“Make It Easy on Your Host”
[Jan-Mar 2010 // 3]

Yes, this one’s a couple months late.  But it might be my favorite of the first three, too.  Maybe because I’ve sat on it for longer.  Regardless, here’s yr rock (with incessant references to John Lennon to boot).  Then, it’s time to move on–so much amazing music has been released over the past six months!  Thus, the next batch of mixes–with new stuff from the 2010’s packed second quarter and some leftovers/missed jams from 1Q–should be coming in the next few weeks.  Here are the first and second mixes, still available.

Mix 3: “Make it Easy on Your Host” | 192k | 46:48 | 64.4mb

1. Field Music “Them That Do Nothing” (Memphis Industries) If you like your indie with more knees-and-elbows than hospital corners, Field Music’s probably not for you.  If, like me, you like your punk prim to the point of pinched, you’ve found one of your favorite bands. And “Nothing,” which manages to swing and groove without wrinkling its trousers, just might be my favorite Field Music song yet.  To wit: The guitars alternate between the crisp, colorful acoustic tones of English Settlement-era XTC and, for those brief breaks, the soft gospel-blues flashiness of the early 70s Clapton/Allman/Harrison axis.  Peter’s off-kilter, jazz-infused drumming set things to a jazz-derived swing, and his fills are perfectly complemented by those handclaps.  It’s all capped by David’s alternately opaque and sentimental lyrics, which as always mix clever wordplay, detached social comment, and wistful what-if musings, perfectly delivered in the nearly passionate tone that rises through the verse bars.
2. Vampire Weekend “Cousins” (XL) Straight jittery nerd fury, shook up and shot off.  Koenig’s fiery guitar runs scald the skin, Baio’s bassline boils, and Tomson’s drums crack open like giant popcorn kernels.  But it’s the words that make the song, the words that piss people off so much, the words that signal that Koenig’s doubled-down on this track, directly addressing his band’s own public and folding them into his own mythology.  “Dad was a risk-taker/ His was a shoe-maker/ You 2006 greatest hits little listmaker”: right here, Koenig’s fascinations with the privileges of lineage and the boring nu-bourgeoisie of the online indie chattering class, all shaped into one sharp dart.  Corralling his own crowd into his own song, splitting fantasy and realty: it’s a lyrical move perfected by hip-hop, but earlier practiced just as well by Lennon and Strummer.  “Me and my cousins/You and your cousins”: in its own sly way, this is Ezra’s take on “posse”; but the sort you’re born into. Which provide you with all the protection and cred you’ll need, and which are impossible to escape.  Vampire Weekend’s detractors like to accuse the band of striving toward embedding themselves in this culture, but they’re mistaken.  This ain’t autobiography, or some white boy’s wish-fulfillment narrative: it’s the clever ambivalence of an observant outsider.
3. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists “Bottled in Cork” (Matador)  The sweet, sentimental, strummy road tune on an album full of piss and vinegar.  Ted Leo’s own “Ballad of John and Yoko,” stirred up with some good old emo self-realization and no shortage of good advices.  I have so much to say about this album–my favorite of the year in a non-surprise/total surprise–but I’ll wait.  This song says enough for now.
4. Jaill “Everyone’s Hip” (Sub Pop) See below (there’s a reason the next two songs are in this order)
5. David Vandervelde “Wave Country” (Secretly Canadian) What we need right now is David Vandervelde, who is possessed of the unique capacity, long forgotten by too many rock musicians, to invent imagined worlds in which the only currency is cool–in the social and meteorological senses of the word.  He’s from Chicago, and his “Wave Country” has nothing to do with beaches or water.  His waves are what happens to that hot blacktop under those parked cars–solar psychedelia, as it were.  But that’s not it: like Lennon did with “Rain,” Vandervelde baked in in the heat long enough to come to the realization that “you’re not any cooler in the shade.”  If you were there, you’d understand.  For the time being, though, just hear that hook rise up from the ground–it’s enough to feather your hair.
6. Malachai “Shitkicker” (Domino) Some imaginary ‘66 British freakbeat band, doing the opening credit music for a Western parody TV pilot that, for many reasons, never got picked up.
7. Dum Dum Girls “Jail La La” (Sub Pop) So many bands have tried this retro formula over the past few years, and Dum Dum Girls get it so incredibly, undeniably right with this song (and side A of I Will Be, for that matter).  A 16mm punk/girl-girl group damsel in distress tale with Lesley Gore’s approach to the role of the boyfriend (manly savior).  Everything bathed in echo, but the drums crisp and powerful, pushing everything forward.  And that chorus, ostensibly too wordy but delivered with a passion and emotional release that actually makes me believe in this teen drama.
8. Giant Drag “Swan Song” (Roar Scratch) Not sure if we’re supposed to take the title of this song autobiographically or not–honestly, I’d assumed Giant Drag’s swan song came 5 years ago, after being dropped from their label deal after not keeping pace in the label-sponsored “next Yeah Yeah Yeahs” 5k Run of ‘03-’05.  If this is the last we’re gonna hear from Giant Drag, though, it couldn’t be more of a fitting epilogue: more or less the band’s signature drowsy, dirty riffage (here, think “Teenage Riot” at molasses speed) and Annie Hardy’s exhausted little-girl-lost smoker’s squeal, lamenting broken hearts and crooked teeth.  All of which eventually self-immolates (of course).
9. Serena-Maneesh “Reprobate!” (4AD) Seriously, music: if you keep recycling the basic Lush formula and stirring in different elements/theme variations, I’ll keep buying (into) it.  These guys sound like they have absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to be doing, but hey.
10. Liars “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant” (Mute) Marc Masters opened his Pitchfork review of Sisterworld with this simple statement: “whatever or wherever Sisterworld is, it sounds like a pretty creepy place.”  Yes, indeed.  But they’re not the first to travel there, though.  Liars most clearly evoke Sonic Youth’s Bad Moon Rising here, down to “Scarecrow”’s perhaps-accidental similarity to that album’s cover.  Liars specifically wanted to make a dark, scary punk record to push against the LA-style optimism they saw in the post-Obama glow, sort of their own way of saying that despite all hope, society is in fact still quite the hole.  “Scarecrows” packs the album’s most furious squall, somewhere sort of somewhere between SY’s post-Branca sound-assault and the take-no-prisoners industrial punk screamathon of Nine Inch Nails’ Broken.  Pretty creepy place.
11. Besnard Lakes “And This is What We Call Progress” (Jagjaguwar) I’ve got a lot more to say about this soon, but one of the reasons I don’t believe the Boomer generation is going to loosen its hegemonic grip over music/advertising/entertainment culture anytime soon has nothing to do with the actual Boomers and their bands getting old and dying.  It has to do with the fact that bands, labels, fans, ad executives, and so on (of later generations) are going to continue looking for the things they loved about the Boomer-inspired/created canon of the 60’s and 70’s.  It’s incredibly hard, no matter how much we try, to shake the fact that rock music was born and nurtured through a particular set of aesthetic ideologies, and that while the original bands might go away, those ideologies aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  Ever wonder why groups like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, the National, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, are the most incredibly popular groups to rise from the indie rock clamor over the past few years?  It’s because they’re appealing to the same core, residual principles established in the original rock moment, which aren’t going to die out anytime soon.  And which means that, hopefully, we’ll get more amazing arena-psych from groups like Besnard Lakes.  This is Pink Floyd’s ghost reanimated, or some unknown Canadian studio wizards who dropped a concept record in ‘74 and disappeared.  I take this song title as a joke: it’s not progress, but that’s also not the question we should be asking here.
12. Shearwater “Black Eyes” (Matador)  1) Has anyone ever done the “American Radiohead” thing with Shearwater?  Because while Jonathan Meiberg might not have the genius of the Greenwood brothers behind him, he’s certainly got the American Thom Yorke Voice (and they’ve got their “Pyramid Song” covered, too).  2) Shearwater’s not-so-secret weapon is drummer “Thor,” who ably and forcefully steers the band, as flexible with rhythms as Meiburg is going from Yorkean eunuch howl to the stentorian field general’s timbre of “Black Eyes.”  I really like Shearwater, but I love this Shearwater–Meiburg cantering in on a gallant steed, pausing for a moment, then subtly signaling for Thor to ride up.  He comes clomping in on something much larger–a slo-motion medieval funk patter–to the degree that you imagine a cameraman having to zoom out to get him in the frame.  The greatest thing about this band is that they’re able to make these grand lefty/proggy gestures–a grand trilogy of albums themed around the vanishing environment (see this column for more details)–without ever seeming unnecessarily high-minded or dry.  The opposite, actually: “Black Eyes” is on my running mix, and when it comes on, I feel like I can sprint up a mountain.
13. Future Islands “Tin Man” (Thrill Jockey) I like this record so much for the same reasons I like Shearwater so much.  Namely, these guys are so completely unafraid to risk sounding completely over-the-top and totally cheesy, but they somehow never do.  Hell, until I saw them live a couple weeks ago and realized that they’re a Bmore art-world gallery band with a self-annihilating Jack Black as lead singer, I had Faith No More as their closest analog–psychotic lead singer, competent-yet-unobtrusive-yet-banging rhythm section, heavy on the synths, “anthem” in the DNA of every track.
14. Arches “Another Fading Memory” (Somewhere on the Internet) Yr 2010 “#9 Dream”-style psychedelic indie jawn.  Hey indie rock!  Maybe we can ditch the Brian Wilson and go for the Mind Games-era John Lennon for a while?  Arches and Tame Impala leading the way?  What?  You say Panda Bear’s got a new album dropping this year?  Oh.

(pic via)

Filed under: Arches  Besnard Lakes  David Vandervelde  Dum Dum Girls  Field Music  Future Islands  Giant Drag  Jaill  John Lennon  Liars  Malachai  mixes  Serena-Maneesh  Shearwater  Ted Leo and the Pharmacists  vampire weekend