In an act of consolidation that has been many years overdue, I'll now be doing all of my primary blogging through my tumblr account, which as of now has just been renamed Pretty Goes with Pretty —so bookmark the new url and/or update your RSS feeds if you still read blogs that way. I've had an affinity for this site for a long time, always aspiring to be more prolific here, less prolific elsewhere, etc. But the truth is that it's quite difficult to stay prolific on one site and be on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook—all of [...]
Iron & Wine: The Creek Drank the Cradle , Kiss Each Other Clean , and Our Endless Numbered Days Heartless Bastards: Arrow Belle and Sebastian: The Boy with the Arab Strap Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (2) Hospitality: s/t Zomes: Improvisations Cate le Bon: Cyrk First Aid Kit: The Lion's Roar Beach House: Devotion Simon & Garfunkel: Sounds of Silence Feist: Metals [...]
...something new...went to NPR to listen to the new Sharon Van Etten but it did not feel like the right record for me at that moment, so I clicked off after a few songs...switched to Heartless Bastards' Arrow , since it was there on the NPR page—a band I've never heard before but this was nice enough, though a day later I don't really remember it other than the singer had a compelling and strong voice...was reminded that I wanted to hear First Aid Kit's new album —a band I've never heard of until hearing "Emmylou" [...]
I didn't hear a lot of new albums this month, but I did keep up pretty well with hearing new tracks via PR and my favorite blogs. Here's a mix of favorite finds, old and new, that I haven't already written about this month. Special shoutout to the blogs who hepped me to some of these tracks— Aquarium Drunkard (Reparata & the Delrons), For the Sake of the Song (White Fence, Etta James, and Woodpigeon), and the Rising Storm (Dave Davies). (I came across the rest via Pitchfork and innumerable other blogs [...]
# of unique albums played from beginning to end: 33 Albums broken down by decade/year: 2012: 0 2011: 7 2010: 3 00s: 14 90s: 1 80s: 1 (Chopin recording) 70s: 3 60s: 2 50s: 2 Albums broken down by genre: Indie: 21 60s rock: 2 70s rock: 2 Ambient: 2 Children's: 1 [...]
Here's the big "duh" comment of the month: I purchased almost no new-to-me albums this month, but for the two that I did, I feel much more connected to them than a lot of other recent acquisitions—as evidenced by the handful of blog posts I did around each. Even when I got hungry for something new, I just wound up going back to one of these or even older albums. (I like both of these records, though I feel like I'll be returning to Slave Ambient a lot more in the future.) The War on Drugs: [...]
The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient (2) Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Nicolas Jaar: Space is Only Noise Jason Urick: Husbands Unknown Mortal Orchestra: s/t The New Pornographers: Electric Version It feels strange whenever I listen to one of the New Pornographers' first three albums from beginning to end. I bought all three albums more or less at the same time a few years back, and I've played them on shuffle ever since. Listening to Electric Version sometimes feels weirdly exhausting, [...]
Jens Lekman: Night Falls Over Kortedala Les Paul and Mary Ford: Best of the Capitol Masters Miles Davis: Kind of Blue The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo (2) Sharon Van Etten: Epic V/A: Play Music (Orange Sessions 2) Feist: Let It Die , Metals , and The Reminder Junip: Fields The Radio Dept.: Clinging to a Scheme (2) [...]
I've been listening to so many sandy voiced songwriters doused in a morass of atmosphere that when the Pernice Brothers' "Wait to Stop" came up on shuffle the other day, the clarity of Pernice's creamy voice, perfect melody, and lush strings knocked me over as if I were hearing it for the first time. Of course it wasn't my first time. The album from which it came, 1998's Overcome By Happiness , is among my all-time favorites. Though I don't listen to it with as much frequency these days, [...]
A couple of vintage Eddy Arnold tracks appear on the playlist my wife and I have devised for Cooper (i.e. mostly oldies that may as well be made for kids). He hadn't really acknowledged them before, until last week when I discerned that his request for "monkey song" was actually Arnold's "The Cattle Call." Eddy Arnold: The Cattle Call Here's a clip of Arnold performing the song for a television show back in 1956, followed by a few bonus clips just for the hell of [...]
Prior to hearing Smoke Ring for My Halo in full, the two Kurt Vile songs I came across via numerous blogs were "In My Time" and "Jesus Freaks." Perhaps not coincidentally, these are the two most upbeat tracks on the album, and the two most focused. The majority of the rest of Smoke Ring depicts Vile as a smart but apathetic songwriter. Writing for Coke Machine Glow , Christopher Alexander said "Kurt Vile's music sounds like it was made entirely from bed on Sunday mornings," which I think is a pretty vivid portrayal of the [...]
There are a lot of reasons to like the Dirty Three—the evocative mood their songs call up, the grandeur of their crescendos, Warren Ellis's rustic and beautiful violin. I like them for all those reasons too; those are the things I enjoy about the trio when I'm not thinking too hard on it, just letting their songs fill the air around me. I like them for a different reason when I take the time to concentrate on their music. And that reason is Mick Turner. Turner is an unassuming player and most definitely not the member of the [...]
Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit The Radio Dept.: Clinging to a Scheme (2) and Lesser Matters Brian Eno: Here Come the Warm Jets V/A: Play Music (Orange Session 2) Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for my Halo (5) Julia Holter: Tragedy Vampire Weekend: Contra The Shins: Wincing the Night Away and Oh, Inverted World The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient V/A: Rushmore OST Nick Drake: Pink [...]
Isn't it nice to have a new Shins song in the world? They've been gone so long I think they may have even lost the sting of being an indie rock punchline (they never deserved it). That is, he , not they. James Mercer is the only original member left. If there was any question as to how the drastic lineup change would affect the group's sound, "Simple Song" answers with a resounding "not really." The only real difference I can discern is in the drumming—Janet Weiss, who sits in for this track, is a more forceful player than Jesse [...]
"Marienbad," from Julia Holter's upcoming album Ekstasis , picks up where "Goddess Eyes," from 2011's Tragedy , left off. On Tragedy , "Goddess Eyes" is an accessible oasis on an otherwise pretty abstract record. "Marienbad" employs a similar accessibility—Holter's voice is the anchor to the track, overlaid on itself innumerable times. Of course "accessible" should be taken with a grain of salt. The song evolves as it goes, adding counter-melodies, percussion, and more as it travels over its 5:40 running time. For all its added density it never scales to epic heights; it's more amorphous than that. The [...]
It's easy to hear some immediate surface similarties between War on Drugs singer Adam Granduciel's voice and that of Tom Petty or Bob Dylan, but for me that resonance has since evolved into a weird personal nostalgia for Dire Straits. My dad loved Dire Straits, and especially Brothers in Arms , so this is a welcome reference point for me (as opposed to, say, all the Steely Danisms happening elsewhere in the indie scene). Anyway, it's not just a personal thing. I mean, really, they're not that far away from the next "Walk of Life," are they? [...]
Every instrument in the War on Drugs' music has its assignment, no matter the song. (Though, interestingly, no member of the band is resigned to a specific instrument.) The drums are metronomic—no frills, no fills. The keyboards drone. The "No Rain"-inspired lead guitar solos and solos and solos. Despite (or because of) their rigidly defined roles, none of these elements are at the forefront of Slave Ambient . Rather, it's the rootsy presence of leader Adam Granduciel, whose Americana attitude meshes with the lite psyche of the rest of the band way more seamlessly than it has any right [...]
The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle Vampire Weekend: s/t Elvis Costello: This Year's Model Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocrypha The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient (2) Chopin: The Piano Works (performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy) Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo A slight visual tweak to my weekly soundtrack posts—a little repetition of imagery, to illustrate when/how certain albums take over any given week. Of course, this week isn't a great example of that outside of two spins of Slave Ambient (more on that record [...]
The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle Vampire Weekend: s/t Elvis Costello: This Year's Model Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocrypha The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient (2) Chopin: The Piano Works (performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy) Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo A slight visual tweak to my weekly soundtrack posts—a little repetition of imagery, to illustrate when/how certain albums take over any given week. Of course, this week isn't a great example of that outside of two spins of Slave Ambient (more on that record [...]
By now you've made your way through all the end-of-year lists you can stomach, I'm sure. But wait! There's more: my favorite songs of 2011. I've made a mix of my 24 favorite tracks, excluding anything from my favorite albums of the year because it's a given that those albums each contain multiple favorites. The tracks below are not ranked, but are ordered for an ideal two-hour mix. (And for what it's worth, I don't think a lot of these tracks showed up on others' lists, so hopefully a lot of this will be new to you.) Click [...]
Pretty Goes with Pretty
Watch: Trailer for Dave Grohl’s documentary, Sound City
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
First Aid Kit – Emmylou
Hardwell Bootleg Pack 2012
James Blake – Live Album
