February 2012
9 posts
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LINES FROM THE PRINCESS BRIDE THAT DOUBLE AS... →
My favorite is “That is the sound of ultimate suffering.”
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“Now, we seek odd syndromes to try and explain the symptoms in neural terms and...”
– Vilayanur Ramachandran, “Adventures in Behavioral Neurology”, edge.org (interested in strange brain-workings explained in matter-of-fact tones? read the whole thing.)
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“He spends all his time at the window now, looking down at the earth. He says...”
– Don DeLillo, “Human Moments in World War III”, from The Angel Esmerelda: Nine Stories (I need to read more DeLillo, evidently; also, I wish Charles Baxter could review every book)
January 2012
12 posts
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“For every bunch of dubiously photogenic fetal-alcohol-syndrome cases from New...”
– Warren Ellis in Abraham Riesman’s “Deathmatch on Mars” (this whole interview is fantastic, as Warren Ellis goes off on how he sees the future of manned spaceflight panning out)
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“One of the great things about this era of the game, though — it goes along with...”
– Brian Phillips, “Nadal vs. Djokovic: Here We Are Again, My Friend”, Grantland (I love this paragraph, as it perfectly sums up the way that both a) men’s tennis and b) Japanese animes function.)
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“Northern impersonality and Southern revenge converge on a common American theme:...”
– Adam Gopnik, “The Caging of America”, The New Yorker (stomach-turning stuff - Gopnik really nails the fundamental prison issues in the U.S. here, highly recommended)
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“I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in...”
– Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (thanks for reminding me to read this one again, Scott Beauchamp)
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Powell's Books Staff Top 5s of 2011 →
Lots of great book recommendations to be found here (I cheated for my bottom 3, since technically they only came out in paperback this year - but they’re still awesome!) Click through to check these out and support your favorite indie bookstore!
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December 2011
24 posts
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“The most important thing that happened in 2011 was the decision by the European...”
– The Morning News polls a bunch of different writers/editors/thinkers on what they thought was the most important event of 2011. Lots of great answers, but this one from TMN Contributing Editor Giles Turnbull takes the cake. I mean, if he’s right, we could go back and change 2011, rendering all...
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WatchThe Walkmen discuss and perform “We’ve Been Had” as part of the Onion AV Club’s One Track Mind series. Hamilton Leithauser has the best voice possible for this kind of music. Also, I wish I had a friend named Hamilton so I could call him Ham.
Looking forward to the vinyl reissue of Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone next year.
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“Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole...”
– Jim Wallis (via azspot)
This is pretty sickening.
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favorite albums 2011: number one
1. Wye Oak - Civilian
“Expansive” isn’t a descriptor you hear a lot for a two person band. That it feels perfectly appropriate in this instance is a testament to how effectively Wye Oak conjures up vistas of vast plains, deep oceans and wide open skies on Civilian. It was one of those albums that snuck up on me over the year. I liked it immediately the first time through, but...
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favorite albums 2011: number two
2. Real Estate - Days
I appreciate bands that do wistful well, and Real Estate does it better than most. I loved their first album wholeheartedly and naturally assumed that they would keep going back to that lo-fi well of autumnal beauty until it ran dry. It was surprising to play the first track on Days and hear every single instrument in perfect clarity where before, everything had blended...
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favorite albums 2011: number three
3. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
Annie Clark’s sense of rhythm and melody is utterly her own. I was trying to come up with comparisons to other bands/musicians in my head for a long time before writing this up and had no luck. For example, the beats on “Neutered Fruit” sound like it could be a slowed-down hip-hop track, but the guitar dancing around the drums is as angular as it...
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favorite albums 2011: number four
4. The Antlers - Burst Apart
This was my night-time album of the year. You know, that one particular album that somehow seems to come out every single year that is just perfect to throw on when it’s dark outside and quiet inside. Of course, I also listened to it on the bus and in the car a lot, too, and I would never say that it can only be listened to after 5 PM (hey, it gets dark early...
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favorite albums 2011: number five
5. Low - C’mon
Low makes spine-tinglingly beautiful music, and I mean that quite literally. There is always at least one moment on every album that gives me those shivers that I only get when hearing something indescribably beautiful. The best albums have these moments strung across their entire length, and Low has managed to do just that with C’mon. The verses in “You See...
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favorite albums 2011: number six
6. Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
I could listen to Bill Callahan sing about almost anything. The man’s voice is one of the richest and most interesting I have ever heard, and if this was all he had going for him, it would still be enough to get me to pick up whatever his latest album was. But when you combine this with the lyrical prowess on display throughout Apocalypse, you have a...
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favorite albums 2011: number seven
7. Radiohead - The King of Limbs
You would think that since Radiohead has been my favorite band since freshman year of high school, they would have more to live up to with a new album than anyone else in my musical universe. But they have this way of sneaking up unannounced and just dropping new music on the world, thus evading any anticipatory lead-up to THE NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM. I appreciate...
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favorite albums 2011: number eight
8. M83 - Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
This album probably had the toughest job of any of my top ten this year, as I was excited from the moment I heard the magic words “M83” and “double album”. My expectations were sky-high, and thankfully, Anthony Gonzalez didn’t disappoint. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming has the lushest production values of any album on this...
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favorite albums 2011: number nine
9. Panda Bear - Tomboy
I quickly grow tired of many albums that have seemingly indiscernible lyrics on first listen. My mind seems to think it’s not worth the effort to pick them out, but simultaneously feels bad about being that lazy, so those particular albums tend to be purposefully forgotten in short order. Not so with Tomboy. Maybe it’s because I loved Panda Bear’s...
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favorite albums 2011: number ten
10. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient
Adam Granduciel’s voice has a slightly more melodious Dylanesque tone to it, especially in the way he delivers his lyrics, dispensing them matter-of-factly over the band’s dreamy landscapes of layered guitars. The Stone Roses immediately come to mind as a reference point for the sound of Slave Ambient (though it’s definitely a bit more...
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let the festivities begin
OK, I finally got around to compiling my top ten favorite albums released in 2011. I plan on writing up a little something something for each one of them and to post said somethings on a (hopefully) regular basis starting next week. Just try to remember the following before you yell at me for not including THE OBVIOUS CHOICE FOR BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR: I didn’t make this list based on some...
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“Language is a poison in The Flame Alphabet. But the question the narrator faces,...”
– Ben Marcus, “Six Questions for Ben Marcus”, Harper’s Magazine (really looking forward to The Flame Alphabet next year)
November 2011
20 posts
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““Africa is a country. The Taliban rule in Libya. Muslims are terrorists....”
– Scott Horton, translating an article in Der Spiegel (some nice perspective here)
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WatchReal Estate play an acoustic “Green Aisles”. Anyone else want to just sit back and listen to these guys play guitar all day?
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“The alienation, the downright visceral frustration, of the new American...”
– Marilynne Robinson, “Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist”, The Nation (As with any Marilynne Robinson essay, you really need to read this whole thing. Come on, what else were you going to do on your lunch break?)