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November 18, 2009

Quarterly Report: Third Quarter of 2009 Podcast

Album of the Quarter : A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Ashes Grammar
Runners up: Memory Tapes - Seek Magic, Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem

I am well aware that this podcast is a good month and a half removed from the end of 2009's third quarter, and that we are balls deep in the year's capping three-month span. But, perhaps the extra reflection has further winnowed the included tracks down from the fickle week to week whims of the blogosphere? Let's just pretend that that's true.

It's sort of an odd, plucky mix, shorter on the raw number of contributing tracks than usual, and maybe a bit counter-intuitive in their selection. But it feels right. I'll note that I grappled with including something from Girls' debut, but all the songs just seemed so obviously worse than "Hellhole Ratrace" and I couldn't pick a stand-out from the runners up. So, I'm stuck just acknowledging their existence with a sentence here. I'm sure they won't lose much sleep over it.

So listen, remember the heady days of late summer 09, and I'll try to get Q4 under the tree just in time, promise.

"Merry Swankster Third Quarter Podcast 2009"

Tracklisting :

01: Mount Eerie - "Between Two Mysteries" (from Wind's Poem)

Considering the shadow it cast over the decade's pop culture, you'd think some aging 90s baby would have written the definitive Twin Peaks ode by now, but Phil Elvrum's Mount Eerie track feels definitive, if tardy. Spooky and understated, like the show's opening credits, rather than it's more grotesque and hilarious mood swings, though I might just be saying that due to the tasteful lifting of Angelo Badalamenti's synth swells.

02: Thom Yorke - "Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses" (single)

I haven't listened to In Rainbows since the month it came out, I downright hated The Eraser, and generally feel like my Radiohead super fandom won't make it out of this decade alive (Don't get me started on that "These Are My Twisted Words" track). So, why am I repping a supremely indulgent single from ol' Lazy Eye? Because it's as manically, darkly adventurous as anything he's done in at least five years. Rebooting and picking up where "Myxomatosis" left off? Yes, please!

03: HEALTH - "Die Slow" (from Get Color)

They grind and smash much better than they float and coo, for sure, but this one approaches balance. The vocals are total mush, but at least they occupy the right spaces. Full album review here.

04: Neon Indian - "6669 (I Don't Know if You Know)" (from Psychic Chasms)

I can see how this band, and the so-called "glo-fi" movement they are lumped in with, can be infuriating to folks. It's basically an emotionally stunted wash of easy nostalgia, I'll admit. That said, sometimes these smears can be so basic as to become archetypal. This band, out of all of them, have a knack for non-cliched universality. "I don't know if you know/ I don't know if you know/ it didn't show..." is simultaneously vague and specific enough to work for me, anyhow.

05: YACHT - "Psychic City" (from See Mystery Lights)

The best pure pop song Jona Bechtolt has been associated with since his Blow days, and a huge improvement from the tape-hiss plagued K Records obscurity his composition reworks. An inspired salvage job, really. The twee lyrics are better situated when their cleverness Tigger-bouncing on this electro groove. Full album review here.

06: Hercules and Love Affair - "I Can't Wait" (from Sidetracked)

The only new track from a recent DJ compilation sees New York's most authentic disco outfit moving even deeper into the early-90s club sound they've occasionally flirted with in the past. It's a deep submerging, not an attempt to crossover. Sounds pretty cool. I suppose a token line about the song title and the as-of-yet unknown street date for a new Hercules and Love Affair LP is appropriate here, so feel free to make one to yourselves.

07: Cold Cave - "Life Magazine" (from Love Comes Close)

For all the flack this band gets for being so comically dark and goth (they are both, don't get me wrong) it's interesting to note that the pop vocal performance they get from Caralee McElroy in this awesome track is much, much sunnier than anything she EVER did while a part of Xiu Xiu. .

These kids might never take a grand aesthetic leap, but this ode to a crumbling relationship (I think?) features all of the things they've always done well. Wobbly sloganeering and wobblier organ tones, mainly. Full album review here.

10: Jay Reatard - "It Ain't Gonna Save Me" (from Watch Me Fall)

Shades of development here from Jay Reatard, though as prolific as he is, you can hardly expect a much air between releases. Pulling back from full on psychosis to acoustic, live-wire paranoia as the track runs down is the trick of an old pro, though. And he's still an awfully young punk.

11: Karen O & the Kids - "Capsize" (from Where the Wild Things Are OST)

If anything, Karen O's soundtrack for Spike Jonze's (quite good) Where the Wild Things Are film is more precious in context, scoring mopey monsters and sniffling kids. Removed from the flick, it's an interesting, but slight left turn for her. More overtly psychedelic than the glittery It's Blitz!, though still managing to rock out more than you might suspect. The Love Is All inspired "All is Love" is maybe a little bit too cuddly, still, but "Capsize" has a reckless, energetic strut. And those unchained guitar spikes have to be Nick Zinner's.

12: Fiery Furnaces - "Lost at Sea" (from I'm Going Away)

So, I guess a return to straight-ahead songwriting wasn't really what I wanted from FiFu after all. I'd grown accustomed to those self-sabotaging twists and turns. That said, there isn't a single release from the band that doesn't have one ballad of deadpan heartbreak from Eleanor Friedberger that makes me mist up, while staring out the nearest available window. This is that one.

13: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Higher Than the Stars" (from Higher Than the Stars EP)

There hasn't been a better classical indie-pop moment in this band's career than the crisp fall night sigh Kip Berman uses to sing, "in the back of her mother's car, in the back of her mother's car..." Sharp sweater music, par excellence.

14: Memory Tapes - "Plain Material" (from Seek Magic)

I don't even like the Flaming Lips, but even I have to admit that this strummy stunner would be a great Lips song. It's more than that, too. It's got those very of-the-moment joyous shout samples at its chorus, and also some sleek, contained techno loops underpinning the indie rock shell. The thumping, dancey tracks from Seek Magic are great for a party mix, but this works whenever. Full album review here.

15: A Sunny Day in Glasgow - "Close Chorus" (from Ashes Grammar)

If I didn't know for a fact that this track was recorded as the last gasp of an Atlantic hurricane pelted A Sunny Day in Glasgow's recording space, I'd like to think my attentive ear could have picked up the crackling pitter-pat around this gorgeous song's edges. But there's so much else to be intoxicated by, that it's easy to lose sight of any single detail. When the song strips down to that swoony girl chorus, I get pretty weak in the knees. And, I know that MBV references in song reviews are almost as verboten as Hitler comparisons in political discourse, but the end of this song really does have a remarkable bit of K. Shields guitar magic. Full album review here.

16: Destroyer - "Bay of Pigs" (from Bay of Pigs EP)

OK, if I'm gonna wrap up this podcast with a 13 + minute "ambient-disco" number by Dan Bejar, I should probably apologize for calling Thom Yorke indulgent a while back. I like this better than Thom's, though. Even the blank, still passages sound lush and expectant. The kinetic parts enough to long for him to incorporate a more upbeat electronic palette in his more economical album tracks. And really, if you're going to go big and wonky and bloated, you can't have a better opening line than, "Listen, I've been drinking" can you?

Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 18, 2009 04:59 PM

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