¿donde viven los bangers?

breaking from normal practice to post a couple of reviews ahead of schedule – these were slated to run in city paper (and online) today, but got bumped back due to space constraints... but i wanted to share b/c for once it seems i am (semi-inadvertently) in lockstep with the daily pitchforkgeist, in the sense that these albums both got Best New Music, today and yesterday respectively.  (and now it will maybe look like i was trailing hype trends by a week behind...oh well whatevs.)  sweet tunes, lame covers, check it:

Disclosure - Settle

Daft Punk can keep their randomly accessed analog memories; British brother duo Disclosure are using much more precise, calibrated means – pinprick-crisp digital beats, icy smart-missile synth hooks – to summon a very specific place (London – the predominant home turf of their myriad guest vocalists: Jessie Ware, Jamie Woon, AlunaGeorge...) and time (the turn-of-the-century heyday of sleek, syncopated UK Garage.)  No slight on our beloved Parisian disco-bots, but Settle (PMR/Island) – a crossover-ready club thumper that plays like Basement Jaxx's Remedy as reimagined by two-step maven MJ Cole – is looking like the dance party album to beat this summer.

Jon Hopkins - Immunity

Jon Hopkins is no stranger to warmly inviting, ambient-leaning soundscapes, as his collaborations with Brian Eno, Coldplay and Scottish folkie King Creosete all attest, but the producer's fourth solo album finds him aiming for something a bit rougher.  Just a little bit.  Six of Immunity (Domino)'s eight cuts are solidly beat-based; most of them appreciably danceable, many of them more expansive takes on The Field's lush, feathery minimal trance, commingled with Dntel's warmed-over glitch techno.  It all sounds pretty glorious, but it's the glacially-paced, nearly beatless, title track – the most luxuriantly billowing bliss-out Four Tet never made – that's perhaps most heartmeltingly resonant.

No big surprise that Disclosure got the BNM status (though impressive that they leap-frogged Daft Punk on the score – more on that later); seems like a third of the tracks on the album were already being heavily hyped, and anyway it's just an obviously great album.  Though I haven't completely decided if I really think they're the second coming of early-period Basement Jaxx, which seems to be everyone else's go-to comparison (and mine) – if only because it's a lack we've been feeling for so long (if their next album gets as wild and wide-ranging as Rooty I'll be truly impressed; so far they seem to be mostly fitting their guest vocalists to their specific mold/choosing from within a narrow range, rather than letting collaborations broaden their approach – which is a totally reasonable approach, at least for now...anyway...)  But the Hopkins review was a bit of a surprise; as much as I'd been enjoying the record it seemed like the kind of thing that p4k might sniff at.  I guess you never know.  Anyway (as I wrote), it's the closing title track that really does it for me – precisely because it sounds almost exactly like one of the slow/gentle cuts on There Is Love In You.  It's the kind of perfect that could be stretched to an hour long and be all the better for it.

so anyway, yeah – as nate asked me recently (in english) – where do bangers live?  if you'll notice my unusually up-to-date "2013 scene" sidebar, i'm developing a pretty sturdy canon of 2013 hits.  i'll probably fashion these into a summer jams mixtape before too long (probably with that as a title) but in the mean time i thought i'd share a few of the most notable.  oh hey soundcloud (apparently that's the answer.)

  
most recently, i've been crushing super hard on this song by CHVRCHES (are we allowed to call them Chrvches in polite company?) – actually overplaying it to the point where I feel like I'm in danger of wearing it out.  not so far, though.  still sounds like crystal clear summertime sprinkles.  i guess i still need to fully parse the lyrics, but in the mean time it hits a whole bunch of tried-and-true electro-pop marks just so meticulously, and often with a little twinge of something extra... one of my favorites is the slightly martial (definitely live-sounding) re-entry of the drums after the breakdown (around 2:40)   dance with me?


not sure i can fully explain why this song has stuck with me so strongly – the rest of caitlin rose's album is good but this is a head-and-shoulders stand-out – but it just feels like utterly perfect pop.  i connected with it immediately when i saw her play live (before hearing the record), so that probably helped.  lyrics are great too, even the loose tennessee williams references which could so easily feel forced.  also great for such a sweet sounding song to be about such a dark destructive impulse.

 
so this is a "minimix" of all the different remixes on the 12", which is especially fun b/c it's exactly the kind of goofiness i would get up to. (qv my treatment of "mixed bizness" on superstar djs and "dancing on my own" on the 2010 mix.)  been banging this all year but it's clearly built for summer.


so i'm just hearing this remix for the first time now... nice stuff! reminds me a lot of the avalanches treatment of "i'm a cuckoo" (one of the all-time greats.)  i'm not gonna say it's better than the original, but it does a good job of translating the song's gooey saccharine sweetness into something very different.  hard to beat those super-chimey chirrupy mandolins, but hyperactive multi-tracked slap bass is a pretty good approach if you're gonna try.  what do you think?


I'm sure this song will get its due time to shine (VW don't like to go about things orderly, which is just fine), but as far as i'm concerned this is far and away the banger from MVOTC.  (It obviously doesn't come close to "Giving Up The Gun," which is one way, at least, in which the new album is a let-down – but it's a solid shot.)  I always want the blazing pianos to kick ("I know I love you...") when the bottom drops out instead ("I'm not excited...").  Why they gotta hold back like that?  (I do like the handclaps in this live version.)  Meanwhile "Obvious Bicycle" is so utterly beautiful, and "Hannah Hunt" works so well that it's really tough to pick a favorite track from the album as a whole...



feels so cheap (not to mention clunky! - i know it's supposed to feel casual but omg those dubbed-out curse words are just sloppy – even if actually including the curse words would be 10x worse) but dammit it works.  #on repeat.

as for Daft Punk...i didn't mean to pick on them in my Disclosure review, it was just an easy target.  I'm taking my time with Random Access Memories, have only given it three or maybe four listens thru so far.  So I don't feel ready to make a definitive statement.  there's a lot of fun stuff there, for sure, but it is clear that sequencing is a major issue – "Giorgio by Moroder" would make so much more sense later in the album rather than killing momentum on track three.  and what's up with putting a slow-jam second (in the "Aerodynamic" slot, if you will.)  a lot of the best stuff is in the middle of the album - esp. "Instant Crush" (Julian!!) and "Lose Yourself To Dance" although that song is just begging to be sped up a good ten clicks.  I guess I'm a little undecided on "Giorgio" but some of the other epics do work pretty well, especially "Touch."  (also "Get Lucky" is much improved at this length and with proper song structure.)  anyhow, i'll keep on living with it, gettin comfy.

(P)review Round-Up: May 2013

Here are all the concert previews I wrote for last month.  

Stornoway
[Indie Pop/Folk]
concert preview

Stornoway are at once meticulously modest and epically, almost outrageously ambitious.  Four well-groomed, unassuming lads – quietly consummate musicians, top-notch harmonizers – they take their name from a remote, romantic-sounding maritime town in Scotland's Outer Hebrides (which features prominently in BBC weather reportage), though they actually hail from suburban Oxford.  Led by Brian Brigg's heart-meltingly earnest, Ben Gibbard-ish tenor, their songs focus on familiar, intimate things – pastoral and domestic pleasures; the little quandaries and quagmires of love and young adulthood – but somehow conjure up far grander, more mysterious horizons.  Their 2010 debut paired indelible indie-pop earworms like "Zorbing" with arrangements that had a sneaky way of swelling, at the slightest provocation, from understated folksiness to towering quasi-orchestral bombast.  Tales from Terra Firma (4AD) follows suit on both accounts, offering could-be campfire anthems like the Celtic-tinged "The Bigger Picture" – all tremulous mandolins and a chorus so sweetly buoyant it's almost unbearable – while elsewhere layering on the strings, trumpets, zithers, dulcimers, Dixieland clarinets and spoons to the bursting point.

Classixx
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Even if Daft Punk's new album somehow mysteriously fails to live up to the ludicrous levels of hype surrounding it, this still feels like a banner month or two for retro-minded electro disco, between the domestic release of Breakbot's fabulously cheesy (and very Daft Punk-ish) debut LP, the surprise return of fake-French electro-genius Jacques Lu Cont, and the tasty promise of new Phoenix remixes.  Add the full-length bow of long-time DJ duo (and sometime Phoenix remixers) Classixx to that list, with a bullet.  The LA-based twosome have been lighting up the decks and the B-sides of other people's 12"s (including easy RIYLs Holy Ghost!) for over a half-decade now, but Hanging Gardens (Innovative Leisure) readily justifies its long gestation: it's an ideal, summer-ready sampler of dance bangers and chill interludes, with crucial vocal spots from Junior Senior's Jeppe, Active Child's Pat Grossi and Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean.

Little Boots
[Pop/Dance]
concert preview

Victoria Hesketh is the reigning queen of metaphor pop.  The British electro-popstress' 2008 breakout single "Stuck On Repeat" was a naggingly unforgettable pop song that likened love to...a naggingly unforgettable pop song, while other numbers from its fantastic attendant album found similar analogs for love (and dancing) in subjects like medicine, driving, radio broadcasting, and both algebra and geometry.  Her slightly darker-toned follow-up Nocturnes (On Repeat), another set of classically-styled synth-pop that could pass for prime Kylie Minogue, covers comparable ground on "Crescendo," "Satellite" and "Motorway" (shades of St. Etienne?), while also repeating "Repeat"'s feat with "Broken Record" (with the requisite additional glitchiness), paying homage at the shrine of Madonna ("Every Night I Say A Prayer") and emphasizing the dance half of the dance-pop equation on literal-minded, tech-housey highlight "Shake," produced with Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford.

James Blake
[Pop/Soul/Electronic]
concert preview

With his self-titled 2011 album, James Blake emerged, already somehow reluctantly, as the first, de-facto poster boy for the still-exotic-seeming music known as dubstep.  Two years down the line, that label has seen so many boundary disputes and tastemaker redistrictings that, wherever it may be at in 2013, it's got almost nothing to do with the dreamily glorious music contained on the UK producer's second LP.  It's not, as some have feared, that he's simply yielded to his flickering singer-songwriter inclinations.  Indeed, while he remains a formidable singer, it's curious to note that, aside from covering Feist and Joni Mitchell (and, on "Wilhelm Scream," his little-known prog-rocker father), he's rarely trafficked in "songs" per se, preferring to repeatedly loop and tweak a single verse or line of his burnished, gospel-inflected crooning (or, in one instance, RZA's slightly dubious rapping) against a rich, deftly mutating sonic backdrop.  Sidestepping genre distinctions almost entirely, Overgrown (Universal Republic) opts to play it all ways, showcasing Blake's heart-tugging sensitive-soul vocals and somber, nocturnal pianism side by side with his forward-thinking beat science, including some surprisingly tough-edged slo-mo funk and some awesomely clipped, Portishead-style ride cymbals.  Win-win.

Colin Stetson
[Instrumental/Experimental]
concert preview

The sounds that Colin Stetson conjures up with (or through, or upon) his saxophones – especially the honking humongous bass sax – constitute some of the strangest, most utterly remarkable music you're likely to hear.  First there's the physical fact of its creation.  Even understanding how he does it – circular breathing technique, multiphonics, vocalizing through the horn; basically, unimaginably precise control over every aspect of his playing, plus close-mic'ing of his breath, clacking keys, etc. – and even (perhaps especially) when confronted with the huffing, puffing, beyond-intense muscularity of his live performances, it still feels mystical, unfathomable, beyond the reach of human capability.  It's no less astonishing as pure sound: churning, cycling, susurrating waves of tone and timbre that, in the service of his meticulous, minimalist compositions, can be savagely disturbing, hauntingly eerie, lulling and mesmeric; sometimes all at once.  To See More Light (Constellation), the final volume of Stetson's enigmatic New History Warfare trilogy, finds his Bon Iver bandmate Justin Vernon turning up, somewhat incongruously, to contribute ethereal multi-tracked harmonies and guttural, cod-metal barking.  (The last installment had Laurie Anderson.)  But it's not like we needed the distraction.

Phoenix
[Rock/Pop]
concert preview

Phoenix have had – to invoke their fiery namesake – quite the majestic rise, from their early 2000s emergence as a quirky second-tier French electro-pop band to a head-scratching headlining slot at this year's Coachella.  They've done it on the wings of an absolutely killer run of singles – their eventual best-of comp's gonna be a firecracker – but, impressively, without sacrificing or even really toning down their considerable eccentricities: the evocatively meaningless accidental poetry of Thomas Mars' lyrics; their commitment to a garishly synthetic production aesthetic which should feel faceless but is somehow actually unmistakable; a defiantly non-linear approach to song structure wherein ample hooks rarely conform to verse-chorus pieties.  Bankrupt! (Glassnote/Loyaute), their fifth album, is the first to feel comfortable rather than hungry – doubling down on established terrain instead of grazing new stylistic pastures – and their most idiosyncratic.  It's also the first whose contributions to their stuffed canon of hits – the chintzy "orientalist" riffs of gaudy kick-off "Entertainment"' perhaps excepted – aren't blindingly obvious, if only because, mirroring Mars' ruminations on jet-set excess, it's their most thoroughly lavish and consistent work, more of an album-length suite than a set of pop hits.

Ghostface Killah
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Ghostface has been plenty prolific in recent years, but his latest project is a particularly enjoyable one: a full-on collaboration with composer/producer/crate-digging sample scholar (and also actual entertainment law scholar) Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons To Die (Soul Temple) is a beautifully conceptualized narrative rap opus – doubling as a series of comic books – that pits Ghost's lively yarn-spinning against sinister, sumptuously stylized beatscapes, steeped in '70s Italian film soundtracks and psychedelic soul, from Younge's band Venice Dawn (who are also backing him up on tour.)  The openly referential but neatly self-contained narrative is the stuff of fantastical Wu-Tang/Marvel comic-book dreams, recycling familiar blaxploitation archetypes and reinventing the Tony Starks/Ghostface personae in a tale of mafioso warfare, double-crossing, reincarnation and sweet posthumous revenge exacted via vinyl records.  Along for the ride is a cast of Wu regulars, plus Philly soul icon William Hart, fresh from the Delfonics' recent Younge-helmed revival album.

Charles Bradley
[Soul]
concert preview

The good folks at Daptone records have well established themselves as loving inheritors of the 1960s Southern soul flame, keeping post-millennial record racks stacked with Stax and Muscle Shoals wax facsimiles.  But the latest from Charles Bradley – the toughest, rawest belter on the roster, who like most Daptone singers is old enough to have been there the first time around – takes a slightly different tack.  Victim of Love kicks off with three brassy, predictably masterful cuts more or less in the label's familiar mold, but things get a lot woolier after the dramatic pivot of the title track, a sparse, acoustic folk-soul ballad with echoes of Richie Havens (R.I.P.) and the late-period Rascals.  From there we get a couple of feathery, flute-laden blaxploitation grooves before a hard left veer into gritty, socio-political psychedelic soul taking its cues from the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion," with Bradley's impassioned, Wilson Pickett-caliber groans riding a roiling sea of fuzz-tone guitars and dubbed-out funk.  This ain't your old man's retro-soul.

Gold Panda
[Electronic]
concert preview

Scan the track list for Gold Panda's forthcoming, curiously entitled sophomore LP, Half of Where You Live (Ghostly International/Notown) and you'll notice a clear preoccupation with residential-type places, from "An English House" and "The Most Liveable City" to seemingly invented (a la Bon Iver) but actually existing toponyms like "Flinton" and "Enoshima."  It makes sense in that the producer – who himself lives in Berlin, though he hails from Chelmsford, UK – makes music that invites habitation: warm, comfortable sonic architecture which tends to create and embellish atmospheres rather than calling overt attention to itself.  Half continues Panda's habitual (and eminently worthy) pursuit of sounding more like Four Tet than even Four Tet does anymore, crafting intricate, naturalistic, bonsai-like beatscapes of pitter-pattering percussion, bell tones and the occasional touch of gentle exoticism (kalimbas, wood flutes, kotos, etc.), though, keeping pace with the times, you'll also find an uptick in concessions to denizens of the dancefloor, as on the pumping-piston pulse of "Community."

MS MR
[Pop/Rock]
concert preview

Many aspects of MS MR's backstory have a distinct quality of deja vu – or, less charitably, done-to-death – they're based in Brooklyn, they built up blogosphere buzz via an artfully curated web presence (specifically – and this is ostensibly a point of distinction – on tumblr), and until relatively recently they upheld their blankly anonymous-sounding moniker by maintaining actual anonymity.  Their unabashedly huge-sounding, lavishly theatrical debut album, the aptly titled Secondhand Rapture (IAMSOUND), expands the picture somewhat, even as it conveniently recycles most of their tumblr hits.  It's not hard to find reference points for their style of darkly anthemic pomp-pop either – Florence + the Machine, Bats for Lashes and former tour partners Marina and the Diamonds are maybe the most obvious go-tos – but (MR) Max Hershenow's adventurous, widescreen production style and (MS) Lizzy Plaplinger's legitimately spellbinding alto are strong and distinctive enough to stand alone, particularly with a strong and infectious batch of songs that veer from martial trip-hop ("Hurricane") and thunderous orchestral rock-soul ("Bones") to stately classicism and the self-explanatory (but still intriguing) "Dark Doo Wop."

The Uncluded
[Folk/Hip-Hop]
concert preview

The Uncluded is the long-in-the-works superhero team-up of Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson, two artists who seem like weirdos even within their respective established genres (hip-hop and indie-folk), making the collaborative Hokey Fright (Rhymesayers) a thoroughly improbable, head-scratching proposition.  On paper, at least.  Once you hear it, the pair's underlying commonalities are obvious: both are writers, first and foremost (and musicians only secondarily), who use a mixture of wit, absurdist humor, and kid-like logic – including gleefully unflinching riffs on fleshly and grotesque (or just plain-old gross) concerns – along with a penchant for refreshingly specific topicality (subjects explored here include laundromats, organ donation, fear of flying, sandwiches, aquarium ecosystems and pubescent sexual confusion) to get at unexpectedly universal, if sometimes uncomfortable, truths.  You might imagine the forbiddingly cryptic Aesop would supply the titular "fright" while cutesy, chummy Kimya brings all the hokey, but it's not such a straightforward equation: her squeaky sing-song can be deceptively simplistic, and the geekily oblique verbosity of his spitting often obscures its considerable playfulness.  If they only rarely sync up in any conventional sense, they illuminate and play off one another beautifully, making each one's idiosyncrasies all the more compelling.

The Thermals
[Rock]
concert preview

After stretching out a bit – at least relatively speaking – on their last couple records, The Thermals's sixth full-length in a decade (which continues the band's survey of old-guard indie rock labels – Sub Pop, Kill Rock Stars – with a new home at Saddle Creek) ratchets back to the tightly-wound, frill-free immediacy of their blistering early work.  Desperate Ground's scrappy hooks, grit-caked production, breathless tempos and pithy track times (even if half of the numbers nudge closer to three minutes than 2:30, which with these guys practically qualifies as bloat) all signal a triumphant resurgence and/or comfort-zone retreat for the Portland indie-punk fixtures – either way, a move worthy of some fervent fist-pumping.  The album's loosely conceptual lyrical approach, meanwhile, takes a decidedly less comfortable, non-triumphant tack on familiarly psycho-political themes; it's a song cycle sung from the perspective of a nightmare-wracked but unrepentant, bloodthirsty killer.  The details are sketchy (is he psychotic? ex-military? both?) but the passion and pain are unmistakable, particularly as punctuated by the urgency of Hutch Harris' terse, adenoidal yelp.

Beacon
[Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

The Ways We Separate (Ghostly International), the eminently elegant debut full-length from Brooklyn electro-pop duo Beacon, is available on vinyl, CD, digital download, blah blah blah.  Or, if you prefer, you can buy it in the form of a ten-pound, thirteen-inch-square box made entirely out of sugar.  (It's allegedly 100% archival, which has gotta involve some seriously potent epoxy action.)  There are probably some deep, heady metaphors to be gleaned there regarding the interrelationship of substance and superficiality; beauty and artifice; decadent, intoxicating sweetness and mannered, icy inaccessibility – all of which are certainly salient aspects of the group's music.  Mostly though – and also very much like the music – it's just really damn cool (albeit at the same time undeniably, capital-A arty.)  The moody, enveloping warmth of the synthesizers, the flickering Timbaland-via-Junior Boys rhythms and the blurry soft edges of Thomas Mullarney III's vocals all code as R&B, but there's also an immaculate, bloodless perfectionism here that separates these guys from fleshier neo-indie-soulsters like Rhye and Inc.

Mt. Kimbie/Holy Other
[Electronic]
concert preview

Mt. Kimbie came up within the hazy, niche-filled "post-dubstep" milieu, but the London duo's early output had as much to do with the wistful, muted pastoralia of Boards of Canada and early Four Tet as their bass-dropping Hotflush/Hyperdub peers – to riff off key track "Carbonated," it felt fizzy, light and understated as seltzer, with a similarly mellowing, refreshing effect.  Queerly-titled second LP Cold Spring Fault Less Youth (Warp) retains that effervescence and a modicum of dappled intimacy while also following their pal James Blake's lead into notably more extroverted territory, exploring meatier instrumentation, edgier textures and dance-leaning beats, and regularly sporting proper vocals – i.e. voices that haven't been delicately sampled and spliced beyond coherence – including pair of spots from punk- and rap-informed singer-songwriter King Krule.  If you do want blurry, manipulated, subaqueous vocals and deep, immersive sub-bass, Manchester's Holy Other – whose Held (Tri Angle), all ghostly, R&B-refracting vocal splinters and swampy dub'n'click atmospherics, was probably the most satisfying album to descend from the dark, slippery witch house trendlet – is probably your guy.

Charli XCX/Little Daylight
[Pop/Electronic]
concert preview

"Nuclear Seasons," Charlotte Aitchison's broodingly anthemic breakout 2011 single, cast her in an intriguing, darkly twinkly electro-goth light – co-signified by the song's ominous title and, perhaps, her nonsensically redundant roman numerals – but the unexpectedly glittery, swooning chorus of last year's magnificent "You're The One" complicated that picture.  Full-length bow True Romance (IAMSOUND) finds her enviably poised between tastemaker cachet and big-budget pop ambition, playing a bit of a magpie – sampling Todd Rundgren; appropriating Gold Panda's beatific "You"; paraphrasing Blu Cantrell's timeless "Hit 'Em Upstyle" – on a solid set of oblique-angle electro-pop allsorts.  But – unlike some would-be neo-divas (Little Boots, I'm looking at you) – where Charli really shines, and that ambition feels fully substantiated, is as a performer; flashing her infectious grin, stage-owning spunk and nonstop dance moves, and rocking a noisy, neon Hot Topic fashion sense that feels like a throwback we haven't quite seen yet.  Also: don't miss openers Little Daylight, whose single "Overdose" may be this year's purest, sweetest synth-pop thrill-ride.

The-Dream
[R&B]
concert preview

It's no coincidence that, for once, the word "love" appears nowhere in the title of Terius "The-Dream" Nash's long-delayed, guest-stuffed fourth artist album.  Even the actual title – IV Play  (Def Jam) – is a slight misdirection, as made clear in a title track which, somewhat hilariously, equates foreplay with "procrastination."  Sure, bluntly unabashed bedroom talk has always been central to the chart-dominating hitmaker's rakish charm, but his R. Kelly-ish mitigating wit wears awfully thin here: "Equestrian" never bothers to flesh out its hackneyed central conceit, would-be MJ homage "Michael" hardly even invokes its ostensible subject, while the titular metaphor of the intriguing (albeit b-bomb-littered) "New Orleans" is simply left unexplained.  Here's sex made just as empty, joyless and mutually degrading as the red-eyed, remorse-strewn variety assayed by Drake or The Weeknd; more upbeat if only for being less self-aware.  Of course, The-Dream being The-Dream, he'll win you right back again with the very sound of the album: plush, woozy, detail-studded, lavishly synthetic slow-mo R&B that's pretty undeniably perfect for...well, foreplay, for a start.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

get the lowdown on my hoedown

[hey, did you ("you"?) notice how i haven't been making any references to last.fm in any of my 2010 year-end hoo-hah? ha!]

the magnetic fields were one of my very top last.fm artists in 2010 (#3 in fact, behind joanna newsom and hot chip, – isn't it nice when lists line up with reality like that?), and they're probably going to become my overall most-played artist in a matter of days, due to my preparations for the upcoming 69 love songs cover party (which will be amazing) [and which was also part of the reason they scored so many listens last year, along with needing to bring my girlfriend up to speed, getting excited about the movie, and an autumnal obsession with "100000 fireflies"] however i didn't even really listen to, or like, their 2010 album, realism, all that much. but, there was that one very (overly?) catchy song [hm, they're very tiny there] about scientology, which is sort of like the title track for this mix, except that it's not actually on it (cuz i ran out of space, but maybe it's better that way anyway):

title: H'010NANNY! [SONGS of 2010]
date: december 2010. the 22nd-ish? format: cd-r,+blogpost
packaged: with 2010isLove, at least most of the time, together in a devious white foldy.

come and take our personality quizzzzzzzz:
1. "When I Still Have Thee" – Teenage Fanclub
2. "Zorbing" – Stornoway
3. "Ain't That The Way" – Devon Sproule
4. "I Heart NY" – Samuel
5. "Heaven, Sittin' Down" – Phosphorescent
6. "Gloria" – Jonny
7. "'81" – Joanna Newsom
8. "Free Translator" – The Books
9. "Hang With Me (Acoustic)" – Robyn
10. "You Better Mind" – Sam Amidon (with Beth Orton)
11. "You Are Not Alone" – Mavis Staples
12. "My Heart Is A Drummer" – Allo Darlin'
13. "I Didn't See It Coming" – Belle & Sebastian
14. "Horchata" – Vampire Weekend
15. "All Yr Songs" – Diamond Rings
16. "Hormones" – Tracey Thorn
17. "Love And Do What You Will" – ceo
18. "Indeed" – Georgia Anne Muldrow
19. "Whole New Way" – Scissor Sisters
20. "All Matter" – Bilal
21. "I Can Change" – LCD Soundsystem
22. "Alley Cats" – Hot Chip

i didn't make a "favorite songs of 2010" list, not really. i made this mix, which has already been much acclaimed ("massive," somebody said, or maybe it was "major"), and which i am enjoying (still) surprisingly much (unlike last year's songs mix [scroll down, scroll down] which i was kind of already sick of by the time i made it, and have barely listened since.) and now, so that you'll have something to listen to, and look at, while i ramble on about the songs/artists/albums(?), it's now also a video playlist:


1. "When I Still Have Thee" – Teenage Fanclub

wow, what a glorious song! pretty close to perfect, i think. simple structure, simple chords that somehow sound fantastically fresh. i love the gradually expanding arrangement: first just clean, eternal, Byrdsian jangle guitar (and a bit of piano for emphasis), sounding like a fanfare, then the drums (and full band) crashing in (with "the rolling stones") for verse two, and then, surprise, even more!: warm, glowy churchy organ, (right on the word "hymn"!) for verse three. and a few more crafty details: sweet lil guitar solo that builds right up to and wraps around the penultimate refrain, then a nifty little cadence to bring it back around one last time. hard to believe it's well over three minutes; it feels so much like an elemental 2:30.

tremendous lyric too: again, quite simple but also wholly unexpected. yes, i enjoy mocking it for the preposterous pronoun in the refrain (which feels mostly like a blatant reach for a rhyme...though i suppose you could make an argument that it fits in with the "modern hymn" bit?) but it really just makes it all the more endearing(ly earnest.) elsa heard it as being about religion or god. it seems to be about several things at once which are really all the same thing: love, the goodness of life, and, most especially, music. specifically, [indie] pop, or rock and roll i guess; from the western isles to the tasman sea, i.e. scotland to new zealand, the heartlands of this particular strain of p!o!p!, incl. the name-checked go-betweens (who are australian) [and apparently this cornish band i have never heard of.] who knows what rolling stones song they're talking about [any wild guesses?], but i love that the singer describes it as being written "for him"...also, "a minor song in a major key" is reminiscent of erstwhile new world janglers the gigolo aunts but even better executed i'd say.

i never really paid too much attention to teenage fanclub, at least post-bandwagonesque (which i've liked but never loved), even though i always figured i should. and now, probably, i shall [also, see jonny, below.] i was surprised by how much their new 'un, shadows, sounded like the clientele (okay, a slightly more awake version of the clientele.) the whole album is pretty lovely, with lots of nice string bits and so on, but this one is far and away the standout for me...it's the kind of song, i knew right away, that will never lose its power to make me smile through any little heartbreak, and that is something to cherish. ok, on we go...


2. "Zorbing" – Stornoway

wow, what a glorious song! speaking of the western isles, stornoway is on one of them, though stornoway are not from there, they're from cowley, a part of oxford, which is mentioned in this song ["zorbing through the streets of cowley."] zorbing is highly fascinating, and i would love to learn more about it, but that's not really what this song's about. it's about love, of course, new love more specifically, and though zorbing is a pretty brilliant metaphor for the feeling (floating, tumbling, disoriented, inside a bubble), but wisely i think, they don't force it or make it fit too neatly, but find various other more and less outlandish ways (thunderstorms, sensory dissociation) to describe the same thing which are just as compelling.

this is one of those songs (like "when i still have thee," i suppose) that manages to express almost exactly the same feeling musically as it does lyrically; in this case an irresistible, barely controlled giddiness (the short eruptive trumpet breaks are almost too much – isolated from context they might be unbearably twee – but they provide exactly the release that the song needs.) another slowly building arrangement with wonderfully crisp details all arranged just so (love that slightly subliminal jaunty piano and of course the low laddish harmonies and bouncy bass.) and i haven't even mentioned the melody, which is a marvel unto itself.

this is the kind of song that, as i think rae said about hefner's "i took her love for granted" [which i wrote about at length here, and which it could probably argued is the solitary reason i am still a devoted darren hayman listener], makes me remember why i love indie-pop.

actually, for some reason [because this was technically first released in '09?] i'd intended to include "i saw you blink" instead, which is almost equally wonderful (the rest of beachcomber's windowsill, very very good as it is, is trying for something somewhat different and can't quite match these two pinnacles) but this fit better for some reason.



3. "Ain't That The Way" – Devon Sproule

wow, what a – well, actually this is a slightly different situation here. of course, it is glorious, like most everything the dazzling ms. devon does, plays or is. (even if the album this kickstarts, ¡don't hurry for heaven!, was a bit of a let down for me after her untouchably great last one.) this is a pretty astonishing piece of songcraft, right up there with "keep yr silver shined" and "plea for a good night's rest," which really could not have been written by anybody else. this one might actually be more immediately captivating and endearing than either of those. i don't know anybody else who does this thing, intricate and breezily poetic but homespun and humble at the same time, nearly the way dev can. actually, her poetics are less high-flown than usual here, and her virginny drawl (which feels maybe just slightly exaggerated on this one) makes it more feel even down-home.

not to get into too many of the little details, i'll just point out maybe my favorite lyric, in the surprise cyclical sorta-canon coda (which is all great), she hears on the way home "new ry cooder on the radio." then there are the little twinklies which lead us nicely into...



4. "I Heart NY" – Samuel
...a rather different vision of home. (hey, there's that word again...) a total out-of-nowhere hit for me (i have basically no sense of who or how many other people are even aware of it; i know next to nothing of this samuel, except that i think he's got a major label contract now. and i haven't heard any of his other songs, but i'm suspecting that maybe we all will in the near future?) an uncannily enchanting piece of candyfloss pop – unusually for this style [q.v. lenka, marit, etc.] sung by a male, which maybe tempers the candyflossness of it a bit (?) and partially explains why i hear a surprising degree of swag alongside the disney twinkles... could also be the zip-a-dee-doo-dah hip-hop beat (reminds me of "hard knock life" a bit) and the subject matter, not just that it's about new york (and a much more touching and cogent ode than, for instance "ny state of mind"), an unabashed celebration in spite of broken bicycles, pot paranoia, boredom and alienation. [also cf. hip-hop,] i like that "what makes [him] real" is the inexplicable queasiness he feels in his stomach.

p.s. i might have a soft spot for songs that mention coney island: "from out here," "strange powers," what else, lou reed of course, and that gybe! thing... (also, i was on coney island during a blackout!)



5. "Heaven, Sittin' Down" – Phosphorescent

aw sooky. another sweet groover. [nb. album version is better, but for some reason not on the yootoob...] the first time i heard this (on the train back from nj, as elsa was on her way moving up to boston) i was sure it was a trad. cover (partly because of the r.l. burnside album of the similar title, which i've not heard), but evidently no, it's a phosphy original, albeit based around a nicked line (cuz it is the title of a gospel oldie or sumpin.) well, add this one to the instant new sing-along standards pile, right on top of "wagon wheel" (and similarly, could easily see people just writing their own verses for this. i never even notice the verses anyway.)

i 'specially love the slightly loose, rushed scansion of that crucial, wrenching third line of the chorus ("i wish those nights of pleasure and those days of pain weren't so tightly bound.") never really thought about this, but the song sounds so jaunty yet is about utter exhaustion, so that's neat.



6. "Gloria" – Jonny

jonny = norman blake from teenage fanclub + euros childs from gorkys zygotic mynci, welshy goofball (though, as it turns out, maybe not quite as much of a goofy welshball as gruff rhys, cwwddyhthythgd.) seems likely he provided much of the goofiness of this song, but who knows. it's the first song from their free downloadable first ep (album coming soon, on merge!?) this is, awesomely, about gloria estefan, and if you hadn't noticed it's the third song on this mix so far to mention other musical artists by name, an appropriate unintentional theme for me. [i think there's two others still to come, unless james murphy slipped something by me.]

anyway, jonny, "gloria," short (!!) and sweet, couldn't resist. will probably be teaching this one at sing-alongs too.



7. "'81" – Joanna Newsom

sort of the obvious "single" from have one on me, i guess, in that it's short (but longer than the micro-sized "on a good day") and has a simple-ish, very catchy melody. "good intentions paving company" seems to be the consensus de facto standout, and it's also my favorite, in part because i love singing it and playing it on the piano. [but it's too long, natch, plus was already on the original (and frankly preferable) version of t-shirt weather. they're both spring songs, btw, unless this is summer.]

i love singing this one too – even though her phrasing is maddeningly difficult to pin down (slippery as a naked trout) – and i can almost imagine other people learning how to sing it as well, something i'd be hard pressed to say about any of her other songs (well honestly it's not true about this one either.) maybe it's more that i just want to sing it to other people, and have them hear it, and be comforted: "the unending amends you've made are enough for one life: be done. i believe in innocence, little darlin', start again; i believe in everyone."



8. "Free Translator" – The Books
equally as much comfort, utterly negligible sense. the story of this song is here. "Machines are dumb, but sometimes they do brilliant things because they can’t help themselves."

(also, the sufficient clues to the mystery of its palimpsestuous source material, which has had me curious for a while now, are in the comments to that tumbl. oddly enough – or not – this song does a surprisingly decent job of preserving the existential, open-ended feel of the unnamed original song which it "translates"; not unlike the semi-surrealist charlie king parody of said song i heard him sing years ago.)

i'd like to hear a bedtime story (a la "the story of hip-hop") or maybe a superhero comic about the instantly distinctive entities listed at the end of the song: the adventures of meteorological man and whirlwind girl, with their sidekicks, a careful goat and a talking plant. and a squid in a bag. etc.



9. "Hang With Me (Acoustic)" – Robyn

the best song of robyn's (aptly called) "magic 2010," i'm pretty sure. and, in this version, one of the few pieces of that output which comes close to matching the breathtaking, honest emotional nuance she achieved at the emotive peak (i.e. robyn's heart-stoppingly clear-eyed closing suite) of her magic 2005. [which isn't necessarily to say i like the disco single version any less.]

a subtly key moment: "i know what's on your mind/there will be time for that too": slyly, ambiguously supplementing her touchy-feely with some touchy-touchy, in a way that lets you know this couldn't have been written by anyone else (except maybe prince.)

oh, and just one little amendment i'd make, for my own selfish purposes: fall recklessly, headlessly in love with me; it won't all be heartbreak blissfully painful insanity.




10. "You Better Mind" – Sam Amidon with Beth Orton

awesome. [in the original, literal sense, even.] sam amidon was essentially new to me this year (though, turned out e's known him since they were at folksinging summer camp together), but this was maybe the most tragically overlooked alb of the year in my book. (even more than allo darlin', yes, because i recognize their somewhat more limited appeal, and because this is the more distinctive, original accomplishment.) this is both possibly my favorite cut (tho the sweetly sneaky r. kelly reenvisioning "relief" is close) and a good representation of the album as a whole. heard right, i think this song and this rendition just might be capable of putting the fear of god into ya. (also: nice to hear beth's voice again.)



11. "You Are Not Alone" – Mavis Staples

from old gospel sung by a young folkie to a song written by a young folkster for an old gospeller to sing. (and with moderately oppositional messages, to boot.) jeff tweedy wrote this for mavis staples' same-titled album, which he also produced, and much as you can absolutely hear the tweedy in it (the writing that is), staples and the song fit one another comfortably and completely. it's such an immediate standout (and instant classic) that it's a shame he didn't write more for the album.

message-wise, this isn't terribly far off from what joanna newsom tries to convey in "'81," and it's easily at least as powerful, probably more, particularly in the truly striking forcefulness the lyric adopts – taking on overtones of police aggression – in conveying its intent to get that message across: "open up this is a raid/i want to get it through to you: you're not alone." how fundamental that is, yet how hard to hear. by now we've seen quite a handful of old, faded (in terms of their visibility, at the very least) soul titans attempting to recapture some glory by basking in the genre's recent reflourescence, but this is one moment that really rises above the pack and manages to feel unambiguously vital.



12. "My Heart Is A Drummer" – Allo Darlin'

"deep down in the place where music makes you happiest," – i've said it before and i'll say it again: it's a place allo darlin' know well – do you really have life to waste on music that's less vibrant and direct and upfront than this song is? ok ok. it's not actually as good as graceland, and it doesn't have the carefully calibrated perfect-pop detailing of, for instance, the first two songs on this mix. (even the impressively convincing faux-afrique highlife outro, which in context doubles as a sly graceland nod, and which is the song's best showcase for bassman bill, the allo's greatest secret weapon – is more a triumph of feeling than of composition.)

no, this song's unabashed strength is in its personality, which, happily, is way more than enough to carry it. it's in the music, which positively bursts; it's in elizabeth morris' adorably accented vocal (notably, in the way she sings "telephieone"), and most of all, actually, it's in what she's singing. [also, it's in the fittingly handmade, albeit possibly too goofy, cankerblossom-esque video, which i hadn't seen until now – i've mostly avoided looking at the videos whilst writing these blurbs, probably for the best in the interests of ever getting this finished.]

"do i have to say i'm sorry for my happiness?" – she asks it almost weakly, as though it's actually a question. but there's more to the story than that: one of the things i love about this song is that it's about the comforting, satisfied self-knowledge of subtle, hidden depths of fortitude and resilience: the singer might seem all gushy and gooey as she slides her feet up and down the wall, but she's knows that she's actually stronger than you are. "baby, you don't know, but my heart is as strong as a drummer." (never mind that heart cancer might not be precisely what asthmatic smokers need to be mindful about.) some folks have pointed out the chorus' melodic similarities to cyndi lauper's breakout hit, which never really stuck out to me, but coincidental as that connection may be the two songs do have something similar to teach us: there is power in just wanting to have fun.



13. "I Didn't See It Coming" – Belle & Sebastian

polychrome in the 2010's
you go disco and i'll go my way

still not entirely sure how i feel about write about love as a whole (that is, whether i love-love it or merely like-like it) but this, track one, which just jumped out of the speakers from the first time i plopped it in, the day after it came out, at my birthday listening party, this just might be the best thing belle & seb have done since... well? waitress at least, though that's only two albums back. and this has a maturity and confidence that the closest parallels of that era ("your cover's blown"; "cuckoo," maybe; the excellent and overlooked "stay loose") don't quite.

eh, it doesn't really feel right to compare: in its stylistic freedom, formal adventurousness, impressionistic style, and fluid, unrepentant musicality, this consolidates many of the strengths of b+s mark 2; but then again, it also feels like something totally new. even if something about it (the lyric?) vaguely calls to mind "electronic renaissance." ["make me dance/i want to surrender" – what a dizzyingly potent little fragment.] anyway, it stands with the band's very best, of any era.

even if it flattens out a bit when it opens up (in the late-middle, before launching into the maddeningly beautiful tail-section that less-classically-versed music writers would probably describe as a "fugue"), and even though, when i'm listening to it, i wish it didn't fade out like that. or so fast. or ever. anybody can write about love: this song sounds like it. and the title makes it self-fulfilling prophecy.



14. "Horchata" – Vampire Weekend

my favorite songs from contra – an album that i adore for no real reason other than that i love listening to it, which sounds like a trivial statement but strangely doesn't feel that way [maybe it actually is as good as graceland?] – my favorite songs are all right at the end: "giving up the gun" (evidently my SotY), righteous banger "diplomat's son," and the momentously ineffable quasi-title track. but with the former well and adequately repped on both 2010islove and feet active vol. 1 (hm, i really ought to get that mix up here), and the latter on t-shirt weather, it was tricky to know what to rep contra with here, as few of the album's other great songs particularly stand out to me as being more great than the great rest. (according to my blog, the evidently-popular "white sky" was an early favorite of mine too, but i don't entirely remember that.)

i chose "horchata," even though it seemed a bit obvious, even though i initially thought it was overly goofy, because i really have continued to sing it, and it remains singularly playful and delightful, and also i liked the way it fit in to the belle&seb fade-out. at one point this song felt a bit like a hold-over from the sound of first album, but although it probably does work as a stylistic bridge to some extent it also definitely fits in, and works well as an opening statement.

my favorite things about this song are: the xylophones, the clattery offbeat rhythms, the full wistful singing on the chorus/bridge ("here's a feeling..."), the wormy, wiggly melody, the periodic mix-n-match drop-out-and-build-back-up that happens at the end, the all-over-the-place kitchen-sink arrangement, the sudden stop at the end. pretty much everything except for the lyrics, which are fun too.



15. "All Yr Songs" – Diamond Rings

i mighta overrated this album (i really wanted it to be reminiscent of warren zevon..), but this song is supa dope, any way. it's got a peppy fun cheap/sloppy bedroom fi steez but secretly it is really neatly and snazzily arranged. lots of subtle stuff going on. it has acoustic guitar breakdowns! it has beach boy "oohs"! it has (synth) bass come in on the second verse! it has bongos, mixed low on the chorus! and: it has a vibraslap! (like free energy's "something in common," absolutely one of my favorite songs of 2010 that didn't come out in 2010 because it was only on the ep and not the album for some crazy reason, but otherwise should totally be here. i want to keep a running tally of vibraslap songs but it's hard to remember, as they're best when used sparingly.)

this song is also totally sweet in the lyrics/sentiment department too. the sunscreen part always makes me think about best coast, but i don't like any best coast songs nearly this much. she should be more sing-songy. oh-woah-oh-oh-oh-woah-oh-oh-oh. i guess this was viral-ish in '09 but whatevs i didn't catch it until the album this year. woot!



16. "Hormones" – Tracey Thorn

hard to get past the attention-getting (and admirably non-traditional) subject matter [her menopause coinciding with her daughter's puberty], which tracey treats in typically frank, affecting, non-sensationalized fashion, but the music of this is pretty great too; nicely groovy, handclaps, neat piano riff, nice guitar punch-ups. it's probably the best song on love and its opposite for both reasons – though "oh the divorces" is also something pretty special. it's an album i can certainly appreciate and respect plenty, tho (and i don't think it's just b/c of my age) it didn't quite floor me like out of the woods did (and does.) but that's an unusually special recording. anyhow, tracey is still one of my favorite voices, and i'm happy to spread the love.



17. "Love And Do What You Will" – ceo

there is something so befuddlingly other about the tough alliance and, now, ceo – having spent plenty of time with their albums, and writing about them, and digesting white magic in particular (and it's not a long album), i still feel like; for instance, out of the albums in my top ten for 2010, ceo's is by far the one i'm least able to comprehend, or feel like i connect with, on a human level. which can make it hard to say exactly how much, or even whether, and certainly why, i like it.

but it's equally hard to deny that they/he make some pretty fantastic music, phenomenal both on its own terms and in its utter singularity. i'm also pretty sure that white magic is even better, and even more sui generis, than the tough alliance output to date. and it's great both as an album and as individual pieces. this song is great, for instance. i can't really tell you what's going on – there are tons of interesting sounds, an interesting, syncopated beat, a catchy melody, a catchy riff or two, some enthusiastic singing – but if we can "love and do what love and do what we want we will," [as someone once said of prince's equally inscrutable "7": if "together we'll love through all space and time,"] it can't be all that bad, can it?



18. "Indeed" – Georgia Anne Muldrow

though i sort of half forgot about her for a while – after i missed her show and left my copy of king's ballad in matt's cd player (which i should try harder to recover) – i was rocking the GAM jams pretty hard in the early part of the year, and this is definitely one of the sweetest and the fonkiest. it's an entirely touching, heartfelt, if not a little quirky, celebration of kids: "i love the mess out the children..." who can't get down with that?



19. "Whole New Way" – Scissor Sisters

i feel a little bad that i didn't find better ways to express my love for scissor sisters in 2010. night work is a pretty terrific piece of work from end to end, definitely a surprise and a step up for a group i'd all but written off – much as i loved their debut (and it's probably only gotten better with time), it somehow never seemed like they were fully able to live up to their potential. but this one is a total treat, chock-full of pop thrills, and i don't really understand why it was so overlooked.

for some reason it's a little tricky to take individual songs out of the context of the album, maybe because they have such a strong shared stylized aesthetic. this song (which is also shoehorned in at the end of 2010islove, paired up with "rude boy" for a deviant little quickie) isn't necessarily my favorite thing from the album (i think i like "skin tight" and "running out" slightly more, though it's a hard call), but it might be the best stand-alone cut. it's pretty delightful, either way. "subtext"-wise, the entendré-filled lyrics are winking pretty impossibly hard (ana matronic's overly labored live introduction/"apology" for this song, both times i saw them this summer [on the same day] was almost wince-inducing), but that's obviously a lot of the point, and the fun.



20. "All Matter" – Bilal

by contrast, i have pretty much no idea what this song is about. (apart than love, of course.) didn't know what to make of this cat when i saw him open for erykah badu this summer, and after a bunch of listens through the in any event staggering airtight's revenge, i still don't really know, but i think it's a good kind of making. as intriguing and often enjoyable as it is, there's been precious little in the recent wave of loose, clunky, atmospheric, post-dilla "broken-beat" electro-funk, whether instrumental or vocal (erykah, quadron, flying lotus, sa-ra – stuff that, for instance, andy kellman loves) that's really grabbed me. this one did it with just one little ineffable snatch of liquid vocal soul magic, which feels like i could listen to it forever. "you ain't even gotta try/all you've gotta do is realize..."



21. "I Can Change" – LCD Soundsystem

the new lsd screensaver album is bookended by towering standouts ("dance yrself clean", "home") or else the singles are the towering standouts ("drunk girls", "pow pow") or maybe it's all standouts (well, except, sorry, "somebody's calling me") or, i dunno, but this is the slyly crucial centerpiece after all, a quintessential "album cut" only in that it is fully and undeniably in and of its album, not that it can't work outside of it, and in any case it's the best solution to the quandary that "all i want" doesn't measure up to "all my friends" (quite), and nothing here touches "someone great" (even if "you wanted a hit" has the right feel for it), and yet this is happening is somehow a more complete and cohesive and consummate work than sound of silver, half of which now almost feels like throwaways in retrospect (actually, it felt that way at the time, tho i still loved it, and i still love it.)

"i can change" has only a few changes, but plenty of good lines (bad poetry my foot), if maybe not as many quotables as some others. but more than that its string of casual, lucid observations about relationships (which might or might not add up to a narrative sketch i've never bothered to really trace) add up to a vaguely wry, witty, alternately (or simultaneously?) cynical and hopeful meditation on modern (always modern) love that doesn't need much coherence to be curiously moving. and failing that, the bleeps and the beats – which, perhaps tellingly, barely change at all over the course of the track – offer some motion of their own.



22. "Alley Cats" – Hot Chip

one life stand is my favorite album of 2010. what is my favorite song from one life stand? "brothers"? the title track? "thieves in the night"? ["happiness is what we all want/may it be that we don't always want"...pretty hard to argue with that] earlier mixtape inclusions "hand me down your love" (on t-shirt weather) or "i feel better" (on 2010islove)? i'd almost be tempted to say the utterly sublime osborne remix of "take it in," although of course that's not on the album.

the truth is, i don't have one. this is about as close to a perfect album – not just in the sense of having no weak tracks, but having no tracks that are even notably weaker than any of the others – as i can think of in recent memory (a strange arrangement, my post-facto #1 of 2009, fits this bill too.) which isn't to say to say that all of the tracks are perfect: indeed, i could probably point to distinct, frequently lovable imperfections in just about every one. (that's called idiosyncrasy, and it's a large part of the appeal...though admittedly it's not nearly on the level of, say, kanye west.)

just at the moment, though, i'm having trouble coming up with anything that's particularly imperfect about "alley cats." it's not especially good for dancing to. joe isn't a technically brilliant singer. the words are quizzical and often hard to make linear sense of... but in this context, that last is actually a decidedly good thing (and probably the previous one too) – the lyrics feel warm and thoughtful and personal and as full of odd inscrutable private codes and pet references as an intimate chat between two lovers.)

one life stand, from its title on down, is overflowing with fresh, simple, unexpected and economical figurative yet immediate ways of talking about love, and this song has several: "we wear each others heads like hats"; "you painted a song...and now it is in my lungs"; the wonderfully succinct list of why people are like unhappy cats ("restless, needs attention, loses patience, seeks affection.") also, this song, like the album in general, recognizes that love is not only about two people: there are also pets, and parents, and plants, and even pop bands ("do you dig germs?"), and a whole lifetime full of those things together, even when the things you love want to kill one another, all of that, all together, is what makes up a life of love. that's all.

re:stocking

the annually rejiggered pitchfork readers poll (now closed) – which somewhat arbitrarily requested five songs and albums of the year, yet a full top ten of favorite songs out of from their best of the 1990s list [a fun and interesting task..i ended up with the magnetic fields' "the book of love" on top, but it might have been different another year] – also asked us to pick the year's top three live acts.

that's always a hard one, and maybe even more so since i saw more live music this year than possibly ever, thanks to a steady stream of CP assignments. robyn came pretty quickly to mind – her august show with kelis at the trocadero was the apotheosis of an emphatically summer-pop-summer, and a great reminder that she's as much of an effortless bad-ass as a performer as she is as a record-maker. (one particularly brilliant bit of stagecraft: eating a banana during the lengthy build-up of "don't fucking tell me what to do" – finishing in time to deliver just the title hook vocal live – in, if this is possible, a relatively non-sexualized, or other-than-sexualized fashion.) it also showed a fairly dramatic progression from the intimacy and simplicity of the first time i saw her into a dazzling, larger-than-life-feeling pop-star spectacle, though the difference was as much about a clear shift in her way of relating to the stage and the audience as added production fireworks (not to mention the perhaps-unfortunately ballad-free setlist.) will be interesting to see how that evolves when she comes back to play an even larger venue, the electric factory, in february. anywhow, a world-class performer, no question.

i'd thought about lcd soundsytem (whom, like fellow top-tenners joanna newsom and vampire weekend, i saw for both the first and second time this year) until i remembered about mayer hawthorne [& the county], from this vantage point easily my favorite new artist of 2009 [and that's not even accounting for the weirdly lackluster live performances of jj and the very best], whom i saw for the first-through-fourth times this year, at four substantially different venues [the most recent time, regrettably and frustratingly preventably, occasioned my missing a chance to see easily my favorite new artist of 2010, allo darlin', for the second time – but first real-full time – all in one day...], and he consistently killed it every time. the mayer hawthorne show is a well-oiled, spit-polished thing of beauty, and those four performances were far more similar than they were distinct [though the latest included some very exciting sneak previews of his new material], but i hardly minded the chance to re-experience it.

for the third slot, i picked a band i'd just seen, and really only recently listened to: stornoway, about whom i wrote this preview for city paper. the first two (and best) songs on their debut album, beachcomber's windowsill – which probably oversell the extent to which they can be categorized as "indie-pop" – bookended a set that demonstrated both rock-solid chops (instrumental and vocal) and considerable musical range, from moody, arty chamber-ish pieces (some of it verging on slightly tedious) to straight-up (and very british) folk (including a really lovely new one, "november song," performed solo and acoustic by frontman brian briggs) to a surprising amount of rocking out, particularly on the big swelling codas to a few songs. there was also briggs' endearingly nervous/nerdy banter, including recitations of inventions made in philadelphia (the slinky, lemon meringue pie...) but the best part was almost certainly the two-song encore, performed entirely unplugged and un-mic'd, which elicited some of the most genuinely enthusiastic crowd-love i've witnessed in a while. [videos of the encore songs are here and here, thanks to my cp compadres.] it was truly a heartwarming feeling to be in that crowd.

let alone recapping the year in live music, this past week alone has been stellar. last friday i watched two fake-local groups – my buddy tom's band via audio and their piano-popping pals jukebox the ghost [aka cutebox the most] – sock-rock a fun-happy beatles-loving crowd that seemed to consist primarily of teens and their parents, some of them in white astro-jumpsuits, with (respectively) songs about slacking, godzilla, pitch-corrected divas, and babymaking, as well as some lovably dopey banter and a frenzied rendition of "what's this" from the nightmare before christmas (also glad i stuck around for the night-closing panda-monium-inducing team-up cure cover.)

on sunday i saw the utterly ineffable nellie mckay kick some life into the bewilderingly all-over-the-place tunes from her new album – from the latin-kitsch/broadway melodrama "¡bodega!" to the meat-is-murder "unknown reggae" – as well as a bunch of the doris day numbers (and some other assorted jazz standards), a few old faves ("dog song"! "sari"!), a possibly new (?), typically beautiful/insane seasonal political number – an anti-christmas tree eco-rant inexplicably wrapped around a broken-hearted love song – and a wtf tom waits cover (awesomely, if unsurprisingly, she can do a pitch-perfect waitsian growl.) i think this was the first time i'd seen her play with a band, a trio of game if non-smiling jazzbos who set a highly amusing contrast to her preposterous, precociously giddy/girlish and befuddlingly anachronistic stage presence. her albums may be (increasingly) hit-or-miss, but her performances never fail to remind me of her truly limitless talent, eccentricity and charm. it's hard to put it words.

finally, last tuesday i trekked up to hoboken with rae to catch night seven of yo la tengo's annual 8 nights of hanukkah at maxwells [ira's account is there], something i hadn't done since 2002, when the band were very memorably joined by ray davies (whom, incidentally, i would have seen in boston over thanksgiving if hadn't, very sadly had to cancel for health reasons...) this show was similarly a pretty transcendent experience, if only because it reminded me how much i dearly love this band (you wouldn't think i'd forget something like that, having written something like this, and i didn't, really, but i maybe hadn't thought about it in a while...)

this is what they played:

HOME = "feels like going home," from ...beat your ass, a really sweet gentle one which i really should have included on home, why did i not do that? [wasn't] BORN 2 FOLLOW is a carole king cover that i didn't know, but almost of the others were familiar YLT favorites, really a solid setlist of classics, if maybe a tad obvious, but just perfect for not having seen them in a while... definitely heavy on the soft pretty ones (season of the shark, last days of disco, shadows, little eyes, black flowers) but that's kinda how i like it, and helped set off the totally awesome noise/drone freakouts that bookended the set (the last and first tunes, respectively from the last two albums.)

they were joined for their entire set (except for "tom courtenay," since he broke a string wailing out during the late-set punk-out patch) by the amazing mr. nels cline (of wilco, nels cline singers, and assorted out-jazz excursions), in a rad eyeball t-shirt, which made the whole thing all that much more awesome, even if he sometimes made it hard to see georgia. then they came back and played two ramones covers – "pet sematary" (james on vox!) and "sheena is a punk rocker") – and were joined by openers bonnie prince billy + the cairo gang (who were also awesome! even though i barely recognized any of the songs they played...need to brush up on billy's last half-decade) to close the night with lou reed's "heavenly arms" (which tbh i only know from el perro del mar's closer.) heavenly indeed...