Make It Work

THURSDAY MORNINGS, we should all be listening to Tim Gunn's Project Runway podcast. The only podcast I subscribe to (read: the only podcast I find consistently interesting week to week (and consistently interesting minute-to-minute, as these suckers can be long)). Get Tim's Take here!

Subscribe here [xml], here [iTunes], or listen to the latest episode [mp3]

Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars (The Hey Team Remix) [mp3]

Okay, and a real song because I'm moved to mention this. It kicked off my Infinite Mixtape-inspired sleep shuffle, which I'm hoping proves therapeutic. It's soft and strong, and it's asleep, dreaming. Listen to its form changing, a tide's gentle tug-of-war between consciousness and nothing, and see if you can stop it from coming up, over your head.

Visit the Hey Team's MySpace.

All the Numbers (Swim Together)

CALIFONE SONGS, TO ME, are the most comfortable places to be. Califone songs are alive and gentle and ugly and real, in the sense that ugly and real are very, very pretty. "The Orchids" - I only wish it didn't end.

Califone - The Orchids (Psychic TV cover) [mp3]

Visit Califone online. Roots & Crowns comes out October 10th.

Every night for the past week or so I've lay in bed listening to Get Lonely. This may or may not be a good idea - sometimes I make it to sleep before the end, sometimes I don't. Or can't. Luckily, my favorite part of the record comes early, in the second song, called "New Monster Avenue." It's best to listen on cd through headphones, to hear the percussion as clearly as it was meant to be heard. The way it swells, organic and unassuming, to a heartbreaking crescendo after he looks down at his hands, "like they were mirrors," and then especially when the monsters (neighbors) come out, brandishing torches. In its way, these small waves are much more affecting than any squall could be, which could be said for the entire record.

Buy Get Lonely here.

Heteronyms, vol. IV

The And/Ors - Rockets [mp3]

IN HIGH SCHOOL I would pick up obscure music magazines, the ones with the little black and white ads for little acts on little labels. I would remember the names if they sounded right - that is, if they sounded like a cute indie-pop band - just in case I ever happened across an album. This worked maybe five times, one of them being The And/Ors' Will Self-Destruct. I don't know what I liked more: the band or the fact that nobody else knew the band (probably the latter, as I haven't listened to the album in years). But coming back now, this isn't what I remember; "Rockets" is slower and low(er)-fi, the band reduced. "You wear me out," is repeated at the end, and it shows.

Cat Power - Rockets [mp3]

THIS MIGHT BE everbody's favorite pre-What Would the Community Think? Cat Power song. I love thinking about what makes this so much stronger than a standard 4/4 driving rock song (which it resembles in most every way); there's the subtly perfect pre-chorus phrasing of "Pick, pick up/ Dig, dig out those/ Weeds," and then there's the chorus itself. "Where do the rockets find planets?" she asks with a strange fervency and sincerity for such an unknowable question. And really, that's why it works.

Visit the And/Ors online here, and Cat Power here. Buy Will Self-Destruct here ($0.13!), and Dear Sir here.

And for reference, here's the And/Ors song I so enjoyed from that record:

The And/Ors - Candy Takes The Cake [mp3]

Past Heteronyms.

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Swoon has two great songs by Clark, check them out.

Thanks to everybody who insisted I look into American Music Club! It's been a rewarding endeavor so far.

When This Is Over

M. Ward - To Go Home [mp3]

I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING M. Ward for what feels like a very long time, having discovered him (beneath dust and creaky floorboards, it would seem) during my first foray into folk and country in high school. M. was the most endearing of my discoveries: as many others had noted he sounded entirely anachronistic, but he also had a worn warmth I couldn't feel in the early 20th century folk I listened to. So it was, basically, everything I was searching for.

When Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent came out a while later I realized I might have to share my find with a few more people, so confident and accessible was that album. That was fine; the songs, especially his cover of Bowie's "Let's Dance," became personal and special, more than before. Also, I began to recognize Ward's unique and immense talent as a songwriter, which would only be further cemented with the release of Transistor Radio.

Now, and even before I heard the new Post-War, I regard M. Ward as one of the best musicians around (what I would give to see the "Monsters of Folk" tour: Ward, Oberst and Jim James - as good as it gets). But this release is more than I could have hoped for, far more. Sounding newly free and passionate, saying M. is firing on all cylinders couldn't be more appropriate. There's an increased vitality and urgency running through this record, a wonderfully enhancing contrast and fidelity - nothing intrusive, but very appreciable. On the most immediately charming track, a cover of Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home," Ward's élan is most apparent. The song's lift is thrilling, an ascending piano riff and a splay of drums like pure joy, making it the best love song since he did "Let's Dance."

M. Ward - Fearless [mp3]

Here's a rare M. Ward track with his recognizably jaunty, sweetly humming sound. The growth displayed between the above song and this one is significant, but this is closer to the old M. Ward song I would keep secret in my pocket.

UPDATE: So the all knowing Frank has informed me that "Fearless" is an American Music Club cover. Whoever they are. For the record, I think it's a well-written song; the growth I referred to above had to do with M. Ward's overall sound (he is less assertive on "Fearless" than on "To Go Home," for example). Please don't make fun of me.

Visit M. Ward online, and buy Post-War here (released tomorrow).

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Go get the rare "Hot Fries" and "Milkcrate Mosh" at the Hold Steady's MySpace! And a new track, too (thanks CW).

Emissaries from Neighboring Lands

WHEN I SAW THE MOUNTAIN GOATS in LA earlier this summer, they played a song I fully assumed was new. It fit in with the other new songs he played, perhaps because he sang with Get Lonely's heartbreaking hush, but also because it shared lyrical similarities to songs like "Woke Up New." Now that I've been afforded another (and another) listen, it can be said that this sounds like The Sunset Tree as well, and We Shall All Be Healed. Really, it's from neither of the three - "Soft Targets" is the Mountain Goat's contribution to a split 7" with John Darnielle from 2003 - but the connections are clear. The story of a failing relationship, a breaking down (one point Get Lonely), "It's you and it's me and the baby makes three/ Yeah but we've got our love to carry us through" sings Darnielle between verses about crying. This shared despairing is what reminds me of We Shall All Be Healed, the helpless "us" he refers to; and it's the last three lines, where resolution is just-hinted-at, that recall the Sunset Tree: "When I hunt down the vampire who did this to us/ I will rip out his heart with my hands/ I will rip out his heart with my hands."

Combined the effect is overpoweringly sad, in a more Get Lonely fashion, with even the title packing a punch (soft target is a military term referring to an unarmored or otherwise unprotected object to be destroyed. - ouch). Don't listen to it thirteen consecutive times as I did while writing this - you'll be numb. But give it a listen, see that I'm not crazy.

The Mountain Goats - Soft Targets [mp3]

You can't buy this release anymore, but you can visit the Mountain Goats online.

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I'm enjoying the Yeah Yeah Yeah's iTunes Session EP [here], it's very Sunday morning & a cup of coffee. Their Sonic Youth cover sounds like that Pavement songs that goes "relationships, hey hey hey," yeah?

Also, get the Mountain Goats' Amoeba in-store session at *sixeyes.

Impossible

VERY RARELY does a piece of music inspire me this greatly while leaving me so small and with with so little to say. Please, listen and wonder.

The Clientele - The Sea Inside a Shell [mp3]

From the Clientele's Ariadne EP, available here.

On The Morning When

IF FALL HAS COME EARLY THIS YEAR, if the air has begun to crisp and the evenings have been reeled in from infinity, it is because the Mountain Goats' Get Lonely has willed this to happen. This is an album full of the season's quiet and ghosts and still water, devastating in a different way than those before it, more restrained and far scarier. Here chill air is an instrument, the weight of hush and dark are heard in the strings and strain, and when I listen I imagine a sky full of black anchors, nothing else.

Appreciating Get Lonely has required the mental fortitude usually reserved for more urgent endeavors than listening to a pop album, but hearing it any other way was like peeking through my fingers. I think the incredible, unrelenting sadness here comes from the songs sounding newly forceless and resigned; gone are the manic moments, the triumphs and the intensity and the wild decrees - all replaced by a light shuffle of instruments and a strange half-falsetto.

Darnielle once sang "It's a bad place I'm in" while recounting darker days in his life, now we have only his wandering observations to tip us off. And perhaps the most difficult thing about this album is the too-real feeling of concern I get when I listen, a feeling usually far removed from this context. But whatever - to empathize with something is to love it, and that's why Get Lonely is a truly remarkable album.

The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New [mp3]

The Mountain Goats - Wild Sage [mp3]

The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New [video]

Visit the Mountain Goats online, and buy Get Lonely here.

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Not much to say after my week away (I was backpacking) - what did I miss?

Nilsson, Schmilsson

THIS SONG DEFIES my every attempt to describe it gracefully, it's too big, it's too shameless, it's too dirty. And it sounds like this is what the Walkmen were born to do. As an improvement on the obstreperous A Hundred Miles Off, there's now a tenderness in Leithauser's always-severe croon, and a sway that only complements the band's formidable swagger. It may be Nilsson's song (or Jimmy Cliff's, really), but I can't get past the avidity and the confidence, and that's unmistakably the Walkmen.

The Walkmen - Many Rivers To Cross [mp3]

Visit the Walkmen online, and purchase their music here. This song will appear on the forthcoming "Pussy Cats" starring The Walkmen.

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Is this cheesy? I like the bluegrass covers of Modest Mouse over at the DIY Rockstar.

Sunniest Day Ever

WHILE I WAS WRITING the sentimental bit at the bottom of this post, I probably ran through A Sunny Day In Glasgow's The Sunniest Day Ever EP about six times. It stood tall against thoughts of futility and selfishness, playing like a well-timed reaffirmation of music blogging's importance to me. I discovered them through Fluxblog, and couldn't help but drop three dollars on their 4 (5!) song EP. Happily, the album ingratiated itself with me immediately via blown out sounds, warm and crystalline, that seem to originate from the tiniest thrumming. The album's beauty is consummate on "Laughter (Victims)," a too-short two-minute wash of middle-consciousness (I can't describe it without the generous hyphenation). This is perfect, enjoy.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Laughter (Victims) [mp3]

Visit A Sunny Day In Glasgow online, and do purchase the Sunniest Day Ever EP here for only three dollars post-paid.

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At any moment, I've got ideas in my head about this blog and music blogs in general. Not all are positive, and most will remain in my head, but I'd like to mention something Ian wrote at Popsheep recently:

Sorry for the long gaps between posts lately, but I'm feeling less and less motivated to write these things. Perhaps its the unbearable, oppressive heat or just the futility of being one among a billion other MP3 blogs. Regardless, these are two great songs. Enjoy.

I sympathize completely with this statement, and with Ryan's comment at the bottom, though it saddens me to say it:

There may be a billion music blogs out there now, but they're mostly all completely worthless, in my opinion at least. Popsheep is one of the 3 or 4 mp3 blogs that I still actually read.

And it's good that you don't post every day, or, god forbid, multiple times a day. That's the worst. I'd rather get one gem per week than 50 of those quota-filling posts that bloggers these days seem to do.

There are a billion (and counting), and it's certainly disheartening to see how many are little more than hasty and depthless "mp3 mixes." My point is not to berate these blogs, but to say that it would be a shame if a site like Popsheep called it quits (which I don't suspect will happen, btw). There are blogs, big and small, with absolutely unquestionable heart, which I've drawn inspiration from since the beginning. And while I'm trying to find my own voice amidst the growing clamor, I can say with confidence that the most important ones won't ever be drowned out, even if they aren't the loudest.

There To Stay

OKAY, I'M GONNA TRY to explain this, and it might not work. Ryan's posted an amazing, amazing song by Beaten Awake (not a hXc band) at the Catbirdseat. You know how the strongest memories are tied to scents - the smell at the lake, the car's sun-baked upholstery, her old perfume - you know? Well, this may be harder to pick up on, but it's the same with sounds, I swear. Like with this song, "Browns Town," which recalls exactly what I felt when I'd listen to Algebra One's "Fireball." I don't know anything about Algebra One besides this song which appeared on an old Sub City comp. This mystery, I suppose, was crucial to the construction of this strange mental space I occupied whenever I heard "Fireball." I felt an essence too romantic to share with anybody, like I was the one hollering for my shining sun. I liked the way the instruments veered out of time with what can only be described as punk passion, because it never sounded bad, just excited. And when things did come together, when the song started walking high-wire halfway through, and he sang "Been waiting all night/ Three hours of sleep..." with perfect pitch and measure, I nearly died. Two minutes later and it was gone, and to understand where I'd been I had to listen again.

"Browns Town" plays like an updated "Fireball," retrofitted to match the evolution of my taste over the years. It wraps me in the same air, I feel the same lift when I hear him sing "So I'll rock you right down to the floor" like a promise that's more determination than anything else. A promise made under low lights on slow nights, or something similarly astral. It's a place I'm only too happy to revisit, whatever it is.

Algebra One - Fireball [mp3]

Beaten Awake - Browns Town [mp3]

Buy Sub City's Take Action, featuring "Fireball," here. It's also got a special version of the Weakerthans' "Everything Must Go!," which I prefer, and my favorite Scared of Chaka song. For, like, four dollars.

Visit Beaten Awake online, and buy Let's Get Simplified when it comes out on Audio Eagle in September.

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Please go listen to Thao Nguyen's Daytrotter session while reading what Mr. Moeller's so graciously written. "Feet Asleep" is one of my favorite songs of the year, if that means anything to you.

I'm A Lion

WHAT HAPPENED TO PAGE FRANCE'S Hello Dear Wind? All records of it seem to have been erased, and I'm panicking because a huge mistake has lost my emusic mp3s of the album (iPods and hard resets: damn it all). And I need that album now, when I feel like I'm searching and silly and small, because it's all those things too, and when I listen to it I feel like I've got something behind me.

As a substitute of sorts, I've acquired the band's previous album, Come, I'm a Lion, in hopes that it will have a similarly warming effect. I haven't gotten to know it like HDW yet, but it's obvious that the best parts are all present here. Page France channel wonder, an absolute and honest wide-eyed love for everything, through a soft and generously diffusive lens, the results comprise a grace which fascinates me endlessly. Most special to me is the theme of affinity running throughout the album, "You were made out of my ribs/ We share a heart we share a heart we share a heart..." sings Michael Nau on "Ribs," while elsewhere on the fantastic "Air Pollution" there is celebration as "everyone can share what's left/ We can share a breath/ We can share the air pollution." I reveled in HDW's jubilation and self-assuredness, the roots of which are clearly discerned on Come...

Page France - Ribs [mp3]

Page France - Air Pollution [mp3]

Visit Page France online, and buy the fantastic Come, I'm a Lion on Fall Records here.

UPDATE: Hello, Dear Wind will be re-released on Suicide Squeeze on September 12. Thank goodness.

Meet My Knuckleduster

PERHAPS BECAUSE SHE SINGS the bulk of the band's songs, or because I've always had a crush on her, I think of Eleanor Friedberger as the main Fiery Furnace. I know this isn't true, that Matthew's easily half the racket, but he's always seemed the less knowable and more darkly exciting sibling, which understandably makes him the other Friedberger. Thinking about it, though, he's the one responsible for my very favorite moment in the band's entire oeuvre (which is saying quite a lot), the lines I find myself singing aloud most often. From Blueberry Boat's "Chief Inspector Blancheflower," a conversation between two brothers rife with tension and executed perfectly by Friedberger:

Fiery Furnaces - Chief Inspector Blancheflower [mp3]

Well I rode up to Springfield on my motorcycle
And I’s gonna stay with my younger brother Michael
Mom’s oxycontins and the Amstel Light
But I noticed I was doing most of the talking that night
So I got both remotes and turned off the DVD
And said Michael is there something that you need to say to me?
Well I don’t know how to tell you
You can tell me anything that you want ’cept I started seeing Jenny
I started seeing Jenny
My Jenny?
And he looked down at the floor
You know damn well she ain’t your Jenny no more

Clearly, there's a dramatic element in the Furnaces' music unlike many other bands'. For some it's written in the lyrics and some have the voice for it, but few can combine these like the Friedbergers. And that's why I'm excited to hear Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School, Matthew's upcoming solo effort. The two songs I've heard thus far suggest he can pull it off just fine without his sis, thank you.

Matthew Friedberger - The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. Resignation Letter [mp3]

First of all, the title should eliminate ninety-nine percent of doubt among the skeptics. As for the song itself, it's nearly everything I want to hear: Matthew's always-quiet voice singing in specifics, a too-loud guitar not embarrassed to play over everything else.

Matthew Friedberger - Do You Like Blondes? [mp3]

There's an insistent thump which somehow makes me think of the Furnaces covering Spoon. There's the wired cool at the song's core that gives it away as an all-too-possible secret collaboration, not unlike when Eleanor showed up on the back of Spoon's 30 Gallon Tank 7". Think about it.

Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School comes out Tuesday on 859 Recordings.

Jay-Tee

I've always loved the massive anticipation which accompanies something like the release of Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds. An event that doesn't exactly transcend pop culture's inherent vacuousness, but at least makes us forget about it as we wait, along with millions of our neighbors, with baited breath. Now, I'm not saying ignorance is bliss, and the absolute last thing I want is a(nother) diatribe on the evils of mainstream media. I'm just excited that we're all excited, if you know what I mean. That's special.

Justin Timberlake - SexyBack [asx stream]

Buy this album anywhere on Earth September 12.