a cold sweat

Yes.

thisismyfavoritesong:

“It’s Too Late” by Otis Redding from The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965).

Sampled in “Gone” by Kanye West.

Ever pay close attention to the bass in this song? It has never jumped out at me until today, when this popped up on shuffle. It’s kind of goofy sounding.

That said, this song still gets me every time.

Today I could be happy sitting at home with nothing but a pot of coffee and this song on repeat.

Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve seen this video and I have to say: the fact that the xx look like they’re members of The Commitments working on a side art project makes me love them that much more.

So I guess it’s fair to say that Josh Ritter won me over last night. Especially with this tune, which he performed with all the stage lights completely off.

Photo courtesy of @richarwalshe74.

Going to see Josh Ritter tonight. Have always admired his music, though have never loved it. 

I understand he’s huge in Ireland for some reason. Maybe something about him live will get the Irish in me excited.  We’ll see.

If you haven’t bought it yet, you should at the very least buy “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound.”

And you should visit the Johnny Cash Project, which is making a video for “Ain’t No Grave,” one fan-painted frame of video at a time. You can paint and contribute a frame right there on the site. The project is creating a stunning, beautiful video.

matt’s top albums and tracks of 2009

albums

5. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

It’s not always a compliment to say of an album or band “I have no idea whatsoever how to describe this sound.”  It is in this case, though.  I mean, who the hell are these guys?  What is this?  Where did they come from?  Who do they sound like?  Who cares?

4. Hold Time by M. Ward

So so solid.  Even though it’s been out for a number of months now, I still have a tough time ranking my favorite songs on this album.  And ranking songs on albums isn’t something I always do, but in this case I think it’s a result of there being about four songs that always make me say “Oh yeah, this one has got to be my favorite of the bunch.”

3. Dark Night of the Soul by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse

Gritty, twisted, dark and funny.  I think I remember David Lynch telling Scott Simon that Sparklehorse had many of these songs tucked away but unrecorded because Mark Linkous felt he didn’t have the right voice for them.  If that’s true, that the voices here fit so perfectly with the songs totally validates Sparklehorse’s thinking.

2. Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective

I brought a lot of baggage to this one.  The little I knew about Animal Collective (not much, but mostly influenced by being bored to death by the last Panda Bear album) made me think this would be over-thought, pretentious art rock.  And it was hyped, to boot.  Before I had heard it, I think I actually read a review of this album as introducing an entirely “new kind of music.”  Praise like that, when attached to a band name like this and all of the preconceived notions I had coming in, was admittedly enough to make me judge a book by its cover.

But then the 2:30 mark of “In The Flowers” happened.

1. Midnight at the Movies by Justin Townes Earle

Last time I’ll mention/list this one, promise. But I just liked it too much not to give it the top slot for the year.

HONORABLE MENTIONS Dark Was The Night by Various Artists, March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland by Beirut, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix, The Fall by Norah Jones

tracks

10. “Gentle Hour” by Yo La Tango - This band had always bored me. But this track (from the amazing Dark Was the Night compilation) jumped up on the earbuds as I walked to Georgetown to renew my driver’s license early one sunny morning.  Slayed me.

9. “Up From Below” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

8. “Jailbird” by M. Ward

7. “Laundry Room” by the Avett Brothers

6. “Daddy’s Gone” by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse featuring Nina Persson - The sleeper track with the beautiful chorus that rewards you on about the 6th listen of the album.

5. “They Killed John Henry” by Justin Townes Earle

4. “Percussion Gun” by White Rabbits - Winner of “Best Air Drum Song of the Year”

3. “Summertime Clothes” by Animal Collective

2. “My Night With The Prostitute From Marseilles” by Beirut - I recommend listening to this one jetlagged and exhausted in a part of the world about which you have no knowledge or expectations.  On the ferry from Piraeus to Naxos, Greece, say.

1. “I Dreamed of My Old Lover” by Elvis Costello - Still not over that standup bass. This one’s ranked #1 because, of all of these songs, I think it’s the most timeless.

(an incomplete playlist can be found here)

… and other good stuff from 2009

BOOK  The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Finally read this at the beginning of the year and it gutted me.  I’ve heard mixed reviews of the movie, but I think that’s because some people have a hard time seeing the redeeming parts of the story.  Which is understandable given the, you know, hopeless post-apocalyptic setting of cannibalistic craziness, death and overall misery.

FOOD The annual OysterFest at Hank’s Oyster Bar - $60 for all you can eat and drink at my favorite DC restaurant.  I tackled 34 raw oysters and the bliss was totally worth the monetary and gastrointestinal cost.  And yes, we kept count.

TV Top Gear from the BBC - Bloody brilliant show of car reviews, challenges and auto-related cross-country adventures.  I’d never seen it until my vacation in Ireland this past summer, when rain kept me and my brothers locked in to our rented shepherd’s cottage for a few days.  I am far from a motorhead— I don’t know the first thing about cars or about their inner workings.  But, as with any other excellent programming, it doesn’t matter because they present it so well— beautiful film work, spot-on humor, easy-to-understand language, the whole nine.  Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond are all hilarious and have off-the-chart “I’d like to get a beer with that guy” ratings.  Now one of my favorite TV shows.

COUNTRY Switzerland - It was even more amazing than in my fantasies of living in a ski chalet in Wengen and skiing through 18 inches of fresh powder to work at the beer and music factory every day.

Knocking people’s music has never been my thing.  But there happened to be a lot of music this year that I heard good things about and seemed right up my alley but that I, for one reason or another, just didn’t get.  So this isn’t a list of the worst music of the year so much as it is a list of misfired love affairs that might have been.  (Except for the track list at the bottom.  That’s really the list of the year’s objectively worst songs.)

albums

5. A Strange Arrangement by Mayer Hawthorne

I love, love, love what this dude is going for and I admire his pluck.  It takes guts to put out a throwback soul record like this.  He just lacks the chops to pull it off.  I’m reminded of the scene in “The Commitments” where Deco says to the band’s backup singers “Ya have fair voices, but yer not puttin’ enougha thaaat into it!”  This album is a sweet, quirky love letter to a better time, but nothing more.

4. Hometowns by The Rural Alberta Advantage

smitch is lucky he got married this year, otherwise I’d have socked him in the eye for recommending this album to me.  I’ll chalk this one up to what I hereby dub “The Apples In Stereo Outlier Comet Effect” where our normally identical musical tastes take one wildly different turn away from one another exactly once every calendar year.

3. Hospice by The Antlers

The beauty of sad music— and until this record came along I thought I was as big a champion as there could be for weepy-bearded-white-dude-with-a-guitar music— is that it takes something horribly sad and makes it beautiful by reflecting on it musically.  There is no reflection going on here.  The Antlers are just dragging you through the muck with them, and the ride is so raw as to be unpleasant.  I know this sounds like a glowing endorsement more than a criticism, so let me be perfectly clear as to why it’s on this list:  I do not like this album because it hurts too much.  Put another way, I do not like this album for the same reason my girlfriend dislikes horror movies.  It may be very effective at eliciting an emotional response, but those are not emotions that I am looking to experience willfully.

2. Post-Nothing by Japandroids

Wanna know who else can compress the hell out of some heavy distortion and yell over three-chord changes?  AN-Y-BO-DY.

1. Blood Bank by Bon Iver

Two things to start with here: 1) I know it’s an EP, but it still makes the cut because it’s my list and I make the rules.  2) I know this one smarts.  I love him too.  But let’s be honest and just get it out there that 75% of this EP sucks.  ”Beach Baby” is the only good song in the bunch.  The lyrics to “Bloodbank” are stilted and distracting, “Babys” is a total swing and miss that— admit it— bores you to tears and “Woods”… well, that one tops my next list.

tracks

10. “Fez - Being Born” by U2 - WTF?

9.“Heartbeat Radio” by Sondre Lerche

8. “Southern Point” by Grizzly Bear

7.“These Are My Twisted Words” by Radiohead - For some reason, this song sounds like someone trying to sound like Radiohead.

6.“Blood Money” by Spiral Stairs - Only because I hold you to such a high standard, SS. Eight minutes of plodding through the same… thing… over… and… over…

5.“Tweakers” by Spoon

4.“Haphazardly” by Rhett Miller

3.“Rave On” by M. Ward with Zooey Deschanel - If you’re gonna slow it down so much, lose the backup vocals. They just sounds creepy.

2. “You Are The Blood” by Sufjan Stevens

1. “Woods” by Bon Iver - Not all experiments work. I’ll just leave it at that.

As a fan of— I guess I’ll call it “non-pop”—  country music, I was happy to see 2009 was a year that offered enough new music to allow me to make a top 5 country albums list.  So here it is.

albums

5. Secret, Profane & Sugarcane by Elvis Costello

I have always viewed Elvis Costello as not much more than a curiosity.  His voice was always a barrier to his music, and the fact that he is such an iconoclast and so musically unclassifiable always made me feel like his music was for someone else.  This album, though, feels like it was made just for me.  In the context of slide guitar and stand-up bass set to a waltz rhythm, his voice goes from sounding quirky to sounding right at home.

4. I and Love and Youby The Avett Brothers

I’d been aware of the Avetts prior to 2009, but like so many others, this was the year that they worked their way in front of my face and said, “No, seriously, listen to us.”  I had the good fortune of seeing these guys play a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR, which sealed the deal for me.  They know how to build drama, and those harmonies…

3. Changing Horses by Ben Kweller

Who knew?  Well, people from Texas knew, I guess.  All I had known of Ben Kweller prior to this record was that he was supposed to be some sort of rock ‘n roll wunderkind with chubby cheeks.  What makes this record to me is Ben’s voice, which is delicate but composed and completely up to the task that these songs put forward.  The healthy dose of pedal steel doesn’t hurt, either.

2. A Friend of a Friend by Dave Rawlings Machine

This one is on faith alone.  Dave Rawlings has earned as much.  Who else is excited for the release on Tuesday?  Anyone?  Hello?

1. Midnight at the Movies by Justin Townes Earle

In a year where this blog had all of TWO posts on it, this album inspired one of them.  I guess that says enough.  Read that post for more thoughts if you’re interested.

tracks

10. “Another Girlfriend” by Rhett Miller - Rhett’s was not a country album, really… but this is most definitely a country song.

9. “Caroline” by Old Crow Medicine Show

8. “Gypsy Rose” by Ben Kweller

7. “Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - See explanation for #10.

6. “What I Mean to You” by Justin Townes Earle

5. “Mama’s Eyes” by Justin Townes Earle

4. “Santa Fe” by Gallaramy “Bells of Harlem” by Dave Rawlings Machine

3. “Old Hat” by Ben Kweller

2. “Laundry Room” by the Avett Brothers

1. “I Dreamed of My Old Lover” by Elvis Costello - I love how there is a solitary pluck of the stand up bass in the intro and that you don’t hear from it again until after the first verse, when POW!  The changes go from sweet to devastating.

Listen up, all you little punks.  It’s been a while since we posted anything here, but that’s just allowed the anger to swell that much more.  Maximize iTunes on your desktop and pause that goddamn La Roux garbage you’re listening to and focus here.  The best record of the year is already out (came out in March, as a matter of fact), and it’s not Animal Collective’s.  In fact, it’s a country record. But this ain’t your daddy’s country music.  That’s right.  It’s real country music.  Good country music.

It’s sad, actually, that we’re now at the point where I feel it necessary to say “This ain’t your daddy’s country music.”  But that’s where we are, so it’s said.  I desperately, desperately want all you hipster kiddies in the coastal big cities to have an appreciation for real country music.  Maybe you do and I’m being overly defensive.  But it bears saying just in case, because it’s important.

I gave Justin Townes Earle’s second album The Good Life a passing mention at the very end of the post where I listed my highlights of 2008.  It didn’t make my top five albums because… well, because it wasn’t all that good.  But damned if it didn’t show promise, and damned if JT hasn’t lived up to that promise with this year’s Midnight at the Movies.

Honest, folks, I could write an essay about the myriad ways in which I deeply love each and every track on this album.  Long, sordid tales of infatuation, flirtation, passion, betrayal and— ultimately— redemption.  Real pulpy stuff, honest.

Like the make-no-bones-about-it, let’s-just-get-this-out-there track about his more-famous old man Steve, “Mama’s Eyes”.  “I am my father’s son / I never know when to shut up / I ain’t foolin’ no one / I am my father’s son.”  I mean, C’MON.

Or the beautiful title track that opens the album and that’ll make you wanna cuddle up with that special someone.  Or the brilliant carefree bluegrass-pitched romp “Walk Out.”  Or the elegantly fingerpicked “They Killed John Henry.” Or the drunken swagger, whistlin’-dixie bliss of “What I Mean To You,” arguably the best tumbler-of-whiskey-on-a-piano song since Dylan’s “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry” (though in a completely different way, and with notably less piano).  The track I’ve posted here, “Poor Fool” is fairly representative amalgamation of these last three examples.

And he covers The Replacements.  Not only that, he covers “Can’t Hardly Wait.” It’s fantastic:



He’s touring with Gillian Welch, the only other person to give me this much hope for the state of modern country music since Johnny Cash died.  Dude does everything right.  He even dresses like Hank I.  Just look at that picture above.  Bless his heart.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, go buy this album.  The world needs more of Justin Townes Earle.

“Poor Fool” by Justin Townes Earle (from Midnight at the Movies)

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