when everybody's lost without a trace

It feels a little inevitable that I would be sitting here at the end of the year/decade listening to and writing about The Clientele. There is always this sense of world weariness and ache of nostalgia attached to Alasdair MacLean’s songs that seems made for reflective moods, and their most recent Bonfires on the Heath is no different. (I have read somewhere that this album might be the band’s last collective effort, and I can only hope this can be interpreted as an “unsubstantiated rumor”.) A warm brew of sadness settles all over several of the album’s most beautifully crafted numbers “Jennifer and Julia” and “Never Saw Them Before”. The band prove to be adept as ever in filling out the porcelain sound, providing exquisite musical accompaniment to MacLean’s languid dreams: the plaintive steel guitar employed to mournful effect on the title track; the ghosts of childhood linger on “Graven Wood” with its softly spiraling violins and guitar atmospherics hypnotizing the listener into The Clientele’s world of buried disappointments through the verges of suburban light.

decade's best #29

If I remember correctly, I was commuting on the bus when I first listened to St Dymphna, and I started excitedly texting a bunch of friends about how simply awesome Gang Gang Dance are. My initial thought was that it's going to be the one album that’s going to have as much an impact on the contemporary musical landscape as Fear of Music, my favorite Talking Heads album, had on the post-punk scene back in 1979 or something like that (and sorry if the comparisons between the Talking Heads and Gang Gang Dance is more than a bit wonky; other than that both bands seem to be rather influenced by African pop music, though in very different ways, as far as one can discern) once more folks start to figure it out… maybe it isn’t quite supposed to pan out that way, but that does not take anything away from this album’s virtuosity.

29. Gang Gang Dance
St Dymphna [Warp, 2008]
There is this febrile quality to Gang Gang Dance’s music that fuels the sense of eclecticism on St Dymphna, their funkiest and most cohesive effort to date – and not too bad at all for a record titled after the patron saint of madness and confusion. While past, edgier Gang Gang Dance records were realized in much rougher (i.e. less than listenable) form, the mutant dance music of St Dymphna has evolved to make for a more coherent thread to their experimental-noise contemporaries Black Dice and (early) Animal Collective; although the stylistic leap into the exploratory global-sourcing of afrobeat-driven songs like “Bebey” and “Inners Pace” is mostly the band’s own doing, and this relentless cross referencing between disparate musical genres is perhaps the album’s real masterstroke. Indeed, listening to the album without first being acquainted to this band’s sonic sensibility (think along the lines of free-improvisational jams anchored by thickly textured dub grooves and the wickedly restless singing of Liz Bougatsos) is stepping straight into a musically convulsive shitstorm, where their unlatched jigsaw fragments of strange rhythmic overtones and beatific madness manage to gel together so brilliantly.

30. The National: Boxer [Beggars Banquet, 2007]

29. Gang Gang Dance: St Dymphna [Warp, 2008]

desert-island dirty dozen, plus two (it doesn’t feel like christmas and other holiday surprises)

(Holy shit, not another decades’ end related list. This is sort of inspired by the “major project” of my friend Wubin, who I can always count on for helping to put things into perspective, heh heh… Or more accurately, this came about after listening to this Velvet Underground album this morning and momentarily remembering how things were a few years back.)

It’s less than 200 minutes to Christmas, and I am glad to say that this year I have consumed just enough fine alcohol by this hour, while chilling out with my family no less, to write home about.

Several of my friends have expressed surprised how much I enjoy the holiday season – even to the extent of enduring the downtown crowds and overzealous carolers – and perhaps I should explain why here. About 12-13 years ago, when I was a destitute teenager barely surviving on a pitiful weekly allowance from my folks, CDs were a real luxury. But still I manage. There were many instances where I had to skip lunches just to scrimp together a few lousy bucks to buy that new, pretty fucked-up trip-hop record by Tricky from Tower Records (heh-heh!).

Each Christmas represented an opportunity: I’d get my sister and relatives to make gift requests for strange, esoteric CDs, and then I’ll buy the CDs off them on the cheap – good bargain both ways. (I still recall that from October onwards I’d start saving for this annual bonanza and there were quite a handful of albums that I got my hands on through this “scheme”: a few Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones – Exile on Main Street really made for such a fucking brilliant Christmas back in ‘96 – the Smith’s The Queen Is Dead one year (’98?), and quite a few others I can’t recall.)

This probably went on for about five years or so before I kinda grown out of it, but I guess those times really held a special significance to me still, made all the more special because it had to do with Christmas, and helped mold my rather parochial taste in music I suppose. And so in the spirit of these things, these are my 14 desert-island records (17 pieces of CD and 18 vinyl, I believe), definitive albums that I would definitely recommend to anyone I know. Maybe come to the next decade’s end, I shall expand this two- or three-fold. Merry Christmas everyone.

01. Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground and Nico [Verve, 1967]
02. Wire: Chairs Missing [EMI, 1978]
03. Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde [Columbia, 1966]
04. Wilco: Summerteeth [Reprise, 1999]
05. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds [Capitol, 1966]
06. Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation [Enigma, 1988]
07. Neutral Milk Hotel: The Aeroplane over the Sea [Merge, 1998]
08. Joni Mitchell: Blue [Reprise, 1971]
09. Sonny Rollins: A Night at the Village Vanguard [Blue Note, 1957]
10. The Beatles: The Beatles [Parlophone, 1998]
11. Miles Davis: Bitches Brew [Columbia, 1970]
12. David Bowie: Low [RCA, 1977]
13. REM: Murmur [IRS, 1983]
14. Billie Holiday: Lady In Satin [Columbia, 1958]

down the aisles, along the titles where you're

I’ve been laboring uncomfortably deep into the night over the past couple of weeks – but thankfully, everything’s slated to complete before Christmas – and the casually chic music of Broadcast has been subbing as my musical companion; specifically, the Ha Ha Sound and Tender Buttons (*) LPs along with The Book Lovers EP. The latter, an early four-song release from 1997 later to be compiled into Work and Non Work, is probably my nostalgic favorite from Broadcast’s body of work; never mind that their uniquely warped sound aesthetics has yet to fully coalesce, and that the still-fledging outfit were mining the same territory as bands like Stereolab but with somewhat less convincing results. The sublime title cut is an early taste of what would make Broadcast’s name: Trish Keenan’s bewitching voice, the way the song straddle the 4 a.m. dream-lucidity/psychedelic divide, and the band’s dead-on ability to dose up “The Book Lovers” with just the right amount of retro flavor.

* I never quite liked their 2005 album Tender Buttons back then when I first heard it but I have slowly warmed to it. And now it strikes me as perhaps their most radical and bravest album yet, an almost-impenetrable din of lo-fi unease and ghostly acoustics that does justice to those Young Marble Giants comparisons. Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?

decade's best #30

By this time of year, I suppose most folks, magazines and blogs who care about such things would be done with their best-of-decade lists. I originally wanted to put out mine, a list of my favorite 30 albums released between 2000 and 2009, before Christmas but it turns out to be not so feasible. So indulge me as I roll these 30 albums out one by one, and who knows – or more accurate, who cares – how long it will take me to finish, but it'll be fun for my personally. And first up to bat, the dark and brooding music of The National.

30. The National
Boxer [Beggars Banquet, 2007]
The 2005 album Alligator is perhaps more representative of The National, but it is the bleary-eyed evanescence captured fully on Boxer that leaves a more lasting impression. These well-worn songs, sung in Matt Berninger’s very distinctive baritone, have the trancelike ability to evoke a profusion of conflicted chivalry, grown-up disaffection and feelings of insecurity – all drawing on the dark musings of a reluctant corporate workaholic, if you may. Boxer is an absorbing listen, albeit with a strong alcoholic aftertaste, as crisp drinking songs such as “Squalor Victoria” and “Slow Show” abound in the kind of torpid observational details that perhaps paint a familiar picture of dissipation, while in the underpinning swagger of “Apartment Story” a tired and wired Berninger manages to mumble out disarming lines about the absurdities of everyday life (“Can you carry my drink I have everything else/ I can tie my tie all by myself, I'm getting tied, I'm forgetting why”). And even if you’re not sufficiently moved by the soporific grandeur of piano-led opener “Fake Empire”, their elegant flail against oblivion (“Stay up super late tonight…”), the rest of Boxer project such an elegant sense of brooding romanticism throughout that you can’t help but give in to its after-hours sensitivity.

favorite movies (2009)

While I'm at it, here's another annual list:

Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
Of Time and The City (Terence Davies, 2008)
Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008)
Fantastic Mr Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009)
The Witnesses (Andre Techine, 2007)
Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola, 2009)

favorite albums (2009)

I have been bogged down with a bunch of stuff of late, including work-related commitments of some sort, to really sit down and write short commentaries to go with each of the following albums. That said, I’ve written about a few posts about these albums here before – albeit in a rather offhand fashion – so you can follow the link if you want:

01. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion [Domino]
02. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest [Warp]
03. Flaming Lips: Embryonic [Warner]
04. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca [Domino]
05. A Sunny Day In Glasgow: Ashes Grammar [Mis Ojos Discos]
06. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Pains of Being Pure at Heart
07. Atlas Sound: Logos [Kranky/4AD]
08. Califone: All My Friends Are Funeral Singers [Dead Oceans]
09. Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt II [EMI]
10. Sonic Youth: The Eternal [Matador]
11. Real Estate: Real Estate [Woodsist]
12. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix [V2]
13. Black Dice: Repo [Paw Tracks]
14. M. Ward: Hold Time [Merge]
15. Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career [Merge]
16. Cymbals Eat Guitars: Why There Are Mountains [self-released]
17. Andrew Bird: Noble Beast [Fat Possum]
18. Mos Def: The Ecstatic [Downtown]

19. Bonnie Prince Billy: Beware [Drag City]
20. The Clientele: Bonfires On The Heath [Merge]

mixtape (december 2009)

Saints born being saints, parallel movies in slow motion
Asobi Seksu “Thursday”
Sigur Ros “Hjartao Hamast (Bamm Bamm Bamm)”
Real Estate “Basement”
Atlas Sound “Quick Canal”
My Bloody Valentine “Off Your Face”
Broadcast “I Found The End”
Animal Collective “Bluish”
Mazzy Star “Fade Into You”
Wilco “She’s A Jar”
Mercury Rev “Opus 40”
The Magnetic Fields “Queen of The Savages”
Neutral Milk Hotel “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”
Broken Social Scene “5/4 (Shoreline)”

Begin responsibilities: As per the end of every decade, my wish is to be completely lost in the mist of presumably could-have-been dreams. The Atlas Sound song “Quick Canal”, the Deerhunter dude Bradford Cox’s nine-minute kraut-fantasy/dream-pop collaboration with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, really anchors this list. (Anyway, just got back from Taipei, and it’s kinda exciting how the Deerhunter album Microcastle/Weird Era Cont match the city scenes and the ache of transience they gave me as I haul my ass around its busy streets.) Or maybe this has got more than a bit to do with the Animal Collective song too, how Avey Tare sings “pulling me into another dream, a lucid dream”. It’s unerringly revealing too, from this mixtape’s second half, that I am still so hung up on my favorite music from the decade before.