B - Pinback - Offcell - EP

B!!!! I made it to B! That's right haters, doubters, mimes and Rance, I made it to the letter B and it only took me a year and a half. Ugh.

Well, at least I'm not in the A's anymore.

Anyway, gotta love Rob Crowe's "white guy attempting to deliver a dancehall rant" on this puppy. If it weren't for that odd machine noise intro, this would be one of my favorite Pinback songs actually.

I've always assumed the title was a reference to the key the song was played in, but with these guys you just never know and my ear isn't good enough to tell you for a fact that this song is actually in B. Whatever, it definitely displays Pinback's rockier side, and for me that's their stronger side.

An Audience of One - The Swords Project - Entertainment Is Over, If You Want It - 2003

We had the cab drop us off at the first stop on my list for "Southie", a place called The Blackthorn Bar only to find that it was pretty close to dead. So we walked a short distance over to another bar called The Junction which had some life to it.

As an Irish-American, I had always had a sort of morbid curiosity about South Boston. To me, the Southie's are an embarrassing cousin...with their "Yo, brah we're going out on a pissa and getting wicked retarded" lingo and attitude, they seem to have inherited absolutely none of James Joyce's DNA and an over abundance of Colin Ferrel's (only with even less class). To me, this was a bit like visiting my cousins who live in a trailer park (Which I also have)...but the experience was by and large not what I expected.

The problem you see, is that Boston is such a college town. Despite it's hallowed place in American History, it's supposed rivalry with NYC and it's abundance of my peoples, Boston primarily serves as the location of Harvard, MIT, BU, Northeastern, and BC and as such, it's bars are designed to appeal to college kids. Cheap pitchers and beer pong tables are the order of the day, waitresses in jean skirts and frizzy hair are the norm. So, I went in expecting little Dublin, and instead was treated to a Northern version of Chapel Hill.

We pulled a waitress over in The Junction to help get the lay of the land, but then were stuck with her for the night as she thought I was hitting on her. So, we put down our beers and made our way to the next location, a bar with the rather tony name of "The Playwright" only to find it largely the same vibe. It was quickly apparent that we were going to be in for an evening of college style bars, and while slightly more adult, The Farragut House was only a slight improvement.

After that, we took a walk down by the water to work off some of the beer wait. The last stop on the list was a place called Murphy's Law, which I had been told was a must check out. We approached the bar at 10 minutes till 1 and heard the roar of a crowd. A trio of people, 2 women and a man walked a few yards behind us and had been behind us for several blocks. As we neared the door, the bouncer stuck his head out and told us the bar was closed...only to allow the 3 behind us right in. The Singhs were convinced this was racism, which might be true, but I was more on the side of it being about getting more women in. Either way, our night in Southie was done...with very little Irish culture absorbed and very little to write home about.

The Swords Project is currently a band called simply Swords. I heard their second album (First with that name) a few years back and had a brief infatuation with it, and decided to check out the first album. Much like their moniker, their songs used to be much longer (This one clocks in at over 10 minutes), and while I still enjoy the sounds they produce, I must say I drastically prefer the shorter more refined songs on the Swords album. Even with their whiny Indie-boy voice singer given a more prominent role, the shorter songs have a stronger since of melody and use the atmospherics to greater effect.

The Athelete - Erland Oye - Unrest - 2003

The thing is, I had considered fighting Aaron before...but there's just no winning a fight with a tiny dude. You beat the crap out of him, and you look like a bully...he beats the crap out of you, and you look like a pansy. So my strategy was essientially to avoid contact with him.

This is why his hit and run while I was on a date was particularly annoying...but once he'd thrown the punch, I knew he was going to have to engage. The punch hadn't particularly hurt so much as jarred me, but it had stalled me long enough that every girl in school had surrounded "poor little Aaron" and gotten him as far from me as possible.

So a couple of interesting things happened in the aftermath. The punch hadn't really done much damage to me. Catching me right on the top of the cheek bone (Remember he jumped up to punch me and threw the punch downwards), I had little more than a little red dot on my cheek to show for the excitement. Aaron on the other hand had broken his first two fingers, his wrist and his arm to the elbow.

This had all happened on a Friday night.

Monday, for reasons that were honestly completely unrelated to the incident, I had foolishly decided to play hooky on the Monday afterwards. Not yet familiar with the intricacies of the high school rumor mill, I was shocked to discover that the word on the street was that he had shattered my eye socket and walked around the school all day on Monday, at long last the bad ass that he wished he could be. Needless to say, he was not happy to see me back and relatively unscathed on Tuesday.

We shared a class, 6th Period Spanish. The teacher, in what I am 100% certain was an effort to look up more plaid skirts of my female classmates, had arranged the desks in the class into two banks of three rows that faced each other and as luck would have it, he sat directly across the aisle from me. So I had to look at him all day. And in his misguided attempt to make himself seem tougher would spend the bulk of spanish class bashing himself in the skull with the cast on his arm...which he would follow up with a "manly" grunt and "fierce" eyes.

It must be really hard to be a short guy...fortunately I wouldn't know.

Kings of Convenience's Quiet is the New Loud is one of my all time favorite hangover albums. Having said that, I don't know that I ever need to have another album by the Norwegian folkies. There is only so much that sound can do. One of the members of Kings, Erland Oye attracted my interest when I heard his stuff was more electronica based...however it is still just as soft and delicate. The skill with melody is still there, but the acoustic guitars have simply been replaced by the bleeps and bloops of Scandanavian Electro-pop. It's nice enough, but a bit of a snooze fest.

As I Rise - The Decemberist - Her Majesty The Decemberists - 2003

6:45 AM came very early that Saturday in Berlin. I groggily answered the wake up call and then threw myself in the shower. Didn't want to drink coffee as I hoped to catch at least a little bit of sleep on the plane. I knew that if I didn't get at least a little bit more, I was going to be useless for the evening in London.

We got ourselves to the airport without too much incident, though both of us felt awful. Our flight was via EasyJet.

If you aren't familiar with EasyJet, it is a low cost ZERO frills airline that flies to locations within Europe for ridiculously low prices (I think I paid 40 Euros for this flight). The downside, as I mentioned, is the zero frills part. You pay for your baggage, you don't get an assigned seat or beverage service. It didn't matter to me, I just wanted to sleep.

We were, of course, to the airport way too early and had to sit and wait for the flight to board. I was afraid to let myself sleep as I was certain I'd sleep right through boarding. When I finally got to a seat on the plane, I put my hood up and was out like a light...not waking up till I was on the ground in England.

"London" Luton airport is only in London by the most generous of definitions. It's about 45 minutes north east of the city and requires a bus ride to get into town. As such I decided to take care of some business at the airport (TMI, I know, but it becomes relevant). So, I'm in the bathroom and I can tell that there are a bunch of British Teenagers in the bathroom with me. All of the sudden, and hand darts underneath my stall and tries to snatch the strap of my shoulder bag. The bag moved quick, but fortunately I was quicker and grabbed the strap and yanked back. I had the mild thrill of hearing my would be bag snatcher smack his body against the stall. And that was the last I heard of that.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and was fortunately feeling a bit more stable than I had been in Germany. We got on the bus and finally headed into the city to meet up with Rance, but our trip would still not be that easy. As I mentioned it was about 45 mintues outside the city, and the trip ended up taking closer to an hour and a half because the door of the bus would not stay closed. Every 5 minutes or so, the driver would pull over to the shoulder to try to fix the problem only for the door to open up again a few minutes into driving. Eventually he just gave up and drove like that.

After missing our stop and taking the underground back, we finally arrived at the hotel ready for the next portion of our adventure to begin. Rance was sitting in the lobby working on his laptop, and our room was ready in a few minutes.

When people think of The Decemberists, they probably think of this album. The ridiculous period pieces, the homoerotic subtexts, the wry commentary in obsolete dialouge, the stories told from the point of view of antiquated genre characters were all solidified on this album rather than their somewhat more restrained debut, or their more ambitious later albums. Having said that, this is probably the least Decemberist-esque song on the album. A simple porch-swing anthem carries the day all the way through with nary a Harlequin nor Brick-bat to be seen.

Art Star - The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs - Mini Album - 2003

So I have now had two seperate people tell me that my color scheme made their heads hurt, so in lieu of driving away loyal readership, I've updated the look of the olde blog here. Tried to give it a somewhat "iPod-y" look. Hope this one suits people better.

Once Anand and I emerged from the park we realized that we had gone several hours in Berlin without a beer and this needed to be corrected. We resolved to step into the first bar we saw. We walked the way towards Charlottenburg palace, taking in the sites of the west side. The differences were pretty obvious.

Firstly the archetecture was more varied, more western looking, as oppossed to the boxy buildings of the previously soviet east side. Beyond that it was clear that this side was more affluent and family oriented, but also a bit less friendly (though still nowhere near as grouchy as my beloved NYC). As promised, we went into the first bar we found.

Old man bars are the same the world over. They have the same basic layout, the narrow bar with an open back room. They always have dart boards and whatever form of cheap electronic gambling is legal in that area (in Berlin it was an actual slot machine). There are always a couple of women, one a good natured wife with a ridiculously outdated hair style, the other a raging alcoholic who can barely lift her head off the table. The bar tender will always be gruff but polite, irritated by intruders into his closed world, but not enough to turn away business. The German variant had the bar tender giving us an exceptionally slow pour, actually taking some pride in the beer he served. The alcoholic woman clung to the wall, face pressed against like Spiderman to make her way to the bathroom. Another older gentlemen (at least 60's) incongruously bobbed his head to "Sexyback" (The music is always American).

We finished our beer and our shot uneventfully, enjoying some time off of our feet after the 6-7 mile walk. This clearly was not the bar to make conversation at.

Karen O has three basic singing modes, her Cobain-like scream, her "Maps" hipster croon, and her Pat Benetar snear...she exercises all three on this song while succesfully lampooning the Williamsburg art scene that she so clearly comes from. Biting the hand that feeds you is the best way to make in an inroad with that crowd. They love to be reminded that they are viscious shallow assholes, cause at least those people are cool. Right?

Arms Aloft - Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros - Streetcore - 2003

Wow, you blink your eyes and all of the sudden it's two weeks later and you haven't touched your already ridiculously ambitious blog...sigh. It's busy times here in my life. Work is insane, the world is falling apart, and I have a bitch of a chest cold (my second of the winter)...and I leave for a weeklong vacation in 6 short days.

Though I must say nothing gets you jazzed up for a trip to drive around England and Scotland quite like Joe Strummer singing about driving around England and Scotland. I shall add it to the Driving In England playlist, post haste.

Approaching Lightspeed - Wolfsheim - Casting Shadows - 2003

So I was riding the elevator in my office downstairs to buy a soft drink, when it stopped on the third floor to pick up a passenger. To the best of my knowledge this was the first time I'd seen the 3rd floor of my building, and I noted with some curiosity that it was an empty floor, completely gutted.

This reminded me of something that I hadn't thought of in a good while. Back when I worked for my crazy dotcom in the financial district in the early part of this decade, there was a similarly gutted and vacant floor in our building that the young men of the company adopted as "the clubhouse".

Due to the fact that we were all over worked and underpaid (and all the bars in the financial district are either ungodly expensive or meant for fire fighters and construction workers) we'd go down to the local delis and pick up six packs (which were equally inflated - $11 for a 6 of Bud, $14 for imports) and go hang out on this abandoned floor, drink and smoke and play baseball with a broken mop handle and the company's branded stressballs that we had in droves. It was nice to have a cheap hang out, in a city where space is at a premium and watchful eyes are everywhere.

I'm certainly guilty of romanticizing this period of my life on a basically daily basis, but tell me that it doesn't sound appealing. An empty floor of a an office building, a bunch of guys, a few six packs, and a game...what more could a man ask for at the end of a hard day of work?

Anyway, this is more German electropop. Not bad and a little more energetic than their previous entry.

Apology Song - The Decemberists - 5 Songs EP - 2003

And speaking of obnoxiously literate people...I generally find the 5 Songs EP (on which this is the 6th song) to be the least annoying of The Decemberists' albums, but this is the most annoying song on it...though there are some moments of great comedy on it. Essientially, the apology in question is regarding a bicycle that the narrator was asked to watch while it's owner was in England. While in his care the bicycle was stolen.

The humor comes mostly (well other than the subject as a whole) from Meloy's attempt to imagine the fate of the bicycle ("I bet it's at the bottom of some French town's pond, rudely abused as some Hesher's joyride")...but the problem with this, along with most funny songs is, once the humor has worn off...you are left with a goofy obnoxious song.

Annie - Elefant - Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid - 2003

So, I got a weird fever thing last week...no idea what it was or what it was from. No cough or respitory trouble, no, uh, "tummy trouble"...just a feeling that I was alternating between being absolutely freezing to death, and then 1/2 an hour later I'd be sweating so bad I thought I'd need to change my shirt. I had no energy at all, felt like my brain was in a fog, and I was treading through oatmeal. I went immediately home after work on Friday (surely a sign that something was wrong, if ever there was one) sat under 13 blankets, ate wonton soup, and watched Excalibur (which I got at Duane Reade for $4.99 that day). It felt like I was 10...and not in a good way.

Elefant is always going to sound like the skinniest hipster in the room circa 2003. You can almost hear the white jeans rubbing together as they play. But it isn't without it's charms.

Animals and Insects - The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart - 2003

I've only ever been to Montreal in August, but I can only imagine that this song is pretty good indicator of what the city must be like in the late fall/winter. There's just something about it that seems to evoke a day in which the sun sets at 3 in the afternoon and won't be back till 10 the next morning.

I don't know, it's been kind of a moody week for me in general...with all sorts of fun adult life stuff dropped into my lap. It would be really easy to sink into this mood, and with the sun setting earlier every day...SADD is only a month or so away. Ugghhhh.

Angel, Won't You Call Me - The Decemberists - 5 Songs EP - 2003

So, I have a relatively simple equation that goes into play to judge how much I like/dislike a Decemberists song. The equation looks something like this:

(Quirky Schtick - Actually Clever Lyrics) * Gay (literally) Subtext/Catchy Melody. You take the result of that and multiply by the square root of how much Colin Meloy's voice annoys you. If the result is relatively low, then you can probably stand the song.

I tend to like the Five Songs EP because it occurs so early in the bands career...before they were completely sure they could get away with the schtick. Meloy keeps it to a minimum. It really only pops out on My Mother Was A Chinese Trapeeze Artist and The Apology Song. The Gay subtext is non-existant, and the clever lyrics/catchy melody quotient is pretty high.

This certainly isn't my favorite song on the album, but it's not bad either.

Also, if you have the time, I've added a "Followers" link and a "Subscribe to my blog" link to the page. Since I have no idea if anyone actually reads this, feel free to let me know you're there.

And I - Wolfsheim - Casting Shadows - 2003

So I had this weird dream last night where a guy I used to work with back at Moving.com was having a ninja star throwing demonstration at a party and accidentally threw one too close to me slicing open my stomach. Upon examination I realized that the wound was quite severe...but I didn't want to upset my co-worker so I tried to hide the damage and tough it out until my friend Shani could inspect the wound. Shani, in reality, works in advertising, but in my dream she had medical experience.

I'm sure this all means I'm fucked up in immeasurable ways, but you didn't need to hear about my dreams to put that together.

German synth pop with a good size dollop of melencholy to keep it from being too robotic. Managable if a tad wussy.

Am I Wry, No? - Mew - Frengers (Not Quite Friends, Not Quite Strangers) - 2003

I realize that I won't be the first person to state this, but there is simply no way to convey with words how awesome this song is.

As usual when discussing awesomeness I will resort to bullet points
* The drumming. Apparently what they did was take their drummer into a room, pumped him full of PCP and then told him that the snare drum knocked up his sister and didn't call her back. The word ferocious would not do justice to the drumming on this song.
* Second only to the drumming in aggressiveness is the staccato, stabbing, crisply distorted rhythm guitar. I once heard a mix of this song that had neither the drumming nor the guitar...what was left was a maudlin, dragging ballad. But include these two crucial pieces and have a visceral, double-headed attack on your ears.
* The soaring arena rock vocals would be too effeminate in any other context, but surrounded by the perfect instrumentation these Danish kids manage to sound like the bizarre love child of Iron Maiden and Cheap Trick.
* The "Diamond Ring" outtro manages to successfully downshift the song from it's simply un-toppable main section without losing the grove. The lilting little piano melody peaks out from the guitars and suddenly subdued drumming to softly bring the song in for a landing.

Seriously, if you are looking for a way to successfully run that last mile on the treadmill, to get ready to go out for a late night party, or to drive 110 miles an hour down a gravel road, this is the perfect soundtrack.

Almost Was Good Enough - Songs:Ohia - Magnolia Electric Company - 2003

And here is the original, recorded under his bands original moniker.

It's not bad, but the striped down and dirty version on T&E is so much more vivid.

Allison Krause - The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart - 2003

A month and a half later, and we are finally out of the "all"s.

So since I've talked quite a bit about my love for summer being based on the inverse relationship between the temperature and the amount of clothing women wear, I guess it's time I talk about some of the things I love about the summer that don't make me sound like a giant perv....which is why you are going to get an ode to my love of the grilling.

I am rarely tempted to leave the city all behind and go grab a suburban life...but one of the few things that would appeal to me about that is the grill in the back yard. Grilling involves many things my caveman-self loves...building a fire, cooking meat, drinking. In addition to that, being the guy running the grill serves another, larger, social purpose. As the grill master at a barbeque you are relieved of the responsibility of mingling. People come to you. They bring you meat to cook. They make you drinks. They come and talk to you because they feel bad you are "Stuck at the grill" and as long as you don't under-cook chicken, you come away looking like the hero.

Allison Krause niether seems to be about the Alt-Country singer nor does it particularly sound like her...in any way...however this song does contain a great joke about technical virginity...which is funny in and of itself. The Stills managed to piss away all the good will they earned with this album with their subsequent releases. Yes, the album is entirely derivative, but it's a good listen...and will always remind me of the crazy second half of 2003.

All You Deliver - Jose Gonzalez - Veneer - 2003

I feel like Jose Gonzalez is rapidly over taking Iron & Wine as the Hipster version of Spanish Fly. I shudder to think of the shear number of Williamsburg babies (and cases of herpes) that have been conceived soundtracked by the Argentinian Swede.

All of his songs sound pretty much the same. Either you like that song (Which I like well enough) or you do not.

This is another one of his songs.

All U People - Jon Auer - Private Sides - 2003

This song is probably Auer's best song on this odd split EP, with three songs each from both of the primary songwriters for The Posies...as I've previously discussed, the two of them were just not the same without each other...and put on the same EP together this mutual deficiencies. Auer misses Stringfellow's bitter cynacism and clever word play, while Stringfellow in turn misses Auer's rock instrumentation.

Incidentally, has there ever been another case of a songwriting partnership in which the more bitter is also the more musically mellow?

Also, this song is almost ruined by the odd, dated and lame Austin Powers ref at the beginning. I don't understand why he'd do that.

All The Right Friends - R.E.M. - ...And I Feel Fine - 2003

It's one of the great mysteries of music how All The Right Friends never made a proper R.E.M. release. The song had been floating around since their early days as an Athens college bar band, and definitely shows the band at their most charming with Buck's chimey guitars, and a great harmony part for Mike Mills.



I used to date a girl who was an R.E.M. fanatic. She had a shoe box full of old bootlegs from those Athens bar days, and this song was certainly one of the highlights...hearing the band in 1979...4 years before Murmur and Rolling Stone's canonizing them as the greatest rock band in America...8 years before Document and the beginning of the arena rock days...10 before Losing My Religion...before the bloat and so on. Just seeing (hearing) them as young southern boys playing a unique brand of rock n roll in a time when bands still played original music in bars was refreshing and gave me a whole new perspective on a group that I thought there was nothing left to know.

All Sewn Up - Longwave - The Strangest Thing - 2003

If you ever need a primer on the role of a producer in record production, listen to any Longwave album besides this one. On any other album they sound like bad Strokes clones: Chimey guitars, low-rent Lou Reed vocals, and the standard issue four on the floor back beat. But on this one album, they were actually kinda interesting...and that is entirely due to the production work of the esteemable Dave Fridmann.

Fridmann used all the tricks at his disposal to make this band interesting; the heavily flanged drums he pioneered with The Flaming Lips, the wall of shoegazer sound he borrowed from Nigel Godrich, and the melodic sensibilities he honed with his own band. All of these things combined to make a dreampop album that was exactly what everyone was crazy for in 2003...well at least everyone in my little circle. But good God was their follow-up boring....sub Strokes songs, with forgettable melodies. Should have stuck with what you knew gentlemen.

All In A Day - Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Streetcore - 2003

Sign It's Spring #1 - I saw two apartment supers spraying off the sidewalk this morning as I was walking to the train. At a certain point, one of them jokingly sprayed some water at the other one and I thought to myself "Yes, it is the season to spray people with garden hoses and run through sprinklers" Good stuff.

Joe Strummer's solo stuff tends to be not that interesting, and occassionally down right banal...but this song actually has decent energy and a hook. Worth a listen at least.