Category: Music

So I’ve been trying to put together a list of my top 10 albums of 2007, something I feel obliged to do, despite the fact that everything at this time of year is in convenient list form. The problem I’ve found myself having is that basically I can’t come up with 10 albums. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I haven’t been posting (count how many posts separate this one from the same one last year.. yeah..) or if there just wasn’t an awful lot of stellar music this year or what, but here are my top 8 albums of 2007, in ascending order.

*8. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin*
At the risk of sending you to listen to an album that’s already mostly used for cell phone commercials, it’s still a pretty decent work of melancholy pop music for when the need of such a thing might strike you.
* “Band of Horses – No One’s Gonna Love You”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/03%20No%20Ones%20Gonna%20Love%20You.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=263615325&id=263615298&s=143441

*7. VHS or Beta – Bring On The Comets*
So many people would give me shit for listening to this band. The best way I can describe them is if you imagine Robert Smith fronting a disco-punk band that relies on a healthy dose of wah-pedal, you’d be really close. Except they’re better than that, I swear. I rocked out to this album quite a bit this year and still kick myself for not seeing them at the Larimer Lounge when I could have.
* “VHS or Beta – Burn It All Down”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/05%20Burn%20It%20All%20Down.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=261914358&id=261912715&s=143441

*6. Tiger Army – Music From Regions Beyond*
I’m not sure why I’ve never posted about Tiger Army before, maybe it’s because of the silly-ness of the music or because the singer is named Nick 13. Yes, that’s the number 13. Either way, the first album to come from Tiger Army that does not contain a number since their self titled debut (ie, “II: The Power of Moonlite”, “III: Ghost Tigers Rise”, etc) is their finest to date. Punk or rockabilly purists would argue with me, as there are a few disco-punk-pop anthems on there, but the reality is, this is one damn fine album. Just enough dose of the psychobilly they’ve come to be known for, as well as that country twang we’ve all come to know and love, but we’re also starting to see some pretty solid songwriting in there, too. Check it out.
* “Tiger Army – LunaTone”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/06%20LunaTone.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=252883384&id=252883214&s=143441

*5. The National – Boxer*
Sort of a hipster-lite favorite. Nothing exactly ground-breaking going on here, just The National doing what they do best: making their way through a subtle soudscape with solid songwriting and sad lyrics.
* “The National – Slow Show”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/06%20Slow%20Show.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=220281468&id=220281465&s=143441

*4. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible*
Another hipster favorite that shouldn’t surprise anyone for being on this list. I wasn’t actually even going to include it until I cracked it open again for the first time in quite a while and I must say, this is a damn fine album. Seeing them live at Red Rocks not too long ago doesn’t hurt, either.
* “The Arcade Fire – Keep the Car Running”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/02%20Keep%20The%20Car%20Running.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=216170422&id=216167680&s=143441

*3. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup*
To be honest, I really wasn’t sure about this album when I first listened to it. Sure, it had Zach Condon’s lovely warbling voice fronting it, but it took awhile for my consciousness to latch onto the music and want to listen to it. I’d been hoping for more of the same accordion-heavy, eastern European-flavored fare from the previous album The Gulag Orkestar and was surprised when The Flying Club Cup felt a lot different. Perhaps it was seeing Wes Andersen’s short film Hotel Chevalier which preceded The Darjeeling Limited, a film which takes place in a French hotel room that I started to appreciate what Beirut was trying to do with this release. The music was not featured in the film, although perhaps it should have been, it was just the visual French aesthetic that seemed to so well accompany The Flying Club Cup that helped me understand it. That probably makes no sense. Oh well, just listen to it for yourself.
* “Beirut – La Banlieu”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/05%20La%20Banlieu.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=262395140&id=262394460&s=143441

*2. Voxtrot – Voxtrot*
My love for Voxtrot has been hashed out at length before, so I won’t do it here, but suffice it to say that I’m not putting the self-titled LP debut from Voxtrot at #1 because I was a little disappointed with it. There’s not an awful lot for me to dissect as to why; when I listen to any single song from it individually, I hear all of the great things I love so much about Voxtrot, but for some reason the album as a whole didn’t “stick” to me as much as the previous EPs had. Maybe this is because I got so used to consuming Voxtrot in EP form, that is, obsessing about each song on its own and learning its ins and outs so well, that when I tried to apply this technique to the LP, I just got overwhelmed. All I know is that I could probably only call out by name 1/2 of the 11 songs on the LP, and know even fewer songs’ lyrics all the way through. Seeing them live twice this year, once in Austin and once at the Bluebird in Denver was a real treat, the latter of which absolutely blew me away. The live versions of the songs on this LP are mostly why it’s being included.
* “Voxtrot – Brother in Conflict”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/06%20Brother%20In%20Conflict.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=253433792&id=253433787&s=143441

*1. Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone*
There was a time when I referred to Explosions in the Sky as “The poor man’s Tristeza.” Something about them seemed derivative and simple compared to a Tristeza opus like Espuma or Bromas. After Tristeza’s DVD/CD release in late 2006, however, something switched. I couldn’t follow where they were going any more, and at the same time, Explosions in the Sky stepped it up and absolutely killed with All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. Deeply moving, noisy-but-not-too-noisy, epic-without-being-lame, dynamic-without-being-tiring, this album simply kills. I’ve listened to this album more times in a row than any other this year. An absolute gem. Also, catch them on Austin City Limits if you can. I’d link you to the YouTube vid of it, but it seriously does not do it justice.
* “Explosions in the Sky – It’s Natural to Be Afraid”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/03%20Its%20Natural%20To%20Be%20Afraid.mp3
* “Explosions in the Sky – Catastrophe and the Cure”:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/26/1663580/05%20Catastrophe%20and%20the%20Cure.mp3
* “iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i=212797656&id=212797654&s=143441

I don’t have much time to spend on telling you why I love all of these songs on these bands’ new albums, but trust me, this is all good shit:

Album Leaf – The Green Tour EP
Fear of Flying
A real return to form for TAL, much more personal and lively than the last album and more accurately reflects what it’s like to see and hear them play live.

Rogue Wave – Asleep at Heaven’s Gate
Lake Michigan
I’m not sure what’s up with the latest swath of compelling music named after the midwest, but Rogue Wave finally sounds exactly like I always wanted them to.

The Hourly Radio – History Will Never Hold Me
Closer
During a recent night at Sputnik, I overheard this band playing this song at the Hi-Dive and I had to learn more. Lovely dance-able dream pop.

The Hush Sound – Like Vines
Out Through the Curtain
While following a link chain related to typographical music videos, I came across a lovely track by The Hush Sound and followed through to their latest album. This track is a little lower-key than some of their other, more rocking tracks that follow in a Hold Steady vein.

Video in question:

Pinback – Autumn of the Seraphs
Blue Harvest
Either you like Pinback’s tight, melodic math-rock or you don’t. If you do, then this track will sound excellent to you. If not, well, you have issues you need to work out.

Last Saturday night, Tai and I went to see my friend Eddie play with The Omens. It was Eddie’s first time playing live with them. It was his first time playing anything live, anywhere, period.

The show was totally packed and totally awesome and I must admit there’s something I enjoy about being at a show that doesn’t really start rocking until well after midnight. Check out my shitty cellphone videos of the show/go-go dancers below, download the music and I’ll keep you posted on when you can check it out for yourself. Also, you can be their friend.

• The Omens – Can’t Satisfy
  
• The Omens – Make Time

I was going to review the latest NIN release, but Fluxblog does it much better. I would have spent too much time talking about The Downward Spiral.

• Nine Inch Nails – Capital G
• Nine Inch Nails – The Great Destroyer

So for some reason, I’ve placed this requirement on myself to post long, sprawling reviews of albums and artists, but what this has done is simply de-motivate me to write on music. Sometimes, I don’t have a long list of reasons filled with personal anecdotes to try and get you to listen to something; sometimes I just want you to listen to the music because it’s fucking great.

So. With that in mind, I’ve put together a short-form post that’s going to accomodate a lot of music and styles and bands. And that’s ok.

First off, I’ve been listening to a lot of Eluvium recently, which is sort of light and airy and instrumental. A lot of people liken them to Explosions in the Sky and Tristeza, but Eluvium has much less weight to it. Their latest album is called Copia and is available on iTunes. Along with Elvium, I’ve been listening (while reading) a lot to another band, Tycho, who sound a lot like the Album Leaf with faster beats, also instrumental.

• Eluvium – Reciting the Airships
  
• Tycho – Pbs/Kae

Next up is a band called Blonde Redhead. Interestingly enough, as I’ve started getting to BR’s latest album, 23 (not yet released), the bassist/singer from my band in high-school randomly sent me a MySpace message asking what I’d been up to. In my surprised response, I asked if she had any of our MP3s from back in the day (don’t worry, I won’t subject you to them here), and she sent me 2 full albums’ worth of MP3s. What I came to realize is that Blonde Redhead’s music has the same tentative style, the same frenzied pace, the same, well, color as the music I was trying so hard to make when I was 18. So without further ado, I give you:

• Blonde Redhead – Spring and By Summer Fall

Because I’m a terrible music blogger, I didn’t post the very second I learned that Voxtrot is coming out with a new, self-titled LP on May 22. They’re my absolute favorite band, and I selfishly kept the news of their forthcoming first full-length album all to myself. For shame. No longer though, because I give you my favorite track and the first officially-released single:

• Voxtrot – Firecracker
• Voxtrot – Kid Gloves

So there you have it. My first short entry post. Next time, I’ll be talking about The National’s new LP, The Boxer. The photos are from my recent SXSW trip, where I saw Voxtrot play at the Austin City Limits studio.

I started writing up an entire trip report detailing how every minute of my trip to Austin this year went. But I realized that it didn’t really get to the heart of what I wanted to say. Here’s what I wrote to my team at work to summarize. Khoi Vinh has some great commentary about the mechanism of the conference and I agree completely, so I won’t parrot him here.

South by Southwest Interactive is always a difficult creature to define. On the one hand, it’s a design conference with many rockstar attendees and on the other hand, it’s a development conference with strong ties to the technology and the social concerns that serve as an undercurrent to every interface alive on the web at any given time. SXSW serves as a sort of social barometer, a finger on the pulse of what is happening, and it changes year to year.

The first time I attended was in 2005 and the concept of the day was social networking, something that in 2007 WSOD’s clients are just now beginning to ask about. “How can we get on this whole social networking boat?” they seem to be asking us, and that boat was first launched in Austin, TX in 2005.

Social networking is just an example of the trends and themes that SXSW has and will continue to explore, but it stands out as a pointer to what SXSW is and tries every year to be: a place for the best and brightest of the web to gather in a relaxed atmosphere and put their heads together to figure out where the internet is headed, on a visual level, a technological level as well as a less tangible conceptual level.

What this means of course is that specific takeaways are hard to define; bullet points are difficult to put together in any meaningful way that will accurately represent the feeling one has on the flight home after 5 days of being inundated with new and interesting ideas.

That’s what SXSW provides you: a subtle shift in how you see the mechanism of the web, an excitement in what is possible, an awe for what happens when tags and images and code work together to create something more.

To best describe SXSW 2007 to someone who’s never attended, though, I’d have to settle on the following lessons:

+ Listen to your users! They’re important and they know what they want better than you do. Most of the time. There was much discussion around the documentation phenomenon and whether the abundance of proof provided to a client prior to any design taking place was an accurate way of designing for a medium that is fluid. Does more up-front documentation proving your idea is worth you client’s dollars make us less likely to try different solutions? Do we become so highly sensitive to critique when we’ve worked up personas and wireframes and use cases detailing why our idea is the greatest idea ever that we refuse to admit that it might be completely wrong? When does a designer’s “intuition” come into play?

+ The strongest web firms in the country are made up of people who were referred to as “generalists,” designers who understand and can write code, and developers who understand the kind of detail a designer puts into their work and who can respect and accurately represent this in their code. No one is advocating that everyone be able to absolutely everything, but having the gap overlap is crucial to success in the marketplace of web design/development. This dovetails nicely with point #1 above, and reinforced to me that WSOD is doing things the best way possible by removing the step of a specialized IA who gives wireframes to a designer who simply styles them. We had many conversations detailing exactly what level our designers delved into the data and cared about the data structure and goals before even starting design. This raised some eyebrows and impressed people that the designers here care as much about the data and information architecture as we do about the colors, type, layout, etc.

+ Design is life. There is no 9-5 if you’re a designer and keeping a strong stable of inspiration from which to draw is key to keeping the well of creativity overflowing. There was a distinct line drawn between being inspired by something and being influenced by something.. The former being the higher road to take as the latter ends up in copying superficial stylistic embellishments while missing the deeper meaning of the original influential piece. The idea of really doing your research before beginning a design project can greatly enhance the visual appeal of it because you’ve understood the structure and the history of everything going into what you’re producing, allowing you to follow the trail to the right decisions that are deeply linked to what you’re designing, not just choosing a typeface or graphical style because “it looks nice” or “it’s what’s hot right now.”

+ Something to keep in mind for the decades ahead: today’s teens growing up on the internet have a much more open mind to what constitutes privacy. There’s a generation who see the idea of blogging your everyday life as immensely anti-personal and as having a complete lack of self-respect or control. But the reality is that the generation younger than the current blog generation are blogging and networking socially in a much more open manner; everything about them is displayed on myspace for the world to see. Very little is kept behind a locked – or even closed – door. How will this influence web-based investing tools in 10, 15, 20 years down the road? What will this generation of investors require of us, and will they request it from us at younger ages? And at quicker intervals?

+ Agile development is really only possible if every member of the team is committed to it, and if the entire team is located in the same space. We won’t be able to move teams to any agile process until the project manager, account manager, SQL developer, etc. all reside in the same small space. This will be a challenge for WSOD.

+ When building a team, there needs to be a part of this team segmented off from doing client work whose sole goal is to focus on the future of the team and the future of the company, otherwise no one will have the time to do so, and the vision will falter, resulting in a higher turnover. Perhaps use more junior-level team members to take the quick-hit projects that require a high concentration of short-term focus to accomplish something, while leaving the senior people to focus on the bigger picture. When attempting to keep a team inspired, the team leaders must be inspiring. This sounds so basic as to not even be worth writing down but it has hidden meaning and is difficult to pull off. “Whining ruins the brand of your team.”

I just got back from SXSW and I have to say I’m tremendously disappointed in my lack of commitment to this blog.

I’ve been working a lot and on some important things, so my time’s been taken up entirely by work and my family. Plus, not having internet at home makes it a little harder to spend time blogging interesting things.

But I’ll try. I promise. New music coming soon, I swear. In the meanwhile, check out the new photos in the sidebar.

In order to celebrate my first end-of-the-year as a music blogger, I’m doing the honorable thing and creating a top 10 list for 2006.

I know. Totally original and totally unheard-of. I bet you won’t see any of these albums on anyone else’s lists, either. I’ve even included an album from late 2005. If that’s not “indie” then I don’t know what is.

• 10. Aereogramme – My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go (2007)
  
• 9. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife – Yankee Bayonet
  
• 8. Joanna Newsome – Ys – Cosmia
  
• 7. Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
• 6. Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther – Head Home
  
• 5. Sound Team – Movie Monster – Head Home
  
• 4. The Long Winters – Putting The Days To Bed – Rich Wife
  
• 3. Mew – The Zookeeper’s Boy EP – Am I Wry? No.
  
• 2. Tristeza – A Colores (2005) – Balabaristas
  
• 1. Voxtrot – Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives EP – Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives
  

PS: I was going to include links to a song from each album, but since EZArchive is fuxxored and totally useless now, I’ll have to figure something else out.

PPS: Dammit. I guess the Aereogramme album isn’t out until 2007. Guess I’m going to have to re-work this list…

Kottke recently quickly mentioned Rodrigo y Gabriela playing at PopTech 2006 and that reminded me that I’d wanted to post about them for awhile. Calling them metal-influenced flamenco/classical guitar doesn’t do them justice but just think for a second about how boring it usually is when it’s done the other way around. Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Rodrigo y Gabriela – Orion (Metallica cover)
• Rodrigo y Gabriela – Ixtapa

Buy on iTunes

(BTW, EZArchive is changng over to version 3.0 or something lame like that soon, so if these links go down, I’ll have to update them to point to the new system.)