The Opening Acts

A friend of mine has been having a hard time lately getting to sleep. I first offered to help her by calling every night before bedtime and talking to her for awhile, as my affection-less monotone can put anyone to sleep within a couple minutes.  After mutually deeming that to be a stupid idea, I went with my second option:  a mix CD of quiet (but not boring) songs from my favorite bands.  Here’s what I came up with:

1) Micah P. Hinson – Seems Almost Impossible
2) Tindersticks – Until The Morning Comes
3) Papa M – Wild Mountain Thyme
4) Screen Prints – Her Name I Can’t Remember
5) Graham Coxon – All Has Gone
6) The Clientele – The Queen Of Seville
7) Lambchop – Greylines In Heaven
8) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – At The Break Of Day
9) Yo La Tengo – The Whole Of The Law
10) Okkervil River – Yellow
11) The Pernice Brothers – Wherein Obscurely
12) Alela Diane – Lady Divine
13) Gordon Downie – Insomniacs Of The World, Good Night

If you’ve got any songs or albums that help you fall off into dreamland, let me know in the comments.

Part One can be found here.

One thing of note: My favorite song of the year can be found within the over-falsettoed mess that is “The Night, The Night” by Chet. As outlined in this prior post, there is a 70-second stretch of pure beauty that begins at around the 1:38 mark.  Though I’m indifferent towards the rest of the song, those 70 seconds got stuck in my head like nothing else this year.

If you like what you hear, go out and purchase the albums which contain these songs.  If you don’t like what you hear, then you’re a disgrace to society (although I guess it’s okay if you don’t like the parts of the Chet song that I don’t care for – we’ll call truce on that one).

Enjoy.

1) Chet – The Night, The Night
2) Amy Millan – Old Perfume
3) The Rosie Taylor Project – Lovers Or Something Like It
4) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Skeletons (Acoustic)
5) Múm – Hullaballabalú
6) Yo La Tengo – More Stars Than There Are In Heaven 

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

There are at least 17,000 post-millenial songs in my various hard drives. I listened to every single one of them yesterday afternoon, and picked out the fifteen best songs.

Some things:

- The first half of the second sentence above is a complete lie. I actually spent about an hour on this.
- This is obviously not in any way comprehensive, as I have neither the time nor inclination to make some massive, 500 song list that would better represent the music of the decade.  My sole objective was to make a mix that flowed nicely together. 
- We’ve already covered Gordon Downie, The National, and Richard Hawley in prior end-of-decade posts (see links below), so I’ve left them out.
- Favorite songs from 2009 are getting their own post, probably next Sunday, so they’re left out too.
- I love Stars and think the songs that comprise the first half of Set Yourself On Fire are damn-near perfect. However, I think Memphis’ “Incredibly Drunk On Whiskey” is even better, so the side-project wins out.
- I am not a Sufjan Stevens fan.  You could correctly say that I absolutely can not stand him. But I’ve got to give him props for “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!” – that’s just a wonderful song. The rest of that album gets on my fucking nerves, though.
- In doing a little bit of research – mainly to make sure that some of the earlier songs on here were released after 1999 – I came across this Pitchfork review for Lambchop’s Nixon. The writer is a fucking moron.
- If you like what you hear, please purchase the albums which feature these songs.
- If I had to pick 1 of these as my song of the decade, it would be the last one.

Press ‘Play’ on the Yahoo Media Thingy at the bottom left to listen to it as a mix. Or just listen to your favorites. Either way, enjoy the songs.

1) Lambchop – The Old Gold Shoe 
2) Beulah – A Good Man Is Easy To Kill
3) Pas/Cal – Poor Maude
4) Sufjan Stevens – Come On! Feel The Illinoise!
5) Memphis – Incredibly Drunk On Whiskey
6) Yo La Tengo – Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House
7) Sigur Ros – Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur
8) Okkervil River – The War Criminal Rises And Speaks
9) Broken Social Scene – Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (KCRW Session 11-08-05)
10) Destroyer – Your Blood
11) The Spinto Band – Oh Mandy
12) Crooked Fingers – Sleep All Summer
13) Jens Lekman – Shirin 
14) The Clientele – The House Always Wins
15) The Lucksmiths – Fiction

Agree? Disagree? Let me know your favorites (or chide my glaring omissions) in the comments.

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

M. Ward – Saturday (Yo La Tengo Cover)

My favorite part of listening to a new Yo La Tengo album for the first time is anticipating what their obligatory 10-minute song is going to be like. With Painful being the only exception, all of their other full-lengths since James McNew came aboard have had at least one (note:  I’m aware that some songs, like “Blue Line Swingers” fall a little short of the 10-minute mark – that’s close enough for me, bucko).  May I Sing With Me and I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass have two of them. There newest album, Popular Songs, goes all out and gives us three monster tracks at the end.

I’ve yet to hear those three monster tracks (my trip to the record store is later today).  If it were any other band, backloading an album in this way would make me a bit weary.  But this is Yo La Tengo, and no one does the 10-minute song better.

Here are my 5 favorites, taken from both their albums and their multitude of EP’s:

1) Blue Line Swinger (Electr-O-Pura)

Probably my favorite song ever.  Their are sentimental reasons for this, of course.  Electr-O-Pura was the first YLT album I bought, purloined from the five dollar clearance section at the Sound Exchange in Tampa.  Back then, I would buy any CD if it was cheap and the album cover looked interesting, so I had no idea what to expect when the 18-year old version of myself put the CD into the stereo.  After the first couple songs, I realized that I had stumbled upon a damn good band.  By the time “Blue Line Swinger” was over, Yo La Tengo had become my favorite band.

2) Night Falls On Hoboken (And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out)

Beautiful. The quietest moment in their most subdued album. That bass groove . . . man, I can listen to that for hours.  Because I’m weird, I actually consider this song to be a great one to listen to while driving late at night. For anyone else, it would put them to sleep.

3) Mr Ameche Plays The Stranger (Camp Yo La Tengo EP, also Prisoners Of Love Bonus Disc)

Another mellow one, but with a much different vibe than “Night Falls On Hoboken”. The two weird samples – a guy repeating ‘Mr Ameche plays the stranger’ and a little girl asking for candy and potato chips (?) – sell it for me, adding a bit of creepiness to the listening experience. Here, see for yourself:

Yo La Tengo – Mr. Ameche Plays The Stranger

4) Spec Bebob (I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One)

Sequenced oddly between a bossa nova number (the lovely “Center Of Gravity”) and the end-of-album showstopper (“We’re An American Band”), this is an 11-minute exercise in noisy skronk that has no business being on this album. But somehow it works. Again, with any other band this would ruin the album. But Yo La Tengo – those charming buggers – manage to pull it off.

5) Sunsquashed (Upside Down EP; alternate version also available on Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo)

Many moons ago, I was a manager at a record store, mainly working the evening shift.  As with any retail job, when closing time crept closer, I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.  This meant we had to get rid of the customers, in particular the ones who would keep hanging around even after repeated announcements that the store would be closing very shortly.

To help us with this, the other managers and I had amassed a small collection of music designed to drive customers away.  One manager went with a yodeling CD.  Another manager would pick a compilation of Tuvan throat singing (if you’ve never heard this, go here right now).

I went with “Sunsquashed”.  It’s got a sound similar to a broken amp that squalls throughout the entire song.  For 24 minutes (and the alternate version is longer!).

Worked like a charm.

If you’ve got a different set of favorites amongst Yo La Tengo’s canon of super-long songs, I’d love to know.  Leave your comments below, yo.

bill callahan, as seen through the security monitor at grimey’s

My roommate and I went over to Grimey’s on Saturday to catch an in-store by Bill Callahan. The smog-free Callahan drove here from Austin to begin his tour of record stores in support of his lush new album, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle. We got there pretty early, but left to make some quick purchases at a nearby Asian market (a house without sriracha is barely a house at all). By the time we returned, the place was packed. Since Bill Callahan would be playing sitting down, we could barely see anything, so I viewed most of it through the nearby security monitor (hence the picture above).

Callahan played for an hour to an incredibly quiet, rapt crowd. I was a lot less rapt, growing a bit restless during the third song, the 10-minute “Faith / Void”, which closes the new album. On record, the song is quite a beauty. Stripped down to just guitar and vocal, though, the repetition can get wearisome. Since I’m not a fan of the the repeat-one-phrase-over-and-over-again style of songwriting, I pretty much zoned out the rest of the performance after the 17th time that he said, “It’s time to put God away.”

Instead, I lingered with my roommate by the magazines, far enough away to converse quietly without bugging anyone. Our location was also conveniently next to the boxes of free pizza from Whole Foods that were laid out for the occasion. It was even-more conveniently located next to Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo, who popped his head in for a couple minutes, flipped through a magazine, then hung out outside.

ira!

The performance didn’t do much for me, but the album – which is overflowing with melodies provided by a fantastic string section – has taken only one listen for it to become the best record I’ve heard all year (suck it, Animal Collective). Weird, eh?

Here’s the first song from the new album:

Bill Callahan – Jim Cain

And his remaining in-store dates:

April 13 – Used Kids – Indianapolis
April 14 – Paul’s CD’s – Pittsburgh
April 16 – Sound Garden – Baltimore
April 17 – AKA – Philadelphia
April 18 – Other Music – New York