All posts by AMR

FMD: Pepper’s readings

Pepper emailed me this quote from Eula Biss's book Notes from No Man's Land:

Each of us has certain clichés, I suspect, to which we are particularly vulnerable, certain songs we are compelled to play over and over again, certain words that undo us with their simple syllables. For years now I have been unable to think clearly if the lyrics of “Sweet Home Alabama” are within my hearing, or “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, or even “Long Walk Home”.

My only other though was asking for more WGOM canon nominations, but I like Pepper's idea better, even if I don't exactly get what kind of power these songs have over Bliss. Does she like them? Hate them? Are they super-earworms?

If you can figure it out, share your own. Or just any random ten. Whatevs.

FMD: Texas is a landlocked state

I took advantage of my cold to listen to some new music. Aided by a Saturday trip to the library.
Some quick takes on passing listens:

Mitski Bury Me at Makeout Creek.
Mitski Retired from Sad, New Career in Business.
Mitski Lush (less about this one).
There's love for her around here, but I didn't have the same immediate reaction as everyone else. Her music reminds me a lot of Angel Olsen (I'm sure Will Oldham has already asked her to sing on an upcoming album), but more dangerous. I'm not sure her best songs hit the highs of Olsen's, but the albums are better overall. There's no drag at all... hit hit hit (as in "punch" or "jab"). I hear a bit of Regina Spektor in Mitski's vocal acrobatics, but Spektor could have turned each of these songs into 6-minute meanderings. I went to bed last night listening to "Shame"... uh, wow.

PS. Can someone translate "胸がはち切れそうで "? Or even give a phonetic transcription?
Continue reading FMD: Texas is a landlocked state

Wilderness Music Day

This afternoon, I'm leaving for a weekend getaway for EAR and myself.
Camper Cabins at Afton State Park, my folks are taking the kids.
Sometimes walking in the woods in winter can be good for things like what Saul Williams talks about here:

Not until you've listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain top
Have you heard hip hop
And let a open wide country side illustrate it
Riding in a freight train
In the freezing rain
Listening to Coltrane
My reality went insane
....
The trains and planes can corrupt and obstruct your planes of thought
So you that forget how to walk through the woods
Which ain't good cuz you ain't never walked through the trees
Listenin' to nobody beats the biz and you ain't never heard hip hop

Not often hip-hop though. More techno and industrial. I liked Carl Craig's Paperclip People or Coil.
But the forecast is a high of 4F, and that's too cold for my headphones. The wires stiffen and pull the earbuds right out my ears.

Not that walks through the park with someone are for headphone listening anyways.

FMD 2-6-15: Mixmaker, make me a mix

I need to postpone my thoughts on last week's discussion about good music for a girl who is just maybe starting to feel angsty. (Even though I see Tori Amos has new expanded reissues coming out for her Earthquakes and Pink. (Missing the Carl Craig remixes of "God" there, grumble grumble.))

Tomorrow is EAR's birthday and it's now tradition or something that I make her a mix CD. This might be number 15. I've tapped most of what I think she'd like, or what I want to share. I don't not want to make her a CD, I just don't have any strong-enough ideas for it right now. As I write this, I've got like 36 hours tops, and that involves sleeping and working and putting kids to bed and so I don't have time to talk about that other stuff. Next week?

Friday. Music? Day!

Here's a discussion seed if we need it:
Worst open of an otherwise good album?

I'll start with a thought that I'm not sure counts (as it's more of a gimmick):
Any CD that had blank tracks to start. I'm thinking of Koяn's Follow the Leader, though I'm sure someone else had that bonehead idea first. (Though this would have actually worked for Ariel Pink.)

FMD: First Friday of Regular time.

No Christmas music. No reading or thinking about year-end lists. Just whatever I actually want to listen to. Maybe the same is true for you.

A short anecdote about one of the entries on my year-end album list, Untold's Black Light Spiral. I added that to my iPod the same day I added all of the tracks I added for the WGOM summer mix, and when I add new tracks, I often make a new Mix to shuffle through the various recent additions. Well, I'd forgotten about the Untold album and thought it was just the Summer Mix nominations, so when I shuffled the "New 2014 06 10"*, I thought that this song was someone's summer mix nomination:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhnajCTEMVQ
So I imagined that the beginning of this amazing noisy thing, an echo chamber without release, was the intro to someone's warped, poppy, summer song. I kept listening without prejudice and without looking until after about 2 minutes I really couldn't figure out what it was. But I was already hooked.

*(or whatever date it was, I delete them when they're no longer new)

Now, share your regular time lists.

Friday Music Day: Best of 2014

After a few years of feeling blah about most new music, I'm excited about some things again. Maybe it's that Random Access Memories is enough in my rear-view mirror that I don't hate music any more. Though that album couldn't have been the cause, it might have slowed my recovery.

Copied from last year (with a slight edit)

My rules, you don't have to use them:
Songs from the album list are pretty much excluded from the song list.
Released in the calendar year.
This is some mix of "favorite" and a more objective "best", but "best" is just about how well things meet my (capricious) tastes.
I go until I don't.

A few years ago, I also explained my editorial idiosyncracies. (A/k/a the "Why no Radiohead Run the Jewels?" explantion.) Also, I don't want to spend so danged much time writing this as I have in the past.
With no further caveatting...

Albums of the Year.
1. Lydia Loveless Somewhere Else
I expected something like this (though I feared I might not). You probably expected this. You may even agree with this. Lydia (and her band) continue to impress me with their songs and performances. This album was a change in style from a rockin' outlaw alt-country to something with a lot more pop songwriting built into it, while still sounding like Lydia. Love the songs I'd been craving for years, love the new songs. Whenever I decide a favorite, I change it to one of seven others. Right now, I think it's "Verlaine Shot Rimbaud", definitely the best love song told through the prism of French poet-lovers and their violent discharges of firearms at each other that I've ever heard. Continue reading Friday Music Day: Best of 2014