Prestige Format

The last of the Super Secret Space Base posts. Links were to dead streaming site lala.

here comes a time in your life where you run out of time to pay attention to all of the different things that were so interesting in your youth. Very often, this time comes right around the time you have children. Thus, most parents have tastes in music frozen in time around the arrival of their bundles of joy. They’re often, but not always, unwilling to appreciate any new developments in music. Unfortunately, the new developments in music that they are receptive to are the most unchallenging (this is why American Idol is popular–it’s basically mass participation karaoke).

For my baby boomer parents, while some touchstones include early Zeppelin, early the Who, mid-period Beatles (specifically the McCartney songs), most of their go-to tunes can be graciously described as “easy listening”. My dad likes classic rock but doesn’t like that it now includes early U2 and Van Halen. For my mom, it’s either schlocky R&B/Motown with any edge carefully buffed out or Billy Joel and his ilk. I have some of their old records and can testify that they used to have good taste in music (Mom’s Steely Dan got sold before my time, but Dad handed down some ELP and Jethro Tull). Your parents are probably similar–the most recent cds they own are probably an American Idol alum like Kelly Clarkson or a soundtrack for a movie targeted directly at their demographic. Now, while not all parents are in this boat (Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s kid is the luckiest alive in this regard), most of them probably have similar touchstones of their frozen music taste. Here are ten albums released in 2009 which will pass through their Music Defense Shield and might have them open their mind a bit.

Richard Swift – Atlantic Ocean
This album is best if your parents ever liked seventies high-art pop songwriters like Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and ELO. It’s got some synth, but it’s mostly played the way synth was played in the seventies: as a funky keyboard. There’s a lot of perfect pop songwriting, with piano and falsetto. Come to think of it, this album might work really well during a late party where a board game is being played with some intensity, but everyone has had a bit to drink. Also, watch out–there’s some swears–nothing severe but you might want to know.

Monsters of Folk – Monsters of Folk
There’s a lot going on in this album. It features the frontmen of My Morning Jacket (Jim James, who released an album of hushed George Harrison covers as Yim Yames this year–Parent Approved) and Bright Eyes (warbly-voiced Conor Oberst) as well as singer-songwriter (and Zooey Deschanel collaborator) M. Ward (who also released a Parent Approved album this year called Hold Time) and Bright Eyes producer/guitarist Mike Mogis. The best approximation is southern rock like CCR and the Allman Brothers (without the all the guitar fireworks), though there’s some Neil Young and some Prince thrown in for good measure. There are a couple of clunkers on this album (thanks, Conor!) but it’s mostly hushed folk mixed with nice rocking songs complete with guitar solos, and a couple of funky butt-rock songs. Monsters of Folk will work best in a loud setting, either a talkative car or a boisterous party.

The Decemberists – Hazards of Love
This is a slightly risky inclusion on the list, but I think it is a worthwhile one. What we have here is a full-on rock opera, with a specific story and structure and everything. The Decemberists have finally taken that literary nerd rock they love and fully integrated with the Led Zeppelin sound. (Don’t think they go together? What about Misty Mountain Hop? The song’s about hobbitses, precious.) Your dad will love the monster Zep (or Sabbath or Rush, whatever his touchstone is) riffs, your mom will love the quiet duets about love. If your mom’s like mine and was a singer in a past life and is always complaining that all the lady singing she hears you listen to is all whispery and not nearly strong enough, then Shara Worden (as the Forest Queen–see what I mean about rock opera?–and also from the band My Brightest Diamond, which is quite a bit more challenging than this) will knock her off her feet. This is probably best as car trip music, provided you’re driving. Plus you can mention their lighthearted feud with Stephen Colbert as either serious or joking depending on their political leanings.

Music Go Music – Expressions
Everybody likes Abba. Everybody likes the Top Gun soundtrack. Everyone likes a little bit of Yes. Especially your parents. Rock on!

Kings of Convenience – Declaration of Dependence
Every baby boomer has a soft spot for Simon and Garfunkel. Some might prefer Paul Simon’s solo work, but the duo have a classic pop-folk sound which is still relevant and popular. Great for quiet evenings, it boasts syncopated acoustic finger-picking and great singing in harmony, featuring Erlend Øye’s butter-smooth vocals. Just, uh, maybe don’t mention that they’re Swedish?

Cotton Jones – Paranoid Cocoon
A blues- (but not blooz-) soaked folk album, this might remind your parents of their hippie days, before it was commodified and sold back to them in a high-priced special edition. It’s got a great hazy Sixties feel, with warm organ and lazily strummed vintage guitar. It’s sure to warm an afternoon and it’ll go just as well with tea as with wine.

Helado Negro – Awe Owe
This is perfect music to play for your abuela and your tias while they whip up their famous batch of tamales (make sure to save me some). Sure to be a hit with anyone who owns an album by someone named Gilberto, Roberto Carlos Lange takes the traditional Latin touchstones and mixes in some ambient atmospherics. This works perfectly as background music–the more “challenging” sounds fade into the background, but the samba and other elements jump out when the time is right.

Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Have your parents ventured into the wasteland that is country music? My dad spent a morning at a country station talking up one of his clients, and later mentioned to me that country music is great! I assured him that most of the time, country music is actually the opposite of great. Neko Case is one of the fantastic exceptions. She writes incredibly solid, twangy pop songs with singable choruses and vital lyrics which tell vivid stories. They’re often sad, even, keeping in line with the classic country stereotype.

Mulatu Astatke/The Heliocentrics – Inspiration Information 3
Do your parents like jazz and funk music? Do they listen to jazz and funk music that is antiseptic and overproduced to the point that it’s practically elevator music? Here is their antidote. This is another great quiet evening soundtrack, perfect for listening while your yearly game of Monopoly rages ever onward.

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Okay, let’s be honest. This album, while definitely one of the best of the year, is pretty difficult. But it’s worth it. Your parents may be unsure at first, so why not start with the single version of While You Wait for the Others featuring every baby boomers’ favorite crooner, Michael McDonald? They use mostly conventional instruments, and write gorgeous pop songs. Don’t call them experimental, just call them a pop rock band. This album might be the most difficult connection to make, with little to connect to Approved music. But just let the songs sink in over dinner and hope for the best. The payoff will be worth it.

---

For best exposure, play these subtly in the background while driving with them or enjoying a meal. Don’t jump on your parents when they ask who it is. Give the name, and maybe mention them in conjunction to an artist on their Approved List. For best results, shuffle with a complementary Approved album or two–you’ll likely get a “sounds like you finally have good taste in music” backhanded compliment. Let it slide.

Yup, another one from Super Secret Space Base.

1. Design
The movie looks great. It’s dominated by colors–each set has its dominant color, which permeates the scene. The shots are carefully balanced but not static. Even though the movie is almost 15 years old, the effects work doesn’t look that dated. Sure, some of the rubber masks are obvious, but even they have the Henson charm. Most of the CG work is unobtrusive and, while looking slightly dated, it fits into the cartoony aspects of the world the film creates. The costume design is great, too! It looks clearly futuristic in an almost impractical way that most other movies set in the future (Star Wars and Trek, for instance) don’t even attempt. Plus there is the object design in the film. Jean Girard (Moebius) was one of the main artists for the film. He has a long history of doing great art that gets involved in film–from designs for Alien and TRON to classic comics that inspired movies like Blade Runner.

2. Story
The Fifth Element is a space opera. It’s an action-adventure. It’s a thriller. It’s a comedy. It’s a drama. It’s well thought out, pretty unpredictable and definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously. It shows, not tells. It gives each character enough depth to make them interesting but not more than they need. At the same time, it’s not clearly delineated into Autobots and Decepticons–while it’s pretty simple to tell which side a person is on, it’s not black and white. Motivations are gray and not everything is explained (and it doesn’t need to be). We know that there is some history and some crazy things happening, but we never have to sit through a massive block of exposition.

3. Action
Flying car chases. Explosions. Kung-fu. Gun battles. Explosions. Pretty ladies. Aliens. Robots. Military might. Did I mention all the explosions?

4. Humor
Unlike so many science fiction films out, this one purposely avoids taking itself seriously. Sure there’s some talk about the end of the world and the body count is relatively high, but it’s done with a cartoon smirk that flushes any serious repercussions out with the refuse. Chris Tucker acts as the main comic relief, with his fast-talking, famous-but-cowardly radio host, but every character, even the antagonist, deliver their performance with a wink of humor that makes the whole thing so much easier to swallow and more enjoyable.

5. It’s a Comic Book!
The movie looks great, it’s story is fun and pulpy and doesn’t take itself seriously, it has great set pieces, and it doesn’t expect too much from it’s viewers. It’s not some jingoistic action rah-rah flick, but it’s a more subtle look-at-this-isn’t-this-cool adventure. Plus, the colors! The acting! are both so stylized that this movie oozes comic book sensibilities, second only to Tank Girl in terms of frenetic madness.

Highly recommended.

Another originally posted at Super Secret Space Base.

Recently I sat down to watch Mary Poppins with my daughter. She had really enjoyed The Sound of Music (aka the greatest musical ever made) and I thought I would subject her to some more of Julie Andrews’ singing, this time augmented with some Disney magic. I was struck while we watched the film–Disney’s live-action fare has changed dramatically since its heyday in the 60’s. I stand by Mary Poppins as a movie, but it’s hardly the scientifically-maximized-for-kids entertainment compared to most stuff available now.

I’ll start with why it doesn’t measure up to today’s kid movies:

1. Length. The movie is just under 2 and a half hours, which, as anyone with a child under 5 knows, is waaaaay too long to sit still.

2. Pacing. There are some great, fanciful, exciting parts of the movie. Unfortunately for a child, they’re broken up by plot. While I am not complaining about plot (I’ll talk about liking it below), it’s pretty easy for a toddler to get bored during these sections.

3. Dick van Dyke’s accent. It’s terrible. Doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s just comically bad.

But what makes it superior to whatever Nickelodeon/Disney Channel-promoted flick out now?

1. The songs. These songs, unlike those in most kids’ shows (Sesame Street and Yo Gabba Gabba! excepted) are timeless. Chim-chim-chiree and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious got me and my 18-month-old daughter singing along and having fun. They aren’t dumbed down or overproduced. They’re stone-cold classics.

2. The sense of whimsy and fantasy. The magic that happens is never explained or even really questioned. Not to say that a lack of skepticism is positive, but, as with JJ Abram’s mystery box, a lack of explanation can make some things more interesting and more exciting. We don’t know how much of this movie actually happens to the Banks children, if they really go into that chalk painting or dance on clouds of smoke above rooftops, and it isn’t important. Neither is HOW it happened. The world is magical for the children in the movie and should be for the viewers as well.

3. The story’s sense of realism. This might sound completely opposed to the previous point, but hear me out. There are very real issues in the story: the children are out of control, their parents are hardly involved in their lives, and their dad is a workaholic. There are no magic revelations in the movie, everyone goes through experiences that change them as people (or children, as the case may be) and they end up better people and a better family. There is real crisis, too, with the run on the bank, George Banks’ firing and subsequent not returning home (initially). The crises develop each member of the family in ways that are implied throughout the film rather than stated, bringing the movie to a satisfactory (okay, and whimsical) end.

So, sure. This movie will not completely occupy your children for its entire run time like the perfect electronic babysitter.* But, viewed as a family, it’ll give you great joy (the songs! I had to find my soundtrack record after we watched this), a chance to discuss things with older children, and even an opportunity to teach the younger ones (”In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. Find that fun and *snap* it’s a game!”). Plus, Julie Andrews’ voice is perfect.

*Your best bet for viewing is to watch the first half before naptime and then put them down immediately after the “Stay Awake” lullabye. The second half can be viewed later in the day. Both halves have an extended song and dance number and kids can be brought up to speed quickly.

This was originally posted to Super Secret Space Base, a now defunct blog that I tried to start with an internet pal. I’m reposting some of my random internet posts here to keep them all in one spot. Most of the links in this post go to a dead music streaming site called lala.com.

Primer is a fantastic film about the interpersonal consequences of time travel. SSSB’s Primer feature is intended to take you “back in time” and prime you with background and commentary on a cultural phenomenon.

Daft Punk is, I believe, one of the greatest music duos of the twenty-first century. While they are immensely popular, they’re almost criminally neglected in the “mainstream” of the music industry. It’s easy to lump them into the “techno” bucket and ignore or indulge based on your proclivities with that genre. Daft Punk are masters of recontextualization; they take dried-up old snippets of music and make them monoliths of pop perfection. But where to start?

Daft Punk is a French electronic music duo. People who concern themselves with genre labels will say they’re French House or Filter House or French Touch.  Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have released three full-length albums, two live albums, a remix compilation, a greatest hits album, a music video compilation, an animated movie, and a film since forming in 1996. They have ties to French bands Phoenix and Justice (who, some argue, stole their sound from Daft Punk). They prefer not to have their pictures taken and typically wear their customized, LED-embedded robot helmets with Hedi Slimane-designed leather biker suits.

There are two obvious points of entry to Daft Punk’s catalog. The first point of entry is one that will not only help you love Daft Punk, but will help you understand electronic dance music (particularly the kind that doesn’t go verse-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus) as a whole.

AROUND THE WORLD

Around the World by Daft Punk and Michel Gondry

This is one of Daft Punk’s early singles. It’s got a great beat, a catchy bassline, and that robotic vocal hook. If you didn’t guess from the picture up top, Daft Punk has a thing for roboticity. Anyway, the key to this song is actually the video, where director Michel Gondry lays bare the working of the song my synchronizing a group of dancers with each part of the song. Granted, the song is repetitive, but it’s also constantly evolving, as is the dance of the various players in the video. If this video doesn’t hook you on Daft Punk, it’s okay. You probably need to watch it again.

The second introduction into the world of Daft Punk is the first four songs of their second album, Discovery.

These first four songs (One More Time, Aerodynamic, Digital Love, Harder Better Faster Stronger) are the cornerstone of electronic pop in the twenty-first century. They’ve influenced a huge amount of the music you’ll hear on the radio, proving that music can be danceable, electronic and impossibly catchy all at the same time. Also, witness the early introduction of what eventually became the auto-tune obsession in pop music. These songs fit perfectly on any dance floor. Your mom can appreciate the vestiges of disco, your older brother can remember dancing to New Order, and your little sister can just not get that beat and that hook out of her head. And that’s only One More Time.

Aerodynamic is included if for no other reason to showcase the greatest rock guitar solo in an electronic dance song ever. Behind the barely-there robot guitar chant of the song title, this song is a solid funk track. And then comes that modulated, filtered and still killer guitar solo. As one Steve Jobs would say, boom. (And then and then there is a baroque breakdown out of Wendy Carlos’ so retro-futuristic Tron soundtrack. Speaking of which, Daft Punk has been drafted to provide the soundtrack to the Tron sequel coming out next year. It’s both a sign that the producers know what they’re doing and that Daft Punk are the preeminent electronic music producers of the age.)

Digital Love is pure pop music. Easily singalongable with the verse-chorus structure and an undeniably catchy chorus, this song trades in smiles and fun times. Any two-people-fall-in-love film montage would be made better with this song on top. Musically, it has more in common with early Elton John than any single from a musician with “DJ” in their name. And, wow, another hott guitar solo!

Harder Better Faster Stronger is the pinnacle of this song-cycle. It’s Daft Punk’s signature song–the one Kanye sampled, and the one it seems like everyone has heard. It’s a great song, and addictive to listen to. But let me give you the straight poop on this song: It features a sample so prominent that you might feel like Daft Punk is ripping you off. (listen to Edwin Birdsong’s Cola Bottle Baby on lala.com) Okay, let’s look at this for a second. Clearly Daft Punk use this sample pretty heavily. They paid Edwin Birdsong for the use of his song, so no harm there. But, did you listen to Cola Bottle Baby? Did you get bored after a couple of minutes? Here is where Daft Punk showcase their talents. They lifted a sample so significantly it’s like they cut their song out of the whole cloth. But Harder Better Faster Stronger is so much catchier and enjoyable than Cola Bottle Baby that it’s mind-boggling. Where Cola Bottle Baby drags, HBFS is propulsive. Where Cola Bottle Baby repeats, Harder Better Faster Stronger switches it up, including with (another!) guitar solo, this time hidden inside of the vocals. There’s a reason Harder Better Faster Stronger is an internationally well-known hit and Cola Bottle Baby is a musical footnote.

The rest of this album is Daft Punk at their best. They touch on several genres, from early hip-hop style electro-funk to smooth R&B to even more straight up disco (the album is called Disco-very). The Barry Manilow-sampling Superheroes is a great throwback to their first album, Homework (which they recorded in High School), which I recommend you check out after enjoying Discovery.

After reveling in the stellar, addictive grooves from Homework (standouts are the aforementioned Around the World and killer jam Da Funk). Try out Human After All, though it was their least critically-successful album, it ended up growing on me (and a lot of people). Start with Robot Rock, which takes all the touchstones from Harder Better Faster Stronger (prominent sample, repetitive robot-voiced hook, guitars) and pushes them to 11. Human After All can be grating at times, but there is enough good there to get to know the album.

The pinnacle of Daft Punk listening, however, is their most recent live album, Alive 2007. Unlike a lot of electronic music producers, who, for a live show, simply push play and pantomime on their turntables, Daft Punk actually controls all of the individual elements of their songs live. They also have a tendency to mash-up elements from multiple songs rather than play single tracks. Looking at the Alive 2007 tracklist is enough to convince you that it will sound very little like one of their cds. So, if you want to solidify your Daft Punk fandom, jump into the live album. Start with the Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger track (that’s right, two great tastes, taste great together) if you need convincing and only have 5 minutes.

Daft Punk are the past and the future of music. They have probably either been influenced by or influenced some of your favorite music. You owe it to yourself and to the future to check them out.

It’s 2011 and I’d like to talk (some more) about my favorite music from 2010. Last year was possibly the year I followed music the closest. I used my emusic subscription to the fullest and I was keeping up on all the big trends. Honestly, it was kinda overwhelming. I don’t plan to follow music as closely or acquire as much music this year. It’s very possible I will talk about it more, though.

One album that surprised me to no end was Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz. The album is all over the map, combining Sufjan’s pastoralism with stuttering beats and wild electronics. (Beats an electronics aren’t foreign to Sufjan–see his first album or 2009’s The BQE.)

The last track of the album is a massive pop epic called Impossible Soul. The track rounds up a lot of different sounds in modern pop. It drives, gets loopy, yearning, ethereal, auto-tuned, and acoustic in its 25 minutes. Which makes it a pretty good framework upon which to lay some of my favorite tracks from 2010. Without further ado:

Impossible Pop 2010 (right-click and save as…)

Tracklist:

1. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. I
2. The Clientele – Jerry
3. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. II
4. Baths – Maximalist
5. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. III
6. White Hinterland – Icarus
7. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. IV
8. Kanye West – Lost in the World
9. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. V
10. Yeasayer – O.N.E.
11. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. VI
12. Hot Chip – I Feel Better
13. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. VII
14. Balmorhea – Bowsprit
15. Sufjan Stevens – Impossible Soul pt. VIII

It’s my birthday, so I’d like discuss the albums I liked last year, no matter that it’s been 2011 for over a month.

1. Beach House – Teen Dream
Slow and soothing sometimes, rocking other times. Brilliant the whole way through. I have trouble talking about this record without using words like “perfect” or “absolutely perfect” or “best album ever”. It’s woozy and melancholy, uplifting and sonorous. I can’t listen to it enough. Sounds perfect on vinyl.

2. Sleigh Bells – Treats
Whereas Beach House is made for being played on vinyl, Sleigh Bells’ debut album, Treats, sounds perfect being played from an iPod. It’s constructed specifically to be lossy–it’s a noisy, violent mess. It’s all the best parts of metal and pop rolled into one. See my previous post about them to learn more of my obsession.

3. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
James Murphy is nothing if not consistent. When this album first leaked, there was a lot of disappointment floating around the internets. A lot of people pointed out the obvious Berlin-Bowie reference point of a couple of songs, and the album was basically written off. But a strange thing happened: as time progressed, the internet’s (and my) attitude towards the album changed. I warmed up to the songs in a big way (seeing them live at the Hollywood Bowl helped immensely–some LCD sounds you just need to hear live) and found some of my favorite tracks of 2010 (Home, anyone?).

4. Yeasayer – Odd Blood
Experimental pop sounds like such a joke genre. “We just take pop songs and play ‘em weird, you know?” sounds like something some ‘experimental pop’ dude would say in a half-drunken interview. Well, the dudes from Yeasayer don’t mess around like that–even though you could describe their music like that and you wouldn’t be necessarily wrong. The guys from Yeasayer write fantastic, catchy-as-hell songs and then find the perfect off the wall sounds for them.

5. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
Local Natives were my first big surprise of the year. Their name makes them sound like some pothead rap-rock band, and they went to middle school with my sister in Mission Viejo, the center of boring white suburban Orange County. But these harmonizers have been listening to a lot of Brooklyn bands like Grizzly Bear (a personal favorite) and combining an East coast-chamber pop aesthetic with a West coast sunniness that really gets me moving.

6. Chris Schlarb – Psychic Temple
“It’s sorta this ambient jazz thing…” is a terrible way to describe such a beautiful album. Chris Schlarb knows how to take disparate elements and layer them in a way that’s practically transcendent. This album works for folkies, jazz guys, ambient music nerds and plain ol’ indie fans in a way that’s honestly surprising. Please, give it a listen and you will be surprised with how much you like this album.

7. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz
Oh man. This guy. He takes a break from writing albums full of gorgeous, swelling orchestral folk-pop songs. Writes a Steve Reich-by-way-of-Warp records symphony to a much-hated highway in New York City. And then this album. It’s as if you took his Illinois album, combined the electronic leanings of his first couple of albums, and then replaced any self-editing tendencies with raw ambition. How else can you explain the 25-minute pop opus track that closes the album and encompasses everything from autotune to raw acoustic guitar (more to come about this later…)

And now we come to the cop-out portion of the list:

8. Baths – Cerulean / Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
I had two very different halves of this year. I started this year with an office job that made living comfortable, I ended up with a very different job that I greatly prefer but that makes life a bit more difficult. And here are the respective soundtracks. Both beat- and sample-heavy, Baths is floating and light in a way that FlyLo is deep and heavy. Both take different touchstones from which to produce serious beats (Baths: pop and R&B/soul, FlyLo: psych and jazz) and both are fantastic.

9. Damien Jurado – Saint Bartlett / The Mynabirds – What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood
These two albums are easy to lump together because they share Richard Swift as their producer. He brings such a similar vibe to both albums: he scrapes open a doorway to a more raw past for both artists. Jurado’s sad, truthful vignettes and laments never sounded so hopeful and nostalgic, and Laura Burhenn (the only mynabird in The Mynabirds) sounds churchier and southern-ier than she ever did as part of Georgie James.

10. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast / Best Coast – Crazy For You
One’s a group of Floridian dudes, the other is an LA girl. Both of them like fuzzy summer pop rock and getting high. Weezer (early Weez, obviously) is a touchstone for Surfer Blood; Best Coast is more of a 60’s pop fan. Both of them clearly prefer sunny days and the beach.

Runners Up (in no particular order) after the jump:
Read the rest of this entry »

I put together a Christmas mixtape for you. It’s two sides of a 90 minute cassette. (The cassette ended up being a little longer than 90 minutes, actually. Lucky me.) One side is for Christmas evening and the other is for Christmas morning, but you can really play them any time you’d like. There’s a nice mix of traditional songs, new takes on classics, and original pieces. It’s mostly Sufjan-free, too. (Not that I don’t love Sufjan’s Christmas albums–I do! they’re fantastic, but I thought it would be nice to have some other Christmas music…though I did slip one song in there.) It’s all zipped up and ready to go in iTunes with album art, track order, etc. You might want to turn on Sound Check, as there is wildly varying sound quality and bitrate in the songs. Click on the Links below to download the zip files.

If you’re thirsty for more Christmas music, check out my post from 2008 rounding up some good stuff and including an old radio show of mine!

C90: Christmas Eve

1. 1. O Little Town of Bethlehem – The Innocence Mission
2. 2. Joy To The World – Eef Barzelay
3. 3. Silent Night – Bosque Brown
4. 4. The Christmas Waltz – Sam Billen and Josh Atkinson
5. 5. lo, how a rose e’re blooming – Feist
6. 6. O Holy Night – Anathallo
7. 7. God Rest Ye Merry Little Gentlemen – Viva Voce
8. 8. Christmas Time is Here – Cepia
9. 9. I’ll Be Home For Christmas – Starflyer 59
10. 10. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear – The September Equation
11. 11. Carol of the Bells – Outputmessage
12. 12. Hymn for St. John of Shanghai – Create (!)
13. 13. Joy Joy!!! (Feat. Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri) – Bifrost Arts
14. 14. I Heard the Bells – Pedro the Lion

C90: Christmas Morn

1. 1. The Nutcracker Ballet March: Tempo Di Marcia Viva – Moscow Rtv Symphony Orchestra
2. 2. Christ Was Born On Christmas Morn – Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers
3. 3. Come On! Let’s Boogey To The Elf Dance! – Sufjan Stevens
4. 4. Father Christmas – The Kinks
5. 5. Got Something for You – Best Coast, Wavves
6. 6. The Bells of St. Mary – Bob B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans
7. 7. Jingle Bells (Dan The Automator Remix) – Dean Martin
8. 8. Little Drummer Boy (Edit) – Lindstrom
9. 9. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – Sy Mann
10. 10. Angels We Have Heard On High – Joy Electric
11. 11. the first blip blop noel – dma-sc
12. 12. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Goat Explosion
13. 13. Why Can’t It Be Christmastime All Year – Rosie Thomas
14. 14. Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me) – Elvis Presley
15. 15. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Ella Fitzgerald
16. 16. Auld Lang Syne – El Perro Del Mar

Enjoy!

Sleigh Bells released their album, Treats, earlier this year. It came out in iTunes in May, and on CD and vinyl in September. They’ve been releasing songs since late last year and have enjoyed a steadily increasing buzz since their first myspace post. I get a distinct feeling that they’re going to be enjoying exponentially increased popularity by this time next year, especially bolstered by the youths who are just now discovering them.

Sleigh Bells is two people: singer Alexis Krauss (formerly of mostly-unheard pop group Rubyblue), and Derek Miller (formerly of very influential metalcore band Poison the Well). The pedigree of these two are not just colorful trivia–it’s the basis of the music. Sleigh Bells is, in its essence, 2000s nonsense-pop shrouded in heavy metal and noise. It’s what every 16-and-17-year-old couple wants to hear: singalong hooks for the girlfriend, shredding guitars for the boyfriend, and bass for the backseat. There’s a coyness in the vocals mingled with a menace in the backing track (which often overwhelms the vocals entirely) that encompasses the range of teenage emotions more than any “emo” band in the last ten years has come close to. And holy crap does it sound amazing coming out of your nephew’s truck’s multiple 12″ subwoofers.

Sleigh Bells was discovered, as usual, by the music bloggers and mp3 nerds on the internet. They started releasing songs on their myspace soon after their inception, and tellingly released their album on iTunes months earlier than it was available in any physical format. Their live setup typically involves a microphone, a guitar, and an iPod. The album’s production (and their ear-destroying live shows) is heavily distorted and overblown in a way that someone who grew up using terrible iPod earbuds can fully appreciate. In his discussion with Perfecting Sound Forever author Greg Milner blogger (and all-around cool guy) Matthew Perpetua discusses the intended listening experience for Sleigh Bells: “It’s kinda perverse, but it’s so much better to hear that really loud on mp3 on bad speakers. It’s just how it’s intended to be heard!” This isn’t how teens’ parents listened to music. It isn’t even how their older siblings listened–crappy computer speakers or cheap earbuds are very much the modern way to listen to music, and it’s the perfect way to listen to Sleigh Bells.

Sleigh Bells’ music itself is fun, bombastic stuff. With its roots in metal, in pop, in hip hop, it’s universal. I, a former-college-radio-DJ/”music snob” can’t get enough of it. My No Doubt/pop-punk/Mariah Carey-fan wife loves it. My Disney princess  and Yo Gabba Gabba-loving two year old daughter declares that it is “so beautiful” particularly after asking to “turn it louder, please!” Listening to it loudly (the best and only way to listen to it) will cause involuntary fits of air-ing: air-guitaring, air-drumming, lip-synching–the music lends itself naturally to all of these things in a way that many Rock Band songs fail to do. It sounds great coming from truly awful speakers (it’s pre-distorted) and it sounds epic coming out of a system with enough power to make the bass explode. That said, it’s noisy as all get out. The recording is far from clean, with compression, distortion and lossy crunches surrounding each beat. Any “adult” who unironically loves yacht rock or “the greatest hits from the 80s, 90s, and today” might have a tough time getting into it at first. But in three years when Black Eyed Peas rip the sound off wholesale, they’ll love it. And so will everyone else.

I was feeling old and paralyzed last night as I drove home. It was my daughter’s second birthday (she has officially graduated from tiny baby to little person). It had been a typical case-of-the type of Monday; I was feeling ambivalent about the job that I like alright but don’t see myself doing forever. I was frustrated with my own lack of enthusiasm in “fun” projects that I had previously been excited about.

I was on the toll road because I had decided that I’d rather spend two bucks than another half hour in traffic. My iPhone was on shuffle, and launched into Japandroids’ single, Young Hearts Spark Fire (free download here). I’d heard this song a few times before–the album was released in April last year. It’s nice, with some yells and some strumming, but lo-fi in a way that Drew would hate (so much guitar noise!).

The chorus of that song, however, is made out of pure youth and exuberance.

“We used to dream
Now we worry about dying
…
I don’t want to worry about dying
I just want to worry about those sunshine girls.”

I found myself shouting along as I drove (substituting an Animal Collective-aping “sunshine and my girls” in place of just “sunshine girls” in the lyric above) and I loved it. I felt thrilled–energized to go and live as best as I could. My misheard lyric (the actual one referring, apparently, to pinup girls in the Vancouver Sun newspaper) invigorated me in a way that music hasn’t for a while. Sunshine and my girls are two of my favorite parts of life. I don’t want to dwell on the crap; I want to think upon pure, praiseworthy things.

So I did something I seldom do–I bought the album without listening to another track. I’m giving you a chance to hear the rest of the album below, but I needed to experience the album where I’d discovered it–my car. I just hoped that the album lived up to that monstrous single and clicked the download button. (physical product?! bah)

Guess what? Post-Nothing lives up to the promise of the single. It will make you feel 19 again, with enough do-it-yourself spirit to build a monster truck.

I injected myself with more Japandroid-enthusiasm-for-living-elixir on my commute this morning. Maybe it was the cold weather and the high, clear skies today–something in this album transported me back to my college days. It felt like the day before a long weekend, having finished my 7am statistics class early (only class of the day) and walking back to the red brick dorms with the blissful knowledge of a few days where I could shirk the responsibilities beginning to settle into my life. I understood this album in the context of the anxiety and potential of the end of my youth (emusic calls it the “soundtrack to a quarter-life crisis”). This album is made to echo off of cinderblocks and poured concrete, turned too loud on mediocre speakers at far too early in the morning for the rest of your floormates.

The band is two guys, pounding away at their instruments, which are turned far too loud. They sound so excited about just doing things. It reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Hobbes pounces on Calvin as he wakes up in the morning. Calvin is preparing to get mad at Hobbes, who shouts “It’s morning! Now we can do stuff again!”

That’s how Japandroids makes me feel.

I’ve been running a Dune book club over at dunecember.com since December, in case you didn’t know. We (and I) just finished the book this week, and I wrote a looooong recap of the last 50 pages and discussed it a bit. I had some more that I wanted to share with regards to my perception of the book’s conclusion and the official Dunecember blog didn’t feel like the right place for it, so here we are.

Over in my post, I said:

This book seems to make the case for looking toward the unexpected, the uncontrollable, the “chaotic” over the planned and the foreseen. It’s an interesting way to look at things.

And I have found myself looking at things this way since I first read this book a few years ago. It’s not an easy way to look at things without a sufficiently-large view of God. The “chaotic” mentioned above is, to me, only literally chaotic to those (including myself) who are incapable of understanding God completely. I believe that God has ultimate authority in every situation and that nothing happens beyond His control. This is a tough way to look at things because, well, shit happens. Daily. From tiny things that suck all the way up to enormous, ghastly tragedies.

Either these things are out of God’s control, or they are part of his plan in a way that will eventually glorify Him. For God to be the supreme being He says He is (”the Beginning and the End”), He must be capable of thinking and planning beyond anything humans are capable of perceiving. Thus even horrible atrocities must have a place in His plan, since they occur and everything that occurs is part of His orchestration.

(This does not square with the concept of Buddy Christ–the God who’s totally your best friend and is going to make you rich. It also makes people uncomfortable to think that every terrible thing they have experienced has been for a reason–understandably, I might add, since people go through terrible things and have a tendency to blame God for making their life hard.)

In Dune, the best-laid plans of a powerful order are diverted by one woman’s decision, due to her love for her husband, to have a boy instead of a girl. (Within this order, women are capable of such minute control of their bodies that they can determine the gender of their child.) Centuries of careful breeding are thwarted by this one decision, and the son becomes the One that they have sought all this time.

While I know that fiction is not evidence of the manifestation of God in our lives, I believe that the act of creativity and creation can be a form of worship–that even non- and anti-Christians can reflect God in art. I think God is reflected in Dune.

Accepting the idea that “chaos” in our lives can be God’s path for us is weird and kind of difficult. In Dune, Paul (the aforementioned One) has limited precognition–he sees things that could happen based on his actions. Sometimes, though, his perception of his various paths dips out of his view. These are the times he knows that he must act–he fears and anticipates them because he knows that it is in these moments that change will come into his life. Our lives have similar instants where small decisions make a big difference later on. Sometimes, we can even see these decisions coming and decide whether to embrace or avoid them.

My encouragement for you is: embrace these decisions. Trust God. Know that things won’t always been perfect or even good, but that He has a place for you in a plan so complex that we aren’t even capable of comprehending.

(Before anyone brings it up–I’m not arguing for predestination 100%. I think that predestination/free will is not an either/or situation. The best way I can put it is especially for nerds: think of light. It is a particle, a photon. Also, it is a wave. Sometimes it acts like one, sometimes it acts like the other. But as far as we can tell, it’s both at the same time. That’s my answer to the predestination/free will argument–as far as we can tell, it’s both at the same time.)