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usic Thread

Phish starts their 30th anniversary run tonight in Bangor. Guessing Divided Sky opener with all the garbage east coast weather.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
This Jason Isbell album is outstanding. This song writing gives me goosebumps. After listening to this I'm realizing why I like Decoration Day more than any other DBT album, as the two outstanding songs on that we're written and sung by Isbell:Decoration Day & Outfis. From Southeastern, my favorite tracks are "Live Oak" and "Yvette"
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Was listening to Decoration Day from his Live from Alabama album when I read this. Southeastern has some deep dark topics. Glad for him he is sober now. Super 8 is the track that really grabbed me first, but I need to play the album at home where I can crank it up and hear the lyrics better. He is in Charlotte tonight BTW.
 
Going to see Keller Williams and the Travelin' McCoury's tonight in GSO.
 
listening to giorgio by moroder reminded me of what's prob my favorite jam:

 
Thanks for the phish updates Cheese. Hard to believe its been 30 years. I remember the first time I saw those guys, had to have been '92 or '93. The Electric ballroom in Knoxville. The PA went out in the second set and they finished acapella.

I think I'll try to catch them later this month in Chicago. Are they still any good? ;)
 
MCHG is pretty solid. Drags at the beginning and end, but from Oceans to Versus is really good.

He's similar to Kanye in that he's

A) More brand than man now
B) Struggling to reconcile swag with domesticity
 
WakeandBake said:
Thanks for the phish updates Cheese. Hard to believe its been 30 years. I remember the first time I saw those guys, had to have been '92 or '93. The Electric ballroom in Knoxville. The PA went out in the second set and they finished acapella.

I think I'll try to catch them later this month in Chicago. Are they still any good? ;)
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I haven't seen 'em since the reunion weekend at Hampton in 2009. I've got tickets for the three nights in Denver in August.
 
Finally getting around to my best of the first half of 2013 list. It's been a really fucking good six months for music. I've purchased/acquired 18 albums since the start of the year. Here are all of them ranked?

1.) Deerhunter: Monomania
When Deerhunter released this album back in May, it seemed to fly under the radar, which was odd considering how much attention Halcyon Digest (my 2010 pick for album of the year) received. Make no mistake: This is not Halcyon Digest. It's widely viewed as "Deerhunter does garage rock", and just about all of these tracks would feel out of place on Halcyon, Microcastle, or even Weird Era Cont. After this complete reinvention of their sound, though, Deerhunter emerges with something that is still very much Deerhunter. It's grittier in places, and it's definitely louder as a whole, but the payoff on tracks like "Leather Jacket II" and "Monomania" is tremendous. The riffs of the former track are some of the best moments on the entire album, while Cox's relentless chanting of "mono-monomania" over waves of fuzz on the latter track is legitimately hypnotizing. They do quiet things down elsewhere, on tracks like "T.H.M.", "Dream Captain", and "Pensacola", and this is where Deerhunter absolutely shines. They are just so, so good at crafting 4 minute nuggets of catchy guitar pop, and they absolutely excel at feeding those tracks through a haze that they might as well have trademarked by now. At the end of the day, the shift towards garage rock turns out to be a pretty wise move. Perhaps the closest thing to previous Deerhunter tracks here is "The Missing", and it's also the first track to really lose its luster on replays. Outside of that one, though, there's really not a weak link on the album.

2.) James Blake: Overgrown
Some people hate James Blake. Fuck those people. I could probably write a book about this album. It is beautiful. One of the biggest complaints of his 2011 s/t album was the songwriting. Blake embraced his singer-songwriter side for this one, making the most fully fleshed out songs he's written yet. Take the first track on the album, "Overgrown", in which Blake probably says more words than on the entirety of his s/t album. He frets about celebrity, legacy, and the effects that either have on relationships. It's a moment of clarity for Blake, and it sets the tone for the rest of the album. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also the most coherent track we get from him. The rest of the album is littered with indecipherable phrases like "touchdown on a rainy day" and "digital lion". There's still enough that does make sense in many of the tracks that this isn't a huge loss; you get what Blake is trying to say, though that's not always a great thing-- his first "we're alone now" on "Retrograde" is downright chilling, as his voice hits a deeply creepy register. He does fall into his old minimalist habits on the second half of the album-- "Voyeur" in particular finds Blake manipulating his voice saying "And her mind was on me." But even that track is stunning in that it does what it says; it worms its way into the deepest part of the mind, and like so much else on this album, it is absolutely unforgettable. So, hey: Fuck the haters.

3.) Youth Lagoon: Wondrous Bughouse
This is such a weird, lovable album. The lyrics are mostly indecipherable, though when they take center stage, they're usually brilliant. To wit: When the climax of "Mute" hits about 3 minutes in, things open up and we get a peek into the final view verses. It's a great moment, and the payoff is a verse of "There's a figure watching from the knoll / All the myths and stories we were told / but I never listen, I never listen." Youth Lagoon is some dude from Idaho named Trevor Powers, and Powers has built his fair share of songs around this sort of coming of age nostalgia. It's not really revolutionary stuff from a lyrical standpoint, but he does it well. When he revisits those ideas on "Dropla" with gleeful chanting of "you'll never die", it sounds more panicked than hopeful, and it's a good lead-in for other spots on the album that take us to some very dark, very mature places. On the album's second track (the fantastic "Attic Doctor"), we get an absurd juxtaposition of what sounds like carnival music with one of the most troubling lines in a non-Yeezus track this year: "The doctor conceals a grin to tell her she couldn't have babies." Uh... okay, then. Powers attacks some more heavy subject matter throughout the album ("Pelican Man" could very easily be about parental abandonment, though maybe that's a stretch). Here's the remarkable part of Wondrous Bughouse: It's never really depressing or disturbing-- It's remains a very fun, strange, lovable album throughout.

4.) Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the Weekend
To me, MVotW is a tale of two albums. The first half is magnificent, containing both a killer one-two punch of "Step" and "Diane Young" and the best single track on the album in "Hannah Hunt". The second half is bogged down by a frustrating insistence to discuss theology and keep things mellow. I'm not going to dwell on that second half, but I want to make sure I'm understood here. Vampire Weekend can discuss philosophy all they want (hell, their obsession with clocks throughout this album is a fascinating subject in its own right), but they have to make good music while they do it. "Ya Hey" falls painfully, gratingly short in that department. "Worship You" does, too. Ditto, to a lesser extent, "Everlasting Arms". The first half of the album is, again, more than good enough to compensate, and "Hudson" saves that second half from being a total dud. Still, I can't help but wonder where Vampire Weekend goes from here. "Hannah Hunt" should have been the centerpiece on this album. The fact that it wasn't reeks of missed opportunity; this album could have been a masterpiece.

5.) Wavves: Afraid of Heights
Bit of a drop from the top 4 to this point. This album was somewhat of a disappointment to me after King of the Beach, and Wavves took out a lot of the oddities and weirdness that made that album so good. There is no "Baseball Cards" here. Everything is pretty much straightforward surf punk, and that's not a terrible thing. I heard a lot of people say this sounded like old Green Day when it came out. I don't know that I hear that, or that I really want to hear it. "Dog" is on the shortlist for track of the year for me, and it sounds a lot closer to Nirvana than Green Day. It's also one of the only tracks on Afraid of Heights to avoid some absurdly emo lyrics. I mean, shit, we're looking at an album with track titles like "Everything Is My Fault" and "Gimme the Knife"-- both stellar tracks, but the point remains. And, like Vampire Weekend, Wavves discusses religion a little here, though he takes a markedly different approach, dropping one of the ballsiest couplets I've ever heard in "I love you, Jesus / You raped the world". And, you know what? He pulls it off. Fuck "Ya Hey", Ezra. Fuck it so hard.

6.) Kanye West: Yeezus
I've said everything I care to say about Yeezus at this point. I like it.

7.) Laura Marling: Once I Was an Eagle
Not much to say here, though I am admittedly getting bored with these write-ups. Marling writes some pretty folk-rock, and her storytelling is at its highest level to date, and the tracks flow together like water. A really good album to just put on for an hour, letting yourself get absorbed by it.

8.) Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience
Again, I wrote a lot about this album when it came out. It's just fucking cool, man. The guy wrote a song called "Spaceship Coupe", and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, it's about how the spaceship coupe is a coupe and not a sedan and thus its a two seater and look there's me and there's you and we're two people. And, here's the kicker: It's a great fucking song. How many people can pull off something that absurdly predictable and just do it by being the tits? Justin Timberlake, that's how many people. He's better than you. Or me. Or everyone.

9.) Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold
Such a fun album. I wish I could have seen them live earlier this year. Alas, they specialize in short bursts of indie-punk, sort of like a jammier Sonic Youth? I don't know. Yelling out shit like "YOU TAKE THE RISK, I'LL TAKE THE REWARD" and "FORGEEEEEET ABOUT IT" is just a lot of fun.

10.) Savages: Silence Yourself
mdmh hates this album.

11.) Smith Westerns: Soft Will
Fun fact: Dye It Blonde is a top 5 album all-time for me. This is not Dye It Blonde. It's pretty good, though.

12.) Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt
A little forgettable. Reminded me of Feist, but trends way more towards rock than Feist ever did.

13.) Local Natives: Hummingbird
I loved this album when it came out. Soured on it a little since then, probably from overplaying it. I'll have to revisit it again soon. It started to feel sort of generic to me.

14.) The Strokes: Comedown Machine
Sort of a comeback album? Nobody will mistake it for one of their first three albums, but it's way better than that miserable fucking Angles.

15.) Phoenix: Bankrupt!
Felt predictable, forgettable, and boring. I don't know. Maybe I have to give it more time.

16.) Foals: Holy Fire
Never managed to get into it. Will have to relisten.

17.) Akron/Family: Sub Verses
Fell well short of expectations for me... But then, I absolutely loved S/T II: The Birth and Cosmic Journey of Shinju TNT.

18.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito
Fuck this. Fuck it. Thanks a ton, Karen O. I thought you were cool.
 
Possum'd and Numberline'd in last night.

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