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Sometimes you have to go put yourself into an imaginary '60s place. I remember getting into these guys a few years ago, when I was apt to snatch up any album if someone told me it was a forgotten classic lovingly/belatedly reissued. Or maybe a rare specimen of exquisite artifice that the masses just didn't get around to appreciating, and then its moment passed. Well, I've still got that instinct, and I still believe all those possible futures are worth pondering. Here are a couple fine examples (links fixed now).
Found myself on a little business jaunt to Philadelphia yesterday. And with a beautiful day on my hands, I felt obliged to walk around aimlessly with all the free time I could steal. In my mind, this is what such a walk sounds like, irrespective of season or weather. And no amount of grim faces and neck tattoos can take the soul out of that fantasy.
Wow, could the emergence of "balearic" music really be more than 5 years old already?! Somehow, the sounds of this Studio escaped my ears while I was getting floated on all that ambient, propulsive, hummy groove stuff. I'm happy to report that jams like this have not aged nearly as badly as some other trends from just a few years ago. The band may be blandly named, but the beachy escape is sweet and succulent.
A national freakout comes to something like resolution. And while I suspect the collective tweakage will more likely find a new expression than just dissolve, a nice healthy exhalation is in order. I offer this tune to color in that mood. Also good for arriving at the street you call home, preferably if you have a vehicle to cruise onto it with.
Meanwhile, does this guy look like a young James Caan or what?
So much going wrong all at once in the world. And some interesting developments happening in mine. It's a head-scrambling mix. Which demands some appropriate musical disorientation.
Leave it to Knife/Fever Ray vocalist Karin Dreijer Andersson to find the dark side in a cool, almost marimba-like electronic groove. Or to look at it in reverse, I guess this is a pop song in her world. Music for walking in circles and waiting for what comes next.
Feelin' the sting of the NYC real estate hustle. The best medicine is a tune like this. Sends me to the imaginary world of $50-a-month lofts and a city that would keep finding reasons for me to see very little of home.
Some menacing clouds came out last evening, and my mind turned immediately to this piece of awesome flute-iness that could shine a light of piercing contemplation through any nimbus. There is a wide variety of brown pants that could accompany this tune, and one day I hope to own all of them.
The sweet spring air brings the sweet rock. Somehow, Westerberg and gang were never too addled to lace their meat n' potatoes rock n' roll with a swooning hook. Perfectly suited to bodies gathering motion and heat. It may be a truncated season, but I'll amble my way down the street with this tune in my head for as long as I can.
Aw hell, why stop with imitation when you can have 11 minutes of Fripp upon Fripp upon Fripp, etc. The more outdated his tape loop analog "Frippertronic" system of self-layering gets, the more I dig it. Something about the limitations of technology revealing the contours of personality. Also, the guy sure knew how to have an audio conversation with himself.
Maybe it's a sign of stunted development, but if you give me some repeated musical patterns and layer them crosswise/syncopated/whatever, I'll be your loyal listener, even if you are a fairly cheezy French prog rock outfit. With this one, they sensibly send the drummer on break, and commence to weave a sparkling web of notes, nicely-paced, before the guitarist launches into his best imitation of a Robert Fripp solo. Bon travail!
Yo La Tengo is emerging as the kind of band you grow old with — knowing how your tastes change and changing along with you, sometimes suggesting places you only might've gone. While putting Tortoise/Sea and Cake vet John McEntire at the console for their latest album might seem like a jump back to their more youthful '90s days, songs like this seem very much of the present. Which is to say, vaguely happy with where we are and yet quietly terrified of what's to come. Hearing it, I see bearded artisanal craftsmen libating at the beer garden in the late afternoon sun, stroller parked at arm's length, bobbing along to this melody, and imagining a time when they'd all be drunkenly belting it out together at the top of their lungs.
