White/Light @ MCA=Totally Sick

Everywhere that I work is cooler than everywhere that you work.  Don't believe me?
Do you wanna see John McEntire, Steve Shelley or Lucky Dragons play at the MCA?  Of course you do. I could not be more chuffed.

A Quick Top Ten of 2009

    Was 2009 an off year for music? Well, I have to admit that I struggled a little bit to actually fill all ten slots without dipping into less than stellar material. You could say there was a stagnation, or a dry spell for much of the year. But, you could just as easily point to what are, for me, the big three: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Veckatimest, and Bitte Orca. Say what you will about the rest of this year's output, these albums are massive leaps forward. Merriweather may not be the single best album AC has put out, but it solidifies them as masters. Veckatimest is long and often spare, but lush and heartbreaking. And Bitte Orca is a nonstop revelation of joy.
    There's also a lot of records I haven't given an honest chance. I would love to write brilliant take downs of say, XX or Fever Ray, but I felt more ambivalence than anything. Even my least favorite band this year, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart weren't even much to hate. And there are just as many albums I thought were good or even great, but haven't yet fell in love with, like The Woods' Songs of Shame, Doom's Born Like This, Atlas Sound's Logos, No Age's Losing Feeling, Neon Indians Psychic Chasm, and of course number eleven on my list, Embryonic. And like any good year, I spent some time getting into older shit, like Dilla's Donuts, FlyLo's Los Angeles, T-Rex's The Slider, Extra Golden, Station to Station.  But for the hell of it, here we go, my top 10 favorites of 2009:


Diamond District-In The Ruff
No one I've actually met knows anything about this album, which is quite sad. With all the questions of Hip Hop's life or death this year, there were certainly some major milestones including Raekwon's return, Doom's return, Dilla's eternal presence over both hip hop and avant music, online mixtapes looking to eclipse albums in importance, Kanye Going robo-soul, Jay trying to kill robo-soul on one song while cashing in on it in others on the same album. But my favorite hip hop album I've heard this year seems blithely removed from the fray. Sure, there's Dilla's influence, Oddisee mixing shimmering hazed beauty with 90's boom-bap, and it is kinda like a mixtape, really more just a standard album released for free. Otherwise, this albums is in a world of it's own. It's a deft examination of the unshocking and unglamorous world we spend most of our time in. There's Bush era paranoia and distress mixed with Obama era optimism and anxiety, elegant but unshowy MC'ing over some fantastic beats, and a deep love for the genre. It may just be my rockist tendencies, but I couldn't help but fall hard for this one.

Wavves-Wavvves
You have to go back before this summer, before Nathan William's 'meltdown,' before the bloodshed to understand why this sounded so exciting when it came out. Better than the lofi-for-lofi-sake artists and their summery nostalgia, this album actually nails the bitter nihilism of idle youth. It sounds like something taking form, which is to say, not perfect. It's frequently antisocial and solipsistic, doesn't offer much in the way of good vibes. As bizarre as his trajectory has been this year, Nathan Williams has remained the real snot nosed nothing-to-lose punk this year. And despite all the setbacks, he's now in better position than ever touring with a tight backing band than can actually do his work the fierce live performance it deserves. I still have high hopes for this guy.

The Clientele-Bonfires on the Heath
I know I'm getting old and boring, but these gents are masters.

Tortoise-Beacons of Ancestorship
You know what can be a bummer? Having an album you love by one of your favorite hometown artists get a total pass of a review. You know what's the best revenge? Having said album sell all of its copies in one week. The dumbass who said this album is hermetically sealed is mistaking the bands demeanor for it's musical output. Aside from the one obligatory Doug McCombs helmed Ennio Morricone tribute, the album is the band's most focused and unrelenting release, and one that is quite aware of what's going on right now. Let's talk about those synth sounds, how unlike the icy and alienating synth wash presets everyone else's keyboards are stuck on this year, these are slice your brain open, pound you into submission, loud as fuck. And the beats. Herndon and McEntire push pull and stretch them, internalizing the chopped up sampler style into live playing and then, you know, fucking with them some more. So yeah, what I'm saying is, unless your not really into music, you probably don't want to miss this one.

Destroyer-Bay of Pigs EP
I wasn't sure I liked this when I first heard it. I wondered if Dan had really gone off the deep end this time, and whether or not I was really down with that. But it won me over in the end, and it may be one of my favorite things he's ever done. There's something free and easy in his delivery here, like he's actually having a good time out there at the pier or at the park. And goddamn if 10 minutes of Ambient Disco didn't just make me want even more out of him.

Kurt Vile-Childish Prodigy
Really, this pick stands in for several records the man has released in the last several months. From Constant Hitmaker's bedroom pop, to The Hunchback EP and it's swampy bombast, to this stellar muscular classic. I could easily pick apart his mix of am rock and Neil Young worship if the man wasn't so clever, so charming, and so dedicated to what he does. Seeing him live was a highlight of my year.

The Clams-Mindbanging
I'm not just being nice to my friends.  This isn't even technically a 2009 release, I don't care.  The Clams dominate.

Grizzly Bear-Veckatimest
Beautiful.

Animal Collective-Merriweather Post Pavillion
Beautiful and you can dance to it. I actually haven't listened to this as much as I thought I would, because it feels so much like a special event. When it came out last winter, I felt essential, like I needed this album to exist to get through to May, and I may have just overplayed it. I may be returning to it for sanity sake pretty soon here. We can quibble where this album ranks in their discography, but choosing one of their albums over another other would be pretty pointless. But this year, there's only one other album that I've let slip under my skin as much as this one.

The Dirty Projectors-Bitte Orca
Oh my fucking god. It's over. When that guitar comes down on "Another Chamber" and shit hits the fan and every sound goes into spasmodic fits, it's one of those pure essential musical moments for me. This is where I check out from objective debate, or even from subjective analysis. The feeling this album gives me is something I wish I could telepathically transmit to everyone I know. I don't care if there's basically a Nico cover song on it, I don't care if the last track is a buzzkill ending. More albums should be made at this level of creativity and musicianship, more albums should work as hard and risk failing and turn out sounding as bat shit insane as this one. Fuck the haters, I believe in this band.

All in all, not the worst year for music. Despite having a kind of eneven year, I still feel like we're living in the middle of a solid period for music making. That may not feel as exciting as being at the beginning of a new era, but it's not as depressing as feeling your at the logical end of something. And as far as the aughties, it may not have been the best decade, but it was nothing of not interesting.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Music As Cultural Artifact vs Music As the Thing Itself

    I had the pleasure of getting my hands on the latest (or almost the latest) copy of WIRE.  This is always a good thing.  I remember tooling around high school in Borders or B&N with some friends (where else are precocious and culturally hungry young people in South Bend s'posed to go?) and browsing through music mags trying to absorb as much news and information as possible.  I tried to get a mental snapshot of the music world at the time, who were the big names in England, up and comers in New York, cool labels, cool festivals, cool hitherto unknown albums from the past and present.  Copies of WIRE always loomed conspicuously, and I would poke my nose into for 30 seconds before lifting my head up totally confused.  There was always an interview with someone I'd heard of, but most of it covered artists and genres I'd never even tangentially heard of.  It was as if there was no clear entry point for me, a young man from the plains who just wanted to stay culturally relevant.  Fast forward three years, I'm working at Borders on the north side during my Junior year.  I work in the cafe which is gracefully located all of fifteen feet from the magazine racks.  I could take home the unsold copies, their covers ripped off but so what, and again stay as current as anyone I knew.  I ventured into reading WIRE as a conscious challenge to my laziness.  And besides, I was already wading into an interest in experimental compositions, sound art, improv and noise.  Every once in a while, I'd even read the damn thing cover to cover, reading in depth interviews with artists I'd never heard of.  It's mostly incredibly intelligent writing on intelligent and serious artists. 
    While reading the most recent copy, I felt like I could finally tell what really set the magazine apart, that WIRE considers music as a thing unto itself.  Not that each work is hermetically sealed, every piece they review was taken within the context of the history and current climate of music, and more broadly, within the context of the Art.  It's that in WIRE, music and sound art are always judged  by the appropriate standards, that is primarily against the goals of the work itself.  When praising say, Disintegration Loops by William Bansky, I can't imagine the review would pull an aside and say, "Well, it's not party music."  Because of course it's fucking not.  What an inane thing to say about a massive experimental loop based work about the impermanence of material record and in intractable nature of time.  Their reveiws don't trade heavily in irony.  I imagine that if they set out to review a dense and difficult work, that most writers there would take it as their duty to give that piece their utmost attention and thorough examination before weighing in on its merits. 
    This is not how music criticism works in my world.  For me, music criticism exists along an continuum between two schools of though: consumer reviews vs criticism as discrete artistic exercise.  Most of the magazines that I used to compile my cultural snapshots featured reviews that were poorly masked consumer guides.  This is the British school of music rags: they exist to give their readers a who's who, what's hot-or-not guide to the mercurial youth culture zeitgeist.  On the other side was criticism in the vein of early Rolling Stone, Creem, and in some ways early Pitchfork.  Long form reviews that were frequently entertaining and thought provoking reads, that may only tangentially relate to the piece of music or artist at hand.  Frequently, reviewing an album is just a springboard for broader cultural critique, if not just a technical exercise of the author's talents as a writer.  This is very obviously the school of thought that has influenced me most.  Not only has it influenced the way I talk and write about music, but also how I listen to music, find music, weigh the importance of music in my life, even at times affecting my worldview.  And so here's a review in WIRE, stoically, carefully examining a piece of music, making insights, providing useful comparisons, and never being lazy enough to confuse personal anecdote with profound insight. 
    Now, let's be clear.  WIRE is not for everyone, and it is at times, a little dry, maybe almost boring, or actually just boring.  It's an expensive and content filled missive for people who take music seriously and who are probably very type B and maybe even a little cantankerous.  That is, WIRE is written for Jim O'Rourke, and as much as I like Jimmy O, I'm not sure I'd want to grab a beer with him.  But I have to wonder, are they right?  Am I wrong?  Not wrong because I actually do love Kid A even if it is derivative, or that I do care (begrudgingly) about Brooklyn's finest poor little rich boys, [fill in your guess here].  I wonder if the way I talk about music, the shifting standards by which I try to judge everything, are just completely off target.  Under further examination, is it that all my pretensions of intellect, taste, and cultural fluency, I'm just talking up my own ass most of the time?  Aren't most of us?
    This feeling is compounded by the culture shock I've experienced while working at Thrill Jockey.  If your not familiar with the label, TJ trades in mostly serious, often unflashy, experimental artists such as Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, High Places, and Pit er Pat, music WIRE would write about.  Although I love Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, I can't say that Thrill Jockey's catalog is really up my alley.  It's growing on me for sure, but the looming lack of  CULTURAL RELEVANCE (imagine this phrase hangs in big block letters like a judgmental specter over everything I say or do) just puts a little sour note on my enjoyment.  Two examples come to mind.  First was Pitchfork's mild review of Tortoises new album, Beacons of Ancestorship, an amazing album by any metric and a huge step for the band.  The review admitted that the album was solid, exciting, made my masterful musicians.  But the album lost points for being too "hermetically sealed" which in this instance I'm almost certain means "not referencing or reacting to or hanging out with any hot new bands."  Then just the other night the Sea and Cake came on on someone's stereo, and I let out one of those auto-exhalations like "I looove this band" to a small chorus of eye rolls.  As if I'd professed a love for Garden State in a film studies program.  I know that these bands aren't for everyone, but I gotta wonder how much these two reactions have to do with those floating block letters that seem to hang over everything if you let them.
    Obvs, this is touching on a larger topic, and I'd appreciate the irony of writing a free form rumination on identity and personal taste in what started as praise for simple and direct music criticism.  Maybe later.  For now I'm happy to read a copy of WIRE, even if it's a little stodgy.  It's like reading the New Yorker after only having read the Red Eye for weeks straight.  It may not be as fun or frustrating, but it restores your faith in the world.

The Liars+No Age=Ear Ringing Bliss

Wow. Some shows are jaw-dropping, eye-watering, ear bleeding good. This is one of those shows. First, Aleks and the Drummer was a total surprise, I'm glad to have bands this good in Chicago. I hope to see them again soon.
No Age ripped through their set and I was again blown away that just two people could put on such a great show. I had very high expectations for them, and they blew me away. From the first song, I just lost my shit like I was fifteen at my friends basement show.
And the Liars are the Liars, back injuries or not. They were almost as unstoppable as their performance at pitchfork fest two years ago. By far one of the best shows I've ever seen.

While waiting at the Metro I struck up a conversation with two new friends about the Chicago music scene, and the experience we've had at shows in the city. I'd been to the Metro at least a dozen times since moving here for school. It's a fantastic venue with a long impressive history and probably the best sound for a venue its size.
However, the staff is notoriously awful and even as a 21 year old, they never fail to make me feel like criminals. And at this show, a Tuesday night where everyone there had slushed through sleet and hail to get there, I don't think they were going to have a problem with any of us.

We all agreed that crowds there have a tendency to be stiff and inanimate. Admittedly, I've stood there with my arms crossed when I first moved to the city and thought that was the appropriate thing to do. But when a band like No Age plays an incredible set, there doesn't seem anything else to do but freak out and enjoy. C'mon kids, be hospitable. Show them Chicago isn't full of boring fucktards and aspiring hipster statues.

Also, Randy was showing some love for Corey Rusk and Touch and Go, and the crowd didn't seem to know what he was talking about. Which is pretty ridiculous considering this is CHICAGO and T&G isn't some obscure fetish label. It'd be like playing a show in Olympia and asking about Kill Rock Stars or Bikini Kill and getting blank stares. This happened when Broken Social Scene played the Metro and Kevin was talking about Tortoise and Shellac to no response. He replied "What, you people don't buy records?"

Well for those of us that do, thank you for the props. We're proud of our bands as well. +2 to Aleks and the Drummer for holding there own in an excellent bill.