Band: Chelsea Wolfe
Album: Ἀποκάλυψις (Apokalypsis)
Best song: “Moses” is one of the best songs of 2011.
Worst song: “Friedrichshain” is the lowest point on a very strong album.
Genre is a shitty way to describe music, but it’s such an ingrained part of the culture that no one can avoid it. Mastodon isn’t a band, they’re a metal band or a thrash band. Read More
Band: This Will Destroy You
Album: Tunnel Blanket
Best song: “Little Smoke,” no doubt.
Worst song: “Osario” isn’t great.
Back at my old job, I used to talk with one of our reporters –Doug is his name — about various stuff. A lot of the conversations got pretty strange, like the time we discussed history’s greatest monster (we settled on Stalin, I believe) or the most effective way to a group like Al Qaeda to terrorize DC. Read More
Band: Amalgamated Sons of Rest
Album: Amalgamated Sons of Rest
Best song: My Molina bias has me saying “Jennie Blackbird’s Blues” is the best song on the record.
Worst song: The hidden track, “I Will Be Good” isn’t much.
The entire notion of a “supergroup” is a little dated and silly. Admittedly, it happens a fair amount and the results are rarely completely terrible — the first Raconteurs record is, really, quite amazing. Indie rock doesn’t have superstars to occupy said supergroups, so, for example, The Sea and Cake wouldn’t be considered such a group. It’s just a band with a dude form Tortoise and Archer Prewitt and such. Were these more mainstream artists, it would probably be a supergroup. Read More
Band: Jens Lekman
Album: An Argument with Myself
Best song: “Waiting for Kirsten” and the title track are lovely.
Worst song: “So This Guy At My Office” struggles a bit.
I’ve got a thing for Jens Lekman’s last proper album. It’s the basis for one of the more long-winded pieces of crap writing I’ve ever done. Read More
Band: Fleet Foxes
Album: Helplessness Blues
Best song: “Montezuma.”
Worst song: “Lorelai” isn’t much.
Next week, Geffen Records is releasing a 20-year-anniversary edition of Nevermind. I’m 30 years old, so the album’s original release wasn’t the seminal moment it was for those a few years my senior, but the album itself is seminal. Nirvana introduced me to the underground and was one of the first bands that I actually cared enough about to become a junior fanboy for. For my 13th birthday, for example, I received the Nirvana singles box. That set contained all the CD singles from the band. Those b-sides were epic for a preteen punk/indie rocker. Read More
Band: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Album: Hawk
Best song: “You Won’t Let Me Down Again” is the best song on the record.
Worst song: I’m not in love with “No Place to Fall,” as Willy Mason doesn’t do it for me.
Let me preface this by saying that this entire piece is mostly my trying to rationalize my being super judgemental. So, take whatever follows with a giant grain of salt. Similarly, I am not humorless, I assure you. I just come off that way because I’m going through my usual existential crises.
One of my close friends got married in 2010 — long story short: my friend is awesome and she had her wedding at the zoo — and I’ll never forget talking to her a bit about dating and her saying one of the most prescient things I’ve ever heard about me and my dating preferences:
Band: Dente
Album: L’amore Non è Bello
Best song: “A me piace lei” is the album’s grand optimistic — though, mostly aspirational — point and is a great song, but “Buon appetito” has the best arrangement, lyrics and vocal work.
Worst song: Probably “Quel mazzolino.”
I’ve long said that the best love songs are the sad ones. There’s value in songs like “Something,” but overwhelmingly, the best songs are the ones that speak to melancholy, confusion and unrequited love. I’m not sure why this is. Read More
Band: Sun Kil Moon
Album: April
Best song: “Lost Verses.” All 9:43 of it.
Worst song: “Heron Blue” is good, but the weakest song on an excellent set.
In baseball (here I go again about baseball), there is a phenomenon of the age-27 season (though, many would suggest otherwise). It was thought that baseball players generally peak during their age-27 seasons, as the general baseball player peak is 25-29.
I am not a professional ballplayer, of course. I am a regular schmoe. Indeed, I turned 27 in 2008, though I didn’t anticipate it to be the most tide-turning year in my adult life. Read More
Band: Danzig
Album: The Lost Tracks of Danzig
Best song: The cover of “Cat People” says a lot about Glenn, doesn’t it?
Worst song: Well, “White Devil Rise,” while not racist, is kind of strange. I don’t think Rick Rubin and Glenn Danzig taking on Louis Farrakhan (by explaining the inherent malevolence of a race war) is the best of ideas. Also, it’s a crappy song.
I have a friend — we used to be closer, but he and I have grown apart, as all adult friendships separated by 700 miles are wont to do — who is the picture of a certain kind of masculinity. Read More
Band: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Album: Show Your Bones
Best song: “Phenomena.”
Worst song: “Honey Bear.”
I’ve told this story before, most assuredly, in this or another space, but it’s always worth repeating. During the fall of my freshman year of college (1999, for those following), Eric Bachmann, Superchunk and Guided by Voices played a show at the local club in town. I was trying too get in with the radio people, so I naturally attended said show and promptly looked for radio people with whom to cozy up. While Bachmann was finishing up his set, John — one of the people to whom I look up and someone I idolized at the time — said something to me that I found outstandingly smart.
“Both these bands have been playing the same song for 15 years. I just like the Superchunk song better.” Read More
