Autumn of the Seraphs - Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs - 2007

We left the theater bar drunk as Mickey Roarke, but we weren't about to leave until we'd gotten the most out of Boston. We attempted to go visit the north end and take some pictures, but we ended up getting confused by Court St and found ourselves right back at Boston Commons where we were accosted by an old crazy drunk Irish (actually from Ireland) dude named Paul who spoke in rhymes and had his jaw tied with a white handkerchief.

Walking by one closed bar, we saw two guys and two girls hanging out in front of the establishment smoking. One of the girls was laying on the sidewalk, blowing smoke rings up in the air. As we passed she cooed a "Hello boys" to us in a voice that I suppose was trying to be alluring. We just nodded at which point she said "You two look hammered"...it occurred to me later that the right comeback was "We aren't the ones laying in the street, honey" but at the time the best I could manage was a "We are". She then asked (as we were already walking past them) if we were English (in reference to Anand's Arsenal jersey I would assume) which seems pretty silly considering I had already spoken and I'm clearly from Indiana.

Finally, we gave up on finding any after hours action and just resigned ourselves to taking pictures of the city. But by 330, when Anand showed no signs of stopping talking in that Shakespeare accent we decided head back to the hotel.

Our last bit of humor came as we were near our hotel. A woman excited an apartment building at 4AM, still wearing a cocktail dress, clearly hoping the early morning departure would mean an escape from the prying eyes that usually go with a walk of shame. She immediately stumbled on her high heels three feet from the door. Anand and I applauded and gave her a thumbs up...cause we're jerks.

Anyway, the next day was spent checking out of our hotel and driving back to NYC. We rocked Boston as hard as we could and found it somewhat lacking...try harder Boston, try harder...you have the right ingredients.


Piano is usually a bad sign for Pinback. The band is typically at its best when they rock their punk rock side out, whereas ballads tend to be dragged down by their laid back cali vibe. Beyond which, a stint at the piano means that Zach isn't on the bass, where he consistantly proves himself to be the most inventive, technically skilled bass player in Indie Rock...but this song has strengths that most of their piano efforts lack.

For starters, it's not as "dreamy" as a lot of their slower stuff can be, in fact by the time the song reaches the "It's the monster at the end of the book" climax, it stands up to their heaviest songs. Beyond that, Pinback can frequently be a band for whom lyrics are just a place holder to accompany the sounds they want to make, but this songs rather sinister lyrics also aid in lifting it out of the stoned San Diego vibe they so often get stuck in.

And for the final touch of class, there is a truly awesome vocal performance by Rob Crowe. I always admire Crowe's restraint with his vocals. He's certainly shown before that, when he wants to, he has one hell of a set of pipes on him...but most of the time he hangs back and picks his moments (Take the end of Concrete Seconds for a great example) to display his talent...but this song actually lets him show off a bit more than usual and he does so. Impressively, I might add.

Australia - The Shins - Wincing The Night Away - 2007

Once dinner had finished, we all piled back into the Singh's Acura and headed towards The Middle East (after setting the GPS, of course). The Middle East is Boston's equivalent of Mercury Lounge or Bowery Ballroom (bigger than the first, smaller than the second) it's a bar with a performance space where your mid-level Indie bands play. I was under the assumption that we would be hitting the bar half of the venue, enjoying some tunes and beverages and then going our separate ways...and yet again, my assumptions would prove to be incorrect.

As soon as we got to the bar, Uncle Singh proceeded to lead us down to the performance area and buy us tickets for whatever band happened to be playing...a band that absolutely none of us knew.

The lower level stank of patchouli and BO. The band itself was some sort of sludge metal band from Athens Georgia, that was louder than even the younger of us wanted to deal with. I was decidedly older than most of the audience, so I can only imagine how the older Singhs felt. Aunt Singh was certainly doing her best to appear as if she was having a good time, though she was clearly not. All of us tried to be gracious, since they boys' uncle had purchased our cover...but clearly none of us were having much fun. Anand and I stepped outside to smoke and get out of the noise and stench and the rest of the group followed us...it was clear that we would not be going back in.


I've been listening to Wincing The Night Away a little bit lately...it's not the crushing disappointment that it seemed on first release. In the early part of the decade, The Shins released a wonderful, shimmery indie-pop debut album. Shortly after their less shimmery, but still quite good second album was released, tool bag etraordinaire Zach Braff saddled them with the unreasonable expectation of being "the band that will change your life"...suddenly they went from being a cozy little secret to the poster children for the new wave of Indie bands...and that's when they seem to have hit the wall. WTNA isn't a bad album, it just couldn't possibly live up those sort of expectations...fucking Braff.

Atlas - Battles - Mirrored - 2007

Not to ride in on the coat tails of Pitchfork too much, but this probably was the best song of 2007. The rest of the Battles album has it's charms, but this was the clear winner with it's absolutely propulsive drum beats, piston engine guitars and nonsense vocorder singing that somehow doesn't get annoying after 7 minutes.

As usual, it's always harder to write about a song I really like than one I totally hate. This song rocks, and it's great for driving in the summer or taking the subway home at night. Cheers!

The Art of Building Walls - Villains - Don't Let The Blood Get You Down - 2007

Between the jetlag and the late night, we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit on Friday morning. By the time we rolled out of the hotel it was already 1230. We wanted to check out a German restaurant and grab some food, so we asked our hotel clerk for a recommendation in the area and she pointed us in the right direction.

The restaurant itself was basically just a tavern and most of the lunch crowd appeared to just be locals who worked in the neighborhood. There was one guy at another table who was eating alone, and was also from New York...but we weren't particularly interested in talking to him and he got the point. The serving wenches were uniformly lovely and took great amusement at our mangled attempts to pronounce the names of their beers.

I had a very fine schnitzel with a side of fried potatoes and something they call bacon beans. Bacon beans are green beans cut into 1/2 inch long chunks and then cooked with an almost equal amount of bits of bacon. So essentially you are eating bacon with some green beans in it. It was damn fine, but considering I still had the UK in front of me, I could tell that I was going to start craving fresh green veggies at some point.

We also had two large steins of beer with our lunch, including Kostritzer Schwarzbier which is a black lager. It looks like a stout, but in flavor it is much lighter than you'd expect. I'd had it here a couple times in the states and it was really no different in Berlin, but it's still a damn fine drink.

After that we were ready to start our museum hop...

This is actually my friend Rance (who actually met us for the UK portion of this trip) and his musical side project. Rance is quite handy with incorporating laptop soundscapes and rhythms into his dreamy guitar pop and this instrumental is a good example of that.

Arrow - The High Strung - Get The Guests - 2007

Now that we were appropriately lubricated, we left Kruezberg before it got too late and before our stoned Berliner tour guides talked our ears off. Our next stop was the more touristy center of town where we would check out the Reichstadt and the Brandenburg Gate.

Among the many fascinating things about the city is their public transportation. First of all, it is entirely on the honor system...you buy a ticket from a machine, and then get onto a train without ever going through a gate or a check in. You then ride the train. No one ever takes your ticket. Ever. Secondly, not content with the choice between elevated train, subway and ground level trains, the Berliners do all three. And finally, like everything else, it is shockingly clean.

The advantage to going on this trip in February (other than the cheapness) was that we were relatively free of other tourists. The layer of snow also helped, basically ensuring that we could walk around Berlin city center without much interuption or distraction. We did have our one moment of scummy American tourist behavior when we used the space between an empty tourist info booth and a construction wall as a make shift bathroom...but mostly we just took very reverent pictures of the Brandenburg gate, a lovely monument made even more so by the snow.

After walking around the Reichstadt and "Museum Island" for a bit we found a glass wall that had all of the articles of German Constitution written on it, and perhaps most impressively...if you looked straight through the glass wall, you could see a techno party happening in one of the office buildings on the other side. It was sort of like Berlin in one encapsulated image.

Everytime this song, by this Williamsburg-by-way-of-Detroit band has come up on this playlist I've sworn that it was a Jayhawks song. And I suppose they should take that as a compliment.

Armchairs - Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha - 2007

So last night I went to see Will Ferrel's show on Broadway where he plays former President GW Bush giving a farewell to the nation. My buddy Shani bought me a ticket as an early birthday present since she'll be in LA for my actual b-day. As is typical, I got stuck in the bar a little too long and had to haul my ass to the theater district to make the gate. We barely had time to throw down a quick glass of champaigne before the lights started blinking and the show started.

Now Ferrel has certainly lost a little of his luster in the last year or two, but there is no denying he has been one of the comedic superstars of the last decade, and his Bush impression has certainly made the last 8 years slightly more bearable...but what struck me most about the show was how much of it might have been too painful to laugh at.

There was certainly very funny stuff, but by and large it was the bits of absurdism(Bigfoot, Monkeys with spear guns, western style handjobs) that packed the biggest punches. The topical stuff (My Pet Goat, "Nice Job Brownie" and of course "Mission Accomplished") mostly served as reminders of what a total clusterfuck that administration was. It's not that Ferrel wasn't funny, or that the time wasn't appreciated so much as...it was the first chance I'd had to look back since President Obama's innauguration. And to see the scope of exactly how badly the W administration really and truly bent this country over a table was staggering. There was still funny stuff in this (Dick Cheney and the Goat Demon, Condie Rice as the office hussey) but mostly it was a bit like being punched in the gut.

Anyway, this Andrew Bird song is a good antidote for that. Bird has always had a strong knack for writing a melody, and his instrumentation has generally been one of his strong points (a rock musician who clings so strongly to the violin as his core instrument certainly has to be inventive). In recent years, Bird has added a level of maturity to his songs that shines through on this track, a fine song for a sad evening.

Arm and Hammer - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Some Loud Thunder - 2007

Okay, this song represents one of the bigger challanges of this project...well, okay, not this song specifically, but this kind of song. This song is terrible. Unremittingly awful. It is from a clusterfuck of an album produced by a producer I admire and a band whose first album I enjoyed. It's soul redeeming quality is that it is brief.

But I can't quite bring myself to delete it...because well, what if I have a total critical re-evaluation of this album? What if I'm just hearing this single annoying minute and half of "music" out of context? What if it provides the perfect bridge between the two songs that sandwich it, and I erased it because I made the rookie mistake of judging this song out of context? Is that sort of thinking even relevant anymore in the digital age? Is the album a dead art? Or for that matter, is this actually just a bad album that will not age gracefully? You know, like the way you go back and watch Temple of Doom one more time, on the chance that your opinion will be softer on it with the passage of time only to discover that it's still pretty crappy.

Be thankful you don't have my issues.

Arizona - Kings of Leon - Because of the Times - 2007

Sometimes a band must be seen in a live setting to be appreciated. I went through a lengthy period of time not particularly liking KoL. I found them to be a lesser version of My Morning Jacket. I found Caleb Followill's weird voice to be...well weird. And also, as a University of Kentucky grad, I felt obligated to support the KYers over the Tennessee boys.

But then I saw KoL at All Points West. In order to make sure we had some visibility for Radiohead, my buddy Anand and I made our way as close to the front as we could during the King's show. And it's impressive enough that they could change my opinion with a good live show, but to change my opinion with a good live show at a huge outdoor festival (which is death to many better bands...Grizzly Bear for instance). All in all, the Kings of Leon boys put on a great show and lead to me downloading their catalog. They aren't my favorite band by a long stretch, but I've certainly enjoyed listening to them.

This particular song is a nice slow jam with a searing guitar line and good build up. I'm glad they changed my mind about them.

Archetype - Through The Sparks - Lazarus Beach - 2007

So, typically speaking New Years Eve is my favorite holiday of the year, though most people I know hate it. To me, New Years is about celebrating possibility. Granted, things look really really bleak right now, but you never know: 2009 could be the best year of your life. 2009 could be the year that the whole world comes together. 2009 could be the year that you have the craziest adventure, the wildest love affair, the best new job. 2009 could be the year that a cure for cancer/diabetis/baldness is found. 2009 could be the year we implement a workable solution for health care/education/poverty. Any of this is possible. 2009 could just be another year, or the worst year of your life...but why not celebrate the possibility of what it COULD be?

As for NYE itself, people talk about hating the expectations, but I've found that if you go in with no expecations, just treat it as a night in which you are drinking with some friends...you will find that you will have a great night. If you go in expecting some sort of grand experience, you will probably be disappointed.

And usually, NYE is one of the best times of the year for me...usually...

Appeasement - J.L. Weill - Tales from the Cold War - 2007

So I went out drinking with my coworkers last night for a couple of birthdays we had last week. After a while I broke out one of my favorite party tricks which is to find the person least likely to turn down a free drink and offer to buy them the most disgusting drink on the menu.

In this case, at The Soho Room, the drink was The Bubbletini...sadly, the drink did not involve Tapioca balls...which I was hoping it would, as this would vastly increase the fun of making the poor guy drink this concoction...but sadly it was just Pomegranite Infused Vodka, Orange Juice, and some other fruity liquer. Which basically raises the question...why call this the Bubbletini? There's nothing bubbly about it.

Additionally, the evening was made more entertaining by the fact that some new rum was having a promotion and we were basically teh only customers in the bar. The shot girls told us that they were not allowed to hand out more than one shot per person, but that they could leave trays of shots on the bar, and if we happened to come up and take them...so be it...

So there were a lot of fruity rum shots in my evening.

Anyway, this is a song by one of my closest friends, (and occasional blog commentator) so I don't know that I can be objective about it. He and his wife Torie sing very well together and the arrangement is really quite good and adds to the melencholy atmosphere that he's aiming to create. I give Josh a hard time that he doesn't "rock" enough for my taste...but I've always respected his ability to write a good melody, and this song is no exception.

Apartment Story - The National - Boxer - 2007

Despite my vote for Boxer as the best album of 2007, The National remain a band that I wish were better. The problem is, songs like this prove they are capable of being more than a maudlin band full of existiental urban angst...songs like this prove they can actually rock and still keep their philosophical bent.

I will need a little more time before I decide if this song is really worthy of being called perfect, but...between the hypnotic, all snare, drumming, the churning bassline, the haunting organ, and the restrained, buzz-saw guitars, the song manages to mix whimsy and dread in equal parts, while Matt Beringer's lyrics tell a tale that could be about a couple riding out a blizzard trapped in their apartment, or perhaps it's the apocalypse, who can say?

Not to try and be the "I was with this band way back then" guy...but honestly, the parrallels between this band and me are rather noteworthy and lead to me getting into them around the time of their first album. Like me Beringer is from relatively small town Indiana, came to Cincinnati to try to do things better...found that place woefully inadequate and came to New York during the dotcom boom. Now they, like me, call Brooklyn their home. Honestly, I love this band...I just wish their gloomy world view wasn't always so mirred in lethargic rhythms.

Anytown Graffiti - Pela - Anytown Graffiti - 2007

Every once in a while my REALLY nerdy side rears its ugly head and I'll watch a really bad sword and sandalls kind of movie. And I have to say, I watched an atrotiously bad one earlier this week that reminded me of what a broad spectrum of nerds there are in this world.

Keep in mind the Venn diagram of nerddom that was required to produce a film specifically geared towards the intersection of fans of the Roman Empire, specifically Britain during the Roman occupation and the attempts to find some historicity in the Arthurian Legend during this period. Throw in an absurdly large laddle fall of rabid anglophilia, Ben Kingsley as a proto-Merlin with an absolutely hack Welsh accent, Colin Firth looking in no way embarrassed, a hot indian chick inexplicably kicking everone's ass, and some of those great moments where a telling line of dialouge is followed by a pregnant pause so that the brain dead audience can get the inference (for instance, Colin Firth lays dying on a battle field and the 10 year old exiled emperor of Rome approaches him to tell him he fought "like a dragon", Colin Firth then says "And you fought like the son of a dragon"...que pregnant pause so that the audience, who is nerdy enough to know that Pendragon means "Son of the Dragon" can absorb the fact that he has just been christened and will one day be Arthur's father...just first rate shit).

Anyway, it was a really bad movie...and there are probably people who loved it.

Much like this song...actually this song isn't that bad, it's just kind of bland...and there are probably people that love it.

Anticipation - Cut City - Mammoth - 2007

Here in New York it is CMJ week. For those of you not familiar, allow me to explain. CMJ weeks is sort of the music business equivalent of sweeps week. For one week all of the music press and record label talent scouts descend down onto New York City. In order to accommodate all of the bands that will clamour for the attention of these music industry luminaries, every single bar that has anything remotely resembling a stage books bands all day long. Indie record labels book the bigger clubs in order to showcase their talent stable, and smaller bars take the unsigned masses.

This will be my 9th CMJ week since moving here. My attitude towards the festival has evolved in stages characterized thusly:
Stage 1 - "CMJ is one of the best parts about living in this city! I can't believe I get to check out all of these awesome bands"
Stage 2 - "These CMJ shows are kind of a pain in the ass...you have to deal with a truck load of tools, drinks are expensive, and the band you want to see is going to play a short set cause they gotta fit in those other bands. But I really want to see this band, so I guess I'll deal.
Stage 3 - "There is no fucking way I'm going to a CMJ show"
Stage 4 - "Fine, I'll go to a CMJ show, but I'm showing up five minutes before the band I want to see and leaving immediately after"

So, Wednesday night my roommate had talked me into going out to Southpaw and seeing his friends' band. Now Southpaw is in reasonable walking distance to our apartment and the show was at 830 so I figured it wouldn't be too bad for a cold Wednesday night's entertainment. But we showed up only to discover that there was a $20 cover. Okay...now I've been here long enough to know that everything is more expensive than you think it should be...but seriously, if you want to attract attention to your band, making people pay $20 just to walk in the door is not the way to do it. Alex and I decided the only appropriate response was "fuck that noise" and we went and got a few beers at a local bar. It was the only reasonable solution to that.

This is that band that I thought was Interpol and is not. I still like it better than Interpol.

(Antichrist Television Blues) - The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible - 2007

I spent enough time in crazy midwestern churches to know what the contemporary Christian idea of the Antichrist is...what they believe he will be. And while Joe Simpson, doesn't really fit that mold, I can't think of a better symbol (nor can Win Butler, apparently) for everything that is wrong with modern American Christianity than this despicable douchebag.

Despite loudly espousing a religion that at it's core explicitly decries the love of money as the root of all evil, he seeks nothing more than wealth. Despite extolling the virtues of "purity" he makes soft core prostitues of both of his daughters, who spent their youth defining "technical viriginity" while dropping their tits all over MTV, forciing both of them into early and at least in one case disastorous marriages to reconcile their sex drives with their belief system. Despite vocally supporting our troops, our president, and our country, he supports policies that destroy our country all for the sake of a tax break.

His first daughter, for all of her pnuematic stupidity has been rebranded time and time again to suit the needs of a market place that needed virginal teen idols, and then a model wife, and then a jilted sex pot, and now...apparently looking to fill the country shoes (and bra) of Dolly Parton.

His younger daughter attempted to be different (granted in a lame way) to step out from her sister's shadow and was eventually forced to abandon this to countless turns under the knife to become the same sort of hollow barbie doll.

And to answer the question posed by the "fictional" Mr. Simpson in Win's song...you may not be THE Antichrist, but you are certainly anti-everything that Christian values were supposed to mean before they were co-opted by the Republican party.

Another Step Away - A Place To Bury Strangers - A Place To Bury Strangers - 2007

Man was this album a breath of fresh air last year. I fear a world in which all of the good melodic music that's produced is the product of Sufjan like gentility. A world in which sweet melodies aren't covered in walls of noise to make their delicacy more palatable, a world in which raw anger is replaced by a blissed out numbness, and naked, earnest emotion is preferred to dense confusion and ambiguous dread...this is the fear that keeps me up at night.

But then a band like APTBS comes along and sounds as if they might want to tear the world down to it's foundations, and my faith in humanity is restored.

Keep rocking you W-burg guitar nerds, you're the only hope we got...

Another Person - Jay Reatard - Night of Broken Glass - 2007

Let me tell you something about Mexico that I did not expect. It's really, really fucking hot. Sure, you think to yourself...haven't you ever seen a movie set in Mexico? But come on, it's October...I figured it would be hot during the day (perfect for the beach) and then cool off at night for some pleasant seaside sleeping.

No, this does not happen...despite being one of the most beautiful places I've ever been too, with pristine beaches and gorgeous skies...I couldn't help spending a little bit of my trip cranky, cause I just wasn't sleeping at night...cause it was just so muggy.

On our second day we took a hike to the maya ruins of Tulum, which are amazing...but within less than an hour both my lady friend and myself were covered in sweat, dehydrated and slightly confused. And of course, cause of the "don't drink the water thing" an ice cold glass of water or a coke were no where to be found. So you drink beer, even if you don't want it...cause it's the only cold thing they got.

All in all, it was a lovely trip...but when I got home, I drank a giant glass of water, straight from the tap...and then went to sleep in my own bed with the windows all the way open so that I could enjoy the cool of an NYC Autumn.

Jay Reatard doing his Devo meets Question Mark and the Mysterians thing. Not bad, but there are songs of his I prefer to this.

And You Lied To Me - The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse - 2007

I saw something one of the oddest things I've ever encountered on the subway this AM. I had stayed out later than I meant to last night, and then one of my friends had "forced" a shot of Wild Turkey on me, so my morning commute was a little rough. But between Bergen and Atlantic Aves I saw an mid-forties African-American man walking down the aisle towards the front of the train. He was a bit short, but very stocky. And he was wearing a Met's baseball cap and a brown plaid shirt...so from the waist up, nothing out of the ordinary...however...the plaid shirt was then tucked into a full red plaid kilt and hose set. For a second I wondered if I might be still drunk or something, because none of the other passengers were reacting. I know all about NYC cool...but seriously people, if you are not going to react to this, what are you going to react to?

I have mixed feelings about The Besnard Lakes. Their boy-girl harmonies are occasionally a bit Mama's and the Papa's for me, and they seem to have a completely un-ironic song about how cool the corner of Bedford and Grand is...but they are very good at creating menacing, ominous soundscapes, and this song is a great example of that. It's haunting guitars and fat chord keyboards combine wonderfully with the lyrics to create the sort of crushing feeling of being betrayed by someone you thought you could trust.

And She Would Darken The Memory - The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters - 2007

If you ever want to learn how to fake a Scottish accent, just buy this album and learn to sing along with every song. By the end, you will have a pretty good idea of how the vowel sounds work.

And I Remember Every Kiss - Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala - 2007

Jens Lekman can occassionally knock a song out of the park. "Pocketful of Money" for instance is really great, and probably the only non-annoying use of Calvin Johnson's voice ever recorded...but...and I know I've touched on this before...I just don't understand the current trend towards overblown grandiosity.

Stuff like this, Beirut, Anthony and the Johnsons, and The Fiery Furnaces baffle me. Why in the world would you want to sound like the special guest singer on the Lawrence Welk show?

Ancient History - The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever - 2007

The Cribs work well enough for me. Like a lot of people I can get bored of the guitar-bass-drum set up...I can feel like there is nothing left to do with that format, but the fact of the matter is there is still little better for converying certain emotions than that set up. And rather than another hushed acoustic balladeer or pysch-folk collective, it's almost a refreshing change of pace to find a "turn it up to 11" guitar band out there.

As for ancient history...certain recent situations in my life have caused me to think a lot about the Roman Empire...no scratch that, I ALWAYS think about the Roman Empire, but the recent situation has caused me to think about the conquest of the Greeks in particular. The Romans were crafty and strong...essientially they were the first people to break through Greek defence by figuring out the brilliant strategy of "when they throw their spears, we should get out of the way". But all in all the Greeks were the smarter (unless you go with the "if they were so smart they wouldn't have been conquered" theory). They understood more about math and engineering and art and culture...all of these things.

So I think about how it must have been for the Greeks, having overlords that they knew they were smarter and more refined than. Being asked to teach secrets and knowledge that would allow Rome to grow into the big white marble Empire we all know and love, and knowing all the while that it's your knowledge that they will be remembered for. Wonder why I was thinking about that...