(Download the 2008 September 1 mixtape, Kyle!)
[It's not nostalgic, revisiting just a few months ago with respect and even whatever degree of gratitude an enthusiastic convalescent can pretend to conjure. this mixtape is from the pre-"enth. conv."-era. it's more like...ah, i dunno what was happening in Sept. anymore - the Convention, right? no, that was the week before... i dunno. does anyone remember September really well?
it's not wrong to like records, even when you're agnostic about being somebody who plays music or sings songs in public. just try to remember all the songs of other people's that you like. that'll help. sartre notwithstanding, other people always help.]
last to die bruce springsteen + estreet. the last thing i’d've expected hot off the breathtaking solo tour and the snooze-y pete segger crap would’ve been a bunch of relatively noisy, starry-eyed and also relatively fast rock action from the Boss. but magic has a lot of it. and a lotta other stuff that’s good, and one really pie-eyed Crazy Horse style jam (“devil’s arcade”. well, that’s what it makes me think of anyway.)
spin rose melberg i dunno how much you know about K records, but i dunno much. i love this melberg solo alb, tho. i did go back and get a a Softies alb, too. once upon a time i went to college in TN. a short-lived ex-i-dunno-if-you-could-call-her-girlfriend put melberg stuff on several (otherwise pretty good) mixtapes. the ex-i-dunno-what is a cellist for emo bands and other crossover successes these days. (wow, that story had something for everyone, as Andy would say.) i printed out the lyrics and chords for this song. they’re sitting right over there.
four provinces walkmen nevermind my half-formed original comments, what a depressing and great new walkmen alb! it’s surely beautiful, but with the exception of this standout caffeinated track and one other (the one called something/something “new year”), You and Me is not what i need to be listening to. also i love the alb cover from this one
green eyes husker du it took me almost a decade to go from respecting/admiring husker du to really “getting it,” then placing them irrevocably in my top whatever-of-all-time pantheon. tho they have lived in my clammiest of ear-hearts for years now, it’s only since 2007 that i’ve gotten in on flip yr wig. oh cripes! how can a song this pretty make me so afraid? grant hart, ladies and women-men.
canvey island baby adam franklin let’s talk lex: 2008 is a shoegaze year in general, but an adam franklin (guy from magnetic morning/swervedriver/toshack highway) year in particular. here’s only a small part of the reason why.
too long in my mind chris connelly another man with a long and prestigious pedigree, here offering some of the finest bowie/walker worship you can find.
peoria airiel here’s a band i’ve gotta hand it to, key finds of mine that play exactly the brand of “is anybody actually reading this?” that i wanna hear.
people laughing make believe my fave “political punk rock song” of 2008.
little twig neil halstead just because this newest neil alb isn’t “exciting” doesn’t mean it isn’t also awesome. you know that as well as i do. neither neil alone nor mojave together have made anything as great as spoon and rafter in a while, but who has, exactly? mebbe the walkmen? and that’s apples and non-apples, too. at least kinda. i love the combo of wash-y acoustic strum with bearded british vocs.
papa won’t you take me back to town bobbie gentry i know nothing about this – so somebody tell me – except that it sounds like a “lady” Tony Joe White.
ice field bright channel i’ve dropped this one on ben and george, a personal fave for the ice-y guitars, non-reverbed drumming and overall albini treatment that makes this such an a-typically tough alb. i’d like to hear the newer one ASAP, having absorbed this s/t-alb entirely. (eugene note: this makes perfect sense for you Yeltsin fans out there.) totally great, evocative song-titling work hear, aussi.
i hate rock and roll st. johnny this is another one of my fave (re-)discoveries of 2008, more really electrifyingly drone-y early 90s stuff. andrew earles is right to shout out st johnny’s “go to sleep” 7-inch, which was one of a few parcels accompanying my first ever mailorder, from AJAX (rip) in shucks, 1992 or 1993. (and of course, T. Moore is right to shout out Earles and Jensen, as discussed in the aforementioned Earles tour-de-90sSY-ish rock)
new low moline regulator watts let’s mix metaphors gleefully over this! oh how deep a river is that hoover family tree?!? outshines even the best-est, most vintage-est rye coalition stuff in representing the best in obnoxiousness a la DC and Louisville and Touch and Motherbleeping Go.
voodoo candle (live at lollapalooza) son volt first heard the gbv-ish, “rock” version of this number as played by the spencer/anders/jay Gob Iron lineup, though it’s originally recorded as a single for jay’s first solo album sebsastopol, which some people like a lot and others see as the pivotal sorta “end of the beginning” of jay farrar’s career. it’s a treat to hear jay farrar play guitar solos, and mebbe it’s jay’s leads that make me enjoy the crap outta how this track reminds me of, shucks, uncle tupelo in a way.
the hammer hamilton bohannon okay, a pallette cleanser. boom! this is where your american funk meets your afrobeat-ish sloganeering and even-more-afrobeat-ish poly-pol-poly.
opto-isolator christmas decorations nick forte from radio 4 AND beautiful skin AND computer cougar AND rorschach also has an arty, ambient, eno-y sythh/wash/space/dream/moon/’pop’/ alb on kranky. that’s a hell of a legacy, really, and it’s a legacy of quality to match any serious hardware store. everything forte touches turns into gilded silk of one kingdom or another, and this track in particular is just a pleasant space, no less and nothing else.
mysterious girl strapping fieldhands thank you magicistragic for reminding me of yet another in the (recently revitalized) succession of siltbreeze greatness. this band should be well-known to each of you, so i’ll say only that this tune in particular is a chasepack candidate for my all-time mitape.
crush shiner i might as well call “builtonaweakspot rock” that whole, old-but-new-to-me canon of MW gtr rock that stood toe-to-toe with the best punk rock of all coasts in them mid-late 1990s. i don’t care that you can’t hang with the vocs. i care enough about the gtrs that i could hang through ani difranco vocs over ‘em, prolly.
raise your head electro group never have i had so much contempt for and suspicion about the very idea of my, lex dexter, playing music or singing or writing songs. but that’s another story – here’s this story: the electro group “new pacifica” alb is exactly what i hear that doesn’t make me wanna not play guitar again, never. best bassplaying in a shoegaze band since lou barlow in dino.
rose melberg cast away the clouds: this is nice. beautiful voiced, intelligent woman doing acoustic galaxy 500-style sonnets. the delivery is as watercolor-y as the album cover. the lyrics are really arresting, and sly in a serious way. none of this sweater-wearing, belle and sebastian fan with a blackberry gesticulating. maybe you should download the title track for a buck somewhere and see what i mean.
mission of burma obliterati: ha. i’ve mentioned my approval of the breadth and depth of the New Heavy Music thing that’s going on. but then you listen to old timers like shellac and bardo pond, let alone the American Northeast’s mission of burma.
guided by voices power of suck: let me be honest and say that this band has effected my biological life and my own awkward attempts at songwriting as much as any other, bob dylan or neil young or anybody. so there’s that.
ryan adams follow the lights: maybe i listen to ryan adams too much. i spend too much time in my own head, making arguments for how he’s actually somehow cool. but in the end it may be a very personal thing: i identify with his self-indulgence, or his 1974 fm dreams, or his succession of personal failures that bely all outward successes, or his always falling short of feeling cool?