Poor impulse control

I don't think I've gone music shopping in a store since I moved, so went up to Baltimore for a Sound Garden run today.  My rationalization this time is that I need new music for a roadtrip in two weeks....of course, that road trip is to a music festival where I'll undoubtedly buy more new music, but that's beside the point. I didn't find everything I was looking for, but did get a lot of stuff from the used bin to flesh out missing items, a few new releases, and some more vinyl double-dips.

The score:

• !!! - Strange Weather, Isn't It?
• Dinosaur Jr - Where You Been
• Half Japanese - Sing No Evil
• Jaill - That's How We Burn
• Jesus and Mary Chain - Honey's Dead
• Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica [vinyl 10th anniversary edition]
• Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree [vinyl]
• New Order - Movement
• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Henry's Dream
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World soundtrack
• The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
• Xiu Xiu - A Promise

Coming soon: Hopscotch Fest!

I bet the buttons on their facebook page are meta

I love Amazon's mp3 store, and they're having a ridiculously dangerous sale of 1000 albums for $5 each in August.  I just casually browsed for a few minutes the other night and wound up spending $20, I'm afraid to go back and look at the full list.

So far the best thing I grabbed has been the album Release Me by The Like.  They're like a 1960s girl group with modern indie pop sensibility.  Totally peppy and fun!  I first heard them a few months back when they were the opening act at a Futureheads concert; I probably should have bought the album then.  At $5, it's a steal.

Summer Mix

In between packing and moving and unpacking, I've been trying to keep up with music and also work on a good summer mix CD. I just haven't had the time to get it edited down to an actual CD's length, but then I realized that probably nobody actually burns mixes to CDs any more. The player in my car is broken and won't recognize discs most of the time, so why not just go over the limit and have a regular mp3 mix? So here it is, in all its longer-than-80-minutes-and-not-actually-mixed-together glory.

1. The Hold Steady - The Weekenders [from Heaven Is Whenever]
2. Spoon - The Mystery Zone [from Transference]
3. Wolf Parade - Cave-O-Sapien [from Expo 86]
4. Dum Dum Girls - Bhang Bhang, I'm a Burnout [from I Will Be]
5. Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go (No Merry Go Rounds Coolrunning remix) [original from Color Your Life]
6. Wild Nothing - Chinatown [from Gemini]
7. Parenthetical Girls - Someone Else's Muse [from Privilege, Pt. 1: On Death & Endearments]
8. Crystal Castles - Celestica [from Crystal Castles]
9. Love Is All - Less Than Thrilled [from Two Thousand and Ten Injuries]
10. Wye Oak - I Hope You Die [from My Neighbor / My Creator]
11. Xiu Xiu - This Too Shall Pass Away (for Freddy) [from Dear God, I Hate Myself]
12. Signals - Angst In My Pants [not from anything yet as far as I can tell, but you can get it here]
13. Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches [from Forgiveness Rock Record]
14. Cold Cave - Life Magazine (An Optimo (Espacio) Mix) [from Life Magazine Remixes]
15. Cassis Orange - Listen Heartbeat [from Cassis Orange EP]
16. Los Campesinos! - A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters From Me to Charlotte [from Romance is Boring]
17. MGMT - Brian Eno [from Congratulations]
18. Yeasayer - O.N.E. [from Odd Blood]
19. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Round and Round [from Before Today]
20. Best Cosat - Something in the Way [from Something in the Way]
21. LCD Soundsystem - Home [from This is Happening]
22. The New Pornographers - Silver Jenny Dollar [from Together]
23. Roky Erickson and Okkervil River - Goodbye Sweet Dreams [from True Love Cast Out All Evil]

You can download the playlist here for a limited time.

Collectible

I got an email alert the other day letting me know that Animal Collective's "film" Oddsac is coming out on DVD soon.  I saw it in the theater a few months back, and at the time remarked that I liked it enough that I was eagerly anticipating a home release.  It had a hypnotic beauty and all the goofy weirdness you'd expect, and so much of the music was wonderful.  It's somewhat more in the vein of Merriweather Post Pavillion than Fall Be Kind, but it's just as much about the visuals and how they combine with the music.

If you pre-order you can get $5 off the price, and it also comes with a 40 page art book.  Me, I'm getting it for the 5.1 surround mix.

That time of the month

I'm supposed to be packing up to move to a new place, and the last thing I need is more clutter.  But I also get that itch where I have to fulfill my needs, and it hit pretty hard this week.  One thing lead to another and I found myself at Sound Garden slurping up music.  I got a good mix of new things, used items, and a couple vinyl double dips of favorite albums I wanted on that media format.  (If they hadn't been out of the deluxe version of Disintegration, I absolutely would have snatched that up, too.)

Vinyl:
Camera Obscura - The Nights are Cold 7"
Cold Cave - Life Magazine
Depreciation Guild - Spirit Youth
Dum Dum Girls - Jail La La 7"
Galaxie 500 - Today
The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee

CD:
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer of the Void^*
CocoRosie - Grey Oceans
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
The Fall - Totally Wired
Kaki King - Junior
Talking Heads - Little Creatures  (hard to believe I didn't already have this)
Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

I swear I'm absolutely not buying any more music until I've moved.  And by "absolutely", I mean "probably".

^* Half the reason I got this is because my eyes are intrinsically lured in by the word "Destroyer"

For Scores of Twenty Years Ago

Today I read a commemoration of The Goonies' 25th Anniversary.  I happened to catch most of it on TV a few weeks ago, as it's one of those nostalgic films that just grabs my attention if I stumble upon it.  But one thing that really struck me was how great the score was, especially the "Fratelli Chase" song.  Just a few notes of that take me back instantly to the movie.  And then I realized -- I don't know any modern movie scores.  When did they get so boring, or replaced by shitty popular music?  If the Goonies were remade today, is there any doubt that the opening segment would instead be drowned out by some popular "alternative" band who just happens to be represented by the music arm of the conglomerate that owns the movie studio?  (Yes, I know the Cyndi Lauper segment kind of invalidates my whole thesis.)

Think back to all the classic scores.  Jaws.  The Godfather.  Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.  (My personal pick for Best Score Ever:  Aguirre the Wrath of God, with the music by Popol Vuh.  It so perfectly fits the mood and visuals.)  Is there anybody still making them like John Williams and Ennio Morricone?  Hans Zimmer seems to win tons of awards, but I can't say he has a distinct style that stands out to me, or has done anything that really holds in my subconscious.  I like Clint Mansell's work, though it's mostly just that Requiem for a Dream song that gets used in all the trailers.  (I also preferred him back in Pop Will Eat Itself, but that's another story.)

I suppose the real issue is that for the most part scores have been replaced by soundtracks, and all too often those are the lazy way out.  If I see one more montage of lonely people over a sappy love song, one more dude walking away from an explosion in slow motion to crap rock, one more Aerosmith anything I'm going to puke.  A good soundtrack can be a wonderful thing, but for every Tarantino out there who picks perfect yet unexpected songs (krautrock in a kung fu flick!) there are 50 directors going for cheap emotional tugs or a Family Guy-esque "Hey, do you remember [x]? I love the 80s!" nod.  Put some effort into it, people!

Favorite album of May

A lot of great music came out in June, particularly several new albums by bands I love. Some held up better then others.  The new Hold Steady was initially very disappointing; it's growing on me some (especially The Weekenders), but it's still a weak effort overall and the mix just sounds wrong.  The New Pornographers' Together is good but doesn't match up to Electric Version or Twin Cinema.  Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record starts out wonderful, and mostly is, but falls apart a bit in the second half and is just too long overall.

So leave it to LCD Soundsystem to reign supreme.*

Generally when one album is finished I switch to a different one, I don't like listening to things on repeat.  But This Is Happening is a rare exception, and it's been in my car almost nonstop since release...just like their previous record.  To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I love love love love this album.  I love the Talking Heads and Gary Numan homages.  I love that moment three minutes into Dance Yrself Clean where the song kicks into overdrive.  I love the self-deprecation and goofiness.  It may not be quite as fresh as Sound of Silver, but James Murphy set such a high bar beforehand that I'll let that slide.  (And nothing fully matches up to just how amazing Someone Great is, but that's in my top five songs of all time.)

So get it if you haven't already, whether digital or physical.

* Note: I still haven't heard the new Sleigh Bells, Depreciation Guild, and a few other albums.  But it'd have to be quite an upset to topple This Is Happening.