What I'm listening to

So people, here are the new (at least to me) bands that are floating my boat this spring


1. Pinegrove. I swear I've listened to "Old Friends" like 50 times and still get goose bumps when I hear it. Amazing.




2. Diet Cig. LOL for the name, OMG for the toonz.





3. Chastity Belt. These guys have been around a while but are new to me. Love it!





4. Whitney. Great pedigree on this band (Smith Westerns, UMO). Different from them though and it surprises me how much I like it!

My favorite disco song ever:

RIP Arthur. You were one of the greats. I listen to your music at least once a week.

Angus' belated 2015 music review

People I almost didn't do this at all. Work my butt off and get no page views. But then I read Pitchfork's top 50 and knew I couldn't remain silent. What a sack of crap that was.


Here are my top 10 releases from 2015


The first, by far, is Tom Carter, Long Time Underground. This is the dude from Charalambides come back from the dead with a stunning solo guitar album. This is mesmerizingly great.

My next favorite two are

Peacers self-titled album and Adult Mom's "Momentary Lapse of Happily"

Peacers is what Mike Donovan (Sic Alps) is calling himself nowadays and it's absolutely a slacker/psych/garage/retro monster of an album.

Adult Mom is Steph Knipe and her song "Survival" is my favorite pop song of the year. Little bit of Kimya Dawson, little bit of Liz Phair, and a lot of awesome.


There are actually 2 releases in Pitchfork's top 50 that are really good (type I error I guess)!


Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

This young woman is the real deal. This reminds of the Kinks! Great energy, tunes, just a great feel to this band.

Sufjan Stevens: Carrie and Lowell 

My prayers were finally answered and Suffy dropped the pretense and went back to his roots. The result is stunning. All is forgiven. I'm sorry I doubted you.

My next 3 releases are in no particular order:

Speedy Ortiz, Foil Deer

Reminds me or Deerhoof or Miu Miu, great time changes, love the singer.

Royal Headache, High

They are supposed to be punky, but the singer is so damn soulful!

Car Seat Headrest, Teens of style

Look for more from CRH, but this year they gave me my second favorite pop song "The Drum".


And to round out a top 10 list, If you stuck a gun to my head and made me buy two more off Pitchfork's list I'd buy......

Kurt Vile, B'lieve I'm goin down

Joanna Newsom, Divers

Both of these records are really really good, but both of these artists are just coasting (downhill).

Looking back over this list I notice that (a) 40% of my picks are women or bands fronted by women (I really wanted Waxahatchee in here but their new record is just not so good), and (b) every single one is available as an LP (or double LP).

Album of the summer

For me it's Adult Mom's "momentary lapse of happily" and the corresponding song of the summer is "Survival"





You can listen to the whole album for free here. I bought it on CD and on Vinyl.

Here's another example:





This record more than makes up for the relative let down that Waxahatchee's new record was for me.

I'm not bossy, I'm the boss

KPC 2013 music fave Speedy Ortiz is back with a new album in April. Here's the first song they've released from said album.






Sounds like the lovechild of Liz Phair and Steve Malkmus, no?

This is good stuff people, don't snooze!

Gavan Duffy Plays the "Red House"

My Texas colleague, and now Syracuse prof., Gavan Duffy.

If you knew Gavan, you would know why having him play "The Red House" is pretty funny.  Still, the hot redhead with the red shoes playing harpoon is a nice touch.


Gavan Duffy Plays the Red House from Matt Bonham on Vimeo.

Angus' 2014 Music Picks

I have to kind of / sort of agree with Tyler that 2014 didn't smack me like 2013 did. Getting an incredible record from MBV after all those years and discovering Waxahatchee and Unknown Mortal Orchestra is not the kind of year one can have every year.

But there was a lot of great stuff this year as well.

I have to start with a confession though. I started out high on The War on Drugs' record, but Mark Kozelek made me face facts and realize that, dammit, it really was beer commercial guitar solos! I really have to ding it for that. I almost can't stand to listen to the thing now.

Parquet Courts (or Parkay Quarts) really solidified their claim on "next great American band" for me with two great releases: Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea. Sure they're from New York. Sure they sound a bit like the Velvets, but people, Lou Reed ain't walking' through that door, so jump on this!!

Spoon arose from the somewhat ho-hum nature of Transference to produce a stunningly good album, "They Want My Soul". To me it just keeps getting better and better the more I listen. Me and Mrs. A saw them play up in Tulsa this year and the show was incredible. Mrs. A stayed through two encores and never gave me the "ok it's late so let's get out of here" look.  Kudos to Brit Daniels.

Tijuana Panthers are a new discovery for me this year. Their 2014 release "Wayne Interest" is quite good but I also really like their older album "Semi-Sweet".  By the way, they are not from Tijuana. If you like Harlem or King Tuff or Tav Falco's Pantherburns.....

Another top new discovery and top new band is Happyness. Their debut is called "Weird little birthday" and I really like it. Here's a link to one of the songs. OK, maybe it sounds a little like Sparklehorse, but then again Mark Linkous ain't walking' through the door either so............

Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band. This is not old, this is brand new music from Thailand. Pretty awesome.

White Fence, For the Recently found Innocent. Guided by Voice + Rain Parade + Soft Boys. I am a sucker for exactly this kind of music.

White Fence and Parquet Courts were on my list last year. This year's entries by them are even stronger than 2013's. I'd say they were both still on the rise.  Spoon just stubbornly refuses to start sucking. It's really quite amazing. I am really looking forward to more stuff from the others on my list.

When I look at say, Pitchfork's list, I just can't relate. A Sunny Day in Glasgow was aiight, and they got Spoon and Parquet Courts on there (along with the beer commercial guys), but most of it is weak sauce. Though to be fair, Mrs. A won't let me listen to Run the Jewels enough to come to an informed opinion.

Someone's selling all your heroes, and they seem so tame

I've had a deep emotional connection to Neil Young's music since I was a young 'un. Just a huge huge fan.

But now Neil is turned entrepreneur / evangelist for "high quality music", launching his own PONO music player.

I have to admit, I was expecting something amazing. But it's just a Toblerone bar that plays FLAC files!

Holy spumoli, Neil, what gives? 1997 called and they want their technology back! I guess I had so much respect and appreciation for Neil that I just assumed PONO would actually be an amazing step forward.

But it's not.

First off, you don't need to spend $400 to get a player that will play FLAC files. Your phone will do that, if you just feed it FLAC files.

Second, for most people using earbuds or cheap headphones, the sound differences between MP3 and FLAC will be negligible.

Third, probably the biggest sound quality issue in modern music is that bands are getting their music mixed with very little dynamic range and little concern for traditional audiophile qualities, because most folks download / stream the music into earbuds anyway.

It is true that the company making PONO's DAC (the thing that converts the zeros and ones in the FLAC files to amplifiable sound) is built by AYRE who makes an excellent asynchronous USB dac, but I can't tell much about the quality of PONO's dac from their webpage.

The PONO DAC can also handle Hi-REZ files (CDs are 44Khz, HI-REZ is like 96 or 192 Khz), but that is not very relevant in a portable player when you are wearing Beats by Dre headphones!

With a good asynchronous DAC, quality amplification, and physically separated high quality speakers, HI-REZ audio can sound amazing. You can also clearly hear that CDs ripped into FLAC files sound better than when they are ripped into MP3 files.

But the target audience of PONO is extremely unlikely to be using it that way.

Embarrassing

So, Angus posts his music recommendations, and I post a Billy Joel video.  But that's about right, I guess.  Got to give Mr. Joel a little credit, here.  That was pretty brave, unless it was set up in advance.

Angus' 2013 Music Picks

For me the list is split between great new music from old favorites and fantastic stuff from new (or new to me) bands.

Let's get to it.

My Bloody Valentine: MBV.

I never wanted Kevin Shields (third greatest Kevin after Kevin Durant and yours truly) to make another My Bloody Valentine album. Figured it would suck. Figured it would sour me on their earlier two. I figured wrong. It's a freakin' masterpiece. Clearly the best thing this year.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra: II.

"Swim and Sleep like a Shark" is the best pop song of the year, and there are 4 other songs on this album that are mesmerizing. These guys are still on the way up for what they can do, but this is awfully good.

Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt.

More electric and in your face than "American Weekend". Katie Crutchfield is awesome. You would also be well served by checking out her twin sister's band, Swearin'.

Those are the three records I enjoyed and listened to the most this year. Now here's the next tier of good stuff:

Bill Callahan: Dream River
Kurt Vile: Walking on a Pretty Daze
The National: Trouble will find me

These three acts can seemingly do no wrong. Everything they've ever recorded is outstanding. Vile and Callahan are somehow still getting better, and the National continue to amaze me by not falling off a cliff.

Now let's head off the beaten path a little bit:

No Joy: Wait to Pleasure
Mutual Benefit: Love's Crushing Diamond
Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold
Speedy Ortiz: Major Arcana
These New Puritans: Field of Reeds

I'm not sure any of these guys will turn into Bill Callahan, but these particular works are terrific. No Joy is clean-up shoegaze, Mutual Benefit is immaculate folk, Parquet Courts is perhaps the best of this bunch, Speedy Ortiz is adorably weird and These New Puritans really impressed me with Field of Reeds. I've got to check their back catalog.


Finally, here's 4 things I listened to, liked a lot but haven't really fully absorbed. I think they might belong on the list, but I'm not sure.

Mazzy Star: Seasons of your Day
Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus
MIA: Matangi
White Fence: Cyclops Reap

Everything I said about not wanting Kevin Shields to revive MBV goes double for David Roback and Mazzy Star, but the new album appears to be quite good. Fuck Buttons are great but never topped their first album. I'm tired of MIA, but Matangi is actually pretty good. White Fence is Guided by Voices mixed with the 13th Floor Elevators.

These Kids Are Pretty Cool

I have 124 students in my "Economics for Non-Majors" class.  (Syllabus, if you are interested).

15 of them are athletes, including three from the most excellent woman's soccer team, which made the NCAA tournament and went pretty deep, which is pretty cool.  Lots of the others have done some amazing things.

But I thought I'd share this performance by one of the students in the class, Antje Lang, a sophomore.  This was at the Duke Coffee House this fall.  It's an informal setting, and the recording is just ambient, not remixed or fixed in any way.  It is, nonetheless, quite lovely.  (Here is a different set, with some of her own songs, btw).

They came in like a wrecking ball?

Nice piece in the New Yorker about an incredibly active group of session musicians in the 1960s and 70s who called themselves "The Wrecking Crew":

If you’ve heard the Crystals (“He’s a Rebel”), Jan and Dean (“Surf City”), Paul Revere and the Raiders (“Kicks”), Simon and Garfunkel (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”), the Association (“Windy”), the Mamas and the Papas (“California Dreamin’ ”), Frank Sinatra (“Strangers in the Night”), the Monkees (“Last Train to Clarksville”), Herb Alpert (“A Taste of Honey”), Nancy Sinatra (“These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”), or Sonny and Cher (“Bang Bang”)—not to mention the “Batman” theme, the “Mission: Impossible” theme, the “Hawaii Five-O” theme, or the “Born Free” theme—then you’ve heard the Wrecking Crew. When producers called musicians, these were the musicians who got called first.

Among their members were such future luminaries as Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, and Jack Nitzsche.

One of the members' kids is running a kickstarter to fund release of a movie about the Crew. From that page I learned that:

For six years in a row, the Grammy Award for "Record of the Year" was recorded by Wrecking Crew members. Just look at this list!

Herb Alpert &the Tijuana Brass in 1966 for "A Taste of Honey"
Frank Sinatra in 1967 for "Strangers in the Night"
The 5th Dimension in 1968 for "Up, Up and Away"
Simon & Garfunkel in 1969 for "Mrs. Robinson"
The 5th Dimension in 1970 for "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" and
Simon & Garfunkel in 1971 for "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Lou's gone, but I'm back

Blogging hiatus caused by rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder (yes, I am left handed). I can type now, so look out!

Like so many people, the Velvet Underground totally transformed my idea of what music could be and what could qualify as "good". While I was more of a John Cale guy than a Lou Reed guy, Reed was a modern music colossus.

Here's a great Reed cover:






And here's a very Velvets inspired band that I love (check the words around the 1:10 mark):

Annals of internet greatness: guitar edition

First off, here's the most passionate guitar player in the world (if you only watch one video today, it should be this one):





Next up is the best semi-nude, stoned on thorazine, upside down guitar playing ever:



And finally, best guitar ensemble where the boys wear pantyhose:

Fade into New?

Wow. Mazzy Star is coming back with a new album!

Really.

You can stream it here. Judging from the first song, it's pretty good.

I've been a big David Roback fan since Rain Parade, Opal, & the early Mazzy Star recordings.

They are even touring.

Apropos of very little, check out this amazing J. Macsis cover of the Mazzy Star classic, Fade Into You:

Hairy Elefante

See what I did there?

Anyway, here's a new painting by one of my favorite young artists, Nigel Conway:

And here's a great video to go along with the art:

Indie Math

OK people, here we go.

Pedro the Lion + Centro-Matic+(Bedhead/The New Year) = Overseas

Got that? Want to check my math? Think that I've just mis-described the Undertow Orchestra?

No, it's all correct.

David Bazan, Will Johnson, and the Kadane Brothers are touring and recording as Overseas.

This of course is beyond self-recommending.

If you don't know the components, for Pedro the Lion try "It's hard to find a friend" or "Control".

For Centro-matic, try "South San Gabriel Songs".

For the Kadanes as Bedhead, there's "Transaction de Novo"; as The New Year, there's "The New Year".

Bonus Kadane math: There's also a sweet split out there called "Macha Loved Bedhead" and Matt Kadane joined Mission of Burma mainstay Clint Conley in a band called Consonant. Their self titled first album is well worth checking out.

Oklahoma: cradle of songwriters

Wow. JJ Cale passed away. Mostly known as a writer of hits for other performers, Mr. Cale was from Oklahoma.

Which for such a small state has a strong musical pantheon.

Start of course with Woody Guthrie.

Then consider that Lee Hazlewood was an Okie too. Who? You know, the "these boots were made for walkin'" guy.  His music was covered by Rowland S. Howard,  Vanilla Fudge, Lydia Lunch, Primal Scream,  Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Beck, The Tubes, Thin White Rope and Slowdive.

How 'bout if we hop over to Hoyt Axton next. Yep, he was an Okie. Wrote songs that were hits for Three dog night and Steppenwolf. "Jeremiah was a bullfrog Okie"!

Heck, Wallis Willis, who wrote "swing low sweet chariot" was an Okie.

Not impressed yet? OK, let's kick it up a notch

Jimmy Webb? Okie! You know, the "by the time i get to Phoenix" guy. His songs were covered by
Glen Campbell, The 5th Dimension, Thelma Houston, The Supremes, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Isaac Hayes, Art Garfunkel, Amy Grant, America, Linda Ronstadt, R.E.M.,  Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, and Carly Simon among others.

Then there is the great Leon Russell. I love this guy.

St. Vincent (Annie Clark) is an Okie. I just assumed she was (gasp) Canadian!

So is Dwight Tilley!

Was disappointed to find out that Wayne Coyne, the frontman of the amazing Oklahoma band Flaming lips was born in Pittsburgh! We'll still count him as an honorary Okie though (just like me).

And people I'm not even getting into the slew of modern country "artists" from here (Vince Gill, Toby Keith, Carrie Underwood, Garth Brooks, et. al).

That is a very strong line up.

My new axe

Man, I have been getting better on the guitar and Mrs. Angus hooked me up with an awesome new instrument.

Feast your eyes people:

It's a Epiphone Sheraton II semi-hollowbody with alnico humbuckers.

John Lee Hooker, Noel Gallagher, Aaron Dessner, Randy Randall, and now EZ Angus!

Alright people, what do you play? Tell me in the comments.

Maybe Lou Reed was wrong about Robert Christgau?

Here is a great Christgau piece on the Moldy Peaches from back in the day.

You should consider following Kimya Dawson on Twitter. She's a NSFW force of nature.

 And of course the Peaches' back catalog is a must.

Context for the title of this post can be found here (also NSFW).