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scout niblett - “the calcination of scout niblett”
SO badass.
i guess i can see why pfork posted this, but really, ted talks are kind of next level.
pitchfork is totally not next level, but here’s the item anyways:
— Andrew Bird and David Byrne are among the lecturers at the TED2010 conference, taking place in Long Beach, California February 9-13. Other speakers include Bill Gates, Sarah Silverman, and Elie Wiesel.
in other news, does anyone want to sponsor me so i can go to ted this year?
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songjournal:Kid Dynamite - S.O.S.
My heart skipped a beat that night before we said goodbye
Did you catch it? Please say you caught it
As I looked in your eyes, I grabbed every sigh
Please don’t forget to breathe, because it’s killing meThe moon was gone for hours when we were winding down
We should have stayed up longer, but your eyes were tired, I know
Please understand that I’ll be back.
& if you’re still around, that’s where I’ll beYou have my thoughts and you have my words
but the road has my contemptPavement hisses me to sleep as we drive away
The hardest part was touching your face
And knowing i had to let go
Chalk another mile to the board of separation
Strange towns make the best of my sickness
When the cure’s so far away.
It seems, seems so sad, but time’s not flying tonight.My heart skipped a beat that night before we said goodbye
Did you catch it? Please say you caught it
As I looked in your eyes, I grabbed every sigh
Please don’t forget to breathe, because it’s killing meThe moon was gone for hours when we were winding down
We should have stayed up longer, but your eyes were tired, I know
Please understand that I’ll be back.
& if you’re still around, that’s where I’ll beYou have my thoughts and you have my words
but the road has my contemptWish that I could catch a shooting star home right now
But we’re moving too fast can’t slow down
No one cares just how i feel
Your sleep time twitches shake the world and make sandmen sing
Settle nerves and tell me you’re dreaming
There’s still some time to think
& it seems, seems so sad.
the most lifetime song.
drive like jehu - “caress (live)”
boston spaceships - “let it rest for a little while”
peter buck plays guitar on the song, which is why the end sounds so much more jangle pop than late era gbv sounded.
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Elliott Smith “Say Yes”
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Dismemberment Plan- The Ice of Boston
I wrote about this one last year, but tumblr apparently ate it. Fittingly enough, it covers a lot of the themes I’ve covered in my decade end stuff today. Anyhow, here’s the re-up:
Not only is it a perfect song about being young, drunk, a little loneley, but a little too witty to wallow fully on New Year’s Eve but it’s a huge gateway song for me personally. Back in 01’, I tracked down this song because The Dismemberment Plan had placed really high in the AV Club’s year end album list. I found it on Kazaa (oddly enough, it wasn’t even on the album that had done so well) and was intrigued enough by the title to download the thing. This was back when it took half a hour to grab a song instead of 20 seconds. Anyhow, this was the first song where I fully got the whole indie rock thing. That stuttering guitar riff, like an awkward pause that telescopes to a quirky clever ache and releases you from any need for approval. The lyrics are a protracted, self-effacing overshare, heavy enough on pathos to sting but never so heavy that they hurt the song. When I think of the whole conceit of emo, “Ice of Boston” is one of the platonic ideals that comes to mind. Part of it is the sense that I’ve lived this song, getting the family call on a holiday, alone in the city when I’m too fucked up to be friendly but lucid enough to play along. The Dismemberment Plan, for all the musical ways that they’re compleeteley dynamite, fits that “Our Band Could Be Your Life Ideal” in about the most literal way possible for me. Travis Morrison’s lyrics could be aggregated from tumblr, and not because they’re throways but because they embody that moment where a weird glance of a slightly off turn of phrase spills open the world to you and it only feels like a throwaway because the pace of your life demands that all contemplation be clever. Sometimes great slapstick is the only way out of an open wound.
in which i copy and paste the pitchfork "upcoming releases" schedule and delete the things i'm not excited about and comment on the things that are leftover.
January
01-12
Final Fantasy: Heartland [Domino] (leaked. haven’t checked it out, but it’s owen pallett. it can’t be bad.)
Polysics: Absolute Polysics [Myspace] (myspace is funny. hopefully this won’t just be a collection of their good stuff from previous japanese releases.)
Vampire Weekend: Contra [XL] (“horchata” is bad, but everything else i heard was really good.)
01-19
Cold War Kids: Behave Yourself EP [Downtown] (yeah. i know. curiousity killed whatever was once considered tasteful.)
Scout Niblett: The Calcination of Scout Niblett [Drag City] (oh god yes.)
01-26
Fucked Up: Couple Tracks: Singles 2002-2008 [Matador] (this will be hit and miss.)
John Vanderslice: D.I.A.L.O. 7” [Dead Oceans] (john vanderslice doing a 7” on dead oceans? cool, but there’s a good chance it won’t be that good.)
Los Campesinos!: Romance Is Boring [Arts & Crafts] (leaked. haven’t listened to this, but it’s probably going to be pretty good.)
Spoon: Transference [Merge] (so stoked that rob pope is still in this band.)
February
02-02
Mount Eerie: Black Wooden [Latitudes] (leaked. haven’t dled, but it’s going to be pretty good.)
02-09
Best Coast: “Something in the Way” 7” [Post Present Medium] (this is going to be so huge. it’s getting released right after bc tours through the smell with vivian girls.)
02-16
Robert Pollard: We All Got Out of the Army [GVB Inc] (there will be two or three good songs out of twenty five or so total. those songs will be amazing.)
02-23
Quasi: American Gong [Kill Rock Stars] (i keep thinking to myself, “maybe this will be the album that gets me to care about quasi.)
Xiu Xiu: Dear God, I Hate Myself [Kill Rock Stars] (jamie stewart is some kind of savant. listen to “i luv the valley OH!” or “boy soprano” and tell me this dude doesn’t get it.)
March
03-02
Jaguar Love: TBD [Fat Possum] (this band kind of sucks compared to blood brothers, however if they’re somehow getting fat possum to put out their album, something has to be decent.)
03-09
Liars: Sisterworld [Mute] (liars always have one AMAZING song on each album that will make me want to like them more.)
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks [Matador] (wasn’t too stoked on the “going back to 1989 hardcore” stuff he played the last time i saw him, but dude’s music is bulletproof.)
Titus Andronicus: The Monitor [XL] (kooky concept album with buzz band guest stars. what could go wrong?)
03-23
Dillinger Escape Plan: Option Paralysis [Party Smasher Inc/Season of Mist] (this album is going to be kind of bad since this band isn’t converge.)
She & Him: Volume Two [Merge] (hoping for ben gibbard cameos, duh.)
03-30
The Living Sisters: Love to Live [Vanguard] (even though i’ve stopped paying attention to lavender diamond, this album could be really good. everything becky stark does has huge potential.)
Sweet Apple: Love and Desperation [Tee Pee] (j. mascis, another dude from witch and some dudes from cobra verde, who may or may not have been in guided by voices. awesome.)
Other releases expected in the first quarter of 2010
LCD Soundsystem: TBA [DFA] (will dance punk make a comeback in 2010? related: why do these bands keep releasing albums all in the same year?)
(via Hearn Images Ltd.)
Marianne Faithfull, Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright, Melissa Auf Der Maur. R.I.P. Paintings opening - Ryan Adams @ Niagara, New York City September 4, 2002.
fanfuckingtastic. check out the rest of the set.
R.I.P. Paintings opening - Ryan Adams @ Niagara, New York City September 4, 2002
OMGOMGOMGOMG i would have given almost anything to sit there with them.
so much of my favorite music came from that table.
Hooked on The Settlers of Catan. Just don’t ask me to explain the rules.
dudes. let’s get down on some settlers this year.
6 Vital Albums From The Aughts
Le Joshua- Point to the Sky
I don’t know anyone else who likes this record. I don’t even think there’s a way to buy it anymore. For those not hip to this here jive, Le Joshua were part of the scene around LA’s, “The Smell” back in the middle of the decade. They never reached the level of accessibility (or chops) that No Age, Health, Mae Shi or any of the other bands that were emerging at the time did. They burned too brightly and quit very quickly. However, whenever I put this one on, everything I treasure about punk and DIY is instantly present. It’s raw, both emotionally and in terms of the recording. It’s eclectic enough to know when to back off and let the space speak. The young men who made it are reputed as both angels and assholes, so I guess there’s a net negation of personality there, which is as it should be. “The myth is dead.” “Long live the myth.” “Hallelujah!” “Amen!” Back to Le Joshua, they were melodic, they were punk. They were lightly fried on poptastic hokum. They were political in the most caustic ways. They were personal like reading the fibers of a decimated vocal chord in the manner of shredded goat entrails telegraphed from some twitchily defaulted soulgasm. I can’t hit myself hard enough to evoke their songs, despite the fact that it feels like Arcade Fire for people who knew this greatest of recessions was coming years in advance. Le Joshua were fully in on the jokes that HRO made 5 years later before there were even jokes to make. Also, the back half of the record is a pointless instrumental (Sooo glad “OV” wasn’t in my top 5, ya’ll!) and it gradually shifts from “I can’t believe you fucking wankers are subejcting me to this.” to “Oh, so this is how you imply eternity on a budget.” as you journey deeper into the record. At heart, this is a record that arms itself with something to express and the hope that someone else might understand. I do. I hope you do. I hope that the slide of bands to being brands doesn’t eventually kill any memory of electrifyingly amateurish records like this. Le Joshua embody to me the sort of fire and totality of expression that only a truly free person can discover. Please grab it, please listen, please remember that this indie business is about voices in the wilderness and not the frottaging of whatever convenient lies surround a long slide to the middle.awesome list. you sent me the Le Joshua album when I sent you the original recordings of Fight Like Apes’ 2 EPs, and while it didn’t really grab me back then I’ve gone back to it now and I’m quite enjoying (especially the last track, actually). this is what you said in the email - “Heart-shredding stuff from LA’s The Smell (back when it was scary in addition to being awesome). Think Government Issue does maximalist pop by way of zero-budget noise rock but with Native Nod’s intensity.”
other than that, the Hold Steady and Los Campesinos! are two bands I ought to like, but I can just never find their sound all that interesting. that’s not (necessarily) to deny their lyrical or metaphysical awesomeness, though.
pretty much gave up on the idea of doing a best of 00s list myself, because a) I wasn’t listening to current music for most of the decade, b) I felt my 2009 list was kinda patchy and took a bit too much dragging out, and c) most of the punk stuff is already covered here. reading this makes me feel I ought to at least try, however.
woahwoahwoahwoah.
people from outside the south bay listen to le joshua?
drew from le joshua has a new project that’s pretty amazing (colored girls).
he has put on some of the best and worst shows i’ve ever seen.
