# 8 "Let's go on pretending, that the light is never ending"

I'm having a lot of fun with this countdown thing. I clearly miss my days of college radio. Anyway, having a blog is almost more interesting right now, at least I have no responsibility and I can do things at my own pace. Sike, I miss WQFS more than anything. Anyway...

My Number Eight record of the year is the second release from Baltimore's own Beach House, entitled "Devotion," which came out way back in February. Beach House are a male/female duo comprised of Alex Scally(guitar/keyboards) and Victoria Legrand(vocals/keyboards). Apparently Victoria's uncle is some famous french guy. I had recently lost interest in this release even though I had been listening to it pretty regularly for most of the year. I put it on again the other day, and to my surprise the therapeutic and calming feelings of warmth and nostalgia that made me melt into the floor when I first heard it back in February came right back to me. It came out at a time when I was just beginning to get over major depression. Last winter was not so good for me, and if I am kidding myself I'd say this period of depression lasted only a couple months, but those who know me best would remind me it was more like the majority of 2007, and into the first couple months of 2008. When February came around and I was beginning to put things in greater perspective and started feeling better about my life and the choices I had made, this album came along and helped me out a lot. It was right at that period that comes at the end of winter when it's not necessarily getting warmer, but it's getting less cold, and that was more than enough for me. It was a reminder that things could soon be good again. That change comes, and that a period of brightness can only follow a lengthy period of darkness like the one I was coming out of.

The sea of wistful, lazy, reverberating nostalgia you find yourself floating through upon first listen is comfortable and familiar, like you've heard this album before, or maybe this is just the album you've been waiting for. Perhaps if Nico was the frontlady for Grizzly Bear, or Cat Power got Danger Mouse to produce her next album, it might sound a little like Beach House.

Victoria's vocals are haunting and beautiful, particularly on standout tracks like "Turtle Island," a song that seems to promise you that times of fleeting, simple, calm, and hopeful youth are not all over like the winter so assured you they were, her vocals make this song absolutely marvelous. "Gila" and "You Came To Me" are two of the best songs of the year hands down. Their cover of Daniel Johnston's "Some Things Last A Long Time" is chilling to the bone, and what's best is they make it their own rather than giving us an exact replica of Johnston's well known tune. The slow and bluesy "Heart Of Chambers" is oddly sexy, and Victoria's vocals over Alex's arpeggiated guitar scales make her sound years and years older, wiser, and more mature. Her voice sounds worn and tattered, yet vibrant and beautiful, like that of a veteran singer even though this is only Beach House's second album. The great sustain and production values on her vocals sound like they're coming at you from the opposite end of a long, wide, wooden hallway in a 16th century celtic house while she sings at you from 100 feet away. Basically her voice is like the vocal version of John Bonham's drums. Not really.

This is a soothing record for the spring time that you might want to put on on a bright sunday morning, or perhaps when you're stoned in your bedroom or driving around on a late early summer night. Definitely deserving of its place in any top ten, I am glad that they call Maryland home. I've never gotten to see them play live and this must change ASAP!! Enjoy the videos below, two music videos to aforementioned songs. Definitely check this album out if you haven't already, I don't think you'll be dissapointed.


"Gila"


"You Came To Me"

# 9

For my Number Nine record of the year, I am going to choose "Microcastle" by Georgia's hypest of the hype bands Deerhunter. I sort of wrote Deerhunter off last year due to their constant presence in the Pitchforkmedia news section, as well as their frontman Bradford Cox's reputation as a particularly insane and unstable person, going on tantrums and scary rants at shows, telling everyone how much he misses his family as well as how fucked up on pills he is. Then, after a long day of drinking at CMJ 2007, I saw them play a show with No Age, Dan Deacon, and Ponytail, and I was thoroughly impressed by them.

The songs on Microcastle are more concise, shorter, and more structured than their 2007 debut Cryptograms, which got heavy comparisons to My Bloody Valentine and every other shoegaze band. After seeing them at CMJ, I realized Deerhunter is a hype band that, underneath the thick layers of hype and bullshit that tend to cloud them, lies a band with an ear for tasteful composition, almost taking Neil Young's "less is more" approach and ironically applying it to Shoegaze, a genre where supposedly, the more pedals and noise you have, the better. Just when every band in the genre is trying to one up each other, Deerhunter take the road that is now less traveled and make a simpler record than their last one.

The songs here have more "hooks" and are far more memorable and individually satisfying. This does, however, mean that there are more throwaway tracks, making an all-the-way-through listen a little harder than it may have been with Cryptograms. Perhaps this is Deerhunter for your iPod. This might be as close as Deerhunter could come to writing a "hit" record.

and the lyrics, my god the lyrics, they're quite depressing. If you ever feel like you've nearly reached the bottom of a bottomless pit, just listen to this shit and be thankful that you're not Bradford Cox, whose lyrics are more narcissistic than they are empathetic. But like many great artists, perhaps his self destructive ego is required in order to produce the startling honesty evident in his lyrics. Lines such as "I had a dream/No longer to be free/I want only to see/Four walls made of concrete" paint a pretty grim portrait, on top of "It's winter/In my heart/It never stops."

As far as other influences go, they remind me a little of Spiritualized and Spacemen Three. Really beautiful melodies with a dark, isolated, agoraphobic sense of paranoia to boot, this is a definite inside, winter, sun going down at 4:30 pm kind of record. Which sounds perfect for right about now considering the upcoming winter solstice. So enjoy this album for the appropriate soundtrack it paints to the dreary winter, just remember the days are about to start getting longer and longer and it won't be long before you'll be listening to Born To Run with all the windows rolled down.





weird music video for "Agoraphobia"

year end wrap up! Part One!

So with this entry, I begin my countdown of the ten best releases of the year. I will do them one record at a time, the first one being number 10, which is "Rialto" by the Northern Virginia ex-member supergroup Verse En Coma.

Upon first listen I was blown away by this release, and believed it lived up to the pedigree of the members oft-mentioned former and current bands: Pg. 99, Darkest Hour, City Of Caterpillar, and Haram. The release particularly calls to mind the work of Malady, and from what I understand a lot of this music came from writing sessions that were intended to be new Malady songs, before they broke up in 2006. Featuring just the melodic, soaring and unconventional guitar-work that you would expect from guitarist Jeff Kane(City Of Caterpillar), laid on top of Ryan Parrish(Darkest Hour)'s relentless and pummeling percussive attack. It's good to hear him doing something else besides galloping 4/4 double bass metal shit.

One thing that makes this releases particularly memorable. the CHORUSES man, the fucking choruses. Each chorus on this album is epic as hell, with everything coming together with enough power and climactic energy to tear a new hole in the universe. Not really, but shit is enough to really catch your attention and move you. I hear a lot of influences from bands outside of the hardcore/punk genre, as the NoVa hardcore scene is known for doing. Seems that with each release that the ex-pg.99 crew puts out, they get further and further away from the Born Against/Sonic Youth thing, but I appreciate this dedication to keep pushing in new directions. Can these folks put out a bad record?

The one frustrating thing is that the lyrics are sometimes questionable and don't seem to always fit. They're written in a pretty straight forward, storytelling style, which works at points and then doesn't work at others. "DCC Cassette" is a sad tale of a friend's death, the same friend who got the vocalist into punk rock by making a tape for his brother that he then stole and changed his life from listening to it over and over again. I've always felt an essential feature of punk rock is a sense of immortality, or quite the opposite, a reckless sense of accepting mortality, as Modern Life Is War said once "death is more perfect than life, that's why we already died." So anyway, these lyrics aim well but miss the mark kind of. "the tape was for her/but i stole it away/the sticker you put on is rubbing off/but THE TAPE STILL PLAYS!!!" uhh, good idea, bad execution, bro.

I also have no idea if this band has played any live shows, or is even still a band. They have never announced any shows nor any intention to play any. It may be just a recording project, which is dissapointing, cause I know these songs could be really powerful if performed live.

Anyway, definitely give this record a shot. It was released on 10" with a digital copy inside by Robotic Empire. You can also get it on iTunes. Their myspace is http://www.myspace.com/verseencoma, if you would like to listen to mp3's.

so that's Number Ten, y'all!! Check back soon for Number Nine!!

-Andy-

you knew just how you'd been blessed...

For the last two years, I've had the privilege of following the Johnson City, TN band The Everybodyfields, quite closely. I was General Manager of WQFS Greensboro, Guilford College's radio station, when Everybodyfields fever began to kick in among our community DJ's. Their sad, slow, breathtaking and beautiful down-home country music found a perfect home on the radio shows of the community DJ's, many of whom had been living in Greensboro for years, and had seen country acts come and go. WQFS and The Everybodyfields began forming a close relationship, with us booking two shows for them on campus, and placing their newest album at the top of our charts for three months straight, while vocalist/singer/songwriter Sam Quinn wrote the theme song for one of our DJ's radio shows, a song which they still play live frequently. I had the privilege of getting to hang out with them most times they came through Greensboro or Chapel Hill. One night, my friend Carra and I spontaneously drove to see them in Chapel Hill and stayed up all night with them, driving back home to Greensboro as the sun was coming up.

Fortunately, the band are still hard at work, and better than ever. Today they just posted two new songs on their myspace site, "City Noises" and "Mardi Gras." These songs, in addition to three other new ones they recorded for Daytrotter.com. After years of burning through accompanying musicians, the central songwriting duo of Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews have finally found a lineup that works, with Josh Oliver (keys, guitar), Tom Pryor (pedal steel) and Jamie Cook(drums), the drummer being the most recent addition, and seemingly the secret puzzle piece that sealed the deal.

The band still seem to work much like they used to, with Sam and Jill splitting songwriting duties, the writer playing guitar on whatever song is next in the set. I have posted a lot of videos below, so I will let their music speak for itself. I have so many memories associated with this band, having been to see them over 15 times in the last two years. The Everybodyfields kind of supplied a soundtrack to my life in Greensboro, from settling in to calling the city home to coming to terms with leaving it, their music as equally applicable to the bright times as it was to the dark times of my life in that city. It makes me so happy to see them writing the best music of their career.

Basically, check this band out, download the songs from the links posted above, watch the videos before, and hopefully your roommates won't mind the mess when you melt into the floor.


their spot on, nearly better than the original cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon"


another new song, "Another Man." one of my favorite of their recent batch of new ones


"A Way Out," another one of my favorite new ones

HOT JAMS

So, Ingrid are a sick fucking band, let's start with that. Originating in the Washington D.C. area, the band is made up of Ashley Arnwine(Mass Movement Of The Moth, Des Ark) on the drums, and Joey Doubek(Mass Movement Of The Moth, Danke, Bear And The Butterfly) on the guitar. Combining crusty d-beat hardcore, the jazzy math-core of Tiny Hawks and USAIsamonster, and even the alternative rock sounds of the Smashing Pumpkins, every moment of their new 8 song tape is a treat for the ears. They waste no time on this record, building up to epic climaxes on each song, which only seem to last long enough for you to wrap your head around the sheer, well, epic-ness of it all. One of the most impressive things about this band is that in Mass Movement Of The Moth, Ashley played guitar and Joey played drums. Just when you thought they could do it all, they switch instruments and create another devastatingly brutal yet tastefully different band.

The lyrics touch on a variety of topics from queer visibility, environmental issues, death and illness, to mental health and suicide. Joey takes care of most of the vocals, not without Ashley's help, whose moments on the mic are some of the best on the record.

You can hear all of the mp3's on their website, and you can order their tape from my dear friend Will's label website, Cosmic Debris.

My personal favorites: "Heron," "Triangle," "What Makes you," and fucking all of the others, for real.

I'm back

Hello everyone/no one, my name is andy and I have returned to the music blogging world with more of a whimper than a thud. I have spent the last few months rambling around the southwest and west coast, working at a summer camp and visiting family and friends in the bay area. But now I am back on the east coast in my hometown of Washington D.C.!

I am about to head back south for a little while to work on a farm outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Then I am headed to New Orleans to visit my dear old friend Jacob Mazer. I'm bringing some clothes and my guitar, so hopefully I'll get to playin' on some street corners here and there for money, like i have had the unoriginal fantasy of doing for quite a while.

This summer, my music interests consisted mostly of singer/songwriters. Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Gillian Welch songs were in heavy rotation in late night singalongs around the campfire circle. There were a lot of oldies but goodies, but my main discoveries of the summer consisted of Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams, and the late bloomer choice of Bob Dylan. Yes, that's right, Dylan never really hit me until now, but it's all good because his records Blood On The Tracks and Time Out Of Mind are hittin' me like a ton of bricks.

I'll write more on these later, for now I have to go meet up with my sister. Good to see you all again!

-Andy-

Citified

It has been a great six months for new releases from Greensboro bands, and The Meeting After The Meeting by a band called Citified, gives us proof that the best is always yet to come. Just released on Eskimo Kiss Records, Meeting is a collection of seven songs each tremendously beautiful and written by singer/songwriter Chris Jackson, who recorded the group’s last record in 2005 pretty much all on his own, recording all the instruments and using drum machines for his rhythm section. While that was a refreshingly listenable and gorgeous record from beginning to end, The Meeting After The Meeting improves upon the band’s original vision by leaps and bounds, with live instrumentation from each member, guitarist Franklin Kane, drummer Eric Ussery, and bassist Diego Diaz, giving the record the bonus of the full band sound. One can tell each member’s musical vision makes this record in better an improvement in every way. With seven songs, the record is over before you know what hit you, and leaves you wanting more and more.


Combining influences from R.E.M., The National, Ride, to Echo and the Bunnymen, Citified clearly have a love for the melancholy and the autumnal in their music. The first line of the first song entitled “Weddings”, gets to the point pretty quickly. “Open bar/Means I’m safe.” Citified are probably not the first band to suggest the only good thing about weddings is the free booze to warm your own loneliness as a pensive indie rock musician, yet the honesty rings true and continues throughout the record. The high end melodic guitar lines present over Jackson’s voice are drenched in reverb and delay pedals, making the listener feel as if they are floating in a sea of fantastic guitar tone. Many critics have pegged Citified as a Shoegaze band, a term coined by a British music journalist who observed that this style of spacey, reverb drenched music required so many effects pedals, that the musicians spent the entire time looking at the floor for which pedal they had to press next, standing motionless and captured by the music.

British Bands such as Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, and Ride were some of the frontrunners of this musical movement, and their influence seeps through every pore of this record. The swirling guitar lines of the song “Read Like A Number” calls to mind the sound of another British band, who go by the name Radiohead. The reflective melancholy present in each song seems to give voice to small town-anxiety, the feelings that come from living in a place where everybody seems to know everybody, and the same few people occupy the same bars night after night. If anything, this record comes off as a soundtrack to Greensboro life in the cold winter months.


Most of the songs clock in under the four minute mark, and with only seven songs, each one ends somewhat abruptly. The restraint and structure present in each song show a sense of discipline lacking with many bands today. The strength here is songwriting, and the band’s ability to transpose that strength into something real and powerful, on a full band scale, is truly awe inspiring. They don’t overdo it, they know exactly when to quit, so as to leave you wanting more rather than bored and looking at the clock. They fill their songs with tasteful and beautiful parts without being too busy, leaving plenty of room for the listener’s mind to fill in the rest with their own nostalgia and memories. This is certainly a perfect record for the end of winter, a reflective album that may help you gain enough perspective to move forward into the spring. Once you’re done with your first listen, don’t be surprised if you find yourself listening to it again and again. Citified are playing in Greensboro several shows around North Carolina in the coming months, so be sure to catch them whenever you can. http://www.myspace.com/citified.