New Year, New Music, The Decemberists, Akron/Family, Radiohead & More

It’s been a while, but I guess it’s time I got off my ass and de-mothballed this site and started posting again. What can I say? My blogging-self likes to hibernate. Actually, that’s a bunch of bullshit. I’m just a lazy writer. I’m not, however a lazy listener. I have been rocking a ton of great new (or new-to-me) music in the past couple months and I thought I’d kick off 2011 (little late!) with some quick and dirty reviews of some of the highlights of 2011 so far.

The Decemberists – The King Is Dead

With a splash of harmonica, The Decemberists open their latest effort, The King is Dead, and leave behind the prog tinged epics of recent years. I was worried about this group. After their explorations of heavy prog and album-spanning epic tales it seemed possible that they had painted themselves into a corner. Where does a group go from there? Do they dare to write an even better concept album? Expectations can be the ruination of a band.

Not to be daunted, The Decemberists took their time and, this time out, they’ve delivered American folk-rock at its finest. The King Is Dead is a collection of four-minute songs that tell of our lives and the world around with jangling guitars, infectious beats and, yes, Colin Meloy’s penchant for English-Major vocabulary words. While there is no single story or evident concept holding these songs together, they cohere beautifully in what make for a delightful listen. Songs of love, songs of war, and even songs about gardening (sounds lame when I say it that way but it’s cool), weave together with steel guitar, harmony vocals, and just enough rock and roll to make me want to leap from my seat.

If you’ve ever liked The Decemberists, seek out this record.

http://decemberists.com/

Akron/Family – ST II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey of Shinju TNT

When I saw these guys last year, it was clear that they were well past the “freak-folk” genre that I and others had saddled them with back in the Love Is Simple days. Extended explorations of noise ripped through the room and demolished preconceptions. Yes, they can do quiet meditations (and still do) but this band had a direction that it felt compelled to follow. After that tour, the group set to recording what would become Shinju TNT and struck a balance between noise and melody. Like a wrangler breaking a wild mustang, they have tempered the wild abandon, corralled it, and given it purpose and direction.

Each of these songs detail movement and/or destination with lyrics evoking the both metaphysical and the concrete taking the listener along on an amazing journey that spans four sides of vinyl. And so, we find ourselves moving from the dreamscapes of “Island” to the raw, rock riffs of “So It Goes” (a nod to Vonnegut) to the rapid fire, noisy, guitar licks of “Another Sky” to the soaring beauty of “Canopy”. The heavily layered progression of “Light Emerges” reminds me a bit of Animal Collective in a sort of intangible way but it’s followed by the pastoral harmonies of “Cast A Net” that could only be Akron/Family. It’s this many-headed-beast nature that defines Akron/Family as a leading voice in modern, psychedelic, music and this voice that makes Shinju TNT one of my favorite albums in some time.

http://akronfamily.com/

Radiohead – The King Of Limbs

“Bloom” opens the album with a synth space and off-kilter drum beat that take me right back (in my twisted mind) to where In Rainbows left off. The track builds, layering elements until Thom Yorke’s languid vocal oozes from the speakers. With that, Radiohead is back.

Out of nowhere, we got word that Radiohead would be releasing a new album. Pre-order now, get digital on the weekend and vinyl in a month or two… Sounds good to me. How could I not bite on that offer? I jumped a day later and a couple days after that we all had our digital copies and last.fm seemed to think there was only one band in the digital world for a day or two. It was nearly true. As with any Radiohead release, The King Of Limbs will probably take months to fully digest and longer to grok if such a thing is even possible but I felt compelled to include it here because I can’t stop going back to it.

Don’t mistake my opening sentence; this is no continuation of In Rainbows. It inhabits a darker, almost creepy space. When you hear the hand claps in “Lotus Flower” it’s striking to hear such an terrestrial noise within this realm. This space that they create feels familiar, though. It is undeniably Radiohead music and some will mark that down as a negative, saying that they’re not moving forward, but I find myself compelled to listen as they explore their own sound- pushing out new corners in that vast world of theirs.

http://kingoflimbs.com/

Additional Listening:

Ducktails – Arcade Dynamics : Lo-fi, experimental, pop & psych from Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile. Check this song, “Hamilton Road”

Moon Duo – Escape : A side project of Wooden Shjips, this gets darker and deeper into the psyche grooves. I like that.

Delicate Steve – Wondervisions : A wide ranging instrumental debut that laces psych onto pop, African rhythms, fuzzy guitars and more.
Delicate Steve – Butterfly by popgunbooking

Top Ten Albums of 2010

It’s that time of year again and I’m finally ready with my favorite records of 2010. These have been selected by an utterly subjective process of constant listening to almost exclusively 2010 releases for the past couple weeks. This has allowed me to rediscover a couple records that perhaps came out early and have since fallen off my radar (none of those made the cut) and also to catch up with some that I missed altogether and, of course, the more recent releases. Here you’ll find all kinds of music (Country AND Western!) but really only a sampling of the stuff that I really like to listen to and hope to listen to for years to come.

Here we go:

10 – Tame Impala – InnerSpeaker
Hows about of Australian psych-pop to kick things off. Seriously., a record like this is a good place to start anything. This record (and band) really captured my imagination in 2010 and it all started with the terrific single, “Solitude Is Bliss”. There are weirder bands out there (Stardeath And White Dwarfs, anyone?) but these guys perfectly blend rough edged psyche with the polish of brit-pop.

9 – Aloe Blacc – Good Things
Proper soul music that nails it in every category: vocals, lyrics, performance, and arrangements. Elements of Heron and Mayfield are recognizable in this rapper-turned soul singer latest record. Oh, and how about that riveting take on VU’s “Femme Fatale”? A good friend hipped me to this and I’ve enjoyed it from the first note.

8 – Admiral Radley – I Heart California
Jason Lytle (who topped this list last year) teamed up with two members from Earlimart and made their first appearances at this year’s SXSW under the guise, Admiral Radley. The record soon followed and complements Lytle’s catalogue with his humour and slacker psych rock. The songs are great, and the hooks are strong, making this a fun listen.

7 – Junip – Fields
This record came out-of-the-blue for me. a few friends were raving about it and I figured it would be just another indie record that I’d play once and move on but I quickly fell for its charms. Krautrock trances, indie-pop melodies and dizzying production that includes vocals nestled tightly in the mix make this my favorite driving record of the year- as long as the sun is up or I’ve had my coffee. Sleepy isn’t the word but it can induce a meditative state if you are susceptible to such a thing. Myself? I might be; but I dig it, too.

6 – Broken Bells – Broken Bells
Danger Mouse has led a semi-charmed life on this site of late. This project, a collaboration with The Shins’ James Mercer, continues the win streak with a collection of entrancing songs. The hooks are stellar and the whole record pays off with repeat listens. This is another one which did take a few listens to fall for the entire record (although the opening cut, “The High Road” is one of the more infectious pieces of the year) but it begged additional listens and the reward is rich.

Click through to see the top five and more! Continue reading →

30 Years Ago…

Today, on my morning train, I paused my iPod and addressed the man across the aisle.

“Interesting reading selection for today,” I began. He replied with a puzzled look and I realized that he had no idea what I was talking about. This surprised me for a beat but I recovered, reminding myself that not everyone is dialed into the same things and this guy, despite appearing to be in his early fifties, might never have cared about today’s anniversary.

“Thirty years ago, today, John Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman who presented that book as his ‘statement’,” I reminded him.

“That was today?” He was taken aback. He looked at the cover of the book, a white jacketed paperback copy of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

“I’ve never read it,” he admitted. “I’d been meaning to get to it for a while.”

Another pause.

He looked at me, seemingly puzzled, and asked, “I haven’t seen anything in here that make sense as a reason to kill John Lennon.” He looked down to the open page where he’d placed his bookmark, “I’m not even sure that I like it.”

“I liked it better when I was a teenager,” I replied. “Chapman was crazy. No book can explain that.”

Silence sprouted in the aisle. I have an uncanny knack for killing conversations.

The man soon returned to his book and my mind wandered to the passage that Chapman read at his sentencing in which Holden Caulfield imagined himself as the protector of the innocents who might range too far in a field of rye and step off a cliff. Caulfield fancied that he could catch them and, in saving them, preserve their innocence. Chapman somehow hoped to save the innocence of the world by killing Lennon.

Instead, he stole another shred of our innocence extinguished a guiding star.

The train lurched toward my stop and I stood to queue at the door. Remembering my iPod, I pressed play and climbed down the steps to the closing notes of “Mind Games”.

R.I.P. John Winston Ono Lennon
b. 9 October 1940
d. 8 December 1980

Akron/Family Upcoming Album!

Holy crap! How’d I forget to add this to last night’s update?

We got word yesterday via various sources that one of my favorite psyche/folk/rock bands has turned in their new album and it looks to be a slice of awesome. Don’t expect any sort of journalistic objectivity as I anticipate this record; after seeing them again in September I’m flat-out giddy to see this news. Here’s the press release from their label, Dead Oceans:

Finally, after over a month of unanswered emails and text messages, blown deadlines, and pleas to finish and turn in their new album, last week, a large brown cardboard box showed up at the Dead Oceans doorstep. It had “SHINJU TNT” scrawled across the bottom of the box in black magic marker, and the return address read only “AK, Detroit.”

Opening it revealed a sincere but poorly made diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a track list written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant, for fear of leaking and possible lost revenues.

From the note and a short video that arrived days later, we’ve pieced together that the album was written in a cabin built into the side of Mount Meakan, an active volcano in Akan National Park, on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. It was recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit with the blackest white dude we all know, Chris Koltay (Liars, Women, Deerhunter, Holy Fuck, No Age). Chris, on tour after finishing the record, commented: “This album will transcend the Internet.”

Akron/Family spent the end of 2009 and half of 2010 exploring the future of sound through Bent Acid Punk Diamond fuzz and Underground Japanese noise cassettes, lower case micro tone poems and emotional Cagean field recordings, rebuilding electronic drums from the ’70s and playing them with sticks they carved themselves. Upon miraculous resuscitation of the original AKAK hard drive, the album layers thousands of minute imperceptible samples of their first recordings with fuzzed-out representations of their present beings to induce pleasant emotional feeling states and many momentary transcendent inspirations.

This album is titled S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. We have no idea what that means. These are the beginnings, hell or high water you’ll find S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT in stores in the U.S. on February 8, and March 14 in the U.K.

And here are both the track listing and the aforementioned video:

01. Silly Bears
02. Island
03. A AAA O A WAY
04. So It Goes
05. Another Sky
06. Light Emerges
07. Cast a Net
08. Tatsuya Neon Purple Walkby
09. Fuji I (Global Dub)
10. Say What You Want To
11. Fuji II (Single Pane)
12. Canopy
13. Creator

[vimeo width=”400″ height=”225″]http://vimeo.com/16699048[/vimeo]

Did I mention that I’m psyched about this? Even more so after hearing this clip and recognizing several bits from the last show I saw… Man, this is gonna be good.

[audio:http://www.scjag.com/mp3/do/akak.mp3|titles= Akron/Family – Shinju TNT]

Junip, Lanois, Spirit & All Tiny Creatures

Thought I’d continue with my pointless ramblings begun last week with a post about music.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new Junip record as mentioned last week. this past weekend it continued to permeate my brain and top albums list with a series of repeat plays under various conditions. It’s proven itself to be a great driving album as long as you aren’t prone to nodding off easily when the music takes on a krautrockesque droning quality. The lyrics are still a bit of a mystery to me but they are slowly revealing themselves to be more than rhythmic and harmonic devices. Either way, I like what I’m hearing.

Elsewhere on my iPod, I listened to a great All Songs Considered podcast featuring Daniel Lanois as a guest dj. I actually listened to it just this evening as I drove home and was thrilled to hear Sly & The Family Stone, Neil Young, Charles Wright, Jimi Hendrix and more. There was some nice discussion about each of the tracks and Lanois’ recent projects: Black Dub and the latest Neil Young release, “Le Noise”. Check it out and be sure to check that podcast out on the regular because it’s well worth your time.

I’m constantly spinning records at home (you can follow along with my tumblr blog here.) Although most of what I have is unremarkable in the way of rarity, most is pretty great in the quality department (in my humble opinion, at least.) Recently, a friend gave me a copy of Spirit’s eponymous first album and man, did that scratchy slab of vinyl blow me away. I’m not really sure how I managed to miss Spirit over all of these years but, aside from their singles, “I’ve Got A Line On You” and “Nature’s Way” which got play on the classic-rock radio of my youth, they just completely evaded my explorations of psychedelic music. I’m working to rectify that oversight.

One more cool thing. A while back, my new favorite record label, Hometapes, linked fans to a “mix-tape” download from the group All Tiny Creatures. Entitled, “An Iris Mixtape”, it was actually a literal tape, produced in a very limited edition and sold at shows, but now available online via the Hometapes store. Check out the sweet packaging and follow the links to download the thing for free if you don’t have a tape player anymore.