Spektors

There’s this thing Regina Spektor does from time to time when she sings where she makes it sound as if her voice is holding back all the emotion in the entire world and she just can’t contain it anymore and for a brief moment, lets it slip. That shit gives me chills and I love it. Just listen to “Us” and “Somedays” on the album Soviet Kitsch.

Lazy Week

Having turned back the clocks by an hour last night 9:30am this morning was really 10:30am according to most people’s internal clocks and thus the coffee shop was a bit more crowded when I arrived than it usually is. Most of the inside seats had been taken, at least the ones where a single person can sit without looking like some kind of ass for taking a table that can comfortably fit 4. There were seats outside though and the weather this morning was warmer than expected due mostly to the fact that the sun had been out for an hour longer than usual as the result the “fall back” portion of our bi-annual time travel experiment.

At any rate, I got my double mocha with mexican chocolate in a to-go cup and sat out on the patio of Epoch Coffee and began my Sunday morning ritual with the opening of this week’s Austin Chronicle. At fist I thought it had just been me, but after a few pages of the Chronicle I realized that it had been a slow week for everyone as the paper was fairly dry and uninteresting. There really didn’t seem to be anything new or interesting going on this week. For me personally the week as a whole was something of a non-starter with every day constantly feeling like Friday. On Monday I came into work after lunch due to a server integration that was supposed to have taken place earlier in the day, but was still going on, meaning I had no real work to do except for one fairly productive creative meeting. Tuesday was another late start but little work got done as we spent most of our time testing the stability of the latest server build. Wednesday was business as usual, but since the week had failed to start correctly it never really felt right. I suppose by Thursday I started to get into the swing of it and by the end of OT on Saturday I had gotten a decent amount of work done in what was otherwise an unremarkable week.

There haven’t been any new movies recently, at least not any that haven’t been sequestered to limited New York and LA only releases. That coupled with my disappointment at Tim Schaffer’s new game Brutal Legend and the fact that my efforts on the dating sites this month have all fallen flat has sent October out with a whimper and sigh. November looks to be starting off with a bang however. If the calendar doesn’t waiver there are new games and movies every week this month and I’ll be heading up north for Thanksgiving, which will be a nice break. I also decided to renew my Match.com membership so we’ll see how that works out.

Today (aside from the coffee earlier) I’ve been sitting here listening to bands in my “One More Time” playlist. These are new albums this year that I have already listened to at least a couple of times, but haven’t quite judged as good or bad. I just finished listening to “Population” by Most Serene Republic, an auditory cross between Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Polyphonic Spree. It’s not bad, but it fails to really identify itself or grab me in any discernable way. Friday night I listened to “Golden Vessel of Sound” by Yume Bitsu, an album that starts with a strong track and immediately falls apart, never managing to reorganize itself into something worth listening to before it ends. Right now I’ve got the latest release from Kupek “Tries Again” . You’ll likely never see Kupek in stores as it’s a side project of comic book author Brian Lee O’Malley, which he releases for free online. There are a couple standout tracks in this release, but overall it’s not as impressive as his previous albums. Still, it’s pretty damn good for what is essentially a home produced and recorded album.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading to Waterloo Records later today and I’ll be back on the dating sites later tonight to see who I contact this week. It’s a lazy end to a lazy week.

What Are The Chances?

I just sent a message to someone on OK Cupid who looks an awful lot like a girl named Tara that I dated once back in college. Tara is more or less a footnote in my romantic life as nothing ever really developed (it was one of those wrong time, wrong place kinda things), but our only date was to see The Promise Ring live at the Middle East downstairs with Jets to Brazil opening. This was the first time I had every really heard “emo” music (emo being a style of music played by former hardcore punk kids from 1984 till early the 2000’s where it was destroyed by the mainstream and tuned into boy bands with guitars) and it was also the first time I heard Jets to Brazil, whose first album I bought soon after and has contributed to making life worth living ever since.

I never knew Tara well enough to even begin to decipher whether this person I messaged is her or not other than a passing resemblence and it’s been 10 years and people change so I guess we’ll see if I get a reply and hopefully what this person’s real name is.

55

There are only 55 songs left in my “listened once” play list, comprised mainly of Cave-In’s Creative Eclipses EP and Thrice’s Alchemy Index vol. 3 + 4, both of which I acquired a couple weeks ago at Cheapo Discs on Lamar blvd. The other big contributors to the remaining list are The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which I got at Waterloo Records (also on Lamar) on Labor Day weekend and Connor Oberst’s Outer South, which I got from my Dad back in July.

Technically speaking I’ve already listened to the Connor Oberst CD twice, once when my Dad was driving me back from Bradley International Airport in Hartford on a visit to the folks in Connecticut this past July and once on the iPod after I ripped it. iTunes doesn’t know about that first listen though and to be honest, it wasn’t a “good” listen so I can’t really fake count it and thus it gets what is technically a third obligatory listen.

Obligatory is an unfortunate term to use with Oberst, but the fact of the matter is that between Bright Eyes’ Cassadega in 2007, the first self-titled album with the Mystic River Valley band in 2008, Outer South in 2009 and his Monsters of Folk project, I think the man is spreading himself a little thin. It’s not that the music is bad – I can recall a few gems from Cassadega and the Connor Oberst album at least – it’s just that it’s no Lifted or I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning. Not that I expect to be constantly blown away by an artist, it’s just when I find my enthusiasm waning and see someone come out with 4 albums in 3 years, I wonder if that energy had been spent on just one stellar Bright Eyes album, would I have been more impressed. I suppose it’s the ages old criticism though, the kind levied at bands whenever they released double albums. Why make 2 albums full of so-called filler when you can give us 1 album full of hits. Sometimes art makes demands and you just can’t say no.

Listen Twice

Back earlier in the summer I made a post about eMusic selling out and at the time considered quitting the service entirely as some sort of a boycott. Like any hardcore addict however, I was not able to simply discard my paraphernalia and be done with the whole scene. While the changes eMusic made this past summer were almost entirely deplorable (album-purchase-only tracks and full-download-only albums being prime among them) the service remains an excellent source of indie downloads. The main reason I had initially considered a boycott was that my downloads were reduced from 65 a month to 37 for my $15 subscription. This was a change in pricing structure that seems obviously made to appease eMusic’s latest catalogue addition (Sony) who like all major labels are reluctant to sell their music for less than a certain amount even though it really doesn’t mean less money for them.  Since the change was made however it seems that eMusic has been going out of their way to fix the PR problem they created, especially for long time users such as myself with “grandfathered” subscription plans that gave us more downloads at our price point than newer users and who because of this fact obviously lost out on more monthly downloads than others. What eMusic has been doing is giving us ways to get more free downloads. It started in August/September when they gave users with older accounts 50 free downloads. The catch (like the monthly downloads) is that these downloads had to be used before the beginning of my next subscription period, ie. within a month. The next bonus was to give 10 free downloads for rating 10 albums, a virtual freebie. One would think that I couldn’t argue against such a wealth of music downloads, but it would seem that I can.

Over the last year specifically I’ve decided to adopt a more regimented listening procedure for new music. I have two iTunes playlists that aid me in this task. The first is my “never listened ‘09″ list, which contains anything I added to iTunes this year that I have not listened to yet. The second list is “listened once ‘09″, which contains tracks downloaded this year that have only been listened to once so far. The idea of these lists is to ensure that I listen to everything at least twice. To most this might seem like unnecessary organization, but the fact is that when I started monitoring what I had downloaded but failed to listen to at all (let alone twice) late last year, I came up with a surprising amount. The simple fact of the matter is that I acquire an enormous amount of new music every year.

Now let me make a quick aside here and say that I realize that in this age of digital downloads it is not uncommon for most people to acquire a ton of music at once, but in my experience the average person tends to download (or acquire from friends) a number of tracks that they never plan to listen to. This often manifests itself when Person A looks at Person B’s iPod and sees a bunch of tracks that they don’t have by an artist that they are marginally aware of. Rather than pick and choose (because they don’t know the name of the song or songs they like to begin with) they transfer all the tracks to their own iPod and have all of a sudden have acquired several hundred new songs 90% of which they will never nor have the intention of ever listening to.

I’m a music lover, I acquire music in order to listen to it and due to the fact that I only acquire music legally (that is to say I pay money for it) I have more of an incentive to give it a listen, thus the two playlist system I mentioned above. At this point in 2009 I have acquired 1236 new tracks. Over the last month I’ve probably acquired somewhere in the neighborhood 160 new tracks between my 87 (37 + 50 bonus) eMusic tracks in September and the purchase of several CD’s. My “listened once” play list has about 180 tracks in it at the moment, with some tracks going back as far as this past July. I’d say that only half of that 180 are tracks from this past month.

Anyway, the problem I’m running into is that my two playlist system was designed to alert me to un-listened or under-listened tracks and force me to give them a spin. The problem is that the more tracks that pile up, the less likely I am to give them a quality listen and the more likely I am to just play them without really getting what I’m hearing. This of course leads me to my point. Reducing my monthly downloads from 65 to 37 was almost a godsend, giving me less to listen to and more to spend quality time with. And now that I live near two decent record stores and have access to physical media of catalogues not available on eMusic, there’s even more music to discover and I always prefer physical media to digital. If eMusic insists to giving me free downloads though then I’m going to have to use them and the problem that arrises is that I’m not downloading quality music, I’m downloading things on a whim, which works out sometimes, but more often than not winds up flat. The result is that I’ve listened to a lot of mediocre music lately and I almost want to quit eMusic in order to reduce my music intake to only what I can find physically, thus focussing my listening (ideally) on music I’m going to like more often than not. Ultimately I wish that eMusic had a per download pricing plan with the same low per track pricing as their monthly subscriptions, because there’s going to be stuff I’ll only be able to find on eMusic and I don’t want to miss out on it. The question I guess is whether the frequency of good finds on eMusic is worth the glut of mediocre picks I force myself to make in order to satisfy my subscription purchase?

eMusic Sells Out

I used to be proud to be an eMusic member, but starting July 18th that’s not going to be possible anymore.

Back in 2004, my friend Scott turned me onto something called eMusic, a service that would allow me to download 65 tracks for only $15 a month. Now you have to realize that this is back when the iPod was only a year old and before everyone and their grandmother had cell phones capable of holding multiple gigs of music. Back then the only places you were going to get MP3’s were iTunes for .99 a song or illegitimately. The only other options were the places that would let you stream but not own. EMusic not only provided DRM free downloads, but focused on independent artists. Needless to say, this place was ahead of it’s time.

A couple years after that, eMusic changed it’s pricing plan so that $15 only bought 50 tracks a month, but members with existing plans (including mine) did not change and for $15 I still got my 65 tracks. As if I didn’t have enough reason already (eMusic having introduced me to dozens of bands whose music I would never have found otherwise) this made me want to champion eMusic even more and until now I’ve always told people of all listening habits that this is simply the best place to get music for a decent price.

I can understand why many tracks on iTunes sell for .99 because the fact of the matter is that so much popular music isn’t worth buying an entire album. Given a model where artists produce 2-3 good songs out of every 12 and a public that only consumes what they’ve already heard or what someone else has told them to buy, selling single tracks at a cost designed to make up for lagging album sales makes sense. It isn’t the same with many independent artists and the people who listen to them however. We’re overwhelmingly a group of people who care about albums, as we’re accustomed to seeking out good music and not just consuming what we’re told is “cool” by the RIAA, MTV, and others who would see the soul sucked out of music in pursuit of dollar signs and not artistic expression.

EMusic made a deal with Sony recently to offer downloads of their back catalogue of songs older than 2 years. One can only assume that the deal has a hefty price tag or that Sony won’t stand for it’s tracks to be offered at the lower price offered by eMusic because starting in July the number of tracks being offered per month for existing plans (including grandfathered plans like my own) will be dropping, effectively passing on the price of courting Sony to every single member of eMusic. The biggest slap in the face however comes to peope like myself whose grandfathered 65 track plans will be cut nearly in half to only 35 tracks a month for $15.

EMusic is attempting to sell this change as a boon to everyone, a win-win situation that allows eMusic not only to increase it’s own revenue, but provide a larger catalogue to it’s users. While I can’t argue with eMusic wanting to make more money and increase it’s catalogue, I take issue with the manner in which it manifests itself. The question to ask is whether eMusic’s existing members really want Sony’s back catalogue? There’s no doubt that eMusic stands to make more money even knowing that they will likely lose existing subscribers over this deal, but where’s the loyalty to those of us who have been dedicated downloaders for over 5 years? Where before eMusic was a company and a site that I could feel confident in supporting, they have now resorted to the same empty tactics of greed that seem to drive all capitalistic pursuits. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me, but for a company that has done so much to bring independent music to the ears of so many people – music that is nearly impossible to track down in a physical form in so many locations throughout the country – to make a decision so obviously based on satisfying the masses and the status quo is disappointing to say the least.

I used to go to eMusic to take a chance on things that were new as well as download artists that were difficult to find in my area. With the halving of my monthly downloads I don’t know that it makes sense to continue my subscription, but above the cost is the principal. I’d gladly pay more money for more independent music, but Sony and their major label ilk are part of a dying system doing everything in their power to wring money from consumers without providing anything more of value. For eMusic to support this is contrary to what I believed the spirit of such a site was and while the sad truth is that this deal is likely irreversible, I don’t have to see my money go to support it. When my subscription to eMusic goes to renew in July, I have to recourse but to cancel. It may not be convenient, but given the choice I’d rather support independent music directly instead.

Spin The Black Circle

I just had a bit of an “old coot” moment here as I realized that the music industry is rapidly moving away from physical media to digital distribution both because of the new opportunities it opens up for artists and because of end-user demands. The consequence of course is that stores selling physical media become less and less necessary, taking away one of my favorite pass times, browsing record stores.

Over the last 10 years alone we’ve seen the rapid disappearance of records stores both independent and chain. Where stores haven’t closed completely, they’ve merged with larger media outlets like FYE, stores that can sustain a business based on DVD and other physical media sales. On the independent front, stores just cease to exist altogether as the casual market for obscure and used music is met by online outlets instead.

It’s a sad state of affairs for someone like me who (while purchasing more digital than physical media on the average) still enjoys trekking out to brick and mortar stores in search of new discs. I have to wonder if the recent resurgence in vinyl sales isn’t some kind of evolutionary response by the music buying public. If – as the demand for physical media declines – audiophiles are inadvertently (and perhaps unknowingly) cultivating a need for a format with qualities that can only ever exist physically. The fidelity of a vinyl LP cannot ever be recreated digitally and perhaps in some unconscious backlash against the overwhelming digital tide, music lovers are again showing interest in this format and in the process lending relevance not only to physical media, but to the outlets that sell these objects.

All I know is that it will be a sad day when all the record stores close and my “old coot” realization of the day is that we’re quickly becoming a society strapped to our chairs and our internets. Everyday we’re destroying reasons to get out and interact with other people physically and you can’t stop progress, but I have to wonder what we’re doing with all the time we’re saving, because I spend more and more time at home wondering what the point of going outside is anymore.

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

After listening to Andrew Bird’s new album for the second time I have to say that I’m not incredibly impressed with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, but in the spectrum of Andrew Bird it falls closer to The Mysterious Production of Eggs than it does Armchair Apocrypha. While not as sketchy and derivative as Weather Systems, Noble Beast still manages to let Bird do what Bird does best (ie. whistle, play the violin, and string together odd vocabulary), but it lacks the emotion that was present in Armchair. Being jaded as I am, I can’t help but wonder if after the success of his previous album, Bird decided to make something more for the masses, an album that wouldn’t piss anyone off. In the end while Noble Beast is entirely listenable, but lacks the substance that made Armchair Apocrypha stand out and persist over time. I’d rather hear Bird say less of “something” than more of “anything”, which is what he’s given us in Noble Beast.

2008 Year End Mix Tape – Frame of Reference

This was a strange year for music with me as I a lack of decent Punk and Hardcore forced me to explore other genres for a change. Math/Post Rock was big for me this year as well as the usual Indie Rock fair and even a little pop. As far as the mix itself goes, I’m pretty proud of it. The first disc certainly holds up better thematically than the second, but overall it’s a decent collection of songs that were never meant to be together that I’ve managed to shoehorn into a format that works.

Disc 1

1. Sure We Had Knives Around – Don Caballero

Let’s get one thing straight, this isn’t Don Caballero, it’s Damon Che’s new band with the same name as his old band. And while it may not be Don Cab, it’s still good, especially if you don’t expect it to be anything like Don Cab … because it’s not.

2. melody 2 – Tera Melos

I stumbled upon this band during my quest for math rock on Last.fm late last spring. There’s a combination of hardcore, math, and ambience here that just strikes all the right chords. This song especially covers a lot of ground from the incomprehensible drowned out vocals to the last section with the distant, tinny, background drumming behind the spacey foreground drone.

3. It’s All About Right Then – Ghosts and Vodka

This is apparently members of Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc (sans Tim Kinsella) in what sounds like a cross between a math rock band and instrumental 90’s emo. I believe this was a reissue of their only full length album, but it’s good stuff, like Mogwai meets Faraquet played by an emo band.

4. Parakeet – Faraquet

And speaking of Faraquet … I missed out seeing their DC reunion show because it fell on the launch day of Warhammer, but at least they had released an anthology of their harder to find tracks from splits and limited releases that I picked up around the same time. I don’t know what it is, but listening to Faraquet always makes me think of summer nights a few hours after it’s rained, when the air begins to clear and everything feels fresh and cool. This song, while short and simple, just lets me get lost in it.

5. Ten Uh Clock Heart Uh Tack – We Versus The Shark

This was one of my “go to” bands during my math/post rock phase this year. Overall they’ve got sort of a post-hardcore meets math rock in a garage kind of a sound, that despite some rough vocals manages to get quite catchy. This track is one of the rare instances on the album where the vocals don’t really grate and is the only song featuring the female singer as a lead. While not the poster track for this band, you can still get a good sense of what they’re about here while allowing me to slot a decent follow up to Faraquet.

6. I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie

For whatever reason, I had given up on Death Cab after Transatlanticism and even though Plans had a couple decent tracks, I somehow grew to not expect much from them. I think Narrow Stairs won me back. This is one of those songs that will forever end up being misused on mix tapes. Yes, it’s a love song, but it’s about a stalker, then again maybe chicks dig that these days. Even though they made a radio-friendly half-length version of this song as well, I’ve gotta give them props for doing an 8 minute track for the album … it’s very prog of them.

7. Undercovers On – Rival Schools

Don’t ask me why I never listened to Rival Schools before this year, but so it goes. After seeing more than one comparison between them and Hundred Reasons I figured I better put them on my list and the rest is history. Leave it to me to feature the most emo song on the album in a mix though, but I seriously can’t get enough of it.

8. Cornflake Girl – Jawbox

I’ve been slowly working my way backwards through J. Robbins’ career for a few years now. When 2008 started I had 1 Jawbox album and their singles collection. Now my collection is complete and they’ve ended up being one of my top 3 most played bands this year. I wanted to feature something original by the band, but the Tori Amos cover is just too good to pass up here.

9. Hey – Pixies

Who would have thought that I’d end up experiencing a Pixies renaissance thanks to Keaven Smith. This song was featured in a pivotal scene of Zack and Mirri Make a Porno and it had to have been the best use of a Pixies song in a film since Fight Club. On my way home from the movie I was trying to find Hey on my iPod, only to discover that I never ripped all of Doolittle to mp3. When I got home I fixed that problem and for the next few weeks the Pixes got more play than I’ve given them in the last 8 years.

10. Would You Miss Me – Amy Kuney

Amy Kuney was only the tip of the iceberg for indie pop with me this year, but she’s the only one who had any staying power, not to mention that voice … that voice! And she’s easy on the eyes. All that aside … I stumbled upon this album completely by random on eMusic and gave it a shot. Much to my surprise it managed to hold my attention captive for a while. Even now that voice still gets me. I’ve decided that Amy Kuney will be my future wife.

11. The Road Leads Where It’s Led – Secret Machines

I’ve had the Secret Machines first album for several years now, ever since I saw them open for Blonde Redhead back in Boston, but I never bought anything else by them. This year I decided to change that and I can’t complain. These guys are at their best when their spacey and psychdelic and although the album this song comes from was a little more pop than I prefer to hear from them, a few songs like this one ultimately make up for it. It’s a space rock dance song … how can you not support that?

12. Go Mad and Mark (Live) – Envy

Go Mad and Mark is my favorite song in the world 4 years running. There has yet to be another song that can elicit such a visceral response in me every time I listen to it and while it used to surprise me, now I just accept it. Hearing a live version of this track on the compilation Envy released this year just solidified Go Mad and Mark as the most amazing song ever made in my book.

Disc 2

1. Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head) – Ben Folds

Ben Folds new album was a HUGE disappointment for me, sounding more like a collection of experimentations and sketches than a proper release. I’ve tried giving it every possible chance, but there are just too many parts of it that are either disappointing or just plan annoying. This track is one of 3 or 4 that are worth listening to though. I don’t want to be the fan that tries to tell and artist what they should play, but this song is the kind of stuff I think of when I think about Ben Folds, not the majority of what Way to Normal had to offer.

2. Break the Glass – Hundred Reasons

See what I did there? Piano song followed by a song with a piano intro? Yeah, I’m kind of a big deal. I believe markwood described Hundred Reasons to me as a British Foo Fighters, guilty pleasure pop music that paradoxically still rocks. Granted, I played them out kinda quick, but it’s still good windows-down driving music.

3. Dying is Fine – Ra Ra Riot

Not being a hipster, I probably liked this album more than I should have, but since it wasn’t being shoved down my throat the way that damn Vampire Weekend album was, I don’t feel so bad about being into it. Following the path laid down by groups like Modest Mouse and The Arcade Fire, Ra Ra Riot have what is essentially an album of dark, depressed songs that end up sounding really upbeat for the most part.

4. Something New – Dead to Me

Dead to Me didn’t make it into last year’s mix due to purely logistical concerns, but I managed to find them a place this year. Truth be told, they got a lot more play from me this year, especially considering they didn’t have to compete with being bought at the same time as the Armalite album this time around. These guys remind me what Punk music can and should sound like and this track especially really grew on me.

5. Not a Hit Song – Tim Fite

Tim Fite is the hero of 2008. After stumbling upon his music on the Sound Opinions podcast he quickly grew to dominate my daily listening for several months. Like a cross between Bob Dylan, Beck, Tom Waits, and Mos Def, Tim Fite crafts these off-beat tunes that call to mind everything from folk and rock to blues and hip-hop from the last 60 years.

6. Los Angeles – Counting Crows

There’s never going to be a Counting Crows album that I don’t like. They’re the first band I fell in love with and I’ve never managed to grow out of them. This year saw their first new album in 5 years and Los Angeles was and remains one of the real stand out tracks on the album.

7. Train Under Water – Bright Eyes

Even though I’ve had this album for a few years I never really gave this song in particular as much attention as I did this year and I really grew to love it. To me this is lonely highway driving music, when all you’ve got to keep you company are the lines on the road and your trusty six string.

8. The Next Messiah – Jenny Lewis

Jenny Lewis does country in that dirty, broken down, Johnny Cash kind of way, conjuring up images of suckers, scoundrels and sinners set against strong vocals and the sounds of guitars. The Next Messiah is probably the best example of the Cash style country on her new album. Oh, and if things don’t work out with me and Amy Kuney, Jenny and I are totally hooking up.

9. A Passing Feeling – Elliott Smith

Something about Elliott Smith just clicked with me this year and he got a lot more play than ever before. I always knew I was an Elliott Smith fan, but I never found that sweet spot. This year it all fell into place. While there are a myriad of songs that I could use here, A Passing Feeling just felt right.

10. In The Hidden Places – The Mountain Goats

John Darnielle always gets me with one lyric or another. “Autumn came around like a drifter to an on-ramp” … how can you not love that? The Mountain Goats are a pretty consistent band for me and like Lifetime and Kid Dynamite, every year has a Mountain Goats phase. This year I really grew to respect their more recent work, having never given it a chance before and moving backwards through their catalog instead. Now I’m looking forward to whatever’s next.

11. Setting Sail in April – By The End of Tonight

This was another of the math/post rock finds this year and reminds me of a slightly mathier From Monument to Masses, a little happier, and without the samples. The band as a whole has explored some interesting territory in their career, but their best works in my opinion are the album this song comes from and their split with Tera Melos. This is probably their most stand out track with me and similar to Tera Melos, covers a lot of ground sonically, even if the drums pop a bit too much for my tastes.

12. I Hope Yer There – Tim Fite

Tim Fite again … the man can do no wrong. Incidentally this was the track that first got me hooked. The way the distorted violin and drums just explode out of nowhere towards the end of the song still gets me to this day.

13. Wicked Wanda – Stephen Malkmus

Stephen Malkmus’ last album strayed too far into territory that’s better left to Beck, but with his latest release he’s back in more familiar territory and exploring his own boundaries instead of someone else’s. Moodier and more progressive, this is the sound of Pavement grown up and for the first time in his solo career Malkmus decided to end his album with a decent closer instead of the anti-climax I’ve come to expect.

14. Daylight – Failure

Maybe it’s because I’ve never used this track in a mix before. Maybe it’s because I listened to Failure’s Fatastic Planet album all the way through for the first time in several years a few months ago. Maybe it’s because I wanted something grander to end the year on, but after living with this mix as a whole for a few days I knew it needed something more and then Daylight (one of the best final album tracks ever) popped into my head. In the song, daylight is something to be afraid of, but in the real world I can only hope that 2009 brings a little daylight into a work that finds itself in the midst of some very dark times.

Album Audits

Just in case anyone is playing attention, I wanted to say that I’m officially suspending the Album Audit posts. I’m doing this mostly because I simply don’t have the time to listen to and comment on all my music. I have plenty of time to listen now while I’m at work, but to then post a write up about it later on isn’t always going to work. For instance, I’ve listened to a few of my other Aesop Rock albums since my last post and were I to write about them now the result would be less interesting for me and anyone reading than if I were writing it at the time I were listening.

I may jump in from time to time with a live album review … and I’d like to get into the habit of reviewing anything new I get, but at this point reviewing the nearly 1000 albums on my iPod is going to prove difficuly at best. The point for me in the end is to list to stuff I probably haven’t touched in a long time and that needs to be my first concern; that’s where the enjoyment really is for me at the moment and when I find myself not listening to something simply because I don’t have time to write about it, I need to sit back and take notice.