Best Favorite Recent Records

Last time I did record reviews I reviewed hot new albums by bands following up on big successful albums.  This time I'd like to talk about records I've had on heavy repeat.  Records I love.

Blur —Parklive

I nearly feel ashamed for sometimes forgetting that Blur is one of my favorite bands ever, just about the only band I was into really heavy in High School and still love to this day.  Parklive is a live album of their supposed last concert ever (I think they've played a few of those before?) they played at the close of the London Olympics.  Listening to this two hour set, I shudder to imagine being a part of the gigantic Hyde Park crowd, pulsing and swaying to the music, participating in a non-stop top of the throat singalong.  I don't usually, I mean, I just about never hand myself over to the music at live shows, but this one would have snatched me right up.  And for Rock Band Grad School: Study the setlist to this concert, the way it stays strong from beginning to end, pulling songs from their entire catalogue and escalates constantly to the cathartic final act (Song 2, No Distance Left to Run, Tender, and This is a Low) and triumphant encore (Sing, Under the Westway, End of a Century, For Tomorrow, the Universal.)

Typing that gives me chills.  Sorry if that's geeky.  If you love Blur the thought of it should give you chills too.

TNGHT — TNGHT EP

My favorite 16 minutes of music of the year.  Not sure if TNGHT counts as dance music or instrumental hip hop or what, but I find myself never going a workday without giving these five songs a listen, pressing my earbuds into my ears as tightly as possible to try to pick up more of the seemingly bottomless bass found throughout.  To me, these songs are absolute dancefloor fillers, songs to invent some crazy dance too, but also really good music to play at full volume while cruising to a Taco Bell.  If only this record had been around when I was in High School.  If only, if only, if only.

If you are at all inclined the tiniest bit to listen to music highly conducive for flashing lights and shuddering speakers, you just got to try this record.  Please.  Do it for yourself, for me.

Best Batch of Follow-Ups

A number of bands that had well-regarded records in the last few years have recently released new albums, their firsts since their big records.  Here are little reviews on those records:

Animal Collective — Centipede Hz

At first I thought I liked this record a lot, but then I read the reviews and realized I was wrong.  Just kidding!  Pitchfork (and the AV Club) can go jump in a lake, I dig Centipede Hz.  While none of its songs are nearly as good as the standout songs on Merriweather Post Pavillion (For me: In the Flowers, My Girls, Summertime Clothes, Bluish, Brothersport) BUT Centipede Hz doesn't have any songs on it that I'd rather skip than put up with, whereas MPP does (Also Frightened, Taste, No More Runnin).  So in a way, they're kind of equal for me.  Merriweather Post Pavillion is for when I want to hear a few perfect songs, Centipede Hz is for when I want to listen to a whole record.

Dirty Projectors — Swing Lo Magellan

Bitte Orca, the record Swing Lo Magellan follows up on, was a hit I never could stand.  On a good day I'm down with one track (Stillness is the Move, obvs) so trust me I'm surprised that I fell for Swing Lo Magellan.  Big time.  Took a few listens, but I kept wanting to listen, not throw it out the window.  And now barely a day goes by that I don't listen to it all the way through (perk of a earphone-intensive deskjob) and, between listens, find different songs from it hanging out in my brain.  Were I to recommend one record of these four the most, it would be this one.

The xx — Coexist

The first xx hit me, as it did many others, like a very quiet hammer.  I'd never heard anything like it and couldn't stop listening to it.  Now they've got a new record and face the problem faced by bands with a super distinctive sound: Do you keep making that sound and risk people saying "This sounds just like their other record" or do you switch it up a bit and risk people saying "They went off in another direction and it just didn't work."  My reactions to listening to this record, so far:

1.  "Do we really need another xx record?  I don't know . . ."
2.  "No, actually this is pretty great.  They have a sound and it works for them."
3.  "Wait, no.  Forget that.  This is silly, this is the exact same thing.  People are going to start making fun of how these guys sing, if they don't already.  And what's this?  Steel drums?"
4.  "Actually . . . no.  This might be a really good record?"

If you'd like, you're welcome to come along take this back and forth journey with me.

Grizzly Bear — Shields

I think we can always count on these dudes to release a quality product.  I wouldn't have had to listen to this whole record to give you that review.  But I did.  And this record is dang good.  Very easy to love, you will like it a lot.  And that's why I made Swing Lo Magellan my recommended record.  You don't need me to tell you to check Shields out.  You'll hear it and like it a lot on your own.  Oh, and there's this one song, "A Simple Answer"?  Forget it.  So good.

Best Let Me Tell You About Three Records

In as few words as possible.  Pretend this is Twitter, even though the reviews get progressively longer.

Beach House — Bloom

Their dreamy music is getting louder and louder, in a couple more albums they'll sound like sleeping in at Slayer's summer rental.  

Best Coast—The Only Place

An unlistenably disappointing follow-up to their wonderfully sunny and stompy debut, I would rather pretend this record didn't exist.   If you've shown you can make good singalong rock songs, make more singalong rock songs, not something that is absolutely not fun at all.

M. Geddess Gengras, Sun Araw & The Congos — Icon Give Thank

Last month I posted about going to see a documentary about the making of this record (short story: Americans Sun Araw and M. Geddess Gengras went to Jamaica and recorded this record with reggae legends the Congos). . . in the nicest way possible, I want to say that the best way to hear the songs of this album is as the soundtrack to that documentary.  Divorced from the visuals of the musicians hanging out, riding in boats, recording the record, walking down the street, etc. the music is a lot to go through on your own.  Sometimes very heavy, sometimes very off in space, there are a few tracks I do like plenty, then there's also a few I'm inclined to skim, like a difficult passage in a book of philosophy.

Best I Totally Saw Radiohead

Like everyone else on the internet, I went to Radiohead in Newark on Friday night.  By extreme Ticketmaster luck I wound up with a pair of GA floor tickets.  Do you see that hand being raised?  Way off in the distance, just left of the middle of the stage, between the light thing and some speakers?  That's my hand, that's where I was.  This picture was taken from in front of the sound board.

There's Alyssa, that's who I watched the show with, although the venue was full of friends of ours.  I'm still finding out on Facebook that more people that I know were there.

Look at all those guitars!  Look at that Mexican flag!

Caribou opened.  I like Caribou and I liked seeing them live.  I imagine it's a pretty intimidating task opening for Radiohead, I hope lots of people went home and learned more about Caribou that night.  What am I saying.  Radiohead fans are like the most musically-informed fans there are.  Most of the people in the house that night probably knew the names of every member of Caribou.

Post-opener, the stadium was filling up.  Listen, I'm going to spare you an essay, but let me say a few things: This was my first Radiohead concert.  No really, I'd never seen them before.  I'd tried to, not extremely hard, a few times before.  I'm just not a gigantic Radiohead fan, in fact, let me be blunt: I didn't care for them until Amnesiac came out . . . there was this day where I was at the Untitled in LA they were blasting the Pyramid Song (which I recognized as MTV2 was playing it every third video that summer) at full volume and something clicked, I finally got it.  I got into Amnesiac, then used it as a launching pad into their back catalogue and was finally ready to accept the Radiohead way.  Still, all that said, I imagine I was only about 65% as big a fan as 97% of the people around me.  While I was at a concert, a lot of these people were at church.  Radiohead does inspire a certain intensity in it's fandom, they're a rock nerd's dreamband, and during the concert there were definitely a lot of "hmmm, they haven't played this song since their June 14th 2007 show in Barcelona" reactions going on around me.

THAT SAID, it was a rad concert.  I liked it a lot.  I wish it had been louder, I wish it had been longer (even though they played 23 songs in around 2 hours—I could have done another 2 hours, easy).  Radiohead has a lot of these jittery sounding songs, right?  And those I can't always tell apart, but when they played some of their "hits" I was like "Wooo!  YEAH!  Radio-heAD!"  

Just ask the people around me.

From here on out it's mostly going to be pictures of how crazy the lights were.  Do I remember what songs played with each lighting arrangement?  Nope.

But here's the setlist:

Bloom

15 Step

Bodysnatchers

Kid A

Staircase

The Daily Mail

Myxomatosis

The Gloaming

Separator

Pyramid Song

Morning Mr. Magpie

Identikit

Lotus Flower

The National Anthem

Feral

Idioteque (something went wrong during the song, I'm not sure what, and Thom left the stage in frustration.  Then we had to clap and clap and cheer his self-esteem back into shape and they continued the concert)

How to Disappear Completely

Supercollider

Go to Sleep

Paranoid Android

Encore:

Give Up the Ghost

Reckoner

The One I Love (you know, the REM song?)

Everything In Its Right Place

Okay, now for real, Pictures and no more talking:

The concert was about halfway through before I realized: Wait.  They have two drumsets?  Somehow I'd been looking at it but it didn't register with my brain.  But this isn't a picture from the middle of the concert.  This is a picture from when they finished the set.

The crowd waits for the encore.

Encore!!

Thom dances goodnight.

And then the show was done, but they were nice enough to leave the lights on.

Turns out Cole, Chateau, Cassandra, and Jaime (my neighbor!) were on the floor real close to us the whole time.

Number One Concert Champs! Wish you were there, Casey.

One thing I was not expecting was all the Grateful Dead-style solo improvisational jam dancing happening in the audience.  Here I am caught in the act of demonstrating what I mean by Grateful Dead-style solo improvisational jam dancing.  (Not Thom Yorke dancing,  [that link isn't to Lotus Flower, if that's what you were expecting] which I thought was kind of fresh)

Oh no!  Lonely popcorn, do you have anyone to take care of you?!

You know who was pretty popular?  The sound guy in the sport coat.

Talking concert talk.

Made our way out of the music part of the stadium . . . 

. . . into that part of the stadium where everyone is buying t-shirts.

But NOT Mrs. Fields cookies.

Exit, for real.  

When we got to Newark Penn Station the crowd waiting for an NJ Transit train was unbelievable.

But over at the PATH train everyone was packt like sardines in a crushed tin box, if you know what I mean.

Oh hey!  Kirk and Chris were at the show too?!  AND they got seats on the train?  How much did Ticketmaster charge them for those?

Eventually, miraculously, we found a place on board and then everyone was in their right place, right, Chateau?

Arriving in Manhattan, the skies had burst and the rain was falling real hard.  Everyone from the train made a run for it and I lost the group.  Probably everyone else lost the group too, too, but when you're lost, you don't know if anyone else is.

And that's the story of when I saw Radiohead on Friday night.  If I were going to rewrite this post, I'd have more puns and more videos.  Cuz I took some videos and only started punning here at the very end.