Since paranoidandroid.net has died and is fading from the google cache, I'm reposting some things that used to live there.
First Up my favorites list from 2004:
"After much personal footdragging, here is a highly unscientific sampling of the live and recorded music that I stumbled across in 2004 that made the year cooler than it might otherwise have been (in no particular order):
Explosions in the Sky - live at Carleton College. Perhaps its becuase I've been wanting to see them for a couple of years, perhaps it was because I almost didn't make it, or perhaps they are just that good. Whatever the reason, the show was awe-inspiring. The band was intense and fully in each note, without sacrificing any of the beauty and evocativeness of the records. It gave me a newfound respect for their most recent (2003) album, "The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place." I liked it when it came out, but I was expecting it to sound more like their previous record "Those Who Tell the Truth...". That record found a perfect balance between Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai, taking the dark compositional aspects of GYBE and plugging them into the more stripped down approach of Mogwai. On "THe Earth..." they focused their sound more by dropping some of the drama-through-extreme-dynamics for more complex arrangements. Without the bombast, my short attention span would wonder whenever I put on the CD, but when I saw them live it all came together. With my attention completely focused on the music and the band playing the songs for all they were worth, I was better able to hear how the smaller changes - the way they altered the rhythm of the melody or changed the counter melody or the drum pattern - suggested the same kind of emotional arcs they had previously created with long creshendoes and guitar effects. The opening number of their set (and lost song on "The Earth..."), "Your Hand in Mine", has been one of my favorite songs of the last few months, along with Animal Collective's "Win A Rabbit" and Hot Snakes' "Plenty for All". It's beautiful and intricate with a hint of wistfulness, yet completely inspiring. Its a song so good I wanted to see "Friday Night Lights" just so I can hear the film's two new versions of the song in surround sound.
Hot Snakes - "Audit in Progress". It's the Hot snakes. It's John Reis (Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Sultans, etc.), Rick Froberg (Drive Like Jehu), Gar Wood (Tanner), Mario Rubalcaba (Clikatat Ikatowi, RftC, Black Heart Procession). It's more of what they did so well on their previous records; perhaps a little more straightforward in terms of structure and a little more discordant. It's got "plenty for all" on it. What more could I ask for?
Ted Leo - "Shake the Sheets". I saw "A Very Long Engagement" recently and it struck me that my feelings towards Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Ted Leo are similar. As they have gotten older, their work has become more and more conventional. Jeunet abandoned the macabre fantasy of "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children" for the more familiar territory of love stories with "Amelie" and "...Engagement." Leo moved further from the Mod-punk of chisel and the experimentation of the "Tej Leo" album with records that sound increasingly like classic rock. With each new film or record I keep fearing this might be the one where each one's nods towards convention finally tip the balance into banality, but so far my fears have been unfounded. They manage to get more and more accessible while maintaining their solid mechanics (Jeunet's eye for images, Leo's ear for a good tune), quirkiness (Jeunet, which admittedly sat a little uneasily with the war stuff, but overall worked) and heart (Leo).
Futureheads - s/t album. Futureheads were the energetic uplift I needed to weather the post-election, pre-winter blues: good old fashioned angular punk with even older fashioned angular vocal harmonies. The last 3 songs, including their amazing cover of "hounds of love" would be a perfect EP; and, despite one or two slow moments, the rest of the album is almost as good. Plus the aforementioned cover finally convinced me to pick up the Kate Bush record that contains the original, and I thank them for that as well.
Animal Collective and TV on the Radio. These have been pretty well vetted in other places, so I'll just add that it was refreshing to hear records that were melodic and familiar but were also continually surprising.
Devendra Banhardt and Joanna Newsome - Live at the Women's Club Theater and records. Both sound like thet went back to the field recordings that inspired the first generation of popular folk artists and filtered it through their own highly ideosyncratic visions. They not only proved that decades of coffee house banality hasn't yet drained the life force out of the "old, weird america", the strength of their output suggests it might be the perfect launching pad for a new, weird america. Or as Banhardt sings on "A Sight to Behold": "Its like finding home/in an old folk song/That you've never heard/Still you know every word/and for sure you can sing along." The end result is something cloaked in sounds that have been done to death since the 60s which manages to remain unique and foreign, but accessable. After that, the similarities between the two fade. Devendra Banhardt with his finger-picked guitar, more closly resembles the popular conception of the singer songwriter, while Joanna Newsome is harder to describe. She has one of the most unique voices I've heard (dolly parton meets bjork? an teenage appalachan beth gibbons?), one of the more unusual instruments (classical harp), with a style that sound like the missing link between singer-songwriter folkies, the hypnotic arpeggios of minimalism, and Lomax-style field recordings. Both were also great live. Devendra Banhardt had a raving-visionary stage presence coupled with a goofy, laid-back charisma (this despite recovering from bad "iowa tuna curry" - three words that should probably never be used together). Joanna Newsome had the difficult job of taking the stage after Mr. Banhardt for an audience that had mainly come to see him (myself included), but when she opened with an a cappella and then climbed behind the harp to launch into "Bridges and Ballons" I was won over by her tunefulness, her air of folksy wisdom and wonder, all of which was backed up by her palpable joy and confidence in what she was doing.
Xiu Xiu - "I Luv the Valley (Oh)" The whole "Fabulous Muscles" album is good but this was the song I kept listening to over and over. There were a lot of notable vocals this year: vocals used in surprising ways - Futureheads, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective, (and if I had heard bjork's album I would probably throw that in this list as well) - as well as vocals that were plain old surprising like Joanna Newsome. However, I found Jamie Stewart's strangled, distorted "Oh" in the middle of this song the most affecting. The surprisingly straight forward indie-rock accompaniement goes into hiding as he lets out this single sylable, which becomes the culimation of the song's slow-burn tension, while diffusing it at the same time.
Amanda Woodward, Icollide, Endahl - since the burning of the Babylon (insert reggae joke here) it had been a while since i had seen a DIY-ish show. What better way to come back to the fold than with French emo? Not quite the combination of heaviness, fury and melody that marked forebears like fingerprint and jasmine, but great in their metallic-rock-meets-mid-paced-emo-punk way. A live show and new album ("La Decadence de la Decadence") that turned me around on a band that I was pretty ho-hum on before. PLus I got see a friend's band open for them.
Textbook Traitors, Foresnics, Baroness, the Vets, and a local band whose name I didn't catch - Live at a diy space that prefers to remain nameless. Another amazing show, even though I really only caught about 2/3rds of it. I missed half of the first band's set and the show ran so late for a weeknight that I had to leave before the Vets started (I think they started setting up after 1:30 AM). Thankfully, in between I got to see Textbook Traitors play their perfect Reversal of Man style hardcore before they broke up. Think the child of sonic youth and grindcore: heavy and dischordant with rapid changes like grindcore, but with slower tempos and no cookie monster growls. The riffs are so noisy they are almost expressionistic, but Textbook Traitors resist the tempation to push it too far and the insistant rhythms give the music a viceral imapct and hook. Forensics were good, but a bit all over the map from riff-heavy rock to instrumentals that sounded like Drive Like Jehu's quieter, more involved songs. The event of the evening, though, was Baroness who came from nowhere to blow everyone away with their seemless combination of crustcore and metal. Not usually my thing, but it didn't matter that night.
the Mountain Goats - "We Shall All Be Healed" Yet another album full of catchy, literate and moving songs from the Goats with "Home again garden Grove", "Cotton", Young thosands", "Palmcorder Yanja", and "Against Pollution" being amongst their best. "We Shall All Be Healed" was also notable because it felt like the full arrival of the new Goats. "Tallahassee", the first full studio recording after many years of endearingly lowest-fi records, felt hesitant, but on WSABH the songs seemed like they were always meant to have extra instruments on them. Plus it was great to hear John Darnielle stretch out his songwriting and try new approaches, like the surprisingly winding vocal lines of "Mole" or the jazzy break down of "Cotton."
Walkmen "Bows and Arrows" & Destroyer "Your Blues" - These are harder to write about because they came out so long ago and I haven't listened to them as much recently as Futureheads or Animal Collective, but there was a time when I had these records were in pretty constant rotation. The Walkmen sound like the so-called "rock revival" of a few years ago as re-imagined by "Small Change" - era Tom Waits. Rocking, but with a world-weary cool, "Bows and Arrows" felt like the soundtrack to a subway ride home from the hipster party your friend dragged you to. Destroyer is Dan Bejar, the other songwriter from the New Pornographers. Years before rockism became a thing for people to get all steamed about Destroyer had been exploring the lines between artifice and authenticity, with songs and vocals that wore their craft and appropriation on their sleeve, but remained catchy and moving, like a joke so good you will it to be true. On "your Blues" he fed his smart reinventions of 70s art rock through midi-synths to create an orchestra on an indie rock budget. Whether intentional or not, it was a move that forgrounded the tension between craft and emotion even more. What makes the album great though, is that all of this is art-school gravy on a big tasty pile of pop potatoes. These songs were going through my head for weeks, and the darting arpeggios at the end of "Notorious Lightening", despite of (or perhaps because of?) the cheesy synth tones, was one of my favorite musical moments of the year.
Extreme Noise 10th Anniversary show - Extreme Noise Made it 10 years and celebrated by having the legendary Drop Dead play. A good time was had by all. Perhaps too good a time since the triple rock management asked us to wrap it up a little early, cutting short the raffle (thankfuly the tickets were given out for free and most people were too drunk to notice or care). But Drop Dead proved once again why they are legenday.
Reissues:
Brian Eno - these have been covered better by other people, but I recently found the reissues used and I *do* see what all of the hullabaloo is about.
Discordance Axis - "Jouhou" Not quite the masterpiece of their final record "The Inalienable Dreamless", "Jouhou" captures them shifting from being a great grindcore band to being a band that exemplifies the genre, while sounding like none of the (admittedly few) other grind acts I've heard. At some point around the time of this record guitarist Rob Marton seemed to realize that Drummer David Witte was so unreasonably talented that he could do most of the heavy lifting of making the songs sound "grindcore" all by himself, which meant the he (marton) had free reign to come up with whatever riffs he wanted to. The result is a heavy, dark, fast, disjointed metal/hardcore mixture that isn't afraid to strech out into new territory, while never losing site of the fact that the first order of business is to be a heavy, dark, fast, disjointed metal/hardcore crushing machine.
Uranus - To this Bearer of Truth. Uranus combined elements of crust, metal, hardcore and chaotic emocore into a dark, furious, and epic sound that has had a large influence over the DIY punk/hardcore scene for the past ten years. This CD collects their out of print discography. In my bolder moments I would offer their "Panacea" for one of those "songs of the century" lists. It starts out promisingly enough with a atmospheric, drone-y intro before settling into a heavy uptempo verse that marries the locked groove of metalic hardcore with the floating, frantic feeling of Gravtiy Records-style chaotic emo, while the singer howls away as if he is simlutaneously screaming and growling. This is all good enough, but then something amazing happens. The drummer shifts his eigth-note accept pattern to the beginning of the measure the second guitar responds with a riff of hollow chords and high octave jumps. At this point even though I've heard this song 100+ times my jaw always drops. It's a revolution in sound, as if the song and all he troubles that inspire it have been crushed under its/their own weight and something new is ready to bust out of the rubble, wounded but soaring, aware of its origins yet ready to look beyond them. The song eventually settles down into a closing riff, but for a few seconds it shows the promise of a world full of new possibilities, which is all one can ask of art. I'll admit its not for your average listener, but I'd like to think its worth whatever effort is required to listen to it. The rest of their all-to-brief catalog is almost as impressive.
Honorable Mentions
Arcade Fire - A really good album, a sold out show in the friggin' cold. Not that I'm holding it against them. I do like the album, just seemingly not as much as the rest of the world
Mono - I haven't seen Mogwai in a while but I got to see Mono, who blew me away live. Unfortunately when I put the new record on at home, it left me a little flat. I heard it at a club recently and at high volume it sounds a lot better.
Acid Mother's Temple live at the triple rock. I will never write off that hippy acid rock ever again.
MF Doom. Another banner year for the metal faced villain (who if nothing else has a great knack for stage names). I think I like "MM Food" better than "Madvillainy", but don't tell anyone I said that.
Quantumm Records tour - too much talent to fit on one stage, this show left me smiling for a week.
Malady - ex-members of pg.99 and City of Caterpillar get together for a more straight-ahead rock sound than their previus bands. The parts are interesting, reminding me a bit of the first drive like jehu album. They're not quite there yet, but all the pieces are there. Hopefully they avoid the hardcore band disease and stick around long enough to record the great album I think they have in them.
Tom Waits - Real Gone. Perhaps his best since Bone Machine. Of course 3 of those albums weren't really tom waits albums, they were songs from shows that he collaborated on, but it was good to confirm he still has it in him.
Pixies - Live Sure I have a few quibbles, it would have been nice to hear "is she weird" or some more stuff off of Trompe le Monde, but if I only get to ee one pixies show every 12 years, I want it to be something like this."
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