Tracking002

Madvillain - Accordion

After a few stoned nights trying to freestyle with friends it occurs to me that Doom is showing off here. As he crafts a vague picture of the king of gangsters his rhyme scheme slips in and out of wild complexity in a way that only the most virtuosic could do with any style, and it's presented such a laid back ease as if he saying "this ain't even shit for me, I write this in my sleep." He starts by rhyming "ticks faster" with "sick blaster" leaning back on a half rhyme, mid line "Dick Dasterdly" (a 1960's cartoon reference) and right onto "sick laughter" and "mix master" before finally handing off to another sound. From there it's "E cold" to "be old" rhymed with "three fold" to another mid line half rhyme "he sold scrolls" straight into "behold" and then "story told". At this point he puts in third mid line rhyme "glory gold" but the end of the line starts the next sound, as if the "be old" rhyme was tagging off in boxing match. He meanders in off beat rhymes, twisting them around like they're toys, even pulling self-indulgent winks like rhyming "Freudian" with "accordion" while dropping his act and slipping into playful couplets. It reminds me of old painters needing to craft a masterful self portrait to show their skills for entry into a guild. But Doom needs no such acceptance because he's well aware that he's in a league all his own.

Belle and Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

The first stanza was always a counter to arguments that this band was just empty sentimentality, when they are, in fact, harsh bitterness cloaked in sardonic catchiness. This song spews tails about the young scottish hipsters, how they seem so alive and happy and good looking and how the world is going to hit the like a fucking truck. "Think of it this way you could either be successful or be us". A take on the young beautiful/doomed theme, sure, but you start to get the sense that he doesn't even think him and his peers are all that beautiful, that he hates everyone, that his catchiness and good looks, that his smile is purely to mock you.

Evian Christ - Fuck It None of Y'all Rap

Taking hip-hop out of context and making it feel lost, alone. Floating in an empty space of loneliness and letting it flail. But of course, still with a heavy hitting beat pounding on your head, perfect for the car stereos late at night, to creep out the hoodlums roaming the streets of your neighborhood. They should know better.

Drive Like Jehu - Here Come The Rome Plows

Sometimes, as young kids in america, we forget how angry we should be. Especially now, as everything is telling us to be complacent, to not mosh as concerts because it's vulgar and our friends will get kicked and annoyed, when every raging liberal we know is more concerned with the nomenclature for various sexual identities than they are concerned with actually helping curb the oppression. We forget that people are being killed and crushed economically. We forget that our forests are being leveled and our concert venues are being raided by police. We forget that we are no longer allowed to sleep in the woods when we want to, to sit on our sidewalks or go to our public parks past 11. We forget that it takes the first one hundred hours of work at our minimum wage jobs just to pay rent on our tiny sublets, and we don't get sick days. And even at that we are the lucky ones, so many have it so much worse. That we just live our lives everyday with this knowledge. We forget that we are angry, angry, angry, angry, raging.

Burial - Kindred

Today there were thunderstorms in new york city and we live mixed them with this track.

-stuart

Disposable Music

A few years ago me and my younger sister were crashing on the couch of a Harvard Graduate student in Cambridge. Though he was a remarkably accommodating host, he didn't have much time to show us around this unfamiliar as most of his time was committed to research and writing papers. I remember reclining in his living room reading some Wilde stories I had found on his shelf and hearing a stream of shuffled indie pop/folk/etc flow out of his room where he hunched over his desk. It was delightful. I had recently discovered the sugary joys of the New Pornographers and Apples in Stereo, not to mention a still constant flow of deeply effecting bands like Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and The Shins, and found myself sitting there thinking, Damn, this stuff is amazing. There is so much wonderful indie pop in the world, I could just listen to it all the time, forget everything else. Look at how interesting and tuneful all of these sounds coming out of his stereo are. I listened closer. Occasionally I'd recognize something, So Says I and Young Folks, and more often I knew enough to place a band without having really listened to them before, Devotchka, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but most of the time they were the kind of unimportant but delightful bands that swarmed the scene at the time.

And through this closer listening I realized that most of the music coming out of his speakers was not that good. Most of it was derivative and catchy in an uninteresting way. Each song would use an instrument in a way I hadn't previously heard, sure, but had none of the power and depth of the great songs of the genre. There would be no, say, "Seeing Other People" or "I Woke Up Today". These songs were great, and the mix was superb, but they were disposable.

One blizzard and three days later I get back to New York and sit down to make a tape of indie pop songs that would be as amazing to listen too as the MA student's, but with only incredible songs. Only songs with the catchiness and the orchestrative playfulness but also containing incredible depth and power. Only the "I Am Warm + Powerful"s and "Death By Misadventure"s of the world. And I realized that I couldn't do it.  All told I had maybe ten or fifteen albums of indie pop that I loved wholeheartedly and to make this flow of music I would need so much more than that. And that perhaps the brilliance of the Cambridge mix outshone the dullness of each of its tracks individually. It created an emotion and continuity that couldn't be gained by a list of unique and striking songs. Perhaps the whole was greater than its parts.

This was the first time I ever understood the benefit of disposable music, worth in a scene that goes beyond worth in individual bands. This is perhaps a particularly internet age phenomena as previously mixes took hours to make, not to mention the expense of buying so many records in order to create this wash of music. Now with internet streaming and shuffle it's a natural way of hearing this. And it opens up worlds.

The ambient music scene is buzzing (/pun) like it never has previously, if there even ever was an ambient scene before. And though I doubt I could point you to many individuals that have blown my mind (besides, perhaps, Sean McCann and Noveller ) a quick stroll though bandcamp or youtube will show you few stand outs but and incredible wave of music that could bring wonder and definition to every summer afternoon. The same holds uniquely true for the worlds of dubbed out bass music and instrumental hip hop beats and free mix tapes, and certainly of the streams of violent garage bands and surf rockers and synth-pop textureists swarming the Brooklyn scene today.

It goes almost exactly against the Post-Punk ideal of forward forward forward and, at the end of the day, you probably won't be finding things that change your life. But with everything going on in the United States underground music oceans these days I've found brilliance in the whole what I couldn't find in its parts.

-Stuart

The Shins' "Nothing At All" and Nihilism

We've long jokingly refereed to this as the nihilist song. I've got this ideal inside of me, but it's nothing at all. It's almost too funny, too straightforward, an upbeat song saying Hey Guys! There's Nothing At All! I've argued with friends about it, them saying that its about personal dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement. But somehow in the context of the shin's work (first three albums, at least) it looked to me as James slapping a nice melody to conceal that he really truly believed what he was saying. And in the five years of me thinking they'd never release a thing again, that they'd break up (they kinda did), it was the perfect post script to their career. The dropped last song on their last album, now only included as a bonus, as if to say "in case you didn't get it in the coded verse of the rest of our career, here it is for you, spelt out". "You want to put your trust in some solid thing? Yeah, it's a drug to us all". The record store clerk handed me a 7" record, for free, with it on the A and split needles alt take on the B, and as far as I can tell this particular combination isn't supposed to exist, I don't know why I have it.

Of course, this is not the first time the Shins have endorsed nihilism, or perhaps it's a brand of existentialism. The belief that there is no governing force to the universe, no spiritual ties that bind, and no meaning to life. That there is no fate, no god, no deeper reason to live, and perhaps even no love or happiness. In fact, the first seeds of this emptiness manifested on the opposite end of their discography, the first song on their first album. Caring is Creepy deals heavily in existential angst, images of walking naked in snow and feeling nothing, and hiding the fact you're dead again. Even the title shows this depressed detachment, as if to say "I don't care. Caring is creepy."

This trend is active throughout Oh Inverted World, the Shins' most cryptic album, notably on Know Your Onion's tale of teenage misanthropy. "When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters, we knew the worthless dregs we've always been". However, it took until the straightforward, poppy Chutes Too Narrow came out for it to really take off. It's been said that the album is made up one third of love songs, one third of break up songs, and one third of despaired philosophy. Saint Simon and Fighting in the Sack even seem to specifically deal with the meaninglessness of life and the falseness of religion. Fighting's second verse states "Most ideals turn to dust, there are few in which we all can trust. Haven't you noticed I've been shedding all of mine?" He suggests that the whole idea of meaning is just because we humans know that our fate is to die and vanish, and we intentionally believe something else so we won't have to deal with that. "The cruel uneventful state of apathy releases me. I value them but I won't cry every time one's wiped out".

However, there are love songs, which would perhaps suggest that he shifts more towards existentialism that nihilism (in a nutshell, that he believes the universe gives us no meaning, but we can give ourselves some). Though there is Gone For Good, about breaking off an engagement after finding "a fatal flaw in the logic of love", there is the incredible Those To Come to counter it. In it our man wakes up to a beautiful girl making tea in her underwear and through her sees the entire cycle of life in the universe, and seems ok with it. There are few things I've ever been able to identify with as much as this song. I am in love with this girl I've never met through James Mercer's eyes. He is amazed to see her "still prone to care", a dramatic contrast to the original title of Gone For Good: A Call To Apathy.

Snapped back from the relatively clear lyrics on Chutes, the third album drowns itself in symbolism and references, a dense thick shell to crack, and certainly the hardest to tell exactly what James is trying to say. So I can only tell you what I've got. Certainly Australia deals with a whole score of themes of meaninglessness, from it's opening lines questioning the depth of human's purpose on earth to the "selfless fool who'd hoped he'd save us all" holding you down. He talks about the dodo's and the android's conundrum, perhaps meaning the emptiness of wings without flight or living without true life. He wants to cry, but nothing happens anytime he tries. Phantom Limb begs us to "follow the lines and wonder why there's no connection".

Turn On Me deals out one of the most potent anti-love lines, and certainly the one that has had the most violent repercussions throughout my life, from the fifteen year-old who first heard it down to now. "Do affections fade away? Or do adults just learn to play the most ridiculous repulsing games?" There's a handful of other lyrics sprinkled throughout the album that could be on the same strand, but they could also mean dozens of other things so I try not to speculate more than I have already.

Of course this all leads up to A Comet Appears, where, far from the concluding song on their previous album, he looks into his heart and sees a numbness growing. "Every post you can hitch your faith on is a pie in the sky, chock full of lies, a tool we devise to make sinking stones fly."

And if you have the bonus track you're then suddenly hit with "I've got this ideal inside of me that we're nothing at all." "I'm just a shell as empty as can be. Yeah, I've got nothing at all." and the ending chant, upbeat, of

"There's noting at all

there's nothing at all

there's nothing at all

there's nothing at all"

-stuart

Tracking001

So I think we're about ready to start this site back up again, with some rearranging. Please bare with us as we try to lift this from a poorly taped together blog into a legitimate website for music aficionados. We founded Styrofoam Boots three years ago to try to find a view on music criticism that was lacking on the internet. Most online publications either veered towards a professional style, feigning objectivity and impersonal descriptions, something that does not exist when talking honestly about music. Or worse, some of them began to focus almost entirely on the social commentary they believed the music to be pushing, loosing all sight of emotion or personal philosophy. On the other side are most blogs and other online outlets, where people tend to disregard their responsibility to their audience, and instead get self-absorbed, spewing half formed and thrown away opinions. So we hope to land in between, people who feel the music very very much on an extremely personal level, but still hope to get across exactly why that's so, always taking risks with our taste without ignoring the simple things that just get to you. We hope to be like the friend that comes up to you and shouts "you have to hear this", and plays you something brilliant.

My name is Stuart, I am on the verge of being twenty one years old, I live in New York City, and my live has been defined by music. If you have any questions or anything you want to say to us, please leave a comment bellow, we'd love to hear from you.


So without more delay, let me introduce our singles column, Tracking, bringing your attention to any random solitary tracks that have been pulling on our ears and heartstring recently.

Trim - Confidence Boost (Harmonimix Remix)

It's odd that this song is quite as powerful as it is, dealing a swagger that's unlike anything you've heard before. It's not really the forward-pushing dynamic brute force of metal, not the aggression and confidence found in most hip hop, the kind of shouted violence of punk music, nor the wild push of most club music. What it has is something far more static, self-confidant force to it, singular and calm, but no less swagger than you could find anywhere else. I've started to use it as distinct evidence that experimental techniques can create a drop more destructive than the normal and that experimental hip-hop is not just a deconstructionists dream, but a suddenly-exploding field with nearly infinite possibilities.

Dirty Projectors - Gun Has No Trigger

I suppose it's mostly surprising for the Dirty Projectors to be doing something you want them to do. The band has built their legacy by willfully denying convention, taking the melody at a sudden turn just when you want it to break, holding things just painfully too long. And while that pattern busting ability is incredible, here they prove their worth when they stick to building a song. There's something here I've never found anywhere else, like an old noir tune cut out from time, with rising voices providing an affecting alternative to synths or guitar. I love almost everything this band has done, both for pure aesthetic reasons and also for the slight academic joys they send down my music nerd spine, but I'm never actually connected with one emotionally, and here I'm putting the song on repeat, all in.

Radiohead - Lotus Flower (Jacques Greene Remix)

Like the Dirty Projectors' standard work, here Jacques Greene plays a little bit with your mind as well as the undefined part of your brain that connects with music. Which is to say, you fall into a state of anticipation listening to this, the synths holding you in a kind of stasis, looking forward, waiting. And yet, unlike most ambient leaning dance music, somehow this anticipation is wholly pleasurable, I can even taste faint euphoria seeping in the back of my mind. I could wait forever.

Jacques Greene - Another Girl

Another Girl, however, is something else entirely. When you take a hard look at the independent-leaning dance scenes in London and LA right now something terrible becomes apparent. Though the music is brilliant and beautiful and forward thinking, you probably can't dance to it. Or at least your girlfriend's buddies won't want to, and it's not gonna start any parties. Another Girl might, though, finding itself at the only true post-dubstep banger aside from Hyph Mngo. Somehow it's able to fulfill almost everything dance music is intended for in an ideal universe. It can get you hyped for going out and it can also serve as the lovely comedown at the end of the night. It can start people shouting on the dance floor and waving their arms in the air, but it also feels delicate and kind on headphones.

DJ Elmore - Whea Yo Ghost At, Whea Yo Dead

Footwork hits like more fun noise music to me, churning away of the aggressive knots that build up in my misanthropic head. It's generally acknowledged to be the coolest and most boundary pushing thing going on today, yet even the critics seems to have trouble listening to it and people tell me to turn it off pretty damn quickly when it starts. I don't care. The most aggressive battle raps never got to the temples of my head like this, and even the ambient tracks (this one is the first cut off of Planet Mu's amazing compilation Bangs & Works Vol. 1) sound like nothing you've ever heard before. Just good luck learning the dance.

Drake featuring Lil Wayne - HYFR

Shlohmo dropped this during a dj set last week and I can't even tell you how much my brian swirled when the flow went to double time. Drake may be doing something incredible here, virtuosic, crafting lyrics about dissatisfactions with ex's and accidentally slipping I love you into drunken phone conversations with an absolutely weatherproof style. Mainstream hip-hop never gave signs of being able to produce something this awesome and heartfelt, and I am continuously aghast as the all of the lyrics slowly embed themselves into my memory. Hell Yeah Fucking Right.

Tyler, the Creator - Goblin

2011; XL Recordings; Los Angeles, CA

oddfuture.com

Held up to his peers in the hip-hop world Tyler is a wimp. He talks extensively about his feelings, his unrequited love interest, jacking off, how he cuts himself, contemplates suicide, how he hates school, his missing dad. He appears on every single other indie music website, favorably or otherwise. White people may hate him, but white kids love him. He's skinny, wears skinny jeans, high socks, listens to Arial Pink, supports an off kilter fashion sense and green hats, talks about his asthma, plays piano, and hands out cupcakes to anti-violence organizations at Pitchfork Fest. He apologizes, acknowledges critics, adds disclaimers, talks to therapists. He breaks character as much as he has character in the first place. He has a tendency to swear on his life that he's a fucking unicorn.

Held up to his indie music peers (Goblin dropped on the same label as The XX, Vampire Weekend, Radiohead, M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal, and more), he's immature. He sports punk passion, minus the punk ethics, that went out of style with Nirvana, and shock tactics unseen and unwanted since the Butthole Surfers. His calling card, along with the rest of Odd Future, is the childish "Kill People, Burn Shit, Fuck School" and screams of "Swag". He his emotional self indulgence places him, in many's minds, alongside Insane Clown Posse. He has wild violent fantasies, and a heavy irresponsible streak, "I want to see a fucking mosh pit tonight. Fuck security. I don't give a fuck!"

Held up to normal human being standards, he's disgusting. He focuses his lyrics mostly on misogyny, date rape, ultraviolence, murderous rape, casual homophobia, and rape. He speculates about killing, in order, women of all sorts, his mother, any other authority figure, 2dopeboyz, Jesus, B.o.B., Bruno Mars, his friends, himself, and you. He pops Xanax like it's Tylenol and drops the term "faggot" more often than he drops the word "the".

He's also the only complete person in music today. And one of the only complete people in music ever, period. It always baffles me how we beg for multi-faceted characters in movies and one dimensional characters in real life. Pusha T is never gonna show the kind of internal conflict that Tyler does, and for good reason, he'd be laughed off stage. We want him to be one thing, one mood, a commodity that we can put on and always know what we're gonna get. But Tyler is a real person, and he doesn't censer himself. There's no real act. He's a fucked up kid so he writes lyrics about destroying everything, about rape and murder, but it also crosses his mind about how fucked up that is, and so that goes in the lyrics as well. And more often than not, especially on the title track "Goblin" you find yourself wandering around in Tyler's head, even more so than on "Bastard" before it, seeing everything that's going on. He snaps with incredible ease between his violent fantasy world, and the real world of girls that don't want him and critics coming down on his head and deep seeded depression. The man's fighting all the time.

And of course there's always a flip side with him, he is, famously, "A FUCKING WALKING PARADOX." And the flip side is that, despite all his emotional problems that bring this about, he is really fucking angry. Really fucking angry. At everything. And I can legitimize this through the rock cannon, site the Sex Pistols and Minor Threat and Fight Club and No Children and Doin' The Cockroach, but that would be backwards. Tyler is young and wants to burn down the fucking world, and no matter how immature that is, there is something vitally important in it being expressed. And he does it here in such an honestly fiercely angry way, the likes of which have been unseen in over a decade.

Now of the particulars of the album? Tyler consistently shows himself to be an incredible producer, creating thick ambient atmosphere to circle his off kilter beats over. And truly there are some incredible tracks. Surly you've already listened to the immaculate Yonkers, and if you haven't I urge you to run out and watch the video immediately. But there are downs to the album, you've probably heard already. It drops in the middle, with useless cuts like "Boppin Bitch" and "Fish" and sometimes it feels like the album as a whole has a hard time staying together. Bastard remains the better album. This is shit I would surly get on any rock band's case for, but here it hardly matters.

I often argue with people about the difference between skill and value, and truly a quick scan through every major genre of music will give you scores of people talented enough to do anything well, who just set out to the wrong goal. And doing crap with a high level of craft and skill is still crap. With Tyler the opposite persists, what he's trying to do is so novel and worthwhile that the fact that the album is poorly put together is almost a small technicality.

Goblin ain't an easy listen. It's not beautiful or quietly powerful or strained and moving. It's not a party album, and while it is fun, it's fun in a horrible, detestable way. It's not mature or melodically interesting. It's certainly not badass. But it's the most real and important thing out there right now.

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

2008; Fat Cat Records; Glasgow, Scotland

frightenedrabbit.com

"Is that you in front of me, coming back for even more of exactly the same?" sings Scott Hutchison on the leading track of the album. "You must be a masochist."

Is this indie pop? I've been wondering. Because there's nothing beautiful. There's nothing that could end Frightened Rabbit along side late decade main examples Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, and of Montreal. There's nothing beautiful. This is not music for warm days lying on the grass with your girlfriend. There's nothing cute.

And I don't want to spew rhetoric here, but sometimes there's nothing else you can do. Frightened Rabbit have a way of turning every instrument into percussion, mimicking the hard beating heart of the singer, wishing himself death and ruin. Trying to rip his arms off. Begging girls to leave him and declaring war. Hutchison sings with such a desperate calmness, like the pursued in a foot chase, pausing for half a second to choose witch way to run. Sure the songs are catchy but their more involved than that.

The music perhaps sets them alongside Los Campesinos, causing a cacophonous row using only indie pop techniques. But there's something about Frightened Rabbit, something about the modest and difficult honesty of the songs, or maybe it is just all based from Hutchison's delivery, but

It's hard to separate this album from your life. Its hard to look at this music. It seems almost self evident, part of the street outside, of the furnishing of your house, something thats there, undeniably, that's true without you trying to make it so. It should be so hard to listen to but it's just so easy. Something that's just part of life. That's what these songs are.

Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz

2010; Asthmatic Kitty Records; Detroit, MI

www.sufjan.com

Why don't I like Sufjan Stevens? Where do I start? His obnoxious cutesyness. His almost forced seeming sentimentality. His stupid fucking state project that only went two albums. His devotion to writing songs about Jesus. The tendency for the worst of the self-conscious and pandering to pick up ukuleles at parties and play Casimir Pulaski Day. As a man who loves indie-pop, to me Sufjan represents everything wrong with the genre.

Ok, calm down a minute. When I look back and examine, I suppose I never really listened to the guy, never thought it wise to give him a chance. Perhaps this distaste was just an extension of my doucheyness, perhaps it was just the idea of Sufjan Stevens that I hated. Besides, he is good friends with The National, and often makes subtle appearances on their albums (he played piano twice on Boxer). Nonetheless, to this day my perception hasn't changed. The thought of giving Michigan a spin seems so unappealing to me, I've never been able to bring myself past it.

And then he lost his mind. And the same girls at parties started telling me about his crap new album, his entry into techno pop and all sorts of other wild stories. And now I guess I'm a Sufjan Stevens fan.

Though perhaps he hadn't lost his mind. Perhaps it had just come to this. And certainly it fits in well as the fourth piece of the "party like the world is fucked because the world is fucked" mantra of 2010. And even though he retains his earnest-as-fuck delivery there is some real violence to these tracks. To the explosive choruses of "I want it all, I want it all to myself!" and the sensory overload of the title track. His gratuitous use of odd unfocused beats and auto-tune comes off as almost a Dylan-like fuck you to fans. This is self indulgence to the peak, this is the guy at the party falling over himself at a party after too much alcohol and too many failed romances and not giving a shit about anyone anymore.

But really, and I hate to admit it, the songwriting carries the album. Maybe it's that the party atmosphere let him get past the overwrought sentimentality that plagues the worst indie-pop, I don't know. Because when it comes down to it, these songs are sentimental. They are personal and trying and emotionally charged. Yet it doesn't get me down. It doesn't bug me the same way Casimir Pulaski Day does. It feels almost calmly honest, stated in a "this is just the way it is" affect, even over the apocalyptic instrumental whirlwinds. There's nothing precious about it anymore. Even the love song over finger picking and piano is just light and undramatic, nervously subtle.

But I'm still never listening to Michigan.

no i don't want to feel pain

Why? - Oaklandazulasylum

2003; Anticon; Oakland, CA

I intend to, this summer, constuct a photography series on people in their messy rooms. Not dirty, mind you, no grime, just mess. Just stuff, everywhere. There is something sublimly beautiful about these livingspaces, everyone absolutely unique. As if you put a bomb in the center of someones personality and blew it up across the walls. As if their brain was broken in to peices and possetions and expanded. And that's kind of how I feel about Why?'s first album, the music of heinously disheveled and poorly upkept rooms. Incredibly lucid explosive residue.

There's a lot of talk of hip hop concerning Yoni Wolf. At first I didn't hear it. Though granted at first I thought a lot of different things about Oaklandazulasylum, or I didn't know what to think. A slew of bizzare outsider folk that sounded like it was recorded on the floor of someones bedroom, strung out, two AM. Jumping from one subject to another, melodic lines just ending, songs sounding so cut up that my head spun.

Yet listening to it now I hear something so different, a kind of genius-through-schizophrenia. Each song tightly composed in where the guitar ends abruptly and is sharply replaced by a micro beat, where he jumps ship from bizarre nonsense subject to bizarre nonsense subject. His lyrics are a random associative playground, occasionally jagged to a point, occasionally relatable and humanistic.

Sometimes there are even real songs, catchyness, figuring out his young love is a lesbian. The sharp build and fingerpicked tense-calmness of Early Whitney. "I swear I'll write soon." The Berkeley uncertainty, lack of clear narrative. Sometimes you even know whats going on, but not often. You know something is left out. The explaination withheld, but you get the feeling that every one of these words mean something. There is no faux-poetic arbitrariness. Every line has meaning behind it.

The album ends with a track so slight it feels hidden. It feels my own. Absolute in it's electronic minimalism, about how he won't make it much longer. About how he just doesn't believe he can live until he gets old.

just been trying to keep my cool

James Blake - James Blake

2011, A&M Records, London

The slight almost glockenspiel like synth line from CMYK still bounces around in my head almost all of the time. My friends and family won't let me play the song anymore after wearing it out through most of the last ten months. The spearhead in my mind, along with Joy Orbison and Mount Kimbie, of everything both incredibly dancey and incredibly good. One of the only tracks in a long time that deserves to be as wildly anthemic as it is.

And then there's the other EPs, and the Air And Lack Thereof single, and the incredible Strike A Pose rip. And rumors of classical vocal training and other wild thoughts. And then there was the Limit To Your Love video.

Very different than before, and I was lusting for more dancefloor cerebral bangers, but it was very good. I liked the minimalism, his voice, the quiet drop with the sparse beat in the middle. It took a while for me to hear it with good headphones and heard the incredible mind vibrating rumble under it, so low that my speakers couldn't play it at all yet still melodic. Frequencies so low that it's hard to believe my ears can even pick it up.

Perhaps that's what's so wonderful about James Blake's first album, the use of his deep dubstep techniques for songwriterly purposes, as opposed to his EP's where he used emotional songwriting to enhance the dance cuts. There's nothing to dance to on the record which was a let down to me. In fact, there's not a lot on this album in the first place. Most songs are so boiled down that only one line remains, but this works just as well as the looping synth on CMYK. But while the build CMYK makes me want to move and might make me want to shout, the build on The Wilhelm Scream might make we want to die in it's beauty. In it's fidelity. In the whole albums beauty.

Faults? A dozen. The halves are disjointed, with the Feist cover standing out way way to much. Some of the songs could use so much more, some of them are even boring. But mostly the entire album just seems completely formless, almost a slight bit empty. Still, this is a great album, don't mistake. This is an album worth owning.

Will he make better work going forward? Yes, I'm mostly sure he's a genius based on his chameleon motions and crazy prolificness while retaining near-masterpiece form across the board. The dude is real damn young and he'll keep getting better. Am I one of those assholes who still prefers the early dubstep stuff? ..........yes.

fly too high

140bpm, 110hz

What does dubstep even mean? I guess that's the question. And really it's the question that makes me feel most like a douche bag. Why? Because in answering that question I must reveal my absolute hate for the ten thousand american college students that have become obsessed with the genre over the last year, even though I know they're just trying to have a good time. I have to declare that what they think it means and what it really means are two different things. I have to make the douchy declaration that there is such thing as "real" dubstep as opposed to what they're listening to, dubbed, dickishly enough, brostep. And so the masses hate me.

But it goes further. Those in the know have a full other reason to hate me. Because in discussing dubstep I show my colors as one of the douchiest music cliches of the last fifteen years - the american indie kid obsessed with british dance music. There it is. I am. I'm sorry.

So, fuck it. What is dubstep? Is it dirty dirty homogeneous mid rage worble music, played by frat kids and ironically by hipsters everywhere? no. Just....no. I mean...that is something that these days is called dubstep (in america at least), but lets just ignore that for now. Real dubstep takes it's roots back to the drum and bass music of the 90's, when UK ravers on a lot of drugs started to realize that if you scatter the beats it makes everything feel less solid, more psychedelic. They realized that with dance tracks there didn't need to even be a melody, that the snare hits and bass lines could carry everything. This soon got pulled down and warped into an even subtler, cooler, slightly more party-centric genre of UK garage, or 2-step. Flowing with bright textures, R&B vocals and dun-chick....dunchick beats thinks started getting sublime.

And then....slow it down to 140bpm, add heavy heavy sub bass lines, mix in the darkest most off-putting aspects of dub reggae, toss in a bit of absolutely any other genre you want, and you've got dubstep. Dance music that weights on you, listen to enough of it and it starts rearranging your brainwaves. Slows your pulse, steals your breath. And it keeps growing. What started with Digital Mystikz has moved through the tribal noise music of Shackleton, through the glitch and IDM territory of Mount Kimbie, the Techno influence of Scuba, the ambient rave of Joy Orbison. Blink and something incredible and new will have happened in the scene.

So...where to start? Since it's realease Burial's Untrue has been the rock kid's ticket to ride. Beautiful and entrancing in every way, it takes a significant number of listens to get used to but then there's no turning back. Then theres the whole new guard of more indie leaning step - Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Darkstar, Joy Orbison - would be the next step, they're more immediately interesting, and often stunningly incredible, though they lack the subliminal elements that make the more ambient club tracks feel like god. And after that, just keep digging down, around every corner I seem to find something else incredible. Or don't, you may just end up feeling like a douche bag.

can't take my eyes off you

Stuart's Albums of the Year 2010

As Chris is taking his time before we finally announce our album of the already ancient decade, it seems I can put this off no longer.

It's odd to look back at my year in music. I ended last year looking for anything immediate and new and fun, within a month I was swept away by musical forces I couldn't have predicted. Four months later, caught up in some new violence and romance I declared 2010 an important year, said if anything was going to happen it will happen now. Not that my declarations mean anything, the bands rule the state of the scene, I do not. The summer passed and I felt independent music had abandoned me, gone soft and complacent, one hundred bands releasing records described by the press as "hazy, nostalgic", so I took refuge in british beats and electronics. And now I wake up and the year is gone.

And so I find myself unable to turn any kind of objective view on the past twelve months, I was too much of a victim of the sounds to find any impartial distance. Not as much of what hit me stuck as had last year, but what did hit deep, and that's all I have to share. This is the personal list. This was the year to me.

1. Four Tet - There Is Love In You

(SB review)

It's July and I'm sitting in my friend Jackie's apartment in Oakland and me and Adrian are trying to convince her to drop her plans and to come see Baths tonight in San Francisco with us. She said I don't want to go because I don't like electronic music. Bull shit we called! We both used to have that position, but to think that the instrument has necessary stake on the content is crazy! Besides, it'll be fun! We'll dance. Look she said, electronic music doesn't touch my soul.

And at first I scoffed in my mind because that is generally a bull shit self indulgent statement. Doesn't touch my soul! Ha! but then I remembered that this was not some 14 year old on the internet, this is not someone who would just throw that around. This is my best friend who I respect, she wouldn't say that vainly. So then I was a bit shaken, me and Adrian scrambled for Something at least.

Adrian shrugged. Said It doesn't touch my soul either I guess, but its fun and its interesting and its exciting and that's all you can ask for sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes. I agreed with him but in my mind I faced a small crisis. Electronic music doesn't touch my soul. I realized. It doesn't touch my soul.

Except Four Tet.

And certainly my year was kick-started by his masterpiece, like Jackie's sentence, uncensored, not trying to look cool, not concerned with avoiding cheesiness, just concerned with telling it like it is, Unadulterated music about love. About beauty. Innovative, sure, Minimalistic, Experimental, Danceable even sometimes, but never takes it's eye off the prize. There Is Love In You. It swirls everywhere in my head, all the time, my background radiation. It became associated with my person. It's all I talk about.

There is no story. There is not initial seduction, or boy looses girl, boy gets girl back. There is just the emotion of love. There is just the high feeling. There is just 4/4 beats and swirling guitar lines.

She Just Likes To Fight closes the album, an explanation, Look, four tet seems to say, I Don't Want To Leave Her Now, You Know I Believe. Look, he seems to say, It's Ok. She Just Likes To Fight.

2. The National - High Violet

(SB review)

Baring Four Tet, all my favorite albums of the year fall together in terms of a certain mindset. desperation, abandon, bravery of emotion that does not stem from actual courage, but from the belief that the world is fucked. That nothing matters. That looking cool and removed is no longer important. That they are falling into a void. We all take this different ways.

For The National it goes "The World Is Fucked So There Is No Time For Avoidance." the world is fucked so we can only be direct. As Boxer was the screaming behind your eyes as you went about your daily tasks, High Violet is screaming. There is no time for restraint. What made you think I enjoy being left to the flood? Instead of crafting poetry for the feeling you get afterwords they just went ahead and said "I don't want to get over you" instead of metaphors about despair they wrote songs called "Sorrow", called "I'm Afraid Of Everyone" called "Terrible Love". High Violet was the sound of screaming as you fell down into the pit.

3. Los Campesinos! - Romance Is Boring

(SB review)

If anyone in the world is no longer concerned with trying to look good its Los Campesinos. You think they don't realize that they sound like young teens, strung out on minor social woes and mild narcissism? They realize it. And they don't think it's good, or mature, or alright for 7 grown people to be perpetuating, but they are feeling it, and so they believe they must commit it to music.

And so if We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed was a cry out, realizing that the world doesn't love them, Romance Is Boring is the cry of realizing that there is no love, even on a personal level. Its the cry of giving up on the whole concept of romance, of empty beds, of playing straight chicken with gay girls (spoiler: it's never enough).

Los Campesinos have such a habit of churning out line after line, resonating with immature depth. Claims that he would take your heart, with ease, by any means necessary, just in order to crush it, just out of bitterness. Saying he'd rather be dead than spend his time being selflessly cared for by you. Demanding that romance is boring.

And as the music shifts between noise and catchy melodies, you find that he doesn't believe a word of it, and that really he just wants someone to lie around with, counting the moles on their back. But it doesn't matter. Because there is no love. There is no post-coital, there is just post rock. There is no love and he's not even getting off. That his saddest and most depressing break up doesn't even crack the top 100 list.

These are our immature cries.

4. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

So the National's nihilism amounts to unrestrained despair, and the Los Campesinos' fell on unrestrained lust and bitterness. Kanye's went two ways. The first states, to paraphrase one reviewer, "Let's party like the world is fucked because the world is fucked", and certainly he is good at that. Fuck everything, he says, I'm gonna marry a porn star, I'm gonna have a different girl every night. Fuck the haters, their screams are my theme music. Fuck the world because I win anyway, I have all the fucking power, I don't need you. And he does this brilliantly, with swagger, taking the stance of a wrathful god.

But he keeps rubber banding between this and the realization of what an awful person he's been to everyone around him. He snaps between everything is fucked so I will party, and everything is fucked and it's all my fault. He tells girls he love to run far away from him, confessing that he's never going to give them an ounce of anything honest. He confesses to his sins of flesh, his constant infidelity. He confesses how much he needs her, calling her at two AM, making a fool out of himself on record. He knows how much he's not worthy of it. And he fucking hates himself. And then he snaps back. So that's his life, fuck me, then fuck the world, then fuck me again. He can't get much higher.

5. These New Puritans - Hidden

(SB review)

At the beginning of this year These New Puritans swapped the dance floor for the battle field, giving up their "we are cool as fuck" fashion post-punk beats for war drums and violins, and in doing so they created what has to be the most original sounding album of the year. They still have their little insidious turns of words, "Without a doubt I don't believe the stars are symbols, but lets find out", but gone is the self conscious cleverness. Everything about this album screams business, and these screams sound fucking good.

6. Mount Kimbie - Crooks and Lovers

As the indie world seemed to crumble beneath my feet I stumbled upon the land of british dance music, with Mount Kimbie beginning their reign as the young kings. Their virtuosic blend IDM and sub-bass heavy dubstep is absolutely breathtaking, both immediate and staggeringly interesting, I would spend my whole life at clubs if they played stuff like this here.

7. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles

Mostly Crystal Castles were assholes, and mostly that was fun. Occasionally it was much more than that, I wasn't the only one to find catharsis in the screams of "I live. As Alice - I die" but for the most part it was fun. It was dishonest, it was ironic, it was nihilistic, it was a great party album. Their second self titled is none of these things. Amazingly enough the two canadians released a slow churning gothic record. They didn't loose the four on the floor beat but ever ounce of this feels heavy with honest despair, and though its no longer catchy it only took a few listens for it to seep deep into my skin. Not to mention the non-album version of Not In Love where Robert Smith takes on the vocals - the absolute best track to be relieved this year. Because as long as it's true anyway, we might as well have a chorus of it to shout along to.

8. Baths - Cerulean

There was certainty too much talk of what the perfect summer record is this year. And really, I generally don't think "summer" records are that important to begin with, most things season specific tend to be awful. That being said, this is the perfect summer record. Nervous, stuttering beats over shimmering electronics. It's relaxing, it's beyond original and interesting, it's just fucking lovely. In mid July it's everything I had ever wanted.

9. Yellow Swans - Going Places

Yellow Swans broke up and left us the most beautiful noise album that has ever existed. Paradox. Almost coming at it from a post rock perspective, Going Places builds and tugs at you, focusing on subtle emotionality rather than the broader strokes the genre tends to aim for. And yet, it's still noise, still dense and impenetrable. Still the most inaccessible thing this side of Merzbow. Still beautiful.

10. Sleigh Bells - Treats

If you can take Crown On The Ground sitting down then fuck you. Fuck off. The most devastatingly original banger that's hit wax in ages, it can't be denied. And Sleigh Bell's blend of dance, hip hop, and noise rock just tears apart with energy, the first real feeling of violence to arrive on brookyn soil in years. Though the song writing doesn't always back it up, who cares? Get on the floor. Mosh. Shout. Amen.

Honerary Mention: James Blake and Joy Orbison - The Bells Sketch, CMYK, Klavierwerke, and The Shrew Would Have Cushioned The Blow EPs

These two brillient innovators of the genre that's come to be known as post-dubstep (an awful title, anyone will admit, but simple and accurate) turned out some of the absolute best tracks of the year, both for the headphones and the dance floor. Neither came out with an album (though Blake is due for one this February) but it would be beyond a shame for these four EP's to go overlooked.



Bonus list: the best movies of the year

1. Black Swan 2. Inception 3. Exit Through The Gift Shop 4. Enter The Void 5. Biutiful 6. Scott Pilgrim 7. 127 Hours 8. Never Let Me Go 9. The Kings Speach 10. The Kids Are Alright


string ourselves up for love

5. Radiohead - In Rainbows

How come I end up where I started? To say Radiohead was a band with something to say would be to make a fine understatement. These five fine men were obsessed with it. They fought the world. They planted their standard in the ground and lashed out against consumerism. Against alienation, against coldness. They stood for moving mountains, they stood for pushing things forward. They raised flag against the news, against the false sense of order, against the yuppies networking. Against everything that is broken. Their metaphors grew with their scope, their conviction. They crafted car crashes, sinking ships, ice ages. Aliens hoping to get out, star crossed lovers climbing out the window. Math equations that didn't add up. They predicted the apocalypse.

And the sun rose. And the sun set. And its on again, off again. And years passed. And they're still here. And every day they get out of bed and take a crap and hope to find something to eat. They did not understand what it is they did wrong. And the world is still the world. Ten years after the car crash and begging to be pulled out alive. Ten years with computers and coldness and #1 records and legions of hipster devotees and the world was still the world. Despite everything they had to say. How come I end up where I started?

And I guess they're stuck. And so what is there big to say anymore? How come they ended up where they started? The same. They don't know what to say anymore. They don't know if there was anything to say in the first place. This goes around, it's on again, off again. In Rainbows is simple. In rainbows is circular, it begs for climax, for crescendo, and it doesn't come, because as far as Radiohead can tell - it just doesn't come. So fuck it. So give it away for free. So they look at their lives and they look at their wives and girlfriends and say, look, the world hasn't changed, my life hasn't changed from it. But you can change my life. You're all I need. You're all I need. They wrote love songs because love had more to say than car crashes. Because your eyes move me. Because I do not want to be your friend, I JUST WANT TO BE your lover. And thats the truth of the matter. Thats more true than any grandiose metaphor. Because the beat just goes round and round, so you might as well come on and let it out. Because they thought they had it in them, but no. They're stuck. We're stuck. I am stuck. And there's no real reason.

-Stuart

7. Electric Wizard - Dopethone

In ways the front cover of Electric Wizard's third album gives exactly the correct impression of it's continents. Black and white, loosely rendered, a devil smoking from a bong. The cover does not beat around the bush, it's blunt, in every scene of the word. The music found within delivers on all the promises. Electric Wizard craft some of the heaviest, swirling dark doom metal ever created, and they focus themselves mostly on the subjects of death, destruction, and heavy heavy pot smoking. If there was ever an album to get baked and destroyed to, this is it.

On the other hand there is something about this album that almost makes you want to scrap the cover all together. Call it a red herring. As every repeating riff makes you see red you think the cover should have been darker. As Jus Oborn's voice distorts further and further into violence you think the whole cover should have been covered in black, it should have been much much angrier.

And there in lies what must be the miracle of Dopethrone - it is full of contradictions that are simultaneously true. It is a fun album and it is a violently powerful album. It is an album with an incredibly singular sound, yet it is instantly accessible. It's an album to bang your head along with but it will also drown you.

Perhaps I just love it so much because it borders on so many other things that peak my interest. It's the most passionately angry thing around without devolving into noise, and by god it must be the most destructively repetitive thing this side of the minimal spectrum. Perhaps its the sound, so unique and direct that even friends of mine who seek only abstract beauty demand right away to know who made these sounds tearing up my speakers. But I don't suspect that's it. I think it's because - contrary to most metal music where I'm just in it for the fun, the epicness - when Jus Oborn shouts "I. Don't Care. The World. Means Nothing." my god I believe him. I feel every ounce of his words. This is not a game for these people, it's not fun. And through everything else that has to be why this album has such a hold on Everyone who hears it.

It makes you want to tear the world down.

-Stuart

9. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

It's not lost on many people that the first line of Arctic Monkeys' first album begins "Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment" and though of course the song goes on to describe the projected outlook for a crazy evening - ending up with you drunk texting fluid love poetry to an unwitting and unreceptive girl - the line has also always stood for Arctic Monkeys' view on what had happened to them thus far. You see by January of 2006 Arctic Monkeys' were the biggest band in England.

A bit odd for a band writing tales about a normal guy, drunk, alone in a bar at 3 0'clock, professing his love via the most impersonal and desolate of mediums? They thought so too. And with serving up the quickest selling debut in English history and being called by more than one source the next Beatles, Alex Turner and co found themselves increasingly uncomfortable.

You see, Arctic Monkeys' main premise is that they hate people. They hate people. They hate your lies and your scorn, your cynicism and your callousness, your advanced capacity for flat out faking. They hate you to levels that would normally stick them in with Elliott Smith level recluses, Minor Threat level moralists, or even Nirvana level violent outcasts - and yet. And yet Alex Turner didn't want to have to live those lifestyles, alone in his room. People are awful, he thinks, this is not going to change. This is not going to change. Not with all the angry bedroom sitting I could ever do. So I might as well get drunk, I might as well go out and dance, you know, fuck all this shit I intend to get laid.

Most of Whatever People Say I Am is spent in the back of clubs, angry at the rubbish band, furious at the large white wine drinking crowd pretending this band is the peak of art, worried blind about the girl he's trying to pull and the quantity of fluid he's consumed and WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE PUT ON SOMETHING WITH A DESCENT FUCKING BEAT SO WE CAN DANCE?

Surly this did a lot for a fifteen year-old newly faced with an unfair and unconcerned social system. It became my bible. I was angry. Surly it becomes even more relevant as I get older, as I emerge into a world of clubs and concert halls and alcohol. As my libido slowly begins to override my principals. I am angry. At fourteen Arctic Monkeys asked for instruments for their birthdays, five years before. At nineteen, five years later, Arctic Monkeys were the biggest band in England. So at fourteen me and my friends asked for instruments for our birthdays, at nineteen we have no money, with every ounce in our bodies dedicated to music. All Arctic Monkeys to blame and thank.

In January of 2006 England exploded, heralding a new age of anger and guitars that never actually came about. Alex Turner always looked incredibly off put when on stage. He could not believe the amount of people shouting lyrics he wrote. They stood and played their instruments and did not put on a show. Don't believe they hype, they seemed to say. Whatever people think I am, that's what I'm not.

-Stuart

Really Weird French Techno Songs

One of the weirdest/funniest/oddest things has been going on at Canadian punk band Fucked Up's excellent, and usually well thought out, blog Looking For Gold. A few months ago they started using a tool to find out how people got to their page and where from, a rather common internet convention, and all was fine until someone from Stockton, Califonia got to their page by google searching I'm Looking For This Really Weird French Techno Song That Just Came Out. alright. And then 20 minuets later someone from Australia got to the page by searching the exact same thing. And then someone from upstate New York....... it got to ridiculous. This sparked a really long, excessively angry, clever, bizarre, quite meta post by the band, ("THATS NOT HOW YOU USE GOOGLE. IT'S NOT A PERSON YOU IDIOT.") I suggest you read it here..... and then that sparked a (possibly fake) band hastily forming who called themselves, you guessed it, I'm Looking For This Really Weird French Techno Song That Just Came Out, who, just for the fuck of it, started getting gigs DJing at Fucked Up shows.

And since then its been quite a circus of strange searches ending up at Looking For Gold. This includes Google inquires like "Cool Looking Websites", "Is There Any Screamo Songs Put Onto Flute Sheet Music?", and most recently "What Order Of Countries Makes The Most Sense While Touring Europe." It all has noting to do with music, and the band realizes this and seems pretty pissed off/utterly baffled by that fact, but it has to be the funniest thing that has ever happened to a contemporary Canadian kind of experimental punk band.

John Wiese - Soft Punk

2007; Troubleman Unlimited; Los Angeles, CA

www.john-wiese.com

there comes a point when the inciting motive is no longer why you continue. When you realize that the punks are no longer in it because they're angry and misunderstood, that the hippies are no longer using drugs to induce a spiritual experience, now they're just using them to get high. And that's something I had to confront when listening to John Wiese, because lets be honest here, he doesn't extract the same passionate emotional response that Wolf Eyes does, nor the fierce irreverence and protest of no-wave. He doesn't intoxicate like Magik Markers or Yellow Swans. I came to straight noise music because I was angry in a way that no other music could capture, which is not something that Soft Punk does to any great extent. So I have to fess up and say that the passion and the emotion is no longer the sole reason why I'm here, that it is possible that I actually just like this stuff. I've gone from someone searching for help to somewhat of a fetishist. and that kind of scares me, it should.

Soft Punk begins with thirty four seconds of manipulated static that twitches and jumps for lost moments and then a steady clicking beat as if someone was teasing the drum mics, and then all hell breaks loose.... or, wait, no it doesn't. or well it doesn't quite make it. the music scratches its head, turns round and gives it another go. and, well, just misses once again. And thats the brilliance of this pink lp, it doesn't give you what you want, it keeps you on your toes. While Wolf Eyes traffics in a gloriously self-indulgent growl, giving everything they've and then some, yelling until they pass out from their lack of inhalation, Wiese brings the listener to a point just before orgasm, and then pulls out. And so for the forty-four minutes of the album we are constantly left unsatisfied, anxiously waiting for the next turn to fulfill us. And before you know it the forty-four minutes are up. And you want to listen again. And this, I'll be quite honest, is not something that can be said about any other noise full length that has ever existed - that it passes without exhausting you or loosing your interest.

Of course besides for the dynamic make-up of the disc there is a lot to keep you paying attention. While pioneers like Merzbow traffic in long drones of ear-splitting sound, Wiese goes the other way. He delivers a glitchy sampled brand of high-fidelity noise that never stays still for more than a few seconds, switching off between the kind of growl and broken glass that you'd expect from works of this genre and more pulsing subconscious ambiance. It's just never what you expect.

And so it's not hard for me to say that Soft Punk is the best noise album I've ever herd, and perhaps that I just need to come to terms with my enjoyment of the genre as a whole. I mean, it might not be that spiritual anymore, but at least I'm getting high.

no fun

Radio Free, a thought on music pricing.

The third annual Record Store Day took place on August 17th this year. In observance of it hundreds of new records and rather exciting reissues were being released exclusively to independent record stores, as well as tons of free performances, give aways, etc. - and hey, with the closing of the Virgin's last year almost every record store in New York City was an independent. There was a big hunting ground. Most of the releases were centered on vinyl, and with a little time spent saving up I had a few in mind for myself. A long-coveted pressing of the Moon and Antarctica on vinyl, REM's debut Chronic Town EP, a split single with Mogwai and Fuck Buttons covering each other, SoundGarden's amazing first single repressed, new 7" singles by Japandroids, Blur, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fucked Up. Sixty Nine Love Songs got its first ever vinyl pressing. I knew I only had only saved the money for, maybe, three of these discs, but I was excited none the less.

I showed up to my favorite store fifteen minutes before its special early opening, there was a line around the block. I thought, ok, there are maybe fifty people in front of me, big deal.... By the time I walked in the door The Moon and Antarctica was sold out. Chronic Town, a twenty five year old EP reissue, was sitting on the wall for more than 15 dollars. The Mogwai/Fuck Buttons split, just two songs mind you, cost more than 10. Sixty Nine Love Songs cost almost 100. There was nothing I could afford. I looked around. In the arms of most people in the crowded store I could see my coveted M&A disc. And further more, in there arms were five or six or eight or ten other over priced records as well. I realized I was beat. I lost because I came to celebrate with thirty dollars while they came with two hundred.

Sitting on the subway heading to another shop to try again, I realized that I had gotten hugely excited for all three Record Store Days so far, I had even told most of my music loving friends about them, effectively advertising for the cause, and yet I had never walked away with any Record Store Day specific release at all. And I thought about when I had gotten into vinyl, how it was the most amazing format in the world because I could find Led Zeppelin IV for six dollars. I could pick up a beat up copy of Cream's Disrali Gears for two. The White Stripes' White Blood Cells cost me eight bucks, a new copy of Minor Threats 12" on bright green wax cost me nine. I could forsake convenience for quality - and for quantity.

That was only four years ago and yet.... vinyl isn't made for me anymore. I tear my hair anytime a deluxe x2LP 180gram record comes out, because I know they'll try to make me pay 25 dollars for one album, and I know I won't be able to. I hide my head when they speak of good packaging and pristine sound, because I know I won't be able to see and hear it. Vinyl is now for the rich who can afford to love all the high quality pressings, or for the stupid, too rapped up in the hipness of the format to realize they're being ripped off. This is a hard thing for me to realize. And I feel like because of the rampant theft of music online is putting so many bands and record labels in a tough place, they're taking it out on us - those who have been committed to paying for their music. And I don't know what to do about this.

The National - High Violet

2010; 4ad; Ohio, via Brooklyn

americanmary.com

I was sitting here on a corn flake waiting for the National to slip. Because it made sense. Because as rock history dictates, you work your way up, promising album, good album, masterpiece, and then you can't hit that mark a second time. Because every other amazing band in this year has far exceeded themselves, I thought there is no way there can be another surprise. One band has to slip. Because a year can't be consistently great straight across. Because no one can top Boxer. So, as much as I hated to predict doom, I thought this was fated to be the band's The Great Escape to follow Parklife, their Humbug from Favorite Worst Nightmare, their Get Behind Me Satan that would never live up to Elephant. It made sense.

It also made sense when I herd their first single from the album. 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' was a lot of things, but what I herd was something a bit more complex, a bit muddier than the simplicity of the loud-drums-and-vocals-over-undermixed-dissonant-guitar-soundscapes that populated the most accessible tunes on Boxer. And yes it was catchier than almost anything they'd ever done before but it was catchy in a less distinct way, in a less desperate important way. The lyrics preferred a more traditional straightforward meaning over their trademarked lost harshly unfocused abstractness. It favored a more colorful ambiance over their previous garage sensibilities. His voice was the same, but this was not the band I knew.

Everything I feared and disliked from Bloodbuzz Ohio carried over to the entirety of High Violet. And this was actually more than a good thing.

High Violet glows. And it does this with drawn out guitars and heavy piano lines and with horns and somehow uncorny strings and really when it comes down to it I don't know how this album glows like it does. but there it is. It glows with the uncertain luminance and the warmth of coals, fresh from the fire.

This is the most accessible album they have ever made, and are ever likely to make. And somehow that's a good thing too.

From the slow paced march of Terrible Love through to the strained crys of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, The National have created something with vitality and with power, and to achieve this it seems they needed to abandon their troubled detachment. This is no longer the sound of someone running away, or of someone biting their lip and screaming in their mind but keeping their head down, this is some trying honesty, someone caught up or frantically fighting back. The National have recaptured a passion and life that they morned during the course of Boxer. They even begin to border the Arcade Fire's my-god-the-world-is-ending aesthetic, without the self satisfied leanings that mar that band's output. This is the honest fight. No more trying to look cool, no more hiding behind poetry, this is the time for the National to say what they mean, and say it straight.

What makes this harder is how much this music means to me, and how much the National in general have meant to me in the past, but really there is more than that. A lot of music means a lot to me, a lot of people have various music that holds for whatever reason a lot of meaning for them. This has surpassed that, beyond my own subjectivity. High Violate means a lot, not just to me - it holds meaning, period. This is instant classic, this is immediate effect, we will look back in years to come and remember the third week in May when these notes pulsed through our veins.

Something is happening in 2010. I don't know why. For the last few years there has been consistently great music, but you knew and I knew something was off. Something we couldn't completely get behind. A lack of confidence or real seriousness, a lack of violence perhaps. Something was missing, enough for us to stand with the new music world, but not quite. And somehow in the four and a half short months since the decade turned bands have started again going for the throat, digging their heals in. We've gotten back the wild desperation, along with the anger and the passion and the wry confidence. We've gotten back bands that don't apologize. Something is happening.

BBC's Guitarist List is Dumb, Here is a Better One: Part 3

I actually liked the list a bit more than the other two, thinking that just about five of the ten on it are damn good guitarists. The other five though, goddamn. I mean, goddamn. What the fuck? Here are my picks:

J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr)

The whole concept of indie rock really came about in the eighty's, at a time when the mainstream's arteries were clogged with the cholesterol gunk that is arena metal, chock full of huge guitar riffs and solos. As much as they hate to admit it, indie tends to be ruled by going against whats on the top of the charts, and so for the eighty's underground loving you guitar the epitome of uncool. No big riffs, no solos, no crazy distortion. The guitar driven band was out. This guy brought it back. Employing searchingly loud tones and more effects pedals than could fit in the average three bedroom apartment, he somehow was able to create some of the funnest nosiest guitar tones of the time while still pulling some self desecrating understated songs. J Mascis was here to show us that three full stacks of Marchall amps and being a douche bag do not always go hand in hand.

Favorite performance: Kracked

Kaki King

Really, it doesn't seem like Kaki King actually knows how to play guitar. Which is to say she seems to think its a drum set, or a slap bass, or a god knows what. Extreme virtuosity does not even begin to describe the crazy shit she does to it. And further more, she makes it look easy. Makes it look like she could do it with her eyes closed, fuck, sometimes does do it with her eyes closed. She makes the guitar her bitch and, sure, when she tries to sing the songs don't come out that great, but it takes a while to pick you jaw up off the ground before you notice that.

Favorite performance: Playing With Pink Noise

Victor Villarreal (Cap'n Jazz, Ghosts and Vodka, Owls)

Heroin junkie, recluse, and general fucking crazy person, Victor Villarreal has been crafting some of the most ridiculous guitar lines ever herd for about twenty years now. His playing tends to sound something like a cross between avant-jazz and punk rock played by a man in a blindfold. His fingers jump up and down the fretboard in a seemingly random pattern that pulls everyone listening in a hundred different directions. Start-stops? Check. Time signature changes? You bet. Abandoning a melodic line in the middle for no reason? Yep. Anything to make listeners tick. And somehow it works out beautifully.

Favorite performance: Everyone is My Friend

Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai)

A good deal of post-rock bands employ huge orchestrations and classical music inspired licks to build their trademarked crescendo. They also do this to separate themselves from what's seen as the standard rock sound. This being said, Mogwai surely is the guitarist's post-rock band, going against the norms of the genre to create something that shows the instrument without filter or distraction. Braithwaite moves his band from arty and awkward licks to metal and shoegaze straight back to post-rock, from beautiful to destructive, from the blissfully ambient to something that grabs immediate attention, all with an astounding natural fluidity. He also has a really cool and uncommon first name...just gonna put that out there.

Favorite performance: Yes! I am a long way from home

Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie)

Despite playing with obnoxious sentimentalists Death Cab for Cutie, Chris Walla rocks in pretty much every way. Its not like hes changing how the guitar is played but there is something continuously beautiful and captivating about his instrumentation. Never too intricate, and never at all showy, he finds the most remarkable tones that add such an amazing element to the generally lackluster songs of his band. It really makes you wonder why hes hanging out with those guys.

Favorite performance: 405

Glenn Branca

Alright, to be fair he does slightly exceed our thirty year cut off, but no one has affected how a guitar is played like this man. "Played" in itself might be a bit of a stretch to describe mind numbing violence he inflicts on his instrument, creating some of the most unpleasant and passionate sounds his side of Merzbow. After messing around a bit in a few no-wave bands, burning holes in eardrums throughout downtown Manhattan, he began writing entire symphonies for between three and one hundred guitars. In no time this man was able to establish himself as a kind of Philip Glass for dissonance junkies and managed to enlist an impressive array of young proteges, such as Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. It could be said that he raised the guitar to the status of chamber instrument, but it also could be said that reviled the potential in classical composition for rage and destruction. Either way he's done wonders.

Favorite performance: THIS

Brian Gibson (Lightning Bolt)

I know what your thinking: Brian Gibson doesn't play the guitar. Alright, your probably not actually thinking that right now but either way - I don't give a fuck. The fact that he is wielding a bass even further emphasises the ridiculous ability of this man. In a technical sense he has his fingers flying up and down the fretboard faster than the synapses fire in most guitarist's brains. Creatively he is able to improvise the most energetic and explosive lines this side of.... no, there is no other band that even approaches the energy of Lightning Bolt. Even technologically he triumphs, with a mountain of different amps and just a few pedals he squeezes out of his bass guitar sounds ranging from the screeching high to thunderous lows. This man is surly a machine.

Favorite performance: 2 Morro Morro Land

Mike Kinsella (American Football, Owen)

After hanging around on drums or bass in a number of his brother's bands, Mike finally took the spot light and reviled himself to be... whiny as a mother-fucker. All joking aside, he also came out as one of the premier guitar voices of the zeros. Boiling down all the progress made from the stream of post-hardcore bands him and all his former band-mates had been involved in, American Football emerged awashed in flowing pattens. Mike frequently alt tunes his guitar and uses a stream of single notes as a rhythm part to keep afloat his plain spoken lyrics. His guitar style would also keep afloat scores of imitators in the later part of this decade.

Favorite performance: A Fever Analog

Gihm

Gihm does not write his own songs. He only plays covers. Gihm does not release albums. He only displays on youtube. Gihm does not show his face. Gihm is basically everything we should, as music snobs, look down on. Gihm is also a god. There is no other way to say this. He works by striping down a song of multiple guitar lines and arranging them for one guitar. Which is to say he plays three or more parts at the same time, he is a band all onto himself. Let me say this again. He plays three guitar parts all at the same time all on one guitar. He creates building emotional compositions of absolutely ridiculous technical skill that often times surpasses the songs he is covering. He is the king of all virtuosos. He is... Gihm is a fucking god.

Favorite performance: Cover of Rachel's Water From the Same Source