Monthly Archives: August 2010

Romanian Names

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Band: John Vanderslice
Album: Romanian Names
Best song: “C&O Canal” is lovely.
Worst song: The title track is mediocre.

John Vanderslice has been around for a while and has never touched anything but the outlying islands of popular culture. His first few records had some niche interest — “Bill Gates Must Die” was a fun record of almost protest singalong-ness — and his earnestness is laudatory. But, ultimately, the playing field on which he resides is populated by, let’s face it, better artists.

The breakthrough of Justin Vernon was a happy accident in that it coincided with Vanderslice’s calming down. While his earlier records involved more interesting production and voices/character songs, Romanian Names is a bit more of a navel-gazer. It’s soft and easy, lacking the outsized nature of his earlier records.
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Happy Songs for Happy People

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Band: Mogwai
Album: Happy Songs for Happy People
Best song: “Hunted by a Freak” is one of the most perfect songs ever put to record.
Worst song: “Golden Porsche” isn’t much.

My actual real world job title is Online Content Producer. I won’t get into my job duties here, but needless to say, I’m widespread across the Web. “Social media” — whatever that is — is a huge part of my job, but moreover, it’s part of my life.

I’m something of a curmudgeon and I’m getting closer and closer to technology irrelevance (age-wise), so I often don’t adopt new social tools as I probably should. I was definitely against Facebook at first — Taft had to convince me to join when we both entered grad school around the same time — and I even wrote around here about my disdain for Twitter.
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ReLoad

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Band: Metallica
Album: ReLoad
Best song: Bah. Pretty crappy, all told. “The Memory Remains” isn’t total shit, nor is “Fuel.”
Worst song: Oh, whatever.

I like concert films a fair amount, as it gives me the joy of seeing a band live without the hustle, bustle and annoyance of actually having to deal with other human beings. As well, if there’s a song I don’t enjoy, I can… fast forward. This is very nice. A pet peeve of concert films, of course, is the interstitials of the band talking to promoters, setting up set lists and pyro, etc. That shit gets very Spinal Tap-ish. In a very bad way.

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Weathervanes

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Band: Freelance Whales
Album: Weathervanes
Best song: “Starring” is really nice, “Hannah” is fucking brilliant. “Kilojoules” is good. “Location” isn’t bad.
Worst song: “We Could Be Friends” is mediocre.

Effort is really nice in a band, but “trying too hard” is definitely something no one wants to cop. A lot of modern “indie” bands do this, but many do it with aplomb. Still, that disctinction is a fine line that no one quite understands.
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Codes and Secret Longing

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Band: Raised by Swans
Album: Codes and Secret Longing
Best song: “Sandcastles” is the best.
Worst song: “I’m Still Inside You” is mediocre.

The connection of the movie Chloe to this record is two-part. First, Canadian filmaker Atom Egoyan is something of a fan of Raised by Swans, so he’s inserted them into the film, both in that the band has songs on the movie’s soundtrack and in that the titular character asks another character if he’s heard of the band. When he says no, she says “They’re really good. You’d like them.”

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