Anything On Your Mind?
2008 was much like 2009, at least for what I was doing with myself. It was a very busy year at the startup I was working at, as we had a couple opportunities that were time limited and required me to work a bunch of extra hours. One memorable evening I was crunching to get something put together for T-Mobile, and Megan was working on her thesis defense for her PhD. The dog decided that starting to make death noises at 1 AM was a good idea. He staggered around, hacking and coughing, and it really did not sound good. I took him off to the pet emergency room, one of the most depressing places on the planet, as the patients can’t even really understand what is going on. After getting to see the vet, and being asked some questions, the vet concluded that Sampson had probably just aspirated some vomit. See, every year, the crappy apple tree that we had would drop its fruit, which would rot on the ground. Once they were properly aged, Sampson would tuck in with gusto, get puzzled on rotten apples, and then boot in some corner of the yard. Repeat. It was his favorite annual ritual. And apparently that year, it had just gone a little too far.
Did it stop him in the future. No. The only thing that stopped him was when we got rid of that terrible tree.
Uh, anyway. Music! Our chart has just two albums from my library in it (Portishead and the Fleet Foxes), so that furthers the theory that the years immediately after having a baby were my least clued-in. I probably should have that Gojira album in here also, but whatever. I expect the 2008 album list on my Plex to be similar to 2009, in that it mostly focused on bands I already knew.
What Do You Listen To From 2008?
A sampling of albums from the year under question.
Once again, I’m struck by how I don’t really know where to pitch these things. Writing up albums “everybody” knows about seems goofy, but I have no real way to judge that because I’m basically feral. (The other day, I admitted to never having heard Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary to the astonishment of my friends.) This era especially is hard to judge - far enough away that people reading this now might not really have any familiarity with the music, but still close enough that yeah, they probably do. Add that to my baby-induced cultural cluelessness, and I feel like I have a thin harvest again. Ah well!
Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, The Baseball Project
I don’t really talk about baseball on here much, because you all don’t really need to know more about my various stupid obsessions. Tabletop gaming is bad enough! But, much to my dismay, I am a baseball fan going back to my childhood. I saw how much fun my dad was having with the Tigers in 1984, a team he’d followed since 1954, Al Kaline’s rookie year. I started paying a little more attention, with radio broadcasts of games being a perpetual background noise in our summers, and he encouraged me to just pick a team at random. It’s what he did as a kid, and it brought him plenty of joy. I selected the Royals, on the basis of watching Dan Quisenberry pitch on a Game of the Week and also liking the uniforms. Following Kansas City starting in 1986, the year after they won the Series, was one of the worst possible selections you could make in fandom, with really only the Mariners giving them a run for the money.
Then, I moved to Seattle in 1996. Before I did that, though, my dad and I had tickets to the World Series in 1991 and 1992, to watch the Pirates. Who, of course, lost the NLCS both years to Atlanta, 4-3, and in especially excruciating fashion in 1992. Go ahead, guess who was in attendance for both of Steve Avery’s 1-0 wins in the 1991 NLCS? Guess!
Anyway, despite the relentless torture of my teams’ rancid performances and the ceaseless derangement inflicted by carefully following a sport casually mishandled by savage wreckers steering our society into the toilet, baseball has still presented me with nice moments. Individual performances, the camaraderie of yelling at lumbering doofii hacking away at elusive pitches, the rich history…uh, of savage wreckers steering our society into the toilet. Baseball has been a companion to me for most of my life and a constant connection to my father’s memory. Plus, where else am I going to find ways to frustrate myself like this?
All of which is a long way of introducing this record. The Baseball Project is Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5, REM) and Peter Buck (REM, Minus 5) wanting to put together a new band for baseball songs. They recruited Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate) and Linda Pitmon (about a billion different bands with all these people) to fill out the lineup and produced this record. It’s hard to target me more directly. I’ve been a huge fan of McCaughey’s work, since picking up the Young Fresh Fellows’ The Men Who Loved Music in 1990 after They Might Be Giants namechecked them in “Twisting”. And, you know, all of the above about baseball. The album itself didn’t actually need to be good to enchant me, but I think it’s really good. It’s the kind of roots-y rock you might expect given the participants, which is a pleasant base to build on, and they just tell a bunch of fun stories about baseball’s past. They’re mostly stories I knew from all the baseball books I’ve read, but it’s fun to hear them here, and the album is genuinely a delight. And “Harvey Haddix”, one of Wynn’s tunes, is genuinely one of my favorite songs.
Make the Road by Walking, Menahan Street Band
Menahan Street Band play the sort of ambling, pleasant jazz/funk that we cannot get enough of around here. Bright, memorable horn lines, a rock-solid rhythmic base, the whole thing is a warm spring breeze with a cold drink in hand. If you listened to that record by A Plane To Catch the other day, this is a fine companion piece. I should organize some of these records by genre at some point. Yes, yes, I know nobody wants to read more of my scribbling about genre.
Meanderthal, Torche
Steve Brooks started Torche after Floor ended (although they did come back), bringing the latter’s approach to low-end but adding more harmonies and a certain lightness to the music. To my ears, Torche doesn’t really present as a metal band at all. If anything, this reminds me of some corners of grunge than it does anything else. Very specifically, it reminds me a ton of Otis “O” Barthoulameu’s work with Olivelawn and Fluf. There’s the same kind of high/low dynamics, it’s all pretty melodic, the tempos are more punk than they are metal, I dunno. I know by 2008 grunge was deeply, deeply unfashionable so nobody calls it that, but my ears hear what they hear. Anyway, the record is excellent.
Let’s Talk 2008 Some More
Josh, weren’t you just complaining you wouldn’t have stuff to write up? Yes, I was. Shut up!
The Golden Hour, Firewater
Yes, yes, I know. I just wrote up International Orange a couple months ago, and I mentioned that this record is pretty similar. It is, but it is also better. I won’t do the full recap, but Tod Ashley was disillusioned with the direction of the US after the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, and went abroad to escape for at least a little while. This album was the result of that, with him recording with Turkish musicians and adopting some of the instruments and rhythms into his songs. And it sounds absolutely fantastic. It’s a tremendous record, and one that has continued to delight me.
Rising Down, The Roots
“Favorite Roots record” is a tough question to nail down. For a band that was putting out records across such a broad swath of hip-hop history, it’s difficult to really evaluate their place in history or consider their records individually as artifacts. There’s an inevitability to considering them instead as pioneers, as iconoclasts, or whatever else rather than simply as musicians. The default lens for the Roots is not “hip-hop artists” but instead “important artists”, which is unfortunate, I think. Yes, of course they’re important, yes, they’ve opened lots of conversations, yes, they should be considered for their place in history. But also, we can consider their records as records. And so: which is my favorite record?
The chalk answer and the one that most people would give seems to be Things Fall Apart, the breakthrough that won the group a Grammy, plenty of placement on best-of lists, and eventually a platinum record. And it’s a fine choice! But I don’t really think it’s mine. I probably listen to Phrenology more than I do that record, there are times I think Game Theory is better, and then there’s this one from 2008. It’s a tough decision to make, but even contemplating this as being on a par with their best work means that this is a truly remarkable record and I think their last great one. If for some reason you fell off of the Roots at some point and haven’t encountered it, give it a whirl. Framed by arguments of the band about their record label, it considers carefully where they sit with society, what has changed and what hasn’t, and what remains to be done. It’s a hell of an album.
Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump, Various Artists
I don’t include a lot of compilations in here, for the simple fact that I don’t really listen to a lot of comps. That’s mostly because I enjoy sinking into albums, exploring more of an artist’s sound, and just generally spending larger chunks of time on something before switching. You know, outside of hardcore EPs. A comp, then, can sometimes frustrate me a little bit. I’ll hear a song I really like and then learn that that artist maybe never put out a record, or that their albums are pretty different, or various other problems. That’s not to say I don’t listen to them at all, but they’re a relatively small part of my diet.
The Nigeria 70 comps are an exception. My knowledge of Nigerian music, like so many others, basically started and ended with Fela Kuti, whose music broke through to American audiences and stayed there thanks to a compelling biography. Nigeria 70 examines the scene in Nigeria the time of Kuti’s rising and presents a bunch of really interesting music in the same rough vein as Kuti’s afrobeat. The original 2001 comp was followed up in 2008 with this one, which adds another set of excellent music. They’re both worth taking for a spin, especially if you enjoy Kuti’s music.
Five Random Songs
Yes, it’s the “classic” five random songs format. It’s been told before on this blog many times, but basically, on an old forum, people would post the last five songs their shuffle pulled up. I liked it, so I made it into a blog. And now, here we are.
“Time Wounds All Heels”, Ludicra
I just wrote up Ludicra the other day, so I won’t belabor things. This is from their second album, Another Great Love Song, which was on Alternative Tentacles. That always tickles me, as that will always be the label of the Dead Kennedys and NoMeansNo, so hearing black metal on it is very amusing to me. I am easily amused.
“Super Phunk”, The Du-Rites
A 2021 single from the Du-Rites, which is pretty much as advertised. Super phunk indeed.
“It’s Quiet”, Revenge
Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order) started this band after leaving the latter, and they put out one album and some singles and that was that. This is the closer of that album, and this is just an inessential release. I picked it up because I was curious and knew about the New Order connection, and let’s face it, the cover photo didn’t hurt anything. But I don’t even think New Order sickos need to listen to this.
(NB: The thing I found on YouTube is this song plus “Seven Reasons”, which apparently was the a-side of a single with this song on the b-side.)
“Identikit”, Burning Airlines
J. Robbins has been in an awful lot of bands. Off the top of my head: Government Issue, Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Channels, Office of Future Plans, and Report Suspicious Activity. Plus his solo work. And in that list, the two albums he put out with Burning Airlines are my favorites of his, even more than his work with Jawbox which I adore. There’s an extra mathiness to these two records which I really like. I think their self-titled debut is slightly better, but both smoke.
“Upsetter”, Helen Money
I could tell you that Helen Money is the name for Alison Chesley releasing solo cello work, and I don’t think you’d guess that it sounded like this. But, this is recorded by Steve Albini, features a Neurosis member on drums on a few tracks, and…well, it sounds like this and not whatever popped into your head when you read “solo cello”. Can you make menacing doom metal with a cello? Yes, yes you can.
Some Better Places To Learn About Music
Check these folks out, you’ll learn more for sure. In no particular order: To The Teeth, Wolf’s Week/Plague Rages, The Devil’s Mouth, Burning Ambulance, Lamniformes Cuneiform, Hex Records, See/Saw, Starkweather.