Top 5 for January 20th, 2009
1. Jets to Brazil – “Sea Anemone”: the first Jet’s to Brazil album is so great, because it is essentially Jawbreaker songs, whereas the subsequent Jets to Brazil albums began to sound like something else entirely. This song is lyrically dark, yet musically lilting, which is perfect for walking around a city, and nearly drowning in the seas of strangers
2. Rye Coalition – Lipstick Game: I came across this gem in a used bin during my Friday record shopping ritual. It is beyond me why anybody would eschew this record, but their loss is my gain. The second record by these Jersey natives is their best, and is where they develop their own sound, rather than simply sounding like a Shellac like they did on Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet (similar to the way that Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted sounded like a an album by the Fall). The transition of the restrained, dissonant, semi-acoustic “Tangiers” to the breakneck, and driving pace of “Digital Crucifix” provides the perfect microcosm for the bands sound and goals. FYI – Rye Coalition did a split with Karp, which grants them immediate coolness in my book.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GSQe3MKDlM[/youtube]
3. The concept of the rebirth of hardcore: one of my other finds this past week included a copy of The Rebirth of Hardcore: 1999. This record was like a time machine for me. There was a time in my life where most all of what I listened to was hardcore, and pretty generic uninteresting hardcore – i.e. anything on Victory, Equal Vision, Revelation, et al. For reasons still own known to me tracks by bands like Floor Punch, In My Eyes and Battery still strike a nerve in me, which is strange. Needless to say, putting on this record Friday night elicited a one man circle pit in my basement to Good Clean Fun’s “Song for the Ladies.” However, over time I have realized that most of this music was: a) boring, and b) trite. That is not to say that there were not highlights, and certain albums that are still really excellent, but overall it is something that is better remembered than listened to (if you’ve heard on Judge song, you have heard them all). You’ll note that I said the “concept” rather than the actual rebirth of hardcore, because I have little interest in what these bands actually did, to be honest by side B, I was kind of bored with it. Yet at the same time, I now, like then, enjoy the idea of what hardcore and its scene was about, even if it often failed in practice. Irrespective, it was nice to be able to aurally trigger a regression to 10 years ago and seeing shows at the Mr. Roboto Project in Pittsburgh and eating pizza on the law school wall – yet I still wonder why I wasn’t listening to the early Ebullition catalog, and the Rye Coalition records, c’est la vie.
4. The Nation of Ulysses – 13-Point Program To Destory America: A more perfect album for this inauguration, I could not imagine. Ian Svenonious and crew have amassed 13 tracks of substance disguised as style or as the liner notes put it, ”the vitality and importance of fashion and appearance in terms of social (and thus political) delineation.” Obama strikes me in a similar tone – our president elect most famous image2 has been created by the same person responsible for Obey the Giant, and yet underneath the sharp suits and well written speeches is a man with a plan (or so I hope). NoU wants us to realize that “Halloween is a potent instrument for revolt with its tradition of masking the dispossessed in the darkness and sanctioning a threatened house-to-house looting if demands for candy (ephemeral, nihilistic) are not immediately saited.” Barack on the other hand wants to use program evaluation as a basis to determine the feasibility and funding of government programs. Either way under savvy well dressed exteriors these are some men with some plans.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA3RhUhRTkM&feature=related[/youtube]
5. Chuck Klosterman – Eine Zu 85% Wahre Geschichte: In an effort not to completely forget what I learned in 8+ years of studying German, I am attempting to read the German translation of Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story. It is painfully slow going thus far, but despite my general failures I am still laughing a lot at the parts I can successfully translate. For those of you who have not read the English version, it is a lovely pop-culture collage as Chuck revisits his failed love-life, while traveling across the country to visit famous rock ‘n’ roll graves/death sites.
—Footnotes—
- 1. Note: at the time of writing this their website had exceeded their bandwidth and subsequently crashed
- 2. The Shepard Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama has recently been introduced into the National Portrait Gallery.
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