I'll be real irregular for the duration of the year (as I have been all year). It's coming down to crunch time for me listening to music and making my choices for my favorite 25 (30?) of the year. And yeah, all lists are detritus, but they're good rubbish, fun to read. Good news for me is that I've listened to a million albums in the last few weeks. Bad news is that I'm trying to process them all and have something intelligent to say about them all...

Anyways, some discoveries this year that won't make the list, had they been released in '07, or weren't live reissues. In alphabetical order (iTunes!):

• Alan Braxe and Friends: The Upper Cuts -- Here's an something that describes this album: holy sh*t. Had all dance music been made like this, like forever, we'd be eating ice cream in Iraq right now and have 10x the population on the globe.
• Animal Collective: Here Comes the Indian -- I've sung the praises of this guy before, but really got turned onto it again due to circumstance. I drove down a weird, empty back highway in South Jersey this year, passing farms, creepy towns with dysfunctional train stations and kids in Misfits shirts, and, no joke, Cowtown Rodeo.
  
• Beanie Sigel: The B. Coming -- Kick my own ass for not getting this one earlier. Unbelievable lyricism. Philly too.
• Boredoms: Vision Creaton Newsun -- Incredible psych -- huge and triumphant and visceral stuff that comes at you from every angle.
• Burning Airlines: Mission: Control -- Rediscovered this one, my copy was destroyed. Great not-quite-emo punk by the dude that used to front Jawbox.
• Dinosaur Jr.: Without A Sound -- Major label indie is usually watered down, but in Dinosaur's case, it kinda made sense. Their classic rock sensibility is on 11 here, while J.'s stoned drawl is never more perfect.
• Drunks With Guns -- Don't really know if the songs I downloaded are an album or not, but this is what a punk bands supposed to sound like. The St. Louis boys are detached degenerates, playing stupidly drunk and brutal hardcore, slowed down like a 45 going 33 just so you can get a quick view of the split seams and buckling supports just before it collapses.
• Grateful Dead: Fillmore West 1969 -- Really wild stuff, right around the time that it looked like the Dead were going to veer straight off into the deep end. Perfect tension between structure and chaos and 100x better than their 80's watered down pap.
• The Jesus Lizard: Goat -- Again, this is how heavy punk should sound. Disenchanted, hard and pretty damn funny ("Mouth Breather").
• The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs -- Perfect. Incredible genius.
• Marah: Kids In Philly -- Who needs Bruce Springsteen when "Point Breeze" outdoes most of Born to Run? Seriously.
• Pedro the Lion: Control -- This may really be one of my favorite albums ever. Not a dull spot in this album (maybe "Priests and Paramedics", but it follows "Second Best" which is the best song ever -- right now.) David Bazan has an unfortunate stigma as a dude who loves JC, scaring off all people that are too cool or disenfranchised by the whole scene. But, hell, this is a devastating, incapacitating record that just gets better on each listen.
• Sleater-Kinney: The Woods -- Oops. Missed this one last year. Gonna miss this band -- talk about power...
  
• Todd Rundgren: A Wizard, A True Star -- For "Just One Victory" alone? Possibly. Dude's a pretty rad songwriter though.

A to B

When listening to a couple of Animal Collective records (right now: Young Prayer and Project Hummer) its virtually impossible to be impressed by the breadth of their vision and how each successive record has a distinct and seemingly separate, uh, vibe to it. While there are certain reoccurring touchstones (the oceanic guitars, childlike vocals, nu-hippy sentiment), they’ve managed to become a very different band from Here Comes the Indian to Sung Tongs – and that’s only in the period of two years. They’ve radically changed from perverting psychedelic electro to completely flipping pop on its ear. For example, taking a look at the aforementioned discs, they’re vastly different. One could make the claim that, yeah well, there are different players on each. But that’s not the point. What is impressive is the success they have in filing cohesive statements of timeless beauty (Project Hummer) to desperation and sadness (Young Prayer). Perhaps it’s the abstraction of the music that allows this quick change operation to exist so convincingly. Nonetheless, it’s daft how morphable a group of seemingly acid-damaged Marylandites can be.

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So, yeah, that’s cool and all, but where does Robert Pollard, Guided By Voices’ thought leader, come into play here? The guy’s written the same (or similar) song maybe 2,000, 3,000 times? Why does an artist’s development get so much play by critics? I popped in From A Compound Eye last night, not really that impressed with previous listens in the car and on headphones. My stereo was empty, my fiancé’s earplugs were in, and so I jumped at the opportunity. Aside from being an incredible lyricist in the non-sequitur manner (of which, MF Doom has made a career on and continues to get (sometimes undeserved) accolades for), this boozebag writes some of the most righteous rock and roll available to ears. That is not meant to be ironic in the least – this is the stuff of myth, the stuff that will save your soul. Every record has no less than six songs that are triumphant and eternal in the best Who/Cheap Trick/Van Halen/any band that ever rocked an arena type of way. And never mind that FACE is maybe one of the better records I’ve heard this year. Sometimes it’s fun to check out the sights, but in the end, your ass has to find a familiar barstool.

Burial

the things that move ever so slightly. Forget the fact that we’re talking about spaces in between spaces. It’s the spaces in between the spaces in between spaces that mean more than nothing.

We’re all kind of used to things moving slowly, but this is miniscule repetition – a triumph/shackle of modern life? Was ancient or will future life be any different? A gray haze floats over the jostle, like a subway clanking under a cold, windswept night above ground. This isn’t country: claustrophobia like this is an effect of city living, technology-based environments. Things that don’t seem real, but are more than real. The most important are

Where Have You Been?

• Debating whether I should go alone to a restaurant called, no joke, The Glory Hole. Verdict: no.
• On the side of the road, north of Scranton, blown tire, waiting for AAA. Listening to Yo La Tengo at negative volume, pissed off. Reading about Gnarls Barkley, a band I couldn't care less about and still won't (horrible record). Watching the first snow of the year fall.
• 3 hours later, driving through PA on 495 listening to Califone's Roots and Crowns (better while not in traffic/on the couch), the Junior Boys' So This Is Goodbye (amazing record. made perfect by the extremely bright, moonlit night) and Thom Yorke's solo job ("Black Swan" is amazing).
• Downloading Alan Braxe & Friends' The Upper Cuts, possibly the best record ever compiled. Albums are overrated? If you don't believe me, at least try Most Wanted, which makes me feel like sex.
• Watching VH-1 Classic, thinking Rod Stewart's cover of "People Get Ready" (one of my favorite songs ever by Curtis) sounds like sonic jihad (but in a horrible way with lots of nerve gas and unintelligible screaming). Guitar solos in fields while immigrants watch? Rod in a Canadian tuxedo? Incorrect. Not even campy funny. How could Rod stray so far from early "Maggie May" form? Dude's a shadow of his former self, and this was in the early 80's (I think?). Reminds me of one time when I was opening a bottle of wine and almost poked my eye out, but had to get stitches. That was more fun than this.
• Glowing about my favorite new punk band, F*cked Up. Probably because of their name alone and band members being called Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas, Concentration Camp. Similarly glowing about Holy Sh*t, Ariel Pink's new outfit, mostly because of their name, but "Written All Over Your Face" is very groovy.
• Not loving J. Robbins' new outfit, Channels. I loved that first Burning Airlines record, but everything after has been minorly enjoyable, J.
• Reading Bret Easton Ellis. How'd I miss this dude?

More to come...