noisy upancomers

there's a wonderful genre emerging that as far as i don't know doesn't have a name yet.

it's based in noisy, fast, cluttered, loud overblown vaguely-pop songs by desperate-sounding youths, singing about simple joys and existential terrors. there's parallels to grunge, in its punk-borne, diy feel, struggle-laden sentiment, and textured guitars. but its different; its faster, noisier and less defeated, its the music of kids trying to fight off problems so big they can't be sung about, just sung at, and sing at them we will. and the guitars are a ramshackle soapbox racer to grunge's rusty station wagon, with a driver shouting as he flies by that there's no time to stop, that we have to rock harder and faster just to stay ahead of thinking, over the clatter of wheels threatening to fly off sparking into underbrush.

grunge said 'yeah kids, life sucks, might as well quit'. this music says 'yeah life's horrifying and amazing, but maybe we can win at it'. its somehow hyper-modern, like punk ok computer.

grunge was quitting music, this is fighting music.

or at least running music.

for reference:
japandroids (young hearts spark fire)
the pains of being young at heart
(come saturday / young adult friction)
no age (cappo / teen creeps / everybody's down)
jay reatard
(always wanting more / blood visions / oh its such a shame)
vivian girls (lake house / wild eyes)
wavves (beach demon / so bored)
deerhunter (nothing ever happened / never stops)
and in retrospect, in their own synthy way:
m83 (don't save us from the flames / teen angst)

maybe I can call it post-grunge.

if you say it just a little ironically, that's just about perfect.

so far

The Pains of Being Young at Heart's Come Saturday and Young Adult Friction both stand a good chance of making my top 10 tracks this year. For reference.

Obviously, animal collective's my girls, is also on the shortlist.

Dan Deacon's new album is really great, but I can't decide if I can reasonably recommend it to anyone (which is, by personal account, everyone I know) who didn't like his last one.

Let's put it this way.

Spiderman of the Ring's was like being chased by 3 midgets in blue jumpsuits who were trying to tickle you with feathers. It was absurd and fun and made you smile if you had the right mindset, and at least a little annoying either way.

Bromst is like a huge gauntlet of 10,000 midgets with feathers that you're supposed to run through. On one hand, that's way more annoying. On the other hand, running through that many feathers is almost less ticklish, and the awe of the situation might get you to overlook the spazzy crassness of it all.

In less abstract terms, it is a much more dense, lush album, almost ambient at times, despite being made up of thousands of notes instead of drones. I really dig it, even though it sort of gives me the shakes.

Finally, for shits, here's my 2008 list if I had it to do again:

1. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
2. Bryan Scary - The Flight of the Knife
3. Dosh - Wolves and Wishes
4. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
5. Human Highway - Moody Mororcycle
6. Why? - Alopecia
7. No Age - Nouns
8. Beck - Modern Guilt
9. Jay Reatard - Singles (06-07)
10. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

in retrospect, already

among 2008 music that I've found in the last month, I'd make the following observations:

Bryan Scary's the Flight of the Knife should have been my number 2 or so album of the year. the glammy excess of Queen-via-Mika and Elton-John-via-Fluid-Ounces, the angular propulsiveness of The Chinese Album played double-time, plus I-Should-Coco-worthy bass runs and remarkably early-Genesis-esque proggy flourishes. always a couple beats ahead of you, its a super complex, super fun album; how often does that happen?

Ponytail's Celebrate the Body Electric is probably my #3 favorite song of the year. it just builds and collapses and builds, and uses lulls and noise and discomfort to set up one spazzy, grinning climax after another. it puts you on a leash and jerks.

Late of the Pier's Fantasy Black Channel probably would have made my top 10 albums too, but at this point the actual state of that list has gotten all quantum physics.

My favorite albums of 2008

With comments!

1. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals - Yet again, Girl Talk has just the most enjoyable, most listened to album of my year.
2. Blitzen Trapper - Furr - I loved how weird these guys were, but mellowing out was somehow a winning move. Wonderful, rocking, soulful album.
3. Why? - Alopecia - Just killer rhymes, the best hooky one-more-listen bridges of the year.
4. No Age - Nouns - Great, propulsive, noisy album.
5. Beck - Modern Guilt - People take Beck for granted, I posit that if this was a band's first album, it'd make everyone's top 10.
6. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive - It makes me nervous that each of their last few albums is less amazing than the last, but this is still a great one.
7. Jay Reatard - Singles (06-07) - Add this guy to the list of musicians I want to be for some reason, right under david bowie and dan deacon.
8. Los Campesinos! - We are Beautiful, We are Doomed - Happiest album of the year, most heartbreaking album of the year.
9. Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls - Oh girls, you know so much.
10. Islands - Arm's Way - Half of an incredible album.

This is as I originally posted it at the end of the year, I already have regrets though. The human highway album (moody motorcycle) would probably be as high as number 3 or 4 if I had paid it proper attention before now. Also, I just listened to (previous number 1 album of the year winner) Wolf Parade's album 4 times straight tonight. It lacks the hooky propulsiveness and overal roar of their previous one, but it would probably at least crack the top 10 if I were to redo it. Maybe, it bumps islands, but maybe not the vivian girls, so it depends it the human highway album is taken into consideration. Might still have just missed out. Complex.

Bonus!

Favorite 10 tracks of the year!

(With links to the songs in some form or another [don't watch the max tundra video, its distracting and vaguely bad].)

1. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened - Just builds perfectly, the most satisfying, well crafted, hit out of the park, one more time, song of the year. Backing parts grow to solos and soon you're drowning in hooks, exhausted on the shore at the end of the song. Throw in a killer crunchy bass sound and a perfect, disaffected, defeated, post-grunge sentiment and you win.
2. Why? - These Few Presidents - I'm sorry Yoni. Its not fair. The Vowels or Fatalist Palmastry could also totally make this list, but I feel like spreading the love. There are several songs on this album that are equally crammed with good hooks, this one will have to stand in for them, if nothing else on the strength of the wasp bridge. Great bass sound too.
3. The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer - Great propulsive energy, great song to open a show with.
4. Cut Copy - Feel the Love - I do.
5. Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again - The glitch version of nothing ever happened; great buildup, strangely relatable lyrics for me this year. Love it love it love it sometimes.
6. Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love for Planet Earth - Might have made the top 10 anyway, but one post-dawn german train ride listen propels it right on up. Noisy, awful, gorgeous.
7. Los Campesinos - We are Beautiful, We are Doomed - God fucking dammit.
8. Human Highway - The Sound - Simply killer beat, I miss the unicorns. Once again, a band gets cheated, Pretty Hair could just as easily occupy this slot, or one near it.
9. The Cool Kids - 88 [original version here, actually like the clean version better, but still good] So raw. Bonus points for kicking off my favorite mix of the year (thanks chad!).
10. The Dodos - Ashley - Really pretty, ethereal song. Probably deserves to be higher, but this was more of a batshit high energy year for singles for me; I just didn't have that much time for pretty.

Finally, two discussion questions / gripes on the year:
- Where was all the good rap? And no, I couldn't get into Tha Carter III.
- Where is the band with the holy shit new sound? Where's this year's The Books, The Go Team, Jason Forrest or Dan Deacon? I wasn't quite as voracious in finding music this year, who did I miss?

Hope you found somethinig you dig. Peace!

games

its so true

Games are making progress as an art form. Finally.

I don't think I'm even being sarcastic.

If you have a pc, sincerely do try gravity bone and spelunky if you want 20 minutes of joy, or 12 hours of your life to disappear, respectively.

questionblock.com

for those that didnt catch my status update, put some NES art at questionblock.com, more to come.

live (hawaii) basketball at 3:20 am

dope.

really?

"In the second half, Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming and Ron Artest all left the game with minor injuries" - AP

If you follow basketball at all, this is like a parody headline for the Rockets. I knew that mcgrady and yao were fragile and at least one of them would fall to injuries again this year, but all 3 of these guys in one game? "Minor" aside, in credible.

David Bowie

Just blows my mind. More so than anyone, the beatles, radiohead, even beck, if only barely - david bowie represents the sort of songs I want to write, the sort of rock star I would want to be*. Ziggy is the nuts, but man, listening to hunky dory blows my mind out in a car. If you haven't heard that ablum, just get it, and hear life on mars, quicksand, (especially) andy warhol, queen bitch and (especially) the bewlay brothers and hear all there is to know about what my romantic soul longs for in a song.

* Edit: except maybe dan deacon.

The Fall

was really good. I can't believe that it got so much less press than Pan's Labyrinth, a reasonably similar movie that it trumps at every turn. More focus on the fantasy elements, a more epic scope, originality and vision to them; it even had a better outer-story melodrama. A little slow at times, but pretty can't miss if you ask me.

crack!

here's the logo from 3 upcoming / just-started tv shows.

OK guys, fuck, i get it, your show is so intense it broke its own logo.

Edit: more! This is my new hobby.

 

scotland

5 rounds of pints. then someone buys a round of double shots. then another round of shots. on a thursday. wtf.

powerdeer

for some reason I did this tonight. ten-year-old model paint on bird-shit-stained closet door. taller than me.

the first ratatat album

doesn't get its due. Cherry is as much a birthed-from-the-forehead-of-god classic as anything off Loveless, other than the immortal Sometimes.

Dnd

I'm running a Dnd game for the first time since undergrad, putting some session reports here: http://coralislandnightlife.blogspot.com/

Medium

today I go to karl's and order a sandwich and absent-mindedly ask for a Medium drink. When i get to the window, they give me a small drink. I consider saying something, but of course, its one of those FUCKING HUGE cups that would outclass a large drink in europe, or anywhere else in the world. Only someone who had observed the titanic cup arms race as curiously as I had would even notice. I couldn't even begin to stomach the idea of saying "hey! this is a small! I want a bigger one!" They've got me all turned around so I don't even know what size to expect any more, its some eurasia eastasia doublethink shit.

ylt

yo la tengo's painful might be my favorite album i discovered this year

NES

I am fairly obsessed with the NES games as cultural objects these days. The imagery of them, the levels on which they can be understood, as games, as screens, as individual sprites, as puzzles to be TAS-ed, etc. And a general creative/lazy/postmodern urge has drawn me to a variety of art projects around these things, which maybe I'll post some day.

In particular, super mario brothers is becoming a point of obsession. I wonder what percentage of people my age, especially males, have played that game at least once. The layout of 1-1 is a powerful image. The sprites themselves are burned into our brains (though my image of the turtles has been replaced by the more satisfying, rounded ones from later sequels). There is great lore surrounding the locations of invisible 1-up blocks, and of course the mythic infinite water level.

I did some research into how NES graphics are constructed, read this article on bizarre bugs in the game, and seen this thing that shows you what graphics are loaded at each moment as you play - the underlying skeleton is being revealed, and while it ruins the magic somewhat, it reveals a far more powerful magic underneath, far more interesting, somehow.

Its like if we found out a championship runner was actually a complex construction of gears, springs and counterweights. Sure, he's lost his appeal as a fast runner, but holy shit! How does he actually work?

Braid

If you have an xbox360, there's no excuse not to play Braid. Gorgeous graphics and music, extremely satisfying puzzles, and a compelling, if cryptic storyline*. The whole thing just comes together, one of my favorite game experiences ever.

* That I was going to resist calling Lynchian but then David Lynch was one of five folks mentioned in the special thanks section of the credits so maybe its valid. Plus, it really is. I could go on for paragraphs.

play your part!

The new girl talk lives up to the last one. Hit it.