They Shoot Goats

They Shoot Horses Don't They - Emptyhead
I've posted about this band before, but now they actually have an album that you can buy, all chocked full of Brechtian marching band oompah punk rock music. I know that making something sound all pretentiously annoying isn't probably the best way to sell it, but I assume you're listening to it while you're reading and are starting to realize how difficult pigeonholing this band really is. The horn explosion from 2:10 on is pure bliss.
[New alum out on Kill Rock Stars]

The Mountain Goats - Cut Off Their Thumbs
I've been meaning to post this song for over a month now. I originally discovered it on the Mountain goats website in December, alongside another excellent track called "Deserters". Quoting John Darnielle:

They're both favorites of mine; "Deserters," technically a "demo" though the word has always given me fits, is the song that sparked the We Shall All Be Healed album, and has a number of images that are sort of touchstones for me. Both work best if you play 'em real loud.

"Cut Off Their Thumbs" embodies everything that has made the last three Mountain Goats albums almost totally flawless. Narrating a brief and relatively uneventful snippet of a larger story, the song is almost obsessively focused on recreating a specific feeling and atmosphere. And, like the other songs from We Shall All Be Healed, it's crammed with self-hatred, depression, boredom, and paranoia. I guess the chorus ("I'm gonna kill everybody in this room") sort of hits you over the head with the song's bleak message, but it's also sandwiched between some very beautiful writing. I also recommend playing this at a high volume.
[You can find the other track, Deserters, at the Mountain Goats website]

Adios

So John Darnielle , Guided by voices and Daniel Johnston walk in to a bar. They hash it all out and create a large venn diagram. From this diagram they find the point that their three sensibilities intersect. They call this point Charlie McAlister, lyrics like Darnielle, exploring the possibilities of the 4 track like GBV and as crazy as Johnson.


So My Favorite McAlister album has to be Mississippi Luau. It is a concept album that explores what would happen if Mississippi were in the South Pacific. This is the song that hooked me(Thanks Kevin). While is starts out pure good, it just better when the chorus hits.


Darla Come Down To Jackson from Mississippi Luau


While You cannot buy Mississippi Luau new anymore (though many copies sit in used record bins in a store near you[thanks Braden]). I was still able to buy a copy of the very nicely packaged Death Water Estates from Scratch records, I'm sure they have more.

Lucky Day From Death Water Estates


Now if you find that your luck has run out you can always look to the still in print and freely downloadable album I'll See You In Hell, which is the newest work (that I know of) by McAlister.

First we have a non-musical number, my favorite parts are "Charlie please don't burn the audience!" and " The cops could never help this situation"

Austin TX 3-15-01 Piano Reeves from I'll See You In Hell

I think David will been particularly keen on the next song, Shipwrecked Girl and Crabman. Insane lyrics with a catchy walking bass line!

Shipwrecked Girl and Crabman from I'll See You In Hell

What really distinguishes all of McAlister's music is the recording quality. He manages to make everything sound broken and distorted yet pleasant at the same time. There is a craft and intention behind these sounds.

Goto Catsup Plate. Tape Mountian (well worth a look for all the other fine albums that are freely downloadable). Unoffical page. Or the Official McAlister page



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I wont be able to post for the next three months, I'll be on a surf trip in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I promise to come back rejuvenated. Till then I'm sure Amy , David and Ian will take good care of you.

ps if anyone has any recommendations in either of these countries please email me!

CiTR presents:

Live at Thunderbird Radio Hell happens every week on CiTR 101.9 Fm in Vancouver B.C. Canada. For almost 20 years, touring and local bands have been put to tape while giging in the staff lounge and enduring the various hosts, namely Nardwuar, Evan Symons and the more subdued current organisers. The list of bands is impressive (especially to those mid 90's Vancouver-philes like myself): The Headcoats, Bum, Cub, Daddy's Hands, DBS, Gaze, Gob, July 4th Toilet, Maow, The Spaceshits, Submission Hold, The Tonics, The Evaporators, The Smugglers and... Destroyer. These tracks are from a late Thursday night in 1996.

Destroyer - Live at Thunderbird Radio Hell - Track 4

Destroyer - Live at Thunderbird Radio Hell - Track 8

Destroyer - Live at Thunderbird Radio Hell - Track 9

Phoning it in

A long time ago I was contacted by Nadav from Rhode Island. He was involved with a thing called phoning it in on WEHL 88.5 Providence. He wanted my band to phone up the show and play a 30 minute set over the air. With pleasant thoughts of lying around in high school listening to My Chinchilla from Cub's Come Out Come Out, I heartily agreed. A year later, the accumulation of awesomeness is amazing. I am fucking blown away. I can't even believe that I was a part of this. Please go listen to Billy Childish! Jad Fair! Julie Doiron! Hank! Rough Bunnies! BARR! The Cannanes! Little Wings! Hugh J. Noble! Karl Blau! Daniel Johnston! Thanksgiving! Bobby Birdman! The Mountain Goats! Weirdo/Begeirdo! It's so amazing/great I don't even care if it is old internet news!
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....later: stupidly rare Destroyer tracks somewhat related to this post.

Thinking Fellers Soundtracks

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 is easily one of my favourite bands of all time. A stroke of luck when buying an album from my local record store (motivated solely by the silliness of the band's name) introduced me to a world of absurdist improvised/meticulously crafted pop music that saved my life at least twice. They are also one of the few bands to have recognized that instrumental movie and television soundtracks have spawned some of the best music of the past half-century. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have time to do a post on some of their original songs.

TFUL 282 - Selections From a Fistful of Dollars
Ennio Morricone is the undisputed master of the soundtrack, so it's not surprising that the band would choose to cover his work. That they could successfully condense the entire Fistful of Dollars score into a seamless medley is something else entirely. I also think that this track is the best possible proof that a good soundtrack is, in itself, sufficient to create dramatic tension or any other on-screen mood. As an aside: I remember reading once that Sergio Leone actually had Morricone write some of the spaghetti western soundtracks before they began filming, with Leone actually basing the actors' directions on Morricone's score.

TFUL 282 - Star Trek
A friend once isolated the precise Star Trek episode that this song is based on. If I rembember correctly, I think Kirk is fighting a creature named Mugato on some planet that looks disconcertingly like a soundstage in southern California. After listening to this, I gained newfound respect for sixties television soundtracks. Seriously, some of them are quite amazing.

[Most of the TFUL 282 albums are out of print, but you can still find a few here]

Songs of Interest

This post is like being hit over the head with indie rock in the classic sense. It is a gift to all of our bearded readers.

Pavement - Greenlander
"I can't believe someone has the audacity to post another pavement song." "As though nobody's heard pavement." "As though pavement needs more exposure." "Yeah, as though pavement is so obscure that they need another blog post about them." "But this song?" "This song is something else." "I don't know." "Seriously, it sounds like tundra." "That's the easiest way to describe this song. It's kind of weak to say something like that." "Ok, it sounds like snowfall." "Again, weak." "Ok, it sounds like sleeping." "..." "Ok, it sounds like how I'm feeling right now."
[buy]

Karl Blau - Into the nada
This song teases you by making you think that it's, at first, a motown rehearsal and, within a few seconds, a live reggae track. It doesn't take long, though, before you realize that it's the hidden track on Paul Simon's "Graceland". Where has this song been all this time, you're probably asking? I know. I, personally, would have loved to sing this at the top of my lungs on a long car trip with my parents circa age 11.
[buy]

Hayden - Bass Song
I love this song because it's about the kinds of scenarios that are always running through my head when I'm riding on transit or sitting at home with the lights out. I especially enjoy the image of the murderers walking through a yard of undisturbed snow while the victim is obliviously making something beautiful.
[buy]

Diamonds

So there once was an album on a cassette label. The artist presented 24 Ideas for songs, and told them to pick the best 16. The label thought that all of them were good and it was difficult but they chose the best 16, and used a 17th, potentially the best of them all for a compilation cassette. What I love about these songs is that there is proof. Proof that some obscure guy on welfare in his basement with a 4 track can make songs for no real reason other than the making can be just as good as someone a bunch of folks obsess over. Check them out.

Idea 17




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PS As always these are here for a limited time. Once gone they are gone. Please do not email me asking for them.

Proposition: Destroyer's Rubies as Golden

There have been giddy rumblings around the internets these days that Destroyer’s Rubies just might be Dan Bejar’s breakthrough album – the indierock success that had been promised by critics following the almost flawless Streethawk: A Seduction, but that was skillfully dodged by Bejar with the equally ‘difficult’ This Night and Your Blues.

While the album does indeed have the potential to reach the modest levels of success that indierock stardom entails, I would describe it less as a breakthrough than as a greatest hits compilation. Instead of moving along the trajectory set by his last two albums (the logical conclusion of which would clearly have been an acapella interpretation of the Fall back catalogue) Bejar has decided to distill the most successful moments from all of his previous albums, although Streethawk and Thief in particular, to make a musical collage instead of a straightforward song by song ‘hits’ compilation.

In some ways, Rubies is almost a parody of a Destroyer album. As a recent near blindness inducing attempt to literally apply Carl Wilson’s version of the Destroyer drinking game to the album has proved, it is perhaps the most self-referential, pop-culture appropriating, baaa and daaa chorused, Bejarism-infused, and clichéd Destroyer album yet. The hooks and melodies even quote from earlier Destroyer songs this time.

But it is precisely this distillation of the Destroyer discography that makes this album so great. In my opinion, it’s of less importance that this is a (potential) breakthrough album than it is that it's also a gift to the long-term Destroyer fans. You know who you are: the ones who defended the sprawling This Night as a cutting parody of rock music wankery; who saw Your Blues as a damning critique of the cheap emotionalism and fake authenticity of the singer-songwriter genre; who secretly wished that Bejar never left the claustrophobic bedroom recordings circa Ideas for Songs. Deep down, Rubies is what you were secretly hoping for. Nothing is unnecessary, the pop-hooks are pristine, and all without sacrificing the infective lyricism, thematic absurdity, and ever-present critique of Bejar’s own place as singer and songwriter in a largely miniscule corner of the music industry.

Destroyer – Painter in Your Pocket (2006)
Destroyer – Loves of a Gnostic (1998)

I’ve put these songs up as a kind of comparison: the former from Rubies and the latter from 1998’s City of Daughters. Loves of a Gnostic still stands up on its own as one of the best Destroyer songs, but the difference that is most apparent between these two songs is that Bejar is decidedly more of an authoritative presence in Painter in Your Pocket. No longer the reluctant and embarrassed singer-songwriter, he has taken on the persona of the self-confident rock & roll front-man. Sure, it’s all theatre, but after watching No Direction Home recently I detected a not-insignificant touch of Dylan in Bejar’s reclusive/drunken performance on the last New Pornographers tour.
[Destroyer’s Rubies comes out on February 21; you can preorder here.]

The new Final Fantasy:

As previously advertised, it will sound like the 'difficult' parts of Colin Blunstone's One Year. Keep in mind that I am measuring difficulty against the ...Has a Good Home scale. Listen to the dramatic runs at 2:50 of Misty Roses...

Colin Blunstone - Misty Roses

...and mix it with lots of thematic nonsense, like at 2:15 of Can't Live Without You.

Colin Blunstone - Can't Live Without You

It's going to be a great record.

Don't die

I want to preface this post by announcing that the new Cat Power album, The Greatest, is (as always, in my opinion) a thing of beauty. Go and buy it. Play it for your dad. Give it to your mom for valentines day. Leave it in the plastic wrap and wait until you have an entire week to devote to it.

Cat Power - Hate
Ever since I first heard "Colors and the Kids" off Moon Pix I've been worried about Chan Marshall. Nobody could write a song that sad and not be seriously depressed. To me, the song is like a hazy memory of happiness from someone who hasn't been happy in as long as they can remember. It sounds like it's being performed by someone who's been crying for so long that can't possibly cry anymore. Whenever I hear it, I can't help but stop what I'm doing and listen. When I'm depressed, listening to the song is like sinking into the ground.

"Hate" is something different, but I'm no less worried about Marshall because of it. It's stripped down bare, with Marshall's voice echoing off the walls of an empty room, but the lyrics strip it even more bare. It's spilling over with an almost dramatized emptiness, or with an over the top self loathing. But I have this sinking suspicion that there's some truth embedded in the chorus. I'm sure that when Kurt Cobain wrote a song called "I hate myself and want to die" (and put it on the Beavis and Butthead soundtrack, of all places) it probably didn't register as anything beyond a clever song title, either.
[buy or, even better, buy!!]

Fuck - Drinking Artist
This song is more of a warning. It's imagining yourself in a few years and shrinking back in disgust. It's recognizing the possibility that you've been wrong about everything.
[buy the great album, Conduct]