Wednesday, February 10, 2010
New music: Trash Kit
Posted by Eliza K. at 10.2.10 0 comments Links to this post
Thursday, February 4, 2010
[though said with hands in pocket, I mean it hand on heart]
For some, the cohesive, self-assured Romance will be their favorite Los Campesinos! record; others will continue to prefer the extremity of what came before. That's the breaks with an intensely personal band like this, I suppose; you're going to get intensely personal reactions.Thanks for reading my intensely personal reaction. Now go listen to the album and develop your own. I'd love to hear all about it.
*Pitchfork's reaction to that debacle (Editors) was much more to my liking: "Give 'em credit here for going a long way towards dismantling what we've come to know about Editors." or "You know that kid in your dorm who took a semester's worth of intro lit and philosophy classes as a license to use the word "Kafka-esque" at every opportunity? 'In This Light and on This Evening' is for that guy."
Posted by Eliza K. at 4.2.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2010, los campesinos, romance is boring
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Die Antwoord = the answer
Based in his grandmother's house, beat-monster DJ Hi-Tek (he owns a PC computer, see) cooks up next level beats for zef rap-rave master Ninja's (he's a ninja, see) zieker dan ziek flow and crack-baby-chic jail bait bubble gum fre$h futuristik rich bitch YO-LANDI VI$$ER's 21st century answer to 90's eurohouse vocals.
Posted by Steven B. at 3.2.10 4 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2010, beatz, die antwoord, fresh, hip-hop, south africa
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A Little Lost
Posted by Steven B. at 2.2.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: arthur russell, lightspeed champion, lost, mama cass elliott, michael giacchino, petula clark, phoenix, the mary onettes
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Just another day.
"Have you ever made an effort to voice or give word-shape to your complaints or fears? Have you ever tried to articulate your reasons for stomping along the sidewalk glaring at everyone, or wanting to cry because of a snapped shoelace, or waking up in the middle of the night with a bunch of anxiety squatting on your chest like a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare? When someone asks you “What's wrong?” you try to tell them, and it comes out sounding stupid and petty and doesn't begin to touch the very deep sense of wrongness, you end up talking about the superficial things like the shoelace or how you have a lot of work to do or how you haven't been sleeping well. And that just makes you angrier with yourself, because now you have painted yourself as the sort of person who gets all bent out of shape about shoelaces and work stress. But isn't it easier to articulate the symptoms than the disease? The moral of this story is KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, BUCKO. It's easier for you. It's easier for others, because then they can just say “oh yeah work stress that sucks” and use that as a hook for them to launch into their own tale of woe, which call me cynical but sometimes that feels like what 90% of human conversation is about (everyone else asking, even demanding, that you share your feelings but listening only long enough to explain their own). Of course, the “keep it to yourself” maxim, when it comes to mental suffering, works only for a little while unless one has a safety valve, like a big mountain to look at, or a personal web page (ouch), or the opportunity and energy to go make a lot of extremely loud noise, or a friend who belongs to the other 10%.
I wish so much of my thoughts weren't all tangled up with my moods. I either want to (a) live up to my self-conception of being a logical and thoughtful person, all the time, and not let minor things like Crushing Despair With No Root Cause enter my world, or (b) become a creature solely of mood, and let my overdeveloped self-awareness muscles atrophy. Because when I am being stupid, as above, I know that I am being stupid, and when I am happy I think “Is this me, being happy? Is this what happiness is for me?” and when I am depressed I am never able to fully give in to it, because I totally recognize every little symptom for what it is, and I get all strict and disciplinarian and call myself on my bullshit, and I become irritated with my stupid overdramatic neurochemical system, and I end up just wanting to get over myself already. Which does nothing to fix the depression, but which does add another lovely little layer of self-loathing on top of everything."
Posted by Eliza K. at 28.1.10 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: clint mansell, dony permedi, kiwi, mimi smartypants, moon
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I'm sorry if I've gotten sloppy with these electronic dreams, but they're all I have.
A better tomorrow, instead we got this.
Posted by Steven B. at 27.1.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2009, 2010, cold cave, electronic, hot chip, lali puna
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Don't Judge a Song by its Cover
Here are a few pretty special recent covers (+ an older one) for your listening pleasure:
Posted by Steven B. at 23.1.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: cover, destiny's child, grizzly bear, hot chip, jay reatard, kleerup, nirvana, robyn, superchunk, ted leo and the pharmacists
Friday, January 22, 2010
I am a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Posted by Eliza K. at 22.1.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2010, sheep, trouble books
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Dog days, MediaMonkey, the flu, Neil Gaiman. Wondering how all this could possibly be related? It's not.
Lately, in the morning hours, you'll sometimes find me playing the shit out of these songs:
Beach House - Used to Be
Posted by Eliza K. at 20.1.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2010, adam green, b for butterfly, mitchell museum, neil gaiman, owen pallett, state shirt, these new puritans
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Terrible Yellow Eyes
Music to establish the right mood before elaborating:
Jams Dean - Where the Wild Jams Are
Language-Arts - Where Were You in the Wild?
P.S. The illustration on top was made by mr. Cory Godbey himself, to whom we are so very grateful for not minding (?) that we've used some of the pictures. (that's one huge-ass assumption there)
Posted by Eliza K. at 14.1.10 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: drawings, illustrations, terrible yellow eyes
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
New Magnetic Fields!
Posted by Steven B. at 13.1.10 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2010, magnetic fields, realism
Thursday, January 7, 2010
LHNA's Best of 2009 Pt. 2 (50-1)
Best song on the new album? But of course.
47. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Wind Phoenix
[E:] Electric guitars are not out. Proof.
"I thought that one quick moment that was noble or brave
Would be worth the most of my life
As if something that's written should be taken as true"
43. Los Campesinos - The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future
"It affords me a curious pleasure to stand upon this bridge and watch the violent forces which the churning waves, advancing or retreating, generate within the confined space of the rocky hole."
The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch)
40. Animal Collective - Bluish
[S] From the album the blogosphere collectively fell in love with, listened to on repeat and used up last year's supply of superlatives on. My Girls was great, but for me, this was the real standout track.
39. Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind
I'm from where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can't do,
Now you're in New York,
these streets will make you feel brand new,
the lights will inspire you,
lets here it for New York, New York, New York
37. Fever Ray - When I Grow Up
Fantastic imagery:
"When I grow up I want to be a forester
Run through the moss on high heels
That's what I'll do
Throwing out boomerang, waiting for it to come back to me.
When I grow up I want to live near the sea
Crab claws and bottles of rum
That's what I'll have
Staring at the seashell, waiting for it to embrace me."
[E:] I want to paint all my dreams over with this song. Mash them all together until they're one big gooey mess of whistles, rainforests and polka-dotted galoshes stomping around. 2,3,4. 1,2,3,4.
Without a doubt, their best song to date.
You've been humming and I think it's forever
Praying for pavement to get back together
Nobody knows where you are living
Nobody knows where you are
You're so far around the bend
23. School of Seven Bells - Iamundernodisguise
(in an interview with LHNA earlier this year:)
Can you tell?
22. La Roux - Quicksand
[E:] Some might say the singer's voice gets annoying after a while. Some might say it's not exactly "sophisticated". Some might use the words "trendy" or "commercial". Some might say it's nothing new. I say: it sure gets your body moving though, doesn't it?
21. Karen O and the Kids - Rumpus
[E:] I know now what this song is all about.
It's about moments.
Moments like these:
0:24 seconds into the song - "LET THE WILD RUMPUS START!" (aka "this is what childhood tastes like")
0:28 - the most exhilarating transition in a song this year. Max's roar ends. Screams of "Go! Go! Go" in the background. The gleeful, inebriating piano. The drumbeat pulsing with a sense of wonder and adventure. I feel I'm six again. I feel HAPPY. Not just happy - but genuinely, thrillingly delighted and HAPPY in capital letters.
1:40 - Ahahahhhah ahaaahahh aaaahhh aaaaaaahh aaaah
[S:] Letters have no Arms strongly discourages you actually setting fire to your c... oh, you get it
17. Mew - Silas the Magic Car
14. Au Revoir Simone - Take Me As I Am
12. Yacht - Psychic City (Voodoo City)
Believe in something! You're full of horseshit."
[E:] Best song from the new album, hands down. And with an album as unanimously praised as this one, that really is saying something.
6. Metric - Blindness
Tell the survivors help is on the way
I was a blindfold, never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me
What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go
5. Emmy the Great - City Song / MIA
Know how to let it go
From a mess to the masses!
-- Sorry, we had to remove the songs for legal reasons! --
Posted by Eliza K. at 7.1.10 4 comments Links to this post
Labels: 2009, best of 2009, list, songs
Thursday, December 31, 2009
LHNA's Best of 2009 pt. 1 (100-51)
96. Best Coast - When I'm With You
[E:] What I like about this song is that is avoids hyperboles. No grand statements, no rich metaphors or romantic declarations. Just: when I'm with you I have fun. Because, at the end of the day, what else is there to it? When I'm with you I have fun. I hate sleeping alone. Simple as that.
95. Big Spider's Back - Perfect Machine
[E:] No idea why the band chose that horrible name for itself. Or what sort of contraption its members had in mind when they were singing about this "perfect machine" of theirs. I can't even make out the lyrics most of the time. But in unexpected moments after a glass of wine I find myself singing "I've got a perfect machine, I've got a perfect machine, I've got a perfect machine" ad nauseam; sometimes literally.
94. Monsters of Folk - Man Named Truth
[Steven:]Yes, this really should have sucked as hard as a porn star in debt, and yet, it's actually pretty good. Perhaps there's hope for Conor after all...
93. Orba Squara - Come So Far
Maybe my favourite song off Orba Squara's 'The Trouble With Flying'. Like the rest of the tracks from the album, it's extremely understated. It never peaks. It's content with dancing softly around, a leaf carried by the autumn wind. And that's precisely what makes it stick with you.
92. Go Away Birds - The Year of Letting You Down
Catherine Ireton proving she doesn't need to sing Belle & Sebastian songs to win us over.
91. Sunset Rubdown - Apollo and Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh
[E:] The problem with Sunset Rubdown is their songs are often so complex they shift and transform right before your eyes when you least expect it and jump around and slip between your fingers. Each song seems to take so much out of you that it's hard to listen to the whole album. So you focus on two or three tracks that stand out. This is one of them.
90. Julian Casablancas - 11th Dimension
[S:] Well what do you know!?! Who knew Julian had it in him!? It bleeps, he beeps and pings and makes us want to shake our metallic asses.
89. Tinariwen - Imidiwan Afrik Tendam
88. Emmanuel and the Fear - The Rain Becomes the Clouds
87. The Lovely Feathers - Lowiza
85. The Pastels vs Tenniscoats - Vivid Youth
[E:] When we run and then come home. When we lose each other and find each other. When we think it's over but it starts all over again. When we feel older every day and suddenly find something that makes us act like children again. When we do nothing but stare at the sky, and still understand each other perfectly. Silently. Easily. Like this.
[S:] 2009 was the year Yeah Yeah Yeahs took back the zero from Billy Corgan, while the latter lost the plot even further.
75. Black Lips - Starting Over
I'm doing my time
If things don't go right I'll drink some more beer
And I'll blow I blow out my mind"
Hear hear.
74. Egyptian Hip Hop - Rad Pitt
But we like to contradict ourselves
And that's alright"
72. Girls - Hellhole Ratrace
Don't dismiss the track until you reach the shift at 3:20.
69. Fuck Buttons - Surf Solar
[S] In which our heroes fill a rusty blender with several buckets full of coloured and trampled glass, feed it to a blender. Then RE-mix the contents of said blender (+a bag of sugar) and push RECORD while chasing small children around a small circular wallpapered room until all participants are puking up their cupcakes, feet are bleeding and the children crying.
68. Wale - New Soul
67. Dark Mean - Lullaby
"I close my eyes, haven't slept in five days
I'll sleep when I'm dead again."
[E:] In the year 2617, all the joie-de-vivre in the world will be squeezed in glass jars, left there to soak up the summer sun and freeze in the winter cold for a whole year. After exactly 365 days, on the first day of spring, the jars will be thawed and emptied out and their contents will reemerge as these two song lines. Mark my words.
66. Jónsi - Boy Lilikoi
[E:] I've tried thinking of little starving African children, 101 gruesome ways to carry out the capital punishment and puppies crushed to death by merciless filthy trucks - all in an attempt to wipe that ridiculous dopey smile that appears on my face whenever I hear this song. Pointless.
65. Warpaint - Billie Holiday
Well if you want to know me, I'm a war. Come paint.
64. The Crayon Fields - Impossible Things
[E:] I would like to play this song in the morning, rain beating confused drops against the window, a barely-alive flame glowing faintly in the fireplace; slippers on my feet, coffee mug in hand. I would like to say that it makes me feel good, makes me dance, makes me whistle. I would like to pretend its rhythmic handclaps are hopeful rather than nostalgic. I would like to be able to listen to it on cold days like this one without longing for warm summer sun. I still want impossible things.
63. Glass Ghost - Ending
Something new is happening, indeed.
62. Windmill - Big Boom
I can't say Windmill's 2009 effort is a great album. It's a good one. Not a great one. As far as concepts albums go, better than many. An album nostalgic for a lost childhood, for fleeting moments gone unnoticed. Well worth listening to for their fans. If you've never heard of them before though don't start with this. If you've never heard of them RUN get your hands on Puddle City Racing Lights. Fall in love with them. And then listen to this.
61. City Center - Open House
[E:] Doorbell. Key. Open house. Open Arms. Come in. Noise, noise, noise. Beautiful Noise. A thousand nails scratching, a thousand bottles breaking, a thousand voices screeching, noise. It's all coming together.
60. Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer
Bounce?
"I want to be your only friend in life
I want to hold your hand all through the night"
So sweet.
[E:] It is a truth universally acknowledged that all songs about time travel must have a few oh-oh-ohs and yeah-yeah-yeahs in them. These guys are well aware of that fact.
[E:] This song made me think of the countryside and barns and yellow hills in summer and how there are so many sounds out there I never pay attention to - crickets, bells, wind, voices, feet. The sound of leaves cracking under our boots,the sound of pencil on paper, the sound of our breath. It makes me want to start listening harder.
Posted by Steven B. at 31.12.09 5 comments Links to this post
Labels: best of 2009, list
Friday, December 25, 2009
Letters have no Songs!
Posted by Eliza K. at 25.12.09 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: merry christmas
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Top 5 reads of 2009
2. “The Last Samurai’ by Helen DeWitt (really this is number 1 as well)
Recommended for: fellow whizkid-lovers!, fans of the Glass family, people interested in foreign languages, education, and child-rearing, people who like bildungsromans, smartasses.
I want to make one thing clear in case you were wondering: the title coincides with the title of a known Hollywood movie with Tom Cruise in it. Like I said, coincides. Totally accidental. The book in fact takes its title from another movie: Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. The relationship between Seven Samurai and this book is not so straightforward as the back cover would have you believe. Yes, it’s true that Sibylla, Ludo’s mother is worried about her son growing up without a role model since his father is ignorant about his existence, so she decides to play the movie every day for him in order to give him not one but 8 male role models: the seven samurai and Kurosawa himself! But the truth is that the relationship between book and movie is much more complex than that. There are beliefs and ideologies embedded in the movie that have become part of who Ludo is. There are life lessons to be had from it. There are languages to be learned. There are words of wisdom to be memorized and repeated. There are fictional characters that become real friends. The complexities of the parallel that DeWitt is trying to draw between the two is mostly up to the reader to figure out. I don’t want to say anything more because the book is not so much about the plot. Suffice to say, The Last Samurai ties with I Know This Much Is True for my number one spot this year. Go read it.
Recommended for: Victorian period fans, people who like London, people who think they would like a story about a prostitute called Sugar and her attempts to climb up the social ladder, people who don’t get “offended” easily, people who like big books
Recommended for: history buffs, people interested in American politics, people who like historical metafiction, people who find random trivia fascinating, people who love stumbling upon an unusual authorial voice, people who like the 60s
"The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one has ever been put to death in Socrates’ name. And that is because Socrates’ ideas were never made law."
Disclaimer: this post is about books I happened to read this year, not books that were published in 2009.
Posted by Eliza K. at 24.12.09 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: best of 2009, dave rawlings, elvis perkins, lady and bird, list, literature, magnetic fields