Brice Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town
Columbia, 1978
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2011
Price: $.25

I gave Born to Run a hard time when I reviewed it for this blog like, years ago. I still haven’t been won over, but I have found the Bruce albums that I really, really love. Tunnel of Love especially. That and a better appreciation for the sax solo (I know I like JUST faulted the Psychedelic Furs in the last post for their persistent use of cheesy sax, but again, THEY ARE NOT THE BOSS AND THEY IN NO WAY WROTE ANTHEMS DESERVING OF A FUCKIN’ BITCHIN’ SAX SOLO OK?!). “Badlands” rules, and the sax solo is brief and perfect and functions like a sort of modern harmonica interlude. “Adam Raised a Cain” sounds like the inspiration for Kurt Vile’s 80,000 renditions of his excellent jam “Hunchback” and that just has to be the case because both songs have that same sort of like, punch-in-the-gut badassery to them that just makes you wanna put on some sunglasses and cruise. Not doin’ anything illegal, just cruisin’ and lookin’ like a badass. I listened to “Hunchback” on the way to getting fired from a shitty property management company in Lawrence a few years ago, and it made me totally justified and totally ready to throw my keys on the table and walk out of that office like a badass. The Boss would have more than sufficed, too. I think I dig Darkness so much because it sounds like the panting after the marathon that was Born to Run. A step back and a shift, if that makes sense. The sort of record that needs to be made after a major hit for an artist to keep himself from going insane. A “minor work” that will only be revered as a classic years down the line. Like the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. Can’t help but keep bringing in the modern music! Don’t know what’s up with that, other than using modern music to illustrate the fact that these types of albums and songs keep existing to this day and that the Boss is the Boss for a reason and while I don’t like all of his albums or hits or all that, I hold the opinion that he is a badass dude who does what he wants and my opinion is meaningless in that argument.

I read that Springsteen bookended each side with an anthem and an emotional slow-burner, which I think is awesome without having any real reason to cite (note: Wikipedia reminds me that he did this with all his early albums, called it the “four corners” approach which is, like, kind of awesome. I think I think it’s awesome because I’m looking at Bruce in this white tee on the back of the sleeve and he’s just.so.ruggedly…cool I can’t help but not want to be like, his friend). It makes the record feel really balanced, I suppose, but not in a like, cookie-cutter way. There’s an organic flow at work, and the songs in-between the bookends all feel like a mix of that anthem/slowburn sandwiching. “Prove it All Night” is upbeat, and there’s a totally awesome sick guitar solo in the break, but the Boss’s vocals on the chorus have this like, longing to them that keeps the song from being a triumphant fist-pumper. The whole album is like that. Somber, really. But still like, full of ass kicking. It’s a weird marriage and I dig it way more than the straight-up balls to the wall of Born to Run (with the exception of “Thunder Road,” which is a forever jam). Just scanning the Wikipedia entry for this album the words “legal troubles” and “contractual obligations” and “three years of forced hiatus” stick out. And I think that explains it. The sort of brooding fuck you of it all. Great record.    

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Matador, 1994
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $5

A supreme masterpiece from a band I for some bizarre fucking reason just can’t fall in love with. I mean, it’s like, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you Pavement.” That sort of capital L Love I reserve for the bands that reside in my bloodstream. But I love Pavement, that’s for sure. I spent the better part of the spring getting acquainted with the group’s final LP, Terror Twilight, and that has really opened up their earlier discography. Like the pot of tasty jams at the end of the rainbow where you can look back and see the arc from Slanted & Enchanted and all the development in between.

I feel like the falling in love could happen when I decide to wade through all those b-sides on those fantastic CD reissues of all the albums. It’s not like I don’t try to fall in love with Pavement, there’s just something that doesn’t hit me on the right emotional wavelength. They’re blindingly important, that is for certain, and I understand that, and their pretend slacker technical proficiency is awe inspiring, but what’s missing? I don’t know. I don’t care too much, either, and I still listen to Pavement constantly like comfort food. I love talking about how I can’t fall in love with Pavement for some reason. I don’t know why. It’s like “Yeah, they’re that friend that I love because they’ll always be just a friend.” And I think I talk about it because I just can’t figure out why the fuck I don’t Love love Pavement. Why I’m not obsessed with them despite trying my hardest to be obsessed. They have songs that make me feel, like down at the core. “Frontwards,” “Here,” and “Fillmore Jive” kind of kill me. Speaking of “Fillmore Jive,” It’s on this record and I always overlooked it because this record also has “Silence Ki[d/t],” “Range Life,” “Gold Soundz,” and “Cut Your Hair” which are probably like 4 of the Top 25 indie rock songs of the 90s. No lie. Crooked Rain, Crooked Lane is also a capital A album, which is MORE reason for me to love it.

But all Love aside, look at this fucking record. Something about playing this in the summertime feels optimal. Perhaps recreating the L.A. that birthed it. What’s most important about Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for me is that the band was totally willing to be weird as hell in between writing some of the most tuneful anthems of the time. The album closes with “Hit the Plane Down” and “Fillmore Jive” which are TOTALLY fucking weird, although “Fillmore Jive” is, as I said, one of my favorite Pavement songs from their catalog and not really weird but it’s on a sort of different level from the rest of the album yet is still the only way I can see this album ending. The guitar work on that song is just breathtaking. The palpable exhaustion in Malkmus’ vocals that echo the refrain of “I need to sleep.” “Goodnight to the rock n’ roll era,” he sings as if ushering in the death of the rock gods and the arrival of these normal bros making this sublime music and making it OK to create masterpieces in one’s bedroom/garage/makeshift recording studio, whatever. There’s something immensely satisfying about sitting down and listening to this album. All the little intricacies that are intentional or accidental (doesn’t matter) that reward listen after listen and it becomes obvious why so many people can be obsessed with this band. I want to join you, brethren, and soon I hope. 

We Make Our Own Movies - May 25, 2012

Finally, video proof of Panda totally killing it at being a dog. He does this all the time. In filming the dog though, I thought why not make a little movie every week, a little music video! A little music video set to mundane everyday things! So more to come. It's also a sad way to try to justify studying film at the University of Kansas.

Songs About...: Moving

Two weeks ago the wife and I moved up north to the Twin Cities. There was a pros/cons list involved, and the only real con with leaving Kansas/Kansas City was pretty much limited to Family and that smell you get out in the country. But basically most of our closest friends had moved, Jenny had just finished grad school, I was growing increasingly depressed at my job and Sam Brownback was absolutely trying to beat Kansas into submission with a cross and the Koch Brothers and there was no fucking way I was going to move to Kansas City. Gigwork with the Pitch kind of ended once they got sold away from the Village Voice and I'm sorry but in the 8 years I spent in Lawrence/KC the only band I thought was amazing was Rooftop Vigilantes and that was the only band. Something about Kansas City not being capable of sustaining a vibrant arts and music scene. That's just a personal assessment, I may be out of the loop, but it felt deathly there. The thought of moving to Kansas City was cringeworthy and while I love Kansas with all my heart the politics there are so disgusting that I just can't imagine staying there. Maybe a sea change will occur and Kansas will revert to its badass roots but I just don't see that happening.

So here we are in Minneapolis, which may be in the same boat as Kansas City on the arts/culture/music front (I really have no idea, I've only been here two weeks) but at least I know it was at one time absolutely capable of sustaining a vibrant music scene (from Husker Du and the Replacements through Lifter Puller and Dillinger Four and, of course, the Purple One) and has arts funding written into its constitution unlike another place I have lived. Basically it's just different and when I vote it has a chance of mattering and anyway Minnesota has a lot going for it that is seriously boosting my quality of life. It's fun, I guess. That's the big thing. Adventurous. Like going to college again without the debt or the classes and just getting to explore all the excellent things these cities have to offer. Granted, the Royals just totally scored a comeback win against the Brewers and I went "YES YES YES!" and jumped up and down and scared the dog and probably the neighbors so there's a part of me still tied to KC, and there was a part of me that moving was absolutely necessary at this point in time. SO, I made a list of my favorite songs about moving or songs that I've always associated with moving or songs I discovered as I was moving this time around and yeah.

Jeffrey Lewis - "Moving"


The Weakerthans - "Sun in an Empty Room"


that dog. - "Minneapolis"

It's really bizarre thinking about how much I love this song, and how I've loved it over the years starting sometime during the KJHK days and I never, ever thought I'd move here.

Pavement - "Box Elder"


Teenage Fanclub - "Everything Flows"

This song came on my iPod EVERY SINGLE TIME I went running in the two weeks leading up to leaving. A sign, I suppose.

The Weakerthans - "Left and Leaving"

Although maybe this song is about the people sticking around.

Tullycraft - "Our Days in Kansas"

I lived in Lawrence for 8 years and went to the University or 5 and no, I never learned the KU fight song.

Gentleman Jesse - "Eat Me Alive"

Leaving Atlanta hasn't entirely grown on me, but this jam was a mainstay in the whole moving process. Mostly with lines like "This city's trying to eat me alive."

Drive Time: Archers of Loaf - Icky Mettle

I hosted a show called “Alternative Flashback” on KJHK and I never even gave a fuck about Archers of Loaf. How did that happen? Gabe Holcomb and Justin Brown would be sad. And Andy Green, who hosted the show after I graduated. All three of those bros for sure had devoured Icky Mettle. I’m sure I had my merits, but I didn’t know enough. Mostly because all I ever knew about college rock came from listening to Gabe and Justin’s “Alternative Flashback” shows the couple years before I got it. And I don’t know where the hell Archers of Loaf ever were in my upbringing. I remember there was this mystical CD-R that played in my weird clock radio when I was a Junior/Senior in high school and it was full of MP3’s I’d snagged from Audiogalaxy and this was the one CD-R that played in the aforementioned weird clock radio and it had “Don’t Stop Now” by Guided by Voices and “Cut Your Hair” by Pavement and “Getchoo” by Weezer and some Archers of Loaf song I can’t even remember but there was a time and a place and somehow Archers of Loaf got left out.



But they seeped in, in little ways. Like the Crooked Fingers song “Sleep All Summer,” which was a mainstay during a nasty breakup. And then Alkaline Trio covered “Web in Front” on one of the very first episodes of the AV Club’s “Undercover” covers series and I was hooked. Not just because Dan Adriano was the perfect person to cover that song, and that it meshed with a skill-set I was familiar with, but because I realized I’d already kinda loved Erich Bachmann to begin with. Icky Mettle was acquired, but more importantly, Crooked Fingers’ latest LP Breaks in the Armor became a stalwart in the car on the iPod at the gym. And then Icky Mettle ended up in the iPod at the gym and about half that album was about just perfect for running.


The way the guitars on "Might" just fucking kill you, that's what I'm talking about. Like right before the chorus, do you know what I'm saying? All that goddamn dissonance! And the song is only two minutes long! Just so much angst embedded in that riffage and chordage! Beautiful to the max god it makes me wanna explode yes!

It’s a weird record. So all over the place despite sounding like a unified whole. Up and down and up and down and up and down. In the car, it’s a fucking perfect drive-to-work record. The concept of the drive-to-work record has always excited me, ever since I was like 16 listened to Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown EP on cassette on my way to work at AMC Studio 30. That music you listen to before you go make money is extremely important. It’s like getting pumped up before the Olympics or the Super Bowl or some shit. Gotta get your head in the right place. Sometimes NPR just isn’t doing it. Know what I mean?



So Archers of Loaf. So Icky Mettle. So this album is a weird schizophrenic baby, but schizophrenic in the I-am-basically-talking-about-multiple-personalties. It’s up and down forever. Hit then weird jam then hit again. “Web in Front,” “Wrong,” “Might” and “Plumb Line” are some of the purest indie-rock slash pop jams of the era, I’d say. And not just about one goddamn thing! Which is exciting! “Web in Front” plays like one of those amazing 90s era break-up jams and though “Wrong” sorta sound like on eat first it becomes a companion piece to Superchunk’s “Slack Motherfucker” due to the Chapel Hill connection and the general speak about certain co-workers not, shall we say, working as hard as they should. A universal feeling, I’d say.


Oh yeah it was Aaron Dessner from the Nation and Annie Clark of St. Vincent that did the cover of "Sleep All Summer." Ung. Fuck this song. "I can change for you but babe that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man." Who writes like that? Seriously, Eric Bachmann, you win. I quit.

The album’s charm lies in how all-over-the-place it is. It tries to do everything at once and it still sounds like a muddy (I mean that as a compliment), angsty, mid-90s indie rock record. Eric Bachmann’s songwriting has grown and grown over the years to sadly not enough damn acclaim but the hits on this record really hit. “Web in Front,” despite all its mysteries (read: bizarre lyrics) still captures some very precise emotions that I don’t think have been better captured since (see: “And there’s a chance that things will get weird/ Yeah that’s a possibility/ Although I didn’t do anything/ No I didn’t do anything/ All I ever wanted was to be your spine”). Ironically, in another AV Club series (“One Track Mind”) Bachmann played this song and talked about how weird and nonsensical the lyrics were, but he still played it and recognized that it was important. And that’s my favorite kinda songwriting. The kind that doesn’t set out to be profound but stuns the masses regardless.


And back to the beginning. The blurb refers to Alk 3 as "pop-punk kingpins" which seems like a way of softening the blow of the pop-punk tag which isn't really all that bad or shit, even bad at all, when you get down to it. I've gotta funny story about meeting Matt Skiba at the Replay Lounge, so maybe I'm biased. But this cover kills, and I will always rally for Dan Adriano because dammit I think the man's under-appreciated. No one else sings like that. No one! 

The Psychedelic Furs - Mirror Moves

The Psychedelic Furs – Mirror Moves
Columbia, 1984
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2011
Price: $1.50

“Who is this? Is this the Psychedelic Furs?” Jenny asks.
“Yep.”
“Is ‘Pretty in Pink’ on this one?” she asks.
“Nope.”
“It’s still good. What year is this?”
“I don’t know?” I say, turning my brain on. There’s this game Joe and I play at work where we look at a really awful, cheesy, corny book (this game is almost exclusively played with business books) and whoever is queried has to guess what year the things was published (usually late 80s/early 90s but sometimes something came out in 2001 and it looks mega old and it’s extra funny/sad thus making the game extra fun). So, I rolled the dice.
“1984.”
“Really?” she asks.
“Um, I dunno let me check.” I scan the worn back cover. “YES! 1984! VICTORY!”
“Good job honey.”
“I KNOW! I AM A FUCKING WIZARD!” I don’t really say that, but I do think it. I think “Goddamn, what a fucking wizard I am!” Because sometimes you can just tell, you know? Like, the timbre of the sax line that runs through the seemingly infinite “Heartbeat” just screams mid-1980s (and screams a bit more subtly through like, all the other songs on the record because this is the 80s after all before the advent of the crunchy-guitar-solo-on-some-beat-up-fender era). There’s a weird association with mid-80s music and me because I was born in 1985 and it’s just plain weird thinking about music that came out when I was born. Like looking at one of those kitschy pamphlets you get at fancy rest stops in the middle west, each one dedicated to a different year and each one laced with ads and newspaper stories to make you go “well I’ll be darned! What a year!” It’s like a time capsule to my birth/infancy/toddlerhood. Even when I was like, 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 and was in a position to remember music from the mid-90s, all I would listen to was the radio, and then only when I was in the car with my parents. So Oldies 95, 101.1 The Fox and 99.7 KY pretty much exclusively until I “discovered” Smashmouth with my best friend when we were in 6^th grade (with the bizarrely cool exception of a cassette single of They Might Be Giants’ “Istanbul” that I got at a garage sale three houses down and pretty much tried my hardest to wear out on my little boom box when I was like 11 and, for whatever reason, didn’t really understand the genius of TMBG until I was 24 and working at CD Tradepost and put on their two-disc best of whenever I thought the CEO dude wouldn’t show up and I could spend the morning listening to all that wonderful, weird goodness and every time “Istanbul” came on it warmed my little heart and simultaneously made me wonder how I could have listened to such a goddamn annoying song over and over and over again at such a young age and wondered if it maybe tampered with my tolerance levels because I’m not nearly critical enough to be a music critic, not really. I talk a lot of shit but mostly I’m ok with most stuff that’s even remotely OK). But this is from my pre-infancy. When I was like, a little nubbin of a person in my mama’s belly (HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MA!) Actually, since I’m still qualifying as a Kansan* for another couple of weeks, I was TECHNICALLY a person like, 4000 years ago when God created the garden and all that shit because really, WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE WITH PERSONHOOD. But that is beside the point, and only getting in the way of my deft analysis of The Psychedelic Furs’ Mirror Moves, which I’m avoiding critiquing because it’s a normal, run of the mill, mid-80s new wave record that lacks any really spectacular hits. Sure, “Heaven” is pretty OK, and it’s a clear-cut single, but it’s kind of a hum-drum single if you ask me. A sort of trying-too-hard-to-sound-deep-and-emotional thing. The rest of the album kind of gets lost in a bunch of new technology. Myriad synths, drum machines, and FUCKING SAXOPHONES EVERYWHERE GOOD LORD THIS THING IS LOUSY WITH SAXOPHONES! Or maybe I’m being overly harsh because the cover of this thing is just so obnoxious. This like check-pattern portrait of Richard Butler looking like “You wanna look up my nostrils and measure the parabola of my indifferent frown? Five bucks” is really bothering me. It’s just like, sitting right here while I’m writing and I’m looking like, RIGHT up his nostrils and I remember when I bought this, I bought this the same day I bought Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and put the two albums up side by side and pretended to stage a faux-showdown between the Boss and this effete British dude in a big blue suit. Guess who won that fight? I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t the guy NOT-singing “Pretty in Pink” on this album. That’s probably because “Pretty in Pink” is on Talk Talk Talk which I’ve never listened to but maybe should because It’s probably better than this one, where the band feels comfortable with the success they’ve built having a movie named after one of their songs and they’re content to just try to get on MTV with the blandest new-wave imaginable. Well, maybe not the blandest, but you know, pretty forgettable and well, maybe I just can’t fucking stand it when bands that have actual band names put the fucking singer on the front looking like some pretentious cock and the poor less-fortunate-looking bros get shuffled to the back (and one of the bros is wearing SUNGLASSES, I mean, come ON Richard Butler! COME ON! He could be your brother! I know one of those guys is!).
Seriously, the saxophone NEVER FUCKING ENDS.

*The Wife and I are moving to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks, although I don't think you can take the Kansan out of anyone. There's like, way too much shame involved to let that shit go. And let's just say that most of that shame is built around the fact that Kansas could be so so so so SO cool and has such a fucking rad history and yet chooses to bow to these horrific goons like the Koch Bros funded Sam Brownback. Oof. And sure Minnesota has Michelle Bachmann who is just as crazy, but at least she has Al Franken and a Democrat governor to balance that crazy out.

Drive Time: Pavement - Terror Twilight

Drive Time is a weekly feature in which I absorb an album through my #1 means of music consumption: driving to and from work. The requiremints ATM are that albums be indie rock classics or debatable indie rock classics that I have overlooked despite hosting Alternative Flashback on KJHK. So not really being familiar with these albums should be sort of embarrassing, at least in the early going until I make terms with the fact that I couldn’t listen to every album ever before I turned 23. This is making up for that.

Pavement – Terror Twilight

For me, Pavement is like that dude you really respect and are on a like, we-nod-at-each-other-when-we-see-each-other-on-the-street-but-you’ll-never-be-best-buds-basis. It’s not like you can really divide lovers of mid-90s indie rock into different camps, but I’m openly a Guided by Voices fanatic, and there’s something intangible about GBV that I’m drawn to that I don’t really get from Pavement. It just has to do with the person, not whether or not the music is better or whatever. That doesn’t really exist on this level of criticism and appreciation. I know plenty of people who are just as gaga for Pavement as I am for GBV and we respect each other’s band du jour but our favorites are our favorites.

That said, I think Pavement are fantastic, and while I’ve never been 100% on their discography (see: Wowee Zowee with the exception of “Grounded”), I have a great affinity for Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Brighten the Corners. Something about listening to “Fillmore Jive” a couple summers ago and being like “oh my fucking god” really set me straight on Pavement. Those re-issues with all the b-sides, I gotta get into those down the line. I couldn’t get past the first five tracks on Slanted & Enchanted because they were just so fucking great. That EP with “Shoot the Singer” and “Frontwards,” holy fuck. BUT Terror Twilight, the album which this post is about, I’d never ever listened to that album not once in my life until last week. Every Pavement album but this one has been working through my rotation for like 8 years and I’d only ever heard “Spit on a Stranger” and “Carrot Rope.” After spending a week with this bad boy in the car, I think it’s an absolute perfect cap to Pavement. Why not? I mean, “Spit on a Stranger” got covered by that neo-bluegrass (do they call it New-Grass? Is that what it’s called now?) band Nickel Creek and I know that because that album gets played at work sometimes and I’m like “Man this is a fucking great song, is this a Pavement song? This sounds like a Malkmus vocal line.” All the dirty fury and angst is gone by this point, and you just get these gorgeous little numbers like “Major Leagues” and “Ann Don’t Cry” and Stephen Malkmus just being so fucking weird with his songwriting. But even though it’s nonsense, it has feeling you know? Malkmus is a genius at spitting out bullshit and making it sound like sage advice. And I love him for that. And god “Major Leagues” is so good. The more I listen to it the more beautiful it gets. And “Carrot Rope,” goddamn. This sounds like an album made by a band that’s done it all and is content to sail off into the sunset with a rock-fucking-solid discography and a legacy under their belt. There’s no need for them to tarnish it by reforming (reunion shows are OK). I mean, look at “Billie.” The verse to that song sounds like the build up to this amazing perfect pop song and the chorus is just so fucking totally straight out of a totally different song. It kind of ruins it as first, but good god the verse is so fucking perfect perfect perfect. “You’re a hungry matron/ and you are just what I need/ I was tired of the best years of my life” CHORUS THAT SOUNDS LIKE ITS FROM SOME OTHER SONG BECAUSE I AM TOTALLY EXPECTING A CHORUS THAT SUPERSEDES A VERSE BUT THIS IS LIKE THE OPPOSITE WHAT THE FUCK. But you know what? I like that about that song. It’s nice to really love a verse once in a while. Who the fuck loves verses anymore? NO ONE DOES. Choruses get all the attention.

I dig this album. I dig it because it’s concise and it’s a band OK with being done without going out in a total ball of flames. It’s probably the tightest album in Pavement’s whole damn discography, and while it’s maybe not as compelling as Slanted & Enchanted or Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, “Spit on a Stranger,” “You are a Light,” “Major Leagues,” “Carrot Rope,” and “Ann Don’t Cry” could easily find their way onto a Pavement best of and those songs are almost half the album. And the other more-than-half the album is mega-listenable and I’m gonna hope the CDR doesn’t get too scratched up to not-play in my CD player because it’s a great change of pace album. Nice to have on deck. Good for cookouts too, I suppose. It’s amazing that Pavement only released five studio albums when it feels like they have 500 songs.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Matt Sweeney - Superwolf

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Matt Sweeney – Superwolf
Drag City, 2005
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $5

I don’t know why it’s so easy to forget how fucking beautiful this record is, because I listened to this album like near-infinite times when it came out. I revisit it every year or so and am always astounded by Will Oldham’s songwriting and the tone he and Sweeney strike that sounds separate from either Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Chavez. Like a whole new band, born to make one album and why the hell didn’t they just call themselves Superwolf because holy fuck that’s a great name/title. And I can’t remember when I’ve heard guitars this beautiful and epic since this record came out. Like the way they still manage to sound huge despite sounding like all the treble has been sucked out of them in “Goat and Ram.” And that beautiful beautiful picking on “Beast for Thee.” It’s music you’d want playing at your death. Epic and sad and beautiful and ready for the apocalypse. “Only Someone Running” is probably the loveliest song ever. One that defies writing anything about it because well, I just can’t think of any words. I’m speechless! So here’s that song:

Oh yeah, and that video for "I Gave You" with the weird birdy* murdery shit is pretty rad too.

Which Bonny 'Prince' Billy has someone dressed in a bird suit? I forget, I thought it was this one, then I watched this video and was like "Oh yeah, this is the one with the dead body."I still think the world wasn't ready for Will Oldham as an actor, because I swear to god homeboy could take the world by storm.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Punch the Clock

Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Punch the Clock
Columbia, 1983
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $2

I really don’t know anything about Elvis Costello’s career. I know Burt Bacharach is in there in these latter days at some point. Maybe? I don’t even know. Maybe some collaborations with some quartets? I really only know this based on CDs I’ve priced at work. It’s weird though, given my compulsion with painstakingly (lie) tracking down information about artists I fall in love with. This was especially true when I was like 16 or 17 and got My Aim is True from the Indian Creek Branch of the Lawrence Public Library and had one of those moments that were coming day after day when I was 16 or 17. And then This Years Model fell into my lap when I was 20 and Armed Forces when I was 23 and then I kind of quit after that (though I own a copy of Armed Forces, I’ve only ever listened to that album like twice, and expressly for the purpose of this blog, which by-the-way I should revisit that one yes). But I saw this one at HPB and suddenly it ended up at home with me. Probably because it has “Shipbuilding” on it, which if I remember correctly was on the High Fidelity soundtrack, which I totally remember I listened to in excess when that movie was my favorite movie of all time.* It’s four albums removed from the Armed Forces, and there’s a whole lot of evolution I’m missing but fortunately, Costello is one of those fine fine artists who can totally maintain the essence of his sound/style no matter how the times (read: cheesy 80s production) change. The gloss on this album is as shiny as a freshly printed mid-80s glamour shot, and though this album is almost 30 years old, it doesn’t look nearly as cheesy as it should if we’re still running with that kind of poor glamour shot metaphor (since in my head, the soft focus of glamour shots would lend it self to matte photo paper but I really have no idea). So Punch the Clock, a glossy album that somehow manages to not be super-cheesy because Costello is a consummate artist who knows what the fuck he is doing at all times and he’s maybe one of the more bulletproof songwriters in the business (though having heard four of his albums, I could be totally missing something, and I feel like maybe there’s a Thrill of Discovery project in here…). “Shipbuilding” is an immediate standout, though I don’t really remember it despite listening to that High Fidelity soundtrack like a million times. Also, speaking of “Shipbuilding,” foregoing the commonplace 80s sax solo for a Chet Baker trumpet solo = a total fucking ace in my book. There’s a whole mood in that song that is like whisky and smoke filled rooms. It’s about the Falklands War, too, apparently, which is a +1 because how many songs can you think of about the Falklands War? Oh yeah, and “Every Day I Write the Book” is on this album, and I forgot to mention how great that song is and how it exemplifies how this album plays with those very dangerous mid-80s cheeseball tropes and how Costello totally makes them work. Sure, there are moments where the 80s grease seeps through the napkin, but it’s nowhere near as bad (not even by a mile) as when Springsteen does it.

Book Club: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Warning: This is lightly spoilery, so if you haven’t read the book or get extremely upset about finding out that characters go places, then skip for now! Spoilers are weird, I tried reading Jenny bits or telling her something like “They go to Amsterdam” and she was all “WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO RUIN THINGS FOR ME?!” and I was like “Dude, John Green was in Amsterdam for two months because the book had something to do with Amsterdam of COURSE they go to Amsterdam, and by the way, if I start writing novels remind me to set it in an exotic locale…” Anyway, this is a great book and this post only makes sense if you’ve read it. Which if you haven’t, you really should. Because it’s great.

The Mountain Goats – “Minnesota”
What with all the Dutch and all the sadness (and Green’s open love for the Mountain Goats*), this one feels kind of perfect for The Fault in Our Stars.

*In addition to using “Game Shows Touch Our Lives” as the epigram for Paper Towns, Green occasionally namedrops the Goats in Vlogbrothers videos and John Darnielle is thanked in the acknowledgments of The Fault In Our Stars.

The Mountain Goats – “There Will Be No Divorce”
“And all the hair stood up on the back of my neck/ We were rising from the grave/ Yeah yeah/ yeah yeah.”

Neutral Milk Hotel – “Two Headed Boy Pt. 2”

This video kills me. You see the somberest of somber followed by one o the most jubilant pop songs I can think of.

Again, all the Dutch. And that scene where Augustus and Hazel go to the Anne Frank house which was one of the most magnificent parts of the book. A way of putting tragedy in perspective. So naturally, I kept thinking of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the whole time I was reading that part of the book. It was hard picking just one song, but I feel like this has to be the one. It’s the most tragic. It’s also the last song on the album. It’s also my favorite song on the album. Or if I was forced to pick a favorite at knifepoint, I would pick this one. Probably because I default to the first or last song on a record when it’s a Record record. “Two Headed Boy Pt. 2” is the most tragic of all the tracks on Aeroplane. It’s the conclusion to Jeff Mangum’s audio essay on life and death and the criminal unfairness of the world and the beauty we need to find that world despite its horrors. It’s also the one most specifically about Anne Frank.

The Weakerthans – “Manifest”/ “Hospital Vespers”/ “Past Due”
These three tracks (all Elizabethian sonnets) provide the coasts and geographic center of the Weakerthans third LP, Reconstruction Site. These brief songs chronically a person with a terminal illness. Diagnosis, hospital, and death. These tracks, naturally, provide the thematic core of the album which is one of my favorite albums of all time (Notably, it was my #1 record of the year the first year I started making best of lists, 2003). I’m weird with Weakerthans albums, in that I don’t really understand why I love them til way later. Like this one, I didn’t catch all the thematic stuff until I read something about it on Wikipedia and then everything made sense and made sense hard since I knew the album so well. This album is full of grief but it’s also full of love and excitement and joy. And that’s the same stuff that The Fault in Our Stars is full of. It’s like Romeo & Juliet where you know it’s doomed (there are mentions of star-crossing and hell, the title is straight outta Julius Caesar) but you go along with it anyway because of course, it’s beautiful. I was in a drawing class when this album came out, my junior year of high school. Every week we had to do a drawing. Any kind of drawing, total freedom. So I would draw scenes from songs I liked or scenes from books I was reading (I’d only started reading books like, the year before that class**). One week I drew “Hospital Vespers.” It looked like this. Looking back on it I can see why this album has stuck with me. I’d never really drawn before (or drawn like a serious person who draws and understands perspective and contrast and how to use pencils etc) but I spent so much time on that drawing, listening to that song, trying to capture why it was important to me even though I didn’t really have any touchstone in my life that corresponded with the subject matter. It was just incredibly important and made me feel more full as a person. And it’s perfect that this song corresponds with The Fault in Our Stars because that book made me feel the same way.

**See: That one Fourth of July where I sat in the bed of my dad’s truck reading The Catcher in the Rye, listening to Alkaline Trio’s From Here to Infirmary, and becoming a 16 year old oh my god. There were no fireworks that night. Actually, they were, but there was some crazy malfunction on the ground where they all exploded at once and someone ended up in the hospital. Weird Fourth of July that I remember so well.

The Weakerthans – “The Reasons”
For love so pure and good. On an album laced with grief this is that blinding positivity that knows no limits because damnit, it’s just so pure and good and true. “I know you might roll your eyes at this/ But I’m so glad that you exist,” sings John K Samson. It sounds like the song Augustus would write to Hazel if he could write well (though he sells himself short and while he might not be eloquent, his intent would surely be felt in waves). Or even better, a song he would put on a mixtape for her (after paring it down from nothing but songs by the Hectic Glow).

Christine Fellows – “Vertebrae”
http://music.cbc.ca/play/artist/Christine-Fellows/Vertebrae

Years back, one of my closest friends told me about how much he loathed Christine Fellows’ music. I don’t know why he ever listened to it, he of dance and house and electronica, but somehow it came across his plate and he spat it out. That’s how I recognized her name when John Darnielle (coming full circle now) listed “Vertebrae” as one of his favorite songs of 2007. I tracked down the song and thought it was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking tracks I’d ever heard. A week later, Paper Anniversary came into KJHK and I quickly snatched it up at a music staff meeting so I could review it. I spent the next week drowning in that album. But mostly “Vertebrae.” It’s rare to find a song that just hits you in the precise place where you just kind of fall apart. The break in the armor. Achilles heel. Etc. And once I found out that Christine Fellows was married to John K Samson (the circle here gets even fuller!) well, it didn’t help.

The first year I was fortunate enough to have the radio station pay my way into SXSW (Spring 2008) I was scouring the massive schedule to find something to do on Thursday or Friday or Saturday evening, I forget which. But I wandered into some small bar where I THINK Mint Records was having a show case and Ms. Fellows as on the bill and I showed up just in time, got a beer, and sat down on the floor with the rest of the small crowd and watched probably the best show I saw that whole trip (which was made up of probably 5 “Best Shows,” really, they’re all equal). Fellows played keyboard while a hired artist worked an overhead projector and cutouts that went along with every song. It was beautiful. And peaceful. And no one shouted or talked over the music and at the end I kind of freaked out at how great it all was. Even better because I’d seen Fellows play keyboards with the Weakerthans earlier that day in a shitty club that was too small and too hot and Southern Comfort was sponsoring it so I drank way too much Southern Comfort mixed with Coca-Cola on the back patio between sets but that set was still great because Christine Fellows sang the vocal harmony parts on “Benediction” in lieu of Sarah Harmer and I only the other day realized it wasn’t her on the recording while reading the liner notes because I’d never read the liner notes to Reconstruction Site. I don’t even remember if she played this song, but she must have, because it’s incredible. And so sad. And it was running through my head the whole time I was reading this book and I wonder if that’s a spoiler. I kept trying to tell Jenny stuff while I was reading it. I tried to read her these gorgeous bits of prose and she just put her hands over he hears, went “la la la la la” and said “NO SPOILERS” as loud as she could. I understand not wanting to be spoiled, but there are basic plot elements of The Fault in Our Stars that are just kind of known (I.E. The book involves a protagonist with terminal cancer, that’s established from the get go right? And since the world isn’t a wish-granting factory and it isn’t a Hollywood movie, you can assume it stays terminal, right?). If I had a running playlist for The Fault in Our Stars this would be the last song. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you listen to this song you’ll get the picture.