More Sunshowers.

Sunshower Orphans live at The Tank on July 24th (video taken by me):



If you haven't checked out the band's music yet, do it now. If you haven't downloaded the FREE digital single for "Lies in Sepia", get that taken care of.

Seriously, these guys are going places. This is some of the best music to come out of New York in a while, and that's saying quite a bit.

Spastic Fit of Rage

Okay, I've fucking had it with these guys:



Ruining perfectly good pop songs by switching around time signatures and song structures for the sake of doing so? Fine. Recording a damn near unlistenable record with one's aging granny? Okay, I can deal. But this, Fiery Furnaces? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

At first, I gave the Friedberger siblings the benefit of the doubt; perhaps they were talented songwriters who were just giving into the wrong urges. But no, kids; you're just the most unbearably pretentious duo ever to come out of Brooklyn. Congrats.

Honestly, John Cage would probably call you guys pompous cunts.

Dancing in the Sunshowers

My good friends Sunshower Orphans have released a digital single through Holiday Records, which can be downloaded here. Glorious drone-pop with arresting melodies and all of that weird-sounding goodness that comes from shoegaze. Take note, dear readers.

Grizzly Bear: Now With More Zzzzzzz...

I think complaining about mainstream culture is, ultimately, a waste of one's time. It is an absolutely disgusting thing to behold, and when I did such things (at the age when one feels compelled to complain about Top 40 radio and MTV and what have you), I felt very icky about it years later. Really, you're not accomplishing anything by bitching about how listening to pop radio is horrible and how they play the same 15 songs over and over again. It's a fact of life; we've all moved on. (I like to think we have, at least.)

Similarly, I find it difficult to feel any reaction when an artist proclaimed to be "indie" by the powers that be encounters a modicum of success. One isn't accomplishing anything by calling the Shins sellouts because their record hit Billboard's Top 10 for one week: Nirvana came and went and showed us all that things like that happen. The notion of selling out is overblown, anyway: the archaic notion that a successful band has "sold out" more often stems around the band's original fans no longer feeling as if they're part of a super-secret, exclusive club than any legitimate complaints about an artist making musical concessions for the purpose of financial gain. (To date, I can only think of one example of this.)

Recently, the experimental folk-rock collective Grizzly Bear became the latest to follow in the steps of The Shins, Death Cab For Cutie, and The Decemberists as an indie-rock darling that received its brief flirtation with mainstream success after its latest record, Veckatimest debuted at number eight on Billboard's album charts. The reaction was typical: the indie-rock press was quick to jump on this as an instance of either the cool kids taking over or the unwashed masses developing good taste in between listening to Green Day singles and eating fast food. (Pitchfork's response was typically pretentious.) Now, what does this say about Grizzly Bear? Have the freaky folkies from Brooklyn leaped on to some alt-rock zeitgeist, ready to join Phoenix and The Decemberists in the hallowed halls of artists that get late-night play on WRXP? One listen to Veckatimest indicates otherwise.

Don't get me wrong; Grizzly Bear are a talented band. Their previous record, Yellow House, was an interesting little thing, a collection of muted folk musings on damaged psyches and one flat-out excellent song ("Knife"). The arrangements were complex and intricate, and Veckatimest continues that tradition. It's louder than Yellow House; the arrangements are fuller, giving the songs a sonic heft that they lacked previously. The makings of a great record are here, right in front of us...and yet I'm not completely impressed. I respect what Grizzly Bear have done here: they're clearly more than a bunch of spoiled hipster brats playing lo-fi surf-rock bullshit. However, Veckatimest doesn't resonate the way I think a great album should. It's certainly an impressive piece of work, but each listen makes the record feel like a museum piece: we can look, yes, but we dare not touch anything.

In some ways, Grizzly Bear's talent is a bit of a downfall. The complexity of Veckatimest more often than not keeps the listener at arm's length, preventing one from really enjoying the record. This is not to say that any sort of complex pop music is impossible to love: as a recent example, the last two Dirty Projectors albums have done similar things (albeit with less instrumental window dressing), and those records are successes in ways Grizzly Bear have yet to achieve. But, the indie rock press have made their declaration, and Veckatimest is now the new Greatest Album That You Must Hear Before You Die. It's a nice record, but one could be forgiven for skipping it.

Thinking Out Loud

Sometime in March, my life sputtered and came to a screeching halt (I blame Hollywood. Stupid limousine liberals...), so this little creature fell by the wayside. So, I'm just going to throw spaghetti at the Internet and see if anything sticks:

-The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are the best group of musicians to come out of this fucking city since Sonic Youth. Their sound, while admittedly trapped some time around 1989, is absolutely refreshing to hear amidst the sea of good and bad bands who are abusing the instant credibility that lo-fi recordings bring these days. Noise and dissonance and art for its own sake is fine (I've been seen listening to this every once in a while.), but I think that the art of writing good pop songs has become undervalued, largely because New York has, since the late 60s, always been a place where pop=bad (Blondie excluded). Keep making great stuff, guys. Here's hoping that the second record won't suck.

-I may have seen the worst movie ever made in the past week or so. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING matches The Spirit for sheer, unadulterated ridiculousness. Boondock Saints had a ludicrous premise and a dangerously unhinged Willem Dafoe? Fine, but nobody, not even Norman Osborn, can ham it up quite like Sammy Jackson. How, exactly, can you respond to this:



No, reader. Do not try to explain it. Do not contemplate how that photo could've been taken out of context. There is no fucking context that could possibly justify the above photograph. It makes no fucking sense.

Makes no sense at all.

-That's all for now. Continue praying to the invisible people who care so little for us all.

Admission of Lameness

I hate nostalgia, for the most part. While looking back on the past with a hint of fondness can be enjoyable, it can ultimately poison the future, since it will never be as good as the memories you are looking back at through red lenses. Ultimately, I try to avoid nostalgia whenever possible. I really don't care how much I liked Bean as a child, because I saw it a month ago and thought it wasn't funny at all. If it can't stand the test of time, it has no value to me, regardless of the value it had to me in my younger years. The past is past, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Easier said than done, though.

This week, I've been watching U2's week-long stint on Letterman in support of their latest record, No Line on the Horizon. Now, I've heard the record, and it's a big, steaming heap of shit. (I mean, really? How good can an album be if the first single is one of the worst songs in existence?) Either way, it's safe to say that the record won't be turning many heads and that it only extends the rut that this 30 year-old band has been in since 2001. It's one shitty album from a group that has ceased to be relevant for a decade. Why, then, do I care?

Because I love U2.

There, I said it. And I am not afraid to admit it.

It started when I was 13 and about to go into counseling for writing a note to a girl that some people interpreted as a suicide letter. Having to hear teachers, nuns, and counselors make assumptions about your impending, self-inflicted death at the age of 16 can get to an impressionable kid who only cares about when he can get home to watch Batman Beyond and play N64. Just when I felt that life couldn't get more complicated, All That You Can
't Leave Behind came along. At this point in time, I hated all rock music made after 1980, so the fact that any new rock song could be this good was important to me. And I guess it just happened to appear in the right place at the right time. Every discussion of that record centers around how uplifting it was in the post-9/11 world, which could be valid, but I remember walking on Park Lane South listening to "In A Little While" and thinking that everything was going to be okay.

This was also the first time my dad took an interest in what I was listening to. My father liked U2, but he cared mostly about their early work that he heard on college radio stations, before they put out The Joshua Tree and became the biggest band in existence. (He likes to point out that he heard "New Year's Day" on New Year's Day for three years in a row.) He hadn't the nerve to talk about music with me because most of the music I liked was stuff he had gotten sick of a long time ago, after it had been played a billion times on AOR radio stations for 15 years. U2 was something he understood, something he could be nostalgic about. A reason to pull out his vinyl copy of Boy and his old, beaten Joshua Tree cassette tape. It was more of that deadly nostalgia for him, but it helped him relate to his son, which has its benefits, I think.

Ultimately, I don't know what to think of U2 on an objective level. I know their 80s work is almost impeccable (There are some exceptions). I know Achtung Baby is a masterpiece and one of the greatest rock albums ever. I also think Zooropa is an under-rated gem that will never get the credit it deserves because it doesn't sound like U2. And, I know that their new records are all shit save for a handful of songs. Oh, and Bono is a huge prick. And The Edge will never be taken seriously because he has such a dumb name.

Whatever. I still love 'em to death.

The Best Albums of 2008

New wave, modern disco, punk rock, Graceland; all of it means nothing now. At least, it did to me, regardless of how many morons listened to that stuff in 2008. It got infuriating (as every year does), but I managed to trudge through the year without actually acting on my urges to murder everyone with an asymmetrical haircut or an impeccably-tailored "ironic" appearance.

Oh, and I listened to some records.

Here are the really good ones.



10. The Gang-Zero Hits

I can probably count all the people reading this who have also heard of The Gang with one hand. It shouldn't be like this. A band with such energy and vibrancy would never be ignored if this were a fair world. Then again, nothing's fair, so the raucous anarchy of "Sea So" and "Fits and Shadow Fights" will continue to be overlooked by every rock publication in the country. Bullshit.

The Gang-Sea So (Myspace link)



9. David Byrne and Brian Eno-Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
They just beat out R.E.M. for the Old Respected Dudes Get A Sympathy Award title. I kid, of course; the album's great. Granted, it's no My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, but you can only make a groundbreaking, genre-defining album a couple of times. Here, I'll settle for "really fucking good" over "revolutionary." For once, David Byrne seems relaxed on record, and he's all the better for finally losing his jitters.

Brian Eno & David Byrne-"Everything That Happens"



8. The Mae Shi-HLLLYH
With all the attention paid to No Age's debut, people seemed to forget that The Mae Shi are the best band to come out of Los Angeles since X, and-unlike No Age-they did it without ripping off of My Bloody Valentine and releasing their worst song as a single. The album re-defines relentless, as it takes off in a wave of synths and guitar noises and never lets up. Yet, it remains immersive, making sure that the listener never loses attention. It's bloody great fun from start to finish, and coming from a hateful curmudgeon like me, that means something.

The Mae Shi-"Run To Your Grave"



7. Los Campesinos!-Hold On Now, Youngster...
Americans can't seem to find a balance between being ironic and not being a total dickhead. The British, however, seem to have found that balance, and they have Los Campesinos! to show for it. For every lyric that tries to say too much, the music that comes with it is an effortless sample of guitar pop not heard of since the last two Pavement albums. It's a record that comes across as needlessly complex, yet it's simple and easy to enjoy, much like watching a hipster justify LC's tourmates Titus Andronicus...ugh...

Los Campesinos!-Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Break Beats



6. Fucked Up-The Chemistry Of Common Life
Hardcore still exists, but it stopped being listenable back around 1995 or so. Fucked Up hearken back to a simpler time, when one could call Husker Du a "hardcore" band without being called a pussy. Unlike most modern hardcore, Fucked Up find angst in the trials of tribulations of the working man, hence the title. There's no teenage angst and misdirected anger here: the anger on this album has a purpose. It's directed at growing up, getting a job, paying your bills, and realizing that your life is nothing like you hoped it would turn out to be. It's hardcore for grown-ups.

Fucked Up-"Crooked Head"


5. Portishead-Third
Yes, trip-hop still exists, and Portishead have re-entered our lives to remind us. The genre itself is of minute value, yet Portishead always seem to work the best out of it. Third isn't a groundbreaking record the way Dummy was; it's merely Portishead being Portishead. Not much else to ask for, really.

Portishead-Machine Gun




4. Times New Viking-Rip It Off
It's good to see that the spirit of Guided By Voices is alive and well long after Robert Pollard told everyone to piss off and decided to be boring. Times New Viking recall a much simpler time, when recording quality meant diddly squat, so long as the songs were good. And short. And loud.

Times New Viking-"(My Head)(mediocre live rip)"



3. M83-Saturdays=Youth
John Hughes created a generation of sappy romantics with keyboards, one of which appears to be Anthony Gonzalez, since M83's latest could have appeared on the soundtrack to Pretty In Pink. The album's songs mirror the themes of the director's work: "Highway of Endless Dreams" recalls that youthful desire to run away from home and one's troubles, while "Graveyard Girl" portrays the teenage depression of many a goth kid. It's nostalgic, but it never gets sickening, and Gonzalez steers away from any rose-colored glasses. If only The Killers could learn...

M83-"Graveyard Girl"



2. Deerhunter-Microcastle
After turning out a dud with his debut album as Atlas Sound (disagree with me all you want, but the record sucks), Bradford Cox crafted a near-masterpiece with Microcastle. Some would chastise it for having "sonic consistency", an overly fancy way of saying that all the songs sound alike. I feel that it is more of a collection of ruminations on a single theme, which is probably loneliness or ennui or whatever depressing thoughts Bradford Cox thinks when he is writing. I'll keep listening, though, as long as his songs are as superb as they are here.

Deerhunter-"Nothing Ever Happened"



1. TV On The Radio-Dear Science
Yes, I went with the least-original choice for Album of the Year in existence. Hell, even Rolling Stone agreed with me, and I didn't have to bring up some old classic rock cash cow who is way past their prime. Regardless, I stand by my pick. I mean, can you really blame me? Forget about the hype and publicity for a second and actually listen to the damn record. "Crying" and "Golden Age" are the hallowed return of soul to indie rock. Need I mention that "Family Tree"-a heartbreaking ballad that is as majestic as it is gut-wrenching- is the best thing they've done since "Ambulance"? I can't force anyone to like anything, but if I could, you would all have had Dear Science playing on repeat since October.

TV On The Radio-"Crying"
TV On The Radio-"Family Tree (Cool Youtube video I found)"