He left/He left his coat.

I don’t  think it’s set in on a real level yet, but I just found out that Vic Chesnutt, surely one of the most creative, startlingly honest, human songwriters, had died yesterday from an overdose of muscle relaxers. Chessnutt killed himself at the age of 45; put himself into a coma two days before Christmas, and died yesterday.

Surely, there are better people to be giving Chesnutt the eulogies and elegies he so desperately deserves, but my two cents are as follows.

Chesnutt was careless in a way that suited him well. About a third of the way through his recording career, he closed an album singing “I was never much one for the niceties,” and that’s fitting. Chesnutt’s words were only rarely beautiful, they were only occasionally blossoming or splendid. They were, instead, dirty and mangled, and bruised. I hesitate to use words like “bruised” because they hint at Chesnutt’s physical disability, and without meaning to, suggest that Chesnutt’s entire life, or at least his reason for creating art revolved around a car accident when he was 16 that left him paralyzed from the waist down. I have no doubt that the accident changed Chesnutt’s life entirely, but it was Chenutt’s mind that conjured up stories and images and songs as enrapturing as Chesnutt did, not his motionless limbs.

There are a few things that must be said about Chesnutt if you’re new to the game. First, dude was mutable and eclectic. He had albums of stripped down folk that put his monotone, soothing, grandfatherly, wise (I said it before and I’ll state it in capitals now, VIC CHESNUTT WAS ABOVE ALL ELSE, WISE.) voice upfront. He created fishtank-dunked soap operas with the backing band Lambchop on his album “The Salesman and Bernadette”. He recorded raucious southern rock with the jamband Widespread Panic under the name brute. He recorded playful psychedelic pop with the band Elf Power on last year’s Dark Developments. He recorded somber albums filled with negative space on his recent collaboration with Jonathan Richman, Skitter on the Take-Off. And, in perhaps the biggest sonic shift of his almost manically eclectic career, he recorded two album backed by members of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Fugazi, and A Silver Mount Zion, which shot his voice through a pinball machine that was as big as a catherdral. He could, and would work with anyone. And, in case it somehow doesn’t go without saying, he always made it work.

Second, Chesnutt could be gloomy. The isolation he captures on some of his songs is, to my mind, terrifying, because it has such truth and such anger behind it.

Third, Chesnutt could be joyous. You can’t say that he didn’t have one of the best, deepest, most goosebumpy senses of humor in rock and roll.

Fourth, I took Vic Chesnutt, and all his bear hugging beer drunking eye rubbing gut clenching songs for granted. Fuck if I didn’t think that he would be around forever. It kind slaps me across the face the degree to which I was able to divorce what I’m sure was a difficult struggle of a life from Chesnutt’s songs which talked about a difficult struggle of a life.

It goes without saying that I will miss all the art that Vic Chesnutt has created, and for allthe art he had left to make. What we must remember is exactly how much wonder Chesnutt injected into the shit and dust and pain of life-  his, mine, ours.

“Bernadette and Her Crowd” and “Mysterious Tunnel” are from Vic Chesnutt’s album with Lambchop, The Salesman and Bernadette.

“And How” and “Little Fucker” are from Chesnutt’s album with Elf Power, Dark Developments.

“Flirted With You All My Life“  is from Vic Chenutt’s album At The Cut. 

“See You Around” is from Vic Chesnutt’s album About To Choke.

Weren’t we fine tonight? (Gabe talks about what music he loved this year, part 3.)

Note: Discerning readers will notice I skipped “Part 2″ of my best of the year extravaganza. The reason for this is because I wanted to get my best of done in time to submit it to the Hype Machine list feature. The reason I do this site is because I love the music I’m writing about, and if, by submitting my list, I happened to allow a few more people to listen to and perhaps purchase the music that moved me this year, that’d just be swell.

Verbatim from last year: Everyone can do year end blurbs. Blurbs are, frankly, dime a dozen, and quite honestly, who needs ‘em- you can listen to the songs and get all the stuff. Here’s some writing about some music that I loved this year.

14.
It’s hard to add an exclamation point to “malaise,” but I’m starting to think there’s little Thao Nguyen and her band The Get Down Stay Down can’t add her clanky rhythms and smokey voice (a vertiable exclamation point) to.  While her first album tackled the blunt stuff: heartbreak, joy, childhood, Know Better Learn Faster is a little more complex.  Its topics are listed, on an old boring magnet on your half broken fridge: having responsibilities, slowly growing out of love, the terrible aftertaste and terrible view from the top of a one night stand. The music, likewise, isn’t sugar coated. It satisfies like bakers chocolate- the longer it sits and the more time you spend the sweeter it gets. This is the group’s second album in 2 years and their second time appearing on my best of list. I can see no reason that either of these things should stop at any point soon.
 
“Know Better Learn Faster“  and “But What of the Strangers” are from Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s album Know Better Learn Faster.

13.
I don’t care about what the cool kids did or did not say in this case.  My real question: why weren’t Florence and the Machine all over Z100 this year? In a year when pop got weird, I’m shocked there wasn’t room at our country’s microphone for Florence Welch, whose voice is a drink, not even a cheap drink or a first drink, thrown across the room in one of those slow motion Matrix sequences, and the Machine, who back Miss Welch with all the abandon of a careening Kia with occupied baby seat in the back.  This is passion somehow being wrapped up by composure. This album is built upon a synthetic approximation of a beating heart. (I’m writing about the EP because I don’t have the full length.  I can only assume it’s as good as this EP.)
 
“Dog Days are Over” and “You’ve Got The Love” are from Florence and the Machine’s EP A Lot of Love, A Lot of Blood. 

12.
Consider Kurt Vonnegut and Berkley Breathed. Two people who saw the world and thought to hold up a mirror to it. We were shocked and thought, “they must be using one of those carnival fun house mirrors” and laughed and said “Oh, I read there stuff when i was in high school.” Years of being trivialized or ignored took their tolls on the beautifully surreal visions of these two men, causing both to become cranky, topical, and, worst of all, irrelevant. Consider Robyn Hitchcock, whose been holding up that very same mirror for years, and has never faltered, watered down or compromised. He’s asked us in once again for tea to have a look at it. It would do us a lot of good to listen to him.

“What You Is” and “Up To Our Nex” are from Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three’s album Goodnight Oslo.

11.
Scientists can (and, if there are any who read this site, will) prove me wrong about this one, but over the lifespan of our human lives, the mountains we see will not change.  They will simply amass all the combined footwork that walks across their paths and look majestic for photos for calendars put up in office break rooms to remind employees on their worst days that, even if god’s not in the picture, there is something bigger, much bigger than us.  And, because mountains will not change, there are plenty of people who feel they don’t need to visit a mountain twice.  These people think that they’ve seen it once already, and there are roller coasters they haven’t been strapped into yet.  But here’s the thing about unchanging beauty; if you give it a second or third visit, use it’s postcards as bookmarks and stare at a different part every time, new things will emerge  A mountain is too big to give it all away at first, and you are too small to catalog everything at first.  This is my argument:  Let us revisit our mountains.

“Heartbreak at 10 Paces“  “Hope Dies Last” and “Whip-Poor-Will” are from Magnolia Electric Company’s album Josephine.
 
10.
Debate Topic: The Human Voice.  Go.

“OK. well, obviously there are mutes and people who disprove what I’m about to say, but in general, the voice is how we communicate things.  The way we speak, the way vowels come out differently, it’s just as much a part of who we are as, I don’t know, our eyebrows or our temper. Sometimes our voices matter just as much as what they’re saying.”

“My opponent argues that there is truth in the voice; that despite not being able to speak a common language, speech binds us altogether.  I won’t disagree with that, but I think it binds us all together in failure.  There’s such a limit to what the voice can express, and I think my opponent inherently denies the perversion that occurs when we put thoughts into language.  The amount of stuff that’s lost is a pretty big roadblock to any true understanding of what anyone’s talking about ever.”

“Well, I think I pretty well understand what you’re saying when you say that, but I think that in itself proves my point.  You said something, you used your voice, and I understood it.”

“I don’t think you got the half of it.”

“Ship” and “Calculator” are from Micachu and the Shapes’ album Jewelery.

“Almost Let You In” and “What You Reckon, What You Breathe” are from Molina and Johnson’s self titled album.

9.  
“Philip, Philbert, come over hear.  Your mother and I have been talking…Philbert, stop cleaning the window….I don’t care if the queen herself was looking at it, I’m trying to speak to you…Phillip, take your finger out of your ear…both of you, just sit down and listen.  Now perhaps your mother and I bare some of the blame for the way you turned out; it probably wasn’t a great idea to name identical twins Philip and Philbert, and we probably should have realized it wasn’t a good idea to dress you two the same until you were seven, but god, to think you would turn out to be such polar opposites, we couldn’t have possible known that. Now tomorrow is your first day of high school, and you’re both enrolled in the same classes, so I wanted to give you the best advice iI could think of.   Philbert, you’re three minutes older so you first. 

Ok, put away the Purell.   Now I appreciate how clean and organized you are, but you’ve.  Well, son, some people would say you’re no fun.  An example? Well, how long did you spend parting your hair today?   Ok, well a lot of kids your age could have spent those 45 minutes playing guitar or playing catch with their old man…No, it looks very nice.  I’m sure it is even.   I’m not doubting you.  I’m just saying, as much as you can, try to loosen up. Maybe you could take up the trumpet, or take up smoking, or think up a cool nickname for yourself like “the razzmaster.” It was just a suggestion.

Philip, my advice to you…are you wearing a potato sack?  There are better places to put your lunch than…ok, just listen to me for a minute or two.  Your mother are concerned that you’re having a bit too much fun.  Remember when you rode the neighbor’s Saint Bernard to Dairy Queen last summer?  Well, yes, no one is doubting that it could support your weight.  The problem is the fleas.  No, they’re not your friends.  No, they’re not. Philip, my advice to you is to clean up a bit, maybe have just one or two shirts without lucky food stains on them.
 
I’m not saying both of you should lose who you are.  That’s what makes you special.  But if both of you, just a bit, tried to even out, find an in-between I think it might be interesting to see what might happen.”  

“Gigantes” “Northern Something” and “de Chelly” are from Tortoise’s album Beacons of Ancestorship.

“Patterns” and “Ma” are from Nomo’s album Invisible Cities.  

8.
Charlie Dreams of Colors
Sinning.  Yellow drips its way
into someone’s bloodstream and makes them
rip up their child’s artwork and Yellow makes them
go into their child’s room and Yellow makes them
tell them their picture are terrible, that they can’t draw life, still
or otherwise.  Blue pushes a bottle off the shelf
into waiting hands, while red locks the door.  Purple
cut the phone lines and closed the curtains. White
took out the sky and Black pinched up all the water.  
Greens the one who has to explain everything to the passersby
Charlie looks at Green in horror and pain,
but Gray’s beat him to the punch,
stole all the words.

(a brief moment of levity:  The shift in tone, style, production, in general the sheer amount of progress Scott Bondy made between last year’s American Hearts  and this album knocks the blood out of my head.  It took him a year to produce this.  I have no concept of where he will go from here, but I’m excited to find out.)

“A Slow Parade“  and “The Coal Hits The Fire” are from A.A. Bondy’s album When The Devil’s Lose.

7.
I think I got it right the first time with this one. “Anni Rossi’s new album Rockwell teeters.  It’s an egg teetering on the point of a sharpened pencil.  It’s a word left teetering on our spit covered larynx at the end of the evening.  It teeters.  The interesting and arresting thing about her Viola playing is how often it sounds like she’s messing up, hiting wrong notes momentarily, and how well these “mistakes” blend into and increase the fragility and lighter-flame-thin tension that these songs posses.   Her lyrics are unusual, in a good way, but she sings them as though they will break your heart.”

“Machine” and “Glaciers“  are from Anni Rossi’s album Rockwell.
 
6.
Sometimes you worry a little bit after the debut.  A band or an artists releases an overwhelming, emotionally saturated album, and you think, “how can they top this?”  The problem is exacerbated if there’s a back story tied to the initial album, a story of life that pointedly provoked the album you’re listening to.  So maybe it makes sense that on his second album, Elvis Perkins retreats away from his spotlight, sharing the billing with his band In Dearland.  That’s not to say Perkins’ urgent, precise voice and nonlinear, poetic lyrics aren’t still present on his album.  It’s just to say he’s got bassist and a guitarist and, man, what a drummer, who’s sometimes just playing one of those big drums your marching band plays.  Rather than having everything fall on a concept or a story or emotional barbells, Elvis Perkins’ second album, and the debut by Elvis Perkins in Dearland stands high as a basketfull of creative, intelligent, folk and rock songs. Some of these songs sit fall alseep on the back row of the bus, some of which run 10 blocks in wooden clogs to catch that very same bus, and, even then, when it won’t stop, they just grab hold to a piece of jutting metal on the door and go flying. 
 
“Hey“  and “1 2 3 Goodbye“  are from Elvis Perkins in Dearland’s self titled album.

5.
Hearing the first version of “Learned To Surf” made me feel like my life was a hit movie, a movie some critics would call saccharine, but which, those critics would acknowledge, was based on a true story.   Hearing the second version of “Learned To Surf” made me feel 5 years old again- sing me a song and then I promise I’ll go to bed.  I promise.  Everything in between covers the space between those two things.

“Learned to Surf” and “Learned to Surf” are from Superchunk’s EP Leaves in the Gutter.

4.
Want to know what’s infuriating to me?  If The Reigning Sound’s last album hadn’t been the volcanic Too Much Guitar, this might have very well been my favorite album of the year.  That album sweated and screamed and stuck its junk right in your face, and you liked it.  Love and Curses, the band’s new album still rocks, it screams sometimes, but it doesn’t jump off the stage in a flying karate kick.   But that’s the last time I’ll make that comparison, because Love and Curses is still my favorite rock and roll album from this year.  Greg Cartwright and company are clearly having fun doing something they’re very good at, and the results sound confident, brash, lovelorn, and, at times, fucking loud.   “Dangerous Game”  forces the listener to play follow the melody for all minute thirty six of its length.  “Break it” and “Debris”  are wounded as much as they are taut.  While the title of the album hint’s at its disposition and its conclusion, the groups loss and frustration and hindsight get all revved up in the music.   Somehow this group manages to make resignation sound like proud defiance. 

“Debris“  and “Stick Up for Me“  are from The Reigning Sound’s album Love and Curses.

3.
The worst thing about Neko Case up until Middle Cyclone was that the best of her songs were some of the best, deepest, most stirring songs. Period, no qualifier needed after the word “songs.”   “Star Witness,” five minutes and 17 seconds long from her last album, has inspired well thought out academic papers, for example, and could inspire full length films, paintings, novels, or bloodshot drives towards a compas point.  She wrote some of the finest songs, but couldn’t write an album of them.  The best thing about Middle Cyclone is that she actually did it with no qualifiers, ifs, ands or buts.   Thematically unified, Middle Cyclone is the most consistent, accessible, fierce, evocative album Case has created so far in her career.  This album feels gigantic.  Case’s voice has never sounded better, and her songwriting has never been stronger.  “It’s a dirty fallow feeling to be the dangling ceiling from when the roof came crashing down” Case sings on one song. “Can’t scrape together quite enough to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love.” She sings on another.  These are the lines of a wordsmith, and Case stretches her voice around them wholly.  This is an epic, beautiful, sometimes terrifying, always engaging album.  Just spectacular.

“Middle Cyclone” and “Red Tide“  are from Neko Case’s album Middle Cyclone.
 
2.
At the beginning of one of my favorite books, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, there’s an introduction which describes a cranky, lonely old author who is looking for someone to talk to, and a carpenter who builds the writer a bed.  As the carpenter builds, the writer tells him his thoughts on life.  He believes that, at one point, there were truths in the world, the truth of beauty, the truth of honesty, the truth of forgiveness, but that people took up these truths like they were animals to be domesticated, and as people claimed these truths as their own, they became grotesques.  Anderson remarks, of the writer, “it was the young thing inside him which saved him” from becoming a grotesque himself. 

At the beginning of Comet Gain’s new album, Broken Records Prayers, they tell you, “We have torn ideals.  Comet Gain have torn ideals.”  That’s what they tell you on track one. I cannot think of one other rock band who would claim to have ideals, much less the beauty of realizing how torn those ideals must be.   Not a single other band.

“Jack Nance Hair” “Young Lions” and “Emotion Pictures” are from Comet Gain’s album Broken Record Prayers.

1.  
I’d say there’s a fourty percent chance that Catfish isn’t alive today. 

Nearly a year ago to the day, I was on an Amtrak heading down to New Orleans to visit some friends and get away from the life-shaped straight jacket that I woke up in most every single day in Michigan.  It was a wonderful, memoried trip, but New Year’s Eve sticks out and almost feels separate from the whole experience.   The friends I was visiting and I walked from the bywater, (where they were renting a small house as they waited for other plans to ring the doorbell or arrive via airmail), to downtown where we watched whatever object it is that the people of New Orleans watch drop from a tall building.   The crowd mulled and danced afterward, and two of my friends got handed a dimebag by a guy who called himself Catfish.   We were drunk, all of us, and so following Catfish around New Orleans for hours to bars and liquor stores and through streets that grew increasingly less crowded as the hours mounted seemed good and it seemed right.  At one point, when we must have been halfway across the city and halfway towards sobriety, Catfish said to us “I’ll take you to where I live,”  which only seemed only half right and half good, but we went anyway.  Ended up back at the big park right downtown, right by the Mississippi, where we had started.  sitting there, now almost too exhausted to be angry or scared or happy, Catfish said at one point “I had a gun this morning.  I was going to kill myself today, but then I met you guys.”  Soon after that, we started walking home.  The next day was quiet, we went to a dog park and ate once or twice, but mostly it was quiet.  

I tell the story because Hurray for the Riff Raff are from New Orleans, I found out about them from some over-inked music zine they give out in coffee shops down there, but also because the wonder and sadness of the story is what the band specialize. The wonder of pure human connection and the sadness of the static that interrupts those connections are the songs on It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You, Hurray For the Riff Raff’s first albums.  Oftentimes there’s overlap; “Baby Blue” starts off like a spool of wire unwinding in the dark, and builds to two people so close they can’t even see each other clearly, before it breaks apart again.  “Amelia’s Song,” likewise is made of words celebratory and mournful “you’re not made of stone, you’re made of honey.  and you can’t be consumed by my life.”  The honesty in that letting go is heart-rending.  

The songs tell stories, but the music makes those stories vivid, and I can’t think of an album that is better composed, played, produced, mixed, or mastered (i can never really tell you the difference between those last three) this year.  Everything is where it should be here, sounding crisp but also casual.  There are no flourishes because nothing on this album happens suddenly.   Things ebb in and temper out like it’s the most natural thing in the world.   If it wasn’t such a weighty album I’d say it sounds like it was recorded live on a porch in back of an engagement party.

I can’t think back to Catfish too much at this point or I go too deep in and want to buy a plane ticket back down to Nola and find him to make sure he never followed through with his new years eve plan.   I hope that, at some point this year, he heard this album playing out a window or from an open car door or an overhead speaker somewhere.  I think it might touch him, too.
 
“Fly Away“  and “Bricks” are from Hurray For The Riff Raff’s album It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You. 

A magician under magnification/Gabe talks about what music he loved this year, part 1.

These concerts are from street fairs in Michigan and bookstores in New York City, porches overlooking downtown Detroit, and shanty-stages in Chicago. They’re from old firebrands playing what might have been their last tour, and bands who nearly imploded halfway through their set and broke up on the spot. They’re from earstraining quiet and earbusting noise.

Vic Chesnutt (featuring Guy Picotto, A Silver Mt Zion and Godspeed) (October 27th @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg)
Vic Chesnutt feels wise. The guy is a smart ass, lewd, and pessimistic, but the feeling he emanates is wisdom. So to say Chesnutt played the show he played to a half full crowd in Brooklyn like a baby might seem an insult to him. Quite the opposite; when someone has the lyrical brilliance and musical versatility of Chesnutt, the worst thing that could happen is that the lyrics are great, the songs are great, and the whole thing sounds glazed over. Chesnutt’s set that night tantrumed and bubbled and then got so quiet it seemed to be content whispering syllables to the ceiling. 20+ years into his career Chesnutt is still playing to extremes. Thank god for that.

X (June 17th @ Magic Stick, Detroit)
A day or two before this show, Exene Cervenka announced to the world that she had Multiple Sclerosis. This was X’s 30th anniversary tour; each member of the band is an essential element, and one of the four members announced she had a pretty extreme debillitating illness. And then, Cervenka came on stage and blew every fear and every expectation and every offered hand or look of sympathy away. She was clearly in pain for much of this show, but she barreled on, voice sounding just as good and just as wrecked as I’m sure it did in ‘79. The other members of the band played deserve credit too. Billy Zoom balanced super sonic guitar playing with flirting with the rockabilly girls who kept taking his picture. John Doe’s sung steadily and playing the shit out of the same bass he’s used since Adult Books, and DJ Bonebreak still stands as one of my favorite drummers ever. Still, this was Exene’s night. This was so much more than soldering on; this was furiously ricocheting off the stage lights.

Chris Bathgate/ Lightning Love/Frontier Ruckus (October 22nd @ Spike Hill, Brooklyn)
I thought that seeing Chris Bathgate perform outside of the great state of Michigan would be akin to reading a Faulkner novel set in Connecticut. As I’ve said on this site before, the man is so connected to that place for me, and not being able to see him live once or so a month in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti or Detroit is one of the things I miss most about not living in Michigan any more. When Bathgate came to Brooklyn to play a CMJ set, he did something different than the myriad of times I had seen him in Michigan, he played almost entirely new material, with nothing from his 2007 album A Cork Tale Wake or his ‘08 EP Wait, Skeleton. The new songs, play with a bagillion part band, were loud and confident, like finally making it through the winter straightjacket that Bathgate’s last two albums so beautifully described. Perhaps because free of all the expectations and weight of a hometown show, Bathgate tried something new. Nostalgia bloomed fresh with every new song.

Nomo (June 16th @ Top of the Park, Ann Arbor)
Even though Nomo no longer call Ann Arbor home, their concert opening up the wonderful Top Of The Park series of free summer events in the city has become a yearly tradition. A huge energetic tournout mirrored the energy pouring off the state. Whether they played this well because it feels like a homecoming show for the band, or whether it was the confidence that comes from releasing a great new album, the show was brassy, beat heavy, and one of the biggest dance parties i went to this year. The band’s set would have blown the ceiling off any venue that could have held them.
See: Here.

Frightened Rabbit (January 25th @ Blind Pig, Ann Arbor)
This show thawed me when I was neck-deep in Michigan winter. Sometimes it’s nice to see a young passionate band play no-nonsense rock songs to a sweaty beer-y packed crowd. This was one of those.

Mice Parade (May 3rd @ Pike Room, Pontiac)
There were so many reasons this show could have been terrible. Mice Parade played with a mediocre local band supporting them. The room was packed for the openers, and empty by the time Mice Parade started. This would have been demoralizing enough, but the band was also missing their drummer. A perfect recipe for a disastrous show, a good excuse to half ass it and blame it on mitigating circumstances. But from the moment they came on, the band the band were all smiles, almost treating the evening like a joke they were in on. When an audience member shouted “get behind the drum kit” to lead singer Adam Pierce, he obliged. When the band announced they were going to play one more song and I had really gone there to hear them play “The Last Ten Homes,” and so I shouted out “play ‘The Last Ten Homes,’” of course they did. I’ve said it before, post rock, music this delicate, intelligent, and technically brilliant, is not supposed to be fun. I’m happy to report that Mice Parade continue to buck that trend.

Greg Cartwright (June 28th @ Alley Deck, Detroit)
Talk about the perfect hangover cure. The Alley Deck, the porch on the side of the Magic stick was transformed into an outdoor venue, bar and sightseeing booth sundays this summer. The audience for Cartwright’s rare solo appearence felt as light as the breeze, slowly roasting in the Michigan summer. And, despite warning that his voice was worn out from the previous night’s Oblivians reunion show, Cartwright sounded great, playing two varied sets like he was sitting on a porch in the company of close friends. Which, I suppose, he was.

Magnolia Electric Company/Sally Timms/Elephant Micah (July 12th @ The Hideout, Chicago)
Jason Molina’s not a talker. He probably spoke 10 words over the course of Magnolia Electric Company’s set at the hideout. I don’t think this is due to stage fright, as much as a firm desire to let the music speak for itself. Which is bullshit, if you ask me. Molina has a strong, recognizable voice and personality. His lyrical conceits are original this side of 1940s Oklahoma or Nashville, and to say you’re just a vessel for the music or something seems pretty much like nonsense to me. But maybe it wasn’t that, it was that he didn’t want to take away from what, at this point has become a very solid and very democratic band. Guitar player Jason Groth and drummer Mark Rice both fleshed out every song and were able to make their presences known when the occasion called for it. Upon second thought, maybe Molina’s lack of stage banter was appropriate and better fitted the band than a thousand bad jokes and boring stories would have.

Elvis Perkins (September 2nd @ Housingworks, New York)

Roadside Graves/Parson Redheads (October 10th @ Lit Lounge, New York)
Two young bands start sprinting from the same starting line labeled “country.” The Parson Red Heads head off towards the driving kind, with voices spreading out like lane dividers and melodies blurring together like nighttime scenery. The Roadside Graves head towards the kitchen and start throwing things in a pot, then start throwing things on the floor just to hear the sounds they’ll make. Their common ground came in their half cocky excitement. Both bands played like they had something to prove to the tiny space they were filling that night. Both bands proved it.

Yo La Tengo (September 25th @ Roseland, New York)
It would be easy for a band like Yo La Tengo to get too humble, to get too used to playing a few nights at Maxwell’s and the occasional big free summer show. Sometimes both to reassure and to push themselves, they’ve got to try something big. Seeing Yo La Tengo at Roseland, probably one of the biggest non-free concerts they’ve ever played in New York, felt validating and important. Through a magical light show, a shockingly long and energetic set, and a touching romantic skeletal encore (including one of my favorite of their songs, “The Whole of the Law”) they showed they were as good as every member of the sold out crowd showed them they were. Whether they were proving it to themselves, to the critics or to their fans doesn’t matter, what matters is how seamlessly and entirely they proved it.

History’s Great Catchments.

So after this very post, I’m going to hunker down (read: go to work, go out with friends, and not hunker down in any literal sense) and think up my end of year stuff for this site. I usually try to do best concerts, best discoveries that were released pre-2009, and then the best albums of the year. Sometimes I make a “most disappointing albums of the year” list, but really, shit talking on here just doesn’t seem all that necessary. I’ll try to finish it by the 31st, but don’t hold your breath or synchronize your watches or anything

When I have bad days, these days, it’s not because things are happening specifically to me. It’s that things are happening at my job which I can’t make sense of. If there’s one skill I might never master, which will make my current job twice as difficult as it should be, that skill is being able to leave work at work. There’s too much to even report here, but here’s one thing that I still can’t believe happened five days ago. Here are four bad day songs. You can guess how my day went.

1. I tried to rise, I did.

There was a post on Said The Gramophone a whiles back about how Greetings From Asbury Park was a cover to cover brilliant album and a much more assuming debut for Bruce Springsteen than people give it credit for. The exception, this post argued, was The Angel, which it claimed was melodramatic tripe. It is. This song is unwanted meat reflecting moonlight from a landfill. It is that or it is the five sad bites of the burger left on the rumble strips of the turnpike, so sad because no animal will risk the highway to finish it off, so sad because it cannot rot into soil if there’s pavement in the way. If you were food, your sole purpose to be eaten, and you can’t even manage that, you might feel a little melodramatic too.

The words Springsteen is singing are hastily pasted together, but I love the way he drags his voice behind him like a security blanket or a parole officer. I love that, and I love that the song doesn’t feel claustrophobic or stuffed to the ceiling. It’s just that voice, piano, and a flatlining violin.

“The Angel” is from Bruce Springsteen’s album Greetings from Asbury Park.

2. 12 Missed Calls

Royal City are a wonderful band who could have given me 30 different songs for this post. I’m choosing this one because you can tell it is angry with itself.

“Jerusalem” is from Royal City’s album Little Heart’s Ease.

3. Pour that one out; don’t drink it.

This one’s on here because it’s about the best form follow function song I can think of for days when you just feel miscommunicated. This song is shouting at you and knows you will not understand it. That’s why it put the static and the drums where it did.

“Brighter Days” is from Parts and Labor’s album Mapmaker.

4. Pins and Pins and Pins and Needles

This one’s an insult that slices right through you. It’s an intelligent, reasonable person saying the most calculated mean thing with no noticeable spit nor stutter. The fact that it was delivered with such dispassionate poise sinks it twice as deep; let’s you know this was premeditated. “If now I love the human race, it’s because we wrote amazing grace.” This song sharpens a butter knife until it can you apart, inch by inch.

“Cities” is from Doveman’s album The Acrobat.

A price we put on display

You build yourself a house.

It happens at some point in your late 20s that you’ve saved up enough money to either pay back college loans or buy some small property outside of Dallas, and that seems less reasonable but more productive, so you fake your own death and get down to Dallas in a surprisingly hot late November. You get a taxi from Dallas/Fort Worth to your empty lot at the end of street they were too lazy to make a cul-de-sac, and you sit down on the curb. “Shit,” you think “I should’ve bought some lumber.” Next day you walk down the road ’till you get to a strip mall where, in a pet shop, you post, next to the fliers for missing dogs and such, a notice that says, “help needed to build a house. Must supply own lumber, hammers, nails, caulk, and design plans.” You intend it as a joke, probably to be picked up by some indie kid looking for some found art to put on the back of the new issue of his zine. Four days later, you do get a call. “Hi, my name’s Josh” the voice on the other end says, and you immediately know, after those 4 words, that this is not a scam.

Josh arrives at your lot the next day in a blue Toyota Tundra and unloads some lumber. He asks you if you’ve ever built anything before, and he doesn’t laugh when you say “well, a bird house or two.” He says, “There’s a first time for everything.” By the end of that day, he has a frame put up, and when, at the end of that day, he realizes that neither of you built a foundation, he curses a bit under his breath, and say’s he’ll be back the next day. He doesn’t ask you where your sleeping that night, and you don’t want to tell him it’s going to be in a hole 50 feet away. The next day, he brings his shovel and starts digging. It goes from there, and the long and short is, Josh does a damn adequate job at building a house. He puts in plumbing, a sunken window, a winding staircase, all that stuff. After he’s done building, he asks whether you want it painted. By now, he’s bringing lunch for the two of you, and he says, in between bites of dry cornbread “do you know what colors you want to paint it?” That afternoon, he drives you to Menards and lets you pick out paint. The next day you sit down to paint; you start at one ends of the house and he starts at the other.

You’re most of the way done with your rooms when you walk in to see what he’s done, and suddenly it feels like you’ve just met Josh. That every moment up until now, the moment his dirty sneaker appeared from his truck, the way he struggled with the sink and almost dropped it before he asked for help, has been blown into nuclear bits, and that right now is the first moment that Josh is there. The way he holds the roller, it’s like he’s holding an ice cream cone by the very bottom, passing it from truck window to tiny eager hands, and he moves it as evenly as a zen master would. The walls you’ve painted look alright; they look painted. The walls he’s painted look clothed…no, they look blanketed…no, they look lit up. He makes you wonder whether anything actually existed beneath the paint before this morning. Of course, you know better, but the way he does it is so overwhelmingly seamless that you want to get swept up in the illusion.

“The Bad Actress” is from Josh Ritter’s album Hello Starling.

“The Temptation of Adam” and “Still Beating” are from Josh Ritter’s album The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter.

Josh leaves, and it’s late and you two had just split a bottle of wine, one of those big cheap bottles they sell at the supermarket that’s either labeled “red” or “white,” and so you go upstairs to go to sleep. Very quickly, you doze off, and at 2:34 (you don’t have a clock, but somehow you know it is exactly 2:34), you wake up to nervous skittering in your kitchen. Your thoughts immediately go to mice, and you think of how tough it was to get rid of the two thumb sized rodents that lived in your hole-filled apartment in New York City. You groan and slowly walk downstairs with a hammer you found, unsure exactly what you’re going to do with it should you find two mice sitting on your floor. You walk into the threshold and see three giant red spiders staring at you with their 24 combined eyes. They don’t move and you don’t move. You swear these spiders are glowing. You start to wonder what kind of burial ground this house was built on. You start to wonder how you’ve gone so long in life without taking any course or reading any book that would help you identify poisonous spiders. You think back to pictures of Brown Recluse bites and Malaria and West Nile, but then you remember that’s mosquitoes. The spiders haven’t moved. You have the feeling they’re waiting for you to make the first move. You go back up stairs and try to go to sleep. You don’t see them the next day, but that night, you hear them again. This time you don’t go downstairs. It takes about two weeks, but on New Years Eve, you fall asleep early to the sound of skittering legs on fresh wood floor. You wonder, right before you doze off, if you will ever be able to sleep without the sound from this point forward.

“Congoman” and “Fisherman” are from The Congos’ album Heart of the Congos.

Hey NYers, Field Music play the Bell House Thursday night with Wye Oak, and next week, Parts and Labor play the Brooklyn Bowl! For free!

the birds in a cage in a house in the suburbs.

To put things in a context that should mean absolutely nothing to you: What I offer you today is the best song about post-apocalyptic blowjobs you will ever hear in your entire life. Ever.

“We’re Goin’ Down” is from The Night Marcher’s 2007 album See You in Magic.

The Night Marchers shouldn’t work. The best thing about Marchers’ singer John Reis’ previous band Hot Snakes, was that it had John Reis and all of his songwriting prowess and igneous ROCK, but none of his vocals. It’s not that Reis has a bad voice, he just has a voice that reminds me of two things I could live without, the singer from Smashmouth and iron lunged distant relatives who started smoking a pack a day at 14 and are still at it 70 years later. His voice is gravely but nasal, not exactly pleasant, but not callous enough to be punk. The last band where he sang, Rocket From The Crypt worked because his voice was one of a few elements shoved way up in the speakers; loud firecracker drums, bloodsucked guitars, and those blaring horn parts. The Night Marchers are a much more stripped down band, just guitar (provided by Gar from Hot Snakes) bass and drums. That voice is always there.

You’re also venturing into risky territory if you’re one of the most important figures in independent rock music from the the 90s and 00s (seriously, don’t discount the impact that Drive Like Jehu had, nor how good both Rocket from the Crypt and Hot Snakes were), you’re over 40, and you’re on your 80th or so band, and suddenly you decide to have Philip Roth ghostwrite your lyrics. The songs on See You in Magic, The Night Marcher’s first album are almost entirely about fucking. These are not subtle songs. “Lets be best friends on the floor,” Reis suggests on “Closed for Inventory.” “In Dead Sleep (I Snore ZZZZ),” has Reis asking, “pressed tightly against you, was I born or did I die?” “”Who’s Lady R U” has the deep bass thud of 70s porn soundtracks, just played at twice the speed. “You’ve got nerve, but don’t cut me loose” Reis warns on the more toned down “You’ve Got Nerve.” To be honest, I’m not sure if I could tell you what Reis’ song’s were about before the Night Marchers, but here, it’s crystal clear.

Here’s the surprising thing: Despite the band’s collective age, and the fact that Reis will probably not rock as hard as he did in Hot Snakes ever again, The Night Marchers work, both as an ongoing part of Reis legacy, as a new band onto themselves. The reason for this are can be summed up in “We’re Going Down.”

Reason The First: The band knows their history. For this song, the band drags one of the most familiar rock melodies of all time out of the closet for this song, but they slosh and swagger around in it enough to make it interesting. And things like that happen all over the album; the band plays on hard driving funk on “Who’s Lady R U” and works with something that reminds me a lot of Early Blue Oyster Cult on the more drawn out “And I Keep Holding On.” The band know they’re working at recycling on a certain level, but they bring enough energy, and pure joy to these songs that you won’t care one bit.

Reason The Second: These songs show a sharp wit, and a great sense of humor. Look at the lyrics for “We’re Going Down,” starting with it’s hilariously deadpan opening line, “Would you believe that it’s only Armageddon?” The line works both as an overview of the song’s landscape and as the initial pickup line that Reis is trying: c’mon, we might not be here tomorrow. But it’s though that drawn out chorus, which repeats the songs title ove, and over, that Reis’ duel meaning becomes evident, and, if not there, then in the absolute best spoonerism I’ve ever heard: “Just lip me rim from rim.” (which Reis halfheartedly corrects moments later, mumbling “oh, limb from limb”). The song is hilarious, fun, and, above all, just another in a long string of really, really good rock and roll songs from John Reis.

and I’m running on empty by way of new music at this point: Anyone have any suggestions? Really, I’m up for anything that doesn’t sound like Animal Collective.

we’ve got a lot of renting left to do before we go.

Two totally unrelated things: Neko Case is an animal, De La Soul are guilty bystanders.

Neko Case is an animal. Perhaps that’s a bit obvious, but to describe her any further muddles things, and to leave it at that is more revealing than you’d think. Case is a writer, but has not published any books, stories, articles, poems, or, as far as I know, a single word outside of her lyrics sheets. She is a singer as well, singing country music which sounds nothing like country music. But describing her voice beyond saying that she’s singing, not speaking or coughing, gets tough in itself. Mostly, she does not belt out the lines of her songs. She is not coy in her delivery; not angry nor thrilled, but also not disaffected. It is easier to leave it as Neko Case as an animal, because that allows and in fact encourages the same mystery of Great Blue Whale or Arctic Terns.

There is something you will not grasp about Case’s songs. It’s something you’ll grasp at as lyrics slip out of your cupped hands, and music stretches out farther than your eye can see. Neko Case is an animal and she tells you as much on her song “I’m An Animal,” from her extraordinary new album Middle Cyclone. But that’s one of the few discernible facts you’ll get from the song. The only concrete image of the brief song is one of Heaven as a place with that sickening smell of a midnight airport, sweat and scuff covered with antiseptic powerscrubbing. The image is just one of a brief list of things Case is sure of, the other things on the list being “I love you this hour. this hour today,” and “I’m an animal. You’re an animal too.”

The song ends too soon; Miss Case could’ve made it six minutes long and it wouldn’t have gotten sour, boring, or redundant, but I think that’s part of the package. Listening to Neko Case is like having a conversation with someone on top of a mountain, where every third sentence gets lost to the wind. You could either get frustrated about what’s being lost, or you can appreciate every single word you catch.

“Star Witness” is from Neko Case’s 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

“This Tornado Loves You” and “I’m An Animal” are from Neko Case’s 2009 album Middle Cyclone.

Neko Case plays the Beacon Theater tomorrow night with John and Joey from Calexico. If you’re not working a job that pays as poorly as mine, you have no excuse not to be there.

One of the things that kinda fell outta hip hop pretty early on was the narrative. With the exception of torchbearers like Jay-Z, Kanye West (who seems exempt from most hip hop rules), or out-there groups like Subtle, it seems like no one in hip hop wants to tell us a story. Back in the day (Read: when I was five and still listening to Beatles 45s in nap time in kindergarten), Rap music was a storyteller’s paradise. And perhaps one of the most unsettling and successful examples of a story told comes from De La Soul’s furious, reactionary, brilliant second album, De La Soul Is Dead. The album was a pendulum swing back from the upbeat, witty, positive hip hop of the band’s debut 3 Feet High and Rising, and its centerpiece is a song called “Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa.”

The plot is fairly simple: an abused daughter takes revenge on her molester-father, but it’s the way Posdnous and Dave position themselves in the story that given the song its tragedy. The Two MCs clearly take sides in the story: According to them, Dillon is a social worker who volunteers as Santa Clause at Macy’s, and Millie, his daughter, is a teenager, reactionary and a little bit crazy. Pos and Dave work with Dillon, and he taken them to his house to watch sports and shoot the shit. He’s a good guy, popular, funny, and caring. He’s got an hot daughter who starts to say that her father is touching her.

In small ways that the guilt of the storytellers manifests itself throughout the song. There are breaks in the chronology that hint at the Pos and Dave’s desire to change the way they acted, to revise the history as they recount it. In the songs second verse, Pos raps “Yo Dillon man, Millie’s been out of school for a week, man, what’s the deal?/I guess he was givin’ Millie’s bruises time to heal/Of course he told us she was sick and we believed him.” The lines show regret of the the blind eye they turned towards Milly. Looking back, of course they should’ve done something. This song happened because they didn’t.

Pos’s last verse, where Millie’s revenge is enacted and the title of the song comes into play reveals more of those feelings of remorse on the part of Pos and Dave. Pos is waiting at Macy’s and Millie walks in. The way he describes it, that she “floats in like a zombie,” hints at an understanding of the trauma that she’s coping with, and the way Pos recounts Dillon’s last words, that “he didn’t mean to/do all the things that her mind could do nothing but cling to.” further the impact of what has occured. Even though the story is (probably) fictional, there’s some serious projection going on here. Noone would be that articulate or that emotionally acute with a gun to their head. The lines are just as much about Pos and Dave wishing they had done something as they are about Dillion wishing he hadn’t.

The surreal situation we’re given, someone trying to kill a department store santa, is cut open by the seriousness of these lines. It’s an terribly sad, terribly good song.

“Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa” is from De La Soul’s album De La Soul is Dead.

Funny story: In freshman year of college I made a mix of Christmas music for a few close friends and put the De La Soul song on there. A few weeks later I saw one of the friends I had given a copy to at a party, and he came up to me and said, “That was the most fucking depressing Christmas mix I’ve ever heard. Makes sense though: you’re Jewish.”

This is a good week for shows in New York: Neko Case, The Reigning Sound, and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson all grace our rainy trashpile of a population center with their presences.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

If you’re here for the music, there are some songs at the end. They’re Blood Brothers songs. Feel free to skip this.

So I’ve danced around it before, and will, out of respect for the clients I’m working with, never go into extreme detail, but as of the beginning of October, I work with kids.

Last year, I worked with incarcerated men and women, but mostly men, in the state of Michigan. One of the reasons I did the work was that beyond whatever mistakes or mental instability or unrepentant rage these men and women had and had made, they were people; they had been born to mothers in hospital rooms, had eaten a birthday cake on their third birthdays, and had a favorite song that they always made them smile when they heard it. They were people and deserved the same dignity, respect and basic level of treatment that people must give each other. What this lead to, for the most part, was me divorcing the guys I was working with from their crimes, unless it was absolutely necessary for the advocacy (EG: Someone was a sex offender, so they needed specialized therapy). For the most part, I was able to work with murderers, arsonists, people who had abused or beat their children, and I was able to try to help them get the medical and mental health treatment that they needed. Criminals, it must be said, are so much more than the crimes they commit.

The transition from working with currently incarcerated adults In Michigan (with a few terribly sad cases of kids charged as adults and in adult facilities) to working in Brooklyn with kids at a court that emphasizes alternatives to incarceration was a big one. When I do this work, it isn’t the idea of the inherent right to dignity and humane treatment that motivates me (although juvenile facilities certainly try their hardest to strip the kids of those things), it’s perhaps an even more broad and even more cliched right: that every child has the right to grow, dream, and succeed. If these kids committed the crimes they’re committing (mostly pretty minor stuff; at worst things like assault, but more common drugs, graffiti, robbery, things like that) in any other district in New York, they’d go to trial and either get let go with a warning or remanded to a juvenile facility for some period, and then let go. In most courts, there’s little attention given to what might be causing kids to skip school, act out, commit crimes. That’s why I’m proud to work where I do. But even though the circumstances are different, my reaction to working with criminals is the same: I look at them as human beings, not a walking section of the penal code. When drug treatment counselors, therapists, school guidance counselors want to know what crimes my clients committed, in most cases I honestly answer them that I just don’t know. Where I work, it’s less important what a person has done, more important what they are (or are not) doing now.

Two quick stories from Detroit:

1) I was leaving a show early at the UFO Factory, the venue near the Eastern Market run by Warn from His Name is Alive. I was the only one in the alley where you enter and leave the space. Suddenly I hear a voice shout “hey.” I turn around to see if i recognize the guy, I do not. The guy shouts again, directly at me, “Come over here. I wanna ask you something.” I, as most people probably would quicken my pace. I hear the guy walking faster. There is no one else around. If you’ve ever been to detroit, you know that no one walks anywhere. The streets, even at noon on a Saturday, are usually empty. I hear the guy getting closer to me, and I think he tries to grab my bag. I take off running and the guy runs to the end of the alley, where, thank god, there’s a semi driver trying to park on the street, and then turns around as if nothing happened.

2) I was leaving a movie at the Detroit Film Theater, a giant movie theater attached to the DIA that’s located in New Center, one of the more developed areas of Detroit. I get stopped at a red light on Woodward, the main street that runs from downtown out to the suburbs, and suddenly I hear a sound like a really bad football tackle happening two feet from my head. I look out the drivers-side window to see two gloved fists drawn about a foot back from the pain of glass. I’m frozen, wondering what the fuck is going on. This time, the owner of those two hands decided my roof would be a better target, and starts banging as hard as he can on the roof of my car. I accelerate as fast as I can though the red light. If there had been any cross traffic, I would have surely crashed. I do not know what would have happened after that.

So it was a long day today. I waited for two of my clients to show up for meetings, one about transferring out of his current school where he doesn’t feel safe, and another about transferring out of his school because it might just be that school isn’t this kid’s thing. Neither of them show up. I leave work a little down, but decide that it’s friday night, and after I eat a quick dinner, I’m going to go play punk bingo at ABC no Rio, which I haven’t been to since I was 15. It’s going to be a fun night. I put on Superchunk, my go-to pump up music. Soon the thoughts of my day at work are gone, replaced with chunky guitars and Mac MacCaughan’s chanted vocals. I work firmly in Red Hook, and so the walk from my office to the Smith and 9 Subway station is about a mile each way. I’m two blocks from the subway station on 9th street, one block away from the BQE viaduct, when a group of probably 8 kids approach me. You can see where this is going.

I pass about halfway through the group when one of the kids, can’t be more than 18, grabs me by the throat and puts me in a choke hold. “Clean his pockets.” I’ve got my ipod in my hoodie pocket, a cellphone in my coat pocket, a wallet in a pocket somewhere. I play my part as the paralyzed “no, seriously, is this actually happening?” white dude. The kid is laughing. His friends are laughing. He says it again, “clean his pockets.” After a second or two he lets go. I can’t think of anything to shout and so I say, about as clever as I can be after this terrifying ten seconds or so, “Thanks, man, that’s what I needed at the end of a work week.” I do not scream, chase after him, or break down in tears. I have no idea why I do not do any of those things. Somehow I keep walking, get on a train, and make it back to my apartment, where I subsequently finish a (small) bottle of Jim Bean and write this.

This kid, so easily, could have been one of the kids I work with. If he was, I would have forgotten his crime (“mugging?” i might say with hesitation when pressed by an intake person at a counseling center) like I do with every case I have.

This experience, at least not two hours later, hasn’t changed the way I think about my job. There’s a part of me that is furious at the kid because of course he’s culpable for his own actions, and a part of me that is furious that this kid is so desperate for power, that he has been so fucking marginalized and discounted, that stealing ipods is a way to prove worth. It hasn’t made me afraid to go back to work (although there is no way in hell i’m walking to the subway alone anymore). It was rattling, and still is. After that, Superchunk didn’t make any sense, so I put on the Blood Brothers.

“Guitarmy” and “Fucking’s Greatest Hits” are from The Blood Brothers’ album Burn Piano Island, Burn

global politics climb the hill in your backyard

So I was so bloodpumped about the new John K Samson EP, City Route 85, that I couldn’t help but expect to be let down when I heard it in it’s entirety. And, I’m not even going to preface this with a letdown, this is a great little album. There is no better proof of Samson’s growth as a songwriter than the album’s final track, “Cruise Night.” While the first two tracks largely seem to be from Samson’s own viewpoint, which is fine, poetic and precise, the last track shows Samson’s most well rounded and believable character study yet. While I like the ongoing tales of Virtute the Cat, and could feel the deafness of Elsabet, there were many examples- I’m thinking of the stockbroker in “Relative Surplus Value,” or the writer in “Uncorrected Proofs,” where the characters of Samsons songs were undeveloped and ended up sound like Samson in costume.

Part of this was Samson’s inability to ditch his own poetic lyricism. This makes sense: If you’re a writer who can write well, and, even better, one who has developed a recognizable prose style, it’s difficult to imagine tinkering with that. But that is exactly what makes “Cruise Night” such a delight; the extent to which Samson ditches all flourish and emerges himself in the goal of this song. As someone who used to get the same inexplicable pleasure from driving around, for hours, just listening to music and wasting gas, a song that celebrates such activity is bound to resonate. But even if you’ve never done this, Samson’s narrator will have you wishing you could. The excitement when Samson sings “Dude, just make it happen,” and the adrenaline when he claims “I want to rock the RPMs between the reds and greens,” make me smile but also make me believe every word he’s singing. Samson just invests so much in the kids who inhabit this song.

Even the song’s last line, “We’ll drive a while in one direction, then we’ll turn around” which could be patronizing coming from anyone but Samson here sounds like simple fact, delivered with warmth and premature nostalgia. That’s just what cruise night is.

I can’t wait for volumes 2 through six hundred and twelve.

“Cruise Night” is from John K Samson’s recently released 7 inch City Route 85.

you’ve got that feeling, now lose it fast.

Three years ago last night, I was James K Polk. Preparation for that night was snorting, smoking and swigging (which, probably quickly devolved into slurping and from there further into supping, then slipping, then, somehow, scabies.). It lead to some questionable decisions but from what I recall, it was a pretty fun night and, miraculously, somehow also a manageable next day. Last night, I was a C.H.U.D, and I poured a few more than a few drinks down the pipes and today I could barely get out of bed. Three years difference. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir know what I’m talking about.

“Aspidistra” is from The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir’s self titled album.

And I was going to do a post on songs that use interesting alternatives to standard drumset percussion, but I realize that, while I had a lot of those, the whole post would really be an excuse to talk about how much I’ve recently stumbled into love with Tunng. There’s so much to say about this band that I don’t even know where to start.

Tunng are a band weighed down with whimsy. The words they sing are violent, detailed and quite strange, obsessed with the body, physical injury, and death. Yet, in a way I can only think of comparing to Monty Python, the product of such dire and cutting thoughts never feels belabored or even especially sad- there’s a sense of humor and levity that floats through singer Mike Lindsay telling you, in his pleasant deadpan about stars getting stuck in his swollen throat, or the way he catches bullets in his teeth, back, and head, or the way he would cut off his own fingers, and his reasoning for the severing.

The other fascinating thing about many of Tunng’s songs is how cutting edge they are in a wonderfully subtle way. It’s easy to point to music that is on the fringes of listenable and call it cutting edge. There is no question that groups like Black Dice, Dalek, Liars, Grouper and Zu are making sounds that almost noone else is, and that almost noone else wants to listen to. These groups are so intent on breaking through an established limit, either of structure, volume, or length, that they often have to disregard any semblance of accessibility, at least to all but an openminded listener (Full Disclosure: I like all the groups/artists I listed above a lot, so they obviously are having some kind of impact).

There is another way of working to dismantle those same structures, and this way is more subtle, and, on a certain level more subversive. Tunng don’t destroy melodies, or rip up verse chorus verse, and they certainly don’t overstay their welcome just for the sake of overstaying. What the group does is tweak the elements, synthesizing organic instruments with ramshackle percussion and skittery electronic manipulation. Listen to what happens to the guitar part of “Arms” over the course of the song, or the way the moaning vocal sample works it way into “Bullets”. By simply rearranging things, messing with them a little bit, Tunng are able to maintain the coherence and listenability of their pop brethren while also drawing attention to the structures they must operate within, and the limitation of those structures.

“Bullets” and “Arms” are from Tunng’s album Good Arrows.

See also: the video for bullets.

Also, I saw Vic Chesnutt with his 9 piece backing band a little whiles back (with Guy from Fugazi and a buncha people from Godspeed You Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion), and was awestruck. I mean, it was a shattering experience, uncomfortable at moments, but also extremely moving from begining to end.