so much for old music.
so much for old music.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
TRACK: Calgarynew bon iver track. released today. after listening to it, i kinda feel how i felt when i first heard ‘month of may’. the sound and spirit are there, but they’re definitely doing something different. i like it. i want to listen to it again. i want to talk about it. and more than anything i want it to end up coming from an album as excellent as ‘the suburbs’ was. -d
*’calgary’ is a free download at boniver.org.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
TRACK: If I Had a Boatholy smokes. okay, real quick, before you hit play, go find some good headphones and a quiet room and turn it up as loud as you can take it. this is going smack of hyperbole, but it honestly sounds like the fleet foxes, justin vernon, james blake and the avett bros all got together and made an album just for me. an album, i should add, that just leapt into the top spot for best album of the year so far. incidentally, he’s just announced some tour dates with the band whose album he replaced at the top of that list. genius loves company. mercy what a sound…
preview from the new bon iver album. it’s only 50 seconds. but it’s a pretty lovely 50 seconds.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
TRACK: Seeplymouthi go through a lot of new music. in my haste, sometimes i’ll deliver a harsh judgement on an album and write it off in the name of efficiency. (tho in my defense, music can strike very differently depending on the mood i’m in. and first impressions are especially tenuous.) as a result, sometimes i’ll be chatting with someone whose musical tastes i don’t eschew outright, and i’ll learn that they’ve recently found themselves enjoying the music of one of these bands to whom i’d previously said amen. sometimes i argue and insult the person and invalidate their opinion. but on a quiet day, sometimes i’ll pull the album back out and give it a listen and find that i was wrong. such was the case with volcano choir. granted, it seems strange i would have written it off at all, given the Vernonian pedigree. but the truth is i had. and while it is pretty weird, it’s also pretty lovely. -d (thanks for the reminder melmosa)
| 10. | ‘scribble‘/underworld |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| one of those tracks that was in my head long before i knew what it was or who it was by. the kcrw djs were playing it like crazy, and for one reason or another it got in my brain and stayed there. finally after catching myself humming this nameless hook over and over at the gym one night, i ended up sitting in my car for 2 hours listening to the radio just so i could shazam it. if that’s not a catchy song, i don’t know what is. |
| 9. | ‘O.N.E.‘/yeasayer |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| after loving their last album, i was initially pretty disappointed by ‘odd blood’. but 10 friends, 2 pounds of queso manchego and 1 crazy hollywood bowl dance party later, i saw the light. (getting a hold of this sweet vinyl demo cut didn’t hurt either.) |
| 8. | ‘everything‘/kids & explosions |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| TJ turned me on to this guy no more than 3 weeks ago. and for something to make the top 10 tracks of the year after less than a month of listening is pretty remarkable. granted, he totally cheated by mashing up bryan adams, eminem, guns n roses and biggie. but still. |
| 7. | ‘ready to start‘/arcade fire |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| i don’t really know what else i can say about these guys that hasn’t already been said. so i’ll just stick to the track. it perfectly sums up the morose energy of the entire album. there’s a sad uneasiness to it, but also a drive to do something about it. there’s nobody like em. |
| 6. | ‘lost in the world‘/kanye west feat. bon iver |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| as rad as this track is, it’s really just emblematic. i wanted to put ‘monster’ on here. it’s easily the best song on the album, and one of the best hip-hop songs of the last 5 years. it’s also pretty coarse. i considered posting the clean version, but it’s bad. like, totally bastardized. so i put this one on here because you don’t lose anything in the clean version. and the track isn’t without its merits. it’s an awesome collaboration, it does belong here, and it probably belongs at number 6. i’m just saying if i’d posted ‘monster’, i would have had to fight myself to keep from at least tying for number 1. |
| 5. | ‘simple graces‘/delorean |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| undeniable basque dance music. this song has single handedly made me happier than any other track this entire year. that’s more than enough to merit a spot in the top 5. |
| 4. | ‘come talk to me‘/bon iver |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| what appears to have been a favor in exchange for letting peter gabriel cover ‘flume’ in his latest album, resulted in one of the most perfect pairings of song and style in memory. play it loud. |
| 3. | ‘everlasting light‘/the black keys |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| i’ve heard rumors that this is the last album they’re making together. that they took the best songs they’d never recorded and put them all into one world beating album. so now we have the dilemma of the goose and the golden eggs. clearly they have laid us a perfect golden egg. but if it means the end of the goose that laid it, was it worth it? or would we have settled for just a good egg, knowing that there were more good eggs to come? i really don’t know. this was just such a good egg… |
| 2. | ‘midnight directives‘/owen pallett |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| such a wonderful, unique sound. it was one of those tracks that froze me in place the first time i heard it. not sure what to make of it, not even sure how it was made, but totally electrifying. and lest you think his brilliance is all in the boards, i saw him open for the national last year, and with little more than a violin, he blew the roof off. keep your eye on this one. |
| 1. | ‘sinking friendships‘/jónsi |
| [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] | |
| cut back to march 2010. i’m sitting in my old office at my old job, waiting for something to happen, and i decide to clean out my cd cabinet. i find an old sigur ros album, the one w/ the fetus-like thing on the cover. i get to wondering what they’re all up to. i get to searching. i find my way to jónsi’s website, and with no warning, a streamer starts playing ‘go do’. i think i might have audibly gasped. it was the first in a long series of visceral responses to this stunning album, the most profound of which took place during a thunderstorm inside the fox theater last october. this is the track of the year. |
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
TRACK: Lost in the World5 years ago, if you’d told me that justin vernon would be collaborating with kanye west on his new album, well, actually i guess i probably would have believed it, given the success of kanye’s work w/ jon brion back in 05. whatever, it still would have surprised me. but if i’d had to pick the track that kanye would most likely sample, well, actually i guess ‘woods’ would have been pretty close to the top, what with the autotune and all. whatever, shut up, them working together is still totally crazy. and the results? so insanely good. -d
*full disclosure: this track is actually just a placeholder for ‘monster’, the other track they worked together on. it by far my favorite from the new album, but it’s also incredibly coarse, and not a good fit for a blog my grandma reads. (i was going to post the clean version, but it’s completely ridiculous.)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
TRACK: In The Streami know it’s a little lowkey for a friday, but it’s quiet and foggy here, and a stranger just did me a great kindness. this is what today feels like. -d
*plus sean carey is the drummer from bon iver. chances of me not loving this are pretty slim.
*plus his name sounds like the spanish word for frightening. see? it is friday. that was totally a friday joke.
