Mux126: Porkchop Sandwiches

You can never go wrong with closing on a Justin Timberlake cover.

Boom.

1. Zwan - Lyric (Mary Star of the Sea)
2. Marnie Stern - Noonan (The Chronicles of Marnia)
3. The Hold Steady - Massive Nights (Boys And Girls In America)
4. Foals - My Number (Holy Fire)
5. Cloud Nothings - Forget You All The Time (Cloud Nothings)
6. Broken Social Scene - Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old GIrl (You Forgot It In People)
7. Midlake - In This Camp (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
8. Vampire Weekend - Unbelievers (Modern Vampires of the City)
9. Chromatics - Cherry (After Dark 2)
10. Baths - Earth Death (Obsidian)
11. !!! - Infinifold (Myth Takes)
12. Klaxons - My Love (Justin Timberlake cover) (Live)

TRT 47:11

Rookies: Zwan

New(ish) music from 2013 albums: Baths, Chromatics, Foals, Marnie Stern, Vampire Weekend

Mux123: May 2013

Skipped the mid-April mux because I was just back from London and had nothing prepared! Thus, a bit of a bloated and weird mux to open May. If you're all Eh about this, go back and listen to 122 again. Might be the best mux I've put together in a year.

Boom.

1. Eyedea & Abilities - Spin Cycle (By The Throat)
2. Metz - Negative Space (Metz)
3. The Men - Without A Face (New Moon)
4. Marnie Stern - You Don't Turn Down (The Chronicles of Marnia)
5. Divine Fits - Civilian Stripes (A Thing Called Divine Fits)
6. Midlake - Bandits (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
7. Radiohead - All I Need (In Rainbows)
8. The Knife - A Tooth For An Eye (Shaking The Habitual)
9. Thee Oh Sees - Maze Francier (Floating Coffin)
10. Cemeteries - Brighter Colors (The Wilderness) (For JET)
11. Kurt Vile - Too Hard (Wakin On A Pretty Daze)
12. Justin Timberlake - That Girl (The 20/20 Experience Vol. I) (For JCD & CLG)

TRT 50:16

Newish music (2013 albums): Justin Timberlake, The Knife, Kurt Vile, Marnie Stern, The Men, Thee Oh Sees

Rookies: Cemeteries, Thee Oh Sees

Marnie Stern July 3, 2011 @ 7th St. Entry, Minneapolis

Happy fourth to you, too, my fine, feathered friends.

I saw Marnie Stern (and her bassist and drummer, e.g. the, uh, band) last November, but since I'm really into her music, I checked out their set last night at the 7th St. Entry.

I swiped a setlist, and this is what went down (corresponding albums in parentheses):

1. Cinco De Mayo (Marnie Stern)
2. Transformer (This Is It...)
3. This American Life (In Advance of the Broken Arm)
4. Vibrational Match (In Advance...)
5. Nothing Left (Marnie Stern)
6. The Crippled Jazzer (This Is It...)
7. Shea Stadium (This Is It...)
8. Prime (This Is It...)
9. Transparency Is The New Mystery (Marnie Stern)
10. Risky Biz (Marnie Stern)
11. Building A Body (Marnie Stern)
12. For Ash (Marnie Stern)

Since I last saw them, they've tightened their live show considerably. Aside from the enjoyment of hearing songs from all three of her albums, a few of the many highlights included the chaotic jam "This American Life," the pummeling end of "The Crippled Jazzer," everyone hand-clapping along to the breathless intro of "Prime," the emotional rawness of "Transparency Is The New Mystery" (my third-favorite song of 2010), and the frontal assault on set ender "For Ash."

I hate having to make these little comments, but it needs saying in case the 7th St. Entry sound guy is reading: As with last November's show, there was criminally little guitar in the mix, which is, well, half the draw of Marnie's songs. It might have been my position and the odd stage setup: I was front and center, which put me in the direct path of the bassist's very-loud amps; Marnie's drummer plays with such an intensity that a huge drum sound is unavoidable; and Marnie herself, for whatever reason, played nearly up against the wall of stage right, with her amp behind her and not in my direct ear path. I stand in forward of the venue's speakers, so that might have something to do with it. And while, fortunately, Marnie's vocal mic was louder than last time, I mostly heard her bassist instead of that sweet, sweet tapping.

But yeah yeah if I wanted it to sound like they do on record I would've stayed at home. Live shows are to let loose all the raw immediacy that you don't get when you're in the studio trying to nail a perfect take. And, sure, if I stood by the sound booth I'd probably get the best sound, but the live experience is so much more heightened and fulfilling if you're in the front row, mere feet from the performers. (It's also why the 7th St. Entry is my favorite MPLS venue: you're right up there versus, say, First Ave. or the Varsity.)

This wouldn't be a show "review" without a breakdown of the post-show, would it?

Last time I saw the band I got Marnie's self-titled third record and had it signed by her, so with my slightly-better cameraphone I wanted to get a picture with her. Like last November, they didn't play an encore, so while everyone was waiting around for one, I made a beeline to the merch area and was probably the third dude in line.

I exchanged the usual sort of pleasantries with Marnie and her drummer (I want to say it's Zach Hill of Hella fame but I'm not certain; I know he was the drummer on the record, though, since it's says so on the vinyl sleeve. [Update: A few people have told me that they're pretty sure Zach Hill isn't the band's touring drummer.). Marnie agreed to a photo op, and while no less than five people offered to take the picture (that's the spirit of Minnesota and MPLS hipsters), I make it a point to document my band-meeting encounter with a off-center, poorly-framed, self-taken photo. It's like using Instagram to fuck up your pictures. The result, with the brightness waaay up because of the cave-like 7th St.'s dimness:

I tried to get the drummer (again: Zach?) in the photo but my arm length can only get self-portraits with two people. If your monitor brightness is really high, you can see the reflection in his glasses on the left edge of the frame.

Also, I'm 6'4" and Marnie is not, and I did some serious knee-bending to get down to her height. People in line actually elicited an audible "Awww!" when we took the picture, like it was an episode of Full House or something.

Mux075: Spring Feverish

You know the drill.

1. Joy Division - Failures
2. A Place To Bury Strangers - Deadbeat
3. PS I Love You - 2012
4. The National - Blank Slate
5. Japandroids - Crazy/Forever
6. Radiohead - Optimistic
7. The Joggers - Since You're Already Up
8. The Kills - Heart Is A Beating Drum
9. The Rural Alberta Advantage - The Dethbridge In Lethbridge
10. Marnie Stern - The Things You Notice
11. Bear In Heaven - Ultimate Satisfaction

I was going to start a little feature called the HALL OF FAME, in which I honor the exceptionally-rare albums in which all their tracks have been on muxes. But it's pretty apparent that said Fame-Hall might only get one entry by dint of its few tracks:



Congratulations to Japandroids, whose 2009 album Post-Nothing (MPC's 2009 Album of the Year) and its eight tracks have been cannibalized across nine muxes.

The tracklists are valid but the download links are dead (yell at me if you want them fixed), and here is the Post-Nothing lineup with its corresponding mux:

1. The Boys Are Leaving Town (Mux036: October 2009)
2. Young Hearts Spark Fire (Mux030: Oh Nine)
3. Wet Hair (Mux022: May 2009)
4. Rockers East Vancouver (Mux073: Lousy Smarch Weather)
5. Heart Sweats (Mux026: August 2009)
6. Crazy/Forever (Mux075 and you're already there)
7. Sovereignty (Mux023: June 2009)
8. I Quit Girls (Mux071: Muxsplosion)

This feat may never be repeated. To knock Jpndrds just a tad, their LP is kind of within EP-length territory, but it speaks volumes when an entire record is solid front-to-back. Kind of like Weezer's The Blue Album. Hmm. Too bad I'm not a big fan of "Holiday," and I'd really need a huge gap to close with "Only In Dreams."

JDK's Favorite Music of 2010: Songs

(Stupid disclaimer: I started writing this a few days ago, so this has nothing to do with the fact that Pitchfork posted half their list today and that both lists have a fair number of similarities.)
 
I hate to wrap up things prematurely, but it's safe to assume that 2010, music-wise, has been spoken for. There might be some slim chance of a phenomenal album coming during these last few weeks (as evidenced by the universally-acclaimed My Beautiful Dark LiveJournal Fantasy by Kanye West that dropped recent), but all that theoretical music is in the same league with all the 2010 stuff that was great that I haven't even heard yet.

And as much as I'm an Album Guy versus a Singles Guy, here's a CD-length sampling of some of my favorite music from the year. One note: Placement does not indicate numerical status, e.g. track 1 was not my favorite song of the year.

• Download: JDK Radio 013: JDK's Favorite Songs of 2010

Tracks:
1. Japandroids - Younger Us
2. No Age - Glitter
3. Spoon - Written In Reverse
4. The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
5. Marnie Stern - Transparency Is The New Mystery
6. Deerhunter - Helicopter
7. Liars - Scarecrows On A Killer Slant
8. Phantogram - When I'm Small
9. Health - USA Boys
10. Big Boi - Shutterbugg
11. Crystal Castles - Doe Deer
12. Tobacco - Fresh Hex
13. Four Tet - Love Cry (JDK Fuck The Intro Edit)
14. Best Coast - When I'm With You
15. Titus Andronicus - Four Score And Seven
16. The Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
17. Holy Fuck - P.I.G.S.
18. Sleigh Bells - Crown On The Ground



For the sake of fitting this on a disc and for the principle of not repeating bands, there's a lot of stuff that needs some recognition that didn't make this 18-track cut. I'm going to run down my top four songs of the year in some sort of nebulous order, and then I'll do the rest alphabetical.



1. Titus Andronicus - Four Score And Seven

"Four Score And Seven" starts off the second half of The Monitor on a rather mopey note. "This is a war we can't win," frontman Patrick Stickles begins over some lonely guitar strums, and not long after laments "And all my heroes died at the end."

The band veers into some choice instrumentation that usually reeks of either pretention or crap but works here. A low-key violin line comes in, followed by that most American of all instruments: the harmonica, appropriately sounding like it's coming from a boxcar of a passing freight train.

Things start to pick up with another chant, this time the waiting-for-comeuppance "You won't be laughing so hard." And then, hell, there's a brass section before the first evidence of drums and any semblance of rock in this eight-and-a-half-minute epic.

A guitar solo leads into some of the most intense angst from Stickles on record. At the start of a particularly-venomous rant he just yells "Fuck, I'm frustrated!" at the prospect of doing so much and feeling like it's so little and how it's so easy to just "urinate into the void" of all this "miserable quote-unquote art." Somewhere along the vent Stickles finds his confidence, picks his shit-covered self out of some New Jersey gutter and declares that he "wasn't born to die like a dog, [he] was born to die just like a man."

And then the ultimate rallying cry of the album sounds: "It's still us against them!" repeated, as usual, several times, each with varying degrees of neck-vein-bursting fury. The "us" and the "them" are subjective, and if you don't really care you can just think it's about the Civil War or something instead of the delicate mental gymnastics that any artist has to perform in that just-starting-out terror of figuring out whether you suck or you actually have something pretty fucking important to say.

"It's still us against them" Stickles screams and, for whatever reason, doesn't sound particularly defeated when he finishes the line with "and they're winning." It could be that the whole idea of all this being a battle is total bullshit; that if you don't think of it as Us and Them, you can actually get on with your life; that everything you do isn't permanent, or malleable, or either Perfect or Garbage; that life isn't Yes or No or any one of those millions of dualisms. It's about finding peace within that battle, even if "they're winning."



2. The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio

And now, with much less to say...

It's easy to pick out "Bloodbuzz Ohio" as the standout track off High Violet. It's one of those rare National tracks that gets out of that middle-class gloomy paranoia and just fucking soars. And that, of course, isn't to say that "Bloodbuzz Ohio" is the best tracks off the album. And just because it's the most accessible doesn't mean it'll eventually relegate itself to the backwaters of The National's catalog.

Another reason I hate cherry-picking songs is that they lose all context. If High Violet were filled with uptempo numbers, "Bloodbuzz Ohio" wouldn't feel as good as it does. Coming right off the dread of "Afraid of Everyone" and, in general, an A-side that isn't exactly a blue-skied sunny day, "Bloodbuzz Ohio" seems almost defiant in its instrumental optimism.

Lyrically, though, it's still like getting sucked through the kitchen-sink vortex of Matt Berninger's mind. It doesn't sound particularly pleasant to be "carried to Ohio by a swarm of bees," and (another one of the great choruses of the year) there's a resignation to knowing "I still owe money to the money to the money I owe."

It's also pretty amazing that The National made one of the best rock songs of the year that, if you listen closely, realize is basically just piano, brass, and drums until the guitar "solo" at the end.



3. Marnie Stern - Transparency Is The New Mystery

It must be standard that the most affecting lovesick rock songs have some sort of impenetrability about them. Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Maps" seems an enigma, since Karen O apparently addresses the song to someone literally named Maps, or that maps, in general, have to do with something. You only figure it out after you find out that Maps is really M.A.P.S., which is My Angus Please Stay, which is to say it's about Karen O's relationship with Liars frontman Angus Andrew.

Marnie carries the torch, starting out with "In order to see it, you've got to believe it," and from there not resolving the question at all. Yeah, it's clear there's some sort of relationship going on, as well as some distance, in which Marnie sings "You said to try patience." She then goes through denial and anguish in the same breath with, "Can't you tell? You're like me. I'm too late. You've got her."

And then, christ, the chorus is repetitions of "It's not enough" and "I'm not enough." Only female vocalists can make songs like these sound so beautiful while they're about black-hole pits of sadness.
This song shows Marnie's maturation as a lyricist, given that the song floats along on a basically two guitar notes and a little background drumming. There's no tapping. No solo. No real hook except the downer of a chorus.

There's maybe a shred of optimism at the end, when the song closes on "I want this." Whether it means she's accepted the end of the relationship or that she's in need of a good brood, I don't know.



4. The Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Shout out to the prescient Luke for immediately knowing this would be one of the best songs of the year about two minutes after the album leaked.

Somewhere written into The Arcade Fire's record deal must be a stipulation that each album's penultimate track is its best. Funeral had "Rebellion (Lies)," Neon Bible had the refurbished "No Cars Go," and The Suburbs comes to a near-close on the part-bubblegum, part-sinister synths of "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)."

The Suburbs, in a way, is a knee-jerk reaction to Neon Bible, which many saw as far too preachy. Especially for a Quebecois band trying to stick a finger into the American political debate (of the then-upcoming 2008 election), which is quicksand territory for any band comprised of mere mortals. The Suburbs regressed back to many of the familiar roots of Funeral, with its many references to "the kids" and childhood imagery, though the latter's naivete and pain is replaced with the dull resignation to the droll outer rings of cities.

"Sprawl II" conveys this in only a handful of lyrics surrounded by a bouncy pop instrumental. Regine Chassagne starts off on the defensive with "You heard me singing and you told me to stop" and acknowledges the seeming irrelevance of Art in daily life, when her detractor says, "Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock."

The Arcade Fire has never been too coy with their lyrics, and co-singer Win Butler frequently shouts with an intonation suggesting that his heart is firmly attached to his sleeve. For her part, Chassagne keeps some songs from swelling too big. She drops a fairly large bomb with a one-sentence damnation of suburban sprawl with "Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains, and there's no end in sight."

Just like Funeral, it's a pretty bleak fucking statement, but it's said with a sort of optimistic Fuck All that's much harder to master than mere cynicism.

There goes the song dissection, so I'll now just run through my laundry list of also-great 2010 songs. I'll spare the headache of pointlessly ranking them, so we'll just run it alphabetical:

• Allo Darlin' - Kiss Your Lips
  Really only here because I don't think a song has even had the genius (or laziness) of word-for-word singing the chorus to "El Scorcho" within the narrative of a song. 
• Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round And Round
  The chorus is one of the bigger payoffs of the year. The Hood Internet seized on that and made a remix that pretty much exclusively uses the chorus, and it falls a little flat because there's no anticipation.
• Band of Horses - Laredo
  The band's trajectory has steadily gone downhill since the debut of their pretty-good Everything All The Time. Maybe it's just because they haven't changed much from their midtempo, charming tunefulness, or maybe I'm getting sick of hearing their songs in car commercials. (Okay, maybe that was just "The Funeral" in one a few years back, but still.)
• Baths - Maximalist
  The title says it all. I first latched onto Baths when I saw a video of him performing some tracks at a record shop. Instead of the usual laptop-show standing-behind-your-MacBook-and-head-nodding, he was going crazy pressing buttons and twisting knobs and shit. Without that necessary layer of aural insanity, he'd be another minimalist electro dude.
• Beach House - 10 Mile Stereo
  This is probably the only way to build up a Beach House song: add elements that give the impression that the song is getting faster and faster.
• Best Coast - When I'm With You
  Yeah, yeah, I know this was actually on an EP from 2009, but it was on their full-length Crazy For You so I can include it. Speaking of the latter, it already hints of the embarrassing number of times "lazy" is rhymed with "crazy," and that is endemic of the whole notion that Best Coast generally writes sloppy lyrics. "When I'm With You" stands out from the sounds-the-same-as-everything-else song-collection Crazy For You because it changes tempo after a fake-out slow-mo start. Really it comes down to the choice that, if I had to pick one song from the catchy but lackluster album, it'd be this.
• Big Boi - Shutterbugg
  Any track that has a beat partly comprised of scat-like vocals is worth a few repeats for the novelty alone.
• Broken Social Scene - World Sick
  I think everyone is getting pretty tired of BSS. Every since You Forgot It In People, the band has gotten less structured and far jammier, especially on the "solo" Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning records. "World Sick" doesn't redefine anything, and even with it's obscenely-long runtime of 6:49, there are very few Hell Yes moments. It's kind of like the inverse of the bloated self-titled closer "It's All Gonna Break."
• Caribou - Bowls
  It's a shame that Caribou radically alters his sound for every record, since the territory he explores on Swim is by far my favorite work of his. There's very little of the sunshine, flowers, and weedy high of The Milk of Human Kindness and Andorra, and a lot of Swim sounds downright dangerous.
• The Chemical Brothers - Escape Velocity
  Is it cool to like The Chemical Brothers? Or way outdated? It's like they forgot the memo that straight-up techno was no longer In, much as how similar back-in-the-day acts like The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, and Propellerheads have shuttered up their studios. The album proper Further mostly plays like a long-form electrojam, and the 11:57 "Escape Velocity" lies at the center.
• Crystal Castles - Doe Deer
  On an album that gets pretty close to fully embodying that goddamn label "chillwave" that needs to die, I find myself drawn to Crystal Castles' most unhinged track on an otherwise more-tamer-than-their-debut album. It's sort of like how my favorite cut off their first release was "Tell Me What To Swallow." Everyone thinks I'm just playing some bullshit angle, but I'm serious.
• Deerhunter - Helicopter
  I might be cheating a little, since my mental perception of "Helicopter" was their live version, which sounded downright apocalyptic and not as bubbly as the album version. Still, in the indie-rock arena of bands that come and go within the space of months, Deerhunter is the ultimate wildcard: their sound always shifting, their music-producing pace prolific, and the results consistently fantastic.
• Dom - Living In America
  Sun Bronzed Greek Gods is my EP of the Year if I haven't written it yet. Dom grasped the idea that an EP can be a viable release instead of a glorified demo tape before an LP proper. While Dom juggles a surprising number of sounds throughout the seven-track EP, and while "Bochica" might be the catchiest, there's always something to be said about the lead-off track. "Living In America" is Dom's announcement that, yes, they exist, and yes, you can make infectious pop songs without recruiting Timbaland to produce.
• The Drums - I'll Never Drop My Sword
  I really hate these throwback bands, but I'll be damned if I deny a decent song out of principle. (Well...)
• Fang Island - Welcome Wagon
  The band did me a favor and pinned it down. They described their sound as everybody giving everybody else high-fives. Also refreshing to hear an indie band that can shred.
• Four Tet - Love Cry
  There Is Love In You is a great album, and it pointed me back to the probably-greater Rounds. I've scoured Four Tet's back catalog, and while it's far more danceable than his 2010 release, "Love Cry" is, if not the best dance marathon of the year, it's at least the most ambitious.
• Free Energy - Light Love
  How and why Free Energy is on James Murphy's DFA label, I'll never know. I'll have to refer to my main man Patrick Stickles on this one, who responded, when I asked him the same question before a show, "I don't know. I think [Murphy] is trying to diversify his portfolio."
• Frightened Rabbit - [just pick a track off The Winter of Mixed Drinks]
  The Midnight Organ Fight somehow attained some mythical status, which led many to give The Winter of Mixed Drinks a bit of a brush-off. Besides having the best album title of the year, Frightened Rabbit gets a little less gloomy this time around (especially considering there isn't a lyric as harrowingly optimistic as "I'll save suicide for another year") and dares to actually think forward. "Not Miserable" is pretty true to its title; "The Loneliness" seems more about a lack of such; and "Swim Until You Can't See Land" finds a sort of joy in going so far as to get lost.
• Gorillaz - Stylo
  How Gorillaz are popular enough to play the goddamn Target Center is a mystery I'll never really uncover. Maybe it's because they first hit when MTV still played videos, and the novelty of the Virtual Band performing "Clint Eastwood" had enough momentum to sustain the bloated Demon Days and its swath of singles. Plastic Beach, even with its staggering guest roster, tends to sag around its setpieces. "Stylo," for all its repetition, is the single for a reason, if only because the mere title of "On Melancholy Hill" gives no indication of the track's upbeat instrumentation.
• Health - USA Boys
  Consider it another one of those rare cases where a band progressively sounds more accessible without sacrificing their secret X factor. After the chaos of their self-titled and the slight taming of Get Color (with its gorgeous closer "In Violet"), Health dropped the single "USA Boys" on the remix comp Disco 2. Combined with the chilled-out-but-not-chillwave vibe of live track "Drugs Beach," this could be the start of Health heading toward the dancier side of things without losing their noise cred.
• The Hold Steady - Hurricane J
  Anyone from Minneapolis has a contractual obligation to love The Hold Steady. Heaven Is Whenever forgoes the slight missteps of Stay Positive and gets back to the broader, no-backstory-required narrative rock of Boys And Girls In America. "Hurricane J" wouldn't sound at all out of place on the latter.
• Holy Fuck - P.I.G.S.
  Holy Fuck knows how to bookend an album. "1MD" is a slow burn leading into "Red Lights," and the six-minute "P.I.G.S." takes the grimy bop of everything proceeding, stuffs it in a blender, presses the "ANNIHILATE" setting and pours this shit directly down your gullet. Conventional wisdom for all linear art (books, movies, music) states that if you end on a high note, you've got a hit. "P.I.G.S." proves this for the excellent Latin.
• Hot Chip - Take It In
  One night a carload of guys and I were driving back to Burnsville after a Minneapolis shoot for Archetype. We played this song on repeat until we could passable sing the harmony of the chorus. Anything that can get a group of mostly-cynical mid-twenties dudes to sing well beyond their vocal range is list-worthy.
• Japandroids - Younger Us
  Listen to this fifty times and you'll hear the shiny nuggets of better production that will probably come to define the band's follow-up to Post-Nothing. This was intended for their first album, but because of limited studio resources they couldn't get it on the record. Keep that in mind: "Younger Us" isn't a B-side, but rather one of Japandroids' best songs.
• LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
  This was the only music video I watched the entire year. I was not disappointed.
• Liars - Scarecrows on a Killer Slant
  The narrative for this song and its supposed origins (someone getting killed in the doorway of the band's bad-neighborhood LA studio) are pretty freaky. And while it's pretty redundant to say at this point, if you listen past all the scariness, this is one of Liars' most accessible songs. Granted, you have to stomach the random terror of the chorus, "Why'd he shoot the man with the gun? 'CAUSE HE BOTHERED HIM!"
• Los Campesinos! - Straight In At 101
  I think everyone was already tired of Los Camp after "You! Me! Dancing!" was re-recorded for Hold On Now, Youngster… It's also getting tiring to hear that each subsequent Los Camp album is "darker" when, really, it's just more breathless singing, overstuffed twee pop arrangements, and a lot of angsty melancholy.
• The National - Terrible Love
  As I mentioned in my "Bloodbuzz Ohio" write-up, that track might not be the best off High Violet. I think "Terrible Love" gets that honor. That itself can't have any sort of persuasive power, so I can only recommend you listen the album at least thirty times. At about that point I realized why the band closed with this on their first night at First Avenue versus second night standard closer "Mr. November."
• The National - Lemonworld
  On my first listen of Alligator (my introduction to The National), there was something off I couldn't place. Subsequent listens made it obvious: the lyrics rarely, if ever, rhyme. That's a fairly bold move for any band, but when you abandon the rather trite obligation to rhyme, you can pen such a beautiful, albeit cryptic line like "You and your sister live in a lemonworld. I want to sit in and die."
• The National - England
  For whatever reason it took me a while to realize that "England" was the only other non-"Bloodbuzz" track off High Violet that dared to unfold mainly in major keys.
• No Age - Glitter
  If only to avoid more than a few Nouns comparisons, I think Dean Spunt of No Age made the executive decision to sing more of Everything In Between than shout it.
• No Age - Chem Trails
  I don't know if it's been done before, but adding firecrackers and little fireworks to your song makes it seem so much more exuberant.
• Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds
  I had never heard of Phantogram until I saw them open for The Antlers. They cemented my now-iron-fisted rule that I never miss opening bands. I'll get to my 2010 In Shows write-up in due time, but for their show they added a live drummer, which kicked everything up several notches. Now, tracks off Eyelid Movies sound a little chintzy with synth drums, but doing something as simple as adding live guitar really legitimizes what would otherwise be a laptop band.
• Phantogram - When I'm Small
  I guess you could consider this Phantogram's attempt at making a Hit. It doesn't pander to a possible Hit crowd - it even dumbs down the guitar part - but nearly every 89.3 The Current and Radio K and random CD samplers I get at shows have this song. And now I've done my part by adding this to my 2010 comp in attempts to get Phantogram some much-deserve attention.
• School of Seven Bells - Bye Bye Bye
  While most of Disconnect From Desire takes My Bloody Valentine's "Soon" and tweaks it every way possible to magically form new songs, "Bye Bye Bye" is a little noisier and more confident. If you listen to the background discord of "Bye Bye Bye," it's not so odd to consider that A Place To Bury Strangers remixed "Windstorm."
• Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em
  This is how you start an album that probably strays furthest from any easily-defined genre this year. You've got in-the-red noise that lays off the vocals; hardcore guitars that'd seem more at home in a garage-metal band; massive drum-machine drums; the sugary sweetness of Alexis Krauss's vocals; and handclaps and jingles and other window-dressing that all coheres into a sort of (I know I've said this before) cheerleaders-on-meth sound.
• Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill
  For whatever reason, I was going to make a short film earlier this year for MNKINO that would be stock footage of fighting in Baghdad set to "Rill Rill." I thought it'd be a nice clash. But taken at face value, "Rill Rill" is the best approximation of what it'd be like if doo-wop ballads were first invented this decade. (Side note: It was fairly hilarious when the swarm of Alexis-groping twenty-something guys at the Sleigh Bells show sang along to this word by word.)
• Sleigh Bells - Crown On The Ground
  This is going to be #1 on a lot of lists. Sure, the intro guitar is a little atonal and screechy for the uninitiated, but by the end this is the giant pop explosion that makes it hard to dismiss Sleigh Bells as a band that only has enough good ideas for one album.
• Spoon - Written In Reverse
  Transference almost seems like a deliberate attempt for Spoon to hide behind the ridiculously-good-and-accessible Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and do stuff like ending tracks abruptly under the guise that the album is somehow cerebral and conceptual. "Written In Reverse," if nothing else, is a song for Spoon to play on late-night shows and for the radio to pluck off Transference. If there's such a thing, it has all the elements of a Classic Spoon Song: a lot of room to breath, an airtight rhythm section, and Britt Daniel starting off cool and end up sounding like he's going to lose his shit.
• Spoon - Out Go The Lights
  No sarcasm: This is a beautiful song.
• Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes
  I can play this on guitar.
• Titus Andronicus - A More Perfect Union & Theme From "Cheers"
  I wrote a lot about these for my write-up of The Monitor, so we'll save it for now.
• Tobacco - Fresh Hex
  For all you Scientology haters out there (myself included), I kind of wince every time I have to make a fair assessment of Beck. But the man earned himself some serious cred for his (long distance) appearance in a Tobacco song. Yeah, if you step out of the room you'll miss the 1:35 "Fresh Hex," and you'll also miss one of the weirdest guest spots by a well-known musician on a lesser-known musician's record. "Fresh Hex" takes Beck and puts him in a cement mixer with some of the am-I-on-drugs?-because-I-feel-like-I'm-on-drugs synth madness that classified Tobacco.
• Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun
  Yes, I'm a self-loathing Vampire Weekend fan.
• Wolf Parade - [pretty much any song off Expo 86]
  All context I have for Wolf Parade is thrown off balance now they've announced a hiatus. I'm bracing for the worst of it and anticipate a breakup, which wouldn't be a big deal given their many side projects (and the fact that Sunset Rubdown's "Stadiums And Shrines II" sounds exactly like a Wolf Parade song), but WP happens to play an unreasonably-awesome live show. It's hard because Expo 86 doesn't particularly sound like a swan song. As great as the band is, each of their records has their weak spots, and I think, song for song, Expo 86 might be their strongest collection. Duds aside, it defies many sets of odds that a band with two distinct songwriters can congeal into this level of coherence, with Spencer Krug's "What Did My Lover Say?" and "In The Direction of the Moon" sounding inseparable from Dan Boeckner's "Little Golden Age" and "Ghost Pressure."

I left off quite a few items I intended to include, and even while I'm trying to get ahead of those millions of music sites out there, List-Season Fatigue sets in somewhere.

Mux066: December 2010

Another month, another mux.But, ugh, now I have to direct you over to the lesser of several evils: download this over at Megaupload. Stream below via Soundcloud.

P.S. I left off "Power" by Kanye West because I assume you've all heard it a million times before.

1. Avi Buffalo - Truth Sets In
2. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round And Round (The Hood Internet Remix)
3. Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds
4. Baths - Aminals
5. Wolf Parade - Little Golden Age
6. Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill
7. School of Seven Bells - Windstorm (A Place To Bury Strangers Remix)
8. Crystal Castles - Vietnam
9. Marnie Stern - Cinco De Mayo
10. Holy Fuck - P.I.G.S.
11. Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma

Making their glorious mux debut:
Avi Buffalo
Grinderman
Holy Fuck

Marnie Stern - November 9, 2010 @ 7th St. Entry

With all due respect to the man and his career, I opted to skip First Ave's main room remembrance thing of Eyedea's career. I instead ducked into the little lovable hovel that is the 7th St. Entry to see Marnie Stern, who, three guitar-tastic albums into her discography, still fucking rocks.

The set:

1. Nothing Left

2. For Ash

3. Transformer

4. Transparency Is the New Mystery

5. Risky Biz

6. Shea Stadium

7. Vibrational Match

8. The Things You Notice

9. The Crippled Jazzer

10. Cinco De Mayo

11. Prime

12. Her Confidence

Thanks to show partner-in-crime Thom for snagging a setlist proper and providing this. We're both in agreement that the band played a song after "Her Confidence," but neither of us can name it off the top of our collective heads.

Marnie's set itself - after two really, really weird opening bands - was a little slow to gain momentum. "Nothing Left" isn't exactly the most high-impact opener, and there were some initial sound issues. Namely, Marnie's guitar was far too low a volume, and considering that's the main draw of her music, it took a bit of straining to hear the finger-tapping (often looped after a song's intro) and various guitar heroics.

As the set shows, the songs were fairly evenly divided between old and new. That is, a fair number of tracks off This It It..., the always-crowd-pleasing "Vibrational Match" off In Advance of the Broken Arm, and most of her current self-titled LP.

I read in a fairly-recent interview that Marnie really wanted to have a second guitar player for the tour but she simply couldn't afford it. So it was Marnie, a bassist, and a drummer, and other than looping some finger-tapping, she played a sort of lead-and-rhythm guitar amalgamation for most songs. Once her guitar was turned up, it was a surprisingly effective tactic.

Marnie's highly-technical guitar playing (albeit toned down a bit on Marie Stern versus the tapping-crazed This It It... and In Advance of the Broken Arm) requires her to be fairly stationary onstage. This was offset by her full-throated vocal performance, which was as fiery as all her album cuts. By my usually-not-listening-to-lyrics sensibilities, This It It... seems a fairly extroverted, shout-it-out-loud (oh god, apologies for an accidental Kiss reference) sort of lyrical catharsis, while Marie Stern sounds a bit more plaintive and yearning. Maybe chalk it up to the fact that Marnie was a lot smaller than I imagined (as weird as that sounds, especially considering that I am, by modest phrasing, fucking gigantic), but "Transparency Is The New Mystery" sounded particularly vulnerable. The album itself is a grower, and the song is steadily climbing up my Songs of the Year list. The repetition of "I'm not enough..." sung by Marnie had a much more visceral effect seeing her belt it out on stage.

All the hits were there. As mentioned before, I think Marnie will be playing "Vibrational Match" for quite some time, and my personal favorite cut off This Is It..., "The Crippled Jazzer," got an extended rock-out ending compared to the album's fade-out. A surprise was "Prime," in which the crowd dutifully clapped out the intro as Marnie breathlessly hit each word before the dual guitar and vocal shrieks.

So, yes: Great show. Tonight the band is playing Chicago on the last night of their US tour before heading overseas, but they played with an enthusiasm you wouldn't expect coming at the end of a long haul.

My obligatory, hyperdetailed post-show Marnie Stern encounter:

Before the show, Thom and I brought up the inevitable "Will there be a kissing booth?" query amongst ourselves. Right after the band played their last song, Marnie ran over to the merch area, making it pretty obvious there'd be no encore. Thus, Thom and I went over with our boyish nervousness of asking the Kissing Booth Question, all while I took out my pocket-creased, laser-printed photo of Marnie that I wanted signed.

I apologize in retrospect to everyone I cut in line; I blame it on Thom, who just charged right in at the near-front of a line stretching halfway through the venue. .

Before I go any further: I think it's pretty impossible for any guy between the ages of twelve and forty to not have an enormous crush on Marnie Stern. First of all, she's an incredibly talented guitar player, songwriter, and vocalist. Second, she's absolutely gorgeous. And while she can come off on the record as some siren hellion, her stage banter "revealed" that her "normal" voice is adorable. I was smitten. I am still smitten.

So Thom and I got up to Marnie and he popped the Kissing Booth Question and she politely said there wasn't one on this tour.

"So the ticket was paid?" I chimed in, referring to that the whole impetus behind the kissing booth was to pay for a speeding ticket.

Marnie went off on some mini rant about how the ticket wasn't paid and was ridiculous and argh and Thom bought a vinyl and was trying to get the plastic off so Marnie could sign it. He seemed to be having some trouble, and Marnie pawed at it to no avail. I showed him to peel it off by forcing the cardboard corner through, since 20% of my job is unboxing stuff and I'm a pro at that stuff.

I pushed him aside and got myself a vinyl and, while Thom still struggled, I got the plastic off in like two seconds.

"Wow! You're really good at that!" Marnie said with an enthusiasm that, aw gosh, brings a smile to my robot face even now. (Smitten I say! Smitten!)

I asked her to sign it and she said Sure and asked my name and I said it and, for some reason, spelled it aloud. I also asked if she could indulge my request to sign my printed-off picture, which I feel I always need to justify and which makes me feel even more ridiculous than normal level of ridiculous-feeling. Also, I think there was a Female Musician Conference sometime that dictated that all female musicians would sign their name along with a string of XOXOs, as has been the case with all past female autographs.

Thom was still working off the plastic and Marnie, sort of unprovoked, said, "God, it's so embarrassing to get up there every night and, like, spill my life story."

I couldn't leave her hanging and, without trying to promote my own artistic crap, said, "I'm a filmmaker and my films are pretty much based on my life, so, yeah, I know the feeling."

"Way to go, Jack!" she said, and, goddamn it, I'm smiling right now. (SMITTEN.)

I had an oddly sincere tone when I said, "Well, I really love the album, and best of luck overseas and with everything" and my beardy smile and tallness and soccer-jersey wearing. I think the sincerity came from the pretty well-publicized fact that Marnie is broke and in debt like every musician out there, and I, as a filmmaker, am pretty fucking broken-and-indebted myself.

"Thanks for coming out, Jack, and thanks so much!" and, egad, her just saying my name is like... man, I am really, really embarrassing myself in this blog post.

And that's it! It ended! Thom stuck around for some phantom friends and I went down into the bowels of the across-the-street parking garage to pay for my ticket and head back to Burnsville. I dug through my CD wallet for the muxtape that I, correctly, thought contained "Transparency Is The New Mystery." If I was a normal human, that song would make me cry.

Mux062: October 2010

I broke my record for crossfades. Of the ten tracks, six fade in or out. It's like that annoying "crossfade" setting on iTunes.

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. No Age - Life Prowler
2. Japandroids - Heavenward Grand Prix
3. Superchunk - Crossed Wire
4. The Arcade Fire - We Used To Wait
5. Deerhunter - Helicopter
6. Wild Nothing - Chinatown
7. Wolf Parade - Yulia
8. Marnie Stern - Transparency Is The New Mystery
9. Titus Andronicus - Four Score And Seven
10. The National - Terrible Love

And making their mux debut:
Superchunk
Wild Nothing

So that strikes them off the list for Rookies 3.

Upcoming music releases for the rest of 2010

This has already been a ridiculously-awesome year for music, and there's still more coming in these last four months. Off the top of my head, this is what I'll be looking forward to. I probably missed some stuff, so fill me in via the comments.

• Battles - Untitled Tyondai Braxton-less album (in production)
  
• Cee-Lo Green - The Lady Killer
  
• Daft Punk - Tron Legacy soundtrack
  
• Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (plus at least a bonus EP or, hell, a secret double album)
  
• The Hood Internet - The Mixtape Vol. V (expected)
  
• Japandroids - 7" Singles #3, 4, and 5 (following "Art Czars" and "Younger Us")
  
• Kanye West - Album formerly titled Good Ass Job
  
• Lil Wayne - Tha Carter IV
  
• Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern
  
• Michael Jackson - Untitled posthumous release
  
• No Age - Everything In Between (leaked)
  
• Of Montreal - False Priest (leaked)
  
• Radiohead - Untitled eighth album (rumored; unlikely)
  
• Sufjan Stevens (feat. The National?) - The Age of Adz
  
• The Thermals - Personal Life (leaked)
  
• The Walkmen - Lisbon (leaked)
  
• Weezer - Hurley (it should have at least one decent song, right?)

Mux058: August 2010 Part II

Double muxes today. I made the first a while back, and I wanted to capitalize on some new tracks that have been floating around. Thus, August 2010 Part II.

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. Best Coast - When I'm With You
2. Marnie Stern - For Ash
3. Titus Andronicus - My Time Outside The Womb
4. Frightened Rabbit - I Feel Better
5. Wolf Parade - Pobody's Nerfect
6. Menomena - Taos
7. Deerhunter - Revival
8. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round And Round
9. The Arcade Fire - Suburban War
10. Portishead - Roads
11. Tortoise - TNT

Mux054: Noisy 2

Download or stream via drop.io.

1. Sleater-Kinney - The Fox
2. Marnie Stern - Vibrational Match
3. Crystal Castles - Doe Deer
4. Wavves - No Hope Kids
5. Death From Above 1979 - Romantic Rights
6. A Place To Bury Strangers - Everything Always Goes Wrong
7. Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain
8. Liars - Scarecrows on a Killer Slant
9. Health - Triceratops
10. Justice - Waters of Nazareth
11. Tobacco - Nuclear Waste Aerobics
12. Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)

Mux046: Shooting

Pretty ridiculous, but I sometimes need a reprieve from all this seriousness.

Download or stream via drop.io.

1. A Place To Bury Strangers - It Is Nothing
2. Rollins Band - What's the Matter Man?
3. Boris - Woman on the Screen
4. Iggy and the Stooges - Search and Destroy
5. Les Savy Fav - The Equestrian
6. Rage Against the Machine - Sleep Now In The Fire
7. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
8. Death From Above 1979 - Little Girl
9. Marnie Stern - Transformer
10. Sleater-Kinney - Jumpers
11. Future of the Left - Arming Eritrea
12. The White Stripes - Fell In Love With A Girl
13. Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Mux011: October 2008, the reissue

Goddamn shot lists making me work past 2 p.m. Unreasonable!

You know what to do.

1. Fucked Up - Son the Father
2. A Place To Bury Strangers - My Weakness
3. The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
4. The Walkmen - In the New Year
5. Jay Reatard - Trapped Herer
6. Max Richter - A Song For H / Far Away
7. Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom
8. Brendan Canning - Chameleon
9. Deerhunter - Microcastle
10. Kevin Drew - Frightening Lives
11. Marnie Stern - The Crippled Jazzer
12. Crystal Castles - Tell Me What To Swallow

Mux012: November 2008, the reissue

Still bitching about shot lists.

Stream or download.

1. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home
2. Jay Reatard - Always Wanting More
3. Deerhunter - Vox Celeste
4. The Fiery Furnaces - Tropical Ice-Land
5. School of Seven Bells - Half Asleep
6. Born Ruffians - Sole Brother (Daytrotter Session)
7. Johnny and the Moon - Green Rocky Road
8. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
9. The Arcade Fire - Antichrist Television Blues
10. Rogue Wave - Publish My Love
11. Los Campesinos! - Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s)
12. Marnie Stern - The Devil Is In The Details

Mux015: December 2008, the reissue

Still working on a shot list, so here's another.

1. Caesars - Strawberry Weed
2. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
3. Tokyo Police Club - Tessellate
4. M83 - Graveyard Girl
5. David Holmes - Melanie
6. Rivers Cuomo - I Don't Want To Let You Go (Solo Version)
7. The National - Ada
8. My Bloody Valentine - Don't Ask Why
9. Jay Reatard - Let It All Go
10. Rogue Wave - 10:1
11. Marnie Stern - Roads? Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads
12. Deerhunter - Oh, It's Such A Shame (Jay Reatard Cover)

Mux013: Black Friday, the resissue

In honor of the most ridiculous calendar day of American consumeristic greed, I'm reissuing last year's Black Friday "schizomix" with a bit of retconning. See, when I first made it, I included the title track from the abortion that is Guns N Roses' Axl Rose's Chinese Democracy as a grand, limp-fish joke. I might have actually deluded myself into thinking I could enjoy such a cock-rock single, but my enjoyment with the song lasted a mere handful of days. And keeping in line with a good mix rule of thumb to keep things under forty-five minutes, it has been graciously axed from this fine array of songs.

Thus, the link, which I'm contractually obligated to say is hosted by the fine folks at drop.io.

1. Jay Reatard - Blood Visions
2. Wolfmother - The Joker and the Thief
3. Marnie Stern - The Package Is Wrapped
4. Weezer - Pork And Beans
5. Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos
6. Blitzen Trapper - Not Your Lover
7. Rogue Wave - Harmonium
8. Deerhunter - Agoraphobia
9. Brendan Canning - Hit the Wall
10. Nirvana - All Apologies
11. Radiohead - Let Down

JDK's Favorite Music of 2008 Part III

Ranking any sort of art against another (here: music) is always arbitrary and trivial. But people love lists, and I've made up my mind. I cheated a bit and included a singles compilations that involves 2006 and 2007 cuts, as well as smushing two albums together simply because the band made both this year.

Thus:

1. Deerhunter - Microcastle (without Weird Era Cont.)
2. No Age - Nouns
3. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
4. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
5. Jay Reatard - Singles 06-07 / Matador Singles '08
6. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
7. Crystal Castles
8. Fleet Foxes
9. Marnie Stern - This Is It...
10. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster... / We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

I'm still playing catch-up with a huge quantity of 2008 music, mostly culled from lists arranged by friends and, well, Pitchfork. Last year I didn't even give Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga a second spin after my initial listen, and now I can't believe I didn't put that in last year's top three. If there's any such revelation with the music I overlooked this year, I'll write something about it.

Otherwise, there's a gigantic post floating around in my head that breaks down all the music I liked this year and why I liked it, but since said massive post gains massivitity each day, I'm starting to dread such a task. Maybe a simple list will suffice for the four people that read this blog.

Mux013: Black Friday Schizomix

If the sudden mad rush of the holiday season had a part-rock, part-slow, part-obligatory-guilty-pleasure-Chinese-Democracy-song, part-weird soundtrack, this might be it:

1. Jay Reatard - Blood Visions
   
2. Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
   
3. Wolfmother - Joker and the Thief
   
4. Marnie Stern - The Package Is Wrapped
   
5. Weezer - Pork and Beans
   
6. Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos
   
7. Blitzen Trapper - Not Your Lover
   
8. Rogue Wave - Harmonium
   
9. Deerhunter - Agoraphobia
   
10. Brendan Canning - Hit the Wall
    
11. Nirvana - All Apologies
    
12. Radiohead - Let Down

Mux012: November 2008

Now some time since Dear Science came out, I finally figured out that the only way to properly include "Halfway Home" on any mix is to take the album's advice and stick that cut at the top. A little awkward transitioning into a Jay Reatard song, but when is that ever easy? "Always Wanting More" has such a triumphant riff that I can't deny it the eternal glory of finding its way onto JDK's Mux012. And while I'm still enjoying Deerhunter's Microcastle in its entirety, I'll save some of its better standalone tracks for later, and here I'll offer up the shoegaze jam "Vox Celeste," one of the few accessible songs off Weird Era Cont., Microcastle's ugly b-sides cousin that masquerades as an "album."

Here's my November mix/mux/muxtape/whatever and the tracks:

1. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home
   
2. Jay Reatard - Always Wanting More
   
3. Deerhunter - Vox Celeste
   
4. The Fiery Furnaces - Tropical Ice-Land
   
5. School of Seven Bells - Half Asleep
   
6. Born Ruffians - Sole Brother (Daytrotter Session)
   
7. Johnny and the Moon - Green Rocky Road
   
8. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
   
9. The Arcade Fire - Antichrist Television Blues
   
10. Rogue Wave - Publish My Love
    
11. Los Campesinos! - Don't Tell Me To Do The Math(s)
    
12. Marnie Stern - The Devil is in the Details

Hey look a mixtape

The third for October. Starts with two abrasive tracks and then gets a little indie and then all the way around somewhere.

1. Fucked Up - Son the Father
   
2. A Place to Bury Strangers - My Weakness
   
3. The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
   
4. The Walkmen - In the New Year
   
5. Jay Reatard - Trapped Here
   
6. Max Richter - A Song For H/Far Away
   
7. Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom
   
8. Brendan Canning - Chameleon
   
9. Deerhunter - Microcastle
   
10. Kevin Drew - Frightening Lives
    
11. Marnie Stern - The Crippled Jazzer
    
12. Crystal Castles - Tell Me What To Swallow

The last track is one of my favorite songs of the year (and totally out of place on their album), and the intro is so jarring that I've never been able to get it to transition well on a mixtape. It still doesn't mesh, but fuck it, it's a great song.