Best Listening

I've listened to some new records, here's what I thought of them:


"Primary Colours" by the Horrors

That feature on your ipod where you can give a song a star rating as you listen to it? I don't really use it to rate all my music, but if I am listening to a song during the day and I like it I'll quickly give it five stars just to mark it for future reference as a song I liked. The first time I listened to Primary Colours I noticed halfway into the record that I had marked for future reference nearly every song with a five star rating.

This album is seriously good. It is absolutely ferocious.

Basically it sounds like the unexpectedly triumphant reunion album of goth-leaning 80s band that you've happened to never have heard of until now. I really like it, the whole thing is possessed of a magnificently menacing iciness; a steely, echoing dread. It's some proper rock n roll vampire music and it demands to be played loud.



"Veckatimest" by Grizzly Bear

These are the notes I wrote down while listening to this record the second time:

Hey! This is good. Shambling and tight at the same time. Very good for listening to. Rather pretty in some moments, sometimes sounding like lights in the woods. I think this is indie rock.

At the moment I can't remember what a single song from this album sounds like, but I remember thinking "Oh yeah, this is good!" when I started it up that second time.



"Wavvves" by Wavves

When I first started listening to this record it made me want to wake up earlier in the day so I'd have more time to listen to it (the last thing that made me feel this way was Saturday Morning Cartoons I guess). To me it is baffling and exciting that something so noisy and no-fi (if you haven't heard it then you truly can't know what I'm talking about) sound so pretty. This record basically takes everything that No Age was doing right and timeses it by 11. This and "Primary Colours" are the two records on this page that I'm the most amped about.



"Blood" by Franz Ferdinand

The dub retelling of Tonight. I liked this record because I've developed an acceptance of dub, if dub isn't your thing then you'll probably treat this record as an outcast.

But what's real special about Blood is that it made me curious about listening to Tonight again. Tonight didn't make much of an impression on me the few times I listened to it after it came out, I had been told it was a grower but it never really grew for me, probably because I wasn't willing to keep watering it. But I listened to this record on Friday and returned to Tonight on Friday and, surprise surprise, I only had to water that plant a little bit and it shot back to life into something bigger and more beautiful than I ever expected. So I'd like to take my old opinion back and say that I'm seriously down with Tonight. And totally down with Blood.



"Hold Time" by M Ward

An absolute favorite record of mine is M. Ward's "Transfiguration of Vincent." I am so down with it, so down with it in fact that I've never been too enthusiastic about any of his other records. Sure, they're good...but Transfiguration is so correct, why bother with the others, right? Well guess what, this new M. Ward record ("Hold Time", if you're not into reading bold print headings)? I'm into bothering with this one. After one listen I'm calling it nearly a tie with "Transfiguration of Vincent." Just more and more excellent sometimes-sleepy, sometimes-locomotive songwriter guitar music but this guy, he just does it so right in my book. Very strong from start to finish and its got this cover of Buddy Holly's "Rave On" that, I kid you not, deserves the Nobel Prize. Best cover since M Ward did "Let's Dance" on "Transfiguration of Vincent."