Away

Vacation time! I'm headed to the Pac Northwest for some good relaxing and recharging. Think redwoods and pools, hopefully on the same day. This tune seems more appropriate for blasting off into an inter-dimensional head journey, building to a nice intensity. Which is just what I'm looking to disconnect from for a week or so. Yet again, The Growing Bin serves up a winner.  Peace out and see you back around Tuesday 7/10.

Henry-Skoff Torgue - Bacchanale Cardinale

Two birds with one soundtrack

If you find yourself looking for surprisingly good/somewhat under-the-radar movies with actors who went on to become famous (before becoming not famous anymore), check out Alan Parker's Birdy. I remember being underwhelmed by the similarly under-the-radar soundtrack as I was first devouring Peter Gabriel solo albums. Having listened to it recently with an ear far more sympathetic to atmospheric music that doesn't mind concealing itself, I'm in rediscovery heaven. I'm not saying you need to make like Matthew Modine and perch naked on the bed to enjoy. Then again, does music ever sound worse that way?

Peter Gabriel - Dressing The Wound

Peter Gabriel - Slow Marimbas

A to zinc

Art is sweet escape when it's got a landscape of cheepnis to rise above. And chintziness feels great when it's a breath of fresh air outside the suffocating salons of aesthetic refinement. It's all about balance. Which is to say, I'm in the mood for a tacky groove. As tacky as the heels, leg tan, and skirt slipping out of the taxi above. As necessary as the slap bass and saxophone that messes with all sense of right and wrong. Listening to this song, I can't shake mental images of Danny DeVito in a slapstick huff n' puff all across the screen. And no complaints about that.

Zinc - I'll Never Stop

Instrumental illness

Sticking with instrumental mayhem and blowing the dust off the vinyl crates sitting in forgotten basement corners, we come to The Viola Crayola. I'll always have a soft spot for the menacing rock side of '70s fusion. In other words, you keep those drums jazzy and step on that fuzz pedal, and I'll listen to what you have to tell me.

The Viola Crayola - The Last One On Earth

Battles lost

Time to party like it's 2007. I remember being so excited that the dorky dudes of Battles might be actual rock stars as they rode the wave of their supremely confident and accomplished debut album. What's more, that album seemed to point the way to an ascendance of adventurous "music-music" as a legit pop paradigm. Alas, time passed. The air leaked out of the tires, Ty Braxton left the band, and their follow-up album passed in my rearview without much notice. Having done a recent fly-through, I don't regret not paying attention.

I know that the unstoppable "Atlas" track mostly made their reputation, but this one seemed like the electrifying radio hit in the aforementioned alt reality of an experimental rock world takeover. Hopefully, they will live to fight more battles.

Battles - Snare Hanger

Lift me into your mouth

I've documented my longstanding XTC fandom in this space before, and I thought I'd rung that bell enough. But like all my favorite bands, they keep finding ways to nudge themselves to the forefront of my attention. For a bunch of years, I favored their post-punk peak period, but the lush pop craftsmanship of late albums like Nonsuch has been steadily unfolding its charms. Andy Partridge has always been a great—if usually understated—lyricist, and this one is deliriously appropriate for these days when the air itself seems villainous. For a few minutes at least, an ocean wave overtakes a heatwave.

XTC - That Wave

Summer mirage

I have hazy childhood memories of mid-level MTV hits from The Fixx. For some reason, I spent a lot of time wondering about that second "x" in the name. Seemed designed to make them appear extra intense, which I suppose New Wave often wants to be. Years later, I was surprised to find myself really enjoying the stainless steel pop of their Reach The Beach album. Worth checking out, although there is the headscratcher of why they bothered employing the world's most indistinct and boring drummer when cheaper machines were very much available.

Meanwhile, it seems we're in for a little heatwave. Which calls for mirages in the shape of music. Which this one totally is for me right about now.

The Fixx - Reach The Beach

New man

Legendary status aside, I've always thought Wire were at their best when they balanced out their post-punk stone-facedness with a healthy helping of pouty English posturing. Frontman Colin Newman's solo debut is pretty much an extension of the band's aesthetic, albeit with some surprisingly Cure-esque turns like this. Is that an accordion I'm noticing in the outro?

Colin Newman - Alone

Moments in frames

It's always a happy homecoming to return to the music of Eno, Cluster, or any combination of those guys. It's not so much that these ambient pioneers made specifically "soothing" music, although it often is that. For me, their work seems to frame and magnify a single, deceptively simple moment, revealing all the fine contours, and then place it in a gallery in my brain that doesn't really demand my attention, but finds a way to make me drift toward it. It's easy to say music feels painterly, something else to experience it via those same aesthetic receptors. I could let these dudes soundtrack large portions of any day.

Eno, Mobius, Roedelius, Plank - Es War Einmal

Eno, Mobius, Roedelius, Plank - Für Luise

Back in town

The reality of a drive back into the city involves undifferentiated stretches of highway monotony, clots of traffic, and several minutes of utterly unglamorous reststop time. While daydreaming yourself away from all that, you may find yourself cruising thru a digital wonderland, flanked by hallucinatory waves of a world that can never exist.

Squarepusher - Angel Integer

My way on the highway

If I'm not careful, I'm gonna exhaust all my summer signifiers before we even hit July. Ah well. I'm hitting the road for the year's first weekend upstate, and that means getting prepped for sundazed happiness. It also means driving music, and picking tunes for that never gets old.

Violens - Der Microarc

Free and easy

Forget Memorial Day, people. Summertime doesn't begin with a calendar date. It starts when someone with the above sunglasses enters the stage, counts off the band, and takes control of the air with the flute of interstellar mellow cruising. I love the little pillow fight between bass and guitar at 3:40 that resolves into a goofy flute and voice reconciliation a mere minute and a half later. Truly a reminder that we can all get along with a bit of effort.

The Chris Hinze Combination - Easy Answering

Queen tones

Pulled out some Lounge Lizards albums recently, and was happily smacked upside the head by a spunkiness that has aged very well. Then I put on their last album, which on the one hand is animated by a lovely sound palette and a gaggle of eager/excellent musicians, but now takes on kind of a tragic hue in light of John Lurie's subsequent troubles. Still, these sprightly tones are well worth enjoying, especially when paired with Lurie's album cover painting, which seems appropriate for nearly every moment of my day.

The Lounge Lizards - Queen Of All Ears

Everybody sing out

Keeping with the good vibes. Here's one in the proud tradition of elemental sound-choruses that perfectly punctuate righteous verses. Good to remember that you don't have to say anything to get exactly the right thing across. A little dose of Staples Singers will always make you feel like an upright human being.

The Staples Singers - Oh La De Da

Up in circles

A week+ in, and married life is feeling quite fine. Maybe the landscape has yet to come into focus, but so far a honeymoon seems mostly a state of mind. Which maybe means it always can. Meanwhile, the bulk of photographic evidence is still off in the selection stage, so audio memory cues will have to come first. Here's what we used to get our Jew on, the soundtrack for risking our lives aloft in chairs raised by well-irrigated men in a frantic, totally uncoordinated mess of a circle dance. Part of a wedding's joy is the thrill of survival.

Andy Statman and David Grisman - Chassidic Medley: Adir Hu/Moshe Emes

Getting Hutched

Well, I'm getting married on Saturday. The bigness of it is in many ways something I can't even get my head around. And as I've been warned, not so easy to physically process either. Whenever my plane is about to takeoff, I feel a distinct shakeup in my body chemistry. This is that multiplied a bunch of times. Which actually feels better than it sounds.

But as with so many things, a song says it better. So here's how we're going to introduce ourselves to the world (and hopefully not trip over each other). The honeymoon will wait a few months, but I'm hereby taking a weeklong vacation from the 'blague. See you back on Monday 6/11.

Willie Hutch - I Choose You