Mux179: Mr. Mux Strikes Back

Download.

I've broken my rule of not having the same band on two consecutive muxes. Well, doubly accidental that Battles has been on three muxes in a row, but "FF Bada" is quickly becoming one of my favorite Battles tracks. Also considering "The Yabba," La Di Da Di is pretty much a lock for my shortlist for my favorite albums of the year. It'll definitely be great to hear the studio version of the album in a week or two before I see them live in early October. Hoping to see some familiar faces at First Ave. who will front-row-it with me.

1. The Black Keys - Bullet In The Brain (Turn Blue)
2. Destroyer - Dream Lover (Poison Season)
3. Titus Andronicus - Come On, Siobhan (The Most Lamentable Tragedy)
4. Cymbals Eat Guitars - LifeNet (LOSE)
5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can't Keep Checking My Phone (Multi-Love)
6. Brian Eno & Kyle Hyde - Cells & Bells (High Life)
7. Ought - Habit (More Than Any Other Day)
8. Built To Spill - So (Untethered Moon)
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
10. The Go! Team - The Power Is On (Thunder, Lightning, Strike [Original Version])
11. Battles - FF Bada (La Di Da Di)
12. Caribou - Your Love Will Set You Free (C2's Set U Free Remix) (Our Love [Expanded Edition])

TRT 57:14

2015 music: Battles, Built To Spill, Destroyer, Titus Andronicus, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Mux177: Mr. Mux Cuts The Grass

Link.

1. Caribou - Can't Do Without You (Extended Mix) (Our Love [Expanded Edition])
2. Daft Punk - Megamix 1 (DJ Hero)
3. Battles - Ddiamondd (Mirrored)
4. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Necessary Evil (Multi-Love)
5. The Chemical Brothers - Leave Home (Exit Planet Dust)
6. Spoon - Inside Out (Demo) (They Want My Soul [Bonus])
7. Titus Andronicus - Dimed Out (The Most Lamentable Tragedy)
8. Lightning Bolt - Runaway Train (Fantasy Empire)
9. Wolfmother - Tales From The Forest of Gnomes (Wolfmother)
10. Death From Above 1979 - The Physical World (The Physical World)
11. Bear In Heaven - You Don't Need The World (Time Is Over One Day Old)
12. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Sunday Candy (Surf)

TRT 49:38

2015 music: Caribou (sort of), Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Lightning Bolt, Titus Andronicus, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Mux129: August 2013

Boom.

1. Boards of Canada - Reach For The Dead (Tomorrow's Harvest)
2. Aesop Rock - Zero Dark Thirty (Skelethon)
3. Matthew Dear - Overtime (Beams)
4. Daft Punk - Lose Yourself To Dance (Random Access Memories)
5. Thundercat - Bonus (Apocalypse)
6. Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around... / ...Comes Around (FutureSex/LoveSounds)
7. !!! - Me And Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard (A True Story) (Louden Up Now)
8. Deerhunter - Dream Captain (Monomania)
9. The Men - Electric (New Moon)
10. Apostle of Hustle - National Anthem of Nowhere (National Anthem of Nowhere)
11. Titus Andronicus - In A Big City (Local Business)
12. Weezer - No One Else (Live Acoustic)

TRT 55:02

Rookies: Apostle of Hustle

New(ish) 2013 music: Boards of Canada, Daft Punk, Deerhunter, The Men, Thundercat

Mux114: December 2012

A little something for everything. Or maybe a little something for no one?

In the Box.

1. Grizzly Bear - Sleeping Ute (Shields)
2. Spoon - You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga)
3. Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan (Swing Lo Magellan)
4. Lotus Plaza - Dusty Rhodes (Spooky Action At A Distance)
5. Passion Pit - Little Secrets (Manners)
6. LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (London Sessions)
7. Four Tet - Pinnacles (Pink) (listen to this one with good headphones)
8. Bon Iver - Blindsided (For Emma, Forever Ago)
9. Elliott Smith - King's Crossing (From A Basement On The Hill)
10. Titus Andronicus - (I Am The) Electric Man (Local Business)
11. Frankie Rose - Interstellar (Interstellar)
12. Metz - Headache (Metz)

TRT 49:38

Rookies:
Metz

JDK's Favorite Albums of 2012 (Extremely Short Edition)

Continuing my trend of pushing out a list before the other sites do so I can't be, like, accused of following P4K too closely. But, hell, this, like most other music lists (and muxes) might as well be curated by them.

And if something awesome comes out in December, I'm sure it'll be on my giant write-up, complete with those lovely little graphics of the album art (that take forever to insert, but whatever).

The ordered list

1. Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory
   
2. Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes
   
3. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
   
4. Chromatics - Kill For Love
   
5. Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror

The unordered list

• Bear In Heaven - I Love You, It's Cool
  
• Hot Chip - In Our Heads
  
• Liars - WIXIW
  
• Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action At A Distance
  
• The Men - Open Your Heart
  
• Titus Andronicus - Local Business
  
• Ty Segall & White Fence - Hair
  
• Ty Segall Band - Slaughterhouse
  
• Wiping Out Thousands - This Came First

You can download Wiping Out Thousands' This Came First at their Bandcamp page as a pay-what-you-want download. (And yes, that includes $0.) Favorite songs of the year (limiting two songs per band)

• Chromatics - Into The Black
  
• Chromatics - Lady
  
• Cloud Nothings - Wasted Days
  
• Cloud Nothings - Cut You
  
• Divine Fits - Shivers
  
• Flying Lotus - Electric Candyman (feat. Thom Yorke)
  
• Four Tet - Pinnacles
  
• Hot Chip - Flutes
  
• Japandroids - The House That Heaven Built
  
• Liars - No. 1 Against The Rush
  
• Liars - Brats
  
• Lotus Plaza - Strangers
  
• The Men - Open Your Heart
  
• The Men - Ex-Dreams
  
• Sleigh Bells - End of the Line
  
• Wiping Out Thousands - Creation
  
• Wiping Out Thousands - Beach

Mux101: One Future

Business as usual,  I guess.

In the Box.

1. Cloud Nothings - No Future / No Past (Attack On Memory)
2. The Men - Turn It Around (Open Your Heart)
3. Titus Andronicus - Anxiety Block (Television Personalities cover) (Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape Vol. I)
4. Spoon - I Could Be Underground (30 Gallon Tank EP)
5. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - There She Goes, My Beautiful World (Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus)
6. Boris - Ibitsu (Akuma no Uta)
7. Ty Segall - Girlfriend (Melted)
8. Sleigh Bells - Demons (Reign of Terror)
9. Bear In Heaven - Sinful Nature (I Love You, It's Cool)
10. Chromatics - Into The Black (Kill For Love)

Rookies:
Chromatics

TRT 37:39

Mux084: September 2011

Boxed.

1. Yacht - Utopia (Shangri-La)
2. Dom - Damn (Family of Love EP)
3. Fucked Up - The Other Shoe (David Comes To Life)
4. Black Lips - Dumpster Dive (Arabia Mountain)
5. Friendly Fires - Show Me Lights (Pala)
6. Metric - Satellite Mind (Fantasies)
7. Sleater-Kinney - The Drama You've Been Craving (Dig Me Out)
8. Sonic Youth - 'cross The Breeze (Daydream Nation)
9. Titus Andronicus - A Pot In Which To Piss (The Monitor)

While my love of The Monitor is well documented, my most-recent listen involved some phantom criterion that made "A Pot In Which To Piss" really stand out. For as much self-loathing there's packed into The Airing of Grievances and The Monitor, I found the song strangely uplifting at the time. If nothing else, I love the lyric, "And there's a white flag in my pocket never to be unfurled."

Mux083: Back To Cool

In the Box.

1. TV on the Radio - The Wrong Way
2. Iceage - White Rune
3. Titus Andronicus - Breed (Nirvana cover)
4. Black Lips - Family Tree
5. Tune-Yards - Powa
6. Burial - Stolen Dog
7. The National - Green Gloves
8. Broken Social Scene - Feel Good Lost
9. McLusky - Alan Is A Cowboy Killer
10. Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own

New for 2011:
Black Lips - Family Tree
Burial - Stolen Dog
Iceage - New Brigade
Titus Andronicus - Breed
Tune-Yards - Powa

Rookies:
Amy Winehouse
Iceage
McLusky

Mux082: August 2011

Gave this one a little room to breathe.

In the Dropbox.

1. Peter Bjorn and John - Tomorrow Has To Wait
2. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Heart In Your Heartbreak
3. Jay Reatard - Hammer I Miss You
4. Deerhunter - Primitive 3D (Edit)
5. Sleater-Kinney - One More Hour
6. Wilco - A Shot In The Arm
7. Fleet Foxes - Sim Sala Bim
8. Bon Iver - Holocene
9. Titus Andronicus - Upon Viewing Brueghel's "Landscape With The Fall of Icarus"
10. Yacht - Shangri-La
11. Washed Out - A Dedication

Rookies:
Washed Out

City Pages photographs me "introducing" Titus Andronicus

Yeah yeah, I plastered this all over Facebook and Twitter, but since this blog is archival, I figure it wouldn't hurt to toss this up here.

I'm also having no luck finding some random YouTube video of me delivering the fiery Lincoln quote that opens The Monitor and opened Titus' set. If anyone finds that, I will give you a prize.

Random: From two shoddy YouTube videos and some photos of the event, you can see that I raised the mic to accommodate a 6'4" man-giant and that, afterward, it was quite a bit too tall for bassist Julian (his bass neck sticking out of my hip) who, for a frame of reference, is the exact same height as Dan K, e.g. probably a little less than foot shorter than me.

Mux076: May 2011

Download or stream over at ye olde Dropbox.

1. The Arcade Fire - Month of May
2. Bibio - Take Off Your Shirt
3. Radiohead - Bodysnatchers
4. Titus Andronicus - Arms Against Atrophy
5. Peter Bjorn And John - May Seem Macabre
6. The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll
8. Bear In Heaven - You Do You
9. Spoon - The Ghost of You Lingers (Daytrotter Session)
10. TV on the Radio - Killer Crane

And yes, as soon as The Suburbs came out, I earmarked "Month of May" to lead off my May 2011 mux.

Note: If for some reason you're allergic to .m4as, I apologize. GarageBand kept exporting junk MP3s that effed up the intro to "Killer Crane." If for yet another reason you have an insatiable urge for an MP3, I can convert "Killer Crane" to AAC, bring it back into GB, then export as an MP3 just for you. But considering that I've gotten a total of zero (0) feedback on any mux (sans one person who liked my RIP Jay Reatard mix), I think I'll just listen to the crickets.

JDK's Favorite Music of 2010: Albums (Part 1)

Here we are at the year-end, and instead of living in a pleasant continuum of shifting seasons, we must make lists to mark one calendar day apart from the next. We must.

Statements like this are impossible to gauge, so I'll just say it: 2010 was a hell of a good year for music. We got great material from big acts and a lot of surprises from bands we had all but written off and some we'd never heard of. Yeah, yeah, some might say 2009 had better music, or 2011 will, or that 2004 hit some magical sweet spot. (It did for me, but it's more because I started attending a cool college with cool kids who listened to cool music.)

I'll just take the year from what it was. And, thus, since I hate assigning a number to something to say it's better (in a perfect world, it just means it's different), here are my four most-favorite albums of 2010.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Current play count: 28

I listened to The Airing of Grievances probably twice, and both were heard in that shitty stretch between the last toll stop and the clog and clutter of driving-to-Chicago traffic. In short: I wasn't playing close attention. It seemed weird enough that a New Jersey punk band was playing songs named after Brueghel paintings and Albert Camus, and then came the news that their second album would try to avoid the sophomore slump by loosely, conceptually being about the Civil War.

Right.

And then The Monitor came out, and we loved it, and that was that until I saw Titus Andronicus absolutely explode on stage at the 7th Street Entry early in the year. On my .doc file of shows I've seen, Titus at 7th St. is up there on that pedestal of "Best Show Ever."

Of course, trying to describe that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of seeing and hearing and experiencing something really awesome is fairly impossible. And this was before the festivals, the Fallon appearance, and the victory lap with Free Energy. Titus Andronicus was barely crowned Best New Music when they hit the road with every intention to open every night with the seven-minute "A More Perfect Union" and close it with the earth-shattering, fourteen-minute "The Battle of Hampton Roads." Punk fucking rock, right?

The album is obviously American. It's about the goddamn Civil War, if nothing else (and, beyond that, if only really about the War during between-song quotes). Beyond the lyrics - which aren't so much about North vs. South or Us vs. Them as Myself vs. Myself - it was like the band was trying to recapture a sort of real American patriotism that hasn't been around since pre-9/11 days. When I saw them at the Entry, frontman Patrick Stickles had a US flag tucked under his guitar strap, and one was draped over the front of the keyboard setup. Since then they've abandoned the flair, but it seemed all the more appropriate in that loveable little hole known as the 7th St. Entry.

And, of course, there's some phenomenal music in the collection. You can't rip into a set or a mixtape much better than the tape hiss and rising chord of the first 53 seconds of "A More Perfect Union" and the resulting explosion of Stickles spitting about the picked-over, blown-out New Jersey as a microcosm of the eroding United States. And then the song gets its first Boss reference out of the way and belts out a full-throated guitar solo at 1:45.

"Theme From 'Cheers'", front to back, is the best sing-along of the year. Never mind the "Rally 'round the flag!" off the first track, nor the genuine-in-a-it's-not-coming-from-fucking-Green-Day "The enemy is everywhere!" on "Titus Andronicus Forever" (reprised on "…And Ever"), but there's more shouting along than most records in recent memory. "No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future" has the delicious nihilism of "You will always be a loser!", "A Pot In Which To Piss" shouts "They will always be laughing at you!", and the warm-blanket comedown of "It's all right, the way that you live," on "To Old Friends And New."

That's far too much enthusiasm for a critique of music. But also check out my Titus Andronicus odyssey (featuring a special guest appearance by Craig Finn of The Hold Steady) which was easily the best concert-going experience of my life. (I only hold their 7th St. Entry show in higher regards because I didn't know they were so fantastic live.)

While this is supposed to be about looking back and not forward, it's not hard to see that Titus Andronicus has a pretty fantastic theoretical future. There's enough difference both lyrically and musically between Grievances and The Monitor to shroud the sound of their third record in mystery. And what about any sort of concept? Stickles certainly has enough angst for several LPs worth of self-deprication, self-pity, and self-loathing, but will it be framed? Like as thought by the first astronaut in transit to Mars? Whatever. It doesn't matter when it rocks this fucking hard.

The National - High Violet

Current play count: 40

It's fairly redundant, at this point, to say that High Violet is The National's third masterpiece in a row.

I don't dispute the claim. Alligator and Boxer are unfairly good. But, to me, the difference is a bit illusory. To the outside listener, sure, the limits of Berninger's croon and the increasingly-downtempo instrumentation might make all National listening sound like slowly applying more and more pressure to a turntable stylus, just making everything get slower and slower and--

But to me, it's fairly concrete. Interviews with the band have highlighted it. When it comes time to write, the Dessner brothers often come up with a "sketch," and sometimes that sketch is filled out with lyrics and drums and bass and, boom, you have yourself a National song. For me, it seems that a fair number of tracks off Alligator and Boxer never fully filled out, and thus remained "sketches." In the case of Boxer stuff, it seems like the drumming just never came together, and regarding Alligator, it's a little dashed off.

Fuck it, I'll list songs to hammer this point:

Alligator

"Baby, We'll Be Fine"

"Friends of Mine"

"City Middle"

Boxer

"Squalor Victoria"

"Start A War"

"Racing Like A Pro"

But with the case of High Violet, every single track is fully formed and complete and every bit as polished as everything that we've come to know as A Song By The National.

It seems, though, to come at a bit of a cost. High Violet doesn't have nearly as many highs as the prior two albums. That factor, though, is really what elevates "Bloodbuzz Ohio" to such epicness, as does "England." There's also the quality of each National album is that they're all obvious growers, and only on repeated listens do the intricacies of "Terrible Love," "Afraid of Everyone," "Lemonworld," and "Conversation 16" reveal themselves.

Calling High Violet the band's best record just by dint of its illusory "completeness" is disingenuous. It's a fantastic album because it's greater than the sum of its parts; because it's not just "Bloodbuzz Ohio," "England," and whatever other songs some random listener doesn't delete off their hard drive.

It's inevitable that I end these blurbs on a Where Do We Go From Here? note. It's easy for The National: the fire that burns slow burns much longer. That's ultimately what makes a track like "Terrible Love" suddenly explode on a tenth listen. These are songs made with a craftsmanship few bands can equal, and all those little parts eventually reveal themselves to whoever is wise enough to stick around.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Current play count: 17

Microcastle brought me into the Deerhunter fold. Prior to that, they just seemed some obnoxious band fronted by an obnoxious guy named Bradford Cox who took some obscene pleasure in blogging pictures of his feces and posting barely-legal male porn.

And Microcastle elevated the band to Band status, with Cox handing over some songwriting duties to second guitarist Lockett Pundt and bassist Josh Fauver. Whether or not the latter two's involvement caused the shift away from Cryptograms' uneasy mix of hazy shoegaze and droning instrumentals will be forever unknown (unless I just, you know, ask next time I see them), but Microcastle and its more-straight-ahead rock ("Nothing Ever Happened," "Saved By Old Times") and immaculate pop ("Agoraphobia," "Little Kids") seemed to signal a fundamental change in sound and accessibility.

But take grandiose Microcastle opener "Cover Me (Slowly)" and put it up against the hush of Halcyon Digest's starter "Earthquake." There's no 1:1 correlation there, and for my first few listens of Digest, I was looking for the big hooks that made Microcastle such a surprise hit (for me, at least). What I first thought was the band just turning things down a notch revealed itself as another side of their perpetual chameleon sound. Microcastle seems such a perfect Album as Album, whereas Halcyon Digest seemed to take a left turn every track change.

But because of sequencing or production or some secret X, Halycon Digest is its own discrete unit. Contrast that with a disparate Deerhunter release like the bonus Weird Era Cont. comp that spun out of control. Contrasts somehow creates unity, with the short, poppier numbers ("Revival," "Memory Boy," "Fountain Stairs") pressed up against breezy, airy, atmospheric pieces like opener "Earthquake," the one-take "Sailing," and the oblique this-is-a-Jay-Reatard-tribute?-you-sure? of "He Would Have Laughed."

A few listens in, you'll stop wondering where's the "Nothing Ever Happened" rock-out (well, it's really there in "Desire Lines") and come to grips with the hushed, room-to-breathe sound that characterises most of Halcyon Digest. And much like Titus Andronicus, the thrill of Deerhunter - beyond their hyper-prolific output - is that they're a young band unafraid to chart out new sonic territory. And also like supergroup Wolf Parade, it's astounding that all the individual members have their solo projects to chase their stray ideas, only to come back to a Deerhunter LP proper with a propulsive focus.

The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Current play count: 20

In my write-up for standout track "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)," I mentioned how The Suburbs, as a whole, seems a reactionary piece of music compared to Neon Bible. That is, Neon Bible took itself seriously to the point of pretention, far removed from the lonely musings of the band's debut Funeral.

The Suburbs skips the preaching of Neon Bible and gets back into the mindset of Funeral. But whereas Funeral was about discovering the haunted sheen on once-beloved childhood memories, The Suburbs is about having grown up and now "the kids" don't live in Neighborhoods anymore but the giant Suburb surrounding. It's not so much about the loss of innocence as is it in the assertion that there was never any innocence to begin with. It's about waking up at six and going to "punch the clock" and driving past "dead shopping malls" in the abandoned upkeep of suburbs, that oh-so-strange post-WWII living zone we haven't yet fully grasped.

At sixteen tracks, The Suburbs is almost twenty minutes longer than both Funeral and Neon Bible. There's some filler, sure - "Wasted Hours," "Deep Blue" - but beyond the standout "Sprawl II," there's a giant tie for the second-best song among title track "The Suburbs," the jaunty "Ready To Start," the wonderings of "City With No Children" and "Half Light II (No Celebration)," the halcyon "Suburban War," the rocker "Month of May," and the coiled "We Used To Wait."

It's odd that one of the Biggest Indie Rock Bands put out a record I best describe as "refreshing." I, like many others, was probably awaiting Neon Bible II, with the kind of pomposity of something like a U2 record, or Green Day's overreaching social commentary, or grade-school can't-we-all-just-get-along thematics like late-era Michael Jackson albums. Instead, The Arcade Fire, wisely, once again turned inward and subtly made us reconsider whether all this supposed Progress outside of cities is a liveable place or just sloppy, oppressed sprawl.

Next: Memorable albums worth a listen or two.

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.

Mux064: November 2010

Download or stream via drop.io.

And it may sound silly, but I dedicate this mux to the recent death of Twin Cities rapper Eyedea, who was far too young to pass. Usually my first-of-the-month muxes only have 2010 music, but I put "Smile" as the final track, off Eyedea and DJ Abilities' 2009 underrated record By The Throat. It seems fitting, given that pretty much every mix I've given to a "new" friend has had "Paradise" off E&A on it.

1. Male Bonding - Year's Not Long
2. The Walkmen - Angela Surf City
3. The Arcade Fire - Empty Room
4. Titus Andronicus - Richard II
5. Deerhunter - Fountain Stairs
6. The National - Sorrow
7. Future Islands - Swept Inside
8. The Thermals - Not Like Any Other Feeling
9. Cee-Lo - Fuck You, BPD
10. Health - Nice Girls (Little Loud Remix)
11. No Age - Chem Trails
12. Eyedea & Abilities - Smile

Making their mux debut:
Cee-Lo
Future Islands
Male Bonding

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.

JDK Radio 011: Titus Andronicus - No Future EP

I took some artistic liberties putting this together. I figure, if nothing else, no one has heard the first track unless they're an online crate-digger like me.

• JDK Radio 011 - Titus Andronicus: No Future EP

Tracks:

1. No Future Part One (Daytrotter Session)
2. No Future Part Two: The Days After No Future (off The Airing of Grievances)
3. No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future (off The Monitor)

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

Mux051: Springtime, Bitches

I think this is the longest gap in time I've gone without making a mux since when I started. But here it is. Some new, some old, some deep cuts. The usual.

I was also having a hell of a time trying to put a new Crystal Castles track on here, but that'll just have to wait for JDK Radio: Night 3.

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. Matt and Kim - Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare
2. The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
3. LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
4. Cut Copy - Unforgettable Season
5. Four Tet - As Serious As Your Life
6. Phantogram - When I'm Small
7. Rilo Kiley - Dreamworld
8. Fang Island - Welcome Wagon
9. Titus Andronicus - Theme From "Cheers"
10. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Gimme The Wire
11. Japandroids - Coma Complacency
12. Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot

Mux049: Back to Rock 2

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Titus Andronicus - A More Perfect Union
2. Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench
3. Jay Reatard - Night of Broken Glass
4. The Smashing Pumpkins - Siva
5. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Mourning In America
6. The Hold Steady - Party Pit
7. Pavement - Trigger Cut
8. Free Energy - Light Love
9. Surfer Blood - Fast Jabroni
10. Death - Politicians In My Eyes

The Year in Music: March 2010

Favorites of the year, thus far:


Beach House - Teen Dream


Four Tet - There Is Love In You


Free Energy - Stuck On Nothing


Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks


Hot Chip - One Life Stand


Liars - Sisterworld


Local Natives - Gorilla Manor


Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring


The Radio Dept. - Clinging To A Scheme


Rogue Wave - Permalight


Spoon - Transference


Surfer Blood - Astro Coast


Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks


Titus Andronicus - The Monitor