More from 2008: Santogold and Animal Collective
Our journey through my recent musical discoveries takes us further into 2008's bounty. Granted, I may have been living under a rock for the past year, but I still think this is some good shtuff.
First, we have Santogold; a successful songwriter, producer, and singer who released her first solo album this year. I've had a chance to listen to it, and I'm understanding why it's shown up on so many "best of" lists. It's pop music with a great edge to it. Her most notable track, although not necessarily my favorite, "L.E.S Artistes" is a great example of this. She sounds like a robotic cousin of Karen O as she bemoans the vapid lower east side hanger-ons. The whole album is a collection of solid, approximately 3 and a half minute songs with great pop hooks.
Santogold -- "L.E.S. Artistes"
She's no frilly pop diva. I dig it.
Next up is a band that is nowhere near new, but one that finally produced something that I REALLY like. Animal Collective has been around for years, but I've never heard an example of anything that could be defined as very accessible. I like plenty of "difficult" music, but I just didn't get them. Then, they released the Water Curses EP. The title track is an electronic, underwater, bubbling jaunt. It's the closest thing to a pop song that I've heard from them and it's fantastic.
Animal Collective -- "Water Curses"
I need to dig deeper into their discography now. The song is like a gateway drug, leading to harder stuff. I'm a step closer to becoming a junkie. Good times...
Posted by Mr. Eff on 12/13/2008 || link
More from 2008: Bon Iver and Pale Young Gentlemen
More music from 2008 that recently caught my ear.
The first band, you'll recognize from yesterday's clip with Lykke Li. It's Bon Iver, a band I am just starting to explore, but that I'm already really excited about. This live performance of "Skinny Love" stands out as exceptional. The emotion that pours from Justin Vernon's throat is palpable. It's a simple, powerful song that should be listened to in the dark, with headphones on, and with lots of wine.
The thing that I really love about that video is the looks on people's faces. They look happy. They look like they feel the music in their guts. Maybe it's because of the weed, but I like to think that it's because they got to experience something special that night, in that little room, with those musicians and they knew it.
Now for something a little more upbeat, you should check out this next track by Pale Young Gentlemen, a band hailing from good, old Madison, WI. Their album came out a little late to make it onto anyone's "best of" list, and I'm not sure that the whole album is consistent enough to be on a "best of" list (it's still growing on me), but this track is fun! A friend of mine recently requested "music recommendations that are heavy on the strings yet still have drumming in them."
Well, look no further. This tune rocks and it's the cello that makes it so.
Pale Young Gentlemen -- "Crook of My Good Arm"
Enjoy!
Posted by Mr. Eff on 12/11/2008 || link
It's the time of the season for...
It's winter. I'm hibernating. I'm not outside running around. I'm here, on my couch, with headphones on, searching for new music. Of course, when the winter ends, and I come out of hibernation, I'll stop my hunting/gathering of music until the winter forces me indoors again. Oh sure, I'll listen and I might find something here or there, but I won't be obsessed like I am now. I'll be obsessed with cycling or photography, but not music. Summer is when I recharge for the fall.
Of course, it's easy to discover new music this time of year. Starting in November, every music related web site began posting lists of their favorite songs, or albums, or albums by women over the age of 45, or videos.
I'm trying not to get too pissy about Paste Magazine posting their year end list in November, but, well, I think it's rather sad. That and the fact that they have Okkervil River in the top 10, TV on the Radio at number 50, and Portishead nowhere on the list. Ridiculous.
Actually, I shouldn't get mad. It's not some egregious injustice. You need the Grammys for real egregious injustice.
Despite how misguided some of the rankings are, these lists do allow me to notice bands I missed during the year and reconsider bands I might have consciously ignored. I'll come out with my own list, probably in January, but until then, I'll just post some of the interesting tracks I find.
The first is a low-key collaboration between Lykke Li and Bon Iver in a park in LA, performing Lykke Li's "Dance Dance Dance." I don't know if I'm firmly on the Lykke Li bandwagon yet, but I do love this.
And now, for something completely different, we have The BPA, a project of Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), that produced this extremely catchy tune featuring David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal. The song is good, but the video is brilliant.
I have a lot more to post, but I've rambled enough for tonight. Until next time...
Posted by Mr. Eff on 12/10/2008 || link
Frightened Rabbit
You might have noticed from the current sidebar that I'm quite keen on Frightened Rabbit these days, specifically their album, Midnight Organ Fight, which came out earlier this year. The band is made up of 4 fellas from Scotland, which is one of the first things you'll notice when their vocals come through the speakers. The next thing you'll hear is some of the most emotionally honest indie rock that I've heard in quite some time.
It's sad bastard music, but tremendously upbeat for sad bastard music. There really isn't a dud on the album, but the immediately outstanding tracks are "The Modern Leper," "Keep Yourself Warm," (which was heard on a recent episode of Chuck) and most especially "Good Arms vs Bad Arms;" a song about the jealousy felt when your ex starts dating someone. It's been a long time since I felt that sort of jealousy, but it's a feeling you never quite forget, and a feeling that they nail.
I'm terrible at really describing what I love about the music I find. What I really want to do is put some headphones on you and make you listen to these songs. Although, what I really wish is that I could make you feel what I feel. Even though in the grand scheme of things this music isn't as important as other things going on in the world, it feels important because it's so beautiful in a world that seems so ugly.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 11/30/2008 || link
Amanda Effin Palmer
Monday night, I had the pleasure of seeing Amanda Palmer, well known lead singer of the Dresden Dolls, perform a solo show at the Paradise in Boston. To sum my review up quickly, I'd say the show was fun. I had fun. Amanda seemed to genuinely have fun. Everyone in the crowd looked to be having fun. And the fun lasted from the opening acts through the final confetti fluttering notes of "Leeds United."
Part of that was just due to the enthusiasm Amanda had to be back in Boston. She and the other performers played a longer set, including a lot of different songs than what she had played during the rest of the tour, which everyone seemed to eat it up. I didn't hear the buzz of conversation during a song like "Ampersand," which is rare at any show at a small club. And everyone was bowled over by the energy she poured out in "Runs in the Family" and "Bad Habit" (still my all time favorite Dolls song).
It was all pretty over the top and theatrical, which people might have lost patience with in other towns. But the whole atmosphere felt like a big gathering of all the kids from the high school drama clubs of the last 20 years, and in that sort of environment, all the theatrics felt completely appropriate. The Danger Ensemble and the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer?" theme created pure theater. The Boston Globe thought, simply, that it was all a bit much. Everyone can have their own opinion, even if not many people at the Paradise would have shared it.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 11/26/2008 || link
Choose Life
Have you people seen the new Life photo archive over at Google? It, along with Shorpy, are two of the best archives of classic photography I've seen online, and a lot of it is really amazing. The scans are high quality and they span 150 years of events ranging from the historic to the mundane.
Some are realy strange. I mean, really.
Ozzy...way back when we just thought he was crazy.
Candid Stanley Kubrick. Classic.
It's all good stuff. Check it out!
Posted by Mr. Eff on 11/22/2008 || link
The Election
This sums up the election quite nicely.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 11/03/2008 || link
I like these guys
A couple of guys, one from MIT and the other from Harvard, are preparing to race in a mountain bike stage race next year. They don't yet know which crazy race they are going to enter, but they started a blog to chart their preparations. They are just getting started, but they wrote one thing so far that really stuck with me:
"Bike racing isn't about having a deathwish, or an ego, or needing an excuse to spend $5-10k on something shiny to impress your friends, it's about feeling alive--alive with real pain, real fear, the ecstatic joy of success and the devastation of defeat. It's about learning to appreciate the coffee shop and the hot cider because they're the polar opposite of everything you experience in racing. It's about having your life be more than a flatline of comfortable homogeneity that you trace from office to couch to restaurant until you get married, you have kids, you get old and you die. We race because we love life, and life is best experienced at its limits."
Well said.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 11/03/2008 || link
Mtv did something right
It's been a long time since Mtv was good for anything. They started well. They even made it into the early 90's on solid footing. But then they stopped playing music videos...and that was a big mistake.
But they've taken a lot of the music videos they showed, and some that I'm pretty sure they never showed, and have put them online. The video quality is pretty good, too. There's plenty that I remember (sometimes that's not a good thing). And there is some stuff that I wish I appreciated back then.
There are some omissions; most notably they only include the short version of Metallica's video for "One." That short version should never have existed in the first place. Regardless of their latter day sins, that was a great song and video.
Go in! Explore! Remember why you loved music as a kid, and if you've lost that joy, keep exploring until you find it again.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 10/28/2008 || link
Hangover
I'm still listening to The National. Yeah, my mood hasn't changed much.
I wrote this to a friend and I think it captures what being a Red Sox fan is like these days:
"On one level, I understand that I have no reason to gripe. The Red Sox have won two World Series this decade. They've made the playoffs consistently this decade. They made an improbable comeback even to make it past game 5. Losing that game 7 wasn't like the game 7 in 2003. That was a much different level of hurt.
"I think mostly I'm just feeling the aftereffects of all that adrenaline. Last night, my heart was pounding from the 6th inning on. I guess it just stinks that the party had to end. I'm just left with the hangover this morning."
There's no hair of the dog for this hangover.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 10/20/2008 || link
Changing of the Seasons
Well, another Autumn has arrived. A thrilling Red Sox playoff run has just ended, and I'm listening to The National (yeah, I'm in that kind of mood).
Despite the heartbreak of the Red Sox not winning another World Series (that's such a strange thing to say..."another" World Series), Fall is a really wonderful time to be in New England. Humidity, mosquitoes, and green leaves go by the wayside. Instead, the whole region explodes with brilliant color before November and December bring in the grey and the cold and inevitably, the snow.
What kind of world do we live in now, where scarecrows are cute and clowns are scary?
Posted by Mr. Eff on 10/20/2008 || link
Lucerne's Lion Monument
In continuing with my photo theme, here's a shot of the Lion Monument in Lucerne, Switzerland that I particularly like. The area around the monument is very tranquil and shaded. On the hot day I took this shot, the shade was a welcome thing and also helped provide nice light for the monument. Click the picture for a larger version.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 10/01/2008 || link
Random Photo: Tiger!
Last winter, my girlfriend and I took a much needed trip to Phoenix, to spend some time at a wonderful resort & spa. On New Years day, we made a visit to the rather pleasant Phoenix Zoo, where I captured this fun shot of the local Sumatran Tiger:
Posted by Mr. Eff on 09/15/2008 || link
The Membrane
Bike Snob NYC wrote one of his best posts yesterday about the fine line cyclists ride between safety and death. No matter whether you ride like an idiot or by taking every safety precaution you can, the fact is that some random events can still lead quickly to your demise.
Last weekend, I was mountain biking and a blunder on my part led to me flying over my handlebars and coming to a stop on my face. I cracked my helmet in multiple places and found myself quite bloody. I got off pretty easily. My girlfriend, who watched the crash, was horrified by what she saw. For some reason, I was more upset about the mistake I made.
Today, I was riding home from work, in the rain, down Mass Ave. After going through the green light at Porter Square, I made my way along the bike lane, towards the next intersection. The cars were stopped in a long line, waiting to move through the next light, when I came up beside a big black pickup truck. I didn't see that the truck had left a gap for a car to turn left into a side street, until I was almost in the path of the turning car. I slammed on my brakes, the woman in the car slammed on her's, and when we came to a stop, we both looked at each other and shared a relieved sigh.
Guess which one was scarier? The crash or the near crash? I wasn't doing anything wrong today. She wasn't really doing anything wrong either. But I almost ended up mangled.
And yet, I see people riding fixies with no helmet, speeding through red lights into busy intersections and expecting cars to stop for them on a regular basis. So, I can understand why drivers hate cyclists.
Be safe folks. Watch for cyclists; even the dumb ones. And for the cyclists, keep the rubber side down.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 09/12/2008 || link
Gorée
Back in 2004, you may remember that I took a trip to Senegal. During my trip, I made a visit to Gorée, which is an island off the coast of Dakar. It is most noted to be an old port for the Atlantic slave trade. Historians have showed that it was actually the scene of very little of the slave trade, but it still remains an interesting and somewhat beautiful museum to that awful bit of history.
I did catch this snapshot, which at least one person in my family really loved. So, I thought I'd share it with all of you.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 09/03/2008 || link
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