“(Are There) Ways to Come Home?” by Sebastien Grainger

Slave to Melody, keeping it slow.  Nice tracking, layered vocals.  I like the 6’s.  Mic on filter, like through metal.  Lovely, see?. 

“Love Is Not a Contest.”  Lovely.  This is what we listened to the first night sleeping in the office, with houseguests, including a housedog.  Sebastien knows he’s a good singer and he just uses it, croons.  Hams it up.  “I hope that you find happiness,” like Elvis. 

I like how much open space there is on this record, on this song.  (Like Peter Bjorn & John–easy to sing along with, to build on.)  And a good, satisfying crash. 

“I’m All Rage.”  Really knows how to make a great rock dance record.  The satisfaction of a drum machine, a bass, and a tambourine.  Claps, bass drum.  Tick tick tick tick.  Dun-dudelun-dudelun-dudelun.  I dare you not to bob your head.  Shake it. 

Also, “I Hate My Friends.” 

Old school Sebastien.  So fucking good.  “I don’t need you, but I want you.”  Death from Above 1979, “Romantic Rights.” 

Underrated musician or something.  Or overlooked.

let’s catch up

Hello.

Right now:  Sebastien Grainger’s full-length.  Yay, it’s so good.  More later.

Also, Jenny Lewis’s Acid Tongue, and intermittently Jolie Holland’s Living & the Dead.  In the kitchen:  Etta.  In the car:  Tom Gabel and Against Me.  Limited surroundings, tighten up my artistic belt.  Culling the heart from the chaff.  Or something.

Summer was here, and then the beginning of Fall.

There was so much goddamn Wu Tang.  Just relentless.  Take a 12-disc changer, and load it up:  first ensemble record, Method Man, ODB, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface, Wu Tang Forever, and Bobby Digital.  Then, listen to them all the time.  Especially Liquid Swords and ODB.  Jesus.  Driving around Bethesda and DC with no A/C listenin to Meth. 

Eventually . . .  Juliana Hatfield’s How to Walk Away.  “My Baby…”  The Walkmen’s You & Me.  “In the New Year.”  We saw them, and Against Me and then just Tom Gabel. 

Also, I haven’t really played piano since October.  The beginning of it. 

“Auburn and Ivory” by Beach House

 

Hi.  I like what the kids tell me to like.

In college I used to go across the hall to get my new music–Magnetic Fields, Beat Happening, the Microphones–my music dork friend Nick had the low down.  Then I graduated, and thought, how will I find the good stuff?  I was waiting for the students to represent–but it turned out all they listened to was Three Days Grace and Mindless Self Indulgence.  Ugh. 

This year I have a couple students that do it for me.  I don’t understand.  One of them is 17 and listens to Dismemberment Plan, Slint, Shellac, Brainiac–oh, did I mention it’s 2008, not 1999?  Yeah.  The other one knows everything about every single fucking genre, can talk to anyone about anything and make his fellow conversationalist feel as if she’d found her music twin.  But he’s like that with everyone.  Lately he’s taken to just handing me mix CDs he’s made for himself, and saying:  “Here, listen to this.”  One day he handed me Beach House.  Jesus Christ.  It’s just beautiful, sparse, empty, rainy day music to read and go slow by.  It’s about days in my classroom with the lights turned off by all the blinds up so the gray light comes in, and the room gets nice and toasty hot with the curtains closed.  Beach House.  “Come to me and I’ll tell you what’s wrong.  She said:  I’ll wait for you, I’ll wait for once.”  Listen to that song, “Auburn & Ivory,” until you get to that climax.  It’s worth it.  Baltimore represent. 

By the way, this kid listens to Firehose.  Who the fuck listens to Firehose?  What 17-yr-old in 2008?  This world is strange. 

“alright c’mon let’s dance” – and Music Permission for boys

I’ve been listening to this terrible/wonderful band called All Teeth and Knuckles (or ATAK).  It’s a bunch of aimless drunk 20 yr olds in San Francisco making self-obsessed dance music with rhymes on top, that aren’t quite “rhymes” exactly.  “Now I don’t need liquid courage but I still like to drink it / Got enough confidence to kill a small group of children / I’ll come up from behind you, push you off your swingset / Don’t let me near your battleship, cuz I’m gonna sink it.”  It’s brilliant thoughtless use of a drum machine, a Juno, a Korg (I think), and bad mics.  This character named Sick Face Fallon does the vocals, and he is nuts.  You have to have a delusional sense of arrogance to put this out.  But check it out, he’s kind of hot, if you like dirty alcoholics:  the video for “Look So Good.”

“It’s just these girls are in the gym doin push-ups, bra / And then they roll into the clubs wearing push-up bras / There out to be some sort of legal clause / To put a reign on all the L – A – dies without any flaws . . . Uh.”

Their stuff is in my head all the time.  Today it was “Fuck Your Jacket,” which is so juvenile and yet charming.  Is it because I work with high school kids?  Or that I have a sick thing for guys like that?  Listen to that song here. 

 I think constantly about what it means to be a male musician as opposed to a female musician.  I just keep thinking about if you’re a guy you inherit, without seeking it out or even thinking about it, this permission to do whatever the fuck you want with your music.  I’m not knocking on the guys.  I was thinking about this in terms of Animal Collective too.  They have this incredible, almost infinite pallette of sounds to choose from, and they seem so carefree about it.  I guess I just can’t see any girls really putting out anything like this that’s so technically shitty and sloppy, nor can I see any girls geeking out and making crazy computer music a la Panda Bear or Radiohead.  I love that Julie Ruin record because Kathleen Hanna just taught herself how to make a record in her apartment, because she had songs to put out.  Maybe I should just get a drum machine and have done with it. 

“Leaf House” by Animal Collective

 

I can’t get over this song.  I keep listening to it over and over again.  The repetition, wavering vocals.  The real live wooden drums mixed with so much technological fidgetry.  Panda Bear’s vocals when he drops and sings, “Heyyyyyyyy heyyyyyyyy heyyyyyyy heyyyyyyy” so low.  And the build up and release, with the vocals that sound like fire alarms.  What is this song about?  And how can a song be so weird and still be so fucking catchy?  And I wait and wait and wait for the ending, though I can’t fast forward, “No one, there’s no one, no one, no one, there’s no one, no one, no one, there’s no one to say meowwwwwwwwww  (KITTIES!) meowwwwwwww (KITTIES!)”   Dude, what the fuck, why is it so good? 

 And why was everyone already listening to this for the past 7 years, while I’ve been asleep at the wheel?  There’s too much to keep up with. 

Nothing is better than Animal Collective and Panda Bear this week.  The only things I’ve been able to slide into the play list to go along with this stuff is TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain and the unreleased SMiLE recordings by the Beach Boys.  But I just listen to “I Was a Lover” for a second, and then go back to listening to “Did You See the Words.”  Or Jesus, even the high school Panda Bear stuff–I’ve had “Inside a Great Stadium and a Running Race” in my head too.  So there you go. 

 “leaf house”