make it a mirror

Song: "Love and Space"
Artist: Akron/Family
Source: The Meek Warrior
Day: 10/13
The mystery song from the set I saw back in March is a mystery no more. I feel like I should hate this song. On the face of it, the song is AK AK at their most naively hippy, which should annoy the part of me that remembers being young and disillusioned with the world. The religous overtones should raise the hackles of the knee jerk agnostic/secular humanist in me.

But it doesn't. No doubt part of the reason is its a capella and I'm a sucker for group sing these days. More important is the restraint of the performances. If they were trying too hard, it would sound like they are speaking to me and trying to convince me of something. But they don't, they sing artfully yet plainly. It reinforces the commonality of the desire to live a better, more love-filled life, and directs that request to whatever force can make that happen. And I would hope few of us are nihilists to the extent that you could find fault in that.

Side note, am I the only one who can't hear the title of the new Akron/Family record without thinking of Timothy Treadwell?

Song: Theme from Fenn O'Berg (?)
Album: The Magic Sound Of Fenn O'Berg
Artist: Fenn O'Berg
Day: 10/15/06
This is the Fenn O'Berg song I always wanted to hear. The experimental electronic drones (but they're not drones, they are too active and buzzing to be ambient, yet don't move enough to be something else) are paired with a brass-and-string sample that give the piece a more easily digestable structure for the electronic music novice (which I am as evidenced by my use of the phrase "electronic music"). The piece ends up somewhere between triphop and a movie soundtrack of impending disaster and something far more relaxed.

Song: Four on Six
Artist: Wes Montgomery
Day: 10/17-10/18
Source: The Increbile Jazz Guitar of
Every so often I'll put on a Wes Montgomery album (I really only have 2 or 3) and realize its what I've been meaning to listen to for a while. Smooth but definately swinging post-bop (my records are from his combo period). This song has cool, angular, stepping riff that sounds like little else I've heard from that era, except for maybe Thelonious Monk.

Other stuff I've been listening to... The new Life at These Speeds Album is pretty good so far. A little more mainstream than the "fugazi meets mid-90s emo like Maximillion Colby or maybe Shotmaker" sound of previous efforts but it still has good energy and probably tighter songwriting than previous records. The raccoo-ooo-oo-ooooooooooon (or however you spell it) record on Release the Bats (Is Night People) is pretty good as well if one is into Animal Collective style weird folk.

I want a verb and you give me a noun

roundup since last post through last Sat (10/7).

I'm not sure what's going on. Nothing really seems to be sticking lately. Perhaps it's because I've been sick for most of the past week, perhaps I'm going through a slump, perhaps its because the new releases I've heard recently haven't grabbed me like I think they should. (I'm looking at you, DJ Shadow and TV on the Radio. Don't worry I'll give you a few more chances.) I'm not worried about it, something always comes along, but not too much to report recently.

Song: "Brass Neck", "Kennedy" (tie)
Artist: The Wedding Present
Day: 9/29/06
We recently bought a CD collection at Extreme Noise, so I had the chance to fill in some gaps. Both this and the Channel 3 are a function of that.

I've liked these songs for a long time so its cool to have regular access to them. When I was growing up in the 80s I was little of an anglophile. Most of the interesting, new, and different non-metal music seemed to be coming from England (at least according to the outlets I had at my disposal like MTV and WEQX): New Order, Jesus and Mary Chain, the Cure, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, etc. I didn't have the financial resources to pursue these bands at the time but those sounds were engrained in me, which is why I like The Wedding Present's blend of frantic punk energy with a clean guitar tone and catchy singing. It's not quite nostalgia because I don't really associate these songs with anything in particular and I don't really pine for the late 80s, it's more like a puzzle that has been finally solved after sitting in a box for a couple of years.

Song: "All My Dreams"
Artist: Channel 3
Day: 9/30/06
I'd always heard a lot about CH3, but never listened to them till now. Good anthemic west coast punk. The I've Got a Gun tracks are alright, but the After the Lights Go Out is really solid, especially this track. The lyrics about dreams fading away probably should be a downer to listen to the day after your 31st birthday, but the music is so catchy and driving I don't really notice or care.

Album: Mingus Ah Um
Artist: Charles Mingus
Day: 10/2-10/6
Grooving, small group jazz that fits nicely between the song focus of big bands and the "hurry and get to the solo already" mentality of a lot of small combo post-bop groups. Interesting arrangments and in the case of "Better Git It in Your Soul" amazing songwriting. Plus I love the tossed-off anticipation of Jazz Samba that one of the saxophonists puts into one of the solos ("Self-Portait in 3 Colors", I think).

Show: Yo La Tengo w/Why? opening.
Day: 10/7/06
I hadn't seen YLT for a while. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out was slow and quiet in a way that didn't quite suit my tastes and they seemed content to stay in that mode for a while. I respected their desire not to make another Electr-O-Pura, but at the same time I didn't feel the need to follow then too closely either. Still it had been 5 years since I saw them and why? was opening so the deal was sealed.

I'm not sure either band played the kind of set that people new to their music would have been blown away by, but the crowd was full of partisans that seemed satisfied. why? played a couple of older songs and some essentials from Elephant Eyelash - "Gemini" and "Light Leaves" - in their mostly new set. With Why? it is aways hard to judge the record from the live set and vice versa because the arrangements change a lot, but I'm excited about the new songs and hope they keep the xylophone parts. I have to admit YLT were close to losing me in the middle of the 2 hour set/encores, but I was glad I stuck around the full 2 hours (!) if nothing else for the always amazing "Blue Line Swinger", a song so good that it renders my analytical abilities useless.