St. Vincent - "Actor Out of Work" 7"

St. Vincent – “Actor Out of Work” 7”

4AD, 2009

Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2009

Price: $5

“Actor Out of Work” is a perfect little weirdo indie rock track. It is well documented that I am a fan of short songs. If done right, the replay value is enormous. Thus, I ended up listening to “Actor Out of Work” more than just about any other song in 2009. It’s not your simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus track either. There’s a build, new elements come into the fold late in the game. It punches forward like a battle anthem all pierced by Annie Clark’s dynamic vocals. It’s lightning in a bottle, man. Lightning in a goddamn bottle.

The b-side “Bicycle” is a lovely, dreamy non-album track that sounds like it would play over the credits of a French film if the lyrics were only in French. It is also the reason I’ve continued to hold onto this 7” despite owning Actor. That, and I have great hopes that one day my daughter will take interest in my record collection and I want her to be able to find a badass lady amidst my overwhelmingly dude-ly record collection. Since I started liquidating my collection and weeding out unessential items, I’ve tried to at least make sure it’s a diverse ecosystem. That sounds overly precious to me, but it is what is keeping me from straight-up hawking everything but a crateful of vinyl.

The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

The Mountain Goats – All Hail West Texas

Merge, 2014 (Reissue)

Acquired: Love Garden, New, 2015

Price: $18

My all-time Top Ten records could easily be comprised entirely of Mountain Goats albums. This is no joke. No songwriter speaks to my soul quite like John Darnielle, and were he to forge some sort of tent-revival spiritual following cult-like group, I would follow him into the dark night. Putting nothing but Mountain Goats records in my Top Ten is easy, but deciding the order is hard. I know the top three would be Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree, and All Hail West Texas, but the order is variable. Depends on the mood. Tonight, it’s All Hail West Texas, and it’s a no doubter. It’s simultaneously the last of JD’s boombox recordings and also the first album that feels like an actual Album rather than a collection of songs. It’s a great leap forward and the songwriting here is at another level, which is astounding considering the level Darnielle was already writing at.

The night I asked Jenny out on our first date, I played a solo show at the Eighth Street Taproom in Lawrence. My band the Kite Tails were scheduled to open but my bandmates couldn’t make the gig and, for some insane reason, I decided to soldier on. I used it as an opportunity to cover some of my favorite songs. I’d just spent a year going through a rough breakup, and finally cut it off for good with my ex about a month before. I was still in an ugly place, and I put a lot of sad breakup songs on that setlist. “Source Decay” was right there in the middle, and despite practicing it fifty times in the lead-up to the show, I forgot one of the verses late in the song. Fortunately, someone in the crowd (I think it was this guy Cal, who. Ironically, I ended up playing in another band with a year or so down the line) knew the song and sang out the start of the verse and I finished with as much aplomb as I could. I was nervous, but I got lost in that song. I still get lost in that song every time I hear it. That night I was exorcising demons I’d been living with for too long, and I feel like yelling those lyrics into a microphone to 20 people in a basement in a college town finally got me to move along. I drank my free beer, saw Jenny for the first time in months, and was riding high enough on the emotional buoy of the show to break character and for once in my life act with confidence.

That was almost 7 years ago, we’ve been together ever since, and the Mountain Goats is one of our collective favorite bands. This is what we listen to when we listen to music. This is what I listen to when I listen to music, and I can’t talk about the Mountain Goats without getting evangelical and emotional. I can only surmise that this is what people who love the Bible feel like. They wanna share the good news, they want you to feel as amazing as they feel when they interface with something deeply spiritual. For me, listening to a Mountain Goats record is as close as I get to going to church. Especially this one, which was finally reissued on vinyl last year, thank god.

"The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton"

"Source Decay"

Mark Mulcahy - Fathering

Mark Mulcahy – Fathering

Mezzotint, 1997 (2014 Reissue)

Acquired: Discogs, New, 2015

Price: $5 + $3.50 shipping = $8.50

Mark Mulcahy’s latest album—2013’s Dear Mark J Mulcahy, I Love You—was one of my absolute favorite albums of that year. It clocked in at #6 on my year-end list that year, but I’d like to retroactively bump it up to #2. I listen to that album a lot. It rarely leaves my iPhone, and it’s sort of a go to when I need to get some shit done and feel like a grown ass man. It’s a grown ass man sort of record.

After that transcendent discovery, I sought out his first solo LP Fathering. I could only find it on Spotify, so I listened to it out of order. Listening to it now is the first time I’ve listened to it in its properly sequenced form. It’s a goddamn great record. So spare and different and full of the sort of passion that curls up inside your chest. Unlike the rollicking swagger of Dear Mark J Mulcahy’s most ebullient moments, Fathering is mostly clean, reverbed guitar and voice. It’s a twist on your dude-with-a-guitar singer-songwriter album that tweaks the formula just enough to be both compelling and fresh. It doesn’t hurt that the songwriting is incredibly good. But that’s a given. I wouldn’t be here if the dude’s tunes didn’t destroy me (sometimes “The Rabbit” from DMJM,ILY will come on shuffle and I’ll be wrecked for the rest of the day that’s how good he is).

Selling off the unnecessary bits of my record collection has really helped me change my way of thinking about music. I was always a hoarder. My iTunes library has 82,000 songs and no one needs that much music. Every record in my collection has to tell me a story. There has to be something there that makes me put the record back on the shelf or I immediately list it on Discogs. Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion? That was Jenny and I’s album when we were falling in love. The Pogues Rum Sodomy and the Lash? I tried to sell it but I put on “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” sat and listened, and put the album back on the shelf. I haven’t bought a new record in many months, and it’s a novel thing having an album I own on vinyl but can’t pop onto my iPhone. Fathering is very much an album I associate with, well, fathering. I play it when I’m hanging out with Rosie in the toy room, or when we’re driving to the post office, or when I’m cooking dinner before Jenny gets home. It’s been everywhere lately, and it is only appropriate that it take up residence on my turntable.

"Hey, Self Defeater"

Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle

Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle

Columbia, 1973

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2012

Price: $.50

 

Proto Bruce! These early Springsteen records sound like the dawn of life on Earth. They’re wild, they’re raucous, and they’re definitely hinting at greatness. Springsteen’s songcraft is already damn solid on this, his second album, and I’m almost surprised at this record’s quality. It has been sitting on my shelf for three years and I’ve never put it on! Don’t know why! The Hold Steady is one of my favorite bands, and their debt to Springsteen’s anthemic storytelling rockers has always been worn on their sleeve, but  The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle is hitting all those same Hold Steady buttons. The storytelling is rich and Springsteen does a great job of bringing you into his little corner of Jersey. It’s drenched in the 70s and surprisingly theatrical. Most importantly, it’s a FUN record. One that can be absorbed without the critical eye of his later work or the emotional investment of his mid-80s records, and sometimes that’s just a damn nice thing to have.  

"The E Street Shuffle" - You can see the seed of the Hold Steady in their daddy's eye on this one.

Bruce Springsteen - "I'm on Fire" 45

Bruce Springsteen – “I’m on Fire” 7” Single

CBS, 1985

Acquired: Half Price Books, Used, 2011

Price: $.50

Bruce Springsteen is best known for his big, soaring rock anthems (and having his name tattooed in a crude scrawl on a girl who stayed with us a few years ago but that’s neither here nor there) but I’m more of a fan of his quieter, sensitive stuff a la Nebraska and Tunnel of Love. Born in the USA is sandwiched between those two aforementioned records in his discography, and it’s probably his most famous (at least most famous for having its title track misappropriated by conservative politicians who don’t understand that it’s highly critical of their agenda). It’s at least his most famous cover, featuring Bruce’s all-universe butt in front of an American Flag. It’s got “Born in the USA” and “Dancing in the Dark,” and in the middle it has “I’m on Fire.” There are no chanting background vocals or handclaps or booming guitars. On this track it’s just Bruce, a sweetly sad little synthesizer, a minimal drumbeat, a delicately plucked guitar riff, and some sultry vocals about American Love (“At night I wake up with sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head/ Only you can cool my desire/ I’m on fire”). It’s simple, short, and sweet, and almost infinitely replayable. There’s no repeating the chorus five times here. The line “I’m on fire” serves as a refrain that is uttered three times before the song ends and you reset the needle. I don’t know if I’ve ever admired the Boss as a songwriter more than at this moment, listening to this song ten times in a row on a Monday morning. It’s a track that’s so good that it can even make those dated synths sound relevant. I’m a believer. B-Side “Johnny Bye Bye” is a short, low key reimagining of Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny” that replaces the departure of Johnny B Goode with the death of Elvis Presley. It’s an exemplary b-side: it’s soulful and stands on its own and would make the album from whose sessions it was culled falter a little bit. This is an excellent single for staying up late and flipping through records with your beloved. Sometimes Jenny and I will do that. We’ll hang out up in the loft, she’ll say “what’s this?” and I’ll play a track. For me, that’s the point of owning records. It’s the thrill of discovering what you own, the songs you keep because they’re just that goddamn good and it’s the only way you know how to truly appreciate outstanding music.

Spoon - "The Underdog (Demo)" 7"

Spoon – “The Underdog (Demo)” 7”

Merge, 2007

Acquired: Included with GaGaGaGaGa, New, 2007

Price: $0

This is a very weird promo 7”, but hey, who does promo 7”s any more? I’ll take it. It’ll do. What you get here is an acoustic version of “The Underdog” (which, of all of Spoons incredible singles, seems to be the one most championed by bro-dudes everywhere please kill me) and an experimental b-side entitled "It Took Me a Rumor to Wonder, Now I’m Convinced I’m Going Under.” “The Underdog” demo is fine because it shows that Britt Daniel knows what the fuck he is doing. He knows any great pop song can hold its own in the sparest of arrangements, and while some of Spoon’s weirder cuts aren’t built for dude-and-guitar arrangements, Daniel could release an album of the Spoon singles in this fashion and I’d give it so many spins. The thing about Spoon is that they’re basically a classic rock band in the making. Classic rock for 2035. And when we look back at Spoon 20 years from now, we will see a trail of absolutely devastating singles. You could argue about which is their best album, but the fact that you’d argue means they’re all just goddamn great. GaGaGaGaGa is their high watermark in my book. The three singles—“The Underdog,” “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb,” and “Don’t You Evah”—could be the finest hour for three separate one-hit wonders. The lead-off track “Don’t Make Me a Target” is as gripping a track one as you’d expect from a group that can probably attribute 25% of their fanbase to gripping track ones. “The Ghost of You Lingers” is one of those aforementioned experimental leaning tracks that sounds exactly like its title. The one-two punch at the end with “Finer Feelings” and “Black Like Me” practically forces you to become born again in the church of rock n’ roll. “Black Like Me” especially. That’s one I’d like to hear on that dream, Britt Daniel – Spoon, Acoustic record. That’s the closer. That’s another single for a one-hit wonder and it’s not even a damn single! But yeah, this is a weird 7”, but Spoon is a pretty weird band. I mean, sure they’re violently accessible, but these guys get up to weird shit all the time and it’s the juxtaposition of that envelope pushing and the fist-to-the-face rock n’ roll that makes them so compelling.

The Spinanes – “Madding” 7”

The Spinanes – “Madding” 7”

Sub Pop, 1996

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $.25

“Madding” is the first track from the Spinanes’ second album, Strand. It’s the only album of theirs that I have heard, but it was a big hit. Notably the mid-album track “Valency,” which I played seemingly every other radio show when I was working at KJHK. I love that track, and I love how it’s like a platonic ideal ass-kicking mid-90s indie rock song. “Madding,” on the other hand, is hushed and gorgeous and in the vein of Low. It’s a curious lead-off track, and an even more curious single. The mid-90s was THEE time for slowcore, I suppose, but Strand’s other single, “Lines and Lines,” is another angular ass-kicker in the vein of “Valency.” There are a couple more sleepy snoozers on that record, but it’s mostly catchy, chiming jams. B-side “10 Metre Platform” is another sleepy/dreamy track that again ignores the college rock majesty of the album’s bulk. Regardless, the Spinanes are one of those great little bands that got lost in the alt-rock explosion and discovering bands like this is always a treat. Outside of the Spinanes frontwoman Rebecca Gates released a couple of solo albums that I would very much like to hear and drummer Scott Plouf drummed for Built to Spill in their prime (Perfect From Now On/Keep it Like a Secret/ Ancient Melodies of the Future). It probably already exists, but man oh man I would so love to see a diagrammed Indie Rock Family Tree.

"Madding"

Shufflin' - August 2015

I think, in the process of compiling this month's playlist based on straight-up shuffling iTunes, I realized something: I really like Merge Records. No, seriously. Like REALLY REALLY like. Like LIKE like. It makes sense. I had a Merge Records sticker on my car when I still had stickers on my car. I read the Merge Records book! I'd say my LP collection is probably something like 10-15% Merge artists. So yeah, I really like what they do. And here I am, shufflin songs, and all like, "No, skip, blah, oh this is a good one who is this? Well shit, of course Seaweed is a Merge band." So it goes. Here are this month's highlights:

Seaweed - "Thru the Window" 
Hits all the same sweetspots as Archers of Loaf. Wailing, distorted guitars. Brain-meltingly great chorus. Perfect distillation of mid-90s college rock.

Girlpool - "Cherry Picking" 
I really like Girlpool's schtick. Two girls, lots of off key harmonies, a subdued blend of indie pop and anti-folk elements. "Cherry Picking" starts off slow but has a tremendous build that gathers steam over the track's duration and pays off nicely.

Fucked Up - "One More Night"
I don't know if I ever made it all the way through David Comes to Life more than a couple of times. I kept getting hung up on certain songs. "One More Night" is the penultimate track on that record, and it's a shining example of why I love Fucked Up: they are able to deliver a heavy emotional payoff via screaming at you over a cacophony of crashing guitars.

Destroyer - "Your Blood"
I burned this mix to a CD and played it in the car on the way to Lawrence last month. This song came on and I was surprised to find that I still know all the words. Destroyer, always fun to sing and feel like a foppish dandy dropping hundred dollar words.

Why? - "For Someone"
Relistened to the "Sod in the Seed" EP a bunch this last month. I still hate the title track and the closing track "Shag Carpet" has all of the lurid eww-ness that made Mumps, Etc hard to listen to, but the four quick tracks in the middle are a masterpiece of tone, instrumentation, and sequencing. They reminded me that, though I didn't quite like Yoni Wolf's last offering, I'll still eagerly consume whatever he throws at me next.

Guided by Voices - "Your Name is Wild"I think I read somewhere that Bob Pollard wrote this song about his daughter (or that it was at least a companion piece to "My Son Cool"). Or something. Who knows, everything Bob Pollard says is probably suspect in re what his songs are about. Either way, that's how I'm going to read "Your Name is Wild" now, and I love it.

Damien Jurado - "Gillian Was a Horse"
Poor Damien Jurado. I feel like he's made a career of being a second-tier singer songwriter, which isn't fair because he's a pretty goddamn great songwriter. And yet it always seems like he has a new album out and it's always pretty goddamn good. If he were a running back, he'd be the sort of guy I'd draft because he's consistent. Consistency is key in fantasy football, and something I admire in all fields. So anyway, fantasy football digression aside, I think I need to revisit Jurado's back catalog.

John Prine - "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore"
One of the funniest, most incisive anti-war songs you'll ever hear. Go listen to some John Prine, you deserve it, he is  God's gift to us all.

Sundowner - "Baseball's Sad Lexicon"
Lawrence Arms' co-frontman Chris McCaughan translates Franklin Pierce Adams' poem of the same name and captures all the bittersweetness of baseball's cruelty perfectly, even though Tinkers, Evers, and Chance played for the Chicago Cubs and, McCaughan being a good Chicago boy, I can only imagine he delights in the poem's subject matter.

Frontier Ruckus - Sitcom Afterlife

Frontier Ruckus – Sitcom Afterlife

Quite Scientific, 2014

Acquired: Christmas, New, 2014

Price: $0

How the hell did I not notice the deeply personal nature of this record? I liked it when it came out. I liked it a whole hell of a lot but Eternity of Dimming had just dropped the year before and I was still obsessed with that one so I wasn’t quite ready. I’m listening to my copy now for the first time in six months and holy shit, I’m blown away. And now they have a new record coming out in a couple months and STOP THIS MADNESS! This is the same thing that happened with the Hold Steady. Every year I was delivered a new masterpiece and every year I felt unworthy of this world that was so gracious to give me a yearly installment of something I loved.

Actually, Frontier Ruckus and the Hold Steady aren’t that far apart, as both Matthew Milia and Craig Finn thrive on wordy, little-detail packed tales from their boyhood hometowns. That’s where I will mercifully end this crazed comparison, because FR’s method of filtering nostalgia through the sadness of the future is their greatest asset. Where Eternity of Dimming was a journey into the center of Milia’s beautiful Midwestern heart, Sitcom Afterlife plays like a focused look at love gone wrong. The album is much poppier than its predecessor, utilizing chiming guitar lines and harmonies that would make a choir of angels jealous, but wins with its quiet tracks. The big, slowburn closer “A&W Orange and Brown” is the group’s finest hour (to date) as far as I’m concerned. They nail this extremely precise tone of sadness that stays with you for days.

Taking a break from this record seems to have solidified my opinion of it. Looking at it with fresh eyes I appreciate the band’s boundless belief in what they are doing. You don’t put three albums out in three years if you’re not in love with your own music and can’t put into words how thrilled you are to share it. That’s confidence! A bucking of the typical media cycle most bands go through before embarking on the next cycle. I guess that’s doable for Frontier Ruckus since, for reasons that escape me, are relatively unknown. How these guys aren’t exploding is beyond comprehension because in my unesteemed opinion they should be everyone’s new favorite band.

"A&W Orange and Brown"

Spactious - "Vector 27" 7"

Spacious – “Vector 27” 7”

Flying Nun Records, 1995

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2007

Price: $.25

The three songs on Spacious’ “Vector 27” 7” are the only three the band released. They’re of the solid, jangly indie pop variety you’d expect from Flying Nun. The group is comprised of David Saunders on guitar and vocals and Alan Haig on drums and, as expected, both guys were lifers in the Dunedin scene. Saunders most notably played with the 3Ds where Haig played with the Chills and the Verlaines. This 7-inch is great because it’s just some random-ass 7-inch I pulled out of Love Garden’s Shotgun Room and it enforces my belief that Flying Nun didn’t really have any weak links. There’s a joy to that label’s records you can’t really find anywhere else. Everyone was friends with everyone (or at least they all played in each others’ bands), the government money was flowing to keep everyone happy, and the result is a catalog of records that is pretty consistently great. I’ve yet to find a Flying Nun record that wasn’t at least a little rad. Another winner, no big surprise.