best of 2011 (that i listened to)

So I'm definitely not one of those people who keeps up with new music lightning-quick, listening to the next big thing the second it comes out. It usually takes me a while. Sometimes it takes me a long while. (I still haven't listened to The Suburbs). I get to it when I get to it.

That being said, this list is going to be pretty awful. I'm doing it mainly to see how many albums from this year I actually got around to listening to. So here goes and such.

1. Fucked Up - David Comes to Life

2. Doomsday Student - A Jumper's Handbook

3. Black Lips - Arabia Mountain

4. The Vinyl Stitches - The Vinyl Stitches

5. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

6. The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck

7. iceage - New Brigade

8. Boston Spaceships - Let It Beard

9. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man

10. Algernon Cadwallader - Parrot Flies

11. Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee, Part Two

12. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Mirror Traffic

13. Yuck - Yuck

14. Deerhoof - Deerhoof vs. Evil

15. Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness

16. The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave

17. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

18. Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

19. British Sea Power - Valhalla Dance Hall

20. The Dodos - No Color

21. The Dirtbombs - Party Store

22. The Strokes - Angles

Yikes. Not a whole lot. More than I thought I'd have, admittedly, but still...not good. I need to work on that.

Pretty good year, as far as I've heard from it. A few major disappointments (Radiohead, The Strokes), but a ton of albums that I'm going to cherish for years to come--pretty much the entire top ten, really. Great albums.

LOTS of albums I still have to get to though (Bon Iver, PJ Harvey, etc.), but I have a system I like to keep to that helps me listen to everything in my collection while slowly filtering new music through. I have a 160gb iPod that's constantly full, and I like to make sure I'm not leaving any music unlistened to. And the two times I deviated from that system this year, I was crushed. (Radiohead and The Strokes).

P.S. - People seem to be sleeping on Doomsday Student for some reason, but they're carrying on the spirit of Arab on Radar wonderfully, and I really think their new album rivals anything AOR ever did. Not everyone's cup of tea, to be sure, but I've heard damn near NOTHING about this band from anyone else.

being robert christgau

(Decided to try something new at work on Tuesday. Wrote a review of each album I listened to, all day, quick-burst, Christgau-style, snark left unbridled. It was fun. Internet was out last night, so here it is now.)

Porn – Wine, Women and Song

Melvins-style sludge that rocks harder and stays more professional than their skuzzy brethren. Band name aside (a classy upgrade from “Men of Porn”), these guys don't fuck around. Riffs out the ass and a purity of attitude and style that overwhelms and sucks you into its being like all good metal should.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request

Better than the first request, by a good deal. Stones cocksucking aside, there are plenty of great tunes under the experimental touches. One of the more capable Anton treatises, though like all the rest it falls incomplete, a tossed-off masterpiece that could've been. Too much Brian Jones, not enough Keith Richards.

Sleater-Kinney – All Hands On the Bad One

Riot-grrls with the chops to sound like a big-grrl band, the talent to write legitimately great rock songs, and the sense to ditch the fem bravado for the real deal. No need to say “Suck My Left One” here. They demand in as many words what Hannah will beat you across the head with, only it's significant outside of the socio-political context. Who needs that shit anyway. They sure don't.

Les Sexareenos – 14 Frenzied Shakers

Proof the Chuck Berry riffs are still worth ripping off 60 years later. You can call it punk, but it's no more dangerous than the Sonics. At times they're damn near a carbon copy of them and every other early garage rock band, which is kinda the point. Zero originality points, but for 14 tracks rock 'n' roll appears to be alive after all. (Also, putting 16 tracks on the CD is an excellent punk-ironic touch.)

Guided By Voices – Alien Lanes

Not quite Bee Thousand, but few things in life are. Lo-fi, but it really shouldn't be. These guys need not hide behind the fuzz. Can't say that for many other eight-track demi-gods, yet I love Lou Barlow all the same. Probably could've been killer at half the length, but the sprawl gives it it's charm. When he hits, Pollard is as good as any songwriter alive. He just needs to hit more.

The Lemonheads – Lick

Hard not to look down on any Lemonheads album that isn't Ray or Come On Feel. Still a solid enough album though. They're thankfully shedding the last of the Hüsker Dü fanboy issue, but that obnoxious guitar sound is still there, smothering the band's burgeoning songwriting. The Bob Mould impression just isn't that good. It's been done better. So have Evan Dando's songs.

the beatles - sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band

Is there an album in existence more drenched in context than Sgt. Pepper's?

It feels weird to even use that word to describe it, "album." It's an entity, a piece of music history in itself, if not cultural history, or human history altogether. There's a seemingly endless list of accomplishments and an immense world of influence all attributable to a mere 13 tracks. More success than any band would hope to achieve in their entire career, multiplied by a hundred--all from just one Beatles album, and arguably not even their most influential one.

It's all absurd, and there's really no point in talking about it. I won't say anything that hasn't been said before. Plus, if you weren't there for it's release, you can't understand the full effect it had on the world. You just can't.

For someone like me, born in 1989, who didn't hear a Beatles album until he was 16 because his parents had been sick of hearing them for decades, someone who experienced the end result of the Beatles in the countless bands they inspired way before he could even pick out a single song... It's impossible not to be underwhelmed by this album.

I'll never forget the first time I listened to Sgt. Pepper's. It was one of the CDs I picked up on one of my many library trips, and I could not have been more excited. I had read Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums" list, I had read a few reviews online, I had at least a sense of the amount of hype surrounding it, and I was totally prepared to have my mind blown by what was categorically the greatest album ever made, according to everyone that mattered.

And I was let down. Hard.

Even now, having listened to it probably dozens of times, the general psychedelic feel of the whole album still sounds hopelessly dated. On my first listen, it sounded like a bunch of drugged-out songs about a circus or some shit. It was just...weird. This was the greatest album ever made? There was no way. Rolling Stone was clearly fucking with me.

I've grown slightly more fond of it over time, admittedly, but it never reached that lofty position in my mind among the greatest works of rock 'n' roll, as the critics and the writers and the rock stars lead me to believe. Pet Sounds clearly has better songwriting. Loveless blew my mind more on a technical level. And as a far as psychedelia is concerned, I'll take the diluted garage version found on Pebbles or Nuggets any day. It's just not that impressive.

Granted, this is me saying this in 2011. And I completely understand that. When you look at the rest of the music world in 1967, Sgt. Pepper's towers miles above anything else. I know. Studio achievements, technical breakthroughs, even the goddamn track listing was revolutionary. I get it. It changed everything.

But all of that is reliant on the context. You have to know that Sgt. Pepper's is a great album. You have to know that it changed everything. Which is all fine and good. But I just never thought the album stood up by itself, without that outside knowledge. "A Day in the Life" is a wonderful song, and is arguably the best song the Beatles ever wrote, let alone the best song on the album, but the rest of it is just tedious, strange, and sounds like it was recorded for a world I've never been to before. Which is true, I suppose. (I've never done any psychedelics, which practically drenched the world this album was born into.)

I guess my point is that I really don't like Sgt. Pepper's all that much, and I don't feel bad about it.

There was a time when I tried to convince myself that this album was incredible, just like Trout Mask Replica was fascinating and Faust wasn't boring as all fuck. But it's just not what I think. I'd rather listen to the White Album or Rubber Soul or Revolver or even Magical Mystery Tour. And that's okay. Because Rolling Stone doesn't get to decide what music I should like. I do.

pain jerk - recycled music

I may be the most immature person I know.

I graduated from college in May, degree in-hand, wandered out into the real world, and it's really a wonder that I'm still alive.

I had to write a couple checks today to pay for a doctor's visit, and I had to Google "how to write a check," because I had been using a debit card since I was fifteen. I honestly had no fucking idea how to do it. And even with the Googled instructions in front of me, I still fucked up one of the checks and had to redo it.

The whole college education thing I paid thousands of dollars for (or eventually will, I guess) doesn't seem to have done a goddamn thing for me. I can write, I can hold a logical conversation, I can rattle off stupid meaningless facts that I picked up somewhere along the way, but I'm completely incapable of existing in society as I am today.

All of my college friends are living at home. All of them. We're all too broke to even begin thinking about moving out. Most of us have jobs. Some of us are going to grad school.

The difference between me and them, though, is that if push-came-to-shove and they had to move out and make a quick living and survive, they could do it. But I really don't think I could.

Sometimes I think I have agoraphobia. It'd be nice, really--having an excuse not to leave the house, ever. But really I just think I'm a fucking moron, and having to be around people day-in and day-out reminds of that, constantly. So really I'm not scared of people, I'm just scared of having my own insecurities and weaknesses reflected back on me by everyone I come into contact with.

My days now are just a series of fuck-ups, hesitant conversations, and awkward eye contact. I feel stupid every day of my life. I feel completely incapable of normal human communication, yet that's what I'm paid to do, eight hours a day, five days a week. At a college, no less.

I'm twenty-two, not that much older than the students I interact with--hell, some of them are my age, if not older--but I still feel that same incredible, numbing disconnect with everyone I talk to. As a result, I feel way fucking older than twenty-two. It feels like life is passing me by double-time. I'm wasting away in my khakis and dress shirt and completely phony attitude and appearance, because...well, I don't know.

I need money, I guess. To pay off my loans, which I used to get this college degree I clearly utilize so well. And to pay off my credit card, which I used in the precious few months of freedom after college that would've been totally awesome and amazing if I hadn't been hilariously depressed the entire time. And to pay for music, which is really the only thing keeping me going at this point. (Also beer.)

My dad says I'm buying music now because I'm growing up. Which is clearly bullshit. I'm buying music because I have money.

As much as I never would've admitted it, I've always felt guilty downloading music. Especially when it came to the lesser-known, independent label, dudes recording in their basements kind of music. Which I love. You can spin it anyway you wanted to (and god knows I did), but I was enjoying their art without giving anything back to the artist. And there's just no way to sit right with that.

I've probably bought more music in the last few weeks than I have in my entire life. I got a nice package from Parasol in the mail today (The Extra Lens, Black Dice, The Hentchmen, Brick Layer Cake), and it was such an incredibly satisfying feeling unwrapping that needlessly taped up box of music. Not just the feeling of getting something in the mail (admittedly an excellent feeling), but the fact that I was enjoying music as something other than a Mediafire download or a soulless Mp3. My asshole music friends here on the Internet will tell me that you can't even hold music, but goddammit, I held five different CDs today, and I was holding music. (I also got a Lake of Dracula compilation.)

I hate to be that cliché twenty-something rambling on about the glory of vinyl, but standing in a record store in a basement in Frederick, flipping through racks upon racks of albums, stumbling upon gems like Two Nuns and a Pack Mule, Freedom of Choice, or a copy of Sticky Fingers with the zipper still intact... I honestly can't remember the last time I was that happy. And there's not way to explain it or justify it, because it's fucking stupid, and I know it. It's a dead medium. It sounds like shit. It degrades over time. It's a pointless fetish item coinciding with a larger, mindless societal grasp toward a nostalgia I never even owned to begin with, and it's insane. But I don't really give a fuck.

People ask me that whole "what would you do if you had a million dollars" question, and my honest answer (after sleeping for like a week straight undisturbed) is that I would get a van, drive around the country looking for record stores, and build a record collection. Then I would get a room with a swanky stereo setup (not too swanky--my ears are too dead to really appreciate the good stuff), and just listen to music, all the time. Again, it's stupid, but it's real, it's my own, and it's fucking something, which is more than I have right now.

And right now... Right now all I want is to have my ears smashed in by two walls of flowing static. Just to cleanse and burn it all away for a few minutes, numbing me down and closing everything else out, giving myself a break from feeling like such a waste. Which, consequently, is all happening through a pair of brand new cans (HD-558's) that I bought with the pay from my soul-crushing job. So I guess I'm getting something out of all this bullshit after all.

dog leather - greezy man and stinky man meets smutty ranks on tarantula hill

Out of the multitude of new artists I saw at Whartscape in 2010, DJ Dog Dick was certainly one of the more interesting. His music was an unholy hybrid of noise and hip-hop, and his sanity was questionable. It was loud and borderline painful, but it was fascinating to watch, and enjoyable on a level I couldn't quite explain. It was simply music unlike anything I had ever heard before.

Dog Leather, a collaboration between DJ Dog Dick and like-minded artist/DJ/maniac Sewn Leather, follows along the same warped patterns set out by Dog Dick, and the result is an album every bit as defiant as his solo work.

The sound is almost impossible to describe. Abrasive dub, littered with fractured samples and sparse percussion, with frat-boy stoner rap scattered over top of it all. You can throw out any number of buzzwords and try to tie it to any number of artists--I've seen writers compare this to witch house, which is an absolute joke--but none of it comes close to the reality. (If I was trying to spawn the next bullshit NME cover story, I'd go with "post-crunk" or "psychedelic glitch" or "PCP-core.") Just when you find yourself adjusting to the spaced-out dub flow, bam--flute solo. Once they have you relaxed and situated, watch out--walls of shrieking feedback over a jackhammer synth beat. For good measure, random interludes of cell phone recordings are thrown in between tracks. It's all over the place.

The only element really tying the album together is the manic, druggy energy that flows freely throughout. (Not only are there allusions to smoking PCP, but the CD case includes a few blatant drug images--just in case you had any doubt as to their muses.) It doesn't sound like anything, even track to track, which is a unifying factor in itself. But once it's over, once the blur of sounds fades out, you're left undeniably wanting more.

The madness of it all, the dizzying amount of influences that come together to create such an oddly satisfying product, just leaves you feeling empty afterwards. It feels like just that--a product, an end result, a cold, hollow piece of music lacking any real depth or passion. It feels like a tossed-off side-project, which it may very well be.

That's not to say there isn't anything to like on Greezy Man and Stinky Man. Surprisingly, the tracks with the most half-assed rapping turn out to be the most memorable. (Definitely did NOT see that coming.) "Do Gleat Her," "Gunky Monks," and "Goblin Massacre" are undoubtedly party anthems at the innermost depths of the Baltimore underground that I can only hope to glimpse on occasion. The dub styling on "Troll Spray" even makes for downright pleasant music. I'll be giving this plenty of listens in the future, and I certainly don't regret coughing up some money to support a product as unique as this. It just doesn't quite live up to its potential. Here's hoping Dog Leather gives it another try in the future though.

the vinyl stitches - all strapped up

(I missed Friday's post due to personal conflicts and alcohol. Mainly the alcohol, stoked by the conflicts. Which is odd, since normally it works the other way around. But that's okay.)

There came a point in my life, about six months ago, where I realized that I was forcing myself to listen to music I didn't really enjoy. I had turned my iPod into a rock critic's wet dream, at the expense of my own pleasure, to fulfill some dated, convoluted standard that was irrelevant to begin with. Which is pretty fucked up.

I wish I could remember the specifics of this epiphany. All I know is I slowly began admitting to myself that I really don't like Captain Beefheart, Faust, or Andrew Bird, but I love shitty noise rock, every Mountain Goats live show ever recorded (pre-2004), and most especially, garage rock. So I deleted all the shitty prog and experimental arty nonsense that was simply exhausting to sit through, and began delving deeper into the mindless caveman garage bands that truly got my dick hard.

I've become quite the pompous ass when it comes to garage, if I do say so myself. I've run through every volume of Nuggets, Pebbles, and Back From the Grave many times over, trying to pick out the few bands in those collections that actually released more than one 7", and in the process developed a love for that raw, noisy, awful racket that accompanies good, true garage rock. It's just attitude and naïvety, kids who just wanted to be rock stars so they bought guitars and figured out a few chords and ripped off the Stones and the Who as close as they possibly could without straight-up copying the riffs note for note. It's primal and pure and it's more exciting than any other music I've encountered in my relatively-short life.

The early-2000s brought on a wave of "garage-revival" bands, most of which were absolute shit. The good ones were "garage" in the vaguest sense possible--somehow the Strokes, the Hives, and the Vines fall into this category, when they were really just playing poppy rock 'n' roll with a healthy dose of punk posturing. The bands that actually tried to sound like their Nuggets idols are the ones that suck the hardest. The Flaming Sideburns, the the Mooney Suzuki, the Datsuns, and an endless stream of other bands that played pristine bullshit rock songs and completely missed the point. Where was the edge? Where was the grime? Where was the fucking soul?

The list of modern revival bands that I actually enjoy is short and sweet: the White Stripes, the Greenhornes, Black Lips, the Hentchmen, and maybe the Kills, if we're pushing the boundaries far enough. But none of them quite have that garage sound down like of one of my favorite new bands, the Vinyl Stitches.

These guys got it right. Which is apparently really fucking hard to do these days. They have more in common with the 80s-90s revival groups that predated the whole movement, and did it better than anyone else--the Gories, Oblivians, the Chesterfield Kings, etc. The Vinyl Stitches probably fall somewhere between those three groups. Take the Nuggets songwriting of the Kings, mix in the Oblivians punk attitude, and filter it through the delicious cacophonous fuzz of the Gories, and you get something close to their new album.

The thing that makes this band stand out among the army of look-a-likes is the energy. They sound just as excited and restless as the original wave of garage rockers. Whether they're plagiarizing that energy wholesale is beside the point, because they're plagiarizing it really, really well. I believe it. They're not celebrating rock 'n' roll in the third-person, in that obnoxious Hellacopters style that permeates everything "revival"--they're just living it. Which is cliché as hell but it's true, so who gives a shit. The Vinyl Stitches set out with "a vision of creating a band that would reproduce the live spirit of rock 'n' roll!" (Emphasis there's, not mine.) The scary part is that they somehow succeeded.

All Strapped Up is simply one of the most enjoyable rock albums I've heard in years. Which fits them perfectly into my new-found approach to honestly enjoying music. Not that I'm dropping the noisy, rough shit altogether--I'm listening to 2 by Hanatarash as I type--but it's nice to be able to fit one or two of these nice, wholesome albums in the rotation to lighten the mood on occasion.

fear - the record

I've always found Fear fascinating.

Intimidation, shock value, aggression, confrontation--these are aspects of punk that have been there almost from the very beginning. Once frontmen started catching on to Iggy's shtick, it became commonplace, if not expected, to work as hard as possible to push your audience to the breaking point. Dive off the stage! Fight with your fans! Cut yourself with broken glass! Wear swastikas! It was just what you did when you were the head of a punk band.

Yet within this world of constant edginess and boundary-pushing, Fear manages to stand out as one of more tasteless, crude, even sinister bands to ever come out of punk.

It's not a completely undeserved title, obviously. Lee Ving is a total asshole, and he revels in it, striving to push every button he can get his hands on. He's sexist, racist, and just plain mean. Sometimes his scorn is twisted and elaborate, sometimes it's as simple as saying "I Don't Care About You," as loud and frequent as possible. He doesn't give a fuck, and clearly he has the talent to piss people off.

Fear is possibly the highlight of The Decline of Western Society, a classic snapshot of the L.A. hardcore scene in the early 80s. Ving berates his audience mercilessly, going well beyond the standard taunting and jeering, to the point of being outright mean. And it's simply incredible to watch. He's absolutely fearless, despite the violence spread out among the crowd, and despite the fact that very active threats are being thrown his way throughout. It's a display of uninhibited antagonism so pure that you can't help but be impressed.

At times, it's hard not to read into Fear's music and look for a deeper message. "Let's Have a War" has roughly the same message as Jello Biafra's chilling "Kinky Sex (Makes the World Go Round)" monologue, but while Biafra's satire was crystal-clear, you get the feeling that Ving might actually want to kill off a good deal of society, for various reasons. You almost look for meaning in self-defense, to fend off the notion that you're listening to the truthful words of a sadist.

Nihilism in punk dates back to the very beginnings of the movement, and in many ways is inseparable from the music itself. The difference here is that Fear truly revels in that idea. There's happiness and glee and excitement behind these words. Fuck the world, hate everything, don't give a shit, use whoever you can whenever you can, get yours and move on because who gives a fuck. It equates to a rejection not just of society itself, but everything and everyone in it, on a personal level. There are no higher goals, no personal philosophy, just carnage.

As much as I want to just accept it all from the outset and take Fear for what they are, it's hard not to be affected by The Record. It's an unrelenting piece of art. Taken apart and analyzed, it's easy to shrug off. But as a whole, it's impossible not to be affected. Bands like Brainbombs would take this to the logical extreme, but even in this relatively watered-down form, it's still chilling stuff. Which is the ultimate victory, I suppose.

Even in 1982, after five to six years of punk and punk derivatives expanding on the work of Iggy, Stiv Bators, Richard Hell and co., Fear manages to take it to a different level. The simple answer is that The Record is so riveting because it's true. But that reality is too much for me to accept. I'd much rather believe that Lee Ving is a twisted little genius, and we all just fell for the act. I'm just not sure that I can.

femme fatale - from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks

Back in high school, I got most of my music from my local library. They had a decent sized collection of CDs, almost all of which were new to me, and in the summer of 2006 I filled my Creative Nomad Jukebox with a plethora of free tunes that constantly expanded my taste in music. Superchunk, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mastodon, Marvin Gaye, TV on the Radio--an hilariously diverse selection of artists that opened me up to worlds of music I probably never would have experienced otherwise.

I would walk into the library every week and pick CDs out almost at random, often choosing them simply for their cool name or interesting cover art. A CD called You're a Woman, I'm a Machine fulfilled both of those criteria, and on the ride home one afternoon, I was treated to an absolute mindfuck of a musical experience.

In hindsight, Death From Above 1979 is a pretty good band, though one that hasn't aged particularly well in my eyes. Their sound isn't particularly unique, and the bass/drums combination loses its novelty fairly quickly. But for a 16-year old kid who was just learning to play bass guitar and hadn't even begin to explore the depths of punk, it was a total revelation, an atomic blast of energy and attitude and noise that completely changed the way I viewed my instrument, and was simply unlike anything I had ever heard before. I'll never understand why or how that CD ended up in the Queen Anne's County Free Library, but I'm eternally grateful that it got there.

Compared to Femme Fatale, however, Death From Above is about as brutal as Superchunk.

If you took DFA, doubled the tempo, replaced the bass with a wall of screaming guitars, and drenched it in hardcore, you'd get something approximating Femme Fatale.

It's too noisy to be punk, too slow to be grindcore, and too harsh to be anything in-between. Jesse F. Keeler (one half of DFA) insists on only releasing EPs, all littered with dialogue, ambiance, and interludes, giving it an unexpected prog/experimental edge to boot. It's insanely aggressive, yet well-defined, even restrained at times. It's hand-crafted chaos that often leaves you wanting more, but sacrifices the freedom normally found in experimental music for the creation of an actual product--not a snapshot of a general sound, which most noise-rock bands tend to churn out, but a series of finished, complete records.

If that all sounds bizarre, it's because it is.

The band has a total recorded output of just over 30 minutes, and with their last release put out in 2004, it doesn't look like there's anything else coming out from this Keeler side-project anytime soon. Which may be for the best. While taking on one EP at a time can be disappointing, throwing them all on in a row--Fire Baptism; As You Sow, As You Shall Reap; From The Abundance of Heart The Mouth Speaks--is quite an experience. It doesn't get my blood pumping like Arab on Radar, Lightning Bolt, or Melt-Banana, but it's also not as harsh or blunt. And it's also nice to be able to take in a discography in one sitting, instead of being buried in a mountain of LPs, EPs, splits, singles, and random comp appearances.

As far as noise-rock goes, consider this easy-listening. Which is something even the most seasoned noise junkies can enjoy every now and then. For anyone looking for an edge to their punk without getting their asses handed to them right away, this is the place to start.

spokane - the proud graduates

The application of "-core" genres is admittedly a fickle, silly, and largely baseless practice, used almost entirely to lump together bands that probably shouldn't be lumped together, all to make said bands a little easier to describe. This is true, and I will not and cannot try to fight it.

What gets lost in conversations about this kind of arbitrary genre creation, however, is the fact that on occasion, these made-up genres actually kinda work.

To be fair, the vast majority of these "-core" genres are total crap. Metalcore, slowcore, rapcore, skacore, emocore, deathcore, noisecore, post-core--all real genres people have created to describe various types of music, all of which are completely ridiculous. Most of them are too generic to work (deathcore), some don't even describe the music accurately (slowcore), and some are just fucking insane (post-core).

Then there are the few that actually work. Hardcore stands out first and foremost, since it was the one that started them all, though few people would argue that hardcore wasn't a legitimate genre when it was coined. Grindcore has become a commonly accepted genre, largely because the criteria for the music is so simple--loud, fast, short.

Then there's a genre I'm quite fond of, though I very well might be alone on this one: sadcore.

I can almost hear the Internet groans from the two or three people who might read this, but I don't care. When I see that word, I can instantly come up with bands that fit the same style and sound: Ida, Bedhead, Rex, Red House Painters, Codeine, American Music Club, and now Spokane.

All of these bands share enough common attributes to lump them together: depressing lyrical content; understated musical tones; simple, guitar-based songs; the use of silence and atmosphere; and finally, the 90s.

I'm aware that fans of "skacore" would probably attempt to make the same argument, but goddammit, I think I'm right here. I wholeheartedly agree that the name "sadcore" is stupid, but a lot of genre names were stupid at the outset. Punk, jazz, hip-hop, and even rock'n'roll were ignorant, dumb terms that somehow came to stand for various types of music, so I reserve the right to use an ignorant, dumb term of my own.

Now that that's out of the way, The Proud Graduates is an album by the SADCORE band Spokane. And it's pretty good.

Spokane falls somewhere between Red House Painters and Ida at their most jangly, but they rarely climb up to the lofty tiers of either group. Rick Alverson's vocals fit the style, but he simply does not have the power of Mark Kozelek, Daniel Littleton, or Elizabeth Mitchell. The songwriting is just fine, and the instrumentation is lush and wonderful throughout, and you can't go wrong with this album...but you can definitely go better.

Sadcore isn't the most diverse genre in the world. Almost always, the difference comes down to the personalities of the frontmen/women, since their very souls tend to be projected onto the music itself. Which makes it easy to like bands like this, but hard to love them. There always tends to be another band that does the same thing but better, and in Spokane's case, there are plenty of them.

korn - korn

I was never a KoRn kid. When it came to angsty high school rebellion, I was more into writing Rage Against the Machine lyrics on desks than locking myself in my room and playing "scary" music. (My brother totally was though, and I will never let him live down his plastic-pants-from-Hot-Topic phase.) I always found it silly and overdone, in the same way I saw Marilyn Manson or any other Columbine-era shock-rock artist.

In hindsight, Korn was one of the few bands from the "nü-metal" genre that had any real substance, along with Deftones and probably no one else. Their core sound weakened over time, degrading into laughable songs like "Ya'll Want a Single," making it very easy to forget that Korn was a remarkably unique act when they first broke through, all the way back in 1994(!). The metallic slap-bass, growl-rapping, and tuned-down guitars they became known for quickly descended into self-parody and was picked up by numerous copycat acts, but taken for what it is, their trademark sound packs a tight, manic punch that still stands up to this day.

Jonathan Davis' aggressive lyrics brought them widespread attention from parent groups and politicians alike, and it's easy to forget that that controversy existed for a very good reason: Davis' psychotic delivery is thoroughly engrossing, and downright terrifying if you let yourself get sucked in deep enough. It's easy to dismiss as adolescent, the sound of an outcast lashing out at the ignorant world around him, but it's impossible to deny that the emotion underneath it all is real and true.

Fuck you! I'm fed up with you. I'm not as good as you?

Fuck no, I'm better than you.

Could those sentiments be processed better? Yes. But does he get his message across? Absolutely.

This is not subtle music, to be sure--the same general message is bashed across your skull nonstop for an hour--and it's easy to see why a confused, alienated 14-year old would use it as a weapon against his parents and society in general. But as a work of art, the manifestation of a world of horrible energy and restrained aggression boiled down to twelve songs, it is simply astounding.

This is not to say the album is flawless. The album is ripe with regrettable choices (the use of nursery rhymes in "Shoots and Ladders" is more cheesy than unsettling, for example), but they are far outweighed by the ones that work. The band is buoyed throughout by Davis, who is at his best when he lets his raw emotion pour through. And nowhere is this raw quality more evident than in "Daddy."

The unfortunate truth is that this song is about the real-life childhood molestation of Davis (not by his father, but by a female family-friend), and that the autobiographical nature of the song is what brings it to life. The track is nothing short of pure, unbridled pain. By the end of the song, you can almost hear the demons of his past leaving his body. The lullaby in the background are unnecessary, and even work to dilute the power of Davis' vocals (if you can call them that), which chill you right to your core.

As his words give way to agonizing screams, uncontrollable sobbing, and bellowing cries toward figures unknown, it becomes truly unsettling, truly uncomfortable to listen to. It's one thing to be moved by art. It's quite another to want to physically turn away from it. In my mind, "Daddy" stands up as one of the most frightening songs in rock history, up there with "Frankie Teardrop" and "Hamburger Lady," and is the perfect musical and emotional anchor to the album as whole.

The band never again reached the creative heights of their debut. Maybe the songwriting was never as good. Maybe the production on other albums polished them up too well. Maybe their energy simply peaked at the outset. For whatever reason, Korn's debut was as good as they ever got, and arguably created a "nü-metal" landmark that no other band could touch, far outlasting the ill-begotten genre and all the worthless bullshit it spawned.

the mountain goats - live: 1998/02/06 - cow haus, tallahassee fl

Here's an easy way to spot the difference between a Mountain Goats fan and someone who listens to the Mountain Goats:

Ask them what their favorite Mountain Goats album is.

If said person merely listens to the Mountain Goats, they will name a studio album. Most likely Tallahassee, All Hail West Texas, or the Sunset Tree. If they're trying to get cocky, they might even namedrop Sweden or Get Lonely.

If said person is a true Mountain Goats fan, he/she will either:

a. Hesitate, then ask you to define what exactly you mean by "studio album," or

b. Name their favorite Mountain Goats live recording.

Every good Mountain Goats fan knows that the albums/tapes/compilations are just the blueprints for live recordings. Even the best recorded Mountain Goats songs become infinitely better onstage, bar-none, without question. (Aside from songs that have never been played live, of course. Which, really, given the incredible amount of songs John has written over the years, are not that great in number.) John will write a song and put it down on tape, but it never really comes alive until he's pouring through it in front of an audience, tearing through every last note, dragging the emotion out of every last syllable, at times even seeming to create new emotions he discovered in the songs after he himself wrote them.

A good example of this is Sweden, which is a really an okay Mountain Goats tape, all things considered. It doesn't stand up to the later, greater stuff, but it definitely beats the hell out of some of his older monstrosities. Yet when those same subdued songs are played live, there is a life breathed into them that is nothing short of magical. They almost sound like covers, two versions of the same song, linked together by words and structure, yet vastly different in every other sense.

This exact phenomenon happens throughout my personal favorite MG show: 1998/02/06 at the Cow Haus in Tallahassee.

There are some shows where the fire burning inside John is so white-hot and pure, it damn-near sears your ears just listening to it. Forget broken strings--from 1995-2000(ish), it wasn't a good show if John's guitar wasn't covered in blood. John tends to look back at these shows unfavorably, openly mocking his past tendency to play songs as fast and loud as possible to gratuitous effect, one that is impossible to revel in, despite the knowledge of its disingenuous. If you don't get chills hearing John belt out lines like "You can arm me to the teeth / You can't make me go to war" at top-volume, you just aren't human.

Aside from the manic energy that pervades all recordings from that time, this show is exemplary for a few other reasons. For starters, the setlist is fantastic. "Tulsa Imperative," "West County Dreams," "Waving At You," "Snow Crush Killing Song," "Family Happiness," "Minnesota"--all of which are incredible choices, some arguably sounding at their absolute best in this recording. Clocking in at an hour and twenty minutes, it's also a fairly long show, burning through 24 songs in the process. Just when you think he's starting to fade, he comes roaring right back with even more energy than before. At one point he tells the crowd that he could keep going for three hours, and it's not hard to imagine him doing it, if he thought they would've stuck with him.

The sound quality is imperfect, but for a 13-year old recording, it's pretty excellent. There are slight rough patches to nitpick at, but if the sound is your biggest worry, then you really shouldn't be listening to shows like this in the first place. The balance is great throughout, if a bit low, so you should definitely jack the volume up using your media player of choice. One of the more common problems with these live recordings is poor audio during John's between-song banterings, and thankfully, every word that leaves his mouth that night rings through loud and clear. And as far as Mountain Goats banter goes, this is pretty good. No classic drunk-John lines, no interplay with Peter or anyone else, but plenty of audience dialogue and some choice song descriptions.

All-in-all, it's a tremendous experience, one that any Mountain Goats fan should partake in without hesitation, and one that would certainly open the eyes of "fans" who think the best Mountain Goats recording is a studio album. (Lol.)

Link: http://www.archive.org/details/mountaingoats1998-02-06.flac16

(In case you were wondering, John has no problem with people sharing live shows online. Archive.org even has an email from him, giving his direct blessing.)

the jesus and mary chain - darklands

Slow day at work. So, I scribbled out some nonsense about the album I was listening to at the time. Which happened to be Darklands by the Jesus and Mary Chain. Here it is, transcribed from Post-it notes, verbatim (for better or worse).

I have gone on record potentially millions of times as saying that Psychocandy is the most perfect album ever created. I love bubblegum pop, and I love noise, therefore I fucking love bubblegum noise. Simple mathematics.

Unfortunately, the Chain never quite returned to that formula ever again. They never really gave up the feedback, but the noise was gone--the raw quality fueled by a musical naivete so pure that the idea of tuning their guitars was novel and quaint. And yet the approach managed to result in an album of brilliant pop songs about speed and sex, even if you did have to strain a bit to pick out the melodies.

There's no straining required for Darklands, however. There's damn near nothing BUT melodies. It's basically Psychocandy without the danger. Which is cool and all, but...the danger is what made the Reid brothers cool to begin with.

Darklands is really just a power pop album with Velvet Underground beats. You could easily hear Big Star or the Smithereens playing every song on this album. Which makes sense, I suppose, seeing how power pop is the most derivative genre of music ever created. I mean that's the whole point, isn't it?

I may be getting a bit hyperbolic here. There's definitely a level of melancholy here Alex Chilton couldn't touch. "Nine Million Rainy Days"? Come on now. That's pure Reid downer nonsense. Only this time around, the sound matches the subject. Psychocandy made disparate odes to speeding your life away sound like Beach Boys b-sides. Which was what made it so charming to begin with.

Darklands is just so goddamn...practical. And that's just no fun at all.

(Proof.)

virgin mobile freefest 2011

Another year, another Virgin Mobile Freefest.

This was my second year in a row at the festival (both under the “Freefest” moniker), and my fifth year overall. It wasn't the best year I've been, but it wasn't the worst either. Pretty middling overall, with a couple great bands slightly dampened by a poor mood that covered most of the festival.

Any post about this festival needs to start with how fucking terrible Merriweather Post Pavilion is for shows of this nature. This is about as far from ideal festival territory as you can get. Aside from the very basic necessities (sound from the stages doesn't bleed together, etc.), it's just a horrific experience going anywhere or trying to get anything, to the point that it really does interfere with the general experience and even the individual bands themselves.

Just like last year, Merriweather was fucking PACKED. Filled to the brim with people. Absurd crowds everywhere you went—even wandering around mid-day. Any food stands, bars, or bathrooms were completely swamped after noon, to insane levels. One area to the right of the pavilion that encompassed all three amenities was simply a massive swarm of people virtually the entire day. All paths moving from stage to stage were slow-moving, tight, and uncomfortable, all day. One path in between the dance forest and festival stage worked as a walking path, an area for food lines, and a route for port-a-potty trucks—simultaneously.

Any and all attempts at fostering a “festival” atmosphere of any kind were completely lost. The kind of activities, events and special areas that make festivals like Coacella or Bonnaroo unique acted purely as corporate advertising, with no attempt to hide it at all. The degree to which you were bombarded with advertising, plugs, and freebies throughout the day was simply exhausting. I don't think I'm alone in saying I would GLADLY pay some money for my “Free” ticket if it meant actually being able to walk around in peace for a little.

I can't speak to the setup at the pavilion stage (I didn't see a single band there), but the pavilion setup was atrocious. Just like last year, the process of emptying out the pit after every band was a joke. It turned the event into a series of concerts as opposed to any kind of “festival.” And while last year's setup allowed two different lines to form along the outside stairs—one for the current band, one for the upcoming one—fans waiting for the next band were forced to line up outside of the pavilion altogether, resulting in long, winding lines stretching out into the masses of people wandering around. In the case of the Black Keys, that line probably ended up right in the middle of that aforementioned amenities sea—at best.

Even people sitting inside the pavilion—which seemed to be made entirely free, a welcome change from last year—were subject to the same shitty treatment. Pavilion seating was locked down after the band started to play, with workers forbidding people from both entering AND re-entering the seating area. The only problem was, they didn't tell anyone who went to leave. If you wanted to get a beer during TV on the Radio or you really had to piss during the Black Keys, you were allowed to leave, then told when you returned that you would have to wait with the rest of the people trying to get in. The result was an incredible number of empty pavilion seats toward the end of the major bands, and an insane rush of people trying to get back to their seats AND find new ones. It's a wonder no violence broke out as a result.

I think I'm almost running out of shit to bitch about. $8.50 beers are always horrible, but that's been the case at Merriweather and just about every other venue for so long, it's not even worth talking about anymore. The parking was atrocious, apparently leading most concertgoers to park at rented lots outside of the actual grounds, but that was most likely a result of the Biblical amount of rain Maryland had had that week. I imagine the main parking grounds were just completely washed out.

So, now to the bands.

The first band we saw was Okkervil River. I was running off a brilliant drunk high at this point, so my judgment may be somewhat cloudy. But I absolutely love them. I've been a fan for about five years, and their music has gotten me through a lot of shit, so it was an emotional experience to be sure. I definitely teared up during “A Girl in Port.” Singer Will Sheff is just as uniquely powerful onstage as he is on his albums, with his imperfect vocals still absolutely radiating with emotion throughout the show. His physical presence took me by surprise, especially when he started to get almost violent towards the end of the performance, adding yet another level of power to his stage presence. His backing band was also fantastic, though I was admittedly staring almost exclusively at guitarist Lauren Gurgiolo, who introduced me to my new favorite fetish: women who can rock a pedalboard. Quite possibly the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Just an amazing performance by the whole band, coupled with some excellent song choices, including personal faves “Black” and “For Real.”

After Okkervil, we wandered for a good deal, getting our drunk on and not really settling anywhere until !!!, who we had originally planned on merely stopping to catch a glimpse of before moving on to Patti Smith, Cut Copy, Cee Lo Green, and James Murphy. (If that sounds ambitious, it's because it clearly was.) !!! grew more and more addictive with each passing minute, to the point that we decided we couldn't be fucked to see any of those other assholes and stayed for the whole show. It's hard to pinpoint why !!! is better than your average dance-rock band. Maybe it's the full-blown instrumentation, with virtually every note and effect being played right in front of your face, as opposed to bland, synth/drum-machine dominated live acts. Maybe it's the songs, which are just brutally catchy and funky to the extreme. Or maybe it's how fascinatingly gay Nic Offer is.

Clad in short-short-short-shorts (two “shorts” just isn't enough), climbing all corners of the stage, showing off his best Travolta impressions, and barking out effect-heavy, echoing vocal orders to the crowd, Nic was simply mesmerizing to watch. I'd rank it up there with my top-five favorite frontman experiences ever. (The other four, in no particular order: Iggy Pop, Alex Ebert, Kanye West, Eric Paul.) He took the show from a catchy, danceable live band to a full-blown spectacle. And that entire crowd joined right in. There were some pot fumes floating around, to be sure, but for the most part it seemed a far cry from the drug-induced mania you would expect from a band like !!!. It just seemed like a bunch of people who wanted to have fun and dance badly for an hour or so.

After !!!, we briefly stopped by Patti Smith, only to leave immediately after hearing her dedicate a song to Amy Winehouse. (In hindsight, I probably overreacted a bit, but at the time I was absolutely devastated.) From there we checked out James Murphy for a few minutes, only to leave after realizing it was just a DJ set. (After seeing the full-blown movement of !!!, watching a guy turn a few knobs and push a few buttons is just boring as hell.)

At that point we decided to implement our master plan: Get in line for the Black Keys, and watch TV on the Radio from the steps while we waited. Unfortunately, we were not alone in this plan.

We headed for the steps, only to find a line of people stretching well outside of the pavilion. At the time, we thought the system was still the same as last year, so to us, we were looking at a line of people stretching from the stage clear back to the food stands. It was impenetrable, to say the least, and we weren't excited about the notion of standing with horrible views at the back of the pit. Looking back, of course, our spots would have been fine, since was really only 20-30 feet long. But what can you do.

So instead, we grabbed mediocre side seats and waited on TV on the Radio. A few songs into TV on the Radio, my friend unknowingly left to get food. To her surprise, there was no food left in all of Merriweather (a good 3-4 hours before the end of the festival), and she was not allowed back in until the band was finished. As for the band itself... I always considered myself a pretty big TVOTR fan, but I was not impressed. In fact, I nodded off a couple times in the middle of the set. They rely solely on the music to provide a captivating live show, but it just wasn't good, in my opinion. It probably didn't help that I was very drunk, but still.

After they finished, a hoard of people re-entered the pavilion, a mixture of people trying to get back to their seats and people desperately trying to find new ones. Across the pavilion, we watched a surge of people fill the pit line for the Black Keys. People were running down the stairs, cramming into the pit area one by one, and eventually filling the entire stairwell with bodies. It was insanity, and it's fucking miracle no one got hurt. The estimated attendance was 50k people, and the pavilion area itself has a capacity of roughly 20k. The math alone is terrifying, and the real-life experience was just as scary.

We didn't stay for the entire Black Keys performance, mainly because we were tired, hungry, and too drunk. They opened with a series of older songs just between Dan and Patrick, which were tremendous. We left shortly after they opened up the stage to a couple other musicians, giving them the instrumentation to play their new songs. I'm sure it was great, but I honestly don't know. We were ready to get the fuck out of there.

This festival needs to stop being held at Merriweather, but I know it won't, because you could practically see the fucking dollar signs everywhere you went. Promoters are raking in bucketloads of cash, so there's no end to this in sight. And as much as I want to take some kind of moral stand and say I'm never going to another Virgin Fest again, I know I'll be back next year, because it's the only major festival in Maryland (unless you count HFStival, which is a joke), because they always bring in bands I want to see, and because it's free. Each year makes me miss the Pimlico days more and more, when the festival actually felt like a goddamn festival, when you actually had room to breathe and walk around and enjoy yourself, and when you could actually stand at the front of the main stage for more than one fucking band in a row. But those days are long gone, for this festival at least, and since the chances of another festival coming in to compete with Virgin are slim to none, we have no choice but to suck it up or miss out altogether.

elliott smith - new moon

I've been less than kind to Mr. Elliott Smith in this blog. In fact, in my review of Figure 8, I was pretty much a complete asshole. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense, because Figure 8 is a shit album.

I went overboard, however, in my total dismissal of Elliott Smith, and essentially any dead singer-songwriter who wasn't Nick Drake. I was blinded by my hatred for the album, I overreacted, and I was wrong. Because I listened to New Moon today, and not only was it enjoyable, it was downright great.

I had no idea what this album was when I listened to it--I just thought it was a normal double-album, albeit one with a unusually stripped-down, raw style. Turns out, this is a posthumous release, a bunch of leftover tracks from old sessions thrown together into a double-album. Which is truly remarkable.

New Moon is clear evidence that Elliott Smith had more talent than the vast, vast majority of singer-songwriters in the world. It nearly places him on Nick Drake's level (though no one will touch him, in my opinion). The sheer amount of brilliant songs that were left off his albums his simply overwhelming. As a document of his talent, it's wonderful. But even on its own, as a normal part of his catalog, it's still amazing.

New Moon showcases Elliott Smith at his best: just him, a guitar, and a microphone, for the vast majority of the tracks. Some of the sparser arrangements on the album still do him justice, but for the most part, his style simply isn't well-suited to loaded arrangements. (This is probably why I hated Figure 8 so damn much.) There's a haunting element to his music that appears when his music is left at its most basic. Now that I know this was a posthumous album, this clearly wasn't a mistake: the production gives Elliott's vocals an ethereal quality, and the songs themselves seem to be floating in an empty void, buoyed only by his words.

That being said, I still believe Elliott Smith is somewhat overrated, and most of his fame is still due to his untimely death, but this album has definitely risen his stock. He was an undoubtedly talented songwriter, and the demons that tormented him are plain to see throughout New Moon. I'm glad I had the chance to listen to this album without knowing its origins, as it gave me a chance to view them as songs in themselves, and not as statements on his death. But I'll definitely be giving this one another listen to get that version of the album too.

mgmt - oracular spectacular

(Missed my Friday post because of that Blogger login bug that was going around. My apologies.)

I'm not completely opposed to the use of deception in music. I listen to plenty of rappers whose stories of drug deals and careless murder are almost certainly fake. I love all those mean-spirited punk records by bands like the Sex Pistols, even though the guys themselves were practically teddy bears. Kanye West isn't even really a person anymore, but I like him just fine too.

But for some reason, MGMT just rubs me the wrong way.

I've always loved "Time to Pretend," but beyond that, I was always weary of jumping on the MGMT bandwagon. Oracular Spectacular was absolutely everywhere in 2007, sucking fans from all corners of the musical spectrum into their void, even sparking fashion movements based on their pseudo-hippie attire. But somewhere along the way, the fact that they were just fucking with us all got lost in the noise.

Andrew and Ben make no attempt to hide their beginnings: they started out playing music to piss off their friends, and somehow they ended up getting signed to Columbia. And aside from "Time to Pretend," the music itself reflects that fact.

These guys piss and shit great pop songs. That much is undeniable at this point. But the end results still reek of the piss and shit they came from, almost like they aren't trying to hide it--which they aren't. To the untrained ear, "Weekend Wars" and "Kids" are just solid little synthpop singles. They're fun to dance and sing to, la la la, who gives a shit beyond that. But in truth, they're fucking unbearable.

"Kids" is the biggest offender of them all, and I have to admit I fell for their sick ways the first five or six times through. But in reality it's just a terrible, terrible song, written in ways that only fans of terrible, terrible songs can enjoy.

By my count, the following stanza is repeated twelve times at the end of this song:

"Control yourself

Take only what you need from it

A family of trees wanted to be haunted"

What in the ever-living fuck does that mean? Being haunted sucks, why would anybody bring that upon themselves? Are these trees being haunted by tree ghosts, or human ghosts? How are MGMT speaking to trees? Assuming they're addressing the "Kids," why do they need to control themselves? They're fucking kids, let them be. Aren't you hippies supposed to be all about that shit?

To make things ever more confusing, the Internet can't seem to decided whether MGMT uses the word "wanted," "wanting," or "wantin'"--all of which present an entirely different meaning to the line, which makes no fucking sense to begin with.

Yet you'll find this song played at a hundred million parties around the world at any given second, with people ages enjoying the tune to an outright delightful extent.

I'll be honest, even I add "Kids" to party playlists when I need to please the masses and make sure no one unplugs my iPod (it tends to buy me an Oblivians song or two), because the masses fucking eat this shit up. There are probably millions of people who wish this song repeated that chorus a few more times, because they love it and the line about trees wanting to be haunted serves as a perfect metaphor for the pseudo-problems that haunt their made-up lives.

The worst part? MGMT completely did this on purpose. They write these songs with such bullshit finesse and a perfect sense of how much watered-down avant-garde the public can tolerate that it makes me sick. (Lady Gaga upped that ante a year later, but that's a whole different story.) The whole album sounds like two slightly-stoned pretentious college kids dressed like hippies flipping me off and fucking with some old Flaming Lips keyboards while a gang of 15 year-olds dance around them and shower them with money.

They're evil fucking geniuses and they know it. I feel like deleting this album would be a personal victory for them, so I'm keeping it around to listen to another day. Somehow I feel like I'm still losing.

the replacements - let it be

(My farewell column for my college newspaper.)

I always imagined my last few weeks of college would be different.

In my mind, my remaining days would pass by in an introspective blur, my thoughts reaching back to all the memories I've made around campus in my four years here. In truth, the exact opposite is happening. I can't wait to get out of here, and I cringe thinking about all the embarrassing things I've said and done on all those regrettable weekend nights.

In that same vein, I feel no real desire to do this grandiose final column to sum up my time here or cement my legacy within the paper. (If the Rebecca Black column doesn't do that, nothing will.) Instead, I'm just going to write about my favorite album in the world and call it a day.

---

Fun fact: “Let It Be” by the Beatles is the second best rock album entitled “Let It Be.” By a significant margin.

Aside from the fact that the Beatles' version is an incredibly mediocre effort, a Minneapolis punk band called the Replacements put out a record in 1984 that completely dwarfs it, along with pretty much everything else the Beatles ever did.

The Replacements were the last true “drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll” band, and they have the scars to prove it. The Replacements would play a song called “Beer For Breakfast,” then start their day out with vodka. They lived the life every rock band in the 1980s claimed to live, only they did it for real.

The quartet battled drug and alcohol addictions throughout the 1980s, and guitarist Bob Stinson died in 1995 by simply wearing his body out through drug use. This album catches the band between their early punk immaturity and the more grown-up college sound that would characterize their later albums, with both playing styles deeply affected by the substance abuse that permeated the band.

“Let It Be” is almost directly split between these two sounds. Childish songs like “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and “Gary Got a Boner” are heavily contrasted by the emotional outpouring in “I Will Dare” and “Sixteen Blue,” effectively documenting those adolescent moments where you're not quite done being a kid, definitely not ready to be an adult, and desperately searching to make sense of everything around you.

For an album that will turn twenty-seven in October, this teenage concept holds up incredibly well. The inherent duality of adolescence rings true for any generation. Paul Westerberg's angst-ridden vocals, the best in rock 'n roll (save for the Boss), turn even the most lackluster lyrics into anthems. Every song is seemingly fueled by the very frustration and confusion Westerberg sings about, based off the same treacherous experiences that color everyone's teenage years, resulting in an album that anyone over the age of sixteen can relate to.

Given that I haven't matured that much since high school, this is clearly the album for me. I'd like to say my relationship dynamics have changed since I was sixteen, but they really haven't. The same old crap rears it's ugly head time after time, and luckily I'll always have “Let It Be” to make some sense of it.

- 4/26/11

warm-weather recommendations

As my work really started to pile up in the last few months, even my newspaper column started to take a dive. This one was completely phoned in, but I still stand by my recommendations, so here it is.

Just when you think the warm days are here for good, the cruel mistress that is Maryland weather gives us another stretch of rainy days. One gorgeous 85-degree day, then the same old gloomy cloudy awful days. Well, at least the snow's over with. (Probably).

In memory of that one delightful day of sunny awesomeness we got on Monday, I've decided to present of that warm-weather music I promised to write about way back in September. So without further ado, my spring recommendations:

Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls

This is the album I was personally blasting all day on Monday. Vivian Girls play delightful bubble gum pop at a blistering pace through a wall of feedback, resulting in what you could ultimately call “noise pop,” in the purest sense. It's nice, simple music at its core, but you can still rock out uncontrollably to it at any given time. Perfect music for those long, windows-down drives on the backroads off 140.

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Seemingly-depressing album title aside, this is perfect music for just lounging around and enjoying a nice afternoon after class. There are a few upbeat tracks to pique your attention from time to time, but most of it is simply lush guitar melodies over perfect instrumentation, music to drift off and get lost to. One of my favorite albums from a band that's been making incredible music for twenty-five years.

Das Racist – Shut Up, Dude

Das Racist is frat-house hip-hop with brains. “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” their most well-known song,” is an addictive slacker anthem that you'll be reciting in your mind for days on end the first time you hear it, and the album is chocked-full of similar hook-laden tracks. The lyrics have a Lil Wayne-esque random of quality—only they're actually really funny. I keep waiting for these guys to blow up, and it's bound to happen at some point.

The Beta Band – The Three E.P.'s

The Beta Band gained some notoriety from the movie High Fidelity, which used their song “Dry the Rain” in a classic record store scene, and this album is that song times twelve. Laid-back, trippy, hypnotic, funky—there's no way to properly describe the amount of sounds the Beta Band packed into this collection, and yet it's all still immediately accessible and instantly enjoyable. For my money, the best chill-out record ever made.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy

I'm well aware that I might be alone on this one, but hear me out. These guys invented the whole “playing doo-wop songs really loud with ridiculous amounts of feedback” that's become a genre in itself over the last decade. (Hell, Vivian Girls are a part of that very genre.) They aren't a Christian band, despite the title—they're more likely to sing about staying up all night on drugs than mentioning Jesus—but the music is so mind-meltingly loud that you can't tell anyway. There's something about spring that makes me want to here intolerable screeches of noise in my music. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Bunnygrunt – Jen-Fi

Yes, there is really a band called Bunnygrunt. And yes, they are as adorable as their name suggests. Allmusic famously dubbed them “the world's cutest band,” and numerous other publications have called their brand of music “cuddlecore.” The band hates the label (as they should), and besides, I wouldn't really call them the cutest band in the world. (That would have to go to The Boy Least Likely To.) In any case, these guys are a big ol' bundle of loveable fun, playing their sloppy brand of twee pop that's designed to make you go “aww.” Who could resist a song called “I Just Had Broken-Heart Surgery, Love Won't Bypass Me Again”?

- 4/12/11

hello all

Quick update: As of roughly 1:15 pm today, I am a college graduate. Hurray and such.

As the whole college thing has been winding down, life has been getting more and more hectic, so I've had to cut down on pretty much all of my non-college-related activities--this blog included. I tried to post my college newspaper columns semi-regularly, but my usual schedule was all but lost in the chaos.

Now that college is over and I'm unemployed, the blog will resume the normal schedule I had been running in the months prior. I have a few more college columns to dump here, but for the most part it should be a lot of new stuff. From here on out, I'll be using this place as a means of keeping my writing skills sharp, because ultimately, I want to be able to do this for a living.

So enjoy. If you read something you like, tell your friends. If you have an opinion or a question or any significant emotional reaction to a post, by all means share it as a comment. Feel free to hide behind the veil of anonymity, I won't judge.

Thanks for reading!

- Matt