The Opening Acts

This is the final part.  Part One can be found here. Part Two is over here. 

Of note:  The Gigi song is a very last-minute entry, as I heard it for the first time just a couple days ago. Other than the description over at Fluxblog (where I found the song), I don’t know anything else about this band. It flows nicely into the A Camp song that follows, though.

As stated in the prior parts, if you like what you hear, please spread some holiday cheer to the artists by purchasing the albums that feature these songs (or pre-order the Gigi album, as it doesn’t come out ’til next year).  If you don’t like what you hear, kindly go to hell.

1) Gigi – I’m Not Coming Out Tonight
2) A Camp – Love Has Left The Room
3) Loney, Dear – Summers
4) Richard Hawley – Remorse Code
5) WHY? – This Blackest Purse
6) The Antlers – Two

If you have any opinions on my choices (i.e. telling me how awesome my tastes are, or suggesting better songs from the artists chosen, or expressing utter shock at my too-cool-for-school lack of Girls, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, Phoenix, or Grizzly Bear on this list), let me know in the comments. 

Previous End Of Whateverness:
The Opening Acts’ Obligatory Album Of The Decade Post: Carl’s Choice
The Opening Acts’ Obligatory Album Of The Decade Post: Tyge’s Choice
The Opening Acts’ Obligatory Band Of The Decade Post: Carl’s Choice
The Opening Acts’ Obligatory Band Of The Decade Post: Tyge’s Choice
The Opening Acts’ Obligatory Songs Of The Decade Post: Carl’s Choices

On Wednesday, Chromewaves posted an article which – at the very bottom – had five songs from the fine Albertans of Woodpigeon. Two of those tracks were covers of songs by The Magnetic Fields. Both are from the 69 Love Songs album. Both also happen to be amongst my least favorite songs from that collection, so they didn’t make much of an impression on me (A for effort, though).

It did, however, get me thinking about other bands that have covered Stephin Merritt’s songs.  A quick scan of my music collection yielded a lot more songs than I expected (it helps that my favorite band – The Divine Comedy – has covered 3 songs from Get Lost, along with The Gothic Archies’ “The Dead Only Quickly”).  A further bit of internet digging yielded several more results.

I ended up with 18 songs.  Rather than bombard you with all of them at once, I’m gonna split things up and post a batch of them for the next three Sundays (or four, if I can stumble upon more).  Here’s the first bunch for your enjoyment:

1) !!! – Take Ecstasy With Me
2) The Lucksmiths – Deep See Diving Suit
3) Lush – I Have The Moon
4) The Antlers & Sharon Van Etten – Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing
5) The Divine Comedy – With Whom To Dance?

Like I said earlier, I’m gonna keep searching around for more.  If you’ve ever recorded a Magnetic Fields cover and think it warrants being part of this feature, send it my way.

so hot

Sometimes, the musical accompaniment for coitus is selected to set the mood. Sometimes – as with my Magnetic Fields example – it’s mainly selected so that your roommate doesn’t have to hear the sound you make when you have an orgasm. This is another example of the latter.

The new album from The Antlers, Hospice, was released recently. Every review that I’ve skimmed across alludes to the fact that it’s a pretty serious album – a concept piece about hospitals or bears or something like that (or a very melodramatic person running an extended metaphor about being dumped by a hipster waif to the ground – guess I should’ve done more than skim the reviews).  I mean, the first song is called ‘Prologue’ and the last song is called ‘Epilogue’.  That’s not just the mark of a serious album – shit, that’s the mark of an IMPORTANT ALBUM.  Primary Antler, Peter Silberman, has poured his heart out all over these songs.  If you’ve ever related with any of the emotions laid bare on this record, then it’s very likely that you’ll connect with this album to the point that it will become not just a personal favorite, but an album that you’ll always be reaching for whenever life’s miseries become too much and all you need is some aural catharsis to make things a little more tolerable.

But can you fuck to it?

Well, really, you can fuck to pretty much anything (at least, I can).  In hindsight, though, I probably should have picked a better album.  When you’re picking music specifically for the sake of drowning out some of the sounds that are escaping underneath the door, it’s best to avoid an album that doesn’t turn up the volume until almost ten minutes in (this would be during the first chorus of the third track, ‘Sylvia’).  Heck, there aren’t even any drums until halfway through the second song (the prologue was TOO IMPORTANT for drums).

This is a recurring problem with the album.  The nice and loud moments are few and far between.  Just when you think it’s OK to moan and groan to your heart’s content, the noise dies out.  This is then followed by a seemingly-endless stretch of atmospherics before the next loud moment comes along.  This pattern continues throughout the entire album.  After ‘Sylvia’, you get 7 minutes of nothing, followed by the downright-jaunty ‘Bear’, then back to nothing, then the mind-blowing ‘Two’, and then it’s pretty much downhill from there.

If you and your partner are the quiet type, then it’s obviously not much of a problem.  If your partner happens to be as loud as anyone you’ve ever been with, then this isn’t the album to choose.  Then again, if your partner happens to be as loud as anyone you’ve ever been with, no album will effectively help keep their screams from escaping the bedroom (maybe Slayer?).

With that said, I will now humbly apologize to my roommate:

Sorry, Stuart.

So why did I pick this album for such a situation?  Because the only song that I heard beforehand was ‘Two’.  Since the Arcade Fire comparisons have been hot-and-heavy with this band, I was expecting more anthems, I guess (as a side note, I must say that the Arcade Fire comparison is unwarranted, as their is not one single moment in this album where everybody in the band sings at the same time).  When my fair lady (who, I might add, is aware that I’m writing this) asked me to play something that I liked, ‘Two’ was the first thing that came to my mind. Shoulda gone with the P-Funk instead.

Here’s ‘Two’, by the way.  You’ve heard it already.

The Antlers – Two

The Antlers – Two

That is all.

[Tip o' the hat to Stereogum.]