Zapruder Point
Consumer/Songwriter

Reasons why were partially explained in my “prescript,” but I’m still amazed that I was able to rattle off eight heartily-endorsable albums released this very year, plus a song or two and a band or two, just to round things out. I didn’t even write a top ten last year! Again, as geeky and silly as it seems, it’s important to make these assessments. Top tens re-affirm the worth of all this stuff we pour into our ears; they remind us that it’s not any more fashion than it ever was, that these songs contain nutrients, and we’re smart to ingest them.

Animal Collective — Merriweather Post Pavilion
I was always attracted to the idea of this band, but on earlier albums the kitchen-sink approach grated as often as it beguiled, IMHO. But here, the synthesis of the gorgeous and the confusing seems more complete, more satisfying. Disorienting flushes of rhythm and chords serve the overall buoyancy. A joyous, immersive record.

Pains of Being Pure at Heart — s/t
The JAMC/C86 rips are so seamless that, yeah, you could wonder if there’s any heart under it all, if it’s just a calculated reaping of trendy influences. But the songs are so solid, and the approach so enthusiastic that initial misgivings dissolved by, say, the third listen. If you thought maybe My Bloody Valentine were better BEFORE Loveless…this is your cup of tea, with extra sugar.

Buttercup — The Weather Here
Buttercup is a friend of a friend’s band, and they live in San Antonio and crank out pop records with psychedelic touches. They haven’t gotten wide recognition, but then again, with the music biz being what it is, I’m not sure what that means. So it’s silly to say that they keep getting better “in spite of” their relative obscurity…but they do. These guys do indie in a grand style like the New Pornographers, but with a classic swing like Spoon. And all three of their songwriters keep stepping up their collective game.

John Aselin — Ever Near the Distance
Already wrote about this one, but it bears repeating. My friend John writes hook- and harmony-rich guitar-pop songs that only take up more of your brain as he pares down lengths and arrangements — which is something he’s been doing across the years I’ve known him. Hearing this album is like finding a stack of dateless-yet-classic 45’s — each song honed for maximum impact, yet feeling somehow lived-in and so goddamn cool…

Metrtic — Fantasies
This isn’t a numbered list, but seriously, this is #1, because it sounds like an update of the first Cars album. Catchiest album of the year, easily. I don’t know what makes music “popular” or “pop,” exactly, but surely refrains that jam into your head and never leave would have something to with it…? This is why I like Avril Lavigne and “Party in the U.S.A.” and all, but when that same aggressive hook-hunger is wrapped in an actual band setting…? How exactly is this indie? It’s not. It’s just amazing.

Mos Def — The Ecstatic
I understand Mos Def fell off for a couple albums there, but since I never heard those, it’s hard for me to think of this as a “comeback.” But I picked up the Black Star album this year, and I’ve always been astonished by Black on Both Sides, and so this sounds like business as usual for one of the best MC’s ever. This is a total smorgasbord of styles (both in terms of flow and production), peppered with rewind-worthy lyrics and a defiantly spiritual backbone.

The Thermals — Now We Can See
With the leap from Fuckin’ A to The Body, the Blood, the Machine, The Thermals were suddenly a band I would always follow. They have not added strings, they sound pretty much like a live trio, and the singer yelps more than he actually sings. I guess you could say they are about as far from “orchestral pop” as you can get. But somehow, this stuff moves me. Sometimes like a pep rally (“I Let It Go”), sometimes like an ode (“At the Bottom of the Sea”), but always as sure as three well-placed chords can, if you’re lucky.

Amon Amarth — Twilight of the Thunder God
My palette widens apace. All thanks to my North Carolina friend Chris, who spoke through my brother Scott to alert me to what has become…somehow…the first heavy metal album I’ve ever managed to thoroughly enjoy without irony. What’s even cooler is that it’s caused me to re-assess metal in general: Isn’t head-banging just a more emphatic version of toe-tapping? I mean, this stuff is catchy, and it makes me smile, and it is, as music has always been for me, a legitimate source of energy. That I could have these revelations in spite of the “Cookie Monster” vocal stylings is maybe the best praise I could offer, so I’ll leave it at that.

Atlas Sound [Ft. Laetita Sadier] — “Quick Canal”
A grand swelling rhythm, like early Spiritualized, and then the French lady from Stereolab sings stuff, and then the whole thing is drowned by waves of sound that might be guitar but is definitely shoegaze. And it takes more than eight minutes and yet I just want to hit repeat when it’s done. This won’t mean anything, but it’s MOST like something from Pink Machine by Reservoir. Headphone-friendly, leagues-deep stuff.

Mew — And the Glass-Handed Kites
&
St. Vincent — Actor
The Mew record is from 2006, and they had a new one come out this year, but this is so dense and internally inexplicable to me that I’m forcing myself to take my time here. Not since OK Computer have I heard an album so seemingly sourceless, so influence-free. I mean, it also rocks. And it’s also pretty. And it seems ever on the brink of pretension, but it forges ahead with such confidence that I’m sure they’re onto something, and I’m just totally enthralled by it. St. Vincent I just picked up, and I’ve only heard it a couple times, but even then I can tell it deserves to be here. I’m sure most people reading this have read other praise, so I’ll limit mine to suggesting that St. Vincent is the closest thing I’ve heard to a torch-bearer for Tori Amos.

This Machine Kills Wackness.

This session snuck up on me to some extent. New song ideas have been coming so thick lately that I’ve just been messing around with those more than brushing up on the two songs for Wednesday recording. My hope was that just being comfortable with my instrument in general would be enough, and I was basically right.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Got to the spot at 5:30 with amp in tow. John likes the sound of it, as do I (of course), but he still twinned it with a more reverb-laden unit. More importantly, he let me borrow a beloved 1961 Gibson to play for the evening. Once again, playing a B minor on that was easy as pie, sounded great, and great googly moogly, I have to get a real guitar.

Dramatization.

We started with “Here Comes the Sun” (not a cover), and we got it in about three takes. It helps that the song basically has just one “part” — played slowly at first, then quickly at the end. Both Larry and John got it right away, and it was beautiful. Better yet, we actually got a “scratch” vocal that’s totally usable. That’s right, man. LIVE VOCALS in the trio setting. Very exciting.

Next came the long “country” number, “You Are Not Your Own.” We did nine takes, not including turfed-out half-takes. It was pretty rigorous, but different than the last time. My fingers weren’t hurting at all; I was well-comfortable with the guitar. I was just getting tired in general, and there was so much to remember in the end. I mean, this song is a long (for me) rambling thing, but we needed to have at least a loose map of the dynamics, so we sort of cooked up breaks and builds on the spot, then ran into it. Again and again.

No pedals were harmed -- or used, really -- in the making of this recording.

Larry had to jet at 10:00, and at about a quarter til, we got our “keeper.” No decent vocals this time, and I’ll have to record a second guitar, but otherwise, the spirit was totally there, and John and Larry nailed it. It was a long night — so long that here on the next day, my prose isn’t exactly sparkling. But fun was definitely had, and we did some good work, and I can’t thank those guys enough.

These tracks will likely be a part of whatever “project” is next for me, though how that will come together is a mystery to me. CD again? Maybe a vinyl EP? Maybe nothing physical for once? Much to discuss and decide.

I was tempted to start this by saying that 2009 was the year I stopped buying CDs, but of course it’s not as simple as that. Labels will continue making packages that are only available in that format, smaller bands appreciate the relative cost of manufacturing CDs (as compared to vinyl [if they offer a physical product at all]), etc.

More thorny, though, are those bands caught “in between” my preferred formats as they’ve switched. For example, I really liked Camera Obscura’s Let’s Get Out of This Country from two or three years ago. And, it being two or three years ago, what I picked up was a CD copy. But this year, they released a follow-up, and I’m not sure whether to commit to a vinyl copy…or go the more cautious route of getting it on eMusic. But CD? That middle thing? In 2009, in so many instances, this has felt silly to me in a way it never used to.

(Camera Obscura’s a recent, one-album, case. For bands I’ve known and felt deeply through several compact disc releases, it gets a bit weirder. These have been “CD bands” to me, and perverse as it sounds, I’d like to keep it that way. I mean, I don’t want to switch format horses at what might be the midpoint of the Decemberists’ library. Ditto for Ted Leo, double for my Johnny Cash — the closest thing to a “collection” of any single artist I have. This is a weird tick that I hope will work itself out…but we’ll see.)

As for MP3s, well. Last night I was looking over The Onion’s year-end top 25 list, and I found myself gazing at the cover of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, sort of basking in the recognition of that icon, letting it trigger memories of the songs therein… And this will sound like the smallest, dumbest thing, but I experienced warm and fuzzy feelings without any follow-up anxiety over the fact that I “only” have that album in MP3 format.

I think the anxiety’s gone and I feel relaxed about it because there are quite a few new albums I’ve experienced this year after obtaining them online.  But the important thing is that, once obtained, I still experienced them fully as albums. I think there’s always been a part of me that’s felt paranoid about MP3s, that these shards of song will somehow, by their very fragmentary nature, break my albums apart. But it turns out that this ALBUM part of me is impossible to shatter. Feeling that, I can relax, and turn on to some amazing stuff in the process.  Just like in the old days.  I guess.  This stuff is so obvious to many of you fine people, but what the heck…

[End of rant proper, but...]

A postscript about what I mean when I say “obtained online.” I don’t mean filesharing, because 1) I’m not poor any more, 2) I’m not in a race to hear things before they’re “officially” released, and 3) filesharing software seems clunky, and there’s no guarantee that what you get won’t sound like total shit and/or will have the right credits and/or artwork, etc. In other words, even at “free,” the cost/benefit analysis just doesn’t work out for me.

I also don’t mean iTunes, because while I’ve admitted here to being cool with the format, $.99 per MP3 (or even $9.99 per MP3 album) still seems like a high price-point for a non-physical thing that doesn’t even create spreadsheets. Right? It just seems nuts that something we can all SEE doesn’t need to be warehoused on a shelf…and doesn’t need to be shipped to my door…should cost anywhere near something that DOES. I am merely saying this.

Lastly, I don’t mean Rhapsody. Because while many of my friends, erm, rhapsodize about the service, the idea of relying on an internet connection to listen to music strikes me as a headache waiting to happen.

But eMusic. Oh, eMusic. I pay something like $17 a month to download four or five albums. This is an agreeable price-point, and I really look forward to that day each month when my credits are replenished and I can “pick up” whatever albums I’ve read about and bookmarked. It’s really eMusic’s album-centric site and service that’s eased me into the world of purely digital music. They integrate with Allmusic, they offer plentiful editorial content (“guides” to west coast hip-hop and whatnot), and their selection is crazy huge.

So thanks to them, and thanks to you, and stay tuned for a possible top 10 or two.

Weird couple of weeks there. At first weird in a good way — home again to Cleveland for Thanksgiving with family and friends. (I have footage of me and Scott doing a song there, which I hope to post as a “happy holidays” message closer to the New Year.) But then almost the whole week after that, Amy and I went into Renegade Craft Fair prep mode. I built a display frame thing for hanging scarves and stuff, and Amy made more scarves and other wares to sell. (Check out her stuff at her Etsy shop.) On Saturday, we set up shop…but Amy’s back wasn’t feeling too good.

The next morning, it was twice as bad, and so I took her to the emergency room. This meant skipping day two of selling crafts at the fair…but a few hundred bucks isn’t worth Amy hurting herself any more than she already was.  The doctor said it was a muscle thing — not a bone or spine thing — which is reassuring in a left-handed sort of way. She got some great drugs and she’s been all Dazed and Confused up in here for the past couple days. She’s got a follow-up at the doctor’s Friday, so we’ll have a better sense of what’s actually wrong. Where was I going with this?

Well, speaking of not knowing where you’re going with this, I saw Canasta at the Beat Kitchen in the middle there — Saturday night. Very inspiring, as their new jams (one of which is called “I Don’t Know Where I was Going with This,” natch) are, like, way more rocking than I recall Canasta being before. A lot of it revolves around their new drummer, who’s…just…insane. Like Fab from the Strokes crossed with Lol from Ride. A controlled hurricane, if you will. It got me going.

But seriously, where? Oh yeah. Much to my surprise, Larry didn’t have an engagement a week from tonight, and so me and him and John are going to record again. In preparation, I recorded quick demos of the two songs we’re going to attempt…and in the process, ALMOST A WHOLE DANG OTHER SONG POPPED OUT. Which is a relief, since one of the John and Larry songs has like a million words and has taken a year to get together, just about. Some come fast, others come slow. But then in the shower some lyrics for this other sketchy thing came together..and it’s just like…I’ve been…EN FUEGO…for the last few days.

I still have to get a freaking show, though. That end of things still sags depressingly, of course. I have a strategy, for whatever that’s worth. But it requires…gulp…effort. Don’t worry, I’ll do it. My hope is that all this creative upswinging will serve to bolster me to do the gig-grubbing. You see, when I’m on fire with the songwriting and the practicing and the recording, I tend to feel more like a “real” musician…who therefore deserves real gigs. So I feel like less of a heel asking for them, and so I can actually do it without stuttering. So to speak.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know.  Burn out the days.  Burn out the nights.  And so forth.

This past spring, I was honored to be asked to submit to the latest Coverville tribute project, Unhenged, wherein various indie artists take on songs by Spinal Tap. Initially, I thought it would be cute to do “Cups and Cakes.” Then for one weekend, when I realized how many chords it had, I was terrified. Then I just started recording, and it all fell into place, and I was delighted beyond belief. You can download the project at the link above.  The inimitable Brian Ibbott at Coverville has set up a “Radiohead model” wherein you can donate what you like.

That’s two “whereins” in one post. I think that means I’m done. But do check this out — it’s pretty spectacular!