This is fucking insane. #radiohead (Taken with instagram)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bill never left Shippensburg.  Sure, he left on day trips back South and he leaves to hit up other state schools in Pennsylvania for work related visits, but he lives there to this day.  He still holds on to hope, that the three times he collaborated with another DJ weren’t just for naught.  He wanted them to count, he wanted it to be more than just that.  He wanted nothing more than for another day to enjoy with his old compatriot.

Large, though, he left almost immediately.  He went and he followed the dream he always had from his days at WSYC (pronounced WIISSSICK): he ended up on the other end of the phone.  He even called WSYC on occasion, talking to the successors of his throne, also work related.  And he, too, like Bill in the previous paragraph, wanted to rejoin his comrade in musical association, if not for just one day.  They stayed in touch, they kept each other in the loop what the other was listening to, etc, but they never thought they could return to their humble home where they truly belong: the airwaves.

And so Bill set the seeds in earnest.  He wrote to Large, and he said “we should do this again sometime!” To which Large quickly replied, oh so swiftly, “well what in the hell is stopping us?”

Several more e-mail’s were exchanged, one was just exchanged before this presser was finished.  A date was set and song selection began.  These men, now beyond fully grown who hold still that passion for sitting in a booth and playing songs for one another back and forth, a private listening session the whole world gets to hear, are going to do it one more time. Please listen in, won’t you?

—

My good friend Bill Morgal & I cordially invite you to listen to our show as we return to our humble beginnings this summer for one day only!

PRESERVING THE LARGEHEARTED RUST IV:
LIVE WEDNESDAY JUNE 20TH AT 12PM (EST)/5PM (GMT)
ONLY ON 88.7 WSYC-FM SHIPPENSBURG
STREAM IT ONLINE AT WSYC.ORG
STREAM IT ON YOUR PHONES, TOO.

Over The Ocean (Taken with instagram)

Tunnelvision (Taken with instagram)

Here We Go Magic - “Moon” (Taken with instagram)

There comes a moment on A Different Ship, the third album from Here We Go Magic, that clearly is its climax. The apex. The grand entrance that every second before it has built to, and that just happens to be its finale.  The swaying, aquatic title track that ends the album is as musically poetic as VU’s “Heroin”.  The ship rocks back at forth, at alternating speeds just like the alternating waves it coasts along.  But then, after that final chorus, after Luke Temple hits his highest of high notes, they hit the odds that are stacked high against them. Those highs are the crashing cymbals that act as waves.  The ship, it has capsized now, pulled in by an undertow. The ensuing minutes are the sound of the boat being weighed down by the water, the passengers last gasps for air as they run out.  The end, fades out.  The crowd walks out.  This show has ended.  This isn’t the Titantic, film or fact, but what it is is the perfection a band gets to attain when you work with the acclaimed Nigel Godrich.

But how did we get here you ask? About 42 minutes earlier, a percussive intro fades in.  Beneath it all has to be a buoy, out by wear that ship will eventually meet its end, dinging in the sea breeze.  And then, some voices moan, groan underneath.  Is this the soundtrack to Lucifer’s Paradise, those passengers about to meet their maker?  Each song starts simple: “Hard To Be Close” and single “How Do I Know” fire up with simple and addictive melodies played by guitar, only to eventually be joined by the remaining instruments.  

Songs build, and they build, build, build, and so on.  Like the ship, they each are meant for a destination.  “I Believe In Action”, with its eerie underbelly provided by Godrich, ends oh so abrupt.  Tape not so much ran out as the songs didn’t make their stop.  “Make Up Your Mind” is fuming, brooding, you never know which turn it will make.  It’s a song that can work to ones nerves not knowing what will happen next (Note: My girlfriend disliked this song for this reason alone, her nerves shot by the end.  Once hearing the whole album, though, she enjoyed it as a ‘chill, be the passenger in your car on a Friday afternoon road trip’  album). 

When news first broke of their collaboration with Godrich for Ship, I had this portrait in my head.  It was the idea that this album would sound kind of like In Rainbows, and it does.  Like moments described above, like moments where they use Godrich to their advantage to make a piece of a rainbow all their own, even though the ship described on the album is destined for utter doom, the Ship that is this album is destined to be a top contender of the year for all.

As This Machine starts, there is a sound new to one’s ears. It is a sound never heard before on any Dandy Warhols record: a bass guitar. I started listening to the Portland quartet when everyone else did, when …The Dandy Warhols Come Down was unleashed in the summer of 1997. I was 13 then, and as someone who has listened with a fan’s passion and knows every song in and out, I am certain this is the first time Zia McCabe played an actual bass guitar. Twice I have seen them live and it was always her strategically positioned behind her rig of keys, swaying albeit seductively while shaking a tambourine.

This wouldn’t be the only new thing, the seedy groove of “Sad Vacation”, recently added to the Warhols canon. Sure there’s the obvious notions that point to the Dandys of yesterday, like those trademark heady and heavy guitars taking up every inch of space in every song. There’s Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s familiar voice, deep and raspy one minute (“The Autumn Carnival”), deeper and defiant the next (“Rest Your Head”).  But what is different? Nothing you would pick up on right away.  The oh so familiar haze of a hot desert, the sun’s rays glistening and ripping through the smog on “Don’t Shoot She Cried” is as close as they have ever gotten to that summer when we wondered how many junkies we knew. But that song was written by the rhythm section of McCabe and drummer Bret DeBoer.  Keeping busy with side projects the past few years, they have finally seemed to pen songs without the help of others and even sneak a song on the record.  The final song, “Slide”, a lover’s lament of change, is penned by DeBoer himself.  I believe that’s even him singing lead, Taylor-Taylor’s voice weaving in and out.

There’s the catchy songs like “Enjoy Yourself” which would’ve been the obvious follow up to keep a label’s hope of a cash chow alive some decade ago, but only now to they choose to share a juicy pop song.  They add Los Lobos’ brass section to a cover of “16 Tons” that I’ve grown to love with each listen.  They strip away the space and sonics of …Earth To The Dandy Warhols… and add nothing. To their advantage they just do what they do best, write three minute pop songs and make another solid album that this fan won’t complain about now, or 15 years from now.

This Machine [BUY IT]

The commercial starts by declaring that Ma(x) is back. One, his name is Mac DeMarco, not Max. Two, he’s kind of been here for awhile (re: Makeout Videotape). Three, according to an interview I read I have finally learned things that I was curious about.

• A). He is 22. And here I thought he was about 15.
• B) The man recorded these songs with his smooth (jizz) jazz vocals during a bout of tonsilitis, giving it that near Barry White feel.
• C) He probably likes being naked too much.
• D) We share the same sense of humor. Very insular, very if it’s funny to me it’s only funny to me because only I know what is going on.

At any rate,Rock And Roll Night Club, his debut EP(?) under his birth moniker came un to the world via Captured Tracks last week.  I’ve been more than obsessed with it; daily listens find an intense internal struggle with myself. “Baby’s Wearing Blue Jeans” is the best song of the year so far, yes. This is only because “Only You” is an old MV song of his tact on at the end, thus disqualifying it from the running. Though you then have to go in to the artistic merits of asking yourself “what qualifies as commercially available?” seeings how Night Club is his first properly distributed release, via green vinyl none the less.

The songs are built around his jazz guitar, his love for tape hiss, and that sweet sweet baritone only a bad virus could give. It makes me wonder the next time I am ill, can I write a song for the whole world to hear and they might like it? Mac’s stuff sounds like it was found on that reject Nuggets submission tossed in the can, but is the real crown jewel. Little jokey radio ID interludes, tying together songs about the self awareness of blogs making you an adult male.

I’ve just about rambled on enough now about this guy. If you have made it this far, you are now required to listen to “Baby’s Wearing Blue Jeans”. If you listen to it once, you’ll listen to it 12 times. Promise.

Rock And Roll Night Club [BUY IT]

Fact: When Guided By Voices, my favorite band of all-time, announced that the classic line-up was gonna release their first new album in 15 or so years, I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t surprised, either, but I also wasn’t jumping up and down.  I told friends and such that I didn’t want this to happen, I wanted them to just keep playing all the classics.  Bob had my permission to play as many shows with Toby, Mitch, Greg and Kevin as he wished, but the sometimes dreaded reunion album was the last thing I wanted.

They played their “final show” at Hopscotch in September, and I was there, forever grateful to maybe see them for the “last time ever in a live setting”. A few weeks later, the announcement came that not only was their a new album coming, but that it was already in the can.  Recorded in secret to the public eye during 2011, the album was titled Let’s Go Eat The Factory, and would be released on New Year’s Day 2012.  My initial reaction was sad; I didn’t want the men who wrote/recorded/got drunk to some of my favorite songs of all-time, the men who sat with 4-tracks in basements and garages playing the first things that came to them, to attempt it in 2012.  I wanted it to stay in the 90s, those 90 second blasts of rock. In a present day where lo-fi is faked through recording techniques, I didn’t want them to have to do the same to get back the sound they would eventually make (dare I say) popular.

The first single came out: it was called “The Unsinkable Fats Domino”, and I was surprised.  It was good, like really good.  The crunchy guitars, Bob’s vocals, the melody, it was as if they picked up where they stopped with 1996’s Under The Bushes Under The Stars.  And by the time they dropped second single, “Doughnut For A Snowman”, with it’s tip of the hat to the classic GBV move of tacking an unknown song at the beginning of another song, I was ready for this album.  And it’s actually good, really good, dare I say great even?  They touch on the albums the classic line-up made in the 90s (the lightning charge guitar of “Cyclone Utilities”), and even touch the early 2000s for a second (the barreling out the gate with “Laundry & Lasers”).

Of course, there are a few songs that just seem odd fitting, almost like a waste of space, including a string of bits near the end of side two.  But near the end you also get the set’s highlight, if not the highlight of this entire reunion, in “Chocolate Boy”.  It’s got everything GBV is known for and loved for, a catchy melody sharing space with Bob’s ever-so-strong vocals, and its succinct 90 seconds it lasts.  These are the moments a fan like myself lives for, knowing that nearly 30 years after they were founded, and 16 years since they put out an album together, that they still have it.  Now to wonder if the follow-up, Class Clown Spots A UFO,  will be just as good when it drops in May.

Let’s Go Eat The Factory is out now digitally and is in stores January 17th.

Oh, and if you didn’t see the fall felt through Ed Sullivan Theater the other week…

And so here we are, my annual list of what I think are the 50 best albums of the year that is coming to a close, in this case 2011.

For this year’s big reveal, it is all here at once. Rather than draw it on posting and rambling on about one album a day, I’m tipping a nod to my days writing for Stranded In Stereo. I give you the whole list, with some detailed insight on my Top 10.

But before the list, I guess it would make sense to mention those few albums that were good, or alright, or just didn’t make the cut but for some reason I feel like noting their existence this year.

THE 2011 HONORABLE MENTION OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT
CANT - Dreams Come True - Terrible
Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost - True Panther
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Mirror Traffic - Matador
Megafaun - Megafaun - Hometapes
Portugal. The Man - In The Mountain In The Cloud - Atlantic

And then, there were the more important 50…