve been listing all my articles under the Big Takeover tab above as it is sometimes difficult to find older articles and lists I’ve written.

Until then, here is the first video off the first 12″ in the series titled “Evelyn McHale”, a song that introduces the title character who is known for the most beautiful suicide and is a *ahem* springboard for other confessions — as stated by the press release. Zac promises us songs in the vein of early Roxy Music / Brian Eno and Hounds of Love era Kate Bush.  Where do I sign-up?

“Evelyn McHale” (mp3) by Parenthetical Girls. Taken from the release Privilege pt. 1: On Death & Endearments, available digitally and as a limited edition 12″ via Slender Means Society on February 23rd, 2010.

Partly, this year for me has been a good one in music because I’ve been sitting at the computer so much after work and during the weekends building software.  I do best with headphones in and bittorrent up.  I only get a little distracted.  Because I listened to 4½ days of music from 2009, I think I’m entitled to 2 extra albums in my top pics of 2009 compared to previous years’ posts.  In fact I listened to over 12 days worth of music through the year, which is the most music I’ve ever listened to over a 365 day span (obsession).

Looking at this list, I noticed an interesting visual element.  The first half of my list are dark, black covered albums with brooding and spiritual themes. They pivot around Merriweather Post Pavillion (seriously not a spoiler) which sits in its own illusion. Then the top 5 albums have a bold red-orange graphics, picturing albums that are orchestral, conceptual, and exceptional. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions:

Fleurs

12. Fleurs by Former Ghosts
I’m somewhat amazed that I needed to make room for this album on my list — but it makes sense, with the addiction I have with bandmate Jamie Stewart’s Xiu Xiu cover of Ceremony (live mp3), Fleurs seems to ante up to the same rich, throwback to early 80s goth and employ industrial’s use of found sounds, back when those genres were still novel and without rules.

Former Ghosts is a collaboration between Jamie, Nika Roza (Zola Jesus) and much of the lyric heavy lifting from band “lead” Freddy Ruppert. They draw so much from their influences that they have transformative powers: they are Joy Division, they are Bauhaus, they are Siouxsie Sioux. But instead of being derivative, contrite, or mere imitations, they transcend. The songs on Fluers goes to places these bands just could not because Former Ghosts are forging a new and different path.

And how the sum of their parts can be more than the whole? I’m sure — dear reader — you can spot a few duos and bands where this is true.  I cannot speak more in depth and with more love about this album now as it is still working its way under my psyche and given time (oh the woes of end of year discoveries) I’m sure it’d rise to the top of this list.
Buy Fleurs: Former Ghosts, Upset the Rhythm, Insound

xx

11. xx by The xx
The xx took some time for me to unlock. When an album is impenetrable, I find that I have to find a “keysong,” the one song that will unlock the rest of the album and often the bands’ style. Sometimes this unlocking is immediate, like an epiphany.  On xx it was slow, tumbling adjacent songs, one at a time before they became familiar and yielded to me.  My keysong was “Basic Space” and all the versions that it took on the 12″ before I went “Ah”.

“Basic Space” is such a great keysong, because the title plays well with the band style.  They play notes which hang in the aether and spread apart like the particles of atoms: my god you could drive a bus right through the spaces between the notes.  And here is the contradiction of  a band of 20-year-olds.  New youthful bands play with fuzz and noise to fill spaces and with it, their inadequacies.  They do not make music around where the notes are not.  That’s just plainly too Zen for a debut album.

But the lyrics prove to me that The xx know this “Basic space / open air here / Don’t look away / when there is nothing there.”  And yet, their superpower is something else entirely, it’s the art of the understated love song.  Even talking about abstracts like “Basic space” they make sure to manifest exactly what it means in a relationship “I’ve been underwater breathing out and in / I think I’m losing where you end and I begin.” Now listen to the rest of the album with boy-girl vocals, soulful lyrics, understated electronic beats, and retro indie guitars.  Best debut of 2009, hands down.
Buy xx: Young Turks, Beggars Banquet, Rough Trade, Insound

Bromst

10. Bromst by Dan Deacon
Deacon is the best show I’ve ever seen / participated in and I sought him out for the Bromst tour and (as you can see) was happy I did.  My goodness the man plays in the crowd when he’s not orchestrating it. The album cover is startlingly like Dept. of Eagles’s last album cover but the comparisons stop there.

Bromst ups the range that Deacon splashed on the scene with his prior album, Spiderman of the Rings.  The instrumentation is fuller — he toured with a 13 or 15-piece ensemble. Think: much more percussion — but the core sound is still the deeply entwined electronics that sounds like his setup he uses to make it.  He has not abandoned the Looney-Toons quality of his prior work that makes him such an endearing songsmith which is most apparent on “Woof Woof” where the backing beat is literally a dog barking in a tight loop.  If his music was paintings, they would be drawn by Anthony Ausgang.  But don’t shrug the man off as a clown or a hack.  His music is built with a care and can be deeply contemplative and can draw on tribal chanting and orchestral roots.

The jewel on Bromst is “Snookered” which begins with a lone bells and a soft melody before stating:  ”Been round this road so many times / feel like its skin is part of mine / This taste of milk is almost gone / Still got no shame, but not for long! / Been wrong so many times before / But never quite like this.”  The song slathers on the electronics, discreet and interlocking noise and distortion before rolling in a stereophonic chorus of syncopation.  The notes become only samples of consonants and wordforms before winding back down into the electronics, back through the lyrics, and out with the soft melody and bells again.  A simple cannon, for a modern-day symphony.
Buy Bromst: Carpark, Insound

• Get Older
• Snookered
• Paddling Ghost

Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune's Made

09. Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made by Fol Chen
I loves me some slide guitar, unless it’s in some full-on country song. Maybe a little country — if you throw in lots of psychedelia and a sweet vox (I’m thinkin’ Mazzy Star). Fol Chen pimps some slide guitar, horns, and funked-up whispered vocals; but it is against a massive electronic backdrop. Now think on a band like this covering of Prince and Junior Vasquez and Beastie Boys. What the eff (oh el)?

But man, that slide guitar backing the lyrics when the male lead (who?) confesses “Fuck your friends they don’t care … I stole a picture of you and your sister in Jericho.”  It’s a slow waltz of both deep guitar buzz and jangly acoustics the builds into a percussive crescendo.  And like this song, they create an atmosphere that is surprising in its straightforwardness.

Nearly every track is a star on John Shade. Sometimes their songs are understated, slight tinkering of notes, and other times the go for big beats of electronic percussion. But somewhere in the middle they always find balance between the instrumentation, the lyrics, and their addictive little melodies. Even if the fundamentals are drawn from the same source, each song has it’s own personality and story.

“Everybody here / Thinks I’m and idiot / Everybody here / Can’t stop laughing / How can that be true / If I’m in love with you” slowly made it’s way to become a bit of an unlikely theme song for me.  Schmaltzy, for sure, but there is a sincerity here that you cannot deny. I’m surprised this album seems to have slipped under the radar, could this be why? Please put this on album on your next top 10 list and thank Asthmatic Kitty for the free The Longer U Wait EP.
Buy Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made: Asthmatic Kitty, Insound

• The Believers
• No Wedding Cake
• Cable TV
• The Longer U Wait

The Crying Light

08. The Crying Light by Antony & The Johnsons
Antony is not easy, he requires your full attention.  I think this is why I could not crack into prior listens but I was determined. At Coachella, I heard how he had reconfigured his songs to have a electronics to accompany his backing band.

This decision certainly made the torch-songs more palatable on festival hearing, and I took the advice of a lady standing behind me when she said to her friend to pay attention to the lyrics of “Another World.” On the opening refrain I simply and undramatically burst into tears.  Typically, I’m not a lyrics man, but to hear “I need another place / Will there be peace? / I need another world / This one’s nearly gone,” I could not hold back.

There is one word to describe this, it is called “power,” Antony, in his shy demeanor and fey clothes is an unsuspecting source of this power.  He’s got power in his voice which is androgynous but full of weight.  He’s got power in his delivery that is equal to the agony and the personality of the Butoh dancer that strikes the album cover. He’s got power in those lyrics which bring out the most maternal instincts in the crowd and the listeners who want to shield and protect him like a lost child when you hear him utter the lyrics of “Epilepsy is Dancing.” He begs: “Cut me in quadrants / Leave me in the corner / Oh now it’s passing / Oh now I’m dancing.”

The secret is that he needs no protection from us, we need it from him and his brutal honesty and the self-actualization found in these songs.  The power that he has is of possession and haunting.  And he owns you with his words.  They need little accompaniment, they take you down and they won’t let go. I highly suggest the free DC concert by NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Buy The Crying Light: Secretly Canadian, Rough Trade, Insound

• Epilepsy Is Dancing
• Another World

See Mystery Lights

07. See Mystery Lights by Y.A.C.H.T.
I’ve been a fan of Jona Bechtolt, and his band/brand Y.A.C.H.T. so long I cannot bear to un-acronym the name. I’ve grown with his positivity in outlook over the years and can be found to quote the title of his last album I Believe in You.  Your Magic is Real. and I think this was the album I was most excited about in 2009. I’ve enjoyed his previous collaborations like Mikhaela Maricich’s The Blow but when Claire Evans became the yang to Jona’s yin, their message came pounding through fully amplified.  The two share a symbiotic spiritualism that is explained in full detail in their Mission Statement.

See Mystery Lights is their child and the platform on which they build the Anthem of the Trinity, a set songs that sound like and sound off on their notions of afterlife and ufos, light and darkness, and rejection of materialism and center around connection: “It may come as a surprise / But you are not alone / All that you have is not what you own”.  See, the music is all tied up in these lofty ideals.  But that is where new-age mysticism ends, their message is rooted in the every day, even inspiring that “You can live anywhere you want.”

Also so unlike new-age harps and wind-chimes is the sound of See Mystery Lights – there is a reason why they moved to DFA, the home of LCD Soundsystem.  What Jona can do on his Mac (he loves his Mac) approaches genius.  The cover of Rich Jensen‘s “Psychic City (Voodoo City)” had the most plays in my car and on last.fm for the whole year.  The song is multilayered and multifaceted, as slick as the Mac OS X interface, catchy as fuck, chanty as heaven, dance-y as indie can get.  You might choose to “Hang around baby, baby / We’ll be making a cake for you” and you find that “We’ve been holding this moment for you / We told you your dreams would come true.”
Buy See Mystery Lights: DFA, Insound

• Psychic City (Voodoo City)

Merriweather Post Pavillion

06. Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective
Released within the first week of 2009, I forget what an amazing album MPP is — taking my iPod to bed to get to know it “a little better”. Sure, it is easy to reject claims that the album was the best in 2009 for those statements were presumptuous at best. But you cannot deny that AC have found the formula to traverse borders musically and top lists across all sorts of listeners.

For me, Feels and Sung Tongs are my favorite pair of their albums (and are the last where guitars make an appearance). Those albums do have a few meandering tracks which spring from their ethos: experimentation, combined with testing in front of a live audience which in turn inform future album successes. But what make those albums so memorable for me, if not pivotal LPs, is that they create their own tonal atmosphere and terrain that takes a bit of listening to wrap your head around and requires your own discovery. Sure MPP, has it’s “sound” but the surprises are fewer, they are perfecting the formula that is MPP.  The songs are a perfect bubbly mix of tribal-chants, sonic illusion, underwater sounds, and rhythms that hook you in the way that most pop songs do.

Clear standouts are the title tracks “My Girls” (shockingly topped with Taken by Trees cover), “Summertime Clothes” and “Brothersport”.  The latter a fraternal love letter to Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox’s brother to “open up your throat” (and sing) after, presumably, their father’s death: “I know that it sucks that Daddy’s done / but you gotta think of what you want”.  The lyrics a little awkward in their gay-soundingness-but-not-really yet — like most of Lennox’s writing — they are sincere and comforting.

Tthe joy of this album can be found in a trinity of underwater carnival sounding tracks “Bluish”, “Guys Eyes”, and “Taste.”  The songs feel as if the band is relaxing and letting their colors shine.  Often AC albums peak and go into a more ambient self-reflective state after smash of the first singles, and these songs are a treat: modularizing on harmonizing and offering many facets with each refrain.

I am conforted with AC’s last 2009 EP from the album, Fall Be Kind.  The songs are either enrapturing or forgettable. Its encouraging to see the are still exploring and finding what brings them delight not just returning to the prior formulae to cash in on.
Buy Merriweather Post Pavillion: Domino (UK) (US), Insound

• My Girls
• Summertime Clothes (Dam-Funk Remix)
• What Would I Want? Sky from Fall Be Kind EP

Hospice

05. Hospice by The Antlers
The Antlers have redefined / revived the concept album.  Usually, a bank of songs following a thematic or narrative quality, concept albums found their way out of country and folk roots to begin their rise in 6o’s rock and fall in 70′s space prog and singer-songwriter introspection. Sure, there are examples of concepts in the indie world, (yes, Yoshimi but my favorites come from Viva Satellite!) but nothing like the likes of  Hospice.

The concept is simple: the weeks spent in a hospice surrounding the submission to cancer of the protagonist Sylvia and the months after the narrator copes with the loss of their dysfunctional relationship.  All of which is understandably existential for him.

The narrative is heart-wrenching, Peter Silberman sings his part jumping from whispers to arias, full of blame and shame, dodging porcelain figurines being thrown against the wall. Where Hospice succeeds is the vivid magical reality created by the luscious lyrics. Here is the light, offsetting the story in the rhythmic mumble of acoustic guitars, toybox sounds and resperators, and gentle bass drums.  The band has been succussful in transitioning the intimacy of the album into a live act, you can hear several songs on their Daytrotter Session.

I’ll leave you with my favorite scene in “Two” where the doctor explains nothing can save Sylvia and his reaction is exquisite: “Something in my throat made my next words shake, and something in the wires made the lightbulbs break. There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling, it opened up the scars that had just finished healing. It tore apart the canyon running down your femur, (I thought it was beautiful, it made me a believer).”
Buy Hospice: Frenchkiss, Insound

• Two
• Bear

Logos

04. Logos by Atlas Sound
I read that this album is a collection of first takes but Bradford Cox, who is Atlas Sound, is known to tell stories. I tend to think that he’s is playin’ a right good one with us. Logos shows him coming out of an introspective spell.  He’s tightening up his sound and expanding his horizons on two song collaborations.

These songs are the crown jewels of the album — it seems — that the rest of the songs are gilding around them (but still gold!) Cox’s style remains, a blurring between shoegaze guitars and modern indie electronica, yet he is a chameleon, taking the best of his partners and infusing it into his work.  The effect is seemless, as if he snatched their spirit and wrought it into his own.

“Walkabout” is the first song with Noah Lennox, imbued with all of Panda Bear’s layers and facets, play-yard sounds, and childlike lyrics framed in addictive melodies: “What did you want to see? / What did you want to be when you grew up?” The phrase “want to see” becomes a homonym of “watusi” which is both what you want to do (dance) and the tribal influence the layers of sound takes on. Clocking at over 8 minutes, “Quick Canal” is a Stereolab organ-gasm, kraut-fuck of a song sung by Lætitia Sadier. Again, you can pick off the influences and the song even drives off the road and into a percussive jam half way through – a common signature of Stereolab. It’s still all through the Cox filter that is always subdued, dreamy, full of fusion without being cloying or overproduced.

Having followed Cox under the Deerhunter moniker, as Atlas Sounds, or keeping up with his proliferation of tracks on his blog, the progression is becoming clear: He is a musical genius and it matters not if the songs were not recorded first take. Here are 11 perfect songs that are so refined and lyrically contradictory and exciting that they’ve blown off any work that has brought Cox to this point.  The album is angelic and dangerous and you can begin to understand why he sings: ”My halo burned a whole in the sky / My Halo burn a hole in the ground / My Halo is part of my crown / My halo is a part of my cry”.
Buy Logos: Kranky, 4AD, Insound

• Walkabout
• Quick Canal

Clangour

03. Clangour by Sin Fang Bous
Clangour is Construction Paper Folk. Seabear‘s Sindri Már Sigfússon builds songs that seem to have the simplicity of a child working with bright thick paper. His music is like the album cover of this, his first solo effort where he is a sunshine hippy wearing a beard made of streamers, makin’ music best akin to The Moody Blues. His voice is soft, Icelandic, fully submerged into the snips and glue of his brand of indie pop / folk / electronica.  What makes it work is how the collage of all the pieces fit together to create a picture that is united and glorious.

Sin Fang Bous is the child-like sage.  The title track is cut through with statements of a zen naturalist: “I will be the lumberjack and you will be the tree / I will be the boat and you will be the sea / I will be the fire and you will be the home.”  And on “SinkerShip,” he reminds us that he’s still human, riddled with regret, where real knowing comes from: “I need to forget some words I said yesterday / Change them away from memories.”

All the songs are rich, full of sounds and softness, of whistling and paddling, upbeat and downbeat and crossing from one to the other effortlessly.  Any connection with a computer is the cut and paste of a savant, the songs breathe in and out a life that is so organic you can smell the pine nettles and hear the echoes bounce off the slushy ice-flats.  I want to shout over the cacophony that you must buy and this album and listen to it like a prize.
Buy Clangour: Morr Music, Insound

• Catch the Light
• A Fire to Sleep In
• Melt Down the Knives
• Advent in Ives Garden (low quality)

Actor

02. Actor by St. Vincent
Annie Clark is St. Vincent and she makes dark, dense orchestrations that unravel like the best of songs by Kate Bush without sounding anything like her. Like the songs of Hounds of Love or The Dreaming, you need approach St. Vincent from the side, deciphering the lyrics, listening to all the clues, separating the voices from the choir and peeling back the secrets.

Clark is more sinister than her debut, Marry Me, the guitars are darker. Where the songs from the first album were full, these are busting at the seams.  The album begins with “Lover, I don’t play to win / For the thrill / Until I’m spent / Paint the black hole blacker.” It is an stinging opening volley and credo for the album.  She continues to wind up the “The Strangers,” pouring guitars like oil over the other instruments and over an incessant bass-drum before letting it unravel and quietly exiting with a little French accordion.

Even when the compositions are stunning in their beauty and full of wonder, Annie makes sure to keep it heavy it with her humor: “We are sleeping underneath our bed / To scare the monsters out / With our dear Daddy’s Smith & Wesson / We’ve got to teach them all a lesson.”  Here children are portrayed as the worst LA cops: “Stop right where you stand / We need a chalk outline / If you can put your hands where we can see them please.”

And her songs become instantly nostalgic as one title suggests “Just the Same but Brand New”.  She plays it like an acoustic ballad in a Thompson Twin daydream. Floating and soft, strings humming, strummed out and as it departs, you are left behind as a mixture of tears and ash.  The song is about finding meaning and has a meta quality where you are also searching for the meaning. Even now I’m trying to follow the lyrics: “And anything you wrote I checked for codes and clues / The letters stopped unceremoniously in June.”

Actor may be interchangeable with my #1.

St. Vincent is about to be epic. You can quote me.  She’s not about potential and almost. She doesn’t need to refine to blow your mind.  She doesn’t have to find her voice, she doesn’t need to find a point of view.  She’s not nearly there, she’s already arrived.  I wonder if you found your way to meet her?
Buy Actor: Direct, 4AD, Beggars Banquet, Insound

• The Stranger

Veckatimest

01. Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear
Every song on Veckatimest is a testament to the endless talents of Grizzly Bear.  And yet, like St. Vincent’s Actor, every song is instantly nostalgic — I think there is a perverse reason they had Michael McDonald sing on an alternate take of “While You Wait for the Others.”  But unlike Annie, until Veckatimest, they’ve been on an expedition: on safari (Deptartment of Eagles), searching (collaberations), scaling (being remixed), finding a hold (EPs), and now they are hyper-realized and have reached the top of their crest.

No longer can you box them into indie-folk.  No longer can they be directly compared to The Beatles’ euphonious harmonies.  No longer will reviews expect them to fulfill their potential.  Like the cover, the songs of Veckatimest are multifaceted, deeply layered, fully integrated, subdued and full of bright color and dark hues.  It’s musical comparison to Frank Lloyd Wright: a musical breakthrough akin to the Arts and Crafts movement, producing songs that are graphic as the Guggenheim, deeply spiritual and natural as Fallingwater.  They seem to know it: “Our haven on the southern point is calling us / And faced with all the obvious, so carry us.”

The songs on Veckatimest have a monumental quality. A slight reverb on the guitar makes it sound gigantic.  The synthesizers are delicate, integrate filigree. The vocals are wide as prairies and harmonize so beautifully you cannot pick out any individual voice.  When Grizzly Bear lets you pick out each members vocals, their parts play off each other like schools of fish or flocks of birds, moving together as a single entity, mesmerizing in they way they glide over the song.

But if you wish, you are certainly allowed to compare them with the works of The Beatles. Come on!  It’s not sacrilege and it’s about time we move forward 50 years after the fab four formed.  They seem to know it: “I’m cheerleading myself, I should have made it matter / Go on let it go / It doesn’t mean a thing / Chance is on nothing changing.”  They too can say so much with few words, repeating the choruses like a trance, spinning you into a frenzy.  They can move a song from Act I to Act II, creating vignettes, going off topic. Sometimes they leave you hanging and don’t make it to Act III.

Despite how big they may become, in sound or popularity, they have an intimacy of a lover.  They can whisper dream nonsense into you pillow-bed ear “Would you always / Maybe sometimes / Make it easy / Take your time.”  They can stare at the ceiling and wonder on their hopes and dreams, “And all we want / Another voice / To lead us on”.  And they can slip their hands under the covers and hug you close “I can’t get out of / what I’m into / with you” and you are all the more special for it.
Buy Veckatimest: Direct, Warp, Insound

• Cheerleader
• Two Weeks (Live on Letterman)
• While You Wait for Others (Live on KCRW)

1. The Distance (lala) by Dntel
2. Head Spins (mp3) by High Places
3. Tane Mahuta (mp3) by The Ruby Suns
4. Man’s Heart Complaint (mp3) by {{{SUNSET}}}
5. Seeker of Truth by Curium
6. New Alium (mp3) by Lucky Dragons
7. Prospect Hummer (lala) by Animal Collective / Vashti Bunyan
8. Lump Sum (lala) by Bon Iver
9. Loosen This Job (lala) by No Age
10. First by Welcome
11. Young Shields (mp3) by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
12. The Loving Sounds of Static [Junior Boys Remix] (lala) by Mobius Band

reidmix.muxtape.com

I love this series as it gives me the off the path list of great bands that you may not have heard of from year-end lists.  This list is in no particular order and each album occupied my focus for some time during 2008.

Bright Blue Dream

This Glowing City

Bright Blue Dream / The Glowing City by {{{SUNSET}}}
I’m a big fan of Bill Baird’s moustache-y named {{{SUNSET}}} and I feel he produces pop gems that are smart and clearly underrated.  Plus, who can’t deny the magic of weaving steel drums with wailing guitars and jaunty piano into an indie song. Autobus is generous and gives us many samples from the two albums that they produced in 2008.  It’s a little bit country, a little bit folk, throw in some noise and it takes up lots of space.  Baird sings with an intimacy and conviction of an addict. Enjoy.
Buy Bright Blue Dream Autobus, Insound
Buy The Glowing City Autobus, Insound

• Man’s Heart Complaint, Moebius, The World Is Awaiting, When Perfect Flames Expire

Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles
In retrospect, I had no idea the kids were crazy over Crystal Castles, and Crystal Castles are just plain crazy.  You can see me taking pix on SPINs website (I’m the one over 30 in red).  But when they hit their first song of ROM-core based electronica (like Space Invaders in Air War), the acid musta hit cuz the boys and girls went fucking nuts and Alice Glass leaned into the crowd.  Despite the terror I felt during the show, the album is hard hitting, screaming, surprising (Tell Me What To Swallow sounds like HIIYH HNIA), and if produced in the 70s or 80s I know Crystal Castles woulda been a big metal-hair band.  This is not your mopey goth synths, it’s full of rock and pop, and catchy hooks and ambience.
Buy Crystal Castles Last Gang, Insound

• Xxzxcuzx Me, Vanished

Microcastle

Weird Era Cont.

Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. by Deerhunter
Another album that is wonderful in retrospect considering Bradford Cox’s solo effort Atlas Sound’s album this year.  Granted I know this “double” album was on the top 10 of many indie boys and girls last year. It clearly improved upon the potential of Cryptograms pushing the shoegaze-y envelope. Deerhunter are experts at fuzzing the line between indie guitar pop and electronica. Sometimes unstructured and sometimes the poppiest of pop, the album runs the whole gamut.  There’s strangely not a lot of mp3s to find off the album to share but plenty of music can be found on the prolific Deerhunter blog.
Buy Deerhunter 4AD, Insound

• Calvary Scars (Demo)

Mountain Battles

Mountain Battles by The Breeders
I’m happy to say The Breeders are still rocking.  After a few duds, I feel like Mountain Battles put them back on the map and they are reaching back to their roots. Sure it’s no Pod or Safari, but it’s approximating those albums.  The title track has that raggaeton rock push that The Breeders like to toy with, you can hear it on “Bang On”.  Kim’s beautiful vox is again the starring role nestled with some fun guitar licks and melodies.  Most songs have the space in between notes that make me most think of songs like “Doe” and “Iris”, the only thing missing may be Tonya Donneley.  But The Breeders persevere, and I think this album may have been greatly underated last year and has a lot to offer if you give it a many listens.
Buy The Breeders Beggars Group / 4AD, Insound

• Bang On

Alegranza

Alegranza by El Guincho
You may have heard “Spanish Animal Collective” and labels are quick to wear and fall off even faster.  El Guincho has a psychedelic samba that keeps you rolling through his songs.  If the album cover, a party-parrot with spiderlike 8-irises, give you any indication, each song is a romp of Spanish whispers and South American electronics from el barrio.  There are plenty of samples to wonder at and regardless of the language or the roots that comprise this album, the songs are fresh and exciting, transcending genres just as their labels may maintain.  Discos Compulsivos made his first CDr, Folías, available for free.
Buy El Guincho Beggars Group / XL, Insound

• Palmitos Park, Antillas

We Brave Bee Stings and All

We Brave Bee Stings and All by Thao
I’m very excited for Thao Nguyen, this years album put her smartly on XMU. Who knew that her and the Get Down Stay Down’s second album would elevate their status in the indiesphere? But last year, I could not stop listening to the strange phrasings of “Beat (Health, Life, and Fire)” and her slight accent shining through the “Bag of Hammers.”  What makes Thao special is what sets her music apart, it sounds different, like nothing on the radio, surely folk and punk influences are there, but they are incorporated into her song structures and smart lyrics full of lush imagery and experience.  And who doesn’t love a banjo?
Buy Thao Kill Rock Stars, Insound

• Beat (Health, Life, and Fire), Bag of Hammers

Verbs

Verbs by Au
Oh Au (pronounced “Aye-You”) is the symbol for gold. Verbs is this years’ Ruby Suns. A worldly folk (yes, the freaky kind, if you must) that goes from one song to the next without missing a beat or a pause to distinguish them.  ”Are Animals” is lush, full of whoops and yowls and somehow hook-y and addicting by the time the fast-paced bass kicks in below the synth-y saxes.  I have to say I listened to this album over and over on my way home on the Metro and barely became wary of it.  Sweet vocals and boy-girl harmonies both can take second place to the sound-scape and also be elemental to the structure itself.  The songs have epic Act I, II, and III structures that keep things interesting, weird and circus-like, and wonderful.
Buy Au Aagoo and on cool vinyl, Insound

• RR vs. D, Are Animals, Sleep

Swimming

Swimming by French Kicks
Anthemic, one of the my favorite words to describe a band, album, song.  Abandon is an anthem in its approach.  I remember reading posts where everyone was whining about how Swimming wasn’t like French Kick’s first punk-inspired album. I say, “That’s progress, they become better musicians, they grow up, they produce something wonderful, why not go along for the ride?”  I could listen to Abandon without abandon and the songs that follow with melodic guitars, soft drums, hushed lyrics.  Their approach is more subtle now, but all the more captivating and, yes, they can crank out a good effin anthem.
Buy French Kicks Vagrant, Insound

• Abandon

The Rhumb Line

The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot
Typically I love covers, but Kate Bush covers typically suck.  Ra Ra Riot’s deeply sacred cover of “Suspended in Gaffa” either makes me want to listen to more of The Rhumb Line or break out The Dreaming depending on my mood.  Both are good outcomes.  I’ve read that Ra Ra Riot were contemporaries of Vampire Weekend until the unfortunate death of their drummer put their debut on hold.  To me their songs remind me more of Spent than Vampire Weekend, and that is a pretty good thing too.  They are softer, have rich strings and sweet vocals, deeply sad and introspective lyrics: “And if you were here, winter would not pass so slow.”  I couldn’t agree more.
Buy Ra Ra Riot Barsuk, Insound

• Dying is Fine

Kontpab

Kontpab by Mahjongg
Mahjongg makes electronic music that breathes.  Kontpab is organic, dark, fun.  Over their discography, each album builds upon the last and this last one hits the mark.  I love how they are on krecs, proving the record label should not be categorized easily — granted much great music in the great northwest has come from K.  Kontpab easily crosses the line back and forth between sparkly electronic music and punk-revival, each song an independent statement in sound and often was my dishwashing music to keep me moving-moving and dancing-washing.
Buy Mahjongg K Records, Insound

• Problems

Drippers

Drippers by Black Moth Super Rainbow
I have a soft spot for Black Moth Super Rainbow.  Their vocoder and cloyingly-sweet music-box sound doesn’t bother me one bit and is certainly the charm of the band.  The Drippers EP is a collection of rarities, remixes and unreleased tracks from pre-BMSR 1999 on thru to the present.  The songs are uniquely unified and construct a great expression of what the band is and what kind of music they create.  ”Zodiac Girls” starts off right where the kaleidoscopic works of Dandelion Gum left off, deep synths, girl vox and Tabacco’s vocoder. My favorite is the Mark E. Smith inspired “I Saw Brown” repeating “I open my eyes / was that brown?” over and over in different variations.
Buy Black Moth Super Rainbow Graveface, Insound

• Happy Melted City, Zodiac Girls

Red Yellow & Blue

Red Yellow & Blue by Born Ruffians
Ever since “This Sentence Will Ruin / Save Your Life” came out I’ve been a nascent Born Ruffians fan waiting for their debut LP.  Red Yellow & Blue is an excellent start with great songs like “Hummingbird”, “Foxes Mate for Life”, and “Little Garçon”.  Not to mention the best Grizzly Bear cover on Stereogum during the same era.  Born Ruffians create lovely indie tunes and harmonies without becoming too twee or straying from their punk underpinnings.  They may be compared to the 3rd wave prepped-up ska ala Vampire Weekend, I’d say they have more akin to the Clash in their song structure and sound.
Buy Born Ruffians Warp, Insound

• Hummingbird, Foxes Mate for Life

That sums up my 12 contenders for 2008, a day before I begin working on my 2009 list!

Deastro "Keeper's"

School of Seven Bells "Alpinisms"

On the night of Ghostly 10 Year Anniversary here in LA, two 2008 albums I’ve been recently excited about are from Deastro and School of Seven Bells.  They are not playing, AFAIK, but I debating whether I should pop over.

Both bands seem to be a response to my lament “There will never be songs like this, again” when talking about New Order.  The irony is that I wrote that post because of a song on a Ghostly compilation, so we’ve come full circle.

Both bands are guitar driven, shoegazey with youthful vocals, but distinctly electronic and danceable.  And both bands veer away from easy correlations with 80s bands to bring their own take and brand of music to the world.

Keeper’s is a collection of greatest hits from Randolph Chabot’s demos culled from 10 years of demos.  I think what is surprising is how consistent and coherent an album it is.  The songs are all very bright and despite being electronic, it’s gritty, distorted vocals, and the lyrics are full of contradiction “the uncertainties are all I know for sure” in “The Green Harbor.”  The album cover I believe is hand-drawn by Chabot and reminiscent of the music, cuddly, monstrous and all-seeing, and sparkly.

Buy Deastro Ghostly, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• Michael, The Lone Archer of the North Shore
• Light Powered
• Parallelogram

Ben Curtis and sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza are School of Seven Bells. I’m gonna go out on a limb and dub them “NewGaze” the next wave of shoegaze that is more worldly and uplifting, less introspective and omphaloskeptical. The sisters’ vocals are clear and their words sagelike, born of those ethereal sounds of Cocteau Twins but much more accessible.  In the lyrics for “Face to Face on High Places”, they say: “It’s safe to say, saving you, saved me.”  There’s  plenty of electronic exploration in the land of Alpinism and they can save you too.

Buy School of Seven Bells Ghostly, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• Conjuur
• Chain

Some choices were released in 2007, which surprised me and I will start a new series: Hey You! Last Year.  Even though I keep this list within 2008, one selection (Bon Iver) was “technically” released in vinyl form in 2007.

Last year I looked forward to good things to come based on singles, EPs, and CD-Rs but I’ve never put those in my top 10.  This year I have two EPs in my top 10 and I really do believe this was the year of the EP.  In once case (High Places), I have a compilation of singles and rarities.

There are no rules to albums you really love.

10. Entanglements by Parenthetical Girls
I really looked forward to this album and anxiously trolled Zac’s site for updates.  News of a Tomlab release made me happy — one of my favorite labels as of late — and then a peek at an OMD cover had me swooning.
Entanglements is a vast, orchestral siege.  It is not the twee little confections that were the panic pop of albums past.  The glockenspiel is still there but it’s now only a single voice amongst the movements of full symphony in each song.
What make most of the songs impenetrable are the lyrics.  Gone are the dirty little vignettes that made the cast of “Love Connection” or “I Was the Dancer.”   Those lyrics took a little tinkering to get the essence and (with great glee) the perverse irony out of them.  Conversely, the words that make up the songs of Entanglements are subconscious, delivered in secret language or with dream-time meaning that are tongue in cheek and full of innuendo and rhyme: “his legs gave way like pages / from a pop-up book / and i had to look.”  In the end, you derive your own message from each song, and with each song a mood that is meticulously crafted by Pennington & Co.  On the whole, the album cannot be easily cast aside.  Much care was put into the production and its soul is too sincere.  You are left wanting more, to know more, to be entrenched more, and with any album what more can you ask?
Buy Entaglements: Slender Means, Tomlab, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• A Song for Ellie Greenwich
  

09. Chunk of Change by Passion Pit
The first EP of the list, Passion Pit is Bee Gees for the Indie world.  I say this with the highest regard to Michael Angelakos and his Gibb-like falsetto that graces each song on Chunk of Change.  Sure there may be room for improvement, but here is a set that is more interesting than most full length LPs I listened to in 2008.
The songs are sticky sweet, multilayered candy.  The recipe may be full of synthpop, but there is enough playfulness and exploration of melody and percussion to keep things fun and surprising. Each song is dancible with the gold lamé of disco and the pathos of every great 70s love song.  In the title track, “Live to Tell the Tale,” the poetry goes: “Whatever happens to me / I hope that I’ll fall asleep / Knowing that you’ll always be / The story with no ending”
I must talk about “Sleepyhead” which was most of our introduction to Passion Pit and recorded later than the rest of the songs on the EP.  Here’s our departure from the love note of an album and for me, shows what we can expect.  Big beats that shake through the song while holding onto its playfulness, M.I.A.-like in its worldliness, more confident in its falsetto-ness. The melody is adept and smooth and the song is just too short.  This EP has enough going for it to last until the full-length release in early 2009.
Buy Chunk of Change: Frenchkiss, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• I’ve Got Your Number
• Sleepyhead

08. In Ear Park by Department of Eagles
I have mixed feelings about In Ear Park.  It is certainly good enough to be in my Top 10.  The songs are strong, especially in the first half of the album, and are worthy of all the praise the album has garnered.  I love the lyrics as epistles to Rossen’s recently passed father, they often hold a perspicacious view on life and how we live it.  The delivery approaches what McCartney and Lennon gave us in the late 60s, and what makes them pop gems are the repetition and variations on questions and phrases.  In “Phantom Other” the lyrics ask “What would it take? / What would it take to make you leave? / What would it take? / What would it take to make you listen? / My God, in heaven / What were we thinking?”
There are other musical nods — like on “Teenagers,” I imagine to the Dion and The Belmonts — hints of 50s AM radio doo-wop over jingly guitars.  But the Achilles heal of the album for me is how close to Grizzly Bear it sounds, and my first reaction was that it sounded half-of-that-band.  And certainly, if In Ear Park is Rossen’s farewell letter, I have rationalized that may be why what Fred Nicolaus brings to the table has taken a lesser role.  The exceptions is “Around the Bay” (my favorite song) and “Classical Records” which are full on Mothersbaugh percussive elements, bangs, clunks, doorslams, noisemakers, cello strings and blips to create a microhouse symphony standing mere inches behind Rossen’s vocal harmonies. The album is a thing of stark beauty and gothic-folk, but I still want all the cylinders roaring on that Beta Band trip-hop that fueled the first album.
Buy In Ear Park: 4AD, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• In Ear Park
• No One Does It Like You
• Herring Bone [Live on Daytrotter]
• Balmy Night

07. Nouns by No Age
I’m a big fan of No Age and their tongue-in-cheek noise-pop sensibilities.  Last year their compilation of singles ranked #4 on my Top 10.  Their full-length debut was another album I looked forward to in the spring and was stuck on repeat in my car in the summer.   The funny thing is that Nouns didn’t stick like Weirdo Rippers did.  Perhaps the sound was too polished, the edges a little too smoothed out.  Well I don’t care, every album has a halflife, I just may have burned through Nouns a little too quickly, not the fault of No Age!
The album first catches hold on “Teen Creeps” in a guitar and fuzz-off and has lyrics that read like adolescent anthems: “I hate you more I hate this place / I know why I feel this way / Teen creeps please don’t leave me dead, dead this way.”  The elastic sounds of “Things I Did When I Was Dead” has both a intimacy and a rawness that makes me wonder if Steve Albini recorded the track in the same vein as my early 90s faves like PJ Harvey or Pixies / The Breeders.  Other times, I feel like the songs like “Cappo” and “Keechie” are a nod to their experimental progenitor, Sonic Youth, with wide open spaces full of chutzpah and guitar.  Nouns gives us something a little more laid back, having less to prove, nonetheless with a lot of care. In the instrumental “Impossible Bouquet,” you feel their sense of joy in the making of their brand of rock that is quite beautiful.
Buy Nouns: SubPop, Insound, Amazon, iTunes

• Eraser

06. In Ghost Colours by Cut Copy
In Ghost Colours, I feel like I’m cheating you at #6, please forgive me! You are one of the ones who’ve snuck up the charts in the writing of this list (you may glare at #1, if you dare).  I’ve asked before, how can a band so young throw-back to the best of the 80s synthpop and yet sound so new?  In Ghost Colours is not a hodgepodge of the great underground dance tracks, New Order, or nods to Top 40 connundrums like Fleetwood Mac, but a neat a holistic album where each song flows naturally from one song to the next.  The movement to each song is surprising and not forced, like the intro into “Lights & Magic” where you don’t realize the switch between songs is a fade but register it as a progression, and the full movement of the song doesn’t occur until you hit the chorus.
Unlike much electronic based music, In Ghost Colours remains organic through role of fine vocals and libral use of guitars. Even in the most Big Beat moments, they are connected with a sincerety in lyrics and composition between the spaces which keeps the album real and accessible. Cut Copy is not a one-note wonder, tripping genres and ripping rifts right off bands like the Pixies’ “Break My Body” like they do in “So Haunted” all the while danceable, moshable, thrashable, whatever works to keep your body moving with each song.  To fill out their sound, plenty of sound samples, tape loops, blips and the best of glitch to keep your ears entertained.   There is so much good on this album, it’s hard to believe we’re halfway through this list!

Buy In Ghost Colours: Modular Interscope, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• So Haunted
• Lights & Music

05. Spectrum, 14th Century by Final Fantasy
I adore Spectrum and Final Fantasy’s EP almost took top honors for me this year.  The 5 songs about this imaginary land that lives somewhere betweeen the mind of Owen Palette and the production of Beirut’s Zach Condon make up one of the most perfect EPs.  Begin with “Oh Spectrum,” where we entranced by the chirps of outdoor creatures to a build that reminds me of the bright horns in a West Side Story showdown (Hello, I’m talking Bernstein and Sondheim here!)  Somehow this song flows into a steeldrum masterpiece “Blue Imelda” with horns and heavenly chorus betray the words of a farmer, who works both the soil and his plow.
The lyrics are priceless and crafted with anachronism that make up songs like “The Butcher”  to tell the tale of a preacher at the end of days: “Every morning I listen to confessional / Couldn’t give a shit ’bout the bulk of it / Still I keep it professional” all the while in the same song to quote the great internet meme: “All your bases belong to us!”  The music is gorgeous, full of strings, and piano, against the backdrop of the outdoor bugs and birds forever present.  The wordplay is key against the castanets we learn of the “Cocktrice” in a self-referential song about self-existentialism before entering, I believe, the finest medieval lyrics about a gay bar “But I’ve seen them in the commons with their kerchiefs and tattoos” and “They are fathers without sons or daughters” and homophobia: “And a bunch of those together / Can only do the Devil’s work, and it’s the Devil’s work they do.”  A thing of genius!
Buy Spectrum, 14th Century: Books Recording Club, Amazon, iTunes

04. Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend
I love me some Vampire Weekend and read on eMusic a quote that put them into context: “Third-wave ska goes prep, with enormous results.” (Would this be another wave? Who’s counting?) I’ve had love affairs with The English Beat, Madness, and saw Mighty Mighty Bosstones play the same set twice because they had so few songs.  I can say that 90s mainstream didn’t do ska much good for me.
Ok, to go “prep” means for me, those cardigans of the 80s, those thin ties, raybans and the sweet music of Ezra Koenig’s “Upper West Side Soweto.”  There isn’t much new to say about Vampire Weekend other than to thank Stereogum/KEXP for getting me in at the ground floor and scoffing up those early 45s and finding the CD-R.  The XL release is remastered, fuller in sound and quality, some of the songs got renamed, but the sequence is the same.  The lyrics are fresh and full of fun cultural references, “Cape Code Kwassa Kwassa” still being my favorite: “As a young girl, Louis Vuitton / With your mother, on the sandy lawn / As a sophomore, with reggaeton / And the linens you’re sittin’ on.” I feel fortunate I got to see the band twice, once at the Echo upstairs, certainly one of the busiest nights I’ve seen for a Monday, and full of a much more varied agéd crowd that made me conclude that I was amongst the true earlier adopters of music greats that are my peers.  Even though I may have listened to the songs off this album ad nauseum even before it debuted, I look forward to what comes next.
Buy Vampire Weekend: Direct, XL Recordings, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• A-Punk
• Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
• Oxford Comma

03. For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver
This unsuspecting, spare album will arrest your velocity and place you firmly in it’s orbit.  Justin Vernon’s falsetto harmonies are startling, full of so much emotive quality, he puts most singer / songwriters in a lower class.  The creation of For Emma is equally entrancing, recorded over several winter months in Wisconsin alone in a cabin after a breakup.  And you can almost infer those origins simply by listening to it.
Even with that said, you might feel the album is cold, self-indulgent but Bon Iver provides the warmth in each song, wailing on a song like on “Skinny Love” with enough ire to not take himself too seriously: “I told you to be patient / I told you to be fine / I told you to be balanced / I told you to be kind.”  These are glorious creatures that reach upward to the sky and the sun, despite their current predicament or where the may have come from.
You can get lost in the melodies and rhythms and a subtle crescendo in several songs that sneaks up on you.  I personally love “Re: Stacks,” a sort of final resolution of the album after the title song, a way out of it’s inner depths, “It’s hard to find it when you knew it / When your money’s gone / And you’re drunk as hell” but you find that “It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away / Your love will be safe with me.”  And with For Emma, Forever Ago you believe it’s true with a self-realization you did not possess before.
Buy For Emma, Forever Ago: 4AD, Jagjaguwar, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• Skinny Love
  

02. 03/07 – 09/07 by High Places
High Places makes music with so many of the elements that I love in music and have loved for many many years now.   Boy-girl vocals, music-box melodies, odd sound creations and sampling, electronic in its creation but organic in sound, sweet (twee) lyrics that are so precious you want to squish their little eyes out.  They compose songs in a way I loved most about HNIA and has so much character and psyche rock to keep it interesting over months and months of listening.
Here is an eMusic collection of rarities that some how come-off as more coherent than their full length that was released later in the year.  What binds them together is an exestentialism like in “Cosmonaut” that wonders: “And we’re all full of questions / And we would like to know just exactly where we came from /And exactly where we’ll go” and considers that “I’ve read a lot of books about the future of the sun / And how my great-great-great-great-grandfather might have been a monkey’s son.”
These songs have a joy of life, humor, and innocence about them and are the epitome of what keep me so interested in new, independent music and remind me where I’ve come from and why I spend so much time online keeping my ears wide open.
Buy 03/07 – 09/07: Thrill Jockey, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• Head Spins
  

01. Skeletal Lamping by of Montreal
Of Montreal has been on my music periphery for the past several years, but never landed square in the middle of it nevermind the top of it. Each release capturing my attention more and more, I believed that Hissing Fauna would come the closest. When Skeletal Lamping arrived, I read many posts about its schizophrenia, it’s lack of focus and direction, it’s cringe-worthy lyrics.  Wrong.  It’s simple, they didn’t stick around to get to the meat of this amazing album. Fuck’em if they cannot handle the ride.
I had a friend who’s defense mechanism when first meeting him was to repeat in oh-so-many ways, “I’m gay! Gay! Gay gay gay, I’m gay!” And boy was he!  But after you got used to his fey qualities and need to prove his queeritude, there was a real person kicking around in there, complex and deeply sensitive.  Skeletal Lamping is this friend and the more you listen, the more you want to hear his story.
Sure, it’s about Kevin Barnes’ Ziggy-esque alter ego. “I’m just a black she-male / And I don’t know what you people are all about” but what’s more interesting is that “I’m a motherfucking headliner, bitch you don’t even know it!” exclaims Georgie Fruit with an attitude that’s all Hedwig.  For every song that may have put off cautionary reviewers, there’s something going on under the surface.  Sure, “We can do it softcore if you want, but I take it both ways,” but later Georgie confesses, “The mutual conclusion was I’m not worth knowing because I’m probably dead.”  It’s both sad and wonderful, an album of cinematic quality, full of vignettes and unexpected turns down dirty alleyways and into backdoors of Studio 54s.
The music is exquisite, perfectly crafted, unique and with a purpose.  Because each song shifts and turns doesn’t make it erratic, it’s theatrics and the headliner may be fucking with you (“Don’t be afraid Lille Venn of violence / I’m only poisoning you, not going to stab you”), may be fucking you (“I want you to be my pleasure puss / I want to know what it’s like to be inside you”), may be getting real with you (“He’s the kind of guy who would leave you in a k-hole / To go play Halo in the other room, remember?”), may be regarding a mood (“Plotting midnight raids on the Swedish plum trees”), or may be questioning his existence (“Why am I so damaged, girl?”)
You’ve got to listen carefully because I know Skeletal Lamping will be remembered when Of Montreal raised the stakes.
Buy Skeletal Lamping: Polyvinyl, Insound, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes

• Nonpareil of Favor
• An Eluardian Instance
• Id Engager

Thanks for hanging in to the end, please let me know what you think.

What I like about this video is that the electronics are front and center and everything else is sugar for the eyes (Animal Collective even put themselves into that 2-dimensional space)

Makes me think, Science Fiction. Double Feature.