2011 Weighed & Judged for Your Consumerist Convenience

Toilet Guppies despises lists, from the top ten to the shopping variety, so bravely refuses to come up with an end-of-year ranking of the supposedly best albums of 2011. Make up your own mind. If, however, you'd like a taste of albums or tracks that may have slipped past your fleeting attention in the year that was, here's a random sampler of balmy songs/sounds/grooves/wallowing/ecstasies of the past twelve months—a celebration of the year that was:

V/A: Turner Music Prize 2011, vol. 1 [.zip] and vol. 2 [.zip]

So what happened in 2011? Toilet Guppies heard about the genre «salsa trance» for the first time and thought the 2012 apocalypse had come early. As for record releases, Mark E. Smith's the Fall took the piss… again. Lou Reed & Metallica were universally derided, even though they produced the most sonically interesting record by Reed in three or four decades, and by Metallica in their entire career. (The cruel and disconcertingly inspired lyrics were a pervert's delight. Pity there's no room for that in 2011. Critics always come around to Lou Reed's albums a few decades after panning them, though, so watch this space in, oh, 2041 or something like that.) Amy Winehouse died, and people began to talk about the singer's actual music. Nick Cave disbanded Grinderman, sadly ending half a decade of sonic depravity and lyrical men's lib. SWANS tore across the world, obliterating minds by playing music so loud it turned entire bodies into ears and ears into a constant ringing sensation as if heard underwater, every victim/glutton for punishment having to endure rippling waves of sound vibrating in the void between the molecules, atoms and particles of their tenuous beings. Just in time for the 2012 rupture of our world, then.

What else? Download the above comp and hear for yourself. Whatever you do, go buy HTRK's Work (work, work). Despite the lyrics, it's the album of the year.

Something Awfully Hip

A hippie friend/enemy—apparently in the throes of psychosis at the time—once sent me the question, «Mr. Posh Punk Sex Symbol, are you ready for the Duke?» Cryptic, you might say, but still my all-time favourite question anybody's ever asked me. Didn't quite know what to reply, or even what the question was supposed to mean, but I surmised my confused or visionary friend was trying to call into question my credibility and sincerity as a human being—to call me, in a word, a «hipster», and to prepare this hipster for the violence of a revolutionary revelation that would baptise my soul in a fire of undeniable truth, its timelessness banishing all that soon-to-be-dated stuff from my fickle mind and returning me to great integrity, saving me in the process.

Still, being called a «hipster» is an insult, even to hipsters. Especially to hipsters: It's like being accused of following trends when, as a follower of trends, your secret dream is to actually be a trendsetter. Consequently you loathe the implication that you are, in fact, a mere sheep in the contemptible flock, whose irrelevant anonymity and humiliating subservience it was that made you want to rise up and be different (yet adored!) in the first place. It's the hipster's eternal dilemma. In the words of the great Ken Nordine, the hipster wants to «be different, yet stay the same».

Be that as it may, hipsters are universally despised, even by themselves. So much so that no one ever called himself a «hipster». Admitting to being a hipster is tantamount to implying you're following rather than setting trends, which is hardly hip. It's like the Messiah claiming to be the Messiah; ain't nobody gonna buy it. Now, I'm not going to sully my dignity by rejecting the implication that I'm a hipster. (Someone who has to protest to others he's not a hipster obviously is one.) Instead, let me draw your attention to the funniest website on the entire World Wide Web and what they have to say about hip folk:

The picture above is hilarious as is, but the article it illustrated is even better! I found it on a reactionary Christian/satirical website (take your pick, I can't possibly decide whether the comedy is intentional or not) called ChristWire. It's the very best in out-of-touch tabloid Christianity. There's a plethora of articles with titillating titles such as «Obama Is Literally Hitler», «Do Gay People Have Feelings?», «Do Mormons Think They're Better than Christians?», «Science of Homosexuality: Lesbian Mice FucM Genes Reveal Why Gay Males Are Moody and Dysfunctional», «History of The Beatles Haircuts: Hairstyles Directly Correlates Approximation of Drug Use», «The Anti-masturbation Movement’s 14 Greatest Inventions», «Afro-Saxon Rage Caught on Tape», «Is My Child’s Schoolteacher a Secret Sex Addict?», and so on. Then, just when you've been perusing the site long enough to become convinced that, sadly, this is in fact a serious website, you come across this:

This website truly is a godsend; say goodbye to boredom, people. I mean, who put this collage together?! Who actually sat down to find all those pictures, then to invent those categories? It takes a big freak to entertain, and this is very entertaining… In one article—the hot topical «Dressing Up as Lady Gaga This Halloween Is a Sin Against Jesus»—you can read that

October is the cruelest month for Christians in America. The summer is over, school semesters are underway and we look forward to the special joys of Thanksgiving and Christmas. The one tragic distraction in the middle of all that cheer is the institutionalized celebration of a pagan festival. Many will throw themselves wholeheartedly into this barbaric affair, spending hours making effeminate costumes, stocking up on overpriced sweets and decorating their homes with pentagrams and skeletons. Why do so many Christians willfully engage in this vile, hedonistic ritual?

Priceless writing from one Stephenson Billings, «Investigative Journalist, Motivational Children's Party Entertainer and Antique Soda Bottle Collector». Two of his pet hates are hippies and hipsters. Yet the two terms' root similarity can be confusing, so Stephenson lays out the difference between the two:

Hipsters, while also predominantly Caucasian, tend to come from more affluent backgrounds [than hippies] and their sophistication shows. The hipster rebels against wealth and power by slumming in urban, ethnic ghettoes. They use family money to create farcical careers as unpublished authors or fashion designers. They tend to be far more sexual and consequently likelier carriers of herpes and genital warts. Hipsters fetishize clothes above drugs, while for hippies it’s the opposite. There are far more homosexuals in the hipster demographic, for the hippie does not enjoy expensive hair products and tight clothing. Hippies are more often overweight and unappealing physically, as hipsters use more cocaine and cigarettes than their peers and remain lithe and active. Both groups are unnecessary distractions for children and should be avoided with a concerted, parental effort.

Snort some of that coke, light that cigarette and scratch those genital warts just beneath your tight clothing, dear reader, here's something awfully hip: a sampler of some of the most notable music of 2010. Are you hip to it? ARE YOU READY FOR THE DUKE?!

V/A:
Here Comes the Duke—A Year in the Life of Good Music: 2010, vol. 1 [.zip]

Here Comes the Duke—A Year in the Life of Good Music: 2010, vol. 2 [.zip]

Merry Hallowe'en!

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 4

OK, let's stop messing about with this 2007 business and get this blog started right. I've saved some of the best for last:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 4 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]


1. Mark Lanegan: «Man in the Long Black Coat»

There are no mistakes in life, some people say
It is true, sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die, people just float
She went with the man in the long, black coat

Mark Lanegan’s vocals could lend authority to just about any subject, so lived does his voice sound. Add to that the words of Bob Dylan, and you can’t possibly go wrong: «Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force / Somebody is out there, beating on a dead horse.»
From I'm Not There

2. The Angels Of Light: «Sometimes I Dream I'm Hurting You»
A quick glance at the title and you know what you’re in for. Nothing half-arsed with Michael Gira. This song showcases both why he soars miles above practically all other artists toying with words and music, and why he will never break through commercially. His unique perspective takes you from the gently picked melody to the desperate prayer for deliverance that propels both song and listener until it explodes in trance-like abandonment to music and self-obliteration: «COMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOMEANDTAKEMECOME
ANDTAKEME!»
From We Are Him

3. Radiohead: «Weird Fishes/Arpeggi»
Not to denigrate their more experimental stuff, but with this song Radiohead finally seem to manage a balance between beauty and originality, their individuality something that just manifests itself now (rather than being forced) in a perfect slice of pop rock. «Hit the bottom and escape»…
From In Rainbows

4. Einstürzende Neubauten: «Die Wellen»

What should I do with you, waves, you who can never decide
whether you’re the first or the last?
You think you can define the coast with your constant wish-wash,
grind it down with your coming and going.
And yet no one knows how long the coastline really is,
where land stops, where land begins, and you’re forever changing
the line, length, lay, with the moon and unpredictable.

Consistent alone is your inconsistency.

Ultimately victorious since, as so often evoked, this wears away
the stones, grinds the sand down as fine as needed for
hourglasses and egg-timers, as required for calibrating time,
for telling the difference between hard and soft.

Victorious also because, never tiring, you win the contest who of us
will be the first to fall asleep, or you, being the ocean still,
because you never sleep.

Although colourless yourself, you seem blue
when the sky is gently mirrored on your surface, the ideal course
for being strolled upon by the carpenter’s son, the most changeable element.

And inversely, when you are wild and loud and your breakers thunder,
I listen between the peaks of your rollers, and from the highest waves,
from breaking spume, a thousand voices break away, mine,
yesterday’s ones that I didn’t know, that otherwise just whisper,
and all the others too, and in their midst the Nazarene.
Over and over again those stupendous five final words:
Why have you left me?

I hold my own, shout at each single wave:
Are you staying?
Are you staying?
Are you staying, or what?

From Alles Wieder Offen

5. Spoon: «The Ghost of You Lingers»
To call this a «song» is stretching it a bit, but that’s no reason to dismiss it as just a piece of indulgent studio experimentation. Sometimes a combination of lyrics and sounds come along at en eerily apt time to, well, haunt you. This may not be a song, but it's the inside of an idea, a sentiment, a hope.
From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

6. LCD Soundsystem: «All My Friends»
In passing from youth into adulthood, whether you're cultivating hope for the future or indulging in a nostalgia for the past, in LCD
Soundsystem's «All My Friends» at least you've put resentment behind you. Encouraged by nostalgia to love them and permitted by hope to let go of them, the bitterness towards some of the people you used to know is replaced by a warmth towards all the people you now feel blessed and lucky to once have known, regardless of what subsequently transpired. When James Murphy repeats his mantra «Where are your friends tonight?», it’s a question out of curiosity and gratitude, not an accusation arising from disappointment and bitterness. But then, in seven-and-a-half minutes it's over…
From Sound of Silver

7. Animal Collective: «Safer»
A showcase for Avey Tare’s sense of urgency and flight of fantasy, dig the way this piece morphs from fear into love, like a story going from
the empty present back into a golden past…
From «Peacebone» single

8. The Soulsavers: «Kingdoms of Rain»
OK, so it may sound like some American motivational speaker’s mantra, but the title of the album this song’s culled from says everything: it's not how far you fall, it's the way you land. The voice that makes your knees go wobbly and your eardrums quiver with masochistic enjoyment here is that of Mark Lanegan, who the Soulsavers happen to be covering on this very same track, adding soft textures and careful details to the sparse original arrangement (the key point beginning at the 2:14 mark).
From It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land

9. PJ Harvey: «Grow Grow Grow»
Arguably PJ Harvey’s most accomplished (or at least original) album, I could never listen to White Chalk. Not because it isn’t good, but because it’s too good. Unbearably, almost impossibly bleak, Harvey would’ve had to stare into some serious abyss making this one. But like Mark in «Peep Show» says, «I'm looking into the abyss… I don't like the look of the abyss!»
From White Chalk

10. Devendra Banhart: «I Remember»
I think the most beautiful things happen to be ugly things; most people find beauty in the mediocre. But then Devendra Banhart comes along and proves to us all that beauty is simply the beautiful. Trust Banhart to craft a melody to perfectly convey a tristesse that doesn’t wallow. This song’s atmosphere is a lesson; there is such a thing as blues without self-pity! A pure sadness, within which the sweetness that sprouted into bitterness remains intact. You realise that loss is never total, which works against the bitterness…
From Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon

11. Flight Of The Conchords: «I'm Not Crying»
«I’m Not Crying» is exactly what you need when you are, in fact, crying. Only, of course you’re not.
From «The Distant Future» EP


12. Marissa Nadler: «Bird on Your Grave»
Nadler may come across a little precious, but she doesn’t pussyfoot around. Unlike most contemporary folk females, she eschews faux-childlike naïvety; and unlike so many young performers, she actually manages to convincingly convey the sorrow contained within her songs. (As opposed to composing songs that pretend to be world-weary and -wise—like a Bob Dylan composing «Blowin' in the Wind» and «The Times They Are a-Changin'» at 22-23, straining to make his voice sound like that of a hardened 60 year-old labourer, making up politically correct words that sound good but which are only based on ideas lifted out of a couple of books.) Greg Weeks’ disharmonic guitar keeps Nadler’s perfect singing from infecting the song with too much prettiness. With lyrics such as these, the music can't be too agreeable.
From Songs III: Bird on the Water

13. Elvis Perkins: «While You Were Sleeping»
Lullaby or funeral march? The Dylan-derivative lyrics are overly poetic and, it seems to me, either meaningless or dense beyond interpretation. Yet obscured beneath the kind of lofty imagery that Leonard Cohen was the last writer in the history of literature to get away with, you'll find some tender essence well worth indulging in. Besides, who can resist the Tex-Mex charms? «Uh-oh…»
From Ash Wednesday

14. Fire On Fire: «Hangman»
«You got to have a friend!» Ain't that the truth… And some days, this
song is it.
From «Fire on Fire» EP

15. José González: «Down the Line»
Quite literally nothing wrong with this track. González comes in and says what it is he wants to say, then quits—all with beautiful melody, infectious rhythm and a coda like a lifebuoy.
From In Our Nature

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 3

I get a bit dizzy perusing the titles that came out in 2007. And this is only a tiny selection!

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 3 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. Lockett Pundt: «Whiteout» (a.k.a. «Glass Snake»)
Make me feel safe.
From http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/
2. Atlas Sound: «Only Love Can Break Your Heart»
Every once in a while, the memory of a fling or affair will fill your thoughts with shame or regret—perhaps a sadness that the two of you are no longer on speaking terms. Indulging your nostalgia, you may fancy yourself blue (drama queen that you are), but it’s at self-pitying times like those that you need to keep a firm eye on Truth and tell yourself—in the words of Neil Young—that after all, «only love can break your heart.»
From http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

3. The Cave Singers: «Seeds of Night»
I like this song.
From Invitation Songs

4. Kyle Tomzo: «Bicycle»
Sometimes you like something despite yourself. The gaye naïveté of this song is kind of
repulsive, but I just can’t help myself—that slide guitar sends me into some manner of micro-ecstasy.
From Uncut Magazine’s Devendra Banhart-curated compilation Love Above All

5. Akron/Family: «Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms»
Devendra Banhart once said he makes albums for the «yoga mom
demographic,» but it seems Akron/Family just upped the ante: Gypsy guitar, tribal drumming, New Age housewife chanting, the Family’s own harmonies, whoops’n’hollers, «la-la-la»s, an exquisite vibraphone melody … order and chaos… This song has it all. Listening to this you swirl up into the sky, only to fall back down again, miraculously all in one piece.
From Love Is Simple

6. Deerhunter: «Wash Off»
A song for speeding and—by the time of the vocal-free «chorus»—crashing your car. A triumph of rhythm track over song structure. Impossible to sit still while listening to this.
From «Fluorescent Grey» EP

7. Antibalas: «Hilo»
Flawless groove here that evokes sadistic computer games, right-on political activism, quality pot and vintage porn, all at the same time.
From Security

8. The Budos Band: «Origin of Man»
Music to stalk Hollywood celebrities to, whilst confusedly imagining you're a '40s private eye stuck in the '70s. But then, if you're stalking someone you're bound to be a little confused…
From The Budos Band II

9. Edwyn Collins: «You'll Never Know (My Love)»
All soul, this song. Listening to it, all you can do is wait for summer and anticipate the next time you fall in love. Sometimes innocence isn’t repulsively idiotic, but sublime, like some forgotten truth.
From Home Again

10. Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse: «Valerie»
The Dap-Kings show us how it’s done with their accompaniment to this great, typically wry, Social Realist Brit lyric, originally by the Zutons. And of course, Amy Winehouse effortlessly puts miles and miles
between herself and all the insipid little would-be soulful schoolgirls that have crawled out from underneath the rocks she's already left far behind. Her voice is just a medium, and from where it comes and to where it goes all the well-meaning simpletons going on about «poor druggie/alcy Amy» will never understand (which is precisely why she can’t be imitated—or surpassed). Long after her tabloid popularity's a thing of the past, the seemingly effortless star quality of Winehouse's singing will remain an off-handed «fuck you» to mediocrity everywhere and through the ages… In the meantime, leave her the fuck alone.
From Version

11. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings: «100 Days, 100 Nights»
The Dap-Kings’ various retro soul endeavours often sound a bit anonymous and samey, but once in a while they come up with a bull’s eye. Despite the best efforts of bland British schoolgirls and soulless American R&B divas, soul is alive!
From 100 Days, 100 Nights

12. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons: «Beggin'» (Pilooski
re-edit)
Speaking of soul being alive, Pilooski masterfully remixes a track that didn’t really need remixing, but once he did it, the DJ just added a smidge of tasteful psychedelia. And that can only ever be a good thing.
From «Beggin'» single

13. Blonde Redhead: «23»
Coming out from the Blonde Redhead gig, with everyone ecstatic and on their way to the next watering hole to wind down from the
satisfaction of seeing the band live, just hold on to that frail thing beautiful and brittle singer Kazu Makino's voice comes from (and to which it speaks)—that sultry sadness, all sexy rhythm and melancholy melody, that only Blonde Redhead seems to be able to tap into—by simply going home. Because what to do or say? A misplaced word will only disrupt and vanquish it. End the day, go to sleep.
From 23

14. Menomena: «The Pelican»
One of the interesting things about music—and especially experimental music, less geared as it is towards achieving a calculated response from some target audience—is the possibility to express several unrelated (and maybe even contradictory) feelings, all at once. I don't know quite what I feel whenever I hear this song, but feel good it does. (In a «hurts-so-good» kind of way.)
From Friend and Foe

15. Grizzly Bear: «Shift» (alternate version)
The home recorded version of «Shift»—slightly more violent than this stark rendition—was the high point of Grizzly Bear's debut album. Perhaps no surprise, then, that this is the high point of their EP of studio re-recordings. Doesn't come much more naked than this.
From «Friend» EP

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 2

Now, I'm perfectly aware what a bring-down this blog can be, but I'm more than making up for it by including El Guincho's «Palmitos Park» on volume two of the 2007 revisit. It's like sowing a seed that can only blossom into something good—a source of life to which anything else may attach and go along for the ride. (Anything!) So here you are, my sweet little parasites; 2007 wasn't all balls-to-the-walls rock and electro—there were some life affirmin' ditties and a couple of big choruses, as well:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 2 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. Beck: «Timebomb»
All of a sudden, Beck sprang this one-off single on us. What a tease. Now, go suck your headphone.
From «Timebomb» digital single

2. The Duloks: «Boom! Boom! (Mormon’ Lovin’ Momma)»
Everything about this song is right: the drum programming, the organ, the production, the duration, the lyrics, the attitude—just the title, fercryinoutloud!
From «Star Trail»/«Boom Boom» 7”

3. King Khan & His Shrines: «Welfare Bread»
Khan is king, but who woulda thunk he could sing so tenderly?
«Watching the hours go by / While she's beating her flowers / Out in the tears in her eyes.» I don't pretend to know what the hell that's supposed to mean, but it sounds good…
From What Is?!

4. The Hives: «Well All Right!»
Screamin’ Pelle’s demented laughs set to Pharrell's production, this is one of those songs that make you want to clap your hands and holler'n'scream along. The taunt about «trying to grow a beard but you still look cute» alone is worth the price of admission.
From The Black and White Album

5. Panda Bear: «Bro's»
This song gives sunshine pop a good name. Makes you want to
stretch out on the grass and enjoy your good health, even if (and especially when) that’s all you’ve got. Good thing the track goes on for so long, then.
From Person Pitch

6. High Places: «Head Spins»
India imagined by Brooklynites.
From «Head Spins» 7"

7. El Guincho: «Palmitos Park»
Jumpin' Judy, is this an infectious track! Makes my brain bounce and body throb.
From Alegranza!

8. Manitoba: «Melody Day»
For an old punk, Pencil Dick Manitoba sure knows how to craft exquisite sunshine psychedelia…
From Andorra

9. Klaxons: «Golden Skans»
OK, so I'm pushing it a bit by including this one. Still, never before have backing vocals etched themselves onto your brain like this.
From Myths of the Near Future

10. MGMT: «Time to Pretend»
The poppy party anthem to end them all, MGMT have understood the only interesting incentive behind partying—viz. escaping from lasting, continued existence into the moment—although their brand of empathy (if one can call it that) is mercilessly satirical (and maybe a
little hypocritical, or at least envious). Still, I can't help but picture the ironic image of a dance floor full of drunk and drugged party animals moving and perhaps even singing along to this cautionary farce. (Actually, that's how I first heard this song.)
From Oracular Spectacular

11. Arcade Fire: «No Cars Go»
Pompous, poppy and perhaps a little vomit-inducing, I know, but this song sounded great when I first heard a live version playing… on a car radio.
From Neon Bible

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 1

It's a bit late, I know, but 2007 was such a doozie in terms of music that now that we're done with 2008, a revisit is well in order. Some of the most exciting bands and artists currently working in music unleashed tunes in 2007. So brace yerself; volume one has, as Lord Percy said to Sir Blackadder's crossdressing man-servant Kate, «balls!»

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 1 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. of Montreal: «The Past Is a Grotesque Animal»

Only the beloved, so it seems to the lover… can in this world bring about what our human limitations deny, a total blending of two beings, a continuity between two discontinuous creatures. Hence love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible… Through the beloved appears … full and limitless being unconfined within the trammels of separate personalities, continuity of being, glimpsed as a deliverance through the person of the beloved. There is something absurd and horribly commixed about this conception, yet beyond the absurdity, the confusion and the suffering there lies a miraculous truth. There is nothing really illusory in the truth of love; the beloved being is indeed equated for the lover—and only for him no doubt, but what of that?—with the truth of existence.

—Georges Bataille
From Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

2. Fuck Buttons: «Bright Tomorrow»
The Fuck Buttons’ debut 7-inch (no, I’m not referring to some cherry-poppin' man-bits) is what chill-out ambient should sound like. And that band name alone merits inclusion on any end-of-year list…
From «Bright Tomorrow» 7”

3. Spoon: «Don't You Evah» (Diplo mix)
This track seems minimalistic, but it's its seeming minimalism that allows you to notice all the details and changes going on, undermining this «simplicity». Rich and subtle all at once—and a little skewed—house music rarely sounded this good. It's even got a trace of human emotion! (Who said you can't dance to tristesse?)
From «Don't You Evah» digital single

4. GhostHustler: «Busy Busy Busy»
This is just sweaty, dirty, smelly rock’n’roll masquerading as electro—krumping at the Fight Club—all attitude and sexed belligerence—the sound of a demented spazz breakdancing—on psychoactive drugs. Glorious!
Not from any album (yet), this is one of those one-hit blog wonders.

5. Von Südenfed: «Fledermaus Can't Get It»
2007—what a year for testes! The fucker’s downstairs in the basement on this one. Mouse On Mars team up with Mark E. Smith for a track that’s as ruinous to virtue as any piece of music in human history. Twisted, pissed off and gagging for it (sometimes on it, by the sound of things), this track is pure hedonism—one of the saviours or redeemers of electronic music (justifying the genre's very existence with its
technology-defying human weakness) and the aural equivalent to rotten street speed (which, incidentally, is probably exactly what Fledermaus is referring to when he drones on that «I can't get it now, but I can get it»).
From Tromatic Reflexxions

6. The Fall: «Fall Sound»
… and they just keep coming. You can smell this song. «D-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! / You’ve just woken up to Fall sound-uh!» After driving his entire band and manager to mutiny on tour, «’80s reprobate» Mark E. Smith apparently just assembled some fresh meat along the way and, unruffled, stopped over in studios to seemingly effortlessly record monuments to attitude. Like this track, where he baits the former backing band he considered «TLC»—traitors, liars and cunts («thieving, lying cunts,» by some accounts). With a set of new and unfamiliar musicians behind him, Smith sticks it to his old band by giving us all a much-needed vitamin shot of that «F-f-f-fall sound-uh!». But then, as the man himself says, «If it's me and yer granny on bongos, it's the Fall.» Bless him. The world needs Mark E. Smith. 30 years into his career and at the age of 50, he still doesn’t let us down: «It’s a scream for help that’s desperate / But it’s tough luck!»
From Reformation Post TLC
7. Grinderman: «When My Love Comes Down»
The aural equivalent to libido, up and down, half of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds a.k.a. Grinderman’s «debut» album has several cool tracks on it, the obvious future pop culture reference being the driving, driven «No Pussy Blues». But «When My Love Comes Down» is the
embodiment of the frightfulness and terror of lust/love, and is probably the coolest love song lyric from the hand of Mr. Cave: «Your skin is like the falling snow / Your hair is like the rising sun / Your tongue is like a Kalashnikov / Or some other foreign gun»… (Reminds me of someone I used to know…)
From Grinderman

8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: «Isis»
For fear of sounding like a bloody misery-guts, this is the kind of track that makes you want to dance, except no dance floor DJ will ever play it, either because a) it's not the kind of instantly recognisable hit self-conscious people need in order to dare venture onto the dance floor, or b) it's not the feelgood (or at the very least emotionally neutral) type of music DJs tend to believe are the only pieces of music fit to move your feet to. It’s an emotionally retarded situation that's emblematic of our times.
From «Is Is» EP

9. The Vandelles: «Lovely Weather»
They’re trying too hard to be cool when cool has to be effortless, but the glorious noise of this track is redeeming, and then some. And it doesn't hurt that the overall vibe is so damn sultry…
From «The Vandelles» EP10. Times New Viking: «Teenage Lust!»
«I don’t want to die in the city alone.» Quite reasonable, really.
From Times New Viking Present the Paisley Reich

11. Black Lips: «I Saw a Ghost (Lean)»
As Todd Killings once wrote of Black Lips, they're

… just not right for this world. … Seriously slurred swashbucklers living out the ultimate teenage dream, yet breaking through another layer of remarkable idiocy, transcribed through hallucinations, exasperation, and perfectly casual dick fumbling. … How the Black Lips manage to walk through the perfumed garden of life is a miracle of modern bullshit, but a miracle nonetheless. Their validity is overwhelming and so refreshing, it almost makes me dizzy, and the way they can find their way through the mundane darkness of modern music and discover their own notes and chords between the lines is unparalleled by their peers. … These boys have tapped into a very secret well that everyone wants to drink from. Too bad it's got weird bent rainbows and chunks of shit floating in it.

From Good Bad Not Evil

12. The Warlocks: «So Paranoid»
A band that struggles with pooling enough talent and whatever je ne sais quois it is that great bands have (wait a minute, did I just use that expression?!), the Warlocks occasionally come up with an utterly hypnotising doozie. This one perfectly captures that woe-is-me Desolation Of The Soul experienced by those of us who wish we were
merely «so, so, so paranoid,» yet know only too well that it’s just that we’re not buying into the lies that people so readily tell themselves and each other… Thank you, Warlocks.
From Heavy Deavy Skull Lover

13. Sonic Youth: «I'm Not There»
Originally recorded in 1967 by Bob Dylan and the Band, this song was never released until it came out on the soundtrack to that pretentious Dylan biopic that takes its title from this obscure song. Dylan was probably still woozy from a motorcycle accident when he wrote this one; the lyric seems confused, and perhaps the reason it took 40 years to release is that it’s a little «unfinished». I use quotation marks, not because I want to be pretentious, but because it seems to me the lyrics work better that way; a song may seem more sincere when it’s not covered up in the usual literary decoys employed by Dylan in his sometimes evasive, often overly clever lyrics. But I digress—this is Sonic Youth’s version, and Thurston Moore never sang so well, his weary drawl drawing in the essence of the words.
From I'm Not There

14. Arctic Monkeys: «505»
From Favourite Worst Nightmare

The Turner Music Prize 2008, vol. 3

I can see there's a lot of track-by-track gibberish. Which is why I'm providing the link to the download first off:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2008, Vol. 3 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

Not very much cozy or sentimental music in the last two volumes, so here's something to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside…

1. The Notwist: «Boneless» (Panda Bear remix)
Credited to the Notwist, Panda Bear’s remix of «Boneless» so reworks the single it’s a whole new song—one so typical of the Panda Bear sound (that sunshine pop he does better than anyone) that it no longer belongs to the Notwist. More than a miraculous feat of remixing, though, Panda Bear has crafted a four-minute psychedelic utopia—a freewheeling mental realm where no danger or harm exists. I’d found it hard to even imagine, but here it is…
From «Boneless» 7"

2. Fleet Foxes: «White Winter Hymnal»
I hate to be the one—well, not really—to have to point out that precious souls don’t feel more, or feel more deeply, than those dismissed as cynical or hard-hearted. The sensitive souls just entertain more sentimental lies about life and love, that’s all. Which wouldn’t be so bad, did you not have to deal with such people all the time (and their sad attempts at keeping reality at bay), lured as you are into their
self-set traps time and again, precisely because their illusions are so tempting to believe. So sometimes it’s just as well to surrender against the overwhelming odds and simply give in to all the virgin romantics who make sentimental would-be teenagers rock themselves to sleep with pretty harmonies and inoffensive lyrics…
From Fleet Foxes

3. The Last Shadow Puppets: «The Chamber»
Speaking of pop craft, in my ideal world this is what pop music would still sound like. (Ah! that gently plucked reverb! The floating strings and ghostly backing vox!) Which it does, I suppose, seeing as this is in fact a new release.

Can’t you see you’re only here
to be torn apart
based upon a nothingness?
So leave yourself alone
…
Yourself, you must admit
that you are the instigator
hanging on to arguments
when you’re cornered by yourself

From The Age of the Understatement

4. Vetiver: «Roll on Babe»
Coming out of the bar, the oldest building on the oldest street corner in Amsterdam, I marvelled at the bartender, a knowledgeable older gentleman perfectly fluent in English, a connoisseur of spirits and a
walking, pouring lexicon of the city whose moral variety he obviously embraced, without judgement, and who generously regaled us with facts, anecdotes and histories about our beloved adopted town. «Yeah!» she said, in that way of hers that seemed to mean «I wholeheartedly agree, and moreover my enthusiasm right now knows no bounds, and here’s what…»—and so signalled a rave about to come about whatever merits she saw in what she’d just experienced. It was a sound accompanied by the language of her entire body, her eyes beaming, and you’d feel like stopping her in her tracks every time, to kiss her firmly on that small, shapely, painted mouth (something which would leave her looking pleasantly surprised and a little confused every time, as if she were totally unaware of her own charms). Besides, this «Yeah!» of hers started coming so often now, here in this place we’d made our home (for a reason, it turned out, although it was a win that’d been a gamble at first), that kissing her for her every «Yeah!» could only deteriorate into some annoying habit, out of sync with the roll we were on of discovering new and wondrous things… (Aw, shucks!)
From Thing of the Past

5. tindersticks: «The Flicker of a Little Girl»
This song’s a lullaby for grown-ups—or, summer bicycle music as you roll through the park. Perfect to sing along to for those who don't understand the words.
From The Hungry Saw

6. Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens: «What Have You Done?»
Backed by the Dap-Kings, this is the voice of your conscience (albeit in the tongue of a seventy-something woman). Within the entire field of
music, there’s a quality to North American gospel that’s unique to that genre and that genre alone. Some ineffable upward thrust that inspires hope and encourages a cleansing repentance. I don’t generally dig finger-pointing high-horse riders, but this old woman sings with the authority of a long life, and she's only referring you to your own conscience, anyway, rather than to strict morality. Who can argue against a common sense line like «Your wicked tongue can't twist forever»? If this grandmother's harsh, it’s only to be kind. So: «What! have you done, have you done?»
From «What Have You Done?» 45

7. Grizzly Bear: «While You Wait for the Others» (live on Morning Becomes Eclectic)
Ouch! Sometimes a songwriter will tell you something your friends won’t.

While you wait for the others
To make it all worthwhile
All your useless pretensions
Weighing all my time
You could hope for some substance
As long as you like
Or just wait all the evening
Always ask me why
Yes, you’ll only bleed me dry

The only real act of empathy sometimes is to just call it like it is, whatever the sting.
From one of those Internets
8. Department Of Eagles: «Phantom Other»
… what would it take to make you listen?
From In Ear Park

9. Women: «Black Rice»
It’s not that it’s a mediocre song, it’s just that it’s unassuming and self-contained to the point where
there’s nothing left to actually write about. Still, if you could still feel the warmth in summer, this would be the perfect accompaniment to a day in the park…
From Women

10. The Walkmen: «New Country»
A puzzlingly underrated band, the Walkmen’s 2008 album You & Me contains several other songs that could just as well have ended up on this round-up. One of the things about this song is the story, not told too cleverly, nor in that self-consciously contrived and literate manner of most lyricists, but straightforwardly recounted like a dishonest (or at best ambiguous) letter from one friend to another. When the narrator says,

The news is all good
and I’m flying high
I’m back on my own
Don’t worry about me
I’ve got no more baggage
Threw all my old things away,

it borders on bitter mockery, stopping just short of sarcasm, left for the recipient to uncover between the lines (careful as the sender is not to really burn his bridges). Perhaps it’s the melancholy guitar that betrays the reality: I don’t need you, «friend», but «meet me as soon as you caaaan / and bring me the money you owe me for me…» So what to do when all that there is left to share is some money owed? «Aw, maybe I’ll go see the wooorld / There’s plenty of places to see / And voices I never have heeaard.» Could use hearing a new voice myself…
From You & Me

11. Cat Power: «Naked, if I Want to»
Chan Marshall covers this Moby Grape song for the second time on her second covers album. That «ah-huh» does it for me every time, but apart from that she proves here what a great vocalist she is, the phrasing and strategic lingering of breaths adding to her impeccable tone and timbre. She’s got that slightly roughened voice—almost like
those husky Spanish girls, brown-eyed and raven-haired… Cat Power’s got that capacity for sorrow only a few performers possess. (Sometimes it’s too much.) But this track—although not entirely cheerful—is still feelgood. A last farewell—«I ain’t got no mercy / but I will pay you after I die»—and a looking back when your family’s gone and your friends have all proved an illusion, there are nevertheless no hard feelings: this'un had a great run!
From Jukebox (bonus disc)

12. The Black Keys: «All You Ever Wanted»
«… is someone to treat you nice and kind.» Well, that's all you ever want until someone does treat you nice and kind, at which point you start wanting a whole range of more complex and unattainable things…
But that's working against this song. Like a good ol’ country song, this takes you down from any kind of high-fallutin', agitated state of emotional imagination and back down onto the ground, where all you need to deal with is the workaday—and a little heartbreak. The safety of escaping heady, existential dread and being welcomed into the open arms of the ornery. I like the misheard lyrics I thought that I heard:

I’ll be your blackbird, darling
Hanging on the old telephone wire
Flap my wings on it
And set the old heart aflight

Well… one may dream, no? Hope the thing's still airborne?
From Attack & Release

13. The Dodos: «God?»
«Tell us how to feel inside / No lies, no lies, no lies! / And let us look upon that side / With eyes, with eyes, with eyes!» Amen?
From Visiter

14. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: «Buriedfed»
Self-defeat never sounded this triumphant! Just like revolutions don’t actually overturn the system (as they claim to do), but rather perpetuate it in its hour of dire need, really changing little or nothing, suicidal ideation may fool an individual into thinking he’s flirting with his own end, when really he’s just venting his unhappiness in order to continue living. He awakens from his daydream to find replenished the minimum energy required to keep rolling passively on in life, rather than the determination to take that most decisive, definite step. What a
tease! Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson—fantasising here about his own demise—is a Singer-Songwriter, but he doesn’t just make this stuff up—inventing «characters» we then can go play «good people» by collectively commiserating with, all the while thanking our lucky stars it’s not us «but isn’t it just exquisite?» (and by that I mean «exotic»), and «Aw, how sad it is»—like shedding tears at a Hollywood blockbuster, fancying ourselves empathetic rather than self-indulgent at our oh-so-emotional response to problems we have no way of truly relating to other than in paltry imaginations spoon fed by money-thumbing producers and A&R execs. No, you can hear that’s not the case from Robinson’s delivery (expertly aided by members of Grizzly Bear and TV On The Radio), which by itself alone makes a mockery of all the sensitive troubadours squeezing into the sales niche and peddling their acoustic drivel to dreamers really too superficial or insensitive to know any better. And a line like «I didn’t like people much at all / Tasted better with alcohol» alone merits inclusion on any year-end list. For a little less than five minutes, do yourself a favour and take a break from bullshit—Because You Deserve It.
From Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

15. Bon Iver: «The Wolves (Act I and II)»
Girls must love Bon Iver—or at least the idea of him as they listen to him pining for some «Emma» in the remote log cabin where apparently this song was recorded, «forever ago». The Americana-singer/songwriter and Weird-New-Freak-Folk-Family genres have become too widespread, maybe because people forget that the characters who make for some of the best poets and singers aren’t the bleeding-heart bohemians we like to imagine, but cold-blooded, flint-hearted and unrepentant sociopaths with a pronounced violent streak, routinely conning the sentimental
just as they rationalise their own actions (those martyred reactions to imagined victimisations). They say Stalin—perhaps the biggest monster in recent human history (at least if you count the number of lives afflicted or altogether snuffed out)—sang like an angel. He was also originally a romantic poet, as was the cowardly sadist known by the name of Che Guevara. Hitler
—another sensitive soul—enjoyed painting. There’s Charles Manson, whose bonfire songs hypnotised many a young girl (… and Neil Young… and the Beach Boys…). And before he became very famous, sweet soul singer Bobby Womack would be seen walking around in the ghetto, wearing the clothes of his lover’s man, who had mysteriously «disappeared» shortly before Womack took over the man’s woman and flash suits. Troubadour Arthur Lee of Love tried to kill a bandmate, as did Sly Stone and sensitive singer-songwriter-cum-schizophrenic hobo
Alexander Spence, who attacked members of his own band with an axe. Yet people insist upon assuming that sensitive artistes are sweet-natured—like Nick Drake, who was actually just clinically depressed to the point of paralysis. (Where were all the young art student girls and fashionable actors while he was still alive?) In other words, a pretty melody goes a long way. Just ask the supreme dictator of the Soviet empire… (That was a bit strong, actually. Bon Iver's perfectly OK for winter Sunday listening…)
From For Emma, Forever Ago

16. Kurt Vile: «Space Forklift»
Some performers use their astonishing capacity for beauty of melody, delivery and arrangement to tickle that soft underbelly silly. From 3:35 on I hardly know what to do with myself…
From Constant Hitmaker

17. Air France: «Collapsing at Your Doorstep»
Just a little piece of non-threatening substancelessness, to close the playlist on a pleasant note.
From «No Way Down» EP