52 Albums a Year: January 2016

What Should I Listen To for Week 5? In Search of Harperfield by Emma Pollock

11:35 AM

I'm at an impasse.

I was originally planning on listening to Bloc Party's new album Hymns this week because I fall into the camp of people who naively think they will return to their roots. I started testing the waters this morning and have already thrown in the towel. Their first album, Silent Alarm, was released in 2005, and played a large role in elevating my energy levels enough for me to graduate from high school. Hymns is a bit of a let down in that department.

It's rare that I ever agree with any music critic (which is strange, because I actually feed on hyperbole), but Consequence of Sound hits the nail on the head when they say "Don't come looking for the old Bloc Party." I refuse to read what Pitchfork has to say altogether. While I agree that the new Bloc Party is lackluster, I'm not interested in having my fond memories of driving around with my sister and blasting Helicopter de-legitimized by a site that uses phrases like "a nicotine-stained quality" to describe an album.

Anyway, with Bloc Party behind me some new options have opened up. I really like what I've listened to on each of them, and might end up listening to them all, honestly. But for the sake of numbers, please help me pick one. I suffer from crippling indecisiveness.

UPDATE: 1/31/16

Two benevolent Twitter souls voted on my lonely poll. I kept alternating between the above four albums and I absolutely could not decide, so I decided asking random people on the internet would be a great way to put it to rest.

I'm listening to 1 new album a week for 2016. Which artist's new release should I check out next? #NewMusicFriday
— Cait Cliff (@Cait__Cliff) January 29, 2016

I was really excited when I learned that Emma Pollock was a member of The Delgados, a band I discovered right as they were breaking up in 2005. I spent a lot of time listening to The Light Before We Land on loop, while I tried to figure out how I was unlucky enough to jump on a bandwagon that had been going since 1995 and was ready to stop once I got on board. Maybe In Search of Harperfield will fill an 11 year void for me. We'll see.

Country

Passionate Kisses, Country Music & Covers

9:35 AM

I think it would surprise some people to learn that my first concert was to see Mary Chapin Carpenter, a country artist. I've never self-identified as a fan of the genre, which is interesting considering so much of what I enjoy now has deep roots in it: namely folk, bluegrass and the blues. To be fair, it was 1992: a time before I understood things like genres, judging people or how to take a dump without supervision. My age aside, I still have some vivid memories of seeing her perform, which are as follows:

It was a seated venue
I got to take flowers up to the stage
There were no snacks allowed (Don’t worry, I smuggled in a blunt and some Dunkaroos in the cuffs of my Osh-Kosh overalls)
I pooped my pants and was escorted out of the theater

Could I name a song from the set list? Nope. Do I remember how I got there? Not a clue, but a car seat was involved. Honestly, the experience doesn’t differ all that much from when I got to see Tame Impala last year, except I didn't spill a $10 beer on myself.

'92 was my year

I was really surprised in High School when I finally realized that Mary was considered a country artist and wasn't just my mom's "stress-cleaning music." Instead of triggering the usual feelings of disgust I got from dialing past Achy-Breaky heart on the radio, it mainly served as a warning siren to retreat into hiding until the scent of bleach had dissipated.

Similar to a child that realizes that their hamster did not live to be 13, and was in fact 6 separate hamsters, one day when I was listening to the Dixie Chicks’ cover of Landslide, it finally dawned on me that I had been unknowingly listening to country music my entire life. I was terrified that someone would realize I was a hypocrite, and my carefully curated aesthetic of “cool” would be destroyed.

Calm. Cool. Collected. Even Hufflepuff didn't want me.

To this day, whenever Passionate Kisses comes on in public I get all Pavlov’s dogs-y, and have been known to impulsively deep-clean the nearest bathroom. I have since come to terms with my love for Mary’s music, but I’m still working on how I feel about country music in general. It's complicated.

If you ask any person why they don't like a whole genre of music, you'll get a variety of answers:

“It’s too depressing”
“I can’t dance to it,”
“There’s too much harmonica.”
“I’m not racist but [insert something racist]”
“I just don’t.”

Personally, I can't get on board with an entire genre that promotes fishing (boring) and wearing cut-offs (unflattering).

Even if that's the case, I'm not too proud to recognize a song that has good bones. Passionate Kisses is one of those songs.

Interestingly enough, I later learned that it was actually not written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, but by the great Lucinda Williams. Lucinda may have written it, but I would argue that Mary saw its potential and made it popular.

The reason I wanted to write about this song at all is because I recently came across a cross-genre cover by Saintseneca and it really sealed the deal for me. Their version is easily my favorite because it invokes a lot of the same emotion as its predecessors, but completely skyrockets with energy. Mary and Lucinda each set a conversational tone, imploring that they deserve all the simple creature comforts that life has to offer. Saintseneca manages to take the same lyrics and sound positively joyful as they demand it. Also, you can pretty much get me on board with any song that has people singing loudly in unison. Even when it's kitschy, all I think about is how they sound like they're having a lot more fun than I am.

Saintseneca performing as part of NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series in 2014

By the end, Zac Little, Maryn Jones and the whole gang are shouting, and I'm in my car and I'm shouting too: "Shouldn't I have all of this?!"

You don't have to like any of this, but you should be able to appreciate a song's integrity if it can sound different when performed by two wildly different country artists, and then be completely renewed again when covered by a modern folk-rock group from Ohio. It feels like fate that a song that is so integral to my childhood has been reborn by a band that reflects my current tastes.

I will always despise the Confederate flag, the second amendment, and that one time I accidentally rode in a pickup truck, but I am all about country music if its songs have the potential to be this versatile.

Album Club

Week 4: Curve of the Earth by Mystery Jets

9:28 AM

8 Tracks

15 Tracks For A Cozy Winter Day Spent Contemplating Your Mortality

11:22 PM

Rambling

Song Exploder, The Commander Thinks Aloud & How to Make an Ohioan Cry

2:52 PM

I have successfully found an enclave of young people ("young" being subjective) who have a shared love of NPR and podcasts. Because this is a music blog, I won’t delve into a 30 minute breakdown of my take on Serial and the probability of Adnan’s guilt versus innocence, and you will be spared from any offensive Diane Rehm impressions. I want to talk about a particular music-related podcast and a song that I discovered because of it.

The podcast in question is called Song Exploder. I LOVE Song Exploder. I feel like someone saw into my brain and made it just for me. If you know anything about me (nobody knows this) I enjoy re-listening to songs that I love as many times as there are layered tracks. I start by plopping on my trusty ol' Bose headphones¹ and I give the song a listen focusing on each layer (bass, vocal harmonies, melody, percussion, harpsichord, horn section, and what-have-you) and then when I’ve listened as many times as necessary, I pat myself on the back and say “no one is as cultured as you are.”’

Song Exploder is amazing because Hrishikesh Hirway, the host and producer does all the work and breaks down the song into pieces for you. He then interviews the artist in question who explains their creative process for each sound and decision. He covers everything: from the Bob’s Burger’s theme song to the sexy evil that is War Paint’s Love Is To Die.

Sometime last year I made my way down the episode queue for the first time and randomly selected this song: The Commander Thinks Aloud by The Long Winters. To be honest, I had never heard of this band, and I’m pretty sure that if I heard this song playing at Starbucks I wouldn’t even bother to dig my iPhone out of my behemoth purse to Shazaam² it. The song only has 3 chords. There’s no guitar. It is pretty much the antithesis of all the music that I love.

At this point you’re probably like “Wow, I’m sold! I’m going to look this up right now!”

But wait, there’s more! Before I really delve into the song itself, I want to give some context. i.e. a peek into my glamorous life. I want to try and write about songs and connect them to an anecdote. I do this not because it’s super-relevant, but because I am an unforgivable narcissist. I promise that what I’m about to say is mostly relevant³.

Anyone that is a true Ohioan is a lover of all things space-related. And I don’t mean an “I am obsessed with a good Cab-Sauv!” type of love. I mean that if you’re from Ohio, there’s a good chance you have a Mexican prayer candle of Neil Armstrong on your nightstand.

Here are some personal examples of this bond:

I once went to an Obama rally because John Glenn was speaking at it. He is as old as the hills, and I could barely understand him, but I wept sweet tears of pure Ohio corn syrup at the very sight of him. (Also, I love Obama too. If this is upsetting to you, I don't care.)
My number one fear of dying is being ejected into the vacuum of space and spinning off into oblivion like George Clooney in Gravity⁴. However, since I actually live in Cincinnati and not on the I.S.S. I will probably just croak in my mid-forties due to pollutant exposure from the Ohio River.
One time when I was playing apples to apples with a fellow Ohioan, he cried because someone jokingly played the card “the Challenger Explosion” when the green card was "hot" (It was my boyfriend).

If you’re from Ohio and cannot identify with anything I’m saying, please turn in your pink driver’s licence at the border. If you have finally gotten your license renewed and have a blue one now, you definitely don't deserve the upgrade.

The hotly contested issue of the decade. John Kasich couldn't handle a pink driver's license, so he definitely can't handle the presidency. That's right, I just got divisively political twice.

None of what I’m saying is meant to be funny. We get to brag about very little in this state. Corn? Good thing we have all these husks around to wipe our tears away. Swing state? It’s nice to be noticed every 4 years. Warren G. Harding? Ah yes, another old white republican of distinction to set us apart (That's THRICE, bitch).

Despite our shameful landscape, we have produced a TON of astronauts. 24 to be exact. These people are our pride and joy, and the internet still manages to turn our only asset into a depressing meme.

If you are like Patrick Star and literally grew up under a rock and don't know what an astronaut is, go marathon The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 back to back right now. Ed Harris is in both of those movies! ED HARRIS.

THE PART WHERE I ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE SONG

Since this is not a film blog, I will move on. If you don’t have 7 hours to marathon 2 movies about mankind’s many attempts to understand the majestic wonder that is the unexplored universe, but you still want to experience that emotional pit of fear of the unknown in your chest, listen to this song. It’s about the Columbia Disaster in 2003 and the artist’s initial reaction to what it must have felt like to have been one of the 7 crew members aboard.

This song is about perspective, and is completely carried by the artist's emotion.

This is what makes the song both amazing and still an enigma to me. Musically speaking, it’s not complex or layered. John Roderick’s singing skills are nothing to write home about. Lyrically, there are only 15 lines of verse. There isn’t really even a chorus. And on a scale from 1 to Gilbert and Sullivan we’re dealing with pretty average vocabulary. I think the phrase “The Tropic of Capricorn” is as flowery as it gets.

Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here about emotion and songwriting. I am not saying that if you can make me weep, your song is good. To see a counter-example, please refer to the Christmas Shoes song that plays roughly 12 times per hour during the holidays. Or don’t, because that song is probably one of the worst songs ever penned, green-lighted, recorded, performed and consumed. It is worse than chronic tinnitus⁵.

The Commander Thinks Aloud is subtle sadness. It builds. It is acceptance of the unknown. It is hesitation. It is both fear AND wonder. Honestly, if 3:30 onward doesn’t make you tear up even a little bit, I suggest you consult someone regarding your toaster⁶ tendencies.
Finally, I would like to point out that this song is 10 years old. Many of you⁷ might be thinking “this is a really long-winded review with more tangents than actual substance AND it’s not even current. Also, she talks more about herself than the actual song.”

To that I say, I’m sorry you expected anything else.

If I didn’t completely turn you off to music with my crap writing, check out the Song Exploder episode of The Commander Thinks Aloud here.

1 Fuck Beats. That’s right. I said it. Are they cooler looking? Definitely. But NO ONE needs that much bass all the time. Sometimes I want to listen to Iron & Wine, and those headphones just aren’t going to do the job. This is a footnote intervention, and I’m telling you that you need more balance in your life.^↩
2 Do people still use Shazaam? Is that a dated reference? I still use Shazaam.^↩
3 This is a lie.^↩
4 It’s not a spoiler if the movie has been out for at least a year. Sorry, I guess.^↩
5 I’m sorry if you actually have tinnitus. Archer made it funny, not me.^↩
6 Seriously, you’ve never watched Battlestar Galactica either?^↩
7 If even one person is reading this that isn’t my dad, I am genuinely surprised.^↩

Album Club

Week 3: Not to Disappear by Daughter

10:19 AM

Album of the Week

Week 2: Blackstar by David Bowie

10:51 AM

Engine Driver

The Decemberists, Engine Driver, & The Angst of Teenage Musicianhood

9:50 AM

Disclaimer: When I'm not writing my weekly album updates, I want to take a stab at writing about some things in music that define my mediocre personality. If you follow me on twitter, you might as well turn back now. This is just me being unfunny without a character limit.

The song "Engine Driver" by The Decemberists has a particularly special place in my heart because it was the first I ever learned to play on the guitar. Being a music-obsessed teenager is a rite-of passage, but being a teenage musician takes that pretentiousness and multiplies it by infinity. Before I delve into the melancholy that is this band and how they've made me one of the most insufferable people to make small-talk with, let me give you a brief history of my guitar-ing and what led me to this particular song.

Long ago in the early 2000’s, my dad bought me a classical guitar at a garage sale. My father is a dedicated guitar-player, and has given me an incredible music education over the course of my life. Despite all this, the road to my musical competence wasn’t easy for him when I was a tween.

I was a whiner, my pride and joy was a razor scooter, and I was completely consumed by trying to convince my mom that I was old enough for Abercrombie, when I was simultaneously still too scared to sleep with my door closed. You would think that this was more baggage than any parent would be willing to take on, but for some reason my behavior never stopped my dad from trying to mold me into a less disappointing child. In his mind, the nylon strings of a classical guitar would be perfect for my delicate fingers and simple mind.

Exhibit A: The year is 1999. Fashion has run amok. My father is so done he can't even open his eyes. He is tired because 1. I am a nuisance and 2. He just finished filming "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." I am maintaining fierce eye-contact even though I've done nothing with my life and have exactly zero things to be smirking about.

Unfortunately for him, I decided about 10 minutes into learning a D-chord that the guitar is hella difficult and wasn't for me. Why would anyone even try if you could just smack down on some piano keys and produce the same notes?

I spent the next few years playing exclusively Somewhere Only We Know on the piano while the guitar gathered dust in a case that I had prematurely bedazzled (i.e. why 12-year-olds don’t deserve any possessions) until I neared the end of high school. My father didn’t look at me for 6 years. I developed a Mulan complex¹.

The summer before my senior year of high school, I came to two important realizations:

1. I had signed up for way too many AP courses considering I never planned on amounting to very much
2. People that play guitar are objectively hotter than people who don't

Photo Cred: Getty Images
Singer, song-writer, guitar-master and seductress Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, proving my point

Photo cred: One of the dark corners of the internet
Also proving my point is this gangly, piano-man I have named Gene. I don’t know him, but I’ve created a life for him in my head, and it’s not good.

Mid-Puberty, I awkwardly realized that if I ever wanted to become the hot, nose-ringed and musically savvy chick that I always dreamed of being in college², I needed to learn how to play something that wasn’t Wonderwall on an instrument that was portable enough to carry around with me and my ego. Not looking at you, piano, keeper of my virginity. The guitar was my ticket.

This brings us to Engine Driver: Let’s not mistake it for being the first song that I wanted to learn how to play. Nobody just picks up a guitar for the first time and knows how to play like Lindsey Buckingham.³

Regardless of this, Engine Driver has the perfect blend of learnable chords, angsty lyrics (Colin Meloy says “rid you from my bones” 7 times) and the verse/chorus/verse/bridge format that makes it accessible to the fresh-faced babes looking to make waves at coffee shops that have open-mic-nights (rated 3-stars or less on Yelp), and gatherings where people are high, but not really drinking that much. You better believe I learned the hell out of those five chords and played them every chance I could get. These chords were a gateway to songs by Bon Iver, The Shins & the beloved cross-genre acoustic cover of "Hey Ya"

Here is a photo to illustrate that my infantile college dream was briefly realized until my mother disowned me and my face. This is me and my boyfriend the night we met. I wooed him with a combination of a new nose ring, a disdain for smiling in photos, and a proficiency in bar chords.

If the walls of my dorm could have come to life, they would have smothered me in my loft-bed with my body pillow.

The moral of this story is that I like music, and college turns us all into assholes.

On a completely serious-ish note, by starting this blog I want to make one actual point : I am a Decemberists nut and will love them eternally, even if in a future life I am reincarnated as Garth Brook's dog.

Anything I say I love, I promise I don’t love as much as these morose, Portland-dwelling weirdos. To elaborate: I follow Colin Meloy’s wife on Instagram because she posts a ton of photos of the inside of their house with their children. I re-watch the Portlandia sketches featuring Sparkle Pony probably on a weekly basis. I cried when I found out Jenny Conlee had breast cancer. What I’ve got going on is not healthy.

I recognize this, and yet I am still unapologetic. Instead, I will do what I do best: overshare to friends, coworkers, loved-ones, and complete strangers. Seriously, you wouldn't believe how many close friends I've made standing in the bathroom line at a bar.

What I’m saying is that you should love them too. I totally get that it’s 2016 and this is not a secret underground band that no one has heard of. I’m sure they’ve made it on to your Death Cab Pandora station more times than you would like and you’re like “come on, music algorithm, these guys aren’t that similar!”.

Although persuasion is my goal, ultimately I understand that everyone reading this most-likely has a firm opinion on this band already.

They are as follows:

1. Not a top 40? Why am I even reading this? Wait, is this a blog? Where did my pinterest tab go?
2. Twee as hell
3. Are they the group that has like, 20 sea-shanties about assault?
4. I un-ironically love whimsy.

I hope you will continue to read what I have to say, even though I used the words "twee" and "whimsy" in one post. That's how it has to be.

XOXO,

Not Gossip Girl

(but still likes gossip)

Colin Meloy, casually busking Engine Driver in Brooklyn

1 Insisting on being the most independent woman there ever was, while simultaneously needing validation from her parents. The U.S. was already liberated from the Huns at this time, so I didn't have that much to do. ^↩
2 Don't worry. I have since read "Gone Girl" and no longer subscribe to the "cool girl" philosophy.^↩
3 Too many people have seen me over-imbibe and dance to "Dreams" for me to talk any more about Fleetwood Mac in any capacity. Shout out to Red River Gorge Trip 2015. ^↩