A Record a Day.

[topspin]

Oct 29, 2010 8:27:56 GMT -8 Horned Gramma said:

Hi kids.

I'm not a blogger

[Horned Gramma]

Topspin you can be really irritating

[topspin]

Whatever dude. I enjoy a record a day and surely will follow even if it leaves the board, But come on that was the first six words of your thread did you expect nobody to make that joke. perhaps i should have spared the eye rolling thing. emoticons are not my specialty.

[Friendly Destroyer]

Hey Know,

Is there a "Sasquatch Hall of Fame" we can retire this thread in? If you'd like I can prepare a New Orleans Jazz funeral as a proper send off, I'll use my limited knowledge of multi-media (ie: my 12 year old cousin) to flood this place with relevant youtubes, gifs and images?

Anyways, thanks Gramma this really was the thread of threads! I'm looking forward to your new digs and more great reads (BTW I haven't seen Biff around in a while, would you like me to PM him incase he misses the news? You're right, silly question, consider it done!)

Also Know, consider it done aswell!

[know ID yuh]

Sorry FriendlyD, I forgot to respond to this. I think I can create a "Hall of Fame," but there is very little reason to do so, especially recently. I'll sticky this until it dies though, which should work just as well, right?

[Switch]

Dec 16, 2010 9:53:11 GMT -8 Horned Gramma said:

12/16/10

Elvis Perkins - Ash Wednesday

I'm glad I decided to take the time to read through some of your suggestions because I came across this gem. Thanks for providing me with another artist to discover and explore. I love it.

[Switch]

Dec 1, 2010 9:57:44 GMT -8 Horned Gramma said:

12/1/10

Dan Bern - Dan Bern

Holy shit!! This one too. This is amazing. I've only listened to Jerusalem so far but was an amazing song! Brilliant lyrics

[Geoff]

We get it switch, you want HG to like you.

[Switch]

Say what you want Geno. I really appreciate finding new music that is raw and full of character. Thats what these two albums are and I am showing my appreciation for that. HG secretly likes me the best already anyway. He just doesn't want you to know Geno, it would break your heart

[Horned Gramma]

1/20/11

They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18



At this point I think it's well documented that I love They Might Be Giants. I've mentioned them in probably half of these reviews without ever devoting a column to them; I think that it's time.

They Might Be Giants is the only band that means anywhere near as much to me as The Residents. Together, John Linnell and John Flansburgh are the smartest, funniest songwriting team since... ever, probably. The 'Twin Quasars of Rock', as they have called themselves, have a collaborative dynamic as powerful as Lennon and McCartney, Deaner and Gener, Avey and Panda, _______ and _______ (of the Residents), etc. Their early records as a duo defined a New Psychedelia, knotting together a DEVO aesthetic with an XTC sensibility and rooting it in the geek culture that they pretty much created and fostered until the day Kurt Cobain put on a Daniel Johnston t-shirt.

If 'Flood' (a.k.a. 'The One You've Probably Heard') is They Might Be Giants' White Album, then 'Apollo 18' is their 'Abbey Road'. With the exception of a b-sides and rarities comp, 'Apollo 18' was the Giants' first release after the now multi-platinum 'Flood' and their last as a two-piece band. It is a dark, strange and angular record, full of menacing imagery and minor chords. It opens with one of TMBG's most aggressive songs, the careening, distorted 'Dig My Grave':

"Every time you call my name
I hear the angels say:
DIG MY GRAVE!"

It then downshifts without even popping the clutch into a pleasant, twisty Linnell melody (and one of my favorite Linnell tunes ever), 'I Palindrome I'. The lyrics are both literally and metaphysically palindromic; you can feel them working their way up one side of your brain and down the other at the same time.

The rest of the album plays like a TMBG dork's dream setlist, the songs we're all hoping They will play when they come to town. They Might Be Giants have always maintained a squeaky-clean public image, never admitting to indulging in anything more potent than coffee, and so 'The Statue Got Me High' is a communal favorite for it's bizarre and kind of terrifying account of a drug trip of SOME kind, involving a murderously combustible statue. The herky-jerky rap of 'Spider' is one of the fucking weirdest things they've ever done, and that's saying something. A sort of half-cover of the Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is buried in the chorus of the Flansburgh funk-rocker "The Guitar", changing the lyrics slightly:

"Hush my darling
Be still my darling
The Lion's on the phone..."

...and all that is just the first half of the record. The back half is even more brown. There's the sociopathic "If I Wasn't Shy" and the leering "Hypnotist of Ladies" from Flansburgh, and Linnell's "Dinner Bell" and "Which Describes How You're Feeling" are clever like a joke you are told in a dream which doesn't make sense when you wake up, but you can remember how funny it was anyway.

All this leads up to 'Fingertips', which at the same time is an approximation of the medley that comprises the second side of 'Abbey Road' and a shameless rip-off of the Residents' "Commercial Album". Consisting of about twenty 10-30 second song fragments, 'Fingertips' is a hall of funhouse mirrors that takes weird little phrases like "Please pass the milk" or "Aren't you the guy who hit me in the eye?" or "What's that blue thing doing here?" and turns them into jingles advertising products that will (hopefully) never exist. They come one after the other in rapid succession, and it kind of makes you laugh because it sounds kind of silly, but it also makes you laugh because these are the embryos of two dozen more classic They Might Be Giants song thrown into a blender together and left to ferment.

In the liner notes of the CD release of 'Apollo 18' is a line of text which indicates that the album is intended to be played on shuffle, thus dispersing the pieces of 'Fingertips' throughout and providing the listener with a different experience each time the record is played. It makes you go back and consider the massive stylistic shift from 'Dig My Grave' to 'I Palindrome I' -- it's calculated to a certain extent, sure, but then you realize that the change in tone would be equally drastic between ANY two songs on this record. And yet in spite of both of these things, it is an incredibly cohesive album.

By the time They Might Be Giants recorded their follow-up to 'Apollo 18', they had enlisted the services of a studio band, and then a touring band. A lot of fundamentalist TMBG fans were outraged, in some instances even picketing outside of venues where They were scheduled to play. Again, much like The Residents' "Commercial Album", it was the final endeavor of the group in it's original state, with all of and only the founding members of the band having input. They Might Be Giants were forever changed after this record, but 'Apollo 18' is an incredible capstone to the first part of their career.

I've seen They Might Be Giants perform on eighteen different occasions. If I could find them all, I'd have a different TMBG shirt for every day of the month. I met my wife because of They Might Be Giants. You'll hear a lot of people say it, but it's because for a lot of people it's true: before there was the thriving geek culture that we enjoy today, They Might Be Giants were IT. The ONE thing the picked-on and humiliated beta males of high schools across the country could point to and say, THIS is how I know it's okay to be the kind of person I am. They were the It Gets Better for geeks. And now that there are Green Lantern movies and bedroom recordings and Comic-Con and an accordion player in the Decemberists and a tall, lanky motherfucker of a rock star in Win Butler, They Might Be Giants are venerated grandfathers. I'm so happy about that... It's not that I feel vindicated, it's just that I feel so much more comfortable in the world now.

[Lump]

Though according to your review they went through a billion lineups, is there a possibility the drummer from that "The Guitar" video might be the same one that played last year at Sasquatch? He looks remarkably similar in the face.

[Horned Gramma]

Their current drummer is a fella named Marty Beller. He's been their drummer since 2003-2004 or so. The guy in the video, I honestly don't know.

[Geoff]

And we're back!

[Pea]

I hate to say it, but Switch bringing up that Dan Bern album caused me to look into him and god damn HG, thank you for that recommendation. Dude makes some great music!

[Horned Gramma]

No, seriously. Dan Bern is incredible.

[Friendly Destroyer]

This was almost as good as getting the lineup out early (RELAX, I know), and a TMBG write up to boot! As I said from day one, this rules!

[stamper]

I love Apollo 18! My old roommate used to do a really impressive cover of Fingertips - if such a thing is actually possible/tolerable.

[Horned Gramma]

Actually 'Fingertips' has been a live staple for TMBG since 2002 or so. It's never worked particularly well, and goddammit they NEVER follow it up with 'Space Suit' which is a horrible cockblock of a thing to do, but I admire the balls it takes to pull that particular piece out of your catalog and play it live.

I remember the first time I heard them play it; they opened their set in SLC on my birthday with it, and the 'Oh Holy Shit, They're Really Doing This!!' was worth having it remain on the setlist all these years (at the expense of 'Spy', which now seems to have been permanently retired).

[Horned Gramma]

1/21/11

Human Highway - Moody Motorcycle



Nick Thorburn is a little bitch. Anyone who has seen him perform knows this. I never saw the Unicorns play, but I ALMOST did - they did an in-store performance at Jackpot! records in Portland several years ago, and I waited outside the store for two and a half hours before I realized that I was at the wrong Jackpot!. I did see Islands, on their tour for 'Arm's Way'. They played at the miserable Hawthorne Theater, which my fellow Portlanders will vouch for as being the worst venue in town. The sound technician - if there is in fact a sound technician at the Hawthorne Theater - doesn't know how to do his job, and after little Nicky Diamonds' microphone went into a paroxysm of feedback for the fifth or sixth time, he stormed offstage. The band vamped the intro to 'Whalebone' for a full five minutes while he got over his hissy fit.

The primadonna shit doesn't play well coming from someone who is just barely a rock star, and who cycles through projects and collaborators and bandmates so quickly. However, I admire his ability to work convincingly in several styles of music. Human Highway is his project with Jim Guthrie, descendent of those other Guthries. The name of the band obviously is taken from the Neil Young song.

Jim Guthrie lives in Toronto and is a moderately successful solo artist who pays his bills by writing jingles for television commercials. That fact is pretty apparent on Human Highway's first and so far only record, 'Moody Motorcycle'. As collaborators, Thorburn and Guthrie are a little lopsided. Thorburn's obsession with violent death is toned down, mostly, which is a good thing. The songs that Guthrie brings to the table are short and hook-y, and in fact the album opener 'The Sound' is, if I remember correctly, a rejected song sketch for a commercial. It's still a wonderful song, though: Thorburn and Guthrie's voices harmonize beautifully together, and it's simple lyrics are dear to my heart:

"Got nothin' left but it ain't bringin me down;
I'm just gonna follow the sound."

I've always lived my life that way, for better or for worse. That philosophy brought my broke, listless ass to Portland where I eventually managed to make a home for myself. I came to Portland because this is where The Decemberists were, and Hutch & Kathy.

This album was recorded in roughly a week, but it's one of those albums that - in spite of that - manages to sound casual and off-the-cuff rather than rushed or lazy. It's all strummed acoustic guitar and two-part harmony; this is summer music, which is I guess why I'm listening to it on this cold, rainy January morning. There's a lot of the Everly Brothers in these songs, and they even appropriate the same Santo & Johnny song that Modest Mouse turned into 'Sleepwalkin' and turn it into 'Sleep Talking'.

Thorburn has an incredible voice, and a real gift for writing melodies. He just takes himself so damn seriously that it sucks the life out of a lot of things he tries to do. 'Moody Motorcycle' is a simple, stripped down set of songs from the king of overkill, and next to the Unicorns record it is my favorite thing he's done. There's real David Cronenberg-type creepiness that sneaks into the lyrics now and then, but it's much more palatable than the whipping veins and shattered bones that usually dominate Thorburn's music.

If you're a fan of the guy you may already have heard this record, although for someone that Pitchfork covers as aggressively as they do Nick Thorburn this one kind of slipped under the radar when it was released about two years ago. Here's 'The Sound', which as I said is just a damn fine little tune, with a cool official video that I hadn't seen until just now. Enjoy.

[Drew]

You forgot to mention one of the worst album covers for a solid album of all time. A topic which could be its own thread.