Frustration of being a narcissistic music blogger: I was struggling with the genre taxonomy of a band for two weeks, finally came up with the laughable solution (“power-folk”), and promptly realized I’d forgotten what band this was supposed to describe.
Arcade Fire /// “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” /// Funeral
Reading the glut of best-of-decade pieces got me thinking about Arcade Fire, regenerative novelty and so-called sophomore slumps. Listmakers unanimously, through group consensus or otherwise, put Funeral near the top while pretending Neon Bible didn’t exist—though The Onion’s A.V. Club did provide one asterisky dissent. Indeed, whenever I found myself thinking the latter was an improvement on the former, I’d listen to “Rebellion (Lies)” and instantly disabuse myself of the notion. But it wasn’t as though I’d compared the two fairly: their single best song stacked against eleven pretty good ones? It’s like writing off the stylish wardrobe of the girl you adore because it doesn’t include the stunning dress she had on when you met her, that first image embedded forever in your sense memory. It isn’t to say you couldn’t fall in love once again at the sight of her wearing something new, it’s just that the familiarity of the person under the clothes cuts two ways—you are already enthralled; you already know what there is to love and even why you love it. Of course, the minute she puts that original dress on, at your behest, after keeping it stashed away for months—and here I’m thinking of the rain-streaked-window opening of “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” which I’ve gone long periods without listening to—that mystical sense of discovery flares up again. This is remembered but new, its remembered newness somehow overwhelming the novelty of actually new stuff. Suddenly, you forget your encyclopedic knowledge of the person standing before you and can be lost in her. You’ve managed, in a palpable way, to start over again. What cognitive transaction goes haywire here? How is it even remotely possible?
mentalillness:heyyoshimi:dashofpower:fuckyeahkarindreijer:
The Knife /// “One Hit” /// Silent Shout
One of the best albums released in my lifetime.
*This is a repost. Apparently the original file wasn’t downloading or unzipping or decompressing or something. I think it should work now, but then again, I also thought it would work the first time, so, you know, big fat grain of salt.
My deep depression begat deeper depression begat this mix.
Warning: contents may be unbearably sad.
Tracklist:
1. Yo La Tengo /// “Black Flowers”
2. Red House Painters /// “Have You Forgotten”
3. Jóhann Jóhannsson /// ”Eg Heyrði Allt Án þEss Að Hlusta”
4. The Vaselines /// “No Hope”
5. Clubroot /// “Talisman”
6. Low /// “Over The Ocean”
7. The Clean /// “Getting Older”
8. Paik /// “Killing Windmills”
9. Julianna Barwick /// “Sunlight, Heaven”
10. Bedhead /// “Lepidoptera”
11. The Verlaines /// “Slow Sad Love Song”
12. This Mortal Coil /// “Another Day”
13. Junior Boys /// “FM”
14. Blitzen Trapper /// “Jericho” (Daytrotter Session)
15. Frightened Rabbit /// “Yawns”
16. Philip Jeck /// “Fanfares”
17. Okkervil River /// “April Anne” (Daytrotter Session)
18. Spiritualized /// “Cool Waves”
19. Codeine /// “Loss Leader”
20. Burial /// “Forgive”
21. Dirty Three /// “Hope”
22. Odawas /// “Boy In The Yard”
23. Swans /// “Can’t Find My Way Home”
24. cLOUDDEAD /// “This About The City”
25. Iron & Wine | Calexico /// “Dead Man’s Will”
26. Red Red Meat /// “Gauze”
27. M83 /// “Gone”
28. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy /// “Strange Form Of Life”
29. Max Richter /// “Written On The Sky”
30. Tiny Vipers /// “Dreamer”
31. Kiss Me Deadly /// “Misty Medley”
Fleetwood Mac /// “Go Your Own Way” /// Rumours
In honor of the emergent meme that 2010 will be the year hipsters and other miscellaneous alts fully embrace 70s soft rock. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready.
Best Coast /// “Over the Ocean” /// Make You Mine
via flamgirlant
Here’s a band I wrote off at first. Goddamn lo-fi bastards are always subverting expectations.
Rarely these days do I have time to read an issue of The New Yorker, let alone an entire novel. But Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor was at the top of my must-do list ever since I read an excerpt of it in The New Yorker last winter.
It’s always a thrill to read someone else’s perceptions of a place you know and love. Kit’s parents have a place in Sag and I spend 9 months of the year waiting impatiently for the few weekends we can get out there in the summer. The book takes place in the summer of 1985, but Whitehead’s descriptions, his comfortable but eager familiarity of places like the potato fields along Scuttlehole Road, the Haunted House by the town dump, the Hardware Store in Town, the paper plates at Conca d’Oro - this is exactly how we see, remember, talk about Sag Harbor. These are our places, too.
This sense of a shared, secret familiarity extends beyond the physical boundaries and landmarks of Sag Harbor right into the narrator, Benji Cooper’s, self-conscious view of the world and himself. Benji is a 15 year old black kid; I am a 26 year old white Jewish woman. But so often, when Benji talked about himself or shared his perspective, I thought, that’s me. A strange but comforting familiarity. You are not alone in the world, no matter how lonely, alienated, or outcast you feel. As Jonathan Lethem said in his review of Sag Harbor, it’s “a book that made me immediately feel less lonely.”
This sense of a lost, private familiarity extends beyond the location and descriptions of Sag Harbor, beyond Benji’s character and narration, and into Whitehead’s writing itself. He turns a phrase like a poet, making you appreciate not just the story, but the point of view of the writing itself, the words chosen and the visuals they conjured a perfect mix of unique and known.
Sag Harbor isn’t a long novel, and I devoured it over the course of a plane ride and a few spare bedtime hours. In June, when I head out for the first Sag Harbor weekend of the year, I’ll take it with me and reread it, then take a walk around Benji’s Sag Harbor and see if the novel’s sense of familiarity permeates into modern-day reality. I have a feeling it will.
I loved the New Yorker excerpt but recoiled at the idea of a novel’s worth of its episodic memoirisms and memoiristic episodes. What felt luxurious in its style (and in much of the nowhere-near-as-good short fiction published over there [read this E.L. Doctorow story (though the ending may bite Nathaniel Hawthorne) if you want to regain faith in that particular department]) threatened to extend toward descriptive drift and doldrums in the long haul, I unconsciously decided. Reassessing now.
fek:
Not JK, KK.
Careful not to leak that, Britt Daniel will personally shove a cease-and-desist up your bloghole.
Little Dragon /// “Feather” /// Machine Dreams (mp3)
Jamming this band constantly lately. Machine Dreams is so solid! It perfectly splits the difference between Lykke Li’s charming, upbeat dance pop and the Knife’s really weird, dark dance-pop. The Swedes are so good at this stuff.
This single overshadows the rest of the album pretty hard.
Hot Chip /// “Take It In” /// One Life Stand
It takes zero exaggeration to say this: every single Hot Chip track has left me cold or indifferent … until now. That major and minor keys play as two sides to one coin—by no means a fresh idea, but freshly articulated here—is a fine cerebral enhancement of their raw hookiness. I can only imagine the hyperbole muscle NME is going to pull when they attempt to review this album.
