December ‘07 Mix

December 30, 2007

1) A Trip Out – Do You Like Rock Music? – British Sea Power

British Sea Power must be fairly confident to title their album Do You Like Rock Music? but this track, at the very least, does rock a little.

2) Stormy High – In The Future – Black Mountain

Like a Canadian Wolfmother, Black Mountain is blatantly Sabbathy. Like Wolfmother, they’re pretty good at it.

3) Wrigley Scott – Curses – Future Of The Left

Sadly, this song has little to do with the Cubs or Blade Runner, but it does have a lot of lines about eating sausage on a stick. THAT MAY BE AN UNSUBTLE EUPHEMISM.

4) Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? – Of Montreal

MAJOR props for combining Norse and Greek mythology in the title and not having it sound like Ragnarok in Zeus’s Beard. This bipolar tune (as far as I can tell, actually about manic-depression), works best in the sections about chemical euphoria.

5) “Beat (Health, Life, and Fire)” – We Brave Bee Stings And All – Thao Nguyen

After hearing this track, I’m really looking forward to the Thao Nguyen album due next month. She has a warble like Chan Marshall but she brings it with a confidence and assurance that Marshall only recently found.

6) Anyone Else But You – Moldy Peaches – Moldy Peaches

I adored Juno, but I found a lot of the musical references kind of shaky. Choosing the Moldy Peaches as the closer was dead-on though.

7) Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again – I’m Not There – Cat Power

Chan Marshall seems a little trapped in Bob Dylan’s phrasing, elongating her syllables to match but she sounds great anyway. Her band is working triple-overtime too, especially the horn section which is so happy and fun that it makes the seven minute number just fly by.

8) Country Caravan – Wild Mountain Nation – Blitzen Trapper

This is a great road song, reeking of Americana like a lost track from The Band.

9) Do What You Gotta Do – Golden Opportunities – Okkervil River

I’m always a sucker for a good Jimmy Webb cover, and this is a good one. Will Sheff can sing the shit out of sadness and sacrifice so this was a perfect fit.

10) You And Your Crystal Meth – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark – Drive-By Truckers

I don’t think this song is supposed to be funny, but I find crystal meth fucking hilarious.

11) Chains – This Gift – Sons and Daughters

Sons and Daughters seems to be polishing down their ragged edge for a more danceable, easy going appeal. This track is like their shot at a sock-hop jam.

12) Lover In The Snow – The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo – Rivers Cuomo

Even in his b-sides, Rivers Cuomo is rejected by girls and obsesses over them. While it’s not quite a Weezer classic, it is suitably creepy.

13) (My Head) – Rip It Off – Times New Viking

Times New Viking is the lowest-fi record I’ve heard in a while, and downright difficult to listen to. Underneath the breaking up of the speakers, there is a great exuberance trying to fight its way through.

14) Baltimore – Real Emotional Trash – Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks

Modern Malkmus can be a bit of an acquired taste, and the first couple of minutes of this number is decent but pedestrian psychedelia. Somewhere after the guitar and keyboard call and response section though, this song just starts kicking ass all over the place. It’s heavy, heady, trippy and highlighted by Malkmus’s hilarious reading of “Baltimore, Baltimo-oh-oh-whoa-whoa-whoa.” I’m not sure if I can refer to it as Bodymore, Murderland if I can get away with just sing Baltimo-oh-oh-whoa-whoa-whoa.

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