ah, the year-end list. i'll very quickly dispense with my favourite records of the year list, so you can get to the downloadable mp3s of my favourite songs of the year. so the best records, with a minimum of commentary, are: EPs by up-and-comers air france and surf city, one of the biggest international hit records of the year (i mean lil wayne's the carter III, not that awful kanye's surprisingly listenable emo peter gabriel mixtape), new albums by recent (gang gang dance) and old (mount eerie with julie doiron) favourites, an experimental record by sonic youth (SYR 8: andre sider af sonic youth), stephin merritt's attempt to trace the influence of psychocandy on you turn me on (magnetic fields' distortion), another fine noise record by sissy spacek, a good old fashioned indie rock record by the sea and cake, caUSE co-MOTION!'s singles collection, and—the album of the year—all of the stars, the breathtaking comeback album by forgotten early 90s sarah records shoegaze-pop stars secret shine.
without further ado,
10. nas "black president" * not the greatest song in the world, but the sample from 2pac's "changes" works well to temper all this obama messianism, while the cold, snare-heavy beat is just danceable enough to hold our end-of-an-era excitement.
9. the crayon fields "mirror ball" * just a fantastic economic little song in the association/zombies tradition, the psych pop gem that recent critical favourites like caribou, panda bear, and fleet foxes only, very frustratingly, hint at.
8. yacht "i'm in love with a ripper" (party mix) [only the YSI link still werks] * jona signs with DFA and out-DFAs the DFA. if the italo revival is still relevant next year and jona hasn't moved onto some newer more exciting thing, his next record should be huge.
7. sexy kids "sisters are forever" * a lot of very popular records in the wanna buy a bridge and C86 traditions this year (and next). personally, i don't see the big deal about vivian girls or crystal stilts. sexy kids, on the other hand, are (along with two of the bands listed below) one of the leading lights in the slumberland records revival. my undying love and allegiance is with amelia fletcher, and sexy kids channel the breakneck staccato melodies of amy's early work with talulah gosh and seamlessly writes them into the swooning, drawn out lines of elizabeth price's talulah gosh and carousel songs.
6. caUSE co-MOTION! "which way is up?" * this is actually the only caUSE co-MOTION! single i don't own. can somebody please buy it for me? it's out of print, but tonevendor still has a few copies.
5. kid cudi "day 'n' night" (crookers remix) * another year, another awesome dumb house remix that i can't shake. when the "intruder alert" alarm comes in at the beginning of the third verse, any hope of subtlety (say, that of the above-mentioned yacht track) goes out the window but somehow it's better that way.
3. the pains of being pure at heart "teenager in love" * i sent this to the lieb and he wrote back, "wow, i didn't know he had it in him." "he," in this case, refers to kip, who had this band in college called the starve that we (the lieb and i, as centipede) opened for, to disastrous results. the starve was a pretty good band, but the pains are a great band. there's a difference, and it's definitely not in the lyrics, which are as (self-consciously?) generically rock and roll as they were when kip was falling asleep clutching his strokes CD. actually, it's in the way they make you believe the stupid insipid pathos kip sings about. ...you don't need a friend when you're a teenager in love with christ and heroin.
2. twin crystals "two girls" * patrik sent me a 128 kb/s mp3 of this to me a year and a half, maybe two years ago, all hysterical and raving about it. i didn't believe in it for the longest time, not until this summer, when he gave me the 7". the texture of the drone, the little descending, cure-esque guitar line between the verses, the trent reznor grime, i think i just had to hear it properly.
1. gang gang dance "house jam" * others channeled elizabeth fraser of the cocteau twins this year to great critical acclaim, most significantly salem (the other great 7" patrik released this year) and m83, but none of them channeled it through vintage madonna to make gang gang dance's stolen-straight-out-of-un chant d'amourorientalism palatable to even their most hateful enemies.
it's been a busy while. and it continues to be busy. having finally (almost) finished the first chapter of my dissertation, i'm furiously trying to finish my dissertation prospectus for a fellowship application before i catch a bus to new york in a day so i can spend my brother's 25th birthday with him. i'm flying back to vancouver the next morning.
but a weird thing happened the other day. my mother sent me an email saying it was -8 celcius in vancouver and sent a picture of the snow. facebook told me it had snowed in portland too. rochester, on the other hand, was a (relatively) balmy 13 celcius and most of the snow had melted. then it started snowing again and, by the middle of the night, at which point i was still up writing, all three of the cities i'd lived in were covered in snow. which is all to say that i'm sitting in my living room in rochester trying to finish my work, getting myself mentally prepared for the disorientation of (two-legged) travel, and listening to aztec camera. and i'm about to make some hot chocolate to go with it.
12/04/08
SORRY I JINXED IT
i'm sorry the governor general declared separatist alert orange, or a state of exception, or whatever the hell just happened. i can't help but think that it was my smugness that did it. (see the ok computer-inspired blogmage below.) clearly, i have learned nothing, even after merciless deriding obnoxious american liberals for the last eight-odd years. (sniff) maybe i always was jealous and felt left out. i guess i have something to be self-righteous about now.
12/02/08
YOUR TURN, FRANCE
well that was quick. it only took a month of us having to be envious of the united states (for chrissakes) before harper got the boot. your turn, france and germany.
