Totally disconnected thoughts on music, or Belated Mid-year Music Roundup, part two

I haven't listened to much new music this year, but I'm always listening. In my mid-year round-up, for which this amounts to the much belated and superfluous part 2, I neglected to mention what is far and away my new song of the year: Bill Callahan's cover of Kath Bloom's "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" (which was recorded for Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom). I admit that I'd never heard of Kath Bloom before this year, and still haven't heard her music, but if it's anything like the quality of Bill Callahan's version of her song, then it must be worth seeking out. (Though fans of the originals may be understandably bitter at Bloom's apparent obscurity, still that's no call for completely missing the boat on Callahan's cover--"adult alternative"? No. Just, no.)

Here, anyway, is Bill playing the song live (this clip first seen via Steve, who is also responsible for privately sending me the link to the studio version--thanks Steve!):

Ok, got the song of the year out of the way. Other thoughts:

Of the first four Talking Heads albums, which are the only four that matter, I remain convinced that Remain In Light is the fourth best. I prefer the more austere sound of the unaugmented group. For years I would have said Fear of Music was my favorite, but it may now be More Songs about Buildings and Food.

Outside of the sublime If I Could Only Fly, can anyone rep for late-period Merle Haggard? I have to think he has had a few more gems in the last couple of decades.

I don't listen to the radio much, but I want to say a few words about 96.5 FM out of Chincoteague, Virginia. Basically a rock station, but clearly its own thing. Dylan's "My Back Pages", some Zep, George Jones, some obscure Fleetwood Mac (or solo Lindsey?) alternate take of "Big Love"... the songs I didn't like were at least atypical: a Bryan Adams song that probably hasn't seen the light of day in years, that weird 4 Non Blondes hit, stuff like that. The point is that there didn't appear to be any discernible playlist, most of the commercials were local, actual public services were performed on air by people who sounded like they actually cared... All radio stations should be like this one, in spirit.

I went through another Beatles period recently, in part thanks to Marcello Carlin's superb blog, Then Play Long, in which he writes at length about every album to reach #1 in the UK since 1956. He's made The Sound of Music soundtrack sound fascinating, and the Monkees emerge as vastly more interesting than this listener ever gave them credit for being. But more impressively, he's managed to say something new and interesting about over-analyzed albums from the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan (the posts on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and John Wesley Harding are incredible--I think it's how he illuminates the music, where other writers are so often fixated on Dylan's lyrics). The Beatles in particular. I've loved all of his posts on Beatles albums, especially those on Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale. The one on Sgt. Pepper had me listening to that album for the first time in years, with much greater appreciation (if only because I was paying more attention). Great music writing.

We've inherited some children's music from a friend. Some of it I find I actually like (though I have to say that Raffi, bland and inoffensive as he is, is much more tolerable to simply listen to than to view--there's something weirdly creepy about that dude's eyes! But, hey, the kids all love him. It's a mystery. [Actually, it's not: he's respectful of them and he sings pleasant songs that they like to sing along to. I'm just being a critic.]) In particular, I'm fond of Donovan's Pied Piper album. We've already listened to this cd numerous times. Something tells me that Devendra Banhart spent a lot of time with it. (I can hear him singing "I Love My Shirt".)

Belated entry in the sad songs sweepstakes: "I Keep Holding Back the Tears" by the immortal Souled American.

Not enough is said about Jim O'Rourke's wonderful "Prelude to 110 or 220/Women of the World". (I hear he has a new record coming out, after a long hiatus.)

My favorite working male vocalist: Bill Callahan; female vocalist: Neko Case; group: Animal Collective. None of which will surprise regular readers.

I count myself fortunate to have caught Joe McPhee live more than once. Same with William Parker.

I was obsessed with Jane's Addiction back in the early 1990s. But then it turned out Perry Farrell was hard to take (and the less said about Dave Navarro the better) and Porno for Pyros was not my idea of a good time (given that they sucked). So the Jane's cds got sort of forgotten, lost in the big wall of cds. I loaded Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual onto the iPod not too long ago. Verdict: the former is a little less than I remember it being, a little too, well, "shocking", though I'm still a sucker for "Summertime Rolls"; the latter, however, really holds up well. A great, expansive, meandering rock album, which sounds fantastic (where Nothing's Shocking sounds like it was recorded through a cardboard tube). Even "Been Caught Stealing".

On a related note, of the so-called grunge bands that I was so into back in the early 90s, Soundgarden isn't holding up as well as, say, Pearl Jam, or Alice in Chains' Dirt (Nirvana, ironically, doesn't count as grunge). I still like much of Superunknown and "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" from Badmotorfinger, but man, the rest is rather nondescript.

For those of you who may have wondered, yes we are familiar with the singer-songwriter named Mirah. In fact, she is the original source for our daughter's name--not that she's named after her, or that we're huge fans or anything, but we were struggling with names, and hers popped into my head one night and we liked it. We are fans though, at least of C'mon Miracle (not sure yet about (A)Spera).

By the way, I only recently zeroed in on the lyrics to Mirah's song "Jerusalem", from C'mon Miracle. I think I may previously have been afraid to pay too much attention, but these are pretty good:

So now jerusalem, you know that it's not right
After all you've been through, you should know better than
To become the wicked ones almighty god once saved you from

I recently made a mix cd for a friend, on which I included "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" and "I Keep Holding Back the Tears", both mentioned above, but also "Beer & Kisses" by Amy Rigby. I'm working on another, on which I hope to include Rigby's "Down Side of Love". Does anyone listen to Amy Rigby? These songs are both off of her excellent Diary of a Mod Housewife from 1996. I remember it was very highly regarded that year, and I dutifully bought a copy. The narrative was that she'd been a rocker but then got married and had children and disappeared (she was apparently no Kristin Hersh), before coming back with this record (after a breakup, I think, and the record's lyrics seem to confirm the memory). But, as happens so often, even for one with a music habit as ridiculous as mine became, I never followed up with her, though I liked the cd very much. I know she's released music since then--does anyone have anything to say about her? Any other cds one should try?

I am too old for Death Cab for Cutie. I am too old for Arcade Fire. I am too old for the Rapture. I am too old for Interpol. I am too old for Arctic Monkeys. I am too old for Art Brut. I am probably too old for Broken Social Scene, though I admit I liked that You Forgot It In People record quite a bit (but I'm already not sure it's aged well, and I didn't like the self-titled one at all). (Some of you may notice that these have all been Pitchfork-approved indie bands du jour at one time or another. But: I am not too old for Deerhoof. I am not too old for Animal Collective. I am not too old for the Microphones/Mount Eerie [though I remain mystified by the over-the-top love for The Glow Pt. 2]). I am too old for emo. I am too old for metal (as much as I can appreciate, say, High on Fire and Mastodon, to name just two rather high profile and completely awesome metal bands, I cannot listen to them at the correct, necessary volume. My ears are too sensitive, too fragile, too damaged, too old. People listen to High on Fire through earbuds? A generation of deaf people!).

I mean to say, by the above, that it's one thing to listen to new music, it's one thing to follow musicians down new paths, keeping up with old favorites, but I wonder if there isn't something unseemly about the attempt at remaining up-to-date well into serious adulthood. I wonder if it's not part of what keeps us not young but infantile, or rather, distracted. It becomes consumerist frenzy, this need that must be filled (something like a manufactured consent, of sorts). I also wonder if it isn't convenient for me to come around to such an idea only since I've abandoned my own serious efforts at keeping up. Do I need to know what every hip band of 20 year-olds, however inventive, is up to this and every year? Should I? Am I wrong to call the whole process into question? How many records need to exist? How many can you listen to?

Mid-year Music Roundup, part one

Just past the mid-point of 2009, and what music have I been listening to? Well, I'm glad you asked. As advertized, my intake of new music has dwindled considerably, though this year there's a been a slight uptick over last year, still on the trade-in/store-credit regime.

In another entry I may touch on some of my other listening, but for this post, I'll briefly comment just on the four cds released this year that I have acquired:

Neko Case, Middle Cyclone: an excellent album, though I admit I haven't entered into a zone of obsession with it yet, as I did almost immediately with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood; whatever happens, it's always great listening to that wonderful voice. She can sing. Could do without "Marais la Nuit", the album-closing 30+ minute track of crickets chirping. It's fine once but I tend to skip over it. So far I haven't really zeroed in on most of the lyrics, but I do love this from "This Tornado Loves You": "I have waited with a glacier's patience..."

Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle: this got mostly rave reviews, with listeners seeming to think it's Bill's best record since Smog's Dongs of Sevotion (1999) or, possibly, Knock Knock (1998). For one thing, this view completely overlooks the classics Supper (2003) and A River Ain't Too Much to Love (2005), both of which are far better, in my opinion, than either of the earlier two (both of which, don't misunderstand, I like just fine, though at this late date the latter especially seems a bit over-produced). For another, I think it slightly overrates the new album. It is indeed better than his last album, the disappointing Woke on a Whaleheart, the first under his own name, though that's not saying much by itself (although I admit that I have a soft spot for that one, too, even if I recognize that it's easily his worst record since he started actually writing songs instead of playing with noise). That said, increasingly, I do like the new album. "Jim Cain" is great; "Eid Ma Clack Shaw", "The Wind and the Dove", and "Too Many Birds" are quite good; I'm coming around with repeated listens to "My Friend" and "All Thoughts are Prey to Some Beast"--at first I was thrown by his uncharacteristically emotive vocals in these two, but I believe I've gotten over it. "Rococo Zephyr" is pleasant enough, perhaps overly placid, yet it features this great line, my favorite on the record: "I used to be sorta blind, now I can sorta see." Throughout, the writing is stronger than on Whaleheart, the production is less cluttered and random, and Bill's singing is fascinating as ever, so there is much to recommend it, even if it doesn't reach the consistent heights of his masterpiece Red Apple Falls (1997) or the two mid-decade titles mentioned above. By far the worst track is the finale, "Faith/Void", which I'm afraid is simply an awful song. With the repeated line about it being "time to put God away", it sounds like a song that could have been commissioned by Richard Dawkins. I don't object to the sentiment per se (except that I've always liked how Bill has seemed able to tap into some kind of mystery), except that's all it seems like. The main problem with it is that it's utterly boring, and goes on for nearly ten minutes. I've given it several chances, but ugh.

Sonic Youth, The Eternal: well, yes. After all that, yes. What can I say. It fucking rocks. It's better than "Rather Ripped", about on par with (the excellent) Sonic Nurse or Murrary Street, much better than career nadirs Experimental Jet Set & No Star or Dirty (yes, I said it; Dirty is far and away the most overrated album in Sonic Youth's catalog--Woebot was right [link re-found via Matthew Ingram's own contribution to the SY kerfuffle, in which he backs off of his earlier Woebot-era bash a bit], in retrospect this is where they seemed to lose the thread, and they bottomed out with Experimental Jet Set; in my view they re-found it, beginning, tentatively, with Washing Machine, but it took a while), and naturally not the groundbreaker of EVOL, Sister, or Daydream Nation, or the consolidation of Goo. Full of Sonic Youthiness.

Animal Collective, Meriweather Post Pavilion: It has to be said: this is not Animal Collective's best album, though everyone seems to think it is. It's very good, yes, yes, very good, don't get me wrong. But it disturbs me that this happens with every artist. The best album is always the most accessible. Even fans too often get caught up in the idea that a band's rough edges, disturbing tendencies, whatever might be unassimilable, must be ironed out in order for maturity or growth or whatever to occur. I'm sure Animal Collective are just doing what they want, and what they're doing is still pretty damn good, but those rough edges--the screaming, the meandering, the indulgences--were part of what had made them awesome.

Love is an object kept in an empty box

Scattered thoughts, ill-formed perhaps (perhaps?). . . questions I will probably explore further. Or not. Depending.

Is there a way in which the inability to read—the need for useful texts (information) on the one hand, and the ongoing valorization of mediocrity on the other—is a symptom of the decline of symbolic language? That is, if many of us do not have sufficient experience with once commonly known texts, commonly known narratives, once common ways of storytelling, if we have been failed by education (which we have), if we lack . . . a storehouse of both information and varieties of modes of representation . . . how is art possible, in this sense, beyond just being the plaything of a shrinking minority? If the history of Western literature is built on the Bible and the Greek and Roman classics, and I am needing to play extreme catch up in my late-30s, with time necessarily running out, where does that leave me? (Leaving questions of despair aside, for the most part. And especially if, heaven forbid, I should feel the urge to "blog the classics".)

To the extent that a literature is a lived tradition of a people, is such a thing doomed without a common repository of symbolic language? Or a common repository of much of anything. And is such a thing perhaps already dead, with narrative taking place only in that place of solitude, where the reader finds the text? And if we all have our various tastes, so that few of us can draw on the same body of literature, what then?

"Art for Art's sake": what does this phrase really mean? For me, it's meant simply that the artist should not be constrained to producing art that is "on message"--political, religious, etc. But what does that mean? The artist is at his or her best when he or she--does what? For some, it seems, "art" can only happen when "messages" do not intrude. Or, from the other direction, the reader is not attending to aesthetics if he or she discerns an idea in the text. Is this true? How is it that ideas are not wrapped up in aesthetics? Though I admit to being somewhat at sea on the questions of aesthetics. What are they, really? I know this seems like a silly question, but it seems to me that people talk about it all the time without making it clear that they know what they're talking about. How is it that aesthetics is separate from other aspects of a work? (As is so often the case, the dictionary is of no use, and other reference works leave me feeling that I need to read, and have already read, the whole of philosophy before I may even take on these questions. Which is absurd. And yet. A minimum degree of erudition seems a necessary pre-requisite for so much, which too often keeps it at arm's length.)

If we can agree that much of the great art of the past was religiously motivated, why is it now so difficult for us to believe/accept that great art can be politically motivated? Perhaps motivated is the wrong word. Inspired. Is that better? Or, maybe I mean this: why is it so difficult for us to see value in the content (with the understanding that I do not see content as separate from form), so to speak, of religious literary art? Is it simply because we might reject the underlying religion itself? Is that it? Isn't that simplistic?

The idea that art should stand alone, seeming virtually outside of the society from which it arises (for it is not allowed to "comment on" that society and remain art, though I over-simplify, to be sure), is this not a privileged idea? I am being unclear. That is, our extreme antipathy towards anything that might smell like the "political" in art, isn't this a symptom of capitalism? Isn't it a privileged position to take? If one of the features of white privilege--that privilege that comes from being a member of the dominant group in the capitalist system--if one of the features of this is that we are able to so often not notice the lives of others who are not like "us", that we are able to live as if the way we live our lives is both "natural" and the baseline norm, so that everything else appears to us as deviations from this norm, how does this impact our attitudes towards art? If anything that argues against this privilege (or points it out) is "political", whereas anything that emanates from this privileged position is merely "the way things are", where does that leave literature? Also: is it any wonder, given such circumstances, that the bourgeois novel, the novel of smooth surfaces, in which a view of a coherent world is presented, that this should be the dominant literary mode? (I note, incidentally, that the contemporary novels that come to me from, say, Latin America, or Eastern Europe, are generally more interesting. Though there is selection, of course. Including the decisions as to what gets translated and published, as well as my own particular literary interests. But still.)

(In the second sentence of the above paragraph, I say "our"--I instinctively share this antipathy, though somehow I don't see how it can be maintained, if we consider the fullness of politics, if we consider both art and politics as of a society, and if I am to be serious. I have no trouble believing that a writer can be driven to write, to make a piece of literary art, from a site of political, let us say, anger, or indignation, or something. A spark. Though there must be something in that spark, I would think, enabling the writer to attend to the writing. And the writer, above all, must attend to the writing. At the same time, I wonder how one who, say, writes a novel for the purpose of ending the war, or enacting a policy, can expect that goal to be effected through the writing of that novel. If only because so few people are likely to read any one given novel or story. And it strikes me that this is the sort of situation, perhaps fairly, perhaps not, in which we assume that the writer will not have attended to the writing, as writing, to its formal problems. It also strikes me that I may be contradicting myself and writing myself into a corner.)

Isn't it true that, in the experience of art, we often understand things--things in real life--better than if they had simply been stated, say in an essay or political program? Why does this kind of thing bother certain critics? Though such understanding is not necessarily explicit, nor does it necessarily stay in one place, ready for us to articulate in simple, plain language. It flits by.

Lately I’ve been listening obsessively to Smog's great Supper album. "Truth Serum" features question/response portions between our man Bill Callahan and guest singer Sarabeth Tucek. At one point she asks, "What is love?" and he answers, "Love is an object, kept in an empty box". Love is an object kept in an empty box. I think when I first heard this line, I thought it was merely clever, then over time I looked on it as an interesting riddle. Now, I hear it as something deeper. I hear it as speaking to the questions we ask about art as well as about life. What is an experience? How do we describe it? What is our experience and understanding of art? Presumably it helps us in our experience and understanding of life. Does it not? Or is it merely something pleasant or diverting to pass the time? And if the latter, why then does it matter so much? (It will be seen that I do not hold the latter position.)

How do I reconcile some of the above comments/assertions with the bare fact that I approach the literary work--that I create that work, in concert with the absent author--in a place of solitude? Can I? Do I need to?

Listening Year 2007

How do I explain my utter indifference to Radiohead's In Rainbows, which everyone seems to think is awesome? It's true that I generally don't care for their previous album, Hail to the Thief. But still, Amnesiac is the album prior to that, and I'm always saying that it's their best (which it clearly is). So why the lack of interest? A few reasons, I think. First, I was unimpressed by the whole pay-what-you-like download gambit. I mean good for them and everything, but I had a hard time getting worked up over it as this great revolutionary act. Besides, I still don't like downloading albums. Second, as reported earlier, my relationship towards music has changed, I think irrevocably. I no longer care much about keeping up with new music. I still occasionally feel that tug of curiosity when I read about this or that record, but rarely enough of one to pursue much further. This doesn't mean no more new records, but it does mean I'm being a lot more parsimonious with my music funds. (And for the time being, it still means that what I can't get with trade-in funds, I can't get.) Third, and this time more specific to Radiohead, though still not much of an explanation: I don't know, somehow I just don't care. There was something about the nature of the transition from Amnesiac to Hail to the Thief that has made this listener lose almost total interest in new Radiohead music.

So, at least for now, no In Rainbows.

However, even without new Radiohead, I did have a pretty good listening year in 2007. In line with the second point above, and as expected, there was no end-of-year best-of music post here at The Existence Machine, but here is some of the music I spent a lot of time with:

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It took a couple of listens for me to warm to it, but over the course of dozens of listens since, this has become one of my favorite albums, period. I love every moment of it. Even after excessive exposure, it still seems to me to be somewhat mysterious. I'd love to say a lot more about it, but words are failing me. It's great, that's all. I'd never paid any attention to Neko Case before now, but I expect to be looking into her back catalog.

Bill Callahan - Woke on a Whaleheart. This is not the essential album that certain Smog releases are (Red Apple Falls, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, Wild Love, The Doctor Came At Dawn, Dongs of Sevotion), and on the first few listens, I didn't find much to like at all. But I kept coming back to it. If I was listening to it, I was listening to it obsessively, every day, possibly a few times a day, for several days on end. There's something about it that is both awkward and compulsively listenable. Overall, it doesn't seem to me that Callahan's lyrics are as memorable or as interesting as usual, but his rich baritone is always a pleasure, and the music has an easygoing yet still prickly atmosphere. It could be likened to classic rock, and yet I'm not sure what specific classic rock I could fruitfully compare it to. The opening track, "From the Rivers to the Ocean", probably the best song on the album, does have some lines I like: "Have faith in wordless knowledge"; "I could tell you about the river/or/we could just get in"; "And it's hard to explain what I was doin' or thinkin' before you". I'd say that "The Wheel" has a real hootenanny flavor, except that I've never experienced a hootenanny. But it feels communal and joyous, and I like how he speaks each line before he sings it. Other songs are loose and casual, inviting but not at the level of great Smog songs of the past. This is the kind of minor catalog album that reminds me of an artist's greatness. (Though if Callahan settled into a groove releasing only this kind of thing, I think I'd lose interest.)

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand. I was surprised as hell when I heard about this collaboration. Then I read about it in detail in The New York Times, and I was convinced I would buy it. I love Led Zeppelin, of course, and Plant's solo career has been pretty damn good, all things considered. But as he's gotten older, Plant's voice has become much better suited to mellower fare than to trying to belt out something like "Black Dog" like he's 25. I'm thinking of something like "29 Palms", my favorite song on the uneven Fate of Nations album. Here, he sounds great singing rockabilly and country rock, and he and and the excellent Krauss mesh very well together. My only complaint about it is that T-Bone Burnett's production sort of smoothes out some of the edges, which can create something of a somnolent effect on this listener. But this is a real treat.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch/Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam. I preferred Person Pitch to the group's Strawberry Jam. The latter has seemed at times overly shiny, and though I've liked each phase of the group's development, with each release Animal Collective gets further and further away from something elusive that drew me to them. For some, Feels was a sign that the group had fashioned an "indie rock" version of their sound. I wasn't concerned; I love Feels (again, I can listen to the gorgeous "Banshee Beat" all day long, and sometimes do). But Strawberry Jam is perhaps evidence that they've settled into that polished version of their previous selves a little too comfortably. Don't misunderstand: Strawberry Jam is quite good, and I'm liking it more the more I listen to it, but if you listen to the fragile Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished or the utterly strange and marvelous Here Comes the Indian maybe what I'm saying will start to make sense. . . I don't know, maybe not. Person Pitch, on the other hand, is glorious and significant evidence by itself that the collective still has a lot of excellent music to offer. (To be fair, Strawberry Jam isn't really evidence that they don't.)

The Necks. My favorite "new" band. Naturally, they've been around for more than a decade and have several recordings, all available (or not) as expensive imports. Awesome. Just what I need in my life these days. Anyway, Chemist was my second favorite album from 2006. It has three tracks, each about 20 minutes long. It comes up on iTunes as "jazz" and you could call it that, but somehow that seems not quite right. It's minimal at times, improvisational. They elaborate on themes, creating wondrously beautiful trance effects out of simple elements: bass, drums, piano, maybe some guitar, some electronics. I love it. When we visited California in April of last year, I looked for their other albums at Aquarius in San Francisco. I found several, all fairly expensive, as CDs go; most of them featuring one hour-long track. I ended up walking out with two: Hanging Gardens and The Boys. The latter, a soundtrack to a film by that name, features shorter tracks, none over eleven minutes. I chose it just for that reason. Now I wish I hadn't--not because I don't like it, but because Hanging Gardens convinces me that the Necks need more room in which to operate. It's a single hour-long track, and it's simply wonderful. Now I am coveting all those albums I left behind, especially Aether, and I also have my eyes on the four-cd (and priced accordingly), four-track Athenaeum, Homebush, Quay & Raab. Plus, apparently there was a new live album released in 2007 that I missed, called Townsville.

Those were the main high points of my year in music. LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver has like three or four great songs, and I listened to those songs a lot. As ever, I spend a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan, the Mountain Goats, Sonic Youth, the Rolling Stones, and loads of other records that now escape me. A lot of time enjoying the virtual radio of my iPod on shuffle. And that's about it.

new music

I've mentioned more than once that I've been getting rid of music, and also that I haven't been acquiring a lot of new music. I have managed to get some cds with store credits from my trade-ins, only a few of which are 2007 releases (unlike last year, there is not likely to be a year-end best-of post here).

This is the entire list of 2007 albums that I have (those marked * were acquired with store credit):

*Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam (only a few listens, pretty good)

Bowerbirds - Hymns for a Dark Horse (bought at the Mountain Goats show where they opened; the album is quite nice, if a little samey)

Bill Callahan - Woke on a Whaleheart (had a hard time with this at first, then it was growing on me, but it's been months since I last played it and I can't really say what I think of it now)

Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity (still resisting me; not nearly so good as Reveille or Apple O')

*Feist - The Reminder (pretty; finding it alternately boring and excellent, depending on my mood)

Jesu - Conqueror (very good; expands on the awesomeness of last year's Silver ep)

Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (awesome)

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (mostly excellent; I've praised "All My Friends", but "Us V Them" is also fantastic, as is "North American Scum", about which, incidentally, see this great Mike Barthel post at Clap Clap)

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (haven't warmed to it yet, but Scraps says it's great, so I should probably make more of an effort, considering Modest Mouse has been close to my favorite rock band in recent years)

Panda Bear - Person Pitch (months later, still my record of the year)

*Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (sounds like a good Spoon album, which isn't a bad thing)

Vibracathedral Orchestra - Wisdom Thunderbolt (very good; quality drone music)

iPod rundown - 10/11/07

1. Van Dyke Parks - "All Golden": It was inevitable that I would have Van Dyke Parks represented somewhere in my collection, given my musical interests (gushing praise from Davids Thomas and Grubbs being my specific point of entry, not so much the Brian Wilson connection). I have Song Cycle, which I believe is the best known record. Dunno. I probably have yet to give it the time it deserves, but it doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Strikes me as carnivalesque, corny.

2. (Smog) - "Natural Decline": A good, slow one from the underrated Rain on Lens. The lines that I caught from the end:

The mind is always working
Out ways to see
The things I shouldn't see
And have the things I shouldn't have
I see the night sky as a jewelry store window
And my mind is half a brick

3. Blaine L. Reininger - "Crash": Instrumental, from an album called Night Air. I must've downloaded it, though I have no idea where from. . . it's not bad, sounding perfectly ok in the middle of everything else. Don't know anything about the artist.

4. Pere Ubu - "Rhapsody in Pink": From Art of Walking. Possibly the least good Pere Ubu album, but still not without interest (actually, the later Worlds In Collision and Story of My Life are probably more likely candidates for least good Ubu albums--I honestly routinely forget that those two even exist, which is not a good sign for such a consistently compelling band). This track is a little demented: David Thomas warbling about being "a big pink ball at the bottom of the sea" where "all the fish came and looked at me" over repeated piano figure, slowly strummed guitar (Mayo Thompson) buried in the mix, gurgling and swirling sound effects. . .

5. Kristin Hersh - "San Francisco": Sky Motel, 1999, right in the middle of my full-blown obsession with all things Hersh. But have I gone off Hersh? I don't know. Probably not, but I haven't wanted to listen to her solo music in a while; haven't even bought the new one yet. The album seemed to fade from my memory pretty quickly. Hersh's voice is processed on this song, which you don't usually hear. The song is pleasant, short, drifts by…. Difficult to nail down.

6. Lou Reed - "The Blue Mask": I love the Velvet Underground, but oddly, I haven't paid much attention to Reed's solo albums. I think I bought The Blue Mask a few years ago, primarily because I'd been reading about guitarist Robert Quine. The song is harder-edged than most of the solo Reed I've heard, which again is surprisingly little (and I've not ever listened to Metal Machine Music).

7. Les Savy Fav - "Obsessed with the Excess": This is one of the singles from the Inches collection. I'm always reading that Les Savy Fav are one of those bands that you simply must catch live, that their live show is so amazing, so energetic, so insane, that their records don't do them any justice. Maybe. As it is, some of their albums have seemed sort of stiff (such as Go Forth), but then the songs collected here never did. Even so, I'm not likely to see them live at this point (are they even still around?). This song is representive enough of their raucous post-Fugazi sound (which is really the best you're going to get from me, sorry).

8. The Beta Band - "Inner Meet Me": The Three EPs was one of the first cds that Pitchfork clued me onto, back when the site was more attitude and enthusiasm than actual good music writing (with exceptions), but took itself less seriously. It's a good cd, though it's faded in my estimation over the years. Sort of Beatley classic rock stuff mixed with electronica and dance. This song achieves that incantation-like effect that a lot of their best songs do, where midway through it feels as if the song has been going on for hours and could continue for hours more, but you don't mind.

9. Basehead - "Shouldna Dunnit": Another mellow, loping, and extremely short track from Not In Kansas Anymore, but this one at least has rapping on it.

10. Califone - "Bottles and Bones (Shades and Sympathy)": I rather like Califone. Steeped in the blues (pleasing the classic rock fan in me), and with an experimental bent that gets them labeled "post-rock". Sort of a kitchen-sink, Captain Beefheart aesthetic (without the good Captain's Howlin' Wolf kind of voice). This track is fairly typical and appears on Roomsound.

11. Charalambides - "Magnolia": Unknown Spin. Damn, the shuffle loves this band. . . their early stuff (heard by me on the Our Bed Is Green reissue) was more compressed--bluesy stabs of guitar and organ. Here the guitar lines are longer, more angular, as they wind around each other (it sounds like two guitars). Just shy of the four minute mark, Christina Carter's (Wikipedia tells me she is now known as Christina Madonia) wordless vocals come in, snaking along, in and around the guitars, for the rest of the track's 9+ minutes. . . Quite nice.

12. McLusky - "She Will Only Bring You Happiness": Mclusky was a somewhat short-lived, deeply silly, kick-ass no-frills rock band from Cardiff. The song is from The Difference Between You and Me Is That I'm Not on Fire, is very catchy, features lyrics like "Note to invading aliens, avoid this town, like this town avoided us", and is notable for its closing "Our old singer is a sex criminal" round. Classy.

13. Latin Playboys - "New Zandu": I like Los Lobos just fine, but I don't think I enjoy any one of their albums as much as I do the first Latin Playboys cd. A side project with producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake. I recently read a complaint that the album sounds more like song fragments than fully fleshed-out songs. I don't mind.

14. David Thomas & the Pedestrians - "Confuse Did": The Sound of Sand and Other Songs of the Pedestrians. Wow. I know I have a lot of David Thomas on this thing, but this is ridiculous. Richard Thompson played guitar on this album.

15. Paul Bley - "Seven": Homage to Carla. I've talked about Bley before and his amazing ability to create spontaneous melodies on the fly. Of course, here he's interpreting a Carla Bley song, so it's not quite on evidence; I am otherwise unfamiliar with it. All I can say is that Bley's performance is beautiful.

iPod rundown - 09/27/07

I haven't done one of these in a while, in part because I'd sort of painted myself into a corner with the length of my writeups and didn't have the time for that. So I expect these to be shorter, but, hey, maybe that means they'll happen more often. The self-imposed rules: note the first fifteen songs that come up when I listen to my iPod on shuffle at work in the morning; write about them. I've settled on Thursdays as the day of the week to do this.

1. Mr. Lif - "Collapse": So-called underground, "indie" rapper (or, groan, "undie"). Def Jux. Given my former tendency to assume that the mainstream--in any genre--was not worth paying any attention to at all, I had had high hopes for the Def Jux crew, but I've been generally disappointed. Mr. Lif is no exception. Some of his songs are pretty cool, but I tend to be put off by the timbre of his voice. This one gets better as it goes along.

2. DJ Spooky - "Variation Cybernetique: Rhythmic Pataphysic": How's that for a song title? I first heard of Spooky around the time DJ Shadow was getting big. I bought a random cd of his expecting it to be something like the noisy, hip-hop-ish Riddim Warfare, but it ended up being more of a musique concrète urban soundscape sort of thing. It wasn't what I was looking for at the time, and I eventually got rid of it (I don't remember the title). Later, he did Optometry as part of the Matthew Shipp-curated Blue Series on Thirsty Ear, with contributions from Shipp, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Joe McPhee, and numerous others. I've been up and down about this album (it was on the chopping block last year), but it has enough on it of interest for me to keep. This short track features Daniel Bernard Roumain on violin and is nice and shimmery.

3. The Unicorns - "Ghost Mountain": I loved Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? Loved the ramshackle, half-formed pop songs, the crunchy guitar sound and largely non-sensical lyrics, the sense the songs gave that they were barely holding together. Listened to it incessantly for about a year, not much in the last couple. They seem to be obsessed with ghosts.

4. Scott Walker - "Cockfighter": Very dramatic. I still need to spend some quality time with the two Walker cds I have, and work is oddly not the best place for that kind of thing. This song is interesting--begins with some metallic percussion before settling into its groove--but drifts by without my really being able to get a handle on it. From Tilt.

5. The Flatlanders - "The Stars in my life": More a Legend Than a Band is one of my favorite albums of all time. Great country music.

6. Liz Phair - "Help Me Mary": Exile in Guyville is really the only Liz Phair album I like, and even it I don't like that much. I've always thought it was good, not great, but with a few fantastic songs (like "Divorce Song"). This one's ok. I've always thought it was sort of creepy how obsessed certain male listeners were with Phair, given the sexually explicit lyrics, and I'd tended to think that her popularity was mainly with that crowd (boy wannabe critics). But that was before I met Aimée and saw how much she and her girlfriends (who are all six or seven years younger than I am) love Phair and especially Exile in Guyville. (Incidentally, I have no opinion on the controversial self-titled cd; since I'd already lost interest by the time it came out, I never bothered to listen to it, though I was a little curious when I became aware that it had serious defenders in the "poptimist" crowd.)

7. Mandy Barnett - "Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings": I bought Barnett's I've Got a Right to Cry cd several years ago, partly because she has a pretty voice and sounds like Patsy Cline. The album is not bad, but not thrilling. Not really in line with mainstream country, which is usually fine by me. Never got a lot of play. I've given it to my father as part of the purge.

8. The Mountain Goats - "You or Your Memory": The first track on The Sunset Tree. I love the Mountain Goats, of course, but I did not immediately like this song. It's grown on me.

9. Pixies - "Rock Music": I never feel like listening to a Pixies album anymore, but damn their songs sound good when they come up like this, like the great pop songs they are. From Bossanova.

10. Neutral Milk Hotel - "Untitled": This is an instrumental version of one of the main themes, I think, from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I've never been able to hear what it is that makes everyone go apeshit over them. Can anyone explain to me why I should care?

11. Wayne Shorter - "Chief Crazy Horse": I've been enjoying listening to a lot of Shorter's music lately--I have a clutch of the Blue Notes. This is from Adam's Apple; I think my favorites are Etc. and The All Seeing Eye.

12. Sly & the Family Stone - "Dance to the Music": There's no doubting the historical importance of this group, but I've never been able to love them. All I have is the single-disc Anthology. It's interesting: when it comes to rock or pop from the 1960s or 1970s, I tend to have full albums and discographies from white artists, and compilations from black artists. I should probably explore the reasons for that. It makes me more than a little uncomfortable. No doubt there are several complex socio-cultural underlying reasons.

13. Basehead - "Hoes on Tour Deal Drie": Not in Kansas Anymore. One of those super-short (36 seconds) between song bridges. I inherited this rap album from a friend who was getting rid of a lot of stuff before leaving the country. It's pretty good; has a loping, drugged out feel.

14. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys - "Planet of Fools": I think David Thomas' albums with Two Pale Boys have been a lot more interesting than the recent Pere Ubu releases. This is from Erehwon and features the group's standard accordian/guitar/trumpet instrumentation.

15. Pet Shop Boys - "It's Alright": There are, what?, eighteen songs on Discography, and I have more than 11,000 songs on my iPod, and yet the Pet Shop Boys keep coming up on these things. Typically chilly disco, not bad, not great.


Bonus rundown from last week (so much for shorter, eh?):

1. Jackie-O Motherfucker - "777 (Tombstone Massive)": I'd like to be able to describe this song, probably the best track on Change, but I don't think I can, not without spending a lot of time listening to it over and over (which I'm not against, but it won't happen just for this post). JOMF seem to be able to organically combine most of my musical interests in one place: blues, Appalachian folk, skronky free jazz, electronics, drone, and post-rock come together in a glorious clamor. Change is not as good as Fig. 5 or Liberation, but it's still pretty damn good. Slightly more conventional, heavier on the blues.

2. Mission of Burma - "That's When I Reach for my Revolver": Perhaps the best known Mission of Burma song. I love the group, but this song does not excite me. Is it wrong that I heard the Moby version first?

3. James Brown - "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag": What, I'm supposed to have something original to say about this song? It's always been one of my favorites of Brown's singles from the 1960s.

4. Jack Rose - "Black Pearls": Rose is in the group Pelt, which draws heavily from folk and raga, often in the service of the drone. This is virtuosic solo acoustic guitar from Two Originals...

5. Nick Drake - "From the Morning": Pleasant. Pink Moon.

6. Pixies - "All over the World": Another one from Bossanova.

7. Michaela Melian "Brautlied [edit]": A song from one of those Wire magazine comps. Bells, chugging strings; don't know much about it, but I like it.

8. Gastr del Sol - "Thos. Dudley Ah! Old Must Dye": Crookt, Crackt, or Fly. Prickly acoustic guitar fragment with David Grubb's customary crisp, clear, if not mannered vocals, and sound effects. One of my favorite groups.

9. Chris Bell - "You and Your Sister": Bell was in Big Star. I have this song from one of those Oxford American samplers. A nice enough pop ballad.

10. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys - "Numbers Man": More Thomas and Two Pale Boys, this time from 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man's Chest; harder rocking than most of this group's music.

11. Pixies - "Where is my Mind?": Again with the Pixies. Surfer Rosa.

12. Supersilent - "5.2": Glacial. Lovely.

13. Smog - "Everything You Touch Becomes a Crutch": From the great, early album, The Doctor Came at Dawn. The song is short, with acoustic guitar and piano backing. That can be said about many Smog songs, so it basically tells you nothing; sorry about that.

14. Dntel - "Last Songs": Electronic pop. I bought Life is Full of Possibilities because I'd been listening to Death Cab For Cutie a lot and front-band Ben Gibbard's appearance on the album was hyped. By now, a few years on, I have very little interest in the increasingly boring Death Cab (I've discarded most of what I had), didn't even really like that Postal Service record that everyone loved (I've grown to hate Gibbard's voice), but this album gets better and better.

15. Spontaneous Music Ensemble - "Oliv 1": I bought the classic Karyobin while on a trip in London (actually at a Derek Bailey gig in Stoke Newington). I like this (1969) incarnation of the group better. This track is long (19 minutes), with a folky vibe that I find appealing. I downloaded the song from Destination: OUT. Of all the records they've showcased on their site, this is among the handful of albums I'd most like to track down.

iPod rundown - 05/10/07

1. Animal Collective - "Tell it to the Mountain": From the reissued live Hollindagain. Animal Collective are great live, but this track barely captures their chaotic glory. An electronic tone throughout much of it, alongside a sustained more or less wordless vocal is overtaken by some ecstatic, messy, sort of tribal drumming. That's about it.

2. Billy Holiday - "You Turned the Tables on Me": I listen to very little jazz vocal. I tend to prefer Holiday to a singer like Ella Fitzgerald, though many of her songs seem to end on the same note, as she dramatically delivers the final words, which I do find a little off-putting. This lovely song is on Solitude. At our wedding, our first dance was to Holiday's version of "Love is Here to Stay".

3. Arthur Russell - "Let's Go Swimming (Walter Gibbons mix): Like a lot of people, I suspect, I only heard of Russell in the last few years; curious (and unduly obsessed with filling in the gaps of post-punk), I bought the Soul Jazz comp The World of Arthur Russell, which focuses on his disco-related music. I do like his take on disco, but that has not translated into great reverence. Russell's thin and distant vocal was initially off-putting for me, but not too much so. The percussion is great.

4. Feist - "Lonely Lonely": People are raving about Feist's new album, The Reminder (though I have seen rumblings that it represents the adult-contemporification of indie rock). I haven't heard it. This is off her last album, Let it Die, which I bought because we love her cover of the Bee Gees song, "Inside and Out", that appears on it. The album itself is pleasant enough, though I haven't listened to it closely. "Lonely Lonely" is a good one, sounds like a fresh take on a singer-singwriter sound.

5. Wire - "Marooned": Chairs Missing is great of course.

6. Bardo Pond - "Ganges": I often forget about Bardo Pond, but I always enjoy when one of their songs comes on. This 11-minute instrumental begins with alternating channels of psychedelic electric guitar, which fades after less than a minute. The track settles into a slow, mellow fuzz groove; about seven minutes in, drums and guitar get progressively busier above it, before settling down toward the end of the track. Great music to work to. Dilate is the album.

7. Smog - "Cold Blooded Old Times": One of the best songs on Knock Knock. An insistent rock guitar and nice piano, which ends in a great squall of guitar and piano noise. Some lyrics: "the type of memories that turn your bones to glass" and "in this way they gave you clarity, a cold-blooded clarity". I still haven't been able to pick up the new Bill Callahan record.

8. The Jayhawks - "I'd Run Away": For a while, I thought I was interested in keeping up with various stripes of alt-country bands (this didn't last very long; most of them are pretty boring--cf. The Old 97s). One of my favorite such records is Tomorrow the Green Grass, which includes this song. A lot of what I loved about the record was Mark Olson's vocals, and he left the band after this album. So I lost interest, though I know people who swear by the follow-up, Sound of Lies.

9. Outkast - "Liberation": Damn this is a beautiful song. Why do I feel like I've never heard it before? I've had Aquemini for years (since it came out in 1998, I'm sure). At more than 8 minutes, this is one of the longer rap songs I'm aware of. Just drums, piano, bass. I should probably listen to this cd more often.

10. The Vandermark 5 - "Cruz Campo (For Gerhard Richter)": Airports for Light was produced by Bob Weston of Shellac and, of late, Mission of Burma, and it sounds great. This is solid, workmanlike modern jazz, in the traditions of free bop and free jazz. I saw the group play in Chicago at the Empty Bottle (also in the audience: Peter Brotzmann! Joe McPhee!).

11. The Notorious B.I.G. - "Respect": There's a reason Ready to Die is considered a classic. I still don't have much intelligent to say about rap.
12. Miles Davis Quintet - "You're My Everything": The first great quintet, with Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Jo Jones. This stuff is pretty much the dictionary definition of jazz for me, so it's hard to imagine that there were those who reacted negatively to it at the time. This comes from Relaxin' with Miles.

13. Pixies - "Planet of Sound": I've been sort of bored by the Pixies lately. Or, bored by the idea of them, bored by their position as indie rock gods. But a song like "Planet of Sound" comes on, and well. I've tended to favor the raw, bare-bones, Albini-recorded Surfer Rosa and not given enough attention to the last Pixies album, Trompe le Monde, which gives us this song. It's hard to say why; I'm always surprised by how great it is. There's a lot going on in these songs.

14. Mia Doi Todd - "88 Ways": I'd never heard of Mia Doi Todd before John Darnielle raved about her most recent cd, Manzanita, when it was released a couple of years ago. I bought that album and the earlier, major-label album The Golden State, which includes "88 Ways". I love Todd's voice. Manzanita is beautiful, and its spare production is much more to my liking than is Mitchell Froom's overly busy production on The Golden State. Still, the latter is a good album nonetheless.

15. Belly - "Super-Connected": This is a pretty basic, engaging rock song from the second Belly cd, King. Tanya Donelly's Belly had some good songs, but they were nothing like as good as her previous band, the great Throwing Muses.

You Have to be Careful With the Essential

It's somehow not surprising that Lars at Spurious, one of our more enigmatic and literary bloggers, should be attracted to the music of Jandek, one of our more mysterious musicians. I have but one of the approximately 50 Jandek releases, but there is a hard-to-describe something--at once distancing and inviting--something which I can sense may draw me in further, though I haven't yet made the needed effort. I really know very little at all about him or his music.

Lars says:

Sometimes I think there's nothing I want to hear except for Jandek and nothing I want to think about except for Jandek. Everything else is pointless, non-essential. I listen to Comets on Fire and Espers and Boris and all that sort of thing. It's good, all good, but not essential. I listen to Mark Kozelek, which is nearly essential, and Bill Callahan and Michael Head - all very good, close to essential, but not quite essential. But you have to be careful with the essential, not to come too close to it. You need distance. You need time and space set aside. Sit down on the sofa. Do nothing else. Listen to nothing. Just Jandek. Just that: Jandek.

This more than anything I've yet read makes me want to spend some time with this music. But I come here, really, to talk about Bill Callahan, otherwise known as Smog. Because, for me, Bill Callahan's music is essential. I have and listen to a lot of music, but if I were forced to get rid of the bulk of my collection, Smog would survive. And if I were further forced to pare down to a tiny select few dozen albums--there would be much Smog remaining.

To Lars the essential requires distance, as well as time and space. The other music he references here can all be found in my collection (Michael Head aside, who I've not heard of), and they along with much else help form my daily soundtrack. But a lot of it is excellent aural wallpaper. Smog I listen to almost every day at work, too, his unlikely words and baritone voice piping in my ear while I'm doing something else, which would seem to not be the optimal use of this kind of essential music. The difference is Smog calls to me at odd other times. Those times when I'm home alone. After midnight. The quiet hours (though much of his music is plenty noisy).

Lately I've been listening continuously to the most recent Smog recording, A River Ain't Too Much To Love. A new album comes out next week credited to "Bill Callahan". Why the switch? Have we seen the last Smog record? Or (smog)? Will it make a difference? When A River Ain't Too Much To Love was released in 2005, I liked it right away, but it's not till recently that it's come to rival the very best of his music, which I consider to be, for example, 1997's Red Apple Falls or 2000's ill-titled Dongs of Sevotion. That my favorite had been ten years ago should not be taken as implying that the man's fallen off. He has not. Rain on Lens, from 2001, and Supper, from 2003, are both full of interesting, prickly music. Not to be ignored if you're interested in looking into Smog. (While we're at it, don't miss the great Wild Love (1995) and The Doctor Came at Dawn (1996), either. Or Knock Knock (1999). Ok. So I'm a fan.)

Reviewers have, with Callahan, all too often fallen prey to the tendency to attribute the opinions and attitudes in the songs, some of which are unsettling, to the man himself--the pitfall, I guess, of the music being the singular vision of one person, in a culture obsessed with personality, conditioned to only take art seriously, somehow, when it's factually true. Not to mention 40 years of confessional singer-songwriters. Callahan distances himself from this by the mere use of the Smog name, of course, but this doesn't stop people. (I can't imagine the adoption of his own name at this late date will do much to prevent this.) But his songs are true, the way art is true, true to themselves, to the singer, to the situation.

Callahan gives us excellent, quotable lines ("Whenever I get dressed up/I feel like an ex-con trying to make good", from "Ex-Con" on Red Apple Falls), but the unexpected grace notes are perhaps more striking. One of my favorite moments is in "Red Apple Falls" itself, when the singer pulls back from singing about the widow who "says it's hard to live/on the lonely version of love I give", reminded of the time his brother died, his parents "slowly trying to do themselves in/inch by inch/day by day/and the telephone ring's/like a banshee wail". This is a slow, dirge-like song, with minimal instrumentation, some acoustic guitar, piano. When the words "banshee wail" are sung, Callahan's voice is subtly louder, punctuating the startling moment.

One of the standout songs on A River Ain't Too Much To Love is "The Well", and it has a moment that has bothered me. As the song begins, over a minimal repeating guitar figure and simple drum pattern, with violin, the singer "could not work/so I threw a bottle into the woods", but he "felt bad for the doe paw/And the rabbit paw" (I love this). He runs into the woods and encounters "an old abandoned well", "With a drip hanging from the bucket still". Periodically the words are punctuated by a more insistent drum beat, which retreats to the original pattern. The singer pulls the boards off the well and stares into the "black black black". Then comes a great touch: "I guess everybody has their own thing/That they yell into a well". He yells his yell, into the black, only to find the drip has dropped onto his back:

I knew if I stood up
That drip would roll down my back
Into no man's land

So I stayed like that
Staring into the black black black

Then comes the line that nearly upends it for me: "Well they say black is all colors at once". Except that they don't. "They" conventionally say white is "all colors at once". I've stumbled on this line since I first heard it nearly two years ago. But I've decided to let it go, not least because he could merely mean that black absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them (oh come on! he could totally mean that!). But more importantly, the idea suits the song. It's true. In the specificity of the moment, it works. He sings:

So I gave it my red rage my yellow streak
The greenest parts of me
And my blues and I knew just what I had to do

I had to turn around and go back
And let that drip roll down my back
And I felt so bad about that

But wouldn't you know
When I turned to go
Another drip was forming
On the bottom of the bucket
And I felt so good about that