Tag Archive for 'okkervil river'

child of the noughties: it’s bound to melt your heart for good or for bad;

Published on November 26, 2009 in music. 14 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series best of the noughties

Surprisingly to nobody, in the end I couldn’t steer clear of the “best of the decade” chat that is dominating the blogosphere at the moment. Last time around, of course, there wasn’t a “blogosphere” – and I wasn’t really listening to music at all! This decade has seen my rebirth as a music fan and so, in a way, perhaps every album I call “special” or “personal” or “favourite” is could belong in this list – whatever nickname we ultimately give this decade. Personally, I’m more interested to see what trendy buzzword we come up with for the next one!

Over the next four weeks, I’m going to count down my favourite forty – one per artist – albums of the decade and, while there might not be any massive surprises, I’d be thrilled if you used this as an opportunity to pick up something you haven’t had a chance to listen to yet.

Kudos to Kate, for inspiring me with her similarly themed post on Facebook.

20. The Gaslight Anthem: Sink or Swim
2007, XOXO
The “one album per artist” rule I’ve stuck to so far on this list has its toughest test yet, as my love for the Gaslight Anthem’s two full-lengths is pretty much equal. In the end, a rougher sound and less of the musical namechecks that tend to put the naysayers (and my Googlers) off, as well as the inclusion of my favourite of their songs, swings it for their debut. Sure the singer thinks he’s Springsteen and the bassist James Dean, and the band itself isn’t exactly tearing up the rule book, but that doesn’t take away from the times good and bad their output has soundtracked over an eventful decade’s close.
If you download one track, make it: “We Came To Dance”
BUY: Sink Or Swim at Amazon.co.uk

19. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat
2006, Rough Trade
Don’t get me wrong: I really, really like Rilo Kiley. But I loved flame-haired frontwoman Jenny Lewis’ solo debut. An incredible mix of folk, gospel and blues, augmented by lush harmonies from the Watson Twins, that did much to make Lewis a seeming permanent fixture in music blog eye candy towards the end of the decade.
If you download one track, make it: “You Are What You Love”
BUY: Rabbit Fur Coat at Amazon.co.uk

18. Thea Gilmore: Rules for Jokers
2002, Flying Sparks
Of course, the point of a retrospective like this is to turn up those gems you’d all but forgotten. Ask me to recall one album from the past life in Edinburgh that I revisit in those Friday morning historical blog posts and it would probably be this one – a CD booklet first flicked through on Kaite’s bedroom floor and a collection of seriously rockin’, seriously heartbreakin’, alt.folk from a singer-songwriter who would have been a household name by now if there had been any justice in the world.
If you download one track, make it: “This Girl Is Taking Bets”
BUY: Rules for Jokers (Special Limited Edition) at Amazon.co.uk

17. Sun Kil Moon: Ghosts of the Great Highway
2007, Caldo Verde
Everything about this record is beautiful: the artwork, the packaging and of course Mark Kozelek’s ethereal voice, a security blanket wrapping me up in a dreamworld where my heartrate slows and panic subsides. The melody here is understated, comforting and familiar.
If you download one track, make it: “Lily and Parrots”
BUY: Ghosts Of The Great Highway at Amazon.co.uk

16. Joanna Newsom: The Milk-Eyed Mender
2004, Drag City
The voice is the first thing you notice. It’s raw, childlike and probably like nothing you’ve ever heard before. You might hate it, at first, until you listen to the strange lyrics and delicate harp, scales like kittens’ feet on a piano, and decide you wouldn’t have it any other way. The music of Joanna Newsom is fresh, otherworldly and – above all – compelling.
If you download one track, make it: “Peach, Plum, Pear”
BUY: The Milk-Eyed Mender at Amazon.co.uk

15. Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
2005, Sub Pop
In many ways they were my “band of the noughties”, but with this screaming swansong Sleater-Kinney delivered a sucker punch to an industry sorely needing one. The Woods actually seemed to herald an exciting new direction for the Portland, OR trio – one that was sadly never to be. I miss them desperately.
If you download one track, make it: “Modern Girl”
BUY: The Woods at Amazon.co.uk

14. Okkervil River: Black Sheep Boy
2005, Jagjaguar
One of those bands whose career I worked backwards through: it was Okkervil River’s big-hitting recent albums that caught my attention, but this release remains their opus. A “concept album” of sorts, based around a little-known folk song and detailing the love between a girl and a monster-not-a-monster, it’s a masterly collection of beautifully crafted, lyrically complex songs.
If you download one track, make it: “Black”
BUY: Black Sheep Boy [Definitive Edition] at Amazon.co.uk

13. The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
2007, FatCat
I proved at the weekend that I can’t even talk about the Twilight Sad without going into some kind of a rapture over the night they changed my life, exploding into my heart as if from nothingness, loud and grinding and yet gorgeously melodic. Some things deserve to be discovered in the dark, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, so see them live if you can.
If you download one track, make it: “Cold Days From The Birdhouse”
BUY: Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters at Amazon.co.uk

12. Kathleen Edwards: Back to Me
2005, MapleMusic
I always seem to pick the boy singers; preferring, as I said once, to imagine myself as the girl sung about rather than the girl doing the singing. But then I discovered Kathleen Edwards, fell for her immediately and bought up what was at the time her entire discography in the one weekend spent trying to imitate her throaty, slightly bruised voice in my bedroom while working out the chords to “One More Song The Radio Won’t Like” on the guitar I never really learned how to play.
If you download one track, make it: “In State”
BUY: Back To Me at Amazon.co.uk

11. PJ Harvey: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
2003, Island
Stories From The City… might have been the last album I discovered “the old-fashioned way”: under the covers, headphones clamped in my ears and John Peel’s Festive Fifty soothing me to sleep. It was certainly the most important. Curiously less raw than both Harvey’s earlier and later work, each song a standout standalone, this album sounds as fresh on a rainy afternoon at the end of the decade as it did to a mouldable teen discovering her own musical fingerprint at its start.
If you download one track, make it: “A Place Called Home”
BUY: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea at Amazon.co.uk

NOTE: Album title links almost always take you via my referrer page on Amazon.co.uk. I’m trying to save up for Christmas, so help a blogger out and pick up a fantastic album into the bargain!

a to z: with a book in each hand;

Published on October 20, 2009 in music and photography. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .
This entry is part 1 of 25 in the series A to Z

209. With A Book In Each Hand

I’m quite proud of what I’ve come up with on this little series of pictures, so I’m going to attempt a little bit of mp3 blogging/self-portrait crossover based around a current music-related sub-project within a project. Follow that if you will, or just download the songs and tell me I’m pretty ;)

Gale force winds on the Squinty Bridge meant that this was probably the first time I’ve risked serious harm for the sake of my 365Days project, but I quite like how this snatched iPhone shot turned out after a little post-processing. And I really enjoying getting to walk the first couple of miles home of a summer evening.

As I work my way through my musical A-Z, it starts to become obvious how many of my favourite songs are about drugs, religion or suicide. This track, by Austin’s hyperliterate Okkervil River, takes the latter theme – specifically the suicide of the 20th century American poet, John Berryman – and by linking it with naval imagery and an instantly recognisable Beach Boys refrain creates a song that is sweeping, epic and almost triumphant.

DOWNLOAD: Okkervil River – John Allyn Smith Sails [MP3]
BUY: The Stage Names at Amazon.co.uk

ain’t supposed to die on a saturday night: the 2008 round-up;

Published on December 14, 2008 in film and music. 18 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

list season

So The X Factor is over for another year, which means that ’round these parts we can get back to talking about the soundtrack of your life and the music that saved it as opposed to mawkish, overwrought cover versions of such songs that even my poptastic little sister found inappropriate.

Life is so crazy of late. The one thing I wanted from this year was simply to make the most of it, and I think that I’ve done so for the most part, but these last few weeks have run away from me in such a crazy gallop that I’m scared to go to sleep in case I wake up and it’s 2009. Friends are texting, asking if we can see each other before the holidays, and I’m having to decline as I still have a week of work a family wedding and a Christmas in the Midlands. I’m off until the 5th as of next Tuesday, and I’ll be grateful for the chance to catch my breath (and make some mixes!). This all sounds like a story best saved for my last post of the year, but my point is that if I don’t get these lists posted between blitzing my Christmas shopping today I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to do so again. A precursory recap of how my 2007 picks stood the test of time has been one casualty, but suffice to say at least the top two have held their positions.

But that was then, and this is now. Onwards, then, to List Season 2008.

LAST YEAR’S GIRL’S FAVOURITE, IF NOT THE BEST, ALBUMS OF 2008:

10. Vivian Girls: Vivian Girls [buy]
By all accounts the backlash has already started against these cutesy one-trick ponies, but I don’t use the internet anymore therefore I don’t care. I unashamedly adore the Vivian Girls’ scuzzy debut and their punk-rock slumber party live show, and I think you should too.
I said: “More reverb!” cried bassist Kickball Katy, with a laugh and a toss of her long red hair. “If you can still make out what I’m saying, then we need more reverb!” (December)

9. The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride [buy]
One of the greatest lyricists of our generation returns with another brilliantly understated, beautifully melodic masterpiece. 2008 was a good year for fans of the Mountain Goats, with a couple of EPs (a “pay what you want” download plus a tour EP with Kaki King) thrown in for good measure – next year a proper UK tour though, eh?
I said: [I]t’s as if Get Lonely got a certain kind of melancholy out of our John’s system, and its follow-up is the manifesto of a proud iconoclast. (January)

8. Laura Marling: Alas, I Cannot Swim [buy]
A precocious talent, the debut of Reading’s Laura Marling carries a maturity far beyond the singer-songwriter’s tender years. Marling’s is one of those too-early-in-the-year releases that I hope doesn’t slip under too many people’s radar as the lists get drawn up, and her haunting melodies stay with you long after the album’s end.

7. Okkervil River: The Stand-Ins [buy]
The “companion piece” to last year’s runner-up, the songs and musical interludes that make up The Stand-Ins apparently formed part of the “Stage Names” sessions. While the latter is certainly a stronger album overall, I didn’t realise just how catchy and clever these songs are until I was lucky enough to hear them live.
I said: As live bands go, on a scale of one to the Hold Steady, the Texan indie rockers score at least a 9.5 in my head. (November)

6. Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago [buy]
I was a late convert to this wonderful album – particularly as, if my sources are right, it was originally released in 2007! There’s something rainy-day desperate, yet lush and beautifully moving, about Justin Vernon’s high vocals; but this album will forever take me back to breakfasts of bacon and Coca-Cola in Australia when James couldn’t believe I hadn’t yet heard it in its entirety.

5. Death Cab For Cutie: Narrow Stairs [buy]
A return to form? But Lis, didn’t you actually LIKE Plans? I hear you cry. Well, yes, but I certainly didn’t wake up one morning in November wanting desperately to listen to the album in its entirety. I guess that’s what happens when your old bandcrushes decide to rebel against their slow descent into teen movie indie landfill and trail their new album with an eight-minute single with the creepiest lyrics since “Every Breath You Take”. Ten years and a world removed from their debut, Death Cab For Cutie are as relevant and as worthy of obsession as ever. Snow Patrol et al, take note – this is how it should be done.
I said: [I]n this age of short attention spans and single track downloads, [Narrow Stairs] is a complex beast best appreciated as a complete package. I love everything about this album – from the CD booklet (remember those?) with its die-cut edges, to the perfect segues that refuse to let me prune even the imperfect tracks from shuffle. (May)

4. Sun Kil Moon: April [buy]
Some of my most quality music listening happens in transit, staring out of the window at nothing in particular and appreciating a particular album or artist on a level I’m just not capable of if it’s merely on in one ear while I’m doing something else. I listened to April hurtling backwards on some particular train journey or other, and then again on the long flight home from the other side of the world when I began to realise that sleep was out of the question. Mark Kozelek’s ethereal voice is like a security blanket to me, wrapping me up in a dreamworld where my heartrate slows and panic subsides.
I said: April… is a strange record; one which requires patience but which ultimately sounds familiar. The sprawling compositions almost overlap in my head to become a comforting soundscape… (September)

3. Kathleen Edwards: Asking For Flowers [buy]
I always seem to pick the boy singers; preferring, as I said once, to imagine myself as the girl sung about rather than the girl doing the singing. Since I discovered Kathleen Edwards, fell for her immediately and bought up her entire discography on the one weekend, she has consistently bucked the trend and her third album is another stormer.
I said: It’s the voice that draws me in. It’s throaty and a little bruised, the voice of a girl who’d go for a couple of drinks and a cheeseburger, not pass over dessert because she simply couldn’t, and laugh with you all the way home. It’s a voice that’s also perfectly in my own pitch, meaning I can sing along in the kitchen. And it’s a voice that can do honest, tender, sincere. (April)

2. Matthew Ryan: Matthew Ryan vs The Silver State [buy]
A couple of weeks ago, as I started to think about this list seriously, I had a moment of despair as I considered the fact that there hadn’t been an artist unknown to me before this year who had grabbed me as completely and unexpectedly as the Twilight Sad did last year. I was, of course, wrong – it’s just that Matthew Ryan’s is one of those voices that feels as if it has been with me much longer than it has in reality. A bonus from my contact at Jesse Malin’s record label, ripped to my iTunes and almost forgotten about until one dark evening when it mattered most. Ryan wears his Springsteen influence proudly (“her mascara was born to run”), but his earnest lyricism has a poetry all of its own.
I said: I’m on such a Matthew Ryan kick lately, and this song is amazing. It even inspired me to have a proper hunt around for my Clash t-shirt (the one that was Jay’s Clash t-shirt…) (July)

1. The Hold Steady: Stay Positive [buy]
See, I reckon if the Album of the Year comes as a surprise to anybody then I’m clearly not doing my job as a blogger. Whether it’s in the play tallies, the shows seen, the fake tattoos or the constant namedrops, the Hold Steady are so clearly my favourite contemporary band and one of the few bands worth getting Web Sheriffed over. Craig Finn writes the most memorable characters, the greatest screwed-up Catholic girls, the most vivid killer parties, and the music Tad, Franz, Galen and Bobby create around those stories is perfect and earnest and real. A band who go from strength to strength, and who need a place on your “must see live” list.
I said: The characters that populate the Hold Steady’s earlier work are back… and they’re as druggy and messed-up as ever. But this time they’re older, sadder, dealing with the consequences and trying to lift themselves from their obscurity. It makes for a depth that, although not lifting the album to the giddy greatness of their finest hour, Separation Sunday, certainly edges it above its blogworthy predecessor. (July)

2008′s Honourable Mentions: The Indelicates, American Demo; Marah, Angels of Destruction; Amanda Palmer, Who Killed Amanda Palmer

2008′s Albums Which Might Have Made The List Had I Had Them Longer Than A Week: The Gaslight Anthem, The ’59 Sound, Mark Kozelek, The Finally LP, Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.

They say the devil is in the detail, and there’s plenty of that after the jump. Continue reading ‘ain’t supposed to die on a saturday night: the 2008 round-up;’

you can’t hold the hand of a rock ‘n’ roll fan;

Published on November 11, 2008 in music. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Setlist (Day 75 of 365)

Sometimes I can’t help but suspect that Rachel and I are simply daughters of the wrong time. We should be flapper girls or something, all flailing limbs and too much eyeliner down the front at yr local rock show. Who can explain why we missed a hundred ears, and listen to far too much mournful alternative country?

Not that Okkervil River can really be typecast as such: as live bands go, on a scale of one to the Hold Steady, the Texan indie rockers score at least a 9.5 in my head. Bounding onto the stage at a fashionably delayed hour (leading to set problems later on, with the Oran Mor’s Generic Indie Pish club night cutting short the planned encore), frontman Will Sheff is vaguely reminiscent of a Vernon Kaye who has read his weight in books and laid off the cheddar. And I mean that better than it sounds, as his energetic stage presence is almost as warm and engaging as the band’s amazing drummer. Despite a set drawn predominantly from this and last year’s critically acclaimed related albums – the material with which I confess most familiarity – back catalogue favourites such as “Black” and “For Real” receive rapturous reception from the crowd. Even more remarkably, a reverent hush descends on the notorious venue for a beautiful, almost-solo “A Stone”.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of The Stage names and man, those songs stand up so well live they’d fill an arena. Bellowing out the refrain to “John Allyn Smith Sails”, hemmed in by a couple of hundred fellow fans, was a great experience – beaten only by the singing along we were encouraged to do to “West Falls”, during the encore.

Despite the best efforts of First Bus and their eccentric Sunday timetable, I even got to catch half of the support set. Broken Records have grown into a tight-knit bunch, soaring strings filling the venue faster than the crowds and proving their status as the best new band in Scotland. Check them out while you still can for cheap/intimate.

PS With his sweet face and slightly chubby features, Celtic and Socceroo forward Scott McDonald is blatantly the Ryan Adams of the SPL. Now, should I postpone my first session at my new gym to go embarrass myself here?

[PHOTO: Day 75.]

you own me, there’s nothing you can do;

Published on August 14, 2008 in music and the media. 16 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The above is The National performing new song “A Thousand Black Cities” live at the Vega in Copenhagen the other night. Good stuff. I haven’t grown tired of this band since the day I fell for them [via You Ain't No Picasso].

Bless you, internet. The music industry might think you are smothering it, but me? I love the fact that one of my favourite bands, despite being relatively unheard of in my country, can air a new song somewhere else entirely and I can stream it at my desk the next day. And I love that blogging gives me the ability to share these bits and pieces as well as keeping a record for myself – sorta like the boxes of magazine clippings I kept on top of my wardrobe as a kid only in interactive, multimedia format.

You did note the sarcasm when I joked about the internet smothering the music industry above, right? This has been a banner year for those bands and record labels who, rather than stick their heads in the sand and hope that the nasty downloaders will be scared off by threatening letters and botched prosecutions in the US, have recognised that the internet offers unprecedented opportunity for marketing directly to those hardcore faithful who’ll hang on a band’s every lyric. Radiohead got the ball rolling in the most high-profile way of course, but it was Paul Westerberg’s 49:00 project (since pulled, ironically for “copyright reasons“) that got me most excited.

Hell, it all gets me excited. It shouldn’t really, because so many of the people involved at least in the more “independent” side of the music industry are my age, and must be wise to the potential new forms of technology offers for the promotion of their product, but it does. The other day I got an email from Jagjaguar, letting me as somebody who had purchased Okkervil River material directly through them before that the new album is now available for preorder. That’s not the best bit though – preorder packages come with a poster set, and an electronic version of the album prior to release date.

Now, I can’t be a hypocrite here: the album leaked a while ago, and I’ve heard it. But far better to have an official, properly mastered electronic version, while waiting for the physical product that I still love above all else.

And Jagjaguar wouldn’t be this worthy of my praise without a web 2.0 friendly mp3 from the forthcoming album:

[MP3] Okkervil River – Lost Coastlines [courtesy of Secretly Canadian]

(don’t go back to) rockville;

Published on July 15, 2008 in music. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

this time it even looks like rem!
Photo courtesy of my freakishly tall sister!

I was going to open this post by saying that Sunday marked, if not the end of an era, then at least the end of my long-term love affair with Scotland’s most famous outdoor piss-up what has bands at it. But now that a day’s gone by and my mid-morning crankiness, if not my epic sunburn, has faded from memory, I know that as long as my legs don’t get any worse I’ll find a way to get up there next year.

You see, T in the Park has a brilliant atmosphere that you just don’t find anywhere else. I hear and understand the complaints: that it’s full of neds, that it’s just too big, that the line-up is generic and predicatable. It’s true that you can’t walk by anything resembling a wall without finding a young gentleman relieving himself against it (up to and including the back of the ice cream vans), but the banter and randomness quotient – whether the girl with no teeth dancing in her bikini first thing in the morning, or our new friend who dropped his burger – is legendary. As for the line-up… well, with seven or eight tents and stages of varying sizes these days I challenge you to be stuck for something to do for longer than about an hour. Blows the line-up for ths year’s Connect out of the water, anyway. Sure I’ve always liked the sound of ATP, and I drooled at the prospect of End of the Road until my upcoming Australian adventure put paid to that plan both time-wise and financially, but quite frankly the thought of ten hours on a bus smelling like a campsite has never really filled me with the thrill of anticipation.

Saying that, it doesn’t matter how meticulously you timetable your must-see bands at a festival: your best-laid plans will be waylaid by feuding friends, toilet queues, full tents and unpublicised rescheduling. That’s all part of the fun though. Although I caught a bit of the Two Amys (McDonald and Winehouse) on the main stage, I didn’t see a band properly til The Xcerts took to the Relentless Energy Drink Super Douper Mega Stage at some point in the mid afternoon. Before that, I was so despondent about my sister’s questionable mobile phone reception that I spent half an hour talking to someone from the Samaritans! (As well as clapping along in the ceilidh tent for a bit, and spending disproportionate amounts of money on manky pick ‘n’ mix, and dresses that wouldn’t fit.)

So who did you actually see?
Seasick Steve was probably my unexpected highlight of the festival. While I liked last year’s Dog House Music, he’s somebody I’ve never got around to seeing live and so I was pleased to catch the end of his set in the Pet Sounds Arena when I arrived early for the National. The tent was packed, and it was one of the most enthusiastic punch-the-air receptions I’ve ever seen for somebody you wouldn’t consider a typical showman.

And what was even better was that the tent practically emptied once he’d finished, so with a bit of deft manoevering I found myself front and centre for the National. There’s something about the festival setting that kills the usual music snob attitude that has a tendency to emerge in me at gigs, so I could’ve hugged the guy next to me who screamed for “Mr November” in the gap between each song when he wasn’t reassuring the band that they were his favourite. While the fans went wild below, the band were as quietly explosive as they were in the autumn whether Matt Berninger was screaming “Abel” or delivering a devastating “Slow Show”.

I saw Vampire Weekend as well and they were good fun, although the acoustics (and my awkward position under a speaker) in the King Tut’s Tent meant that every time a bass note sounded my eardrums threatened to burst. A text from my old schoolfriend and “REM soul sister” Patricia seemed like a good enough reason to exit when they started playing that piss-annoying song about Oxford Fucking Commas.

As for REM themselves, what can I say? Good timing and determination got my party to pretty close to the front, which was a sea of randomness none of which I could blog about in a way that would amuse anybody but myself. Although quite heavy on tracks from new album Accellerate, their set was like the last decade of my life never happened (not least because Michael Stipe looks as timeless as my old favourites sounded). Hearing “Fall on Me” and “Begin The Begin”, and a sweet acoustic “Let Me In”, was as amazing as yelling along to “Losing My Religion” or discovering I still remembered all the words to “It’s The End of the World As We Know It”. Needless to say, I’ll be having a rummage through the rest of my CD collection when I’m at my mum’s tonight, looking to rescue a few forgotten gems.

Oh, and the traditionally grim festival loos weren’t a problem either – my top tip for next year, if you’re going? Stop by the sexual health tent for a free chlamydia test – you don’t find out the result on the day, so it won’t spoil your weekend, but you get to use a proper toilet with running water and a flush. As one of the many people to whom I relayed this little piece of information to commented: “And if you’ve got it, you should find out about it anyway – it’s a win-win!”

The 2009 rumours have started already – maybe see you there?

PS New Jenny Lewis album details! Also really looking forward to the new Okkervil River, after a day revisting The Stage Names. 2008 gets better and better.

a hand to take hold of the scene: the 2007 round-up;

Published on December 16, 2007 in film and music. 23 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

146 of 365

Things have been so busy that it’s pretty late in the game I’ve been able to turn my mind to the traditional end of year festivities: present buying and Christmas cards, seeing friends and the traditional end of year blogs. But now, with the X Factor winner crowned and the monkey firmly in the tree, I’m finally starting to feel a little bit festive.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I was struggling for ten albums to put on this list. And I wasn’t alone. The lovely Carrie Brownstein blogged on the same thing: “[F]ew of the songs [I acquired in 2007] amounted to albums,” she said. “[They] don’t really add up to anything more than a 10 day long mix tape with little thematic cohesion and only a shallow survey of the artists’ work. I have shifted from collecting to compiling.”

But 2007 wasn’t merely a case of a couple of albums by a bunch of old favourites and whatever free download preview tracks my bandwidth could carry, and in the end I was breaking my heart over what was getting left out of the list. To say nothing of the band who ended up top of the list: a band whose equally impressive back catalogue I had merely a passing interest in this time last year.

I was going to call this The Only List To Feature Neither Radiohead Nor The Arcade Fire (At Least In The Album Category) This Year but lovely Heather, bless her, has pipped me to that one. Still, without further preamble – and with 80% less h8 than last year! – let’s get on:

LAST YEAR’S GIRL’S FAVOURITE, IF NOT THE BEST, ALBUMS OF 2007:

10. Tunng: Good Arrows [buy]
Who says I can’t get experimental? Tunng, perhaps the second greatest thing I ever discovered on a CD I got free with a music magazine, fuse folk harmonies with electronica and “found sounds” to create cryptic music that it at once simple and complex.
I said: I’m waiting for the album to arrive, hoping it will be full of the same gorgeous acoustic melodies layered with menacing effects – like CocoRosie without the nursery school “wtf” factor. (August)

9. Herman Dune: Giant [buy]
Another favourite new discovery of 2007, Giant is a split personality of a record – half fairytale menacing, half childlike in its simplicity and mischief.
I said: They sound like plastic building blocks and eating ice lollies with mittens on and going sailing on a summer’s day. (April)

8. Jesse Malin: Glitter In The Gutter [buy]
This year I have interviewed, been entertained by, kissed, sang along with, worked the merch stall of, and posed with, the most consistently entertaining singer-songwriter in my collection. And I’ve enjoyed every minute. His most consistent, if not his best, record to date.
I said: Jesse defies characterisation. He laughs in the face of it in fact, a self-referential mockery those outside of our circle might find a little too knowing. I can’t think of him as a “singer-songwriter”, a Damien Rice or James Blunt. He’s a storyteller, writing letters to the love of his life. (January)

7. Richmond Fontaine: Thirteen Cities [buy]
Willy Vlautin is one of America’s all-time great storytellers; and his favourite characters are the late-night losers, the lovelorn bartenders and the people you never think to ask. This record has it all: from “Moving Back Home #2″‘s opening horn section to the stripped down piano dive sparsity of “Lost In This World”. And “Capsized”, which is just a brilliant song.
I said: Their music is the sound of the wilderness proper, a place where you can drive all night and never see another pair of headlights. (February)

6. The Weakerthans: Reunion Tour [buy]
I joke that they’re the last band I have to see before I die. They’ve certainly come to mean something more than most to me over the years, and this album – a grower though, be warned – was a timely reminder why.
I said: In fifty words? Like liquid mid-twenties angst bubbling in my eardrums, feeling like I’m drowning, although it rarely matches the highs of opener “Civil Twilight”. But, as Virtue the Cat defiantly proclaims that she can’t remember the sound that you found for me, I well up every time. (October, LiveJournal)

5. Elliott Smith: New Moon [buy]
Yes it’s the dreaded posthumous compilation, but as Kate says, Elliott has a long way to go before becoming indie rock’s Tupac. Two discs, and not an ounce of filler between them.
I said: Last night I left my boyfriend for a dead man. The new Elliott Smith compilation is awesome, in the truest sense of the word; it makes me want to stay very still, and very quiet, while at the same time raging and railing against a God that took away a man I loved too soon… [H]ow can you take something that makes your heart fill up with the importance of it all and try to pin it down with your silly little words? (May)

4. The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters [buy]
Just when you thought I hated Scottish music, although it did take an American friend (and a live set supporting Idlewild) to tune me into this slice of hometown greatness. I didn’t actually pick up this album until last week, prompting a catty (supposedly out-of-earshot) comment from the guys behind the desk in Avalanche about how quickly these things start to sell when the magazines print their end-of-year lists.
I said: And then the song exploded, and my world exploded, and something in my heart beat hard and fierce and it was all I could do to keep myself upright. And on stage it was tick tick tick and loud, and grinding, and at the same time gorgeously melodic, and the tinnitus in my ears took until 1am to fade, and it was all so unexpected because the band’s recordings have never really moved me but sometimes, like the old line goes, you have to be there. (October)

3. Bruce Springsteen: Magic [buy]
While indie rock finally acknowledged, and then bowed to, his genius, the man they called The Boss smiled softly to himself and then, in October, dropped an album that pwned all their asses.
I said: Fifty-seven. My dad is fifty-seven and half Italian and he wishes he looked so good. And the new song is pretty fucking rad. (August)

2. Okkervil River: The Stage Names [buy]
Will Sheff: the most literate man in indie rock? Discuss, or don’t, because even at about nintey words a minute The Stage Names – referencing everybody from Joni Mitchell to John Berryman – packs one hell of a punch. Listen to it as a whole and let the explosive ending make loops out of your stomach.
I said: Er, nothing actually, which is almost as shocking as my inability to drag myself out of the house to see them play Sleazys in November. It’s been a late-blooming love affair with this album, though no less sincere for that.

1. The National: Boxer [buy]
No surprise to anybody, there. 2007 was a sewn-up job from the beginning: we’d met beforehand, friends of friends, but it was this year we chatted over coffee and slowly fell in love. Both Boxer and its 2005 predecessor are technically my albums of the year, but in this business the datestamp rules all.
I said: Matt Berninger’s deep vocals are the early morning whisper of a lover you’ll never see again, the sound of a curious intimacy between strangers. (May)

2007′s Honorable Mentions: The Shins, Wincing The Night Away (the charm dulled a little after a while, but it’s still pretty fab) and John Vanderslice, Emerald City (an album I haven’t spent anything like enough time with to fall in love as I ought).

After the jump, I’ll whistle through the rest of this year’s awards without being anything like as long-winded.

Continue reading ‘a hand to take hold of the scene: the 2007 round-up;’

curiously meta;

Published on December 12, 2007 in books & literature, music and the media. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

not the beatles

This is not a photo of the Beatles. My brother demanded I take annoying snaps from way up in the gods all night. Breathe a sigh of relief, for I will not be subjecting you to them all.

The Bootleg Beatles show was a fun, if expensive, night out. The tribute band have been performing together since 1980, so it was no surprise that their recreations of different phases from the Beatles’ career were pretty satisfying: the costumes, in particular, were amazing, as were the multimedia backdrops during the songs. A certain self-awareness added to the entertainment, too: at one point a solo “John Lennon” performed the first verse of Wonderwall. “Tribute bands, eh?” he said, before launching into a singalong “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.”

Their voices weren’t the strongest, but as Dom noted it hardly mattered: all they had to do was encourage a willing audience to sing along at the difficult bits.

So, did it make me nostalgic for an era when the music getting into the charts seemed more worthy than another X Factor winner at Christmas number one? Hell no. X Factor is fantastic entertainment, and we’re all going out to buy fourteen copies apiece of Malcolm Middleton‘s single on Monday, aren’t we? Sorry, Rhydian.

I wonder, and I should stress that I am being facetious here, what it must have been like to live in a world where mass-selling and critically-acclaimed were one and the same? Artists like the Beatles and the Stones sold by the bucketload, yet their influence is still recognised today. Were there no indie snobs in the 60s? How did people gauge their superiority then, before mp3 blogs turned us all into arseholes?

I’ve been reading a smaple chapter I was kindly sent from Carl Wilson’s forthcoming (over here, at least – the book was released in the US this week) contribution to the 33 1/3 series. These wonderful little books are self-contained treatises on noteable albums, ranging from critical analysis to (in my favourite of the series, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists on the Replacements’ Let It Be) pure personal reflection on that album’s meaning in the context of a boy coming of age in smalltown Montana.

Carl Wilson’s approach, in Let’s Talk About Love, is different. Rather than gush over some indie darling or critical giant, he has instead chosen to present a look at big ideas of taste and how we define ourselves in terms of our likes and dislikes. All presented as relating to a multi-million selling album by an artist reviled by us “musos” who sit in judgement, seeing ourselves as the guardians of culture and somehow above the popular. What I’ve read so far is smart, funny and self-deprecating, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the book.

Sample chapters were available by emailing letstalkaboutceline @ yahoo.com – I don’t know whether that’s still the case now the book is out, but you can always try.

Elsewhere, my contribution to Fresh Cherries From Yakima’s list season has been posted. And Okkervil River, who I so criminally neglected in that list, are giving away a free Christmas/covers mixtape at their website.

PS Have just found out that a longtime favourite author, Terry Pratchett, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers. He seems pretty philosophical. All the best, mate.