Thanks Esquire.
So I was going to write this whole long thing about how hard The Pixies killed me last night at Massey Hall, playing Doolittle cover to cover on the 22nd anniversary of the day it was released and throwing in a bunch of great encore songs to boot (including a UK surf mix of “Wave Of Mutilation” which gave Nellie her favourite song twice) and getting a little emotional during Where Is My Mind? and on and on and etc.
But then I read Kate Carraway’s review and gave up. She says it better than I could. I saw things in there like “growled exaltations” and “exoticizing of the raw and hideous” and “hysterically ragged” and all I could think of was Ben Fong-Torres in Almost Famous saying “‘Voice of God, howling dogs, the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.’ This is good stuff, man!” and now in my head Kate Carraway’s in the movie.
Va. Read it and hurry.
What a goddamn enjoyable day. No one stellar thing to trump all others, just a collection of goodness. Examples:
I don’t know who pointed me to Said the Gramophone‘s top 100 songs of 2010 mix, but…thanks guy/gal. Among the 70 or so songs that I didn’t already know and/or like, I fell for the following:
I think I’ve fallen hardest for the Khaira Arby song. The first time I listened to it I hit ‘repeat’ about four times. But the Iron & Wine, Maison Neuve and Basia Bulat songs are catching up fast.
A few weeks ago my wife was watching an episode of Community and one of the characters said something that kind of made me feel old, but mostly made me realize that technology has created a gap in my vocabulary. Here’s the line:
Jeff: How old is he again?
Annie: 30-something I guess. He has a land-line and uses the word album.
So, in addition to the fact that we still have a land line — though we probably wouldn’t if our building’s intercom didn’t require one — I noticed they categorized the use of the word ‘album’ as something 30-somethings say because they haven’t adapted to the iPod generation yet and still think of music as LPs. Which I found odd. Maybe some people do that, but that’s not why I say it.
Yes, I say album.
Assuming that the writers assumed It’s not that I grew up using records. My dad did, and my brother had a few, but I started with tapes, then went to CDs, then ditched CDs for MP3s. Probably earlier than most people, actually. But I did always refer to collections of music by the media in which they were distributed…a new Van Halen tape or a new Soundgarden CD.
Yes, I listened to Van Halen.
Anyway, I stopped equating collections of music to the distribution medium once I stopped buying CDs six years ago. Without a physical medium to refer to when a band released a new collection of music, I couldn’t think of a better alternative than to call them albums. What else was I supposed to call them?
And it’s not as if the concept of releasing/purchasing music in batches went away…music is still released to physical and online stores in named collections, awards are still given for ‘best album’, and so on.
So, I’ll continue to refer to new musical releases as albums, until the day when record labels (yeah, uh…why do we still call them that?) let bands release songs one at a time as they feel like it, and the whole silly setup starts to make sense, and the anachronism dies. Like photo albums.
And yes, I used to have photo albums.
Alphabetically, natch:
Quite a few repeaters in there, no? The National, Vampire Weekend, The Walkmen and Titus Andronicus, who very nearly scored three.
Honorable mention: Best Coast . “Boyfriend” / Black Francis . “Six Legged Man” / Black Mountain . “The Hair Song” / Black Rebel Motorcycle Club . “Beat The Devil’s Tattoo” / Corin Tucker . “Doubt / Dean & Britta . “Not A Young Man Anymore (My Robot Friend remix)” / Japandroids . “Lucifer’s Symphony” / Junip . “In Every Direction” / No Age . “Glitter” / Titus Andronicus . “Four Score And Seven”.
It’s an annual event that I pick my ten favourite albums of the year and, a few months later, revise the bejeezus out of it because I was late to the party on some brilliant new band or another. So, welcome to another round.
Note that there is a big, big gap between the top three and everything else. In fact, little if anything separates #4 from #10. Basically it broke down like this: a brilliant Titus Andronicus album, excellent albums by The National and Arcade Fire, and then seven more pretty good releases. And then there was the ‘not bad’ pile made up of Crazy For You by Best Coast, Sea Of Cowards by Dead Weather, Sleep Mountain by The Kissaway Trail, Transference by Spoon, Personal Life by The Thermals and Going Places by Yellow Swans.
Crushes by Mates Of State definitely would have made the list, but it’s an entire album of covers so I don’t think it qualifies.
Before we dash off on another weekend excursion (Prince Edward County…yet another wine trip) I thought it prudent / inoffensive / who cares? to do a brain dump of recent consumption:
I didn’t survive this week at work so much as I climbed out of it. Pushing through this cold (again? seriously? dammit!) I suggested a pub near the Ryerson before our second-last TIFF film. Much to my surprise they had several Unibroue bottles behind the bar, including #9 on the Project FiftyBrew list: Don de Dieu! Kickass. It was very nice, by the way…tasted much smoother than a 9% beer should.
We had time to kill and full bellies, so we walked home, dropped our stuff and then walked back to the Ryerson. I was so wiped that I needed coffee; our barista at Starbucks mistook my ‘sticks of shame’ t-shirt for an indication that I actually speak Japanese and tried to converse with me. My blank stare pretty much answered that question for her. We strolled up to the Ryerson and the oh-so-familiar line-up spot: the concrete wall running along church, a tired movie-goer’s best friend. Oddly enough we were shown in to the theatre 35 minutes before the scheduled start time. That never happens.
Speaking of Japanese, many of the people in the audience spoke it. That’s because we were there to see Confessions (tiff | imdb), aka Kokuhaku, Japan’s submission for best foreign film Oscar. I think I like it more now than immediately after I watched it…it felt a little long at the time, but now I appreciate all the story threads it had to pull together. The filtered slo-mo was beautiful for a while, as was the droning soundtrack, but it wore a little thin in the second hour. Still, very good. It deserves a B, says I.
Tonight is all about relaxing. I could only get about 3 hours of coherent work in at the office today, and tonight — while Nellie is off doing girly things with other girlies — I plan to do nothing more strenuous than write this blog post to the following soundtrack:
Those last two were from the closing credits of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, playing in the other room, and about as highbrow as it’s gonna get around here tonight. Peace.
I’d kind of forgotten about all the movies we’ve watched over the past week:
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My headphones were filled all week with the new releases by Best Coast (pretty good…almost like the Raveonettes without the male voice), Japandroids (good, but not as good as their last album, I’m afraid; few things last year were), Sleigh Bells (which I like more than I feel I should), Mates of State (hearing them cover the likes of Tom Waits and The Mars Volta seems sacrilegious at first, then awesome, then just fun) and, naturally, The Arcade Fire. Which is < Funeral but > Black Mirror and therefore one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Speaking of CadeFire — which is what I call them now, due to us being so very tight — Frank Yang (aka Chromewaves) summed up awfully well what’s so captivating about them:
They somehow manage to evoke that singular moment in everyone’s life where youth gives way to adulthood, where one becomes acutely aware of the fact that they are not in fact invincible, that they will someday die, but also the sense of still having their entire lives ahead of them and the sense of opportunity that offers – that mixture of anxiety and optimism, insecurity and confidence. It’s a powerful, primal resonance made even moreso when rendered in broad, bold musical strokes. With Funeral, it was conveyed through the lens of family and neighbourhoods, of being part of a special gang. Neon Bible turned it around to be them against the world with no sense that they’d actually triumph. And The Suburbs realizes that there’s no us and them, there’s just everyone.
I’ll probably keep The Suburbs on perma-rotation until my next big anticipated release: Lisbon by The Walkmen.
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With Treme, The Office, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and Nurse Jackie off the air right now the only things I’m watching are Mad Men (because it’s the best thing on TV right now), True Blood (because it’s the most entertaining thing on TV right now) and Entourage (because, despite its persistent suck whenever Ari’s not on the screen, for the life of me I cannot seem to stop watching it).
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The miniature time slot attributed to reading is reserved for, as ever, Tony Judt‘s Postwar and Kate Carraway’s twitter feed. However, all other reading shall cease on Tuesday and Wednesday as I have only those days to select our TIFF films.
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And, with that, I’m off to work. After all, all play and no work makes Jack really far behind on his to-do list.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 