Song of the Day 1/26/2012

Just for a change of pace here's some nerdy rock music.







There's still almost two full days of this week left. This is simultaneously not enough time to get that thing done by the end of the week and an appallingly long wait until the weekend.



Bloody hell.

Song of the Day 1/19/12

This is odd. I don’t like The Go! Team, mainly because of their fucking stupid punctuation (although the same crimes don’t bother me when committed by Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Motörhead), and I don’t really like Best Coast (gorgeous vocals over not very good songs) and yet they combined to make this:

Which is obviously great.
Disclaimer: I’m still trying (and failing) to keep up with new music, I first heard this a couple of weeks ago (and then today in Trader Joe’s – one stop indie rock grocery shopping) so I’ve decided it counts.

Song of the Day 1/12/12

The best new Seattle-based music. This blog just continues to deliver on its promises. Sorry, I’ve been typing and trying to eat healthy foods, this hasn’t left me much time for listening to new stuff. The upside of this is technology is getting more awesome and there are more Top Pot donuts available in the Pacific North West.

Which brings us to this great song from the AV Club’s Undercover project, The Mountain Goats explode through Boxcar by Jawbreaker, a lot of good work done in about two minutes with a handful of chords. You’d have to try really hard not to like this. And you would fail. Fail!



Music starts at 1:17 – but you should watch the whole thing.
Free extree bonus fact: That guitar is just like mine!

Song of the Day 1/5/2012

Hey! Look! Song of the day is back!

I try to pick stuff that is current and based in Seattle and I almost always fail to do this. This is off the new Guided By Voices record (so 0.5 out of 2 isn’t bad).

This is them on Letterman from earlier this week, they’re kind of a sloppy mess (if you study the video really closely you might notice that the bass-player makes a tiny error), but Robert Pollard’s voice is dead on.



I don’t feel entirely comfortable saying “I like Guided By Voices” because they have so many songs and I’ve only scratched the surface (their best of “Human Amusements At Hourly Rates” seems to be the best way to start on this surface scratching: http://open.spotify.com/album/53KpX4dhIypkmTZkfgQdS6 ). Their reputation suggests that even though they’re prolific not much of their content is must-have-indie-gold, but I’m envious of this ability to just crank out record after record. Especially because at the moment I have song-writer’s block, I can’t get my guitar to make a decent original noise – a cursory inspection of every good chord pattern I come up reveals that Pixies, Sugar et al. have already written, recorded and released the exact sequence of same notes 20 years ago.

Must be more like GBV.

Song of the day 7/8/2011

Great song, sleazy video redeemed by that ENORMOUS chorus.



Typing for money is killing me at the moment. Is 33 too young to retire?

Song of the day 6/23/2011

Another missed week of blogging. I am ok. I hope you all didn't faint from worry. There’s a lot going on for me at the moment, I’m mainly fixing bugs (or at least staring blankly at misbehaving code and shrugging which is almost the same thing), there’s been a huge injection of very good standup comedy that I absolutely must consume (Live, TV, podcasts and Netflix and oh my fucking god Andy Kindler is coming back to Seattle) and I’m trying to buy a new amplifier to expunge the spectre of Peavey from my band. Things are all happening.

Sugar – If I Can’t Change Your Mind

(I still haven’t justified the “let’s drown some lady” theme in A Good Idea – so I’ll go with this one).

More early nineties indie rock. I don’t accept the notion that there is other music. Ever late to the party I got this record eleven years after it came out following a horrible breakup (really, the kind with multiple, bloody exit wounds, the painful learning experience kind) – this, on repeat and gin and tonics on repeat got me through that. I like all the melodies and harmonies. I like the guitar and drum sounds. I like how this is what Husker Du would sound like if they were more commercial. And the scales at the end – YES!

Good God Bob Mould looks young in this video. Wikipedia tells me that the band Train covered this song. Train can fuck off.

All your problems are over when you listen to this record, it’s 44 minutes 58 seconds of respite.

Thanks Sugar. Thanks alcohol.

Song of the Day 6/9/2011

Check list for a good pop song:

• Stop-Start
• Harmonizing
• Sub 3 minutes

Check! Check! Check!

I love Visqueen. They write great songs and always seem to be working very hard. I saw them twice last year and both times there were lots of tiny children around. Hopefully they’ll play in a bar soon so there can be adult beverages and language.

Song of the day 2/06/2011

Seattle attracts so much music and is awesome.
Seattle also has too many stupid festivals and camping-based torture near by.

God I hope the reformed Archers of Loaf do a show actually in Seattle.

SotD 5/31/11 - Dan Mangan's Robots

I recently had the privilege of attending the fourth show by local house show producers Notes From Home. The evening's entertainment was Cataldo, Hey Marseilles, and Dan Mangan. Of the three of them I had only heard Hey Marseilles before.

I have little experience attending house shows but wow, what a way to experience music. The setting was intimate, the sound was good, the people open and friendly, and I just felt like I was experiencing something special. The highlight for me was that every band that night performed a sing-along song and they all successfully got the entire room singing. This song was Dan Mangan's sing-along contribution.

Song of the day 5/26/2011

The original brief for contributing to this blog was to write about Seattle-centric stuff, as you can see I live to disappoint.

Kerbdog – Sally

I still have the ticket stub for this show somewhere, October 1993 Manchester Academy : The Almighty, The Wildhearts, Kerbdog. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this was a hell of a thing to unleash on a young man. I’d been to a couple of shows before this one, but this was the first gig where I got to stand at the front next to the speaker stacks (this and the endless repetitions of doing similar things almost exactly like this are why if you speak to me today you have to yell directly into my ear). Kerbdog were the opening act and were barely older than me. It was amazing.

Years later when I was in college I saw them again and after the show, because of poor transport links between “where I studied” and “where rock was at”, my friends and I had to wait for a train for a couple of hours, we waited in the bar, we met the band and they bought us drinks. Thoroughly charming chaps.

This song is off their second record where they became less metal and learned to write pop songs with crunching fuzzy guitars.

They did two records and split up. Their bass player went to university to study civil engineering and the other two formed Wilt who were quite good, but less good. People like me remained obsessed with Kerbdog to the point where for the last few years they they’ve relented and done an annual reunion show in Ireland around Christmas. I want to go to that. I owe them a drink.

SotD 5/24/11 - Chromeo's Don't Turn The Lights On

I'm not sure what took me so long to give Chromeo a listen. I distinctly remember an old friend recommending them to me. When we saw them at SXSW it was a bit of a relief because most of the bands weren't dance enough to get me moving. Chromeo is now on frequent rotation for my walk to work.

Song of the Day 5/19/2011

I love The Hold Steady, but their last record was …meh. I’m assuming this is because of the loss of Franz Nicolay and his amazing moustache. Whatever the reason, I have a gap must be filled by too many smart lyrics yelled over crunchy guitar riffs.

Oh well would you look at this:



It’s Titus Andronicus, I got their 2008 record The Airing Of Grievances, which is good and has at least one amazing song on it:



But I found that the distortion/overdrive/supersaturation of the vocals made it really hard to listen to the record all the way through, and I’m delighted they seemed to have stopped doing that on the new(er) stuff.

Hey - there’s a lady in in the band, but she’s not playing bass. Clearly they have not read the Official Rules of Indie Rock (that’s Amy Klein, you should follow her on Twitter @AmyAndronicus and read this interview with her: http://guitareste.com/2011/05/05/interview-amy-klein/)

SotD 5/17/11 - The Lonely Forest's I Don't Want To Live Here

The Lonely Forest came to Amazon recently for a recruiting event. My friend generously put together a resume just so I could get a ticket. It was definitely a strange place to watch a band - the sound sucked and the fluorescent lighting and office carpeting precluded any real ambiance. The singer joked that he felt like he was performing in a biology class.

Song of the day 5/12/2011

[This was all revved up and ready to go last night, on time and under budget as always but there were some weird issues with Blogger and I couldn’t post. I’m using the opening paragraph of this entry to complain about that.]

Frank Black – Headache.

I’m exhausted. Today was long and eventful, there was music and talking, also bug fixing and early morning exercise. Thoughts on going to the gym first thing in the morning: you get to feel smug about having already worked out, but you also get to feel bonefuckingtired all day long – your mileage may vary especially if you’re healthier than I am (which, statistically speaking, you definitely are).

I’ve always really liked this song, and it always reminds me of the first time I heard it – in my friend Dave’s room in college. Then, as now, Dave drank a lot of tea from massive mugs. We later discovered that each of these mugs could hold an entire bottle of dead cheap white wine, and we put this to good use in between learning physics and watching “I Am Weasel”. I miss Dave – I wish unlikely circumstances would bring him, as they did me, to Seattle.

SotD 5/10/11 - Daft Punk's Something About Us

I was going through my posts and renaming them when I discovered that I didn't post anything for May 10th. I'm not sure how that's possible but I'm way too particular to let that stand.

In retrospect, I am posting one of the songs that triggers the strongest emotional reaction in me. "Something About Me" was the song I dubbed "our song" back when I was a naive teenager at the beginning of a 6 1/2 year growth stunting relationship. People used to tell me it was a depressing choice but I'm more appalled at how poorly the song represented our relationship. My romanticism was misplaced: there wasn't anything great about that relationship, I just didn't know better.

Song of the Day 5/5/2011

Some accents work well for rock music, some might even make the music sound more "authentic", for some reason one that works in my head is a Scottish accent. Thinking about it, that probably says more about the state of my mind than it does about music so let’s not pursue this line of inquiry any further.

For whatever reason I've been listening to a lot of scotch* music over the last few weeks, probably the best record that fits into this category is Guide For The Daylight Hours by Ballboy, which is magnificent from start to finish. I love the first song, so I dug around on YouTube for a version to post here and found a lovely 2007 recording from New York. The first two minutes are funny story that turns into an explanation of the song.

Ballboy – Avant Garde Music

• That line "I wish the queen would leave me alone" has bothered me for ages – I'm delighted that this recording explains it.
• More guitar players should wear ties – I might start doing this.
• Never read YouTube comments about anything for any reason.

*Yeah, I know

SotD 5/3/11 - Aqueduct's The Suggestion Box

I feel so lucky whenever a band I like turns out to be from Seattle. The first time I saw Aqueduct I remember being surprised because they looked nothing like I expected, immediately followed by thinking that was really cool.

Song of the Day 4/28/2011

My band has a show this evening. It’s the first one in over a year and this, combined with the lingering cold, and the random, harrowing demands of the job are making me edgy. For the last few days I’ve been anxious, snappy and impatient (more so), I am a fucking joy to be around.

So I looked around on the internet for something to cheer me up and found this:

Superchunk - Digging For Something from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Obviously it’s a stone cold good song, it’s up there with any really good Superchunk song - and the video manages to actually be funny. I reckon this because Jon Wurster is so heavily involved with funny things these days (I also reckon that THAT is how Marc Maron’s WTF podcast got sponsored by Merge Records – I love it when two disparate things I like get somehow connected).

What’s really taking the edge off for me is having this song remind me of the fucking awesome show Superchunk did last year, it’s nice that a miserable mood can be fended off with a happy memory.

Also, we’re coming up on 20 years since No Pocky For Kitty came out. And you should read this about that.

SotD 4/26/11 - The Mountain Goat's No Children

In honor of my shiny new guitar, I give you one of the songs in my repertoire. "No Children" is one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs because it's so damn fun to sing. It's even more fun to sing when you're accompanying yourself on guitar.

Song of the Day 4/21/2011

I am unwell. Not seriously ill, but coughing, uncomfortable and suffering from diminished concentration, any errors or insane observations in the below should be attributed to my condition.

To speed up my recovery I've taken the day off and I'm sitting in a coffee shop drinking spendy coffee and listening to old KEXP song of the day podcasts (drowning out The Jackson Five, which the staff seem to play on an endless loop). Obviously this is an excellent source of new music and being able to select a song from a finite list gives me a pleasant feeling of control that I don't get from just listening to KEXP on the radio.

Of the twenty or so songs I've heard this morning this is probably my favorite:

Teenage Love Made Me Insane by The High Dials
(yeah, Soundcloud, not youtube - this is the future).

Things I like about this record:

• The start - similar (same?) chords as Growin' Up by Portastatic.
• The first verse - sounds like Teenage Fanclub.
• The end - where a phaser (or possibly a flanger) is employed to mix the vocals and guitar lines together into a squashy beam of joy.

Right, back to eating fistfuls of Vitamin C.