Pop Narcotic

The (Finally) Popnarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-18T10:03:00.002-05:00

13. Deleted Waveform Gatherings, Ghost, She Said

I'll come clean here: Ghost, She Said, the third DWG album was the first record of theirs I'd ever heard, and I was sort of amazed to discover that fact and then also discover that I'd sort of wandered into a film in the middle act. Deleted Waveform Gatherings is the music brainchild of a Norwegian rock and pop maestro named Øyvind Holm. Holm' band used to be called The Dipsomaniacs and they recorded a few albums...but wouldn't you know, there was a Jersey band going by that same name. Holm picked a new name (chosen, seemingly, to ensure that it was an original) and here we are, third album from Deleted Waveform Gatherings.

Let me try to take you through what listening to this record was like for me the first time out. The album opens with an almost desperate acoustic-fueled song called "Doorway" that drops an amazing middle 8 out of nowhere to take a decent song and make it a very good one...but on the heels of that fine tune we get "Shaman's Tambourine", an Allman/Black Oak Arkansas-esque stab at arena boogie that just seems out of place and which quickly made me a lot less interested in Ghost, She Said.

And then along comes the stunner. There's nothing in Øyvind Holm's history to suggest he had a tune like "Miss Missing You" in him, but damned if he doesn't grab you by the ears and then sock you in the guts from almost the very beginning of the song. I think what this number (and really what the rest of the record) has going for it is that Deleted Waveform Gatherings is revealed to be not so much just one of those bands with a pop wunderkind with a band unable to do them justice. No, if the nimble bass and absolutely wonderful drums on "Miss Missing You" don't immediately convey the true group-nature of Deleted Waveform Gatherings, then the inspired electric banjo that goes wending through the second verse absolutely does.

Not that "Miss Missing You" is the only wonderful slice of instantly-memorable guitar pop here. "The Doc" sounds as if all it's missing is the "Rocks Off" horn section. "Hate Waiting In Line" starts off sounding like Brian Jonestown Massacre before throwing down a descending note chorus that'd make Noel Gallagher green with envy. "Don't Wanna Know" either sounds like The Who covering late-period Replacements, or vice-versa.

What inevitably hurts a band like Deleted Waveform Gatherings in the commercial marketplace is that there are so many bands attempting the guitar-pop with a Lennon-ish hue thing that do such a mediocre job of executing that vision that when a group comes along possessing the songwriting moxie of an Øyvind Holm and the stiff rocking backbone of the DWG rhythm section, it's easy to think "I've heard this before" without fully realizing that actually no, we haven't. How good is Ghost, She Said? This good: since they're sort of working the same territory as Brendan Benson, I decided this list was only big enough for an either/or between them...and Deleted Waveform Gatherings took the prize.

"Doorway"
"Miss Missing You"
"The Shadow Of Your Ego"

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-16T02:35:00.005-05:00

14. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, S/T

Indulge me in a reminiscence for a second, willya? It's the fall of 1987, I'm bussing tables at a local restaurant while attending college part time and feeling almost completely, incomprehensibly lost in life. Oh, I'm putting up a brave front for friends and family and girlfriend...but I'm feeling like doubt and malaise are tearing me apart inside. There's going to be no Journalism School for me; I've discovered I cannot write up against deadline anyway, so probably that's for the best. I'm completely at sea treading water, probably on the cusp of ending up heading down a path as one of those college town 50-year olds with scraggly hair collecting aluminum cans for the deposit money for a living.

And then some co-workers at the restaurant I'm working at are talking music to me, and introducing me to friends, and finding out how much I'm loving this Scottish band called The Pastels and then I'm up in Robb and Matt and Stephanie's apartment house and they're spinning records by The Flatmates and the Shop Assistants and the first My Bloody Valentine singles comp and I'm literally feeling an almost amphetamine rush from discovering an entire group of people with whom I share a music taste and who seem to have Plenty More Where That Came From, as it were. Those heady, wonderful, wonderful days at university were where I started to get it sorted, life-wise. I may not have marked a clear path on the map, but from that time forward I knew I wanted to keep hearing music that made me feel the way that music did, and life suddenly had some purpose and got a whole lot more interesting and enjoyable.

And so here we are in 2009 and I'm hearing a New York band called The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart for the first time and I'm thinking "This is the band I've been hearing since back then at school." I mean, I don't have the foggiest idea how a group of NYC youngsters can hook into a sound as obscure as the C86 indie pop movement that came and went with alarming quickness in the middle 1980's, but there you go.

The description of TPOBPAH's music isn't gonna do it justice, but I'll try anyway--you take ridiculously fuzzed-out guitars, strum them earnestly, and sing in mostly on-key vocals (thick with British, or in this case faux-Brit accents) and then write one doe-eyed love song dripping with teen angst after another. What that description of the music fails to capture is the exuberance and innocence and naivete required to get this right (and it is perhaps the neatest trick that The Pains turn that they manage to sound incredibly unprepossessing while basically aping a music style that may pre-date the births of the members of the band).

Emo as a movement never really worked because anyone who's ever felt all wrung-out with angst knows that you can't really get to those deepest-valleys without also hitting a lot of amazing, glorious peaks of discovery and joy in life. What makes the twee fuzz indiepop of The Pains work so much better than that genre is that they aren't afraid to express the joys and wide-eyed true belief of young-adulthood (and sadness is just another interesting and unique discovery here). Their ability to transmit that simple feeling of exuberant wonder at all things boy/girl/relationship casts a spell that will make your heart feel 20 again. Hopefully you'll be transported to airy college apartments, sitting on dusty hardwood floors drinking cheap beer and listening to records with friends...and wanting nothing more than that in life.

"This Love Is Fucking Right"
"Everything With You"
"Stay Alive"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
14. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, S/T
15. The Broadfield Marchers, Displayed In Reflections
16. Police Teeth, Real Size Monster Series
17. The Faraway Places, Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-16T02:25:00.004-05:00

15. The Broadfield Marchers, Displayed In Reflections

Here's an album that's been all over and out of my list pretty constantly. I've thought at times "this is one of the best 5 records of the year", while at others I've thought "dude, no." Like so much music, you can wear yourself out playing "spot the influence" with the Broadfield Marchers: singer/guitarist finds that vocal sweet spot between Daltrey and Pollard, the songs clock in at a Dayton-esque average of 2 minutes and feature loopy titles like "Dr. Invincible & The Champions Of Love" or "Where Baxter Meets Willow". When Magnet described a previous Marchers effort as "sounding like Alex Chilton fronting Guided By Voices" they weren't far off.

Which, it goes without saying, sets off my "not another band that sounds as if it was trying to pre-fulfill the wishes of some hipster focus group" alarms. Those alarms are nearly shut down by bouncy Bee Thousand tributes like "The Revenge Of Jimbo Bell"...and then go into full retreat when a song as drop-dead gorgeous as "Falling Asleep To Disappear" (which song, in a little over two and a half minutes, manages to achieve pretty much everything The Clientele have been trying to achieve with lesser results for nearly a decade.) (No, no...I love the Clientele....but "Falling Asleep" sounds like them, but just better.)

There's enough same-ishness here at times to induce listener fatigue, but the brevity of the 2-minute songs helps that quite a bit, and then anthems like "Everyone From Everywhere" or "Incredible Jumpsuit Shaking" step in to yank you fully back into the Broadfield Marchers' weird little psych-pop world.

"Falling Asleep To Disappear"
"Everyone From Everywhere"
"Incredible Jumpsuit Shaking"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
15. The Broadfield Marchers, Displayed In Reflections
16. Police Teeth, Real Size Monster Series
17. The Faraway Places, Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-02T12:06:00.003-05:00

16. Police Teeth, Real Size Monster Series

Back in the day, bands like Bitch Magnet, Bastro, or Helmet roamed the land, creating deafening slabs of guitar roar. Over the years, these groups eventually left the scene for various reasons, changed their sound, "developed", in other words. The little secret of the '80's midwest postpunk sound was that a lot of bands got the loud guitars part right, but screwed up by leaving the energy and lyrical "young, loud, and snottiness" of punk behind.

So when I say that a lot of the sound of Bellingham, WA band Police Teeth reminds me of that musical movement, I can already see you thinking "oh right; big chunky lurching guitar riffs with the occasional mathrock start-stop thing going on and not much else." Well, what if we went back a little further. What if we invoke the name of the holy duo of that movement, of the two bands who got it exactly right? What if we mention the two bands who did the postpunk roar with all the energy and piss of the punks intact? What if I told you Police Teeth has a chance to be this generation's Big Black? What if I said they might end up some day being as relevant as Fugazi? Now how much would you pay?

On Real Size Monster Series, there are some songs that just don't work as well as they might. Let's state that right away. But then let's also say that a song like "Who Wants To Fuck A Millionaire" is worth seeking this album out all by itself. Let's also say that "Bob Stinson Will Have His Revenge On Ferndale" sounds like Big Black covering a Finn's Motel pissy rant on career-ism vs. a rock career ("Pee in the cup, No raise!" goes the chorus, followed by an epic bridge: "Do you remember the spreadsheet that you wrote up way back in 1993?/Nobody ever said 'That changed my life'/Nobody ever said 'That inspired me.'")

Heed some advice, yo. Get on this bandwagon right now. Police Teeth's irreverent, pissy, angry, hilarious guitar fury deserves to be huge and they might just get there. Thousands of people oughta be singing along to the chorus to "Northern California" at concerts. You know how you once felt like maybe The Hold Steady were writing this epic poetry about disaffection in suburbia? Well, this here is the real folk blues, y'know? The Police Teeth album might not be the very best record I heard this year, but it damn straight is the most exciting. In two years I'm going to look at this list and think "Shit, Police Teeth should've been in the top five."

"Bob Stinson Will Have His Revenge On Ferndale"

"Jenny Nails"

"Who Wants To Fuck A Millionaire"

"Northern California"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
16. Police Teeth, Real Size Monster Series
17. The Faraway Places, Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-02T11:53:00.003-05:00

17. The Faraway Places
Out Of The Rain, the Thunder, & The Lightning

To read the band's own promo materials, they'd have you believe that krautrock pioneers like Can and Neu were a huge influence on their sound. I...guess I hear it. More than that--in fact much more than that, I hear what sounds like a great fat slab of brilliant American rock and roll, a sound that puts me very much in mind of the music that came gushing like a torrent out of the southeastern United States back in the early-to-mid 1980's. I hear echoes of Pylon and early B-52's (Chris Colthart and Donna Coppola vocally can't help but sound a wee bit like the early days of Schneider and Pierson on the bouncy "The Sun Goes West"), traces of Windbreakers and Primitons...and a production sensibility that sounds right out of the good ol' Drive In Studio.

To be more clear: the guitars on Rain/Thunder/Lightning sound totally fuzzy and totally kick-ass. The hooks on the album go deep and pull you in, even when they're buried ("F-F-F-F-Fall Down" is the best example; you know that the song title just *has* to be part of a totally great chorus, but they actually ratchet up the tension in the song and make you wait for the coda for the sing-along payoff--but what a payoff it is!) Maybe the best song on the disc is the memorable "You Can Cry". The song is a slow-building stunner that uncorks an awesome George Harrison guitar figure in the chorus, and it just pushes the song into the upper realm of the best songs of the year.

Hear the whole album here.

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
17. The Faraway Places, Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-02T11:36:00.003-05:00

18. Crocodiles, Summer Of Hate

I still remember the first time I heard the Crocodiles song "(Soft Skull) In My Room"; I thought for sure they were going to swing right into the riff from The Fall's "Cruiser's Creek", and I thought to myself, "Self, this sounds like someone marrying Jesus & Mary Chain to The Fall and that sure is a brilliant idea I wish you'd thought of". Further confessions: this is a record with a handful of standout tracks ("I Wanna Kill" re-writes the JAMC chestnut "Happy When It Rains" delightfully subversively; "Sleeping With The Lord" could've been a vintage Spacemen 3 chilldown hymn; the title track is also a glorious salute to Kember and Pierce that no fan of Spiritualized should miss) with what sounds like a lot of filler thrown in. Thing is, when you have songs in your arsenal like these--songs that give you swagger and spit and verve--sometimes that's enough. This is one of those "bands to watch", because they very well could have a start-to-finish era-defining album in their future.

"(Soft Skull) In My Room"
"I Wanna Kill"
"Summer Of Hate"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
18. Crocodiles, Summer of Hate
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 (Cont.)

2010-02-02T11:23:00.005-05:00

19. The Idle Hands,
The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show

This Minneapolis band comes by its UK postpunk feel naturally--they're led by two Irish ex-pat brothers, Ciaran and Criostoir Daly. The group comes up with a perfect mix of the jaggedy, squawky postpunk of contemporaries like The Fratellis or Arctic Monkeys...but with a heartland sense of melodic hooks. In other words, they're guilty of all the good sins and few of the bad choices that plague that particular genre; these folks know that the once you've wound your song into a corner, the best way to find your way out isn't to resort to cheap gim-crackery, but instead to pull out a middle-eight like they do on "Sunshine On The Tenements" or the ridiculously catchy/clunky guitar riff on "Liver And Brains". Is this music a little too obvious? Maybe...but you know you're cranking the song "Loaded" up and air guitaring around your room when no one's looking.

"Loaded"
"Sunshine On The Tenements"
"Liver And Brains"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009:
19. The Idle Hands, The Hearts We Broke On The Way To The Show
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

The (Finally) PopNarcotic Top 20 Of 2009 List!

2010-02-02T11:02:00.005-05:00

Hey hey hey! Long time, no see. How are you? How about the kids? Great!

Me? Oh, I've been busy. Work. You know.

But now that I finally feel like I'm not going to commit any sins too egregious with this list, so I suppose we're ready to roll.

One thing: sometimes the songs that I personally think are representative of why an album is great aren't necessarily the songs the artist or label is "pushing". That's their hangup, not mine. As always, I'm going to include song links to the songs that I feel merited a record's inclusion in this year's list, and if you click a song and hear something you like, by all means support the artists and buy something.

Let's roll!

20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

So yeah, let's take care of the obvious thing first: this album was recorded back in 1969--forty years ago if you're keeping score. The Pretty Things excellent adventure with a French playboy millionaire named Phillippe DeBarge is the sort of thing that deserves a bit of explanation.

In 1967 The Pretties had recorded a string of amazing slabs of incredibly influential psychedelic rock leading up to the first album-length "rock opera", a convoluted but utterly wonderful bit of lysergic awesomeness called "S. F. Sorrow". That album sounded about 3 years ahead of its time and the band--never particularly adept at promotion--saw it sell decently but not hugely in Britain, whilst it made zero impression in the States (where the Pretties never found anything more than a cult audience). The band had spent all available monies on the 4-track recording studio where they'd cut "Sorrow", and founding member Dick Taylor decided to leave the group and by 1969 things weren't looking so hot for the Pretty Things.

Enter a French millionaire playboy named Phillippe DeBarge. Philippe was in his early 30's and was a huge Pretty Things fan. DeBarge also passionately wanted to be a rock star. He contacted the Pretty Things songwriting team of Phil May and Wally Waller and made them an offer: lots of money if the Pretties would write and play on an album with Philippe singing. They'd record it at London's Nova Studios, then second only to Abbey Road as the most technologically advanced recording house in the UK. May and Waller had ideas for a new album but no financial means to record it. Doing this vanity project with DeBarge would then allow the Pretty Things the freedom to record their own record once they made the millionaire happy, so they finally agreed. The group recorded with May (normally the Pretties lead singer) producing and recording "scratch" vocals into headphones for DeBarge to sing along into the recording mics with. Once finished, Philippe paid the band, pressed a few dozen copies of the record he'd made, and gave them to baffled and scandalized friends and family and moved on. For their parts, the Pretties recorded the albums "Get The Picture" and "Parachute", using a lot of the money DeBarge had fronted them to record with. Those latter two Pretties albums get generally good marks from fans of the band, but...they aren't "S. F. Sorrow". The band had moved on creatively from the gloriously ridiculous psychedelia of that record, and never recorded anything as charming in their career.

And here's the thing about the stuff The Pretty Things recorded around the time of "S. F. Sorrow": you listen to it nowadays and think "boy I wish there was more of this out there." Sadly, that's it, all there is. Well, except for a scratchy, wobbly acetate bootleg of that vanity project album the band did with Philippe DeBarge. Copies started surfacing in the '70's and '80's and fans of the Pretty Things psychedelic era swooned. Here, at last, was the "more of this out there". Unfortunately, the recording quality on the boot was terrible.

So this past year, with all hurdles gone or departed (Philippe DeBarge passed away in the 1990's, sadly) a fully-restored from the original tapes version of the album was created using all the modern tech various studio wizards could throw at the record. What we end up with as a result is pretty revelatory. First off--a vanity indulgence like this by all rights should be just terrible...but it isn't. May and Waller wrote some of the strongest material of their careers for Monsieur DeBarge. Also revelatory: DeBarge actually has a pretty solid voice. Given the instruction and sing-along tapes from Phil May, it's little surprise he sounds a lot like the Pretty Things vocalist but that's ok. If songs like "Hello How Do You Do" (which seriously sounds like something Jim Noir recorded last year) and "Alexander" are instant grabbers, songs like "You're Running You And Me", "New Day", and "Eagle's Son" can easily stand alongside Pretty Things standards like "Defecting Grey" or "Walking Through My Dreams At Night" as slabs of psychedelic brilliance (kids, wanna know where the Olivia Tremor Control or Flying Saucer Attack nicked their sound from? Here you go.) Penalized about 15 spots for being 40 years late on release, but definitely a first-time 2009 turn for this remarkable album.

"You're Running You And Me"
"Eagle's Son"
"New Day"

The PopNarcotic Top 20 of 2009
20. The Pretty Things With Phillippe DeBarge, S/T

More Holiday Cheer From Me To You

2009-12-22T13:08:00.002-05:00

The Holiday 2009 Mix is up. Now how much would you pay?

But wait! There's more!

This is the "What else did this blog get me for Christmas?" post.

First up: Some folks have asked for prior year's mixes. Here are the one's I'm ok with allowing to be in circulation:

I Got Yer Wassail Right Here Mac (Christmas 2005)
It's A Cliche To Be Cynical At Christmas (Christmas 2006)
The Christmas Sound Is All Around This Town (Christmas 2007)
Listen Up, Ebenezer! (Christmas 2008)
Christmas Shoes (Christmas 2009)

Just right-click the title of the mix you want to download, and "Save As".

More? Ok. More.

A staple of every Christmas music mix I do is the 1987 song from the Pogues, "Fairytale Of New York". For me, it just ain't Christmas until Kirsty MacColl calls Shane MacGowan "a scumbag, a maggot, a cheap lousy faggot." A lot of folks love the song. It really is just beautiful, and if that wonderful argument set-piece in the song makes you wonder about whether it has a happy ending, well, the strings playing out on the closing coda answer that question better than any lyrics could.

At any rate, back in 2005 BBC Three did an hourlong documentary on the writing, recording, performance, and even video-making of the song. I've got that available for everyone in M4V format. M4V is the native video codec for Apple stuff--if you have Quicktime on windows (if you have Itunes, you do), a Mac, or a video-capable iPhone or Ipod, you'll be able to watch this without too many hoops. In fact, the newest versions of Windows Media Player will recognize M4V as well and play it for you as well.

The video quality in the documentary is fairly compressed--it looks great on an iPod Touch-sized screen, so if you're traveling, there you go. (Although you'll have to explain to everyone sitting near you on the airplane why you're sobbing at the end of the documentary when Kirsty MacColl's ma and the lads in the Pogues are talking about her...) It'll even look fine on most computer monitors as long as you size the screen to a reasonable viewing.

Enjoy!

"The Making Of 'Fairytale Of New York'"

(Yes, right click, "save as"; no really, people will email and ask how if I don't)

More? Seriously? You're like Dudley Dursley here! Ok, one more.

The name of this year's mix, "Christmas Shoes", was inspired by a horribly unintentionally funny and ironic version of the Chipmunks taking a bang at that awful and mawkish Christmas cash-in song referred to by Peggy Hill in the intro. In the end, I dropped the song from the mix 'cause it didn't work, but I liked the title...and I really, really liked comedian Patton Oswalt's hilariously profane comedy routine on the song.

This is Not Safe For Work due to language (did I say "hilariously profane" yet?), but funny as hell. F-Bombs galore are about to ensue...but so is some inspired comedic social commentary.

Don't write me, I warned you!

Merry Christmas!!!

The Popnarcotic Christmas Music Mix, 2009!

2009-12-21T09:37:00.003-05:00

So yeah, for all the big talk, it may be February before I get a year-end top 20 posted...as well as at least that long to count down the top 50 of the decade. Been a busy, busy, BUSY holiday season! Even the snow day on Saturday (22 inches of snow? Really?) was busy with shoveling and stuff. Apologies. It isn't an orphaned concept.

At any rate, I did manage to get Christmas cards with the 2009 Christmas Mix out barely in time last week, only to find a few more folks on the list (who'll have to pull the mix from this source this year, sadly...next year, next year.) I finally found a few spare minutes to put the mix up for all of us here at the blog.

As usual, this is all one big track--an hour and 10 minutes' worth of music--stitched together as one MP3.

CHRISTMAS SHOES
(Pop Narcotic's Holiday Music Mix, 2009)

Right click and "save as" to download me!

Oh, and you'll be wantin' a track list, I suppose?

Fine.

1. The Nap After Christmas, and Peggy Hill captures the spirit of the season.
2. "Christmas Rhapsody" The Pledge Drive
3. "Back In Town" Wiretree
4. "Hit The Snow" The Aislers Set
5. "Winter Wonderland" Phantom Planet
6. "Joseph Who Understood" The New Pornographers
7. "It's Christmas (But I Don't Care)" Brad Laner
8. "Christmas Bring Us" The Gripweeds
9. "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Dean Martin
10."Hark The Herald" The Fab Four
11."Jangle Bells" Love Tractor
12."3 Ghosts (A Modern Christmas Carol)" The Boss Martians
13."I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You" Margo Guryan
14."White Christmas" Frank Sinatra
15."Christmastime Is Here Again" The Flirtations
16."Sleigh Ride" The Ventures
17."Run Rudolph" Dave Edmunds
18."Merry Christmas Baby" Otis Redding
19."Christmas (I Remember)" The Smithereens
20."Winter Must Be Cold" The Apples In Stereo
21."Christmas Blues No. 2" American Suitcase
22."The Christmas Sound" The Swimmers
23."The Blizzard" Camera Obscura
24. Those dadgum boys of the NYPD Choir continue to make with the "Galway Bay" even as the bells of Christmas Day attempt to drown them out. Merry Christmas!

The Pledge Drive is actually one of many noms de rock that an amazingly talented fellow named Tim Walters goes by; I know of him because he and I are both on the Loud Family Email list-serve. Every year one of Tim's bands puts out a Christmas song. Most years, he plays it pretty straight; in 2005, he didn't. I've been holding onto this song, not sure if it was too long or if it worked, but what the hey. I like it.

The New Pornographers tune is maybe the only Christmas song I know that considers the plight of poor Joseph. You can just imagine him coming home from work one day, exhausted from a long day of carpentry, and his fiancee tells him "Joe, I'm pregnant. Obviously, since I won't let you touch me, you're not the father. God is. No, really. And I'm still a virgin. By the way, the kid is going to be the Son of God. Oh, and we're gonna need to walk across the country. Well, you'll walk--I'm riding the donkey. Hope that works for you."

Brad Laner was the guitarist/singer/songwriter in the best My Bloody Valentine soundalike band ever, a group called Medicine. He also was in a band with one of the guys from Tool for a while. Now he produces and does solo stuff from his huge, state of the art home studio. No one buries a sly hook in such difficult music as Brad Laner.

"Christmas Bring Us" is a little taste of what you might've gotten if 1967-era The Who had recorded a Christmas single. (No, the song from Tommy just doesn't work in a mix, try as I might.)

The Fab Four are four very clever fellows who try to do the Beatles cover-band thing. They've got two albums of fun re-writes of Christmas tunes with a Mersey twist on 'em. This one is my favorite.

Dave Edmunds is well-known as a guitarist and cohort of folks like Nick Lowe and even a certain Mr. Costello. While his guitar and spot-on Chuck Berry vocal impersonation are great here, whoever it is beating that piano into splinters is the real hero of this version of "Rudolph".

There are two versions of "Merry Christmas Baby" from which every other one is sprung. A bluesman named Charles Brown did the first one. His "MCB" is a slow, languid, blues shuffle, and was the original. Otis Redding rewrote the melody a bit, and sped the thing up, and turned it into a joyful soul shouter (sadly, he recorded the vocal just before he was killed in that plane crash; Steve Cropper went back and added his killer guitar part and the horns and the signature organ that opens the song.) Here's the problem: a number of modern singers have attempted to do Otis's melody version...only slowed down to the same tempo as Charles Brown's version. That dog don't hunt. You either bash through this song like you can't wait to open your presents, or you sing it with quiet mournfulness...but you don't try to combine it. You know what? Whatever singer you are, you ain't gonna top Otis (and especially the sheer joy of his "Hahaha" in the bridge), so just don't even bother, ok?

The 'Narc's 50 Favorite Records Of The Aughts

2009-12-09T00:59:00.004-05:00

47. Dave Kusworth & the Tenderhooks, Like "Wonderland Avenue" In A Cold Climate

Dave Kusworth is a superstar. What, you've never heard of him? Join the club--few people have (despite Kusworth's affiliations-however sometimes peripheral--with The Dogs D'Amour and Hanoi Rocks). Makes no difference here. When Kusworth steps onstage in leather pants, scarves, and leopard-print jacket, with mascara dutifully-applied...well, he's just a superstar, a rock god, a guitar hero--simply by his own possibly-drunken swagger and sneering confidence. Dave Kusworth has been playing Captain Jack Sparrow for nearly three decades now.

I could give you the laundry list of Kusworth's career--from his days with Nikki Sudden in the legendary Jacobites lineup to a career fronting bands with names like The Bounty Hunters or The Tenderhooks. I could do all that, and you're likely to dismiss it all as some obscurist fanboy championing an undeserving minor league never-was...so let's not do that. No, there's an easier way to "get" Dave Kusworth, and what he's about. It ain't the vocals--Dave's voice kind of wanders around a melody, occasionally hitting it...sometimes not. His songs tend to be rocking mid-tempo laments about love lost, so even if there's the occasional brilliant nugget of wisdom in the lyrics, you're likely to miss it anyway, and hey, that's not the charm of Kusworth.

No, to "get" Kusworth, what you need to do is just hear the music. Especially, you need to hear the guitar. Britain has this knack for producing guitar heroes who become known not so much for virtuosity as they are for the sounds they get. I'm thinking here of the tradition of players like Mick Ronson, Jimmy Page, Bernard Butler, Johnny Marr, or Will Sergeant--guys who simply cannot strum a guitar without it sounding kick ass. Dave Kusworth sits at the top of that heap, right next to a guy like Spider From Mars Ronson who was clearly a huge influence. Whether it's a buzzing electric guitar, a rustic acoustic, or a weeping slide guitar, Kusworth is unable to play without getting a guitar sound that sounds better than anyone else on the planet.

The other great thing is that Dave Kusworth writes riffs and melodies equal to the awesomeness of his guitar chops. During the past decade, he's put out a half-dozen albums of almost equal, excellent quality. I picked "Wonderland Avenue" almost by tossing a coin; as it is, tracks like "Real Girl", "Come With Me", and the incandescent "It Comes And It Goes" are just magic. The wailing slide on "How Come I Always Dream About You?" sounds like the kind of misty-eyed ballad that the metal kids in the 1980's kept trying to write but always failed at--they forgot to kick ass, and here Kusworth demonstrates how to do both of those things. This album--and damned near everything else Dave Kusworth has released over the years--represents the rebellious greatness of rock and roll distilled into its purest form.

Songs to listen to:
"It Comes And It Goes"
"Real Girl"
"How Come I Always Dream About You?"

47. Dave Kusworth & The Tenderhooks, Like "Wonderland Avenue" In A Cold Climate (2007)

48. Grant Lee Phillips, Mobilize (2001)
49. The Cobbs, Sing The Deathcapades (2006)
50. The Bangles, Doll Revolution (2003)

The 'Narc's 50 Favorite Records Of The Aughts

2009-11-30T11:57:00.003-05:00

48. Grant Lee Phillips, Mobilize

I've told this story far too often for it to be new to most of you, but what the hell, here we go again. Like all of us, I remember all too vividly the actual day of September 11, 2001. I went into work around 10:30 that morning, knowing that the attacks had happened, and the first tower had gone down already. Sitting at a stoplight on the corner of Cermak and Harlem, Peter Jennings delivered the news that the second tower was down. Work was surreally quiet, our restaurant being in a shopping mall and no one being particularly interested in shopping that day. On the suggestion of the governor or mayor, Oak Brook Mall shut down about 4:00 that afternoon, so we all went home.

It was a gorgeous, beautiful day, but a day so oddly quiet--no planes in the air, and an almost comical lack of traffic to be found anywhere. I drove home back down Cermak, too despairing to listen to the news anymore. I put Mobilize, a CD I'd picked up just a few days earlier (it came out a month before that, I was just a bit late) and popped it into the player...and my most vivid memory of that day took place. As I drove through Broadview, an economically blighted village in the western suburbs of Chicago (not the sort of place you'd want to be walking alone at night, in other words), Grant Lee Phillips's gorgeous, yearning, lilting "See America" came pouring out of the speakers as I noticed that someone at a thoroughly decrepit Popeye's Chicken had changed their marquee sign to say "God Bless America"....and I was in tears all over again.

For years and years, any discussion of this record, Phillips second solo outing (but let's call it the first proper solo album, since the first was the oddly slapdash Ladies Love Oracle) after dissolving the final incarnation of Grant Lee Buffalo was dominated by that experience. Oh, there were other GLP albums I liked more than Mobilize, I figured, perhaps the folky, rustic country turn on Virginia Creeper, or his return to the more familiar musical landscapes of his Buffalo days on his Strangelet disc. And so a few months ago, anticipating compiling this list, I thought to myself "Self, there should probably be a Grant Lee Phillips disc in your countdown." I figured I'd give 'em all one listen and then probably go with something else...but then I kept coming back to Mobilize.

Even at the time, as "See America" (the first track on the record) dominated this record almost to the point of exclusion of other songs on it, I still remember thinking songs like "Spring Released" (which starts with Bowie's "Young Americans" riff and takes it to eleven on an amazing chorus) or gorgeous, should've-been-a-hit "Beautiful Dreamers" (which if I remember got a neat acoustic treatment by Grant the Troubador on an episode of Gilmore Girls) were pretty awesome. Revisiting it, I came to not only appreciate how terrific those tracks are, but also came to love songs like the evocative "Lazily Drowning" and "Sleepless Lake" more than I ever remembered back in the day.

Mobilize is an odd album in the GLP canon. The record is shot through with acoustic guitars...but also fully-powered by what surely sounds like a one-man electronica sound throughout the record. Electronic beats, drums, synth washes and flourishes work organically with "real" instruments, and usually very, very well. (If you called this Grant's homage to The Magnetic Fields, you wouldn't be missing it by much, in other words.)

Of the four or five GLP solo albums to come out this decade, this is the one that makes the list for one very simple reason: the songs. Grant Lee Phillips has recorded some amazing songs over the last ten years, but nowhere in that catalog has he stacked up so many of his best songs back-to-back as he did on Mobilize.

Songs to sample:

"See America"
"Beautiful Dreamers"
"Sleepless Lake"

48. Grant Lee Phillips, Mobilize (2001)
49. The Cobbs, Sing The Deathcapades (2006)
50. The Bangles, Doll Revolution (2003)

The 'Narc's 50 Favorite Records Of The Aughts

2009-11-30T02:07:00.003-05:00

49. The Cobbs, Sing The Deathcapades (2006)

If I ran into you at one point in 2003, there's a really good chance I told you how awesome the album Howl by The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was. In hindsight, Howl was a good record, but the only record by Philly's rather name-crossed The Cobbs does everything the BRMC did over the course of their career--and takes one album to do it all better.

Pity The Cobbs. Brothers Paul and Ryan Cobb started their career off recording as Ty Cobb which drew just enough notice from two albums to get them a cease & desist from the late ballplayer's estate. After trying out life under the name Mad Action, the band finally settled on the nom de rock The Cobbs, a natual name that unfortunately evokes thoughts of them being one of a thousand half-assed No Depression bands making the rounds.

The Cobbs are not a bluegrass band. They're part of the rich Philadelphia psych-pop scene that produced great artists like The Asteroid #4 and Lilys/Kurt Heasley. Most folks on an early listen will hone right in on a similarity to the BRMC on Deathcapades, but to my mind they outdo the more-famous band in almost every way here. The Cobbs have an unerring songwriting crafstman's sense, which gives songs like "Lo Chey" and "Meia" a feel not unlike what you'd get if The Beatles had recorded Revolver at the far end of a desperate tether. The album turns a very nifty trick of stacking piles of melodic hooks and catchy melodies atop one another without ever resorting to guitar-pop cliches. As the title suggests, this is an album shot through with darkness and a sort of crazy-at-the-edges malevolence that comes searing through on the slide-from-hell song "Say You Never Knew Me" or the devastating leer of "Climb On Top", which starts off sounding like the evillest song the Gun Club never recorded before exploding into a chorus you'll be humming all day.

As good as these songs are--and they're utterly tremendous, nary a weak number among the bunch--what makes this record one of the best of the decade is the incredible production. Belying its rather humble origins, Deathcapades is one of the most-expensive-sounding and interesting production jobs in my entire record collection. In fact, if you crank your stereo headphones to unhealthily loud levels and listen to "Don't Walk", you'll hear one of the most amazing, over-the-top, spine-tingling music bridges recorded during the decade, and what sends it into the stratosphere is the amazing production--chiming guitars swirl over buzzing, snorting, bass...while the drums sound as if drummer Chris Coello is smashing his kit to absolute flinders. Don't miss this album, folks.

"Say You Never Knew Me"
"Don't Walk"
"Climb On Top"

(Also, you could once hear the whole album and order it from Apollo Audio right here, but that link has been broken for a little while now. I know the guy from AA occasionally reads this, and hopefully it might be fixed (and Apollo is a *treee-mendous place to order and discover new music from, btw.)

49. The Cobbs, Sing The Deathcapades (2006)
50. The Bangles, Doll Revolution (2003)

The Narc's 50 Fave Records Of The Aughts.

2009-11-30T01:34:00.002-05:00

50. The Bangles, Doll Revolution (2003)

Chances are that if you mention The Bangles to 99% of the music listeners on the planet, they'll roll their eyes, thinking of overplayed novelties like "Walk Like An Egyptian", or overproduced pap like "Manic Monday" or (shudder) "Eternal Flame"....and that's a shame. Songs like that describe what The Bangles were about almost as well as "Silly Love Songs" describes what Paul McCartney was all about.

The Bangles were a psych-pop band who knew their way around the Nuggets comp (the original, Lenny Kaye version, natch) better than almost any of their more vaunted peers in the Paisley Underground. Playing live, they'd tear the joint down on sizzling covers of "Little Red Book" or "7 & 7 Is". In fact, one of the greatest attributes these four ladies ever had was knowing their own limitations as songwriters and cherry-picking tunes from folks like Prince and The Soft Boys' Kimberley Rew.

Scariano and I went to see The Bangles on their first, House Of Blues reunion tour in 2000, and it was one of the best live shows I've ever seen. The band was great, and the biggest surprise was the strength of the new material they were debuting. Doll Revolution came out three years later, the band amazingly finally recapturing their natural energy and raison d'etre in the studio for the first time in over 20 years. Fittingly, the rollicking opener ("Tear Off Your Own Head") is an Elvis Costello tune, but elsewhere Vicki Peterson lays down the law on a self-penned scorching rocker like "Between The Two" and the declaration of girl-independence "Single By Choice". The band that scored a worldwide hit with their cover of "Hazy Shade Of Winter" manages to do themselves proud with their own version and nearly out-minor-keys Mr. Simon with "Stealing Rosemary".

Doll Revolution remains the band's studio swansong, and what seemed like an fascinating way for the band to expand upon a rebuilt legacy now plays second fiddle to Susie Hoffs' "Between The Covers" projects. Even as a final one-off statement, the record gracefully redeems the legacy of The Bangles from the elevator music hell to which it had been consigned, and stands as one of the most joyous record spins of the last decade.

Songs to listen to: (Right click, "save as")

"Tear Off Your Own Head (Doll Revolution)"
"Between The Two"

Best Of The Decade, I suppose.

2009-11-28T04:14:00.002-05:00

So over the last few weeks various online publications have come forward with "Best Of The Decade" lists.

Here's the Onion AV Club list.

Here's the Pitchfork list.

Go ahead and skim. I own a lot of records that show up on both those lists. Fair enough. Thing is, both those lists are annoyingly similar, as if the same publication came up with the entire mess and then sort of copy-and-pasted it around. Now, I'm not sure how many folks compiled the lists for both those online sites, and how many people wrote the review text up for them...but I'm betting it was a few more reviewers than write Popnarcotic.com. I'm guaranteeing it, in fact.

And here's the thing: those are the two most vanilla, disappointing lists I've ever read. Those lists are utterly safe, extra-vanilla chops of shallow rock-critic doublespeak. You can almost hear the wheels turning: "Dudes, we've gotta put something by Modest Mouse in there somewhere..." (No, you don't.)

At any rate, inspired by how dull and predictable those two lists are, my hobby for the next month or so is going to be to count down the Popnarcotic 50 Favorite Records Of The Decade. A couple of things to know going in:

1. That's 50 favorite records of the decade, not 50 best. I would be able to argue vehemently that perhaps this Radiohead album or that Roots disc is one of the best of the last ten years or one of the ten most important...but not that either would be my choice to listen to recreationally, push-to shove. Stuff I love passionately makes the list, so going in...apologies to Cat Power, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, Outkast, Kanye, and Radiohead. Those folks all made amazing, must-own records during the last 10 years which no collection is complete without. Buy them...

...and read about 'em somewhere else. What can I say? I'm feeling irascible and idiosyncratic.

2. I aim to try to post two or three albums every day, with links to previous picks in each post to make the navigation easy. Goal is to be done by New Year's Eve.

3. Yes, there will be plenty of music to sample. If you hear something you like and want to investigate, buy some music.

4. I'll try to go roughly in order, but c'mon. One day I'll listen to a record by Jim Noir or The People Under the Stairs and think "This is one of the best albums of the last ten years, easily." Then two days later, I'll come to my senses. Today's record I list in the mid-40's I could end up wishing I'd put in the top ten instead. It happens.

5. This is a chance for reassessment of the Year-End Best Records lists I do annually. Some of my picks absolutely hold up, some...don't. (Did I really have When I Pretend To Fall as the best disc of 2003? Really?) Sometimes I missed a record during a year, heard it a few years later....and oops. Perhaps I can do some atonement for that here.

So there's the background. We'll see you in a bit to start things off.

Halloween Music Mix(es), 2009 Edition!

2009-10-30T11:06:00.002-04:00

Hey all, a quick note as I'm getting ready for work today, but I wanted to get these out. I ended up doing not one but two Halloween-themed music mixes this year. Yeah, that was probably pretty stupid, but what the hey. I had two separate music needs for the season, and needed a loud, fun, party-ish Halloween mix for one, and a quieter, creepier, "music to sit 'round a fire and sip bourbon" mix as well. I've got some liner notes to bore you with, but for now, here's the music. As per usual, these mixes are all stitched together into one long mp3 track, sequenced, normalized, and crossfaded for maximum listening enjoyment. If you hear something you like and want, go buy it from the original artist!

First set of tunes is the louder mix for parties and fun:

"I Seek To Eradicate These Things With A Shovel!"
(right click that title and "Save as")

Track listing:

1. "Hell's Bells" AC/DC
2. "Garbageman" The Cramps
3. "One Step Beyond" Madness
4. "Werewolves Of London" Warren Zevon
5. "Yellow Dog" House Of Freaks
6. "Superstition" Stevie Wonder
7. "Lies Of The Living Dead" The Minus 5
8. "Black Hole" Be Your Own Pet
9. "Sympathy For The Devil" The Rolling Stones
10."Pin Prick" Railroad Jerk
11."Remembering Sophie Rhodes" Those Bastard Souls
12."Running With The Devil" Van Halen
13."Gloomy Monday Morning" The Black Hollies
14."Leaving All The Dead Behind" Captain Murphy
15."Evil Ways" Santana
16. "Devil Song" Camper Van Beethoven
17. "Cindy It Was Always You" Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3
18. "Dead" The Pixies
19. "Bronte Moon" The Green Pajamas
20. "Open Casket Access" The Blackouts

Mix number two, the spooky mix:

"Rosedale At Midnight"
(right click tha title, "save as", etc.)

(If you know the significance of the cover pic above, give yourself some kudos.)

1. Intro....
2. Cary Hudson, "Haunted House Blues"
3. Syd Barrett, "Late Night"
4. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, "Raymond Chandler Evening"
5. Califone, "Funeral Singers"
6. House Of Freaks "Lonesome Graveyard"
7. The Velvet Underground "Ocean"
8. Neko Case "Ghost Writer"
9. Hank Williams Sr. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"
10. Blitzen Tripper, "Black River Killer"
11. The Clientele, "Graven Wood"
12. Outrageous Cherry, "Out There In The Dark"
13. The Cobbs, "Deathcapades"
14. Matt Murphy D/B/A Guy Terrifico, "Friend Of The Devil"
15. Gene Austin, "Girl Of My Dreams"
16. Sparklehorse, "Spirit Ditch"
17. The Rolling Stones, "Midnight Rambler"
18. Mark Lanegan, "The Winding Sheet"
19. Cat Power, "Werewolf"
20. The Rain Parade, "A Broken Horse"
21. jennyanykind, "Ghostly White"

(Track 15 is already all kinds of creepy all on its own, but if you know why that song belongs in the Spooky Music Hall Of Fame, you're really ahead of the curve.)

Happy Halloween everyone! Be safe!

Store's Closed!

2009-09-03T02:26:00.002-04:00

With 8 commenters and 6 emails, I think we've arrived at 10 folks taking advantage and grabbing a copy of Yeah No by The Used Kids, so from this point onwards, you johnny-come-latelys better drop a five-spot in a donation on the band. Please?

One of the commenters in the other thread mentioned Nato giving a useful and helpful critique after listening to the commenter's band open for The Modern Machines a few years ago. I definitely get that. If you listen closely to Yeah No you'll hear a lot of spontaneous crazy energy popping through your speakers. Thing is, you'll also hear all kinds of very "crafted" moments, where maybe all the instruments except the guitar and drums drop out, or where just the bass carries the melody for a few measures, etc. etc. You hear some killer middle eights and bridges and codas. In other words, The Used Kids are just as skilled at careful songwriting craftsmanship as they are in getting a glorious riot of sound in the recording. It reminds me a ton of how those on those early Replacements albums, Westerberg managed to showcase brilliant songwriting chops even while he and the Stinsons were beating the crap out of those same songs.

And now I realize that in describing the wonderfulness of The Used Kids debut, all I've basically done over the course of two separate blog posts is talk about how much they bear influence of other artists. Thing is, that really misses the point, and the point is this: I know of very few other bands out there right now who so intuitively get what makes a great rock and roll song, and then know how to deliver on that. The Used Kids walk that razor-thin line between songwriting craftsmanship and ragged glory better than any band on the planet right now.

I Will Now Sell At Least Ten Copies Of A Record.

2009-09-02T02:01:00.003-04:00

If anyone cares to recall my 2006 best-of list, you'll remember that I put Take It, Somebody by Milwaukee/Chicago brats The Modern Machines in the top three. I love that record; lead singer Nato Paisano (now just Nate Coles) managed to roll early Westerberg, Pirner, and even Skag Heaven-era Peter Searcy into one pleasing whole, and I was pretty bummed to hear that the band had broken up.

Turns out they haven't, not really. My friend Joe who knows Nato and Danny (2/3rds of MoMacs) from their Chicago days let me know a few weeks ago that the guys have relocated to Brooklyn (because NY is where the rock is, yo), where they've put together a new band called The Used Kids. Now, if The Modern Machines were wonderful (and they were), The Used Kids go beyond even that: they're brilliant and transcendent. Nato and Danny already had the drawly-midwestern 1980's punk sound nailed, but now they've added another guitarist, Kate Eldridge, who manages to play these gloriously simple (but never facile) Johnny Thunders-esque guitar leads and the band has expanded their influences to include a sound that could almost be Springsteen doing Sorry Ma/Trash-era Replacements.

I know. You're doubting that comparison. Doubt quails when you hear a song like "Dancing On The Edge Of The World". Inhabiting a universe where nonstop "Whoahs", count-offs, handclaps, and insistent Benmont Tench organ can be married to thick slabs of pure punk rock guitar glory, this song kicks off The Used Kids debut with what might just be the very best single rock and roll song to come out during 2009. "Edge Of The World" isn't the only gem here--far from it. "Honorable Man" is a glorious hard-rock tale of unrequited love that could be Made To Be Broken-era Soul Asylum covering Phil Spector. "Midwest Midsummer" is the sound of new Brooklyners not easily letting go their roots to an amazing riff and bouncing bass. "I Miss My Records" might be my favorite track, if only for Kate's amazing, mournful guitar lead over the main riff and a song that wouldn't sound out of place on a Del Lords or Dictators album.

So here. Crank up your speakers or headphones.

Listen to "Dancing On The Edge Of The World".

Now dig on "I Miss My Records".

Now head to the release page for The Used Kids debut that features these gems, right here.

The album is called Yeah No. It might be the best record of 2009. You'll notice that the sales/distribution method is "donationware". You can download the whole album for free from a link on the page there...but the band politely asks for a donation of between $3 and $5. That's a pretty easy getaway right there, y'all. Donate. Download.

Or...I've got an even better idea. The first 10 people who leave me a comment in this thread or drop me an email at chris {at} popnarcotic [dot] com can download the album for free with a clear conscience, because the ol' blog here will drop a fifty spot on The Used Kids for you all.

So go to it. Bands this good making music this wonderful deserve to be heard. Make it so. (I'll be sure to post when 10 folks have taken me up on the offer, so if you try to freebie the Used Kids hard work after that, you're just being a cheap bastard.)

This Is What I Get For Doing My Own Greatest Hits Comp

2009-09-02T01:16:00.005-04:00

While perusing the ol' internet this morning, I happened to be checking new Tuesday releases and saw that there was a "greatest hits" compilation of The Apples In Stereo that was coming out. While that's nice and everything, as someone who was in a tiny minority who didn't care much for the last AiS disc (New Magnetic Wonder), I figured the disc would be heavy on that material and not so much on the Apples stuff that I personally loved.

Since I haven't been to downtown DC in a long time, and since today was an absolutely glorious day (sun dappled and cool as the other side of the pillow) I figured I'd make my own Apples In Stereo greatest hits compilation for the ipod to accompany me for a nice museum crawl on a crisp pre-autumn afternoon. I just threw a bunch of songs on there from the first four or five albums/ep's without really stopping to listen to any of them much, and then I was on my way.

I've always had a special affection for the first Apples album, Fun Trick Noisemaker. It came out when I was still working the counter at Euclid Records, and that album tends to bring back memories of afternoons spent in goofy, hilarious, better-than-Clerks conversations with the folks I worked with in more carefree days. I found out today it holds other memories, too.

I had been working in Chicago for maybe 6 months in '99 or so when The Apples In Stereo played a show at Schuba's (you can see a poster of that very show on John Cusack's record shelf in the opening scenes of the movie High Fidelity). I went with some friends, and met a friend of a friend there named Kelli. Kelli was funny, smart, and quite lovely--way out of my league, I figured. Somehow we ended up hanging out a lot together, and then we ended up dating and spending a huge chunk of our time together. She had better taste in music than I do, and introduced me to stuff I'd never have even thought of giving a fair shake 'til she forced me to listen (yeah, she'd make me mix tapes; how cool is that in a girlfriend?) She was a big Elephant 6 fan (especially Neutral Milk Hotel, although she dug The Apples almost as much as I did), and the Apples song "High Tide" was one that seemed to be an essential part of the soundtrack of our relationship in its happiest days.

We broke up after she got a job in her degree field--she had a degree in international business and a minor in German and she got a dream job in Munich. We actually discussed me moving with her, but never too seriously, and although we tried to keep a long-distance relationship going for a few weeks, that sort of thing is pretty impossible given the circumstances. In 2004--about 3 or 4 years after she moved overseas--some of my friends who'd introduced me to Kelli were in DC and we went out for dinner and they informed me that she'd been killed in an auto accident six months before. They thought I knew, but it was news to me, and I was pretty crushed by it. As far as I know, she's the only person I've dated who isn't alive anymore, and at first it left me numb for a few weeks while I tried to process all that, and then it left me pretty sad for a good while afterwards.

Which is all in the past, now. Life goes on for the living, and days like today when the temperature doesn't hit the 80's and a cool breeze blows through the leaves and the sun chases the clouds off the sky are reason enough to be in love with these times. But as the metro pulled into the Smithsonian station this morning, "High Tide" came on my self-made Apples In Stereo compilation, and for a few minutes it was as if Kelli and I were walking up Chicago Ave in the Ukranian Village for beer and pinball at the Black Beetle....and I really hope no one at the metro stop noticed all the water in my eyes.

"This summer's not over until we say goodbye
then will the tears roll out on the tide?"

A quick question before bed:

2009-07-11T02:08:00.002-04:00

...Since I hate it that I'm always posting about stuff I like and writing nice things about it and hoping I don't come off as a shill on the take, I would now like to be a grumpy contrarian and pose the following question:

Are there any artists as crashingly dull as Modest Mouse or Death Cab For Cutie?

Follow-up regarding these two bands and ten years ago: What the hell were we thinking?

I Solemnly Swear That I Am Not This Band's Publicist.

2009-07-09T02:47:00.002-04:00

So back in February we hepped you cats to the long-rumored and finally-released second album by a Chicago band called The Living Blue, who have been a favorite of mine since they started recording back about five years ago as The Blackouts. Sadly, that second album, Walk, Talk, Rhythm, Roam was The Living Blue's swansong. By the time it came out and reading between the lines, I gather that most of the lineup of the band had split and that lead singer and guitarist Stephen Ucherek was kicking around the Windy City putting another group together. By the end of February, The Living Blue was officially no more...but Ucherek had a new band called Village, and some new tracks up on a Village myspace page.

I think I may have linked to some of those back then. The songs were very raw and obviously demos or reference tracks. A few months ago Ucherek announced that he was actually getting these new songs by Village recorded in studio, and had recruited a band proper to make Village an actual group instead of a one-man show. Over the last month or so more demo tracks and stuff have come out, and the quality of the songs has steadily improved. But none of that prepared me for what I'm listening to right now.

Seems as if in the last day or so Ucherek has uploaded 4 songs from an ep he hopes to release soon, and these are finished studio tracks, and to put it mildly, they're stunning. You can only hear them on his myspace page, so I suggest you run, not walk over there right now. Go! Go! We'll still be here, but seriously head over there. Oh right, a link:

Village Myspace Page

Here's the thing. The Blackouts record was pretty good. The first Living Blue disc was even better. The second Living Blue disc topped them both, and is absolutely excellent....but here Ucherek and company have outdone all of that. He's abandoned any lingering pretext of his roots playing a vaguely "garage-rock" sound and has instead embraced a sound that hearkens back to the postpunk days of classic Homestead Records stuff, only with a better songwriting sense than all but a few of the folks on that label had.

Just play those four songs in order, dude. "Hopeless" just threw me on my ass, but "Trash Palace" is the best song Ucherek's ever written and manages to top "Hopeless". I'll admit that the loosey-goosey and unhinged demo version of "Lava Birds" sounded better to me than this more careful and studio-realized version does, but it's still a great song. Finally, "Downtown Girls" builds an awesome guitar riff in the verse and then outdoes it with an even better one in the chorus.

It took Walk, Talk, Rhythm, Roam almost 2 years to get released, and clearly Ucherek spent that time well by writing a whole lot of very, very good songs. The ep is tentatively titled "Minimal Animal", and the band promises it'll be available "soon". For now, bliss out on the tracks at myspace, because these are four of the best songs you're going to hear this summer.

Long Live The King

2009-06-26T02:53:00.003-04:00

The death of Michael Jackson earlier today is bound to bring out strong reactions in folks. I've heard plenty of jokes today. (The best one: I'm grading these Responsible Liquor Service tests we have the servers at our restaurant taking, and my fellow manager, Jimbo, asks about the results. Pretty much everyone is passing, I tell him. "You know who else passed? Michael Jackson." Ok, you had to be there.) Somewhere around 1985 or so, Michael's life began to become a freakshow, and he was clearly ill-equipped to handle it, and eventually devolved into an almost Howard Hughes-like state of insanity. Yeah, I said "insanity"; I think there'll be little doubt when Jacko's life is dissected in future years that the last two decades of his life were a spiral into deep psychosis that sure seemed a lot like schizophrenia.

So yeah. Jokes. Outrage expressed by thirtysomething males on message boards about the "dead child molester" (this outrage coming, by the way, from a community that has little trouble with counting down the days until the 18th birthdays of the Olsen twins and Emma Watson). I've even seen one galactically clueless nitwit express the idea that Jackson and The Jackson 5 were on a musical par with Donny Osmond. I mean, I can understand if Jackson's music isn't your thing, but most grown adults eventually develop critical thinking that underscores that personal taste is not universal taste, and a recognition of empirical elements of quality. I suppose though that it is easy to look back through the last 20 years at the freakshow of Michael Jackson's life and lose sight of what the whole big deal about him was in the first place.

The thing is, though, you look at Jackson's career as a member of TJ5 and right through his early solo work, and you've got one of the most monstrously, astonishingly talented artists of the modern recorded era--hell, there are few albums in the past 30 years that sound as immediate and winning as Off The Wall. Some will look at Neverland Ranch, sexual abuse acquittals, and the endless creepiness of his physical appearance and say "I don't get it." To me, that's like looking at Fat Elvis in a gold lame cape sweating through a set at Caesar's Palace in 1975 and wondering where the rock and roll greatness is.

The greatness came earlier. But greatness it was, and for all the crazy self-induced nonsense that marked MJ's descent into madness, there's a reason he was the King Of Pop. Rest in peace.

Yes, Green.

2009-06-16T00:26:00.002-04:00

Regardless of outcome, the 60% of Iran's population under the age of 30 will not let go of the simple idea of freedom. What amazing times we live in.

Enough Already.

2009-06-09T13:25:00.002-04:00

Got news from Rob Morton on Monday that over the weekend an artist whose work I've praised here on the blog passed away. Jeff Hanson was only 31 years old, and apparently died after taking a bad fall to a concrete floor in his new apartment. His music was sweet and beautiful, reminiscent of the late Elliott Smith (my old friend Darren from the Euclid Records days said of Hanson: "He was like the Elliott Smith you didn't feel compelled to worry about." If only...) but with a little less of the edge of lurking psychosis that fueled the sharpness of Smith's music.

As incredible a talent as Jeff was, and as haunting as his voice was, what was even cooler was that the guy was a genuinely nice fellow. He wrote me an email or two over the years, and he and I threw down a couple of beers at a live show a year or so ago and he was also one of the funniest guys I've met in the industry. Like, really funny, in an effortless way. When I saw him play it was during football season and the Packers were making a nice run in Favre's last season and he was mostly interested in *that*; guy loved The Pack. He was way too young to have left us, and while I guess we should be thankful for the wonderful body of work he left, I can't help but think that he'd have continued to evolve as an artist and eventually find a much wider audience...and I feel very sad for the opportunity lost.

I'm getting tired of inscribing names into the Pop Narcotic Marble Index. Y'all take care of yourselves. Please?

Out Of The Dumps And Into The Happy.

2009-05-27T03:43:00.002-04:00

Have I mentioned yet just how wonderful the debut album by The Leisure Society is? Well, it is. I hope you've got some disposable income, because if you don't already own a copy of it, I'm about to sell you one.

These two clips made me smile a lot today when I really needed to do that.