New Vinyl

So much of it! I've only listened to 6 Songs by The Stranglers so far (Hannah gave it to me!), but it was great. We had only heard "Golden Brown" off of the Snatch soundtrack before; it's a great song, but we didn't know what the rest of the music would be like.


It was great. Only six songs (yeah, the title gives that part away) but all of them good.


More posts when I listen to more music!

Why Project Playlist is neat:

Because I can do this:

What's playing

Little Hoodrat Friend - The Hold Steady
Chips Ahoy! - The Hold Steady
Infinity Guitars - Sleigh Bells
Paul Valery - Blue Scholars
Good Morning (Haters) - Chamillionaire
Fuck You - Cee-lo Green

Criminal - The Pass

The entire Best of Bootie 2009 mix.

Playlist.com

For a while I tried to get into Last.FM, but I never really stuck with it. I use Hype Machine for some songs, but the main way I stream music that I don't own is off of Playlist.com. The site might be covered in ads, but it works really well and the playlist creation and management tools are pretty good. Hype Machine has the better interface, but it's better used for finding new music or listening to a single artist's new stuff.

I've used Playlist.com for a couple years now, off and on, and I just started putting together playlists again. You can find my profile here, and listen to a few of them. The "New Wave" and "Party Time" lists are my favorites - also the newest, so that makes sense.

The Three Songs I Just Bought...

...are all pretty awesome, but I'm not exactly the first one to say it. Still, it was a good use of the four dollars of credit I didn't know I had on iTunes.

Rill Rill - Sleighbells
We Own the Sky - M83
Statue of Liberty - XTC

The first two are electronic-ish, the first being upbeat and the second a lot slower, and the third is good old-fashioned indie rock.

Since I haven't gotten any other new music lately, so this is all I've got. More whenever I can!

New (and old) Blitzen Trapper

"The Man Who Would Speak True" and "Black River Killer" are the same story, told from different perspectives. At least, that's what I'm going to try and prove by writing them into a single song. Either way, you should listen to them both, because they are awesome.

That is all.

United State of Electronica

U.S.E. has been around for quite a while, and I've seen them in concert a few times - mostly by accident - but I'm still on a plodding path when it comes to actually getting their music. It's not that I don't like them or that it takes a while to get into them, because neither of those things are true. They're really upbeat, all of their songs and remixes that I've heard are great, and I would love to grab an album or two. However, I can say that about so many bands right now that it loses its meaning, so all I can do is add them to some playlists on Hype Machine and Playlist.com, and write about them here. Emerald City and It's On are the best songs I've heard from them, but that's no indication, so go listen to them yourself!

Best song around right now (part 2)

King of Spain! I've written about this song a little bit before, or at least mentioned it as a good summer song, but right now it really is my favorite. It isn't on my iPod (there's a long post that could be spend describing my incredibly janky iPod, but since it isn't something I actually like, it isn't terribly suited for this blog), so I can't listen to it as much as Come on Mona. All the same, I just picked up the new Tallest Man on Earth album that has this on it, and it's fantastic.

King of Spain, like most of the songs I love, tells a story. It talks about how the singer dreams about being the titular King, and asks the lady who he is singing to - since she can "redefine him" as her lover - to make him as such. He both describes his hypothetically ideal life as the monarch in question and questions her relationship with him.

The song is centered around the singer and his guitar, and the two blend seamlessly. It's really fantastic, a fast and upbeat song that lends itself to a range of interpretations. Go listen to it.

The Mixtape

The Mixtape is a podcast on MyNorthwest.com, hosted by one Sean DeTore of TBTL infamy. I'm going into the KIRO Seattle studios tomorrow with a friend of mine to record an episode, and we're each bringing in some music songs in the theme of "Roadtrip". Now, I'm not usually one for themed music, but I figure I did pretty well. I'll post the playlists later (from both of us), but I just wanted to put the word out.

Why do I think "The Way" is the best song ever?

It is a good question. Completely without reservation or regret, I have stuck by this opinion for the last few years, since I pulled the song off on "Now: That's What I Call Music Volume 1". Before that I hadn't heard it since sometime in the late nineties.

My best guess is that it more or less have everything I want in a song:

• The lyrics are catchy
• The lyrics tell a story
• It has a piano (with a very similar riff to "Come on Mona"! Actually, almost exactly the same... Hm.)
• It's got one of the best intros I've heard (a radio switching around)
• No one under 25 has heard of it
• Pretty much everyone has heard it
• It's from a one-hit wonder, so no one will cite a better song
  

Not terribly exhaustive, but that's okay. It's the best song ever.

Summer Songs

I am not good at picking specific music for seasons or weather or whatever. All the same, it's Too Hot here and these are some new-ish songs that don't make me think of how much better life was in the winter:

• King of Spain - Tallest Man on Earth
• Home - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
• Thinkin' Bout Something - Hanson (yes. Hanson. Shutupshutupshutup.)
• Turn Off the Song and Go Outside - The Lonely Forest
• My Life With the Living Dead - The Secret History
• Romance is Boring - Los Campesinos!
• Come on Mona - Mona Reels
• All Y'all - Carcrashlander
• Little King - Casper & the Cookies

Yeah, I've talked about half of these before, but I don't really have any way to get new music.

Besides those, these older songs immediately pop into my head too:

• Float On - Modest Mouse
• Psychic City (Voodoo City) - YACHT
• The Ave - Blue Scholars (full disclosure, I am on or near the Ave 80% of the time that I'm listening to music)
• Nothing to Worry About - Peter, Bjorn & John
• Faster - Dept. of Energy
• This Year - The Mountain Goats

That's all that comes to mind right away. Go outside.

My Favorite Vinyl LPs

It turns out that maintaining the kind of supply of new music necessary to write anything close to a relevant stream of reviews is pretty difficult, and thinking back that’s not really what this site was about anyways. It’s not about new stuff, it’s about good stuff. Sometimes those things interact, sometimes they don’t, and hence this article is a lot more focused on old stuff. I figured I should put this out there to free up some leeway for more content.

Both of us, off and on when we have the money, collect vinyl. I’m going to ask Hannah to write her perspective on this too, but these are some of my favorite LPs – for a variety of reasons. Maybe we’ll do 45s later, but really that would just be a list of all my 45s.

Little by Little – Harvey Danger

I picked up this album at the band’s last all-ages show ever, right before they broke up. I believe I got it signed by all the members, at least most of them. They originally released a free digital copy of the album when it first came out, which I downloaded. Buying it on vinyl directly from them made me feel better about not paying for it earlier, and I felt like it kind of made up for illegally downloading their out-of-print, impossible-to-find second album as well.

The music itself is great. It’s not their strongest album overall, but musically it’s definitely their most advanced. By this time they had fully moved out of the post-grunge scene where they started into the new indie sound: melodic, but with all the same vitriol of their earlier songs. As far as I can tell, “Happiness Writes White” is the only happy song that Harvey Danger ever put out, and “Wine, Women & Song” remains one of the best ballads of abject mediocrity I’ve yet to hear. “Diminishing Returns” and to a less extent “War Buddies” both echo the soft tones of their earlier “Problems and Bigger Ones” from their first album – a song which has the distinction of containing the saddest single line in the history of rock music, in my book: “There used to be a baby, but the baby went away”.

Altogether, this album comes in and leaves strong with all the same variety found on their other records, and the memories associated with it don’t hurt much either. Sean Nelson, the lead singer, is kind of a jerk in person though.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie

I bought this album for 99 cents to use the sleeve as a decoration for my cubicle, before I even had a turntable. It’s warped – probably why it was in the 99 cent bin, but I’ve figured out a way around that and now it’s easily my most listened-to album. I really don’t need to elaborate on the musical content of this one, but suffice to say that my favorite songs are “Five Years” and “Starman”, in that order, and that my choices are entirely based on their lyrical content. On the whole, fantastic.

Hold on Now, Youngster – Los Campesinos!

I’ve raved about Los Campesinos! before, so I won’t take too much time on it here. The important thing is that this album came with a poster and a second platter, which had a 45 rpm single track on one side and an engrave picture on the other. Very neat.

The Greatest Hits of ABBA, Volume 2 – ABBA

“Dancing Queen” is the first track, the only problem is that I don’t have Volume 1 and Volume 2 doesn’t have “Waterloo”. That is all.

In the Reins – Iron & Wine

Two things: “History of Lovers” is disturbing in the best kinds of ways, and this technically isn’t an LP. It’s an EP, but since it’s 12” and plays at 33 rpm, I’m going to count it. I realize now that I haven’t listened to it in a while, which I’ll probably remedy later this evening, but I do remember the intensity of my two favorite songs off of this album. Like I said before, History of Lovers is particularly disturbing, because it takes a very nonchalant approach to the idea of loving someone so much that you move past the point of wanting them to be happy with someone they love more, on to the point of killing that competitor. Granted, it’s implied that the murder could have been self-defense, but it’s also stated that the deceased is “one she found better than me”. In a similar genre, “Prison on Route 41” describes the extent to which the subject’s entire extended family has all ended up in the same prison for unstated reasons, and the affection for his lover and savior – “not Christ the Lord” – which has so far allowed him to stay his criminal urges.

Tallahassee – The Mountain Goats

This album is the story of a couple who, though they start out loving each other, eventually grow to the point where they are only staying together in order to watch the other drink themselves to death. This is a running storyline throughout the Mountain Goats’ music, with these two named the “Alpha couple”, as many of the songs about them prior to this album contained the word Alpha in their titles (on this album the only one is “Alpha Rats Nest”, which happens to be one of my favorites).

As one might be able to tell from what I wrote before about In the Reins, I am a huge fan of this whole album. In terms of intense storytelling through lyrics, any given Mountain Goats song – and especially those off of this album – would top History of Lovers any day. In particular, “No Children” repeats the refrain “I hope you die, I hope we both die”, one of the milder parts of its lyrics. All of this is performed with just a few instruments bordering on the lo-fi, based around John Darnielle’s guitar and vocals.

Making Movies – The Dire Straits

The first few months I spent collecting vinyl – and note that this includes the time before I had a record player – were spent looking for this record. It was only because I couldn’t find it that I ended up going to so many places and getting so many other things. The reason behind it is kind of complicated, and gives a pretty good picture of how my mind operates. In the book So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, by Douglas Adams, two characters listen to an unnamed Dire Straits record, which is described as having a particularly impressive track. Based on when the book was published, I went through their discography and determined that this was the album in question, and then downloaded it. After listening to it, I figured that the track in question was “Tunnel of Love”, and started searching for the LP. I later confirmed that my guesses (both the album and the track) were correct from an interview that Adams gave before his death.

This record is fairly short, but just about every song is great. While I’m not as much of a fan of “Les Boys”, it’s more than made up for by “Romeo and Juliet” or “Skateaway”. Any album which has a song about how if Romeo and Juliet had lived they would have just broken up anyways is a winner in my book. Also, a song about roller skating through traffic doesn’t hurt either.

Hello! And some Furr.

So I’m Hannah, the other blogger that’s supposed to make the “we” in “We Like It.” Up until now, I’ve just been crashing on Daniel’s couch, periodically promising to post something, but now, hopefully I’m here to stick around for a while.

I’m not sure where my love for Blitzen Trapper falls in the “Best of” lists, but it certainly deserves a place in this blog—more specifically, their fourth full-length album, Furr. The first song I heard from this album was “Black River Killer,” a gothic ballad about the ebb and flow between a murderer and a sheriff. Many describe vocalist Eric Earley’s voice as Dylan-esque. Personally, I love Dylan’s music, but his voice grates on my nerves, so in my book, Earley has set himself apart from our American hero. His voice has the same earnest feeling behind it that made Dylan so lovable, but his deep, folk-y tone is full and sensual. So when I first listened to “Black River Killer,” I hardly noticed the dark lyrics in the ballad; instead, I was captured by his simple melody and emotive voice.

Since listening to that first song, this album has stayed close to my heart. Unlike many full-length albums, Blitzen Trapper wasted no space on filler. This album is impeccably produced, and represents each band member’s individual passion and skill – the sextet uses keyboards, banjos, harmonicas, washboards and a spattering of unconventional instruments to fill-out their melodies.

Their previous album, Wild Mountain Nation, was filled schizophrenic collections of synth- and country-based tracks that could never settle on a genre or sometimes even melody (Don’t worry, I’m not knocking it. “Wild Mountain Nation” and “Sci-Fi Kid” are still some of my favorite Blitzen Trapper tracks, but damn was that album hard to follow.) In Furr, Blitzen Trapper found a home somewhere between Folk-Country, Americana, and the Portland-Indie Rock scene where the band found its legs. “Gold for Bread” and “Saturday Nite” will both make you want to pull on some skinny jeans and some Ray-Bans along side some cowboy boots and an American flag t-shirt.

But underneath all of this, the album has stayed with me because it never fails to make you feel it. Earley’s vocals get under your skin, and his lyrics invite you on an adventure. You’re never quite certain where the adventure will take you, but by the end of the album, you figure it must have been worth it, ‘cause you feel so damn good.

P.S. Blitzen Trapper just released a new album, Destroyer of the Void, (Yay!) but I don't know it well enough to post about it yet. More to come!

Best band (electronica)

My love of Passion Pit began with their first EP and has lasted ever since. Their fantastic debut was dampened slightly but what I regard as a less-impressive LP release (still great! I just liked Chunk of Change a whole lot more!). Surprisingly enough, this post is not about Passion Pit. They are the runners-up.

The glory (small as it is) here has to go to Los Campesinos!, whom I have been enamored with for a little longer. They've also been around longer, though I got only that train a little late (early enough to catch their debut full-length, though). I also haven't yet picked up their newest LP (Romance Is Boring) because I can't really afford it, but based on the tracks I've heard I'm willing to give this category to them anyways. The title track alone is good enough to warrant a purchase. A friend of mine (my erstwhile partner in this whole blogging business) showed me one of their videos, and I grabbed Hold On Now, Youngster on vinyl (it comes with some great pack-ins: a poster and a second platter with an extra song on one side and some art engraved on the other).

To summarize what Los Campesinos do with music, I'm going to go with saying that they manage to tell a coherent idea through nearly incoherent lyrics. Every line, on its own, would seem to be part of a nonsense song. It's not entirely unfair to say that some of their numbers are nonsense songs. But then you get one like You! Me! Dancing! or International Tweexcore Underground, that tells an involved narrative about the music scene and its effects on people, and you're forced to realize that you're listening to incredibly poppy electronica with a finely-honed edge, and that it actually has something to tell you.

Since I've apparently gotten myself into a cycle of including lyrics in my posts, one of the best ones off the top of my head is: "We have to take the car, 'cause the bike's on fire/We cannot trust your friends, 'cause they were born liars" from "This is How You Spell 'Hahaha We Destroyed the Hopes and the Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics'". Yes, Los Campesinos write more eloquent song titles than most bands write song lyrics.

Best band (indie rock)

Before we begin this particular love-fest, let me lay out what I mean by indie rock. I mean the kind of band that is mostly based around the guitar-bass-drums archetype, a "traditional" rock band. Basically, it's totally subjective.

So, after all that, I'm talking here about the Lonely Forest. So far the most popular group I've written about - not saying much, but they are the only one with a Wikipedia page - I first heard of them through total coincidence. While standing outside an underwhelming show at the Vera Project in Seattle, getting ready to ditch out on the show with a few friends, a very excited guy came out of the door and introduced himself as John Van Deusen, and urged us to stay until the last band, because it was his. He then left to get cookies. The show started with a room full of bored, stock still hipsters but ended with nearly everyone on the floor dancing. I went out and bought their concept album Nuclear Winter the next day.

Recently, the Lonely Forest released We Sing the Body Electric, their newest LP. Based on a couple concerts and a lot of listening on podcasts and the internet, it is a pretty fantastic follow-up. Whereas Nuclear Winter chronicled a single story of a family escaping a world war, WSBE is a more traditional album with a few stand-outs: the title track and Turn Off The Song And Go Outside among them.

I love this band not because of their musical style, but because of the sincerity of Van Deusen's vocals. The music is great, don't get me wrong, but the melodic, minimalist refrain of Two Pink Pills ("I hear a voice, so faint and weak, two pink pills to fall asleep") - so unlike the rest of their catalog - and the heavy lyrics of Turn Off The Song ("I've seen the tweakers struggle, syringes line the floor") tell the story of the songwriter's struggle with and overcome addiction in between albums.

http://www.myspace.com/thelonelyforest

Best band around right now

I first heard Hey Marseilles on the late Seattle radio show Too Beautiful to Live (now relegated to the realm of podcasting, or "imaginary radio"), and was immediately drawn in by the fact that they could not fit most of their band into the studio. After grabbing the track Rio off the KEXP Song of the Day Podcast and seeing a couple of their live shows, I picked up their debut CD To Travels & Trunks. It is fantastic - every song is a wonderful mix of the nine members (or so - there are quite a lot) and their various instruments playing both instrumental and lyrically incredible music.

They just released their album as an LP. I think I might buy it again. This is coming from a person who is actively concerned about whether he will have enough money at the end of the year to pay his taxes. Hey Marseilles are very good.

http://www.heymarseilles.com/

Best song around right now

Off the People In A Position To Know sampler CD (the origins of which I'm going to need to go into in another post) comes a fantastic track from a band I've never heard of. "Come On Mona" by Mona Reels is a bright, almost twee track with a solid piano back. In fact, listening to the song I'm unable to hear any guitar, just the piano and drums, with a few bits of harmony thrown in among the singing. Speaking of the singing, the lyrics are fantastic: "I found her very smart, she said 'you're just too dumb, and that's going to be the only time I tell someone'" is just one of the better bits. Despite a line like that, it's still an incredibly upbeat number. Check it out.

http://www.myspace.com/themonareels