Category Archives: Music

(Best) music of 2010 (so far…)

As my regular reader(s) know(s), I like to close out every year with a list of my top 5 albums. And usually every year around July I start thinking about how the year has crossed the halfway mark and I start looking at the albums I’ve amassed thus far in the year. I don’t always write about it, but I do always think about it.

In the spirit of openness (or, more accurately, in the spirit of assuming you care), here’s a list of the new music I’ve acquired thus far in 2010, possible candidates for the top 5 list I’ll eventually write in December or so.

Absinthe and the Dirty Floors: Side 1
Since this is an EP, it’s not really in contention for the top 5 albums, but it’s such a fun, energetic EP that it is at least worth mentioning. It’s also a nod to the multi-talented Joshua Wentz, who’s been known to show up in the comments here from time to time. (Learn more at the band’s website.)

The Bird and the Bee: Interpreting the Masters, Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates
This is a strange album. I love The Bird and the Bee, almost as much as I love Hall and Oates. I grew up with these songs. And yet, I’m strangely dissatisfied with this album; the “interpretations” are neither terribly original nor terribly strong compared to the originals. And yet (again), even though I’m strangely dissatisfied with the album, I’m also strangely compelled by it. In a year of strong releases from a number of creative artists, this disappointing, halfhearted effort from one of my favorites is still enjoyable and has been on heavy rotation on my computer, my iPhone, and in my car.

Broken Bells: Broken Bells
Take one member of The Shins and one of Gnarls Barkley — two bands I generally dislike — and put them together, and strangely, you get a band I really do like. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like the other members of these bands, but it’s probably just that these guys are trying something new. Whatever the case, it’s worth checking out.

Coheed and Cambria: Year of the Black Rainbow
I was really enthralled with Coheed and Cambria when I first discovered them in 2005, but with each subsequent album their schtick has seemed more contrived and pointless. This album, while on par with their previous work, is mostly an unenjoyable slog. Still, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to catch the band live this summer on a double bill with Porcupine Tree… but mainly for Porcupine Tree. (Unfortunately, I’ll have to pass up the opportunity, since the closest they’re coming to here is… Grand Rapids, Michigan?! What?!?!)

Field Music: Field Music (Measure)
The members of the band don’t see it themselves, but I’ve always thought Field Music sounds more than a little bit like Gentle Giant, and that definitely continues with this latest album. Like Gentle Giant, this music is probably an… erm… acquired taste, but it’s worth giving a chance.

Gorillaz: Plastic Beach
Much has been made of this “band” since they first appeared on the scene a few years ago. It’s a weird concept, and in the past I didn’t really enjoy it much, but this album really grabbed my attention. It kind of drifts off course in the middle (around the time Lou Reed appears), but overall it’s highly original, frequently weird, and generally satisfying.

MGMT: Congratulations
Here’s another band that’s been popular for a few years but that I’ve never been able to get into before now. I’m still not enjoying this album as much as I feel like I should (or, want to), but it’s cool. I hate the cover art though.

Pat Metheny: Orchestrion
If you don’t know anything about Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion project, stop reading this and watch this video right now!

Porcupine Tree: Anesthetize and Atlanta
I’ve been a huge PT fan for over a decade now, and they have yet to let me down. These stellar live performances from 2008 are absolutely worth seeking out. Anesthetize is the big release: a DVD/CD combo featuring a performance of their 2007 studio album Fear of a Blank Planet in its entirety. Atlanta is available as a download on their website, and was originally planned as a live album, but was eventually considered superfluous when the opportunity to film Anesthetize in the Netherlands presented itself.

Room 34: 66 and 222
Yes, a little self-promotion never hurt anyone. I recorded 66 in January and 222 in February. 66 is a 21-minute prog rock suite depicting a voyage along historic US Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, and is probably my most cohesive and well-executed project to date. 222 is an 8-1/2 minute experimental free-form improv on 6 instruments, with the 6 instrumental tracks organized into different permutations, resulting in 8 different “pieces” on the album all constructed from the same performances. I am contemplating producing a third prog-ish piece in the 8- to 10-minute range, and releasing the 66 suite, “All Together Now” (the final track from 222 that includes all 6 instrument parts), and this third piece, as a full-length album structured like the Yes classics Close to the Edge and Relayer, entitled 3. We’ll see if that happens. In the meantime, you can download both 66 and 222 for free at my music website.

Rush: Caravan/BU2B
The resurgence of Rush in the last few years is exciting for any long-time fans (like myself). Snakes and Arrows was arguably the band’s best album in over 20 years, and based on the strength of these two tracks, next year’s Clockwork Angels promises to carry on in the same vein.

The Seven Fields of Aphelion: Periphery
I’m not even entirely sure how I discovered this album, but it’s great mellow/ambient music for background listening.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: I Learned the Hard Way
No, this album was not recorded in 1967, but you’d never know from how it sounds. The Daptone label specializes in recording with vintage equipment to capture a classic ’60s R&B sound that simply cannot be duplicated with modern equipment. Forget digital, even solid state analog equipment loses the warmth, the soul, that is the essence of this music. Highly recommended.

Sleepy Sun: Fever
Here’s another album where I can’t really remember how I discovered it, but I really like it. This music, too, is dripping with a ’60s essence, but this time it’s the trippy, acid-fueled explorations of the San Francisco Bay Area. At times dreamy and ethereal, at times raw and harsh, always eerily engaging.

Spoon: Transference
If I remember correctly, this was the first new album I purchased in 2010, and it was a good start to the year. Spoon, like Fujiya & Miyagi or The Mooney Suzuki, is at least nominally influenced by the legendary ’70s German band Can. While I have yet to hear a Can-influenced band that can touch the mind-blowingly original, minimalist rock sound of Can, Spoon’s music manages to evoke a similar spirit, despite its more accessible, straightforward approach.

21 years gone: remembering life as a 15-year-old Rush fan

For much of the past decade I’ve been systematically reliving my childhood. I’m not totally sure what stirred up this extended wave of nostalgia, but it may have something to do with the simple fact that I have vivid memories of things I did 20-plus years ago.

It started in 2002, on the 20th anniversary of my acquisition (as an 8-year-old second grader) of an Atari 2600. I went crazy back in that summer of 2002, buying up lots (as in, auction lots, on eBay) of the games I never managed to convince my parents to buy me as a child. In the end I wound up with over 350 games in my collection, counting duplicates, including a dozen copies each of Combat and Pac-Man.

This year I’ve been rekindling my middle school obsession with baseball. (Good timing, with the Twins in a new stadium and playing exceptionally well.) I went so far as to bid on a complete Topps 1985 baseball card set, but lost in the final bidding war I didn’t expect would happen. Back in the day I owned thousands of baseball cards, mostly from the 1984-1988 Topps sets, but ironically I sold the entire collection on eBay back in 2002 to fund my Atari collection. I should have had more foresight.

And then there’s Rush. My long-dormant obsession with the band I spent so much of high school listening to (when I wasn’t — ugh — reading Ayn Rand) had been renewed back around 2002 as well, when I played briefly in a Rush cover band in Atlanta, and then in 2007 with the release of their outstanding Snakes and Arrows album. But now I’m really beginning to relive the summer of 1989, when I was 15 and first immersing myself in the band’s already extensive back catalog.

I’m not sure what prompted the latest resurgence. It might have something to do with the great new documentary about the band, which I saw at the Riverview Theater last week. But as with my Atari fixation in 2002, it’s more like there’s just something in the air.

A friend introduced me to Rush during our freshman year of high school, right around the time A Show of Hands was released. That was my first exposure to their music. Or so I thought, until the Replay x3 DVD boxed set was released a few years ago and I suddenly remembered having seen the Grace Under Pressure concert special on MTV back in fifth grade. I know that concert video had a big impact on me (probably because with his New Wave hairstyle Alex Lifeson looked so much like Simon LeBon), but for some reason I never pursued the band further.

Anyway, back to 1989: I had just gotten my first job, bagging groceries for $3.69 an hour (minimum wage), and, flush with cash, I made frequent trips to the local ShopKo store. The store’s electronics and entertainment section was well stocked both with cheap Rush cassettes and cheap (probably bootlegged) PC games. I bought a lot of both that summer.

My first two Rush cassettes were A Farewell to Kings and Signals. Even all these years later, those are probably my two favorite Rush albums, because they had such an impact on my young ears. They were so different, it was hard to believe they were produced by the same band, just five years apart. And yet they were both so good, so unlike anything else I was accustomed to hearing on the radio or on MTV in the late ’80s. (You see, there was once a time when MTV played something called “music videos,” which were just popular songs with visuals, like the band pretending to play their instruments in strange locations. MTV just played music videos… 24 hours a day. And it was good. But not as good as a then-12-year-old Rush album.)

Whenever summer comes along, I start to reminisce about the summers of my youth, especially the summer of 1989. I can see, hear, almost smell my bedroom back then, window open, cool breeze wafting in, “Xanadu” blasting out of my Panasonic boombox on a hissy cassette tape I purchased at ShopKo in the $3.99 cutout bin. (Hey, that was more than an hour’s wages!)

Why am I drawn back so strongly to that summer of 1989? I’m not sure, but I do know something about it that is strongly compelling. Even though I was working at the grocery store, that was still the last summer of my childhood. The next summer, I had my driver’s license, and everything changed. But back in 1989, I was carefree, virtually no responsibilities, and I could just sit in my room and listen to Rush and play Adventure Construction Set on my Tandy 1000 computer.

Maybe part of what reminds me of then is that in some ways, my experience during the summer now is more like 1989 than it has been at any point in my life since. I have plenty of obligations and responsibilities now — I’m married with two kids, mortgage, car payments, etc. But I’m a freelancer, working mostly from home. And like in 1989, I can sit at my computer in my bedroom, cool breeze wafting through the open window, and crank “Xanadu” up to 11. Only now it’s an MP3.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Oh wait, that’s from Hemispheres.

Bad data

I apologize in advance if my argument here is less cogent than it could be: I’m under extreme time constraints to crank out this post. That said, this is something I just can’t leave alone.

“The album is dead!” people seem to be lamenting. What people? Well, Nate Anderson at Ars Technica for one, and he comes bearing graphs.

But how useful are these graphs? Not very. As one (or more, actually) of the comments on the article notes, comparing singles to albums (to streams, even!) in terms of units is useless, since an album is typically made up of approximately 10 tracks. Meaning, buying a single vs. buying an album is not the equivalent of buying a Mac instead of a PC, or buying an apple instead of an orange. It’s buying one song instead of buying ten songs. But you’re still buying songs.

So… the chart showing 1,138 million singles, vs. a paltry 76 million albums, sold in 2009 — a harrowing comparison — would more accurately be represented as 1,138 million songs purchased as singles, vs. (approximately) 760 million songs purchased as albums, in 2009. Singles are still more popular than albums are, but the number of songs acquired as singles vs. as parts of albums is less than double.

Or another way to look at it, if you don’t like thinking about songs, is dollars. Most popular singles are selling on iTunes these days for $1.29, vs. $9.99 for albums. So you’re looking at $1,468 million in single sales, vs. $759 million in album sales. Again, about twice as many dollars spent on singles as opposed to albums. Maybe not good news for albums (I don’t know; it would be helpful to see what the trends in singles-vs.-albums sales have been over time), but certainly not the catastrophic disaster the Ars charts suggest.

One aspect of the story that is perhaps worth evaluating is how much of the concept of the album as an art form is being lost here. But again, honestly, the 3-hit-singles-and-7-tracks-of-crap model for pop albums has been around since (based on anecdotal evidence from my mom) at least the 1960s. That doesn’t mean all music follows that model, though, and it doesn’t mean that the fans of longer-form compositions or concept albums aren’t still buying albums.

Everything old is new again: a new Room 34 compilation album is now available

Lately I’ve been realizing that my body of recordings has grown large enough that I could start producing the modern equivalent of mixtapes: MP3 playlists.

And so I have. Last fall I remixed and remastered my “greatest hits,” so to speak, from the past couple of years, and released the results on both CD and MP3 as Notated Scorns. I don’t plan to go that far with every future “mixtape,” but there’s still tremendous potential in 10 years’ worth of recordings to produce interesting new rearrangements of tracks without all the mucky-muck of remastering and having CDs manufactured.

Today I am announcing the immediate (and, of course, free) availability of the first of these new compilations: The Ambient Collection: 2001–2008. This collection includes 7 ambient tracks produced, surprisingly enough, between 2001 and 2008, in their original forms, along with some fresh new cover art. Enjoy!