December 2011
62 posts
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wronglikeright:
Song of the Day: Dismemberment...
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Music Marathon Days 19-22
Full albums listened to:
John Vanderslice’s White Wilderness. A new batch of Vanderslice’s songs with orchestral backing seems like a pretty sure bet. The guy’s overlooked as a straight-up songwriter sometimes, the attention focusing on the inventive production touches he puts on his own work. So this seems like the perfect opportunity to highlight his talents for descriptive...
with my two hands... i can change the world:... →
microphoneheartbeats:
withmy2hands:
Well this is something different.
Marvel lawyers have been arguing (in real-world courts!), apparently for a few years, that X-Men are not truly human.
It has something to do with import duties, and the fact that duties on dolls (which are representations of humans) are taxed at a much higher…
Love that for the purpose of this court case, Marvel are...
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Music Marathon Days 15-18 (or something)
Albums listened to:
Iron & Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean. It may include one of my favorite songs of the year (in fact, it may include a few), but I can’t say Kiss Each Other Clean is quite one of my favorite albums of the year. I’m a lot more taken with the straightforward pop of “Tree by the River” and the highly embellished creepy and rhythmic folk descended...
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Music Marathon Day 13 & 14
Albums listened to:
Frightened Rabbit’s A Frightened Rabbit EP. It’s good, it’s short, it’s Frightened Rabbit. No major innovations here, but one of the songs is called “Fuck This Place,” which I like.
Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life. I thought I’d written a substantive post on this album, but it turns out it was just a tiny response to Fucked...
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Music Marathon Day 12
Yesterday’s albums (today, it’s mostly Christmas music per request of wife):
EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints. Lots has been written about the autobiographical nature of Past Life Martyred Saints, particularly Erika M. Anderson’s use of physical imagery to bring emotional trauma to lyrical life. I’m more taken with how freely and smoothly she navigates musical...
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“So many people have praised Christopher so effusively, I want to complicate the...”
– Katha Pollitt, “Regarding Christopher” (The Nation, via The Awl)
===
Considering how much of the posthumous praise for the late Hitchens pins him as a bold teller of truths, there’s been an awful lot of downplaying of the more problematic aspects of his personality. Pollitt’s article...
The Best Hopes to Break Out in 2012 < PopMatters →
Told you I’d have more to say about Death Grips:
Death Grips
For an outfit that sounds like it should be busy preparing for societal collapse (and, perhaps, ruling in the aftermath), Death Grips put a lot of effort into announcing itself in 2011. Evidenced by a stand-alone single, a mixtape, and a series of disturbing, low-budget videos (all available here), the Sacramento,...
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Music Marathon Day 11
My count’s gotten off as my last post (Day 8.5) “cleverly” anticipating a second update that day (Day 9), but the truth is I didn’t listen much to my 2011 playlist this weekend due to non-listening responsibilities and some listening responsibilities for review purposes. So I’ve really just listened to one more album in the playlist since the last update:
Drive-By...
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The Best New and Emerging Artists of 2011 <... →
Lots of potentially great stuff on this list (I’ve just listened to a few from the first page so far, and I’m already pretty sold on Pitom). It also features the highest ranking artist or album with which I’ve had a blurb associated on PopMatters year-end round-up so far:
3 Wild Flag
As if the embodiment of a Springsteen sermon, Wild Flag delivers rock ‘n’ roll as humanist...
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Music Marathon Day 8.5
Alphabetical listens from yesterday and this morning…
Albums:
Dead Man Winter’s Bright Lights. A first listen, so not much to say here. It’s pretty standard bluegrass-influenced (they share members with bluegrass outfit Trampled by Turtles), alt-country stuff, and I didn’t get much of a feel for the lyrics, but they had me from the fiddle solo on the opener. These guys...
“Copyright infringement is illegal, and like many things that are illegal...”
– Matt Yglesias. (via marathonpacks)
Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica < PopMatters →
First full-length review on PopMatters (on a Oneohtrix Point Never album, of all things)!
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Music Marathon Day 7
Full albums listened to yesterday:
Craig Wedren’s Wand. Hm. Do you suppose he intended it to be written out that way? “Craig Wedren’s Wand came out in 2011!” “Craig Wedren’s Wand is deeply satisfying!” In fact, Craig Wedren’s Wand is slightly, er, overlong and unfocused. I’ve been a Wedren apologist since Shudder to Think’s Pony...
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AARP's 2011 Top Albums for Grown-Ups →
the20000:
This is adorable. New life goal: curate the AARP’s music recommendations, get Bob Pollard to spin around in his grave.
loljk bobby’s never gonna die he’s just gonna get these magazines forever
On Wilco’s The Whole Love: “Truly listenable.”
Best accompanied by a meal that is entirely edible and a beer that is thoroughly potable.
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zincalloy replied to your post: Music Marathon Day 3
Beady Eye: calling them “not good” is understatement. No further explanation needed, Dave.
Ah, but I had my reasons! See #17 on PopMatters 20 Worst Albums of 2011 List. For the record, Beady Eye’s album was a distant third place on my ballot (on which I could only think of three albums I disliked in a way that I could articulate). ...
A MUSIC WEBSITE HAS CHOSEN SOMETHING UNACCEPTABLE...
tomewing:
It’s OK, don’t worry. I know it seems difficult to understand right now, but the first thing you need to realise is that what you’re feeling right now is normal. A lot of people are going through the same process you are. What’s more, a lot of people have gone through it before and come out OK. Music sites have been praising hit songs by women, or albums which didn’t break 75 on...
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Music Marathon Day 6
Mostly individual songs today, so this’ll be a little less detailed:
Forgot to add Blitzen Trapper’s American Goldwing to yesterday’s listening. With the exception of some of the stuff on Furr, these guys tend to sound profoundly uncomfortable with whatever they might sound like naturally. On Wild Mountain Nation, it sounded like they were trying to inject too much quirk into...
The 75 Best Albums of 2011 < PopMatters →
Another week, another ‘best of’ list blurb (that I forgot to link yesterday) …
63 The Joy Formidable The Big Roar
The Joy Formidable’s debut full-length comes as the answer to musicians who use the fuzz and delay of ‘90s shoegaze strictly for camouflaging technical limitations and weak writing. Guitarist and vocalist Ritzy Bryan knows her way around a pedalboard, but the...
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Anonymous asked: I read your post about Next to Normal and you seem to be missing an obvious point made by the music that relates to the mother. You mentioned that the musical style shifts have no purpose: They are reflecting the mother's illness. Since she is bipolar, the music goes from slow to fast and back again to reflect that. Seems like a pretty obvious observation. Give the musical research before you...
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Music Marathon Day 5
Skipped an update due to this (and am only getting around to it now after an eye doctor appointment that has my eyeballs thoroughly dilated, so excuse any typos), but the alphabetical listening continues. Between yesterday and today, I re-listened to:
Beyoncé’s 4. Mainstream pop is out of my wheelhouse to the point that this is the first Beyoncé album I’ve heard in full. It’s...
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'This Thing Won a Pulitzer???' or 'My Afternoon at...
Today, we went to see the Milwaukee Rep production of Next to Normal. I knew next to nothing about Next to Normal beforehand; I knew it was a musical about mental illness and had won some heavy-duty awards. My mom has two season tickets for rep productions, though, and offered to spring for an extra so Raina and I could join her.
Among those heavy-duty awards was apparently the first Pulitzer...
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liquidchroma replied to your video: The Belle Brigade - “Belt of Orion” (The Belle…
Some of us enjoy looking at a good static album cover now and again.
Okay, this one’s for you, then.
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Music Marathon Day 3
There seem to be a few discrepancies between the 2011 playlist on my iPod and iTunes library at home (despite unchecking some entries strategically, as explained below), so there’s some number shifting at play (the 1,282 count I was going with is more like 1,347). Not that anyone cares except me and my long-suffering wife, who gamely endured with me today:
The first disc of The Beach...
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Battles - “Dominican Fade” (Gloss...