Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $5
This is a beautiful record that I only very recently fell in love with. I had
some issues with this album when it came out, and they were the worst kind of
issues. The kind you internalize when you’re Music Director at a college radio
station and you overthink everything to the point where you can’t even enjoy
music like a regular person anymore. My problem wasn’t the band itself, not by
any means. I loved their sound so much. The songs were beautiful, just the
epitome of loveliness. I saw them open for Blitzen Trapper a little bit before
this album came out (I think, or they were touring in support of it) and I
remember seeing Robin Pecknold walking down the street as I left with a massive
headache halfway through Blitzen Trapper’s set and I told him how fantastic his
band sounded and how they were the epitome of loveliness and he just seemed
like the sort of dude who was new at receiving compliments about his music and
was really very sweet and like thanks! That still resonates with me, how just
flat out fucking nice that guy was. I’m sure he still is that nice, and really,
listen to this music, how could people that made music with this much beauty
and passion be dicks? I mean, I know it happens but I choose to ignore it and
just live in my blissfully ignorant world where everyone is cool. So anyway, my
problem with the record was all the insane press it got like this was the
second coming. Like Fleet Foxes were single handedly saving music. And I
thought that was just way off. I thought the music was so gorgeous and sounded
like it was straight out of mid-century Appalacia or something but that was
just it, it sounded old and I have a hard time really rewarding stuff that is
basically doing a magnificent job at doing something that has already been
done. It’s the same way I get annoyed when every actor up for the best
actor/actress Oscar is getting nominated for a biopic. There just seems to be
so much more in doing something new. But
now that doesn’t matter, not with this album. It’s just so achingly lovely that
all of that critical mumbo jumbo can be left at the curb for the garbage man
(assuming it’s under 50 pounds, otherwise you’re gonna have to haul it to the
dump yourself). There’s a purity to this album that I didn’t see the first time
around. There’s so much joy in it, and though it is fiercely controlled, it
never feels restrained. It’s wild and free and all that. A testament to capital
F Folk music. It’s not art, it just is, and really I think that’s more important
and an answer to why I can put this record on any time, any place, and dig on
it.
Squeeze – Singles: 45s and Under
A&M, 1982
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2011
Price: $1.50 Someone put this on at work one day and the second I heard “Up the Junction” I
was like “I must have this.” And I found out it was Squeeze’s singles collection
on vinyl that very day and was like “yes please.” And man oh man, I’m always
really on the fence about new wave but this stuff is just so genuine and well,
just really good. Not earth shattering but true and kind of pure. “Pulling
Mussels (From the Shell)” has a goofy title but it’s like some weird kindred
spirit of Elvis Costello. “Tempted” is on this record too, which is great
because when it comes on, I think I have cable television and there’s a
commercial playing. Overall, this is a nice album to pull out and put on at
random when people are over or you’re making dinner and just need something
good in the background with a couple hits thrown in for “oh yeah this song! I
love this song!”
Bob Dylan – Oh Mercy
Columbia, 1989
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $2.50 This is a great late Dylan record, somewhere after all the Jesus stuff and
those two really shitty albums he made and before he started making all of
those blues records or whatever those albums from the 90s were. I bought this
record because it has “Most of the Time” on it, which was featured in the movie
High Fidelity and featured on the
soundtrack and a staple for one of the pretty rocky breakup years back. I’ve
never listened to the religious albums or the shitty ones that came after, but
this does sound like a return to form record. It’s solid. Sounds like Bob Dylan
run through the ringer. Most of the songs suffer from that electronic 80s
production, but it’s not nearly as obtrusive as it is on, say, Leonard Cohen’s
80s albums. “Ring Them Bells” is a beautiful, somber tune buried in the
tracklist. It totally caught me off guard, and kind of led to this idea that “Oh,
this is Bob Dylan now.” He’s moving forward, aging gracefully. His voice hasn’t
aged as well as you might have thought it would, but that’s kind of the beauty
of it. It just gets more weathered and will keep wearing down until he’s in the
ground. I remember Sufjan Stevens covered that song on the I’m Not There soundtrack and I thought it was overlong and weird
and then I thought it was kind of awesome when I heard the original. When the
tunes are spare and lovely, they succeed greatly. When they’re angsty and
bitter like “Political World” and “Everything is Broken,” they get a little too
dated. I’d definitely love to hear a version of this album stripped down to
just Bobby D and a guitar because you know the songs would sound great (that’s
just how the man rolls), and I know Daniel Lanois production and I’m just some
upstart coming in being all “oh boo hoo the 80s” but that’s just how I call it.
On an unrelated note, the teriffic “Shooting Star” sounds like the balladesque
songs Craig Finn has been writing lately.
Since it's like impossible to find an original Bob Dylan tune on YouTube, here's that Sufjan Stevens version of "Ring Them Bells"
Drive Time, in which I spend a week with an album I haven't really listened to before that I probably should have listened to before.
It’s weird how things can just slip under your radar.
Especially things that you love. Or would have loved properly had you come to
them at the right time. There’s a bit of remorse I’ve felt listening to Sha Sha all week in my car. I felt
remorse that I didn’t love this album like I should have when I was in high
school. This record came out in March 2002. I was sixteen years old, and I was
obsessed with Weezer, and this album sounds like the Weezer I loved. The Weezer
of Blue Album and Pinkerton. That spirit is here. Huge pop
songs done on a modest scale. My bag. I even remember downloading Sha Sha on Napster. I remember really
loving “Wasted & Ready” and for some reason, neglected to listen to the
rest of the album. Why? There are so many surefire hits I was bound to love it
because right now, I’m 26 and I think it’s one of the best high school records
I’ve ever heard.
That isn’t meant as a knock, because as you know well, it’s very easy to stay
in love with the music you loved in high school. Maybe I was getting too punk
rock. This was sophomore year, the year of 9/11, and the year I started
listening to lots of Jello Biafra spoken word albums and 80s punk and kind of
cocooned and came out someone that was too cool to like anything that wasn’t
politically charged. Or something. I don’t know, there was a lost year in the
punk rock gestation where I was critical of everything and then about a year
later I found the Weakerthans and started branching out into indie rock like a
good little soldier. I can only suspect this is the case. The one time in my
life where I shunned poppy music (all the while devouring pop punk). I’m sorry,
Sha Sha, I really am. You would have
made the perfect soundtrack to so many awkward dates and makeout sessions
(well, the like less than 10 makeout sessions I partook in during high school)!
Alas, here I am, old and not so much nostalgic but really fondly embracing the
music I loved as a teenager. Finding those qualties that made me love it in the
first place and refusing to write it off as “stuff I liked in high school”
which seems like such a common thing to do. It’s not like your taste gets
better, it just evolves. I mean, I liked some shitty stuff when I was fourteen
and fifteen, but that was all on the path to enlightenment. It’s like, once you
know what you like, and that what you like has certain merits you can kind of
stop judging it. Or maybe that’s just me holding this up to the alternative,
which is Limp Bizkit and Korn and Slipknot and everything looks like solid gold
compared to that shit.
So here’s what happened. Here’s how this record fell into my life in a rather
serendipitous way. I was assisting on a section reflow at work and had to be
there past normal go-home-time until 11 and had to spend that time taking books
off of shelves, moving shelves around, getting splinters, hammering pegs into
shelf walls, and then putting shelves back up and putting books back on
shelves. And this is what the assistant manager put on and all the gripes I had
in my head about having to stay there til 11 kind of went away and I just
worked like a happy little ant all like “Good lord this album is so great!”
Naturally, the ASM remarked that this was the sound of high school. Shit yes.
The next day, I saw the CD sitting up at the buy counter with a $1 clearance
sticker on it and promptly purchased the thing. And it’s been stuck in my car
stereo.
Kweller’s finest attribute is that he might as well be you. Just some kid from
some small Texas town, probably writing these songs in his bedroom or whatever.
The melodies, though, the melodies are world class. They’re playful yet
elegant. Fun without sapping any emotional core. It’s also one of those rare
album I heard and immediately knew my wife would like. She’s very picky.
Sometimes you have to sneak music to her the way you sneak broccoli into
smoothies for people who don’t like vegetables (or that one guy from the Magic
Bullet commercial who doesn’t like vegetables and remarks “I CAN’T TASTE THE
VEGETABLES!” when he tries the broc laced smoothie). I’ll play an album a few
times in the car, around the house, making sure to cue up the tracks I think
she’ll like. I’m not trying to say that she doesn’t love music, she is just
very, very…well, picky. It’s kind of how we compliment each other. She just
likes what she likes whereas I have to critically examine something before I
can like some sort of nerd detective before I can be like “this is really
great” (or maybe more like a dog walking around in circles before choosing to
lie down). I put this on in the car and, as I suspected, she immediately liked
it. Point Ian.
Kweller’s balancing of the slow jams with the straight-outta-Pinkerton jams is nice. I totally
suspected him to just ramp up the power pop but the tender tunes like “Family
Tree,” “Falling” and “Lizzy” are that emotional core I was talking about.
Playing off the playful “Wasted & Ready” and “Commerce, TX.” It’s rich and
satisfying. The hooks, man oh man the hooks! The aforementioned “Commerce, TX”
sounds so easy. Like it could have been tossed off, written in under an hour,
and the thing about great songs is that sometimes they’re like that. Sometimes
they just come out and there it is and you don’t really have to fuss with it
it’s just there. It also makes sense that it was Evan Dando of the Lemonheads
who took Kweller under his wing. It’s all coming together, what with Dando
being another one of those people who has fucking outstanding hooks just
effortlessly flowing out of him. For some reason I find it very comforting that
Kweller married the girl “Lizzy” is about. That kind of seals the deal for me.
OK, Ben Kweller, I thought you were like, SO UNCOOL when I was in high school
but now I realize that you are very cool (maybe played in an uncool way but
still cool) and I swear every time “Harriet’s Got a Song” comes on I think “This
is maybe the best song on the record and it’s buried second to last, what a
bold move!” It’s so wonderful to find an album that makes me feel giddy. Something that appeals to the
basest of my musical obsessions and just feels so pure and good and fuck yes.
There is hope for this world yet!
It was so strange that after two years working at HPB Lawrence, waiting for
something cool like this to come in, it came in like a month before I left. I
have NEVER even seen a copy of this album on vinyl. I didn’t even know what the
cover looked like until I did this insanely cool record buy full of weird out
of print psychedelic and prog rock stuff from the 70s. Let’s say I flipped a
bit. I don’t buy records hardly at all anymore, but this one made me revert to
my wanton, wholly irresponsible record buying early 20s. It’s a weird, weird,
wonderfully weird record. It’s got these glammy, Bowie-esque tunes like “Baby’s
on Fire” and “Needle in the Camel’s Eye” but then it’s got the spacey serenity
of “Some of Them Are Old” and the stunning, magnificent, absolutely untouchable
title track that sounds like this timeless piece of sonic art that will carry
through the ages. It’s anthemic without really standing for anything, and
that’s a beautiful thing. Jenny just said “It’s very artistic” and she’s right!
She keeps asking “What is this?” and then “Here Come the Warm Jets” comes on
and she goes “Oh yeah I love this song.” It’s hard to believe this record is 40
years old despite still sounding so fresh and modern.
Well would you look at that. I basically just bought Carrere’s year-later
French issue of The Church’s debut Of
Skins and Heart. An album I already own and have already written about. Looking
back on that review, I can carbon date it because that must have been BEFORE
the time Jason Harper told me to stop using the word “stellar” in pieces for
the Pitch and I really don’t think I’ve used that word again to this day. But
the music here is still “fucking awesome” even if it’s the same album except
they replaced “Fighter Pilot…Korean War,” a track I really liked but was
apparently like, a dud. In its place is “Tear it All Away” and well, it’s the
same fucking album. The cover art is cool though, and I don’t think “She Never
Said” is lame anymore because this sort of Australian pop is like, a surefire
hit for me. Always pretty reliable, sometimes dated by the 80s, but in this
case rock solid yes please.
Sub Pop, 2002
Acquired: One of Jenny’s like, Five Records, ???, ???
Price: $???
This one was inherited. A good one to inherit, too. I haven’t really listened
to any of Iron & Wine’s albums post Our
Endless Numbered Days, which seems really weird because I love Iron &
Wine. Actually, I remember listening to the expansive the Around the Well b-sides & rarities compilation and hearing “The
Trapeze Swinger” and thinking “Goddamnit why haven’t I listened to any of Iron
& Wine’s new stuff?!” No rhyme/reason to that. None at all other than
laziness. Fortunately, listening to this excellent debut LP is convincing me to
dig up the MP3s. I know they’re floating around somewhere. Funny story, I
haven’t really listened to this album very much either. I got into Sam Beam
with The Sea and the Rhythm EP and
somehow this one never spent that much time in the CD player. I’ve heard it a
handful of times, and it’s great, I just for some weird reason never played it
to death. Weirdly I’ve heard “Southern Anthem” a bunch of times, like up there
with the songs of his I’ve heard the most. Must have been a KJHK staple. The
one some intrepid music staffer put as the first recommended track. Still one
of the more hauntingly beautiful albums from that decade gone by. An album that
introduced us to one of the more infallible (though I haven’t really listened
to any of his more recent albums, I know Sam Beam still receives constant
praise) artists of the day.
I.R.S., 1986
Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2010
Price: $6
From the belly of Athens, GA, this is the answer to “What does college rock
sound like?” That, and I guess every
early R.E.M. record, but this one is more tuneful and enjoyable than early
R.E.M. records (I still for the life of me can’t make R.E.M. sound compelling
to my brain. At least not yet. Still waiting for some like, revelation moment.
Not ruling it out.) Or maybe I just wanna give R.E.M.’s producer some love, I
dunno. Either way, I usually enjoy it when producers make music in addition to
producing, and Mitch Easter’s jangle pop is no exception. While the album is
mostly just “pretty good stuff,” the tracks “Fell” and “Writing the Book of
Last Pages” were like, really excellent. I love these 80s bands because there
were so many and all of them had at least one or two great songs.
The Mortal Micronotz – The Mortal Micronotz
Fresh Sounds, Inc, 1982
Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012
Price: $1.50
Because of course life isn’t ever simple, I’ve been experiencing a little
homesickness for Lawrence. Particularly the Lawrence of the summertime when all
the douchers (well, most of ‘em) go back to Johnson County and all that is
required of you is to work, go to the lake, drink beer, and go to kickball
games and generally just hang the fuck out. Here with the Mortal Micronotz we
have sounds of Lawrence past. The front cover of this very warped album has
KJHK scrawled on it. Oh yeah, and so does the back. And the whole thing is held
together with ancient tape. The music is caught somewhere between early 80s SST
punk and post-punk and it’s fucking marvelous. Like, “Goddamnit why doesn’t
Lawrence have bands like this anymore! Bands that so clearly don’t give a fuck
and just wanna make some jams! WHAT HAPPENED?!?” There are a couple bands like
that kicking around Lawrence still, but only a couple. I wanted like ten. I
played in one that was inadvertently trying to be like one of these bands like
the Micronotz or the Embarassement. Just doing it for fun and free beer and
like $50 split between three people for guitar strings and stuff. Cooler still,
the track “Old Lady Sloan” was written by William S Burroughs FOR the
Micronotz. The Burroughs thing should usurp the Wizard of Oz thing when you
tell someone you’re from Lawrence. Instead, more often than not you end up
explaining that Lawrence is the one sane place in Kansas and I promise we’re
not all backwater hicks (well, not all of
us, lord knows Lawrence has its fair share of derpers but hey, what burg
doesn’t?). Anyway, this record is a lot of fun and you know, it wasn’t going to
change the world, but hey it was never trying to and it’s like a little time
capsule when kids were seemingly more interested in making music than trying to
be cool.
P.S. I know I rail on Lawrence and Kansas a lot, but I should mention that my ideal place of residence is North Lawrence (a few miles after you cross the bridge, turn left at the airport, keep going a little way and there) but in an alternate universe where Sam Brownback isn't Der Fuhrer and trying to destroy what could be such a great place.
The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
4AD, 2004
Acquired: Christmas present, New, 2011
Price: $0
Here’s another album that took me a long time to warm up to and subsequently
became one of my favorite albums in an artist’s discography. Tallahassee sometimes has a slight edge
over The Sunset Tree, but most days
they’re dead even. Beautiful and tragic in different ways. Tallahassee for the tragic in the fictional tale of a dead romance
symbolized by a house falling apart. The
Sunset Tree, the John Darnielle’s second try at straight-up autobiography. There’s
teenage bliss found in first love and there’s the terror of confronting one’s
abusive stepfather in his car on the driveway and the scene ending in a
standoff. There’s the introduction of drugs in the menacing strings of
“Dilaudid” and then there’s “Love Love Love.” And there’s just some of the most
amazing words Darnielle has ever written.
The Sunset Tree snuck up on me a
couple years ago. I’d really liked it when it came out, but got lost in a sea
of all the other music coming at the time. I’d just started college, and just
started working at KJHK, and there was just way too much going on to really pay
attention to any music with the attention that most of it deserves. It was all
about consumption. And once that all settled down, I listened to this all the
way through for weeks at a time until it all clicked. Until I could say “yes,
this is a perfect album.” There’s something so thrilling about listening to an
album you’ve heard dozens of times and noticing that your favorite songs are
changing. Where “Broom People” was the track that immediately hooked me and
today I think “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod” is the crux that this whole
album balances on. One of the most powerful songs I can even think of. The
thesis statement and then some. It’s so absolutely heartbreaking the whole
thing would absolutely fall apart if you didn’t have absolute faith in the
singer. Listening to The Sunset Tree
over and over again retaught me how to love music. That sure you wanna hear
everything coming out and be as well versed in the scene as you can, but good
lord if you can’t take time out to give the great albums the time t your
favorite records than maybe something is wrong. Or maybe it depends on the
person. Although I’ve always been the type of person to have favorites. To hate
that response of “Well I like a lot of different music.” Maybe that’s what made
me an asshole of a music director. That if prospective staff members couldn’t
name like, five of their favorite bands or albums then I assumed they didn’t
love any music passionately enough to be on a staff of people who were all
psychotically obsessive enough to be critical. Again, maybe that was the wrong
way of going about it, but it made sense at the time. Anyway, The Sunset Tree is one of those albums I
could talk to you about forever. Jenny and I fell in love to this record. It
was one of the albums I’d put on and we’d lie in bed and listen to over and
over again. I can’t believe this album is eight years old. It makes me feel
old. I’ve been living with it for so long and it still sounds so timeless. If I
meet someone who says they don’t like the Mountain Goats because it’s too lo-fi
or the guy’s voice is weird, I burn them a copy of this album and say, “Try
again.” I’m pretty passionately evangelical about John Darnielle. I feel like
his songs are my scriptures. I get out of them what Christians get out of
sermons or the Bible. His songs make me feel comforted, like I know there’s
something more and that something more is just trying to be the best person you
can be and to be good to people. The
Sunset Tree reminds me that it’s OK for albums to be perfect. That trying
to judge everything by the same arbitrary scale of numbers is often folly and
that the merits of any given album are often way too abstract to put into some
sort of cohesive sliding scale. This is a straight-up masterwork.
