Sunday Tape: June 2008 + an important SOIVAY!

Please download the June 2008 Sunday Mixtape, and please purchase the works of those included thereupon.

Feb 14 Drive-By-Truckers... I am relatively new to this band, having scored their newest alb after "hearing good things" for years. Rest assured it's great blackout music if yr a leftist labor dork in Portland. I guess my loving them, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown and their children makes me a (reluctant but nonetheless) devout alt-country guy. How embarrassing, how true. This song drives me like I wish I could say all the Replacements stuff did. Patterson Hood rules as a singer, which is, natch, very important for this Sticky Fingers + Darkness on the Edge of Town rock palette.

1,000 of Anything Giant's Chair... Oh god! Sadly out of print, Giant's Chair deserves mention alongside Chavez' Gone Glimmering and Unwound's Future of What when it comes to arty, guitar-rock glory. Oh god, lucky you the gentlemen at usedbinforever made it available!

Valentine Number One Toshack Highway... Denser-than-average, synth and drone-drenched placidity for your nearest beachside. Seriously, lay your towel down in the somehow Pop-pointillist sand. Good for you.

The Innocence of a Child Catherine Howe.. I don't begrudge any latter-day folkies nothing, but it's a wonder it took the geeks so long to remember an alternate 60s where hippies swooned in addition to Molotov Cocktailing or even just druggin'. Where's the moral imagination, you punk rock aesthetes? Just like you, people everywhere always end up doing things besides necking and punching and "keeping it real." You didn't know about other versions of 1968 until 2004, huh, really? Thank you Catherine Howe for constituting the wispy, swoony Return-of-the-uh, ur-Relaxed. Great, buttery throat. I hope right now somebody's taking off the Devendra and turning on to you.

I Found You Anders Parker...Despite spending the last coupla years high on Anders, I'd never gotten around to purchasing AP's Wounded Astronaut ep until just this last month, the one called June of 2008. 'Turns out this ep houses more layered guitars and more Sonic Youth-y dialectics of melody/dissonance than is found on either of the solo albs he's made since taking down the Varnaline tent. Lady vocals, too.

Secrets Mick Jagger... This is from the solo Mick alb I've been so happy to laud beyond reason. Maybe it is true, Mick.

Witches Wand Sloan... I had heard nothing from this grew since their Buzz Clip-era debut in them early 1990s, but between Tom Scharpling's endorsement, my recent resurfaced devotion to Teenage Fanclub, and my increased distaste for the very idea of Belle and Sebastian... well, mebbe Sloan is where I need to go for my not-un-indie Beatles-y twee. This song has at least three killer hooks and gets out in three minutes. (ps - Am I wrong to blame Belle and Sebastian for the Decemberists? Probably? I dunno, but I know that even the very droll Belle and Sebastian are seeming unsustainably overwrought when I try to put 'em on the box and place 'em in my life-world. I wish life was a big, fun sweater commercial here in Eugene - it ain't. Nor am I an undergraduate, apparently.)

Allentown Billy Joel... because it's cause for an important survey question: is "Allentown" or "Born in the USA" the 'best' of its era when it comes to popular evocations of male, white ethnic 80's (class) angst?

100 South of Broadway The Philadelphia Society. From the often-banal, always-fantastic second installment of Soul Jazz' Philly Soul series. 'Makes me think of the woman I love, who everyday wafts around my life like really good Saxophone Disco.

The World is in the Turlet Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (Lyrics penned spontaneously by Tom Scharpling and the Best Show callers during an historic episode, while the Pharmacists toiled in the studio to churn out what they churned.) Good christ, the limited time frame and inanity, insanity and genius of the lyrics make for a Ted Leo song that encapsulates all Ted Leo songs within itself in a manner not unlike that perpetrated in the "Circe" chapter of old what's-it-called. In particular I commend you to the uncharacteristically "raw" solo and ascendant "moment of triumph" crescendo.

Police Police Me Hey Mercedes (Less embarassing than my alt-country disposition but nonetheless embarassing is the fact that) I have a higher threshold for certain poppy tendencies in 1990s emo than many friends of mine. Given this penchant and giving the adroit lyrics of Bob Nanna, both Braid and their latter incarnation Hey Mercedes have always been tasty red meat for "driving in the car" pattyjoe. In this instance, Hey Mercedes are hip to shout out les Beatles with this song-title, tho in actuality they're still playing some very hard rock beneath the harmonic, chiming SGs. Just dig it on its own terms, people. While the Get-Up Kids, Promise Ring et. al. seemed always either too dressed-down, too dumbed-down or too derivative... Bob Nanna's work looms large on my Bucket List.
Skip a Rope Henson Cargill Thanks, Kyle! This here is some "message music" from the storied realm of 60s studio country. Good god, divorce is killing our children! And have you seen how they dress lately? They should get a job, is what they need to do. Seriously.

All Going Out Together Big Dipper In different ways, Husker Du, REM and NZ greats like the Clean were all capable of elevating indie sounds to a place that almost merited the earnest title of "pop-rock." 'Turns out that Big Dipper belong in that class as well....at the very least, this song belongs in yr walkman. Taken from the magisterial and overdue and magnanimous 3-cd Anthology of Dipper stuff that just emerged from Merge. I love the Tom Scharpling essay, but better still are the very deadpan and very balanced appraisals from ex-Dippers who lived through the Homestead Records era to experience abject, major-label squalor in the post-Nevermind era. If guitar-based indie rock a la SST et. al. ever really "comes again," it'll be in part because of people's coming together around lost luminaries like Big Dipper.

Bikini States Electro Group... Now as ever I am thankful to builtonaweakspot for keeping me half-abreast of contemporary shoegaze pockets. The main lick sweeps from chords to single-notes in a Polvo-y manner that arouses me. I'm always slapping the steering wheel when this one comes down.

Wait Mom and Dad Julia... If only I'd known about this stuff as it were happening. More of the slint and dischord-infused "hardcore" that was peculiar to the South in the late 1990s. Great, smart guitar chord-ing and the swaggering vocs that all the lex dexters dig.

I Want You Marvin Gaye...ooh, and then there's this alb-opener from the overlooked Marvin alb. You're psyched, there's nothing else I can say.

Coalmine #666 Crain...now we're talking. What time signature is this? And for all the herky-jerky, how can it rock so much. While Rodan and Slint always end up covered in praise-silt when it comes to the Louisville rock canon, the mighty Crain must be honored and praised as the slightly more oaf-ish, slightly tougher sibling in the litter. This track is culled from the bonus cd that accompanies Simple Machines' legendary Working Holiday comp. Tasty and nasty, spicy and cool.

My Noise Superchunk.... An early anthem from the big kids. Free yourself, teens! Whatever.

Can't Let Go This Feeling Spotlight Kid... Oh, my...we're lifting off. We may never get to actually fall of an actual bridge or make love in a lunar module, but we do have this kind of weightlessness. For me this sub-mode of post-whatever is like having a waterfall-like, frameless system of LiteBrites forever shimmering in the corner of mine eyeball. If life en general turned into something more like this music pocket, everybody would opt out of pants and opt into flowing combos of fleece and astroturf. Bean bags everywhere. Take a seat or lay down.

The Turnpike Down Lemonheads... Weird that I ever felt a need to revisit Shame About Ray these ten years on, but weirder still that I dig it. 'Like a vintage Dinosaur album recorded on acoustic guitar and snare drum. Even the alb tracks like this one stand up fine. Evan Dando is the perfect frontman for this band in the same way that the Doors'd've been utter shite had Jim Morrison actually been really smart or poetic.

Forever Idaho... Another band from the "they existed for how long without me noticing?" category. Crushing guitar haze is dribbled over the choruses of this dirge in a manner befitting "Cortez" or Come or even Codeine. Let's get lost again.