Sometimes I Do Listen To New Music (2006 Wrap-up Part 1)

So of albums that were actually released in 2006, these are some of my favourites.



Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Neko Case was one of those artists that I kept managing to see live somehow, without ever really digging into her recorded work. Now that I have, I’m a big fan. Her new album is really rewarding as well, not just because it continues her tradition of great songwriting and singing, but because of the detours it takes. For example, one of the main pleasures of her albums is just the visceral pleasure of her voice, hearing her crank it out. But on the first track of Fox Confessor, she stays low in her vocal range, letting the words and instrumentation gradually build the mood. The understated nature of the first track makes the second track, “Star Witness”, even more effective, with its multiple, soaring vocal lines.



The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

I’m going to steal a line from Pitchfork’s year-end wrapup: “The Decemberists have always been an interesting band, but with The Crane Wife, they became a great one”. I think I listened to this album probably more than any other this year, which is probably untrue since I got it at the end of October.



Joanna Newsom - Ys

This was an album that came heavily recommended by a lot of the hipper-than-thou indie music publications, but I couldn’t decide for a week whether it was totally awful or totally awesome. It’s definitely not the most accessible of albums: five songs, each longer than seven minutes, sung by a frantic pixie in a child-like voice, accompanied only by her harp and a string section. Singing songs about meteorites, monkeys and bears, being milked from thistles at twilight, etc. Then one night when I was kind of lost in multiple ways, it all started to come together, and I decided on totally awesome.



Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam was my favourite band for a long time, and are definitely the band that I’ve invested the most in emotionally over the years. I was pretty disappointed with their previous album, Riot Act. I’ve always been willing to follow Pearl Jam down interesting detours (I still think No Code is their best album), but Riot Act was their first release that didn’t feel like it had been really worked on and polished. It felt rushed, and half-baked, and for the first time Eddie Vedder’s lyrics weren’t up to his usual standards (“Thumbing My Way” and “Green Disease” are the worst offenders).

But the new album, Pearl Jam, is a huge statement about everything that makes the band, and rock music in general, great. The first half of the album is filled with unrelenting rockers, capped off by the best song on the album, “Marker In The Sand”, while the second half steps back a bit, and thinks deeply about living. I think Pearl Jam’s best work is always when they’re in transition. Dealing with sudden fame on Vs. and Vitalogy, dealing with adulthood on No Code, and now figuring out how to still rock out, and still make a difference, when they’re all in their forties. It’s nice to have them back, and so vital, after so long.



M. Ward - Post-War

I went to see M. Ward at Sala Rosa earlier this year, and immediately became a fan. His most recent album careens between rock stompers and slow crooners, telling a series of stories about lovers, losers, dreamers, and dead men. One thing I like about his work is the amount of space he gives the slow songs to breathe, and the way his guitar dips in and out of things, commenting briefly then fading out again. This album will also be forever notorious to me because of the impromptu dance party it inspired at a family reunion, featuring pogoing Uncles and ten people with ten different ideas about just when the semitone bend happens in the chorus of “Chinese Translation”.

Honourable Mentions:

• Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years In The Belly of a Mountain
• Bob Dylan - Modern Times
• Calexico - Garden Ruin
• Cat Power - The Greatest
• Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther

These are mostly albums that I just started listening to recently, or don’t really have much to say about except I like them a lot! Also, I can’t believe I waited for five years for a new Sparklehorse album to come out, then didn’t hear about it at all until a few days ago.

Your Attention Please

We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting to bring you this important message - who’s that hottie just selected as the Georgia Straight single of the week?

There's A Darkness On The Edge Of Town

As of about forty minutes ago, the sun reached its greatest distance from the Earth’s equatorial plane (for those of us in the Northern hemisphere). Happy Winter Solstice!

If I was in charge of things, the solstices and the equinoxes would be major holidays, mostly because they have great-sounding names. Solstice.

I Wasn't Born Of A Whistle Or Milked From A Thistle At Twilight

And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor
Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember

Then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center
And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never



Darling remember, when you come to me
That I’m the pretender
And not what I’m supposed to be
But who could know if I’m a traitor?
Time’s the revelator




And sometimes you don’t need words at all.

In Which I Rhyme "FitzRoy" With "hoi polloi"

...or, “$100 buys a lot of cucumber rolls”.

For the Biology Department Christmas party last night, myself and my friends Jeremiah and Jackie wrote and performed a song, and won first place in the skit competition along with $100 worth of sushi at Sho-Dan. Hooray! We tried to keep the details of the project top secret leading up to the party, with good success.

What we ended up writing was a bit of an adventure song, chronicling the famous Voyage of the Beagle, sung to the tune of “The Legionnaire’s Lament” by The Decemberists. Here are the lyrics, with a bunch of links for people who aren’t Biology geeks:

VERSE 1
I'm a clergyman, my name is Charles Darwin, hope my nose looks determined, for this voyage at sea
Sailing with Captain FitzRoy, ‘Round the world with the hoi polloi, trying to employ, Lyell’s Geology
And I’m writing down, all the new things that I have found, I pray we don’t run aground, so far from our homes
It’s been five years, so far, better check our chronometers, double-check using shining stars, as we sail through the night

CHORUS
We’re sailing on the Beagle now, the Falklands lie off our prow, Patagonias gone, Galapagos ahead
From Plymouth’s shores, sit back and hear the ocean roar, collecting fossil bones, finches, and new friends
And I don’t know if we’ll ever be back again, La Da Dum Dum La Da Da Dum

VERSE 2
Bleached bones lying in the sun, Megatherium and Glyptodon, eighteen pence buys a Toxodon, to send back to my home.
“One might really fancy, from an original paucity”, from one species to a multiplicity, these finches and their beaks
Watching this tortoise cook, maybe I’ll write a book, on this gobbledygook, that mystery of mysteries

REPEAT CHORUS

INTERLUDE (With a slide show)

REPEAT CHORUS (GO TO OUTRO)

OUTRO
And don't know if we'll ever be back again,
be back again, be back again, O be back again.
Oh oh oh oh oh, la la la la, la la la la, oh oh oh oh

As well as being to the tune of a Decemberists song, the lyrics are very much written in the style of The Decemberists: as many ridiculous rhymes, and as much archaic language as possible. My favourite moment in writing the lyrics was realizing that a famous passage from “The Voyage of the Beagle” actually matched the rhyme scheme of the song. Here’s the full quote:

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.

Keep in mind that this was written before the publication of “The Origin of Species”. Anyways, we had a lot of fun putting this together, and it seemed people really enjoyed our performance as well. I’ve currently got a pretty good cold, so I wasn’t able to sing at all, but Jeremiah and Jackie were awesome. I’ve been told that video exists of our performance, but for now here’s a picture of the three of us:

Saturday is YouTube day

In lieu of actual content, I thought I’d start putting up some music videos each week. Something old, something new, and something weird. First up, in the “something new” category, here’s The Decemberists continuing their tradition of releasing one of the weakest songs on the album as a single. This also reminds me that I really did mean to write more about this band, because I’m still listening to them all the time:



Next up, for something old, here’s Sam Cooke, who shouldn’t really need any introduction at all:



Finally, for something weird, here’s Apocalyptica. I remember hearing these guys back in undergrad, but I think you really need the video to get the full awesomeness: