Nelie Mckay will you marry me....or atleast never stop making music.

Ok first off my mixtape is awsome. I'm just finishing up the song placement. It's totally got a creepy stalker feel. That probablly comes from playing Braid relentlessly for the last few weeks....i still haven't finished that devil game. Anyway I'm gonna say let's try and post our mixes by next sunday the....i think 7th or 8th. Then we can like review the tapes and post our reviews in the next week after that.

Ok so I'm reviewing another album from last year.By last year I mean 2 years ago. I bought the album a year ago and never really listened to it till recentlly. By recentlly I mean like an hour or so ago...Just kidding I've given this a lot of thought over the last few days.

Nellie Mckay is back ladies and gentleman. Ok maybe none of you listen to her. Well shame on you. Get away from me is a PHENOMENAL pop gem. It came out in 2004 and still has a lot of repeat in my ears. I actually bought the re-release that came out like 2 years ago. Anyway this girl is fucking hillarious. She's like a one girl Monty python singalong. Her newest/2 year old album Obligatory Villagers is like a classical musical. Like if you close your eyes you can kinda make out a story...missing the chatting in between songs. Nellie is a really supberb aranger. The songs really feel like classic 50's style musical. I can see guys in navy costumes and girls with huge hair and red ribbons dancing across the stage. Her lyrics are her sharpest ever. I agree with allmusic.com it takes a few listens to really catch on to what she's going on about. This is a giant step between albums. Pretty little head her second album had a few phenomenal songs but was really bloated and had some kinda miss steps. Kinda like melloncollie accept without the bonus of cultural importance. But Obligatory Villagers is a fun intelegent well written romp. Mckay is a really talented muscian and artist. Hope she keeps her shit up.

PS THAT"S A BOAT



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Mixtapes

(Photo by Mike)

Ok Yonny, I will see your mixtape challenge-- as ive mentioned, my post was deleted due to mp3s posted on it, so listen.grooveshark.com or imeem.com are probably our best shots for posting the playlist. With both of them you can add your own songs to the site if they arent there. What do you think, a week? Hopefully I could do a mixtape by then. I have also been working on a post about 5-star songs. I have 13,000 mp3s or so, with about half of them rated (John knows how my family is-- Drew with his GLB and video game drafting and me with my bird lists-- we are organizers. I love rating my music) and much of what hasnt been rated yet is stuff I don't really listen to much or is my wife's-- and I have only 101 5-star songs. These are the songs you can't live without. To hear them is to change the flow of your day. So I would love to do a post with covers of my 5 star songs, but most of them don't have covers. So I am trying to find some. OK, still super busy all the time, but in and out of love mixtape challenge #1 is on. Drew, Dan? You guys in? That goes for anyone else out there, too. Just post your list in the comments section on this post or wait til ours come out on Sunday and post then. Mixtape Sunday! Just to recap the theme-- Relationship from meeting to tragic end-- can be a double tape due to the heaviness of the subject, and because John87 already did it.

Mixtape,tape worms and M83 and the Walkmen on Conan o'brien

So i have a wierd relationship with conan o'brien. I love him. Desperatelly. I have since highschool. H made it ok to be a nerdy white kid. Well not all right i just thought hey maybe there's a way to become famous because of it. ANyway me and my friend Aaron always said we'd run out to L.A. one day and make our own conanesque talk show. He'd be the lanky uber nerd and I'd be the andy ricter side kick. Well those dreams faded and Aaron is one of my least favorite people on the face of the earth. So i fell out with conan...one of those wierd association things yer brain does. Well recentlly i got back in to mr. CO. And man two days in a row he has had great musical guests. He always has had great music taste. Great bands that only get tv exposue on his show, the max weinberg 7, his own songs...Obrien is a nerdy indie kid.



Anyway the two performances were by The Walkmen and M83. Try and look them up on the olde you tube . I was really impressed by both these bands. Late night talkshows have got to be hard for musicians. You only get one song, about 5 minutes, in front of an audience that is sitting down and not really even there to see you. Both of these bands really knocked it out of the park. I'm amazed at the walkmen's vocalists. He has one of the best howling screams maybe ever and he's really great at just going from scream to sing in the blink of an eye. M83 really played the shit out of Kim and Jesssie. This was one of my favorite songs and albums from last year. M83 have a very electronic sound, heavy (atleast on this album) in 80's synth. To see them pull this song off live and so well was just another notch in a talented bands bedstand.They were so restrained and really seemed to play perfectly together. Also they have some amazing equipment. Really wanna see those guys live.

Anyway, mike has yet to come up with a mix tape idea. I've been carefully crafting a sort of story arch double album mixtape. Yeah complex shit don't look at it directlly. But it's gonna be a relationship going from meeting someone to the eventual tragic break up. I got this from my little ipod shuffle experiment, which went on for about a week and 1100+ songs before my sis captured the pod and stared playing ryan adams. 99% of songs on my ipod and probablly everyones is about either being in or falling out of love. So I'm taking some of my favorites and editing them into a sort of concept album....so if you wanna step up to the plate and try to best me go for it.I'll try and finish this up after super bowl sunday (go cardinals fuck steelers).

That's it. Oh I don't know how to edit this web page, i.e posting comments and changing what it is that's 'blowing out my speakers'. I'm dumb like that.

The good,bad and crazy of the art of ipod shuffling

Ok so I've championed the art of the album as a whole more then once on this here website. And I stick by my belief that now one can truly be considered an artist in the field of music without being able to create an album...elvis i'm looking at you buddy( on a side note one of the best lines ever in a song ever is from Public Enemy: Elvis might of been a hero to some but he doesn't mean shit to me...hells yeah.). Anyway lately, and especially in the morning while driving I have had the serious problem of trying to decide what music to listen to while doing said driving. So I've been doing the ole I pod shuffle. Taking all 16772 songs on my lil juke box and mixing them together.

Today alone I've poured through 283 songs...not that i've listened to them all, i skip a lot....Let me pause here and say that I've come to realise as much as I love the man there is no reason for anyone, let a lone a lame suburbanite as myself to have 28 lil' wayne albums...4 full albums and like 2 more albums of his best songs....plus everything he's ever done on anyone elses records is enough...But the really cool thing is I'm listening to a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally get around to listening to...I'm listening to soul coughing right now and loving it, that only ever happens when I'm around mike.Now It's bring da ruckus by wu-tang clan."bring tha bring tha mutha fuckin ruckus'' still the best opening to a hip hop album maybe ever and i'm sure someone could argue one of the best hip hop albums ever. But there we go I'm thinking and talking and enjoying music i usually just pass over.

The thing is we live in an era of music unlike any other before us. There is an infinite amount of content at the fingertips of any who reach for it. My parents talk about having like a dozen LP back in their highschool and college days, and my parent are pretty music savy: bowie,eno,queen,csny, niel young...they like good stuff and like it a lot. Can you imagine only having 12 records....I can't imagine going a year without getting 12 new albums. I'm obtaining through questionable paths 8 albums right now.(now i got pahses and stages by willie nelson playing, see this is fun). Anyway there is so much you can have at your fingertips. I have about 1400 albums on the ole ipod. 1400!!! that's a lot even by the amount that i digest daily. so of course there are things that are being pushed to the side.This tends to make songs and music in general less important. I mean in reality there are probablly 12 albums i could name that are like the ultimate of ultimate of importance to me and that literaly have attached themselves to my soul.oooh there's an article, john's big ones and why they are so...strangely enough me and my mom share one of these intense album connections and we will never listen to that album at the same time....try to guess what album it is and if you get it right you get 80 indie points 600 friend points and a cookie.

So back to the point, maybe there isn't one...there usually isn't one, like a Fiery Furnace song...(1917 off the FF's blueberry boat album is in my ears). We have so much music floating around us just there for the taking. So what do we choose to listen to. Does that make each song, each album more or less important. When you pick to listen to A over B are you saying A is better because it's getting that precious air time in between your ears. What does that say about you...for me I'm a lot more country and a much bigger pussie then any of you can imagine...shhhhh. ('there were rumors he was into field hockey players'....ok 1000 indie points if you can tell me what that little opening tangent is from, hint: it's spoken in the studio before the song starts and it's a girl bass player saying it)

One of my favorite things about this little shuffle effect is the mixed up memories that come a long with the music. I never realised how one song can send me spining on a daydreamic tangent. I was thinking about tennis class in bisbee arizona and my old freind nigel for the first time in like 5 years because of a beck song i hadn't heard in just about as long. (now i'm groovin to Be thankful for what you got by Massive attack, and thinking about katie melocik my ex-friend aaron's cool sister, who introduced me to this band, and the art of smoking bannana peels). I've just been in this wierd state all day thinking about all these personal connections that specific songs that randomly come up on shuffle have on my life. It's like this wierd dream state, the people at the coffee shop must have thought i was really high, just stairing off into space smilling and giggling to myself...wierdo.

Here's the problem, and especially for me. Music is an addiction to some. Obviouslly i have a pretty bad case. Listening to music like this just juices me up. I've now started a list of things I want to listen to again, things i want to share, things i want to blog about, songs i need to download. I mean it's totally absorbing. To the point where real and important things in life, like watching battle star galactica are going to be possed over so that i can feed the addiction. I mean I've added 11 albums to my dl list since i started this little blog. Oi i am sick. And now I've written a lot and have really no clear point , thesis or agruement. See blogging is like a kloisterman novel...it's just rambled barely coehisive thought based around cultural events. And yes let's end with that reference and critisism...(oh and i'm ending with 'If not now then When' by the Books...and if you have never listened to the albums Lemon of pink or Lost and Safe by the books you would do yourself a favor and mind meld with that beautiful shit.)

I've got 4 minutes before my character in WoW lands in Marshal's refuge so let me tell you why the rock hall sucks...

The Rock and roll hall of fame is a museum about music....That should be the first warning to everyone. The second warning sign is that the rock and roll hall of fame is in Cleveland Ohio. Yeah I love this city as every other miserable brainwashed browns fan, but come on..... really? I mean they don't even hold the awards ceremonies here....ok this year they are and they are gonna be lame.

There's lots of reasons why the concept itself of a rock and roll hall fame is just stupid. What is rock and roll? Who decides what is considered rock and roll. Apparentlly Grand Master Flash and Wanda Jackson are similar. Also the people who get inducted are so steralised and uncontrovertial....Black Sabath got passed up i believe 5 times...black sabbath the band that created and perfected a modern staple in pop music Heavy Metal don't get imediate recognition. And yeah I'd like to nominate some people well let's just say Sonic Youth was up for induction in 2007 and they still aren't in....lame

Ok besides tangents on why the nomination process is lame the museum itself is ridiculouslly boring. It's a museum to rock and roll....i already said that...but take a second and think about that. A museum to the most explosive performers in human art that we have....and there's a museum to it. with things hanging on the wall, and not even good shit that leads to insight of the artistic mind, it's just junk that got throw on a wall....jimi hendrix's drawings from when he was 12 about the USC football team....yeah i don't care....his mixer was kinda cool. I mean there were tvs with like 5 minute repeating clips about different eras, but they were all the generalized thoughts sort of redigested. I mean we all know that there were hippies in san fransisco fighting "the man" and doing lots of drugs. But like where did that start from. Where did lsd come from, who were the originators of the san fransisco sound, where were the cool places to go? I mean there were books there documenting all of that, but it was behind glass.I mean i learn more from watching fucking VH1 then i did at the museum i payed 22 dolars to get into.

I guessone thing that makes me so mad is that people are sooooooo ignorant about music. How pop music affects us all day everyday. You hear one song everyday in some form or another. I just think that if people became more informed about what they were listening to they might make better choices, look deeper into the art form they are so involved in and actually take something back more then a simple smile on their face. There's alot more then the music in your ears. There's the thoughts the lyrics the vast pyramid of history behind influences and sounds. How did we get here? What is this artists saying about the past present future? Do they have anything to say at all? Here's a museum dedicated to this great art form and most of the space is taken up by cars these people used to drive and dummies wearing stage outfits. And all the clothes and cars are nice pieces from the high points of the artists careers. Where's the ast bottle of jack that janis joplin drank. Where's the tshirt and jeans jon bonom puked himself to death in?Where's the outfit madonna wore when she walked into sire records off the street and demanded a record deal? where's that cool shit. The history laid out in away that leads to insight and thought. Not a giant white room with 25 pictures that represents the history of the African American influence in rock....and sorry danny but what the fuck was whitney houston doing in there.

Anyway this is what is wrong with music. Well it's a symptom of the whole. We can just listen and not think about it. We can have all the young kids get shit cramed down their throats for half their lives until they just don't have the energy to look up something genuinelly cool.I mean brittnay spears has had her career resurected more then once....why.? Because nobody cares that she makes terrible trite music with no heart. I mean she could have made some phenomenal music, the bitch has been through a lot, instead you get blackout and circus. Yeahy. And she will probablly be in the roc hall one day...sigh. I have to agree with Jonny Rotten who when asked why he and his band mates weren't going to accept the nomination to the hall " it's a piss stain"

Dar Williams Mix for Anne

For Anne's Open House Background Music

Mike's Best Songs of 2008

Well I already posted it once, but Blogger deleted it because I tried to share some of the mp3s. Anyways, here is my list, minus a couple songs that weren't on Grooveshark. I tried only 1 song per artist, but there were 2 amazing Drive-By Truckers songs this year and I had to include them both, "Two Daughters and a Wife" and "That Man I Shot" were tied for number 3. Also not showing on the playlist, "We Sing in Time" by The Lonely Forest. Technically the album comes out this April, so you can use it on your list at the end of this year-- I bet it'll be considered. Check them out on myspace

I'm just gonna keepem comming New Ideas and New music 2009

Ok so I like mike's idea of a mixtape contest...I'll let you come up with the rules on that one Mike.

I also think we should try to get more people writing on here. I'm gonna talk to a couple of friends and see if they wanna start making posts...the more the merrier I think, then we can have actual bloggy type suggestions and what not. Danny you mentioned a friend of yours who was into the same stuff as me, try to get her around to the idea.

I also thought we could have a little music book club sort of thing. Pick an album every week or so...everyone get it, listen to it and write a review and discuss. could be interesting. Just don't want everyone throwing down big bucks...we might wanna pick some back channels to discuss ways to get the music spread around wink wink nudge nudge.

Ok so New music for the year I'm looking forward to this year...

A.c. Newman- Lead singer of the New pornographers, he's never put out anything i didn't like

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- they said they were taking a big break and going to the studio in august so i can only assume they're gonna follow up Show your Bones...it's been like 4 years.

Belle and Sebastian- They should put something out. They have a steady stream of eps rare material and what not...but i heard rumblings they were gonna put something out soon.

Decemberists- Yeah a full rock opera by these guys. They put out some good songs last year on the Bridesmaids eps. But I love their full albums.

Radiohead- believe it or not they are already back in the studio. Hail to the Thief took them 2 weeks to record so maybe we can get something new from them this year...that would be a long stretch though.

Arcade Fire- I really hope they get over the sophmore slump. Really neon bible was just meh compared to Funeral which was spectacular.

Joanna newsom- I'm just hopping and preying here. I just want to see her live again. Seriouslly she is the most angelic person, there's this white glow that emulates from her hands to her magical harp.

Fiona Apple- I wrote the last post about her after i got word that she had new material ready to go. Not sure the entire truth or when to expect this, but i always like her work.

Jay-z- Blue print 3. Blueprint 1 andAmerican Gangster was great, but kingdom come and Blueprint 2 sucked....let's hope it's the former on the 3rd blue print.

Andrew Bird - can't remember what the name is but his new album is comming out in like a week or two. Should be good, he's always consistent.

Metric- Emily haines said there was for sure gonna be a new metric album this year. Probablly by the spring time. So yeahy. In the mean time check out the mainstream ep that came out this year, It was pretty damn good.

Sarah Harmer- She's one of my favorites ever and it's been way to long for someone who has their own damn studio to put out new material. So yeah do it already.I have written you many love letters and sent you many small dead animals....you owe me.

I'd like to see a new shins album out this year, but i doubt that will happen.

Oh yeah Sufjan Stevens should finally put out his next states album this year. Everyone thinks it's gonna be calfornia. I'm gonna roll the dice and say he goes for Alaska. Come on he could write like 8 songs about Sarah Palin and the caribou and the pipeline and eskimos and snow and fish and polar bears...well if he doesn't write it then I am.

Ok well that's all people I'm hopping for in 2009. Feel free to add anything you might be lookin forward to.

Beck+Scientology=suck and XTC+Skylarking= yeahy happy

Yeah I'm on a role here. I seriouslly am just going to continue to write posts about things I think are important in music. I doubt there's many people reading these so...here you go Mike this is about XTC a really great band and their magnum opus Skylarking. This is also about album construction and Beck being an idiot scientologist.

Ok so if I haven't made it known yet, I love the album as a format. I gues what this means to me is that when a band or artist or monster under the bed puts out a cd I really wanna hear a whole product. Not just one song then the next with no connection or flowing theme. This doesn't mean all the songs have to continually work into one another. Just that they should have the same sort of feel and emotion behind them. An album should be a snapshot of the artist during the time they made it. A sure sign once great artist have fallen apart is when they force music to come out and their albums sort of start sounding confusing...I'm looking at you Beck (i get it your a crazy scientologist that's no excuse for the last three albums you've put out....Modern Guilt, yeah i liked it better when it was called mutations and it didn't suck and also...cut your hair)

Ok so at some point I'm gonna mention XTC. XTC is this great british band. I got into themonly after they'd broken up and gotten back together. They had one of those rare comeback albums that was both high quality and not a retread on their old material....It was called Apple Venus vol 1....if you check the band out check out bothe these albums their both stellar stuff. Anyway XTC are one of those hidden gems we probablly would have all been into if we were born a decade earlier and in England....there's a lot of those.

So yeah Skylarking is an excellent example of an album that's got a theme and organised sound to it. The sort of all around theme is nature and the freedom of running about in the english country side...you should all try it one day....There's birds chirping, songs about rolling in the grass and even in the downer songs the melodies keep the feel light and upbeat. Todd Rudgren produced this album, look him up he's important, and he reallt pulled XTC out of their new wave tendencies and moved them into more melodic and organic sounds.

One of my favorite things is how the two writers (Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding) hit on so many varied topics. On the same album you've got songs about making love in the countryside, providing for a new family, getting married and children asking god if these there and if he is when he's going to save him. It's the melodies and pop arangements that keep everything together. Rudgren said he struggled a long time in trying to order and arange the songs on the album so that they would sound more coehsive. Like making a mixtape that's a real mix tape and not just songs thrown together. In fact when I originally bought this album I thought it was a best of collection of their early work. It wasn't until I looked at the liner notes did i realise it was a single album.

So yeah XTC's Skylarking is a great example of an album that the band worked to combine theme, melody, tone and song placement to create a full album.You should check it out at your local library...or no, just go download it on Itunes.Or buy the actual cd...if people do that still...losers. But make sure you get the version with Dear God on it. It's the best song on the album and was originally a bside. But strangely enough a song about god with a child talking through half of it was a huge hit in england. So they took out one song and put on Dear God.I know those people are wierd right.Or you could be totally cool like me and get the album and the extra song.I am awesome...

EDIT BY MIKE:
Skylarking

So here's one for the other guys and their irational fear of female singers

Ok I'm wired, bored and have about 60mg of different legal chemicals pumping through my body...let's talk about Fiona Apple. Or more directly let's talk about her album Extrordinary Machine. It's a rare case and not many people paid attention to it. But they should have, there's lots of great songs on this anomally.

What's so different about this album is that there are two versions of this cd. The Jon Brion produced version that got scratched at the last moment and the actual album that got released. All but one of the songs are the same...in the sense of lyrical content and structure, but the executions are dramaticlly different.

A little background information. Jon Brion is a producer, composer, movie scorer guy. He does a lot of great work, most notably Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless mind. He's also been the producer on some of your favorite works by the Eels, Rufus Wainwright and I'm not positive but i think a couple of things Beck did. Anyway he has a total sound of his own and you, after listening to some of his work, pick out a track that he's worked on. There's this heavy string dominated sort of chugging orchestral feel to it. On Extrordinary Machine the orchestra swirls in and out all over the place. They dominate some of the songs and in some places it sounds like the singer and the background music are fighting for the dominante presence on each song. This really works for most of the songs. Especially "Not about Love" "Get Him Back" and "Not about Love". In these songs the fighting back and forth emphasises the anger, confusion and just raw emotion of the songs. She really seems to be standing on stage and the music is taking the place of whoever these songs are directed at....I'm looking at you Paul Thomas Anderson, look him up.

Anyway rambling on...So yeah Brion and Apple put together almost the entire album before the record label came down and said they didn't want to release it because there weren't any singles on it....aka what happened to Yankee Foxtrot Hotel by Wilco...So Apple took the time to go over the songs again. She decided she didn't really like all the mixes and that Brion had really taken the songs in a direction she wasn't pleased with. So in walks Mike Elizondo, who is....you guessed it Dr. Dre's protegee. Yes that's right Dr. Dre and Fiona Apple. Well it's not exactlly that. What Elizondo did was strip down the songs and put the vocals first on the tracks that needed it. What came out was really great sounding more Top 40 friendlly album. Which isn't really a bad thing, not that this album sold, I'm sure no one reading this has heard it.

Ok so what's the point of my jib jabbing to a bunch of people who don't exist. Well it's this. Producers matter. They change the whole direction of sound. They translate the bands ideas and live sounds into something formated and constucted. Radiohead call Nigel Godwritch (SP?) their th member( he's produced all their good albums). ruined the strokes and Regina Spektor in one year...I fucking hate that guy. So when you see one of your favorite bands has a new album comming out, check out who's producing it. Or go through your cd collection/scroll through your Ipod and check out who produced some of your favorite albums. You might have a couple producers pop up over and over again, maybe check out some of the work they did with bands you don't know. You might be pleasentlly surprised..... Ok it's football time....football football...so yeah have fun, write some comments so that we know someone is reading this shit. I talk to myself at night for hours, don't need to spend time writing to no one as well...assholes. Just kidding I love you fuckers.ut not enough to check my spelling or grammar.

Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion...a review...yes i like it

Ok I'm gonna first come clean and say I used to hate Animal Collective. Hate. I hated Sung Tongs. I thought it was annoying and couldn't understand why everyone was not only talking about it ,but talking about how much they loved it. So there I don't always know what I'm talking about. I don't really love Sung Tongs now, but I like it enough and enjoy individual songs mor ethen the whole album.

Like most things in music that I start out hating I now Fucking love Animal Collective. I went out and bought the vinyl version of MerriWeather Post Pavillion on tuesday after I had downloaded the album...and i don't have my record player at my house....or a job to afford it. Strawberry Jam and seeing them live was what did it for me. I may not have described to everyone reading this just how incredible it was to see them live in San Fransisco, but it was my favorite concert ever and it literally rearanged my brain chemistry....everytime I hear a song they performed that night I flash back and just smile dumbly.Whenever I want to get in a good mood I throw on strawberry Jam and wallah insta happiness.

Now I open with my initial hat for Sung Tongs because admitadelly Animal Collective isn't for everyone. I played it for my mom today and she politelly gave it 3 songs before asking to play actual music. This isn't your average pop album, the song structures are not well...they aren't really there and the lyrics don't dip deep into storytelling or charecterization or really any normal themes in modern music. What is here is a sort of dreamy ocean of emotion...good emotions. Happiness joy smiles and grins and kisses on cheeks thrown into blenders and then pieced together again.

This is the Collective's (Panda Bear,Geologist and Avey Tare... Deakon isn't on this album) pop album if you will, and it's much more "listenable" to the average "listener". The album is a cullmination of all the bands earlier works including their side and solo projects...Panda Bear's Person Pitch in particular is dominating here... It's like they sat down, looked at their entire discography and pieced together all the pieces that work. Or more likely they took all the songs that they loved playing live and how they loved plaing them and used that as a template for the new album. In interviews the band has called this their Soul album, meaning the bands true soul comming through for the first time. And yeah i can feel that.For the first time they don't sound like they're emulating the music they use to like but instead really fine tunning their sound to be the definitive Animal Collective sound.

I could talk about individual songs or lyrics, but no...this is an album.It flows together as a whole. Much like a live set these songs seem to tie into one another perfectlly, there's very few breaks in the sound. It's a lot like panda bear's solo album, the ambient sounds overtaking the music only to fade to the background again as the next piece starts.I also can't really pin point a favorite part. I've caught my self singing, humming or thinking about almost every song on this album. I acually woke up this morning mumbling 'lion in a coma lion in a coma can't you smell the aroma'...it confused my dad. My favorite thing about this album is the tone and sort of charecter it take. It's so child like an innocent, so fun in a skipping threw the park kinda way. The band sings about family, friends and falling in love. They sound so sure of these ideas of joy and happiness it just so reassuring in such fucked up times.

My favorite aspect of any music is the way it transforms your prain chemistry. The sort of psychic force it has on you. Sad songs making you sad, or comforting you when your upset. Happy songs filling out those car rides with the windows down. Dance music making you shake your ass like an idiot from midnight till 4am....think about that, what other legal substance has such control over our emotions and lives in such vastly drastic ways then music. Animal Collective fits in with the best. They are a joy. They're smart talented artists who really know what they want and how to create it. I envy them and pity anyone who won't give this album a serious try. Your missing out. Just open up, throw those old thoughts on what music is out the window and jump down the rabbit hole for awhile. It's fucking crazy down here and it's much much better then real world.

John's Post is 6 Minutes Old; Time to Bump it

Hey, sorry John-- I liked your post, but I just wanted to post this link:

Hypem Zeitgeist

I don't know if anyone but me from the site posted their list to this metalist, but it was one of my favorite reads last year, and helped me find a lot of music I missed.

Other News: my fave songs are ready and I just need to build a playlist for them-- I have 20 easily, but I'm narrowing to ten, and I have a few more post ideas as well, so look for more from me. Anyone for a playlist competition?

Boring quiet first review of 2009 for an album that came out last year.

So yeah there's lots to talk about and not a whole lot of time. First I definetally want to throw together another list of albums to check out from last year. Ten is never really enough especially this year when there was a lot of great material released. So yeah I'll try and put some more suggestions together in the next few days. There's also great stuff comming out for 2009. I'll try and make a list of things for people to keep an eye out. Animal Collectives new album is AMAZING. I'll give a review later but I want to listen to it some more.

So yeah let's start the first new year's post with an album i didn't really checkout till the begining of this year. Mount Eerie's ''Lost Wisdom". This is a tiny litttle album, 10 songs in 23 minutes. If you aren't familiar with Mount Eerie they are really just one guy: Phil Elverum. Elverum used to make music under the moniker of The Microphones and their album The Glow pt. 2 is a phenominal piece of work. On ''Lost Wisdom" Elverum teams up with Julie Doiron who has some great albums in her own discography. Elverum sound is always about space. These are very low fi, no production accoustic works. It sounds like it was recorded in an abandoned house. The ambient sounds of the space that these songs were recorded in are always present and this makes the sound incrediblly intimate. Doiron is an amazing addition to the sound. Her harmonies and shaky voice really add to the pallet of the album. Pallet wow what the fuck does that mean. My favorite song on here is 'Voice in Headphones'...50 indie cred points if you can tell me what the backround chorus is from...no looking it up either it took me three listens to figure it out, and it's awsome. This is a really great quiet piece of accoustic music. If you like Sun Kill Moon, Jana Hunter, Iron and Wine i Highly recomend checking out this album. And if you like this one go look up The Glow pt. 2 by The Microphones. Anyway yeahy there you go. I'll write some more stuff later in the week, but I'm sharing one computer with 4 family members right now and it's worse then sharing the bathroom at a frat house. Anyway have fun fuckers.