89.3 The Current

89.3 The Current is a fucking breath of fresh air. It's exactly what one would want from Satellite radio without the burden of cost: no continuous, devolving playlists, that cycle into themselves repeatedly like mating, hermaphroditic worms, or lecherous lawyers in an elephant walk; it has no ads, the DJ's love the music they spin, and while some songs do repeat over time, you cannot truly compare the multiple spins of the Arcade Fire, or the Shins, or even Atmosphere, in six hour periods to that of enless repetitions of I wanna Slit My Wrist When I Listen to this Muck I mean Hoobastank I mean that band that's going to be playing for some hobo's wedding reception in a year. And by Hobo, I mean that smelly dude whose eyes you didn't meat as you walked off with your two dollar short cappuccino.

I really wish I lived in the Twin Cities. Sure, listening to The Current is like stealing some white hipster's Ipod that his Mom bought him for Christmas. But he's an older hipster. Wiser. And his Ipod holds about five hundred more gigs.

And losing all the commercials about The Big Lot car sales? About how Lazer 103.3 will be at Daytonas, where the hottest girls in town will gladly bend down and pick up that dollar bill you dropped? Or just go ahead and listen to the commercial for Big Earl's, where every Tuesday is Amateur Night!

Listening to an online radio stream is like dating over the internet. Sure, it gets you through the lonely nights, but darnit, some days you just want to hold someone.

And anyone who plays Seu Jorge, My Bloody Valentine, Elliott Smith, the Shins, and the Olympic Hopefuls is worth hugging. Daily.

PIcaresque

Three months from now America will be awash in rogues and spies sung out in sweet, trepid falsetto by Colin Meloy(and by some woman, beautiful and pale no doubt, skinny like a model with her eyes all painted black, whose name I haven't yet learned). Of course, these days three months is an easy thing to time travel thanks to the Internets(one must be for Time Travel, used by rascals and rogues to theft out the future of music; thrift store hipsters in a Ford Taurus instead of a Delorean driven by the coolest of the cool, Marty McFly).

The Decemberists are one of those bands who get shoved aside; loved by those who love them, ignored by the rest. Or perhaps you know one of their songs(Billy Liar has his hands in his pockets/Staring over at the neighbor's knickers down/he's got his knickers down) and perhaps you just think of them as those shanty music players, those pirates of indie pop, each and everyone with peg legs(great to play drums with) and strangled parrots stapled to their shoulders.And perhaps you hated them for that.

Perhaps you heard their songs and thought it was all paltry, all those meaningless words and faux nostalgia schtick. Well, Picaresque ain't for you.

Perhaps you love the Decemberists and their graceful lyrics, which stray far from Montana, far from the 21st century, far from your ears as they sail into the breach of your canals. Perhaps they invade your dreams with images of down knickers, soldiers and architects, ancient Celtic Myths. Perhaps you love that dancing according jangle that makes you sway like the bow of a ship.

Well, Picaresque should be your masterpiece, and all it takes is one song. The 9 minute epic "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is already the best song of 2005. Is there a better band out there at writing long, epic songs? And not the drone for twenty minutes into one droning fugue only to burst out into attacking guitars. But in near perfect pop songs that tell sharp, witty novels that are quite simply, fun.Has there ever been a more perfect moment in music than when the Boy's mother cries out:

"Find him/bind him/tie him to a pole/and break his fingers/to splinters"

I'm sure there has been. But that plea, tossed out over the waves and from a death bed, finds that inner pirate in me every time. I search the eyes of those I pass to see if they maybe a rake or a roustabout.

Sadly, I'm a Temp for a Mortgage company; everyone I work with is a roustabout.

Come March 22nd, 2005, and one of the best albums of the year will be released. I'll be buying it. And I don't even have some older mistress to suck dry.

The Arcade Fire Live

Win Butler has dirt underneath his finger nails. Régine Chassagne has shiny sparkles on her arm that shine like diamonds, or headlights. Richard Parry has a big, goofy smile that lights up a room. And he loves to beat on everything in sight, from the pipes on the ceiling to the amps lying next to him.

These are the sort of things you notice when you're standing so close to the stage you have to lean against it, when your friend is so close to the stage he's nearly getting stabbed by Win's mic as Win careens like a drunken Preacher through their first song, "Wake Up". If there were more Preachers who could produce the experience that the first song the Arcade Fire play, the fire, the beauty, the sheer protoplasmic wave of musical noise that goes louder than anything you've ever let your ears touch, and yet, it's touching you like a lover, like a choir, like an energy fulfilling your existence, travelling the length of your body until it burns in your brain, well if Church did that for everyone, we'd all be Christians.

They played 11 songs, then three more for an encore, last night, in Iowa City, at Gabe's Oasis.

1. Wake Up
2. Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
3. No Cars Go
4. Une Année Sans Lumiere(I think this was it; I snagged the set list and it says F. Song)
5. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
6. Rebellion(Lies) (though really they never stopped in between five and six)
7. Burning Bridges (listed on the set list as B. Bridges, and Win, after asking his band mates who wrote this song, said it was a Leonard Bernstein song. I've searched and found nothing. It's been rumored it might be a new song. Whatever it was, it was damn fine).
8. Naive M. (I don't know the Talking Heads, and so I'm listing it as it was on the list)
9. Haiti
10. Crown of Love
11. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Encore:
When they came back on stage, Win asked if we wanted to hear a new song or an old one. Everyone started shouting new. Then Richard took a coin from an audience member, and said he'd flip for it. He let the coin hit the floor, saying he lost it, so they'd just have to play both.
1. New song(something about soldiers? I have no idea)
2. Headlights like Diamonds
3. In the Backseat

Seeing everyone on stage rushing around, changing instruments mid song, playing guitars and bass, playing drums or keyboards, hitting everything in sight, stomping on the floor, making the bar shake, making everyone their own gospel choir, doing this every night, across North America, makes one want to convert. Maybe all it takes is moving to Canada?

So in the last week I've listened to more new albums that I've enjoyed then at any other time this year. And almost all of them have been new births to me; bands that I didn't even know existed came out from left field and flashed their eye lashes and big titted voices or soft, quailing sleet of mouths, muttering out songs over the most beautiful, Canadian arrangements.

There was a little movie that came out in 1989 about videogames players and the women who love them. It was directed by Todd Holland, who also directed an episode of the best tv show Fox has cancelled in the last five years(and that is more distinguished company than what they've kept; excluding some, of course). That movie was a seminal movie for my 9 or 10 year old boy self, as I watched it at a birthday party with kids I didn't know. We bonded over how cool Super Mario Bros 3 was(I mean, Mario had a fucking raccoon tail. Badass) and how stupid that girl was. Who knew she'd grow up with such a voice?

Jenny Lewis, if he doesn't love you, I do. Because More Adventurous is one beautiful pop record. This was my first falling into bed with the headphones on with Ms. Lewis and co, so the long time's fans current dislike with the record seems odd to me. Personally, I've always liked listening to the singer and the guitars. Though it might just be Modest Mouse disease.

I'm going to have to check out more of Rilo Kiley's work.

Then there's the prolific Devendra Banhardt. I haven't really given Rejoicing in the Hands much of a chance yet, but Nino Rijo, that has been an immediate arrival. His voice trembles out over his guitar like a ghost, white, pale, and lost on some mountain trail, his guitar, broken strings and all, strapped across his back.

Oh, I can't forget the Delgados and Universal Audio. I'm going to be listening to this one for a long time. And yeah, that's about it about that one.

But I think my favorite new album has to be the Arcade Fire's Funeral. They remind me of a slight, very slight, mix of Broken Social Scene's pop sensibilities and the Firey Furnaces more weird adventurous motions. Crown of Love may end up my favorite song this year. Canadians are producing the best music in the world right now.

And while they're website uses Flash, it doesn't annoy the hell out of me.

I went a little over kill on the hyperlinks today. I think I needed to feel the rush of the hyperlink between my fingers, as it's been too long.

In the Shadow of No Towers

Art Spiegelman is the only writer of comic books to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. He won it in 1992 for Maus, a graphic novel based on the Holocaust, from accounts Spiegelman's father, Vladek recounted to him. All the Jews are rats and all the Nazis are cats. Americans, well, as usual, are dogs.

In the Shadow of No Towers is Spiegelman's latest work, to be published in September. The main character is named Art Spiegelman, and is a "chain-smoking, unshaven, potbellied paranoid dressed in a cheerleader outfit" according to the Times.

Read that wonderful interview here. In case you don't like signing up for silly sites like the Nytimes, go here for passwords to most all newspaper websites that require a login.

Top Singles of 2004, or how I learned to stop worrying and spout off what everyone else is

2004 has found me listening to more music than ever before. Mainly that is because some how, some way, I didn't grow up listening to music. This means that my list really is meaningless, as I can't spout off platitudes of how this year is better/no worse!/nah, it's just average/fuck you! it's the best ever! or anything like that. So I'm just going to tell you what my three favorite singles are.

They aren't original choices. Hell, two of them are cheating, as I'm not sure the Streets has released "Dry Your Eyes" in the states yet, and "This Fire" is going to be the next FF single here. But oh fucking well.

1. Modest Mouse – Float On
Is there a better song being played on modern radio right now? I mean, until the Scissor Sisters get "Tits on the Radio" out there to the new rawk masses. It doesn’t matter how many times I listen to Float On, how often the radio bleeds it out, I still turn around and listen to it again and again.

2. The Streets – Dry Your Eyes
This was very unexpected from Mr Skinner. Geezers need excitement, but they need a little tenderness, too. Even though I’d love to hear it, I’m glad Chris Martin got axed. Skinner handles this flawlessly with his unbeautiful voice. You can really believe he has nothing left without her, but Martin's voice, well that's the voice of someone who has babies named Apple and wives named Gwyneth.

3. Franz Ferdinand – The Dark of the Matinee
THIS FIRE?!?!?!? THIS FIRE OVER MATINEE?!?! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! I suppose you are thinking that This Fire sounds more like Take Me Out, and stupid Americans will be able to appreciate it. Plus, who doesn't like to burn shit? Oh well. Matinee made me believe in Franz Ferdinand. I listened to the first three songs and I was agreeable but not exactly shaking my fucking ass; nothing inside of me was out of control or on fire. But then Kapranos says
"You take your white finger/slide the nail under/the top and bottom buttons on/my blazer/"
and I woke up, and looked these bastards in the eyes. Plus, who doesn't like the dark of the matinee?

Oh, and if the Scissor Sisters released their cover of Take Me Out, I might have to extend this list to four.

Now after all that talk of cheating, I have to say that if I was doing a best song list, it would be different. But to choose the best damn song of the year? Jesus. I need to listen to more records.

Who released the best album in the last year?

The Strokes, the motherfucking Strokes! Okay, maybe not. But last August I found Room on Fire online and I, well, I pilfered it. I stuck it to those New Yorkers, who play their guitars with caviar stained fingers, singing vocals while getting blow jobs from runway models, beating out the high hat while watching French films(and not elegant, easily beautiful French films like Amelie, but weird, sexually deviant films filled with cigarettes and penis dangling like The Dreamers).

I stuck it to 'em, and listened. And listened. I turned my room into a bastion of fire, listening Under Control so often I started telling my girlfriend I didn't want to give it to her her way. I had it going on repeat in my puny Winamp player every day for a month; I could have criss crossed a country, if say, that country was England, or travelled the burroughs of New York, listening to Albert and Nikolai and Julian and Fab and that other dude.

And then I started to think. Is this the greatest fucking album ever released? I'm listening to it like it is, every dishrag on the newstand tells me it is, bloggers throughout the interweb are saying it is, so yeah, obvs it is the best jawn evs. But it wasn't.

I tried to keep listening, to the catchy guitars and wonderful beats, to the spit out lyrics tossed out of a cab rollin' down the Tunnel. But alas, once that balloon is popped you can't inflate it back. The Strokes saved nothing. And I in turn didn't save them.

Fast forward ten months. Room on Fire breathes like a lung full of Marlboros, when all you've had that day is air, sweet, fresh, unkilling Midwest air, and god did you miss that nicotine.