Muscle relax

Been feeling a curious muscular lethargy in the evenings of late. I doubt there's anything medical going on, but that doesn't stop my mind from having all sorts of projects, which may explain the bizarre layering of dreams over those same nights. Coincidentally, Papas Fritas's swan song album has been stuck in the stereo, quaintly enough in actual CD form. Their benign '90s college pop has been a fine complement to these wispy moments. 

Papas Fritas — Girl

Soft illusions

Being in the baby bubble means blurring the line between sleep and wakefulness, deliberate movements and falling back on muscle memory. Makes me appreciate the soft, surprisingly near-hallucinatory brushstrokes of Satie. Here's a classic one, nicely rendered by old progster Steve Hackett, and his brother John, fully in charge on flute.

John Hackett & Steve Hackett — Gnossienne No. 3

Haunted strummin', sweet pickin'

Another one from college/post-college days. I haven't kept up with the continuing adventures of Tara Jane O'Neil, but I'm right pleased to have fresh ears for her haunted, strummed ditties of yore. I keep putting this album on and commence to tasks that don't compel me to restlessly change up the music. Which means I'm enjoying it in an attention span-preserving way. Which is therapeutic.

Tara Jane O'Neil — Sunday Song

Tara Jane O'Neil — Another Sunday

Vibe visions

A band built around a hyperactive drummer and a relatively mellow vibesman yields some fun contrasts, like gears moving at different speeds. The backwards tape opening is an easy signifier for waking up bleary-eyed from an accidental nap, but the rest of the tune suggests that it's just the beginning of another sound dream. Jazzy chord sequences over hypnotic rhythms are surely the stuff of comfy dreams, and this one might just spill over into the part of Saturday morning where you look at the sky and wonder what degree of consciousness qualifies as actually waking up. 

The Dylan Group — Division Long

Will-o-the-wisp

Feeling drained from a busy work week, which makes me susceptible to mysterious stringy noises leading me down equally mysterious mental paths. I'm not sure if it's light or darkness in the distance, but I can't resist the slow momentum toward it. 

Nels Cline - Friends Of Snowman

If'n

It's the nature of music scenes to come and go. For improvising musicians, the last thing you'd expect is for them to linger too long in proven configurations. It's sad to see things dissipate, but that's what makes the moments meaningful. As long as the gigs keeps coming, I'm all for moving on to the next thing. Which made it fun to catch this trio a few weeks back, reunited after about a decade, picking up right in the groove where they left off. For an evening anyway.

Chris Speed Trio - Gina

Vacationland

New Zealand is starting to feel within my grasp. Countdown to blastoff is 3 days now. And while I can't wait to get my antipodes on, the excitement is tempered a bit by the prospect of spending double-digit hours above the mighty Pacific. That said, the time for vacation soundtracks has come. And I will commence to sprawl out to this musical saw/mallet-laden number with the dopey smile of a man who is very far from home.

Kev Hopper - Lamalou Les Bains

Thoughts in orbit

Starting to feel that cold weather urge to spend some good solo contemplative time walking through wooded places. Which means it's time for music to accompany that sort of thing. Or for being all moody in dim places. Either way, this tune has you covered.

Matthew Shipp - New Orbit

Square shadows

Dave Brubeck gets no respect. I suppose it's due to his shameless brand of white, European-ish jazz that was decidedly non-hep in its day. Also, those odd time signatures, which are bound to get you marginalized in any era. 

Improviser David Slusser had his work cut out in covering this moody little noir nugget. And he nailed it. I like how he bear-hugs the nerd factor, then throws an avant-noisy curveball, followed by nice some bluesy guitar strangling. Goes to show that maybe Brubeck wasn't as square as he seemed. Or that it is indeed hip to be square, as another much-maligned paleface has taught us.

Dave Slusser - Blue Shadows In The Street

The floods breathed

Talk about a perfect pairing of music and album cover. This is some hyper-maudlin stuff that may be a shade of gray too far for some. Not me though. I like my emotionally manipulative sounds to be as heavy-handed as possible. I'm just not sure if the imaginary movie should take place in the countryside during the bleakest Soviet days or if it should follow the long, lonely retirement of a discarded stuffed animal. Suggestions?

Sylvain Chaveau - Et Peu a Peu Les Flots Respira

Movement

Gotta say I'm a bit amazed at being able to get my meaningful possessions packed, transported, and mostly unpacked in a relatively short span of countable hours. Now there's the process of acclimating to a new domestic space, but there's plenty of time for that. Unpacking box after box of CDs brings many thoughts to mind. And even more songs. For some reason, this one popped into my head at several moments. Not sure why, but then what fool assigns meaning to any thoughts that come when trying to reconstruct the shape of a collection from poorly packed moving boxes? Maybe something to do with the title.

Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around The Block

Genius funk

So they gave Ken Vandermark a MacArthur Genius Grant a while back. Good on him. Skronkers need money. And look what it accomplished. Gave him time to practice his groovy moves. I like the way he shimmies it up with the trombone here. And the bowed bass is cooking up something awfully smokin'. Unfortunately, the song title calls this to mind.

The Vandermark 5 - Roulette

None of us have anything

Happy belated MLK Day. Sorry, forgot to mention I'd be observing it. In the spirit of honoring lives, here's a song for the sadly just-departed Trish Keenan, singer of the excellent band Broadcast. They never quite got all the acclaim they deserved, what with simplistic comparisons to Stereolab and the like. But they were brilliant all the same, with both a well-considered aesthetic and a drive to keep evolving it. They only made a few albums, but they're all worth your attention. This track feels appropriate for the occasion — funereal and otherworldly, with Keenan's beautifully blank voice set hauntingly in the foreground.

Broadcast - Until Then

Room to breathe

You know what's hard? Not making sound. Especially when you've got instruments right in front of your face. Like today's song. I'm constantly amazed not just at Harold Budd's melodic restraint, but also how he resists the temptation to resolve his ideas. Maybe it's a genetic predisposition to give direction to movement, but very few people have the instinct to make music that drifts, hangs, or lingers without coming to a comfortable rest. It's what separates the good ambient work of people like Budd and Eno from pony-tailed New Age baloney.

This piece feels like an un-hurried reach, an unfolding that reveals nothing. But with a slight sense of disturbance that keeps a small but necessary part of your brain at rapt attention.

Harold Budd - The Room of Ancillary Dreams

Go, going, gone

I'm not even gonna qualify my claim that the Go-Betweens were one of the very best bands of the 1980s, "alternative" or otherwise. The facts: the band boasted 2 ace songwriters in Robert Forster and Grant McLennan; the songs are tight, smart and catchy, nearly always in equal measure; they were critically adored but criminally absent in the charts, with recognition coming way too late. You've heard it before.

I'm gonna skip over their '80s classics (anyone reading this should at least own Before Hollywood) and go right to their comeback in the '00s, which was cut short due to McLennan's sudden death in 2006. Super bummer. They still had it—rhyming about looking good in Hollywood, dreaming of Birnham Wood. Take that, Biggie.

The Go-Betweens - Going Blind

Taking your ass to school (and picking you up afterward)

The road of excess may lead to the palace of wisdom, but aren't palaces kinda fundamentally excessive in themselves? And what about an excess of wisdom? You could end drawing and quartering your own brain.

Don Cab built some pretty over-ornamented edifices in their day, but I think they've weathered the years better than lots of their fellow post-rockers, or whatever you want to call them. They started out kicking ass all over math class and ended up learning how to sip tea. Almost. At least they put their looper pedals to good melodic use. I figure this is a good tune to mark the start of the academic season. Not that I'd know anymore. Nowadays, I can only have my back-to-school moments over evening beers or by wandering around the Kmart.

Don Caballero - You Drink A Lot Of Coffee For A Teenager

Flowin' not fussin'

Many of my fellow Easterners love to dismiss LA as a vain, self-absorbed, hopelessly shallow ooze of sprawl. Hollywood incarnate. While I don't entirely disagree, I think it's kind of a lame straw man. Especially from a bunch of pretentious, neurotic, equally self-absorbed Yanks. There, see. Let's all hug. As for LA, I prefer my caricatures positive, and I like to imagine the place mostly in musical terms—a palette of easy grooves garnished with a sweet breeze and smog-kissed sunsets. Here's one that captures that flavor, from an album of similarly charming sketches. Who really cares that they have the fleetingness of sandcastles?

Tommy Guerrero - Flux and Meter

Oui!

Hello summer! That came fast. I was hoping to work through a proper spring, but it looks like we've leapfrogged into July. Here's a song from a band that always seems to pop up right around these temperatures. They're so solid nowadays, it's hard to even notice them. I remember being very excited about them back in the days when Chicago gave us indie rock rather than presidents. Languid and zippy, all feathery vox and exquisite arrangements, this one makes me want to ride through soft landscapes taking in all the air I can swallow.

The Sea and Cake - All the Photos

I love her nonsense

I've still got Talking Heads on the brain. Of all the groups that had those guys in their DNA, here's one that probably deserved the most acclaim. If only for their singer's complete disregard for bar lines and discernable lyrics. Sadly overlooked in their day, they're broken up now, which may have been a great career move in the long run.

I first heard their record as winter turned to spring in a year much less personally contented than this one. The audio memory was bound to be more intense. And here we are, with spring just about to happen. Onward to the weekend...

Life Without Buildings - The Leanover