Fucking internet. Because of you, my tastes have broadened and deepened at the same time like an orifice that gets fisted four times a day. You know that scene in UHF when Stanley Spadowski puts the kid on the rocking horse and lets him drink out of the fire hose and he gets totally blasted off? That shit’s hilarious until it happens to you.
I know you don’t like to read, so go ahead and look at the images while listening to this mix of 13 fabulous tracks from this list (45 Megs).
Any of this other stuff sound interesting? Wanna hear it? Just ask!
"They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts" - Almost Famous
“Music is my boyfriend. Music is my girlfriend. Music is my dead end. Music is my imaginary friend.” - CSS
FAVES
Snowden – Fuel of the Celebration – This is possibly my favorite remix album ever. Snowden’s indie rock is contemplative and angular, and these remixes preserve that while unhesitatingly embellishing it with the bold crispness of dance and synth. It’s amazing how well it captures the best of both and becomes better than the sum of its parts. – great!
Julie Sokolow – Something About Violins – If you like Liz Phair and Cat Power, I would rush right off and acquire this album, recorded by a 19 year old with an Apple G4, a quiet acoustic guitar, a beautiful weary voice, and a prodigious talent for bittersweet poetic songwriting that will make you feel like you’re sitting on the porch as the sun sets in the early summer, wondering after the people you’ve loved and the mistakes you’ve made. – great!
Panda Bear - Person Pitch – Who knew you could forge a new intersection between ambient experimental and 60’s reverby Beach Boys kinda stuff? Truly beautiful and satisfying artistic soundscapes made from unraveled pop gems. – great!
Justice – cross – Justice represents the unflinching struggle of broken, radio-controlled cyborgs to conquer Earth’s oppressors with DANCING. I love the way their songs are a touch playful while also sounding like they are coming apart and falling into crazyland due to the sheer musical power coursing through them. If you think Daft Punk is too glossy, try Justice: stompy synth drums, crunchy funk bass guitar fills, and whatever unpredictable angle they can throw in and get to work regardless. – great!
Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? – The ornate, knobby, brickwall sound has been toned back a little, which is a welcome relief and matches the subtle reinvention this album represents. One song in particular, and if you’ve been listening you know the one I’m talking about, breaks free of their usual ultra-composed, impenetrable shtick to dive deeply, deeply into insecure, vulnerable, flailing territory in a beautiful and profound way, which I would call the ’07 Song of The Year thus far. – great!
The ep, Icons, Abstract Thee, does a fabulous job with the “good songs that don’t really fit on an album” thing. – good
Taken By Trees – Open Field – My god, it’s hard to write a review for this band. Maybe imagine if Billy Brag was female, played piano, was recorded by Cat Power’s producer, and didn’t always sing about British politics. The singer, Victoria Bergsman (of Young Folks guest vocal fame) has a beautiful, tired-sounding crackling voice. The sounds are sparse but lush with interesting instrumentation and lots of piano. The songs are wistful and sweet and comfortable. – great!
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black – Cleanly sequenced soul instrumentation, crisp hip hop beats, and Amy’s sexy-ass Motown vocals whose capable elegance contrasts insightfully with her lyrical portrayal of the too typical seedy moments of modern myspace life as a 20-something-er, like getting drunk in bars and condoms on the sidewalk and stuff. – great!
Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls – Thank god we got another Power Out instead of another Axes! Electrelane’s dignified, desaturated simplicity emphasizes the emotional power of their songwriting, and I love them all over again. – great!
!!! – Myth Takes – I’m especially impressed at how they continue to deliver their angry dissonant dance aesthetic while bringing unexpected elements into their style, like the late 80’s pop vocal in Heart of Hearts. They always exceed my expectations, and no one else comes close to their brand of confidence and polish. – great!
Schneider TM – škoda mluvit – Quirky and intrusive glitchy electronic arrangements mixed into a shifty acoustic base with production as heavy as an anvil. They are so far out in music space that they prove just by existing that most other bands are clustered around the origin, and yet they are totally listenable, poppy, and even emotional. - great!
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver – This is actually a great album, and increasingly I love it. However, James Murphey talked up how experimental it was going to be, which set my expectations too high; it’s actually kind of the opposite. It leans heavily on their “drone of layered rhythms” (Yeah, Losing My Edge, etc.) approach to the exclusion of the variety heard across a full listen to the debut full length. The typical per-song variety is largely how snappy the rhythms are. Its finest moment is All My Friends which accomplishes the impressive feat of faithfully recreating New Order, circa Power, Corruption, & Lies. – great!
CocoRosie – The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn - The sheepish and feeble freak nerds have become superstars. Good for them! The process of honing their “operatic hip-hop lullaby peppered with witchy clutter” style has made it more bold and anthemic, less of a sketchy thought poem alla time. – great!
SLIGHTLY OLDER STUFF I CAN’T HELP BUT MENTION
The Whitest Boy Alive – Dreams (2006) – Incredibly amazing, probably the best thing on this list, mind blowing without overtly coming across like anything special. Erlend Øye’s quiet murmuring sweet boy voice over crystal clear guitar, bass, and drum arrangements… some of the crispest production imaginable. It’s kind of a snappy, uptempo, and energetic but very mellow rock thing which makes the perfect soundtrack for driving to the beach in July, if not for your entire life. It’s casual and beautiful and soaked in sentiment. – great!
Cassius – 15 Again (2006) - Oh wait, maybe this is the best thing on this list. They tend to call Cassius French house, but that’s a lie, on this album anyway. One moment you’re in a club trancing out, another you’re on an island passing a doobie, another you’re listening to top 40 radio while cruising in your convertible. Imagine a couple super smart, super competent, super slick, super hot dudes who don’t take themselves too seriously bumping a really wide range of styles all of which have a retro modern techno/pop thing going on. They are probably wearing stylish orange jackets in Paris, and they have nice rockstar voices and scruffy faces. That’s how I like to imagine Cassius, anyway. – great!
Cansei de Ser Sexy – s/t (2006) – Probably the best 00’s indie party album. I was put off by their live performance, but once I got into the recordings it was hard to deny how spunky and danceable and fun they are, and such a gift for pop posturing! If those faceless chicks from Robert Palmer videos developed identities and formed a seminal rebellious Brazilian synthy punk dance band, they’d be CSS. – great!
Dynasty Handbag – foo foo yik yik (2006) – I have a thing for really weird people, ones whose eyes point in different directions and whose apartments are cluttered with porcelain doll mobiles and rusty car batteries and overgrown plants and some rocks they painted. I like it when they are solo musicians and breed into their music that sense that they’re only just barely holding it together, that they see reality at a slightly offset phase and haven’t ever really tried or been able to snap to the grid. I think Dynasty Handbag is actually sane, but you’d never know it from this album, all primal sparse weirdness and cheap synths and drum machines and arty, unhinged pop. – great!
Coco Solid – Rap ‘n’ Roll (?) – Lofi demo album of sloppy, raw white boy/girl rap, which is simple as old school hip hop but with simple club/dance type loops underneath. It’s lively, sassy, and unpretentious. This is a demo album which practically doesn’t exist, so I’m really lucky I found a copy. – great!
Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards (2006) – These guys steer so clear of the hated clichés that it’s strange how clearly they are in the blues rock genre – a polished, sparse, powerful, alternate version of it. I think the thing that works best about this for me is the prominent wobbly and stretching voice of the singer, and the way his simple lyrics guide the instruments to form a relatable picture of modern sensitive-but-assertive guy life. – great!
Ladyhawk – Ladyhawk (2006) – A great alt country type thing sorta like Band of Horses or Jim James. Their hit single is poppy, but a lot of the other stuff is painful and mopey. It kinda like how it cuts while at the same time reminding me favorably of living in Austin. - good
Supersystem – Always Never Again (2005) – This is very quirky, very dude-like rhythm-driven rock, structured like gleaming highway overpasses, architecture built from synths and guitars and a variety of percussion, too nerdy to be hip but too cool to be nerdy. – great!
Beach House – s/t (2006) – Reverb drenched female vocals around dreamy organic slow rock, sort of a more lo-fi, indie Mazzy Star. - good
Euromotion - Get Serious (2003)– Are you sick of thinking? Ready to have fun? Great! Euromotion is awesome and hilarious and impressively competent eurotrash dance music. Don’t call them novelty, they are concept. Every song is about dancing and being from the future. Build your library of inside jokes today! – great!
THE MELLOW, LOUNGEY GIRL BLOCK
I can’t get enough of this shit. It’s so pretty and nice!
Feist – The Reminder – Holy shit I love Feist. So pretty. So nice. So intelligent and emotional and organic. I had zero idea until I started writing this review that she’s played with Peaches, Broken Social Scene, Manu Chao, Kings of Convenience, and some bad bands. I dunno, if you’re not already listening to her and you like nice music you should probably correct one of those two things. Usually she’s very loungey, but this album has a few rocky bits that will remind you favorably of Broken Social Scene or maybe Tom Petty, and a few heartbroken bits that will make you sad. – great!
Joan as Police Woman - Real Life (2006) – If you listened to either of my SXSW 2007 mixes, you already know that “The Ride” has universal appeal and is roughly the best song ever. Turns out the rest of the album doesn’t quite attain that brilliance but often sidles right up next to it. – great!
Feist – Open Season (2006) – The remix/covers album. There are beautiful versions that focus on the purity of simple instrumentation. There are slick west coast downtempo electronica versions. A few too many Mushaboom remixes, but otherwise… – great!
Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope (2006) – Her voice and music is a little more 90’s MTV 120 minutes alternative girl, like Lisa Germano or (god bless her) Tanya Donelly but based around a piano singer/songwriter thing. It does get a little overly literate sometimes, I suppose, in that way that NYC anti-folk can, but if you’re in the mood, it’s solid and satisfying. I got the release with the bonus cd, which is extra better because she seems less focused on performance and more on fun, risky experimentation. – good
Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55 (2006) – This one is very French, full of very lush arrangements of acoustic guitars and strings and Charlotte’s breathy voice. Her songwriting talent kind of echoes her dad’s obvious pop aesthetic, if maybe lacking his incredible brilliance. – okay
ALSO REALLY GOOD
dntel – dumb luck – I had hoped Jimmy would reserve the dntel moniker for the type of monolithic meditation that made 2001’s Life Is Full Of Possibilities so deeply moving, but it seems he can’t help but pile lots of ideas into things lately, which makes the distinction between this and, say, James Figurine very blurry. It’s still amazing ambient/idm, but it isn’t likely to suspend you in a cathartic daze. – good
The National – Boxer – The National’s biggest strengths are carpets of sophisticated rock arrangements and the singer’s uniquely expressive voice singing lyrics which tie the grandiose and the imaginary to the immediate and wonderfully mundane. On Boxer there are too many stretches that feel emotionally flat, like maybe they should have been groomed more or just trimmed, which makes the album overall less profound. I suppose it’s hard to follow up on a masterpiece like Alligator. - good
Love Of Diagrams – Mosaic – Fast, grim, and emotionally flat indie punk that feels like a gray knife jabbing into your shoulder, over and over, but no blood comes out. Recommended for folks who like cutting themselves when they should be sad but can’t feel anything. Not depressing like the Cure, just relentlessly spare. – good
Klaxons – Myths of the Near Future – Digitally bright, punchy club rock careening out of control. Endlessly remixed, and kids love it. – good
ESG - Keep on Moving (2006) – Sparse downtempo funk grooves with playful chatty female vocals, really fun and really chill at the same time. Heavily cited as early hip-hop inspiration, they had a ’93 release entitled Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills. – good
Anna Oxygen – This Is An Exercise – Not artpop gems like All Your Faded Things, this uses the same instrumentation - rudimentary electro plus operatic voice - to create a seamless, lengthy tapestry that feels like a series of weird dreams that all happened the same night. – good
dosh - The Lost Take – Yay for more skittering glitchy Rhodes and snappy acoustic drums! I love having dosh’s instrumentals on in the background when I’m doing something quiet and thoughtful. – good
Marc LeClair - Musique Pour 3 Femmes Enceintes – Straight up cold crackly cerebral beautiful glitch ambient idm. Masterful, though. – good
Handsome Furs – Plague Park – This album sounds like the “this heart’s on fire” and “it will not just be quiet” Wolf Parade songs because they are written by that same guy. Compared to Wolf Parade proper this is a little less jarring and yelping and a little more whiskey voiced innovative rock guy. – good
DJ MIX BLOCK
Looking for a dance party on one shiny disc for when your house party starts to get frisky?
FabricLive 33 mixed by Spank Rock – Fabric is some famous club in London or something, and it releases this series of live mixes that were performed by visiting dance dignitaries, in this case Spank Rock, the dirty hip-hop / dance DJ group from Philadelphia. Unsurprisingly this one feels the most like an actual club event, with a great mix of funk, rock, electro, and hip-hop. – great!
Girl Talk – Night Ripper (2006) – A patchwork of (mostly) top 40, hip-hop, and indie rock samples arranged into a continuous party mix. He’s a post-modern monster, so don’t bother unless you’re completely ADD. His shows are fucking ungodly raging, but this cd is just... – good
Hot Chip DJ Kicks – DJ Kicks is another great cd series, but because it doesn’t have the demands of a live club, I tend to think the guest DJs enjoy more leeway to express their personalities. As such, you’ll find a lot of soulful electro and quirky charming dance pop here, not a lot of four on the floor. – good
MORE STUFF
The Postmarks – s/t – This band sounds exactly like Heavenly, who were a sweet, poppy, sorta retro-sounding, flowery indie rock band from the 90’s Pacific NW scene. Twee? Sure. – good
Mirah – To All We Stretch The Open Arm – Silky, world-aware folk music (meaning that it has accordions). This is the same type of dusty, matronly stuff she’s been doing lately: wonderful, but not the cuttingly precise poetry of her earlier intimate indie rock. – good
The Shins – Wincing the Night Away – Bummer at how adult contemporary they’ve become. I mean… definitely not as far as Sting, or anything. – okay
Voxtrot – s/t – Oh man! It’s hard to put a finger on why this doesn’t create the kind of passion that Raised By Wolves did. The obvious answer is that it’s less inspired, but I think it’s also that they deploy their “cheeky indie pop” elements less effectively against making their “nostalgia for last week” thing cohere, but why?, why? If Raised By Wolves was an A+, this is a B-. – good
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible – This Bruce Springs.. I mean Arcade Fire album is good! At the very real risk of becoming insanely unpopular I will mention, however, that I greatly preferred the first one.. this one is more workaday, less magical realism, less gripping. – good
Blonde Redhead – 23 – This is a really smooth album. There is no agonized yelping, no clashing guitar, no dizzy synthesizer, no hammering drone. It’s kind of dreamy and poppy, even. – good
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Some Loud Thunder – I was as prepared to dismiss this album as everyone else who was subjected to their tepid and seemingly insincere live performances, but I was favorably impressed that they forwent the smooth emo tastes of their fratgirl fanbase and instead amped their jagged distorted edge. Even so, most of the songs, while just fine, sound like the well-placed fillers from the last album.. what does that mean, that they only had 4-5 truly amazing songs in them? – okay
Shout out out out out – Not Saying / Just Saying – Infinite energy and mathematically correct synthy dance by hyperactive nerdy white boys. – good
Datarock – Datarock Datarock – A hip, fresh take on dance rock that sounds not unlike Talking Heads, but their “dumb” thing gets a little tiring. – okay
Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City – Really? Because I’d have thought an overproduced, underinspired, and massively less aggressive album is the one you could least afford to release as your sophomore effort. What happened, was it all that opening for Panic! At The Disco? You fucking let me down, hookers. - crap
Luomo – Paper Tigers – Featherweight groove/dub electronica with a cup of microhouse and a pinch of idm. Best served at 2 am in a dark, dark club. – good
YACHT – I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real – One half of the wonder twins that make up The Blow’s last 2 albums, YACHT brings the tumbling, precisely overdriven, razor sharp sequencing to the equation. There are interesting musical ideas, but a lot of the time they are goofy and upstage whatever sentiment he may think he’s getting at. – okay
Dandi Wind – Concrete Igloo – Harsh yelping electro girl punk, totally spazzy. – okay
Dan Deacon – Spiderman of the Rings – Very synthy and messy hyperactive knob-twisting and keyboard pounding with effected vocals, like a box of melted crayons or maybe a goblin raiding party. – good
Shitdisco – Kingdom of Fear – If you can imagine a much more stage-diving-oriented version of… oh, who is most like this kind of dance rock?... Franz Ferdinand, then this would be it. – okay
lo-fi-fnk - boylife – Bouncy electro vocal pop with that glossy house sound. Presumably they are gay dudes who wear spandex on stage. – okay
Think About Life – s/t – Distorted Casio dance punk – spazzy and grating. – okay
Errors - How Clean Is Your Acid House – Spare and snappy downtempo Casio-style instrumentals. Very 4-track, very 2003. – okay
Prodigy – Return of the Mac – This reminds me most of caustic Wu-Tang era rap but with some MF Doom intelligence, just kind of chattering articulately in the background. - good
Matthew Herbert – Scale – Solid and mellow jazzy/loungey electronica. Some of his other stuff is more heartfelt, less quirky than this. – okay
Islands - Return to the Sea – Occasionally as “on” as the Unicorns, but too often gets bogged down by poorly formed folk “offness”. Would have made a fantastic 4 song EP. – okay
MC Chris - Dungeon Master of Ceremonies – The burly gruff edge of his life performance is missing on this album, where he sounds like a bratty little kid burning his considerable talent on quasi-novelty party rap. Skits are really funny, though. – okay
Adult. – Why Bother? – That’s sort of what I’m asking myself. I already own 3 Adult. albums just like this. What can I say, I was inspired by their live show. – okay
Amiina – Kurr – Very beautiful and organic idm-esque lullabyes. Think Morr Music, think Múm. They are even from Iceland. – good
Menomena – Friend and Foe - Mostly I enjoy the noisy surges and quirky production tricks in this clean, clashing, very male indie rock. The big detractor is that too often abrupt and inadvisable shifts in aesthetic makes it so the seams don't hold together and the songs fall apart, leaving you with nothing. – good
Outkast – Idlewild – Did anyone else notice this came out or have an opinion about it? What does that tell you? – okay
Âme – s/t – Slick, spare, and smooth, utterly electronic, four on the floor grooves. Not unlike Richie Hawtin. Predictably German. Mysteriously available in a non-vinyl format. – okay
Aqueduct – Or Give Me Death – Aqueduct is basically the Kevin Smith of music, and this is the album/movie that strikes the wrong balance between self-indulgence and creative genius. He’s so high on his dork-ass self, it’s a turn off. – iffy
Ono – Open Your Box – I love Yoko Ono, and I so wanted this to be good. Too bad, it’s house remixes. Yawn. – iffy
INDIE ROCK RECOMMENDED BY PITCHFORK
I put them all down here because they are really, really indie rock without much of an angle, and you know how I like angles, so I’m reluctant to pretend to be an authority.
Review = the band they most resemble when they’re at best.
Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (2006) – Low – good
Hell on Wheels - The Odd Church (2006) – Heartless Bastards – good
Field Music - Tones of Town – Yes – okay
Home – Sexteen (2006) – Meat Puppets – okay
Papercuts - Can't Go Back – James Taylor / Velvet Underground – okay
Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther – Fleetwood Mac – good
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