July 2008 - month that it was - Tape

(Help yourself confidently to the tape. I've been listening to great bands throughout this hectic time of living i've had for so many weeks now. I believe this will have to be remembered as an all-time great playlist in terms of customer satisfaction. In this case, the "customer" is me. Sure, I need to get off the computer. Sure, I could probably stand to take some walks. But I'm listening to good records while I work myself into middle-age.
Unfortunately, copyright minutae and private property as such have intervened in the inclusion of Leon Russell's "Tight Rope:" make a point of experiencing that for yourselves, tho. also absent is "She's Crazy for Leaving", from a Guy Clark alb that I love despite it's crappiness.)

st johnny 'i give up'. when i heard of these guys back in them early 90s, they were always shrugged off as young sonic youth proteges with a yen for drug references. well, they somehow got signed to geffen! and the resultant record, while hardly "great," is nonetheless really good. it sounds like siltbreeze-y Crazy Horse standing in an empty field, trying to play music that's somewhere equidistant from sonic youth and dinosaur.

ida 'lovers' prayers'. fantastic title cut from a fantastic record, recorded with Levon Helm in Woodstock, by a band that has a sensibility towards album rock that betrays their East Coast, 'hc' pedigree. i will follow this band, from here on out. already bought three records from them this year. beautiful, haunting, a la the good Elton John albums like honky chateau. is it sometis okay to be sentimental, so long as you're in the right company and never, ever sentimentalist?

karate 'cherry coke'. from the split with crownhateruin. i have come full circle on this band, who, not unlike st johnny, were maligned en masse among at least the sort of wankers i once knew. the guy is a fantastic guitar player. and i've always associated them with ida - not sure why.

the baseball project 'past time'. my favorite song of 2008? it's not just the baseball references - it's the steve wynn swagger, dumbass! - and it's the paul muldoon-like decision that, yes, i will unleash a sea of non-sequitor namedrops for the sake of a sonorous-er afternoon! poetry needs to continue to exist, sis. even oscar gamble, bobby wise and joe pepitone are hip to that.

electro group 'la ballena alegria'. now we're talking - this is my new band, here. i just swallowed them up whole, after builtonaweakspot dropped them in my face. this is your bleed-y post-shoegaze that also retains weird polvo elements. very float-y, but a lot tougher than most of the wannabe mbv-type bands. i love this band.

faces 'if i'm on the late side'. god, we never talk about how great Faces' ballads are, cuz we're so busy talking about how hard they rock.

toshack highway 'i thought i saw my ship a-coming'. this is the solo outing by adam franklin, another 1990s badass from 1990s badasses swervedriver. this is really sedate, scott walker-y pop with tastey tones and advanced songwriting. placid. why did nobody never send me the memo about swervedriver? that's franklin's old group, too. recommendations?

bruce springsteen 'silver palomino'. i must confess that i have no idea how the Boss got from being a guy who reads Steinbeck to being a guy who alternates between writing b-grade Nelson Algren genre scenes and Horse Songs like this. but it's so, so idiosyncratic - the Jersey Guy dreams of Horses! - that i'm ready for it. his version of "the street" was always a little contrived, too. but since when was this thing we do ever about verisimilitude?

the walkmen 'lost in boston'. soon i will have more to say about the walkmen's new album, which is really cool....but this joint is a deep cut from 100 miles off, which is one of the only rock records of the 2000s that i really love. as i was saying to my friend with the new, cool blog
the other day...the walkmen are my dream hybrid of the faces and fugazi. 100 miles off is the closest we'll ever get to having guy picciotto front the highway 61 band.

beauty pill 'the cigarette girl from the future'. wow. the guys from infamously-obscure dischord geniuses smartwentcrazy have emerged in this format, like a 'pop'(/'Pop'?) june of '44. this record is, of course, 7 years old by now.... where have i been?

drive like jehu 'good luck in jail'. this joint is from the self-titled, a colossal part of the guitar canon that rules all over the polvos, pitchblende's et. al. if you like the guitar playing on "Down by the River" or "Death Valley 69" than you have to love this, even tho it's also more punk rock than either.

make believe '(i can't understand) satisfaction.' one of two recent releases from tim kinsella, make believe's going to the bone church is, among other things, home to the most dominant guitar performance of 2008, that of sam zurich. (i can't understand) satisfaction is both a godard-y, situationist-y derive of the stones' legendarily sexual single, and the platform upon which zurich and the really, very downbeat-y rhythym section can really wreak havoc. this music is like a slow, intermittent tornado.

the crownhate ruin 'lesson in thread'. this is righteous terrain - the bass-driven post-hoover outfit considered by many to be the highwater mark of their family tree. mixed metaphors do no justice to this weird, smart, angular power trio. find out about it at hardcore for nerds.

curtis mayfield 'freddie's dead'. and now let's get a little deeper inside the pocket. vamp city, drum land.


garden variety 'harbored'. a punishing, grating, chugging, math-y battery from an overlooked power trio who made one amazing pop/core record a la jawbreaker, and then one very mathy, ploddy art record. guess which this comes from? check out builtonaweakspot's profile of 'em, and help me find whatever 7"s of there's're out there.

shipping news 'untitled with drums'. it's weird when they're balladeers. this song is a sleepless, overcaffeinated, exhausted wooden roller coaster.

wayne shorter 'ana maria'. getting weird with you again: this is from wayne's collaboration with milton nascimento, entitled 'native dancer'.

joan of arc '9/11 2'. the other side of tim kinsella circa 2007-2008 - a much-maligned track from this new, seemingly 'confessional' joan of arc release. and personally, yes, i think the song lives up to the promise of the title. i think 9/11'll be a full-functioning metaphor for loverly relationships by 2009, if it isn't already.