heavy paraphernalia

The Fuck Buttons seem to be given a considerable amount of latitude for making essentially the same album twice, with last year's Street Horrrsing and the new Tarot Sport. That hardly matters listening to the album, once you’re hit with the sensational fix of leadoff track/10-minute single "Surf Solar". Famed producer Andrew Weatherall is involved here but Tarot Sport is still essentially the Fuck Buttons firing off a fuzzed stream of their recognizable, gratuitously shoegaze-influenced brand of drone-rock noise. The sweep and warped virtuosity of “The Lisbon Maru” and “Olympians” (which roughly forms the album’s middle segment) takes on a distinctive emotional resonance that is mostly absent from the Street Horrrsing songs, it must be said; the club-ready sonic fissures of “Phantom Limb” will have you riveted too.

mixtape (november 2009)

Dreaming backwards, rehydrated
Black Tambourine "By Tomorrow"
PS Eliot "Entendre"
Boy Genius "Old New England"
Love Is All "Movie Romance"
Ampersand "Tokyo Girl"
Veronica Lake "When You Smile"
Orange Juice "Louise Louise"
The Champagne Socialists "Teardrop Tattoo"
Voxtrot "The Start Of Something"
The Vaselines "Molly's Lips"
The Aislers Set "Long Division"
Young Marble Giants "Music For Evening"
Best Coast "When I'm With You"
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart "Doing All The Things That Wouldn't Make Your Parents Proud"
The Shop Assistants "Train From Kansas City"
A Sunny Day In Glasgow "Panic Attacks Are What Make Me 'Me'"
The Magnetic Fields "I'm Sorry I Love You"
The Softies "Count To Ten"
Teenage Fanclub "Everything Flows"

Whole-grain madness: Anxious, slack motherfuckers are making me nervous. Probably after I watched this sorta-forgotten American movie Wanda recently or more so because of the current seasons - I love days that never stop raining - but I have been in the mood for some classic indie pop. Either that or I'll be commuting across town, disgruntled and immersed in Wire's Pink Flag, so help me God. My post-thirty days thus far can perhaps be summed up in my favorite Teenage Fanclub song ("I'll never know which way to flow/ Set a course but I don't know") that close this latest mix.

waking up on gilded splinters

What is this squall of psychedelic horseshit? With their latest Embryonic that sounds unlike anything they have done thus far in their decades-old careering, the Flaming Lips have delivered a phenomenal double-LP that celebrates, aggressively, their deepest acid-rock indulgences. A sprawl of incalculable influence of fucked-up masterpieces like Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Dr John’s Gris-Gris and Can’s Future Days are all over these epic Embryonic songs – fans of the more polished craftsmanship of past Flaming Lips albums like 1999’s The Soft Bulletin may well be disappointed, but what the hell. I haven’t bothered to make much sense of the inventory of warmed inventions Wayne Coyne is singing about on this record (mostly a whole lotta paranoia, bad vibes and meddlesome mysteries, it seems) but it all comes together so incredibly well; overwrought, druggy pop songs that sound so weird, disorienting and beautiful.