Where is Nathan??

So when I heard Gossip were coming to New York I was pretty excited. I was excited to see friends I hadn’t seen in 4 or 5 years, but I was also excited to meet friends who have achieved a pretty enormous amount of stardom. I mean, I’ve never really been friends with Rock Stars until now, I wonder what it is like?

The show was great. It was the first time I had heard Apache Beat or MEN, and I was impressed by both (although in different ways). The Gossip played an incredible show if anyone had been hearing it for the first time, but for me it was incredible to see how similar it was to previous Gossip shows I’d seen 6 years ago. They still make inside jokes and give shout outs to friends and have conversations with people in the front row between songs.

After the show I met up with Nathan behind the venue. It was good to see him and talk about old times and old friends. I also got to meet some people that he had me along the way who now live in New York. He was DJing at a club called Butter and asked if Elizabeth and I wanted to come.

After Butter we went to a party where I caught up with Beth. I don’t know why I was surprised to find out the Beth is the same person she’s always been. But it was refreshing. We talked about my family and hers. We talked about the way things used to be, and about the way they are now. We also talked about how stupidly famous they had become and how crazy it all is.

Saturday night I met up with Nathan and friends again, and we spent most of the night in his hotel room talking and hanging out. It was one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time.

[I didn't take many pictures, but here's a few]

I keep hearing the term “Black Metal” pop up. And every time I do, I think back to one faithful day in a computer lab at Harding University when somebody said “Do you want to see something ridiculous?”, and showed me this. It is so so funny, but you probably don’t want to view it if you are at work or if you are my parents.

According to me of course.

It dawned on me on Christmas eve, our last day of work before our Christmas holiday, that I hadn’t downloaded any new music in a long long time. I didn’t do anything about it until I was making a trip to the store and listened to NPR’s all songs considered Dec. 8th show, “The Year in Review: 2008″, where Bob Boilen had a few guests on and were discussing what had happened for the past year in music. As I listened to the show I realized that I had kept up with most everything that had happened (musically) in 2007 (which was a great year for music), but hadn’t really paid much attention to anything that had been going on in 2008.

So I immediately sought to remedy this situation by searching the net for top 10 lists in 2008 and acquiring the music they contained. I suppose I hadn’t been completely in the dark in 2008 but I had missed some good stuff. So let’s see what came out this year.

From bands you’ve probably heard of

Weezer hadn’t released an album since 2005 and hadn’t released a good album since 2002, and judging from the cover of the Red Album they released in June it was hard for me to seriously expect much. I was mildly amuzed by Troublemaker and I smiled when I heard The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, but when I got to Pork and Beans I thought “now here’s the Weezer we all fell in love with!” The rest of the album had it’s ups and downs, but all said and done I’m glad Weezer is still making music but this was not a great album to me.

Much like Weezer other band’s with names released only mediocre albums this year, including Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple. I did listen to this album and enjoy it, but it certainly didn’t have the impact that St. Elsewhere had. I don’t even remember the Beck Album and I never was into Death Cab the way most people were. But if you like Death Cab, I guess Narrow Stairs was ok.

Now Metallica on the other hand. I feel the same way about Metallica that you do. They are money grubbing sell outs who hate our freedoms. Besides that their music has sucked since the black album. Well, for me it has. I’m not that into metal anymore. So I’ve listened politely since 1991, but not really been impressed. Then Death Magnetic came out this year, and I thought yeah right Metallica, why are you even trying anymore. But then I listened to it and I was pretty impressed. The seem to have made music with some heart, heart wrapped in furious growling metal! I don’t listen to this everyday, but sometimes when I’m pissed off and need to get to the gym and be a jock for a few hours this certainly provides a good soundtrack.

The winners of the year

Here are five albums that were on almost every top 10 list I could find: Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago, Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes, Santogold – Santogold, My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges, and Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter 3. Now these were good albums that got due recognition, but I found them all to be a little blah. Except for Bon Iver. The first time I heard this album was on the NPR show I referred to earlier. I stopped dead in my tracks and thought “Wow, that is a beautiful sound”. It’s a little too sad for me to listen to it everyday, but I must say it was a very powerful album.

The winners I loved

If you don’t own these five albums then make your life better by going out and getting them. These 5 were talked about a lot and showed up on a ton of Top 10s and Top 25s and I also love them. They are TV on the Radio – Dear Science, MGMT – Oracular Spectacular, Son Lux – At War with Walls and Mazes, Mates of State – Re-arrange Us, Sigur Rós – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly).

I had never hear of TV on the Radio until this year when I got Dear Science. This isn’t really music I usually listen to, of course I don’t really know if I can classify this music as anything (except good).

MGMT (formerly known as Management) are two guy from Brooklyn and I think this album is technically synth pop, but I find it a little more melancholy than that. The opening track, Time to Pretend, is easily the best. It is danceable and noisy and yet a little sad. It’s a song about being young and thinking you’re going to take on the world and be famous, but then you grow up and find out things aren’t going to work out and that you’re going to work in a boring job just like everybody else. I don’t think the song actually said that, but that’s what I got out of it. A beautiful song about the death of young optimism. Maybe I loved it so much because I’m turning 30 this year.

Son Lux is Ryan Lott, a musician from New York who (I think) used to write music for TV commercials. This album is dark and adventurous with all kinds of sounds and textures in every song. Certainly not danceable, but very beautiful if you want something to raise your intelligence level. I would classify this as “challenging music”.

Mates of State rock all the time!! They took a bit of a beating from the hosts of the All Songs podcast I listen to, but I’ve loved them from the first. They have certainly changed their sound a bit on this album. Well, I’ll say it’s grown up a bit, it’s cleaner and better produced. But the excessive amount of joy is still there, and I don’t care who you are you will be happy after listening to this album. You may be a mass murderer who steps on new born kittens for fun, but after listening to Mates of State your heart will burst for with human kindness and you will prance through the street kissing old ladies and blessing everyone you see. That is the power of this album.

And finally Sigur Ros. This album was beautiful. I can’t say much more than that. That’s how I feel about most of Sigur Ros’s music. It’s like looking at wonderful art. You just stare at it in amazement and wonder at its mystery. I mean just look at the name, “With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly”. Shock and awe people. I did make this one a daily listener more than most Sigur Ros though and I feel it was a more digestible album.

The Best Albums of 2008 you didn’t hear.

If you are still with me, here are my favorite albums of the year that nobody was talking about.

The unsung hero of 2008

I don’t remember exactly when I got this album, but I do remember Elizabeth told me about it saying that she thought’d be something I would like. I had never heard anything like it. Well, I guess I have. I’ve been following 8-bit music for about 4 or 5 years, but this wasn’t 8 bit it was something more. From the first time I heard Untrust Us I was in love. After the summer when I got my new phone, I made it my ring tone. It is still my ring tone, that’s means I’ve been listening to it everyday for the last 6 months (at least the first 12 seconds or so) and I can put the song on right now and still love it! I will readily admit that this album is not for everybody, but if there’s a little bit of a punk or a little bit of a geek in you (or a little of both) you NEED to have this album. NEED!!

8-bits of awesome!

Speaking of 8-bit here’s an album that took me by surprise. I know not everybody likes 8-bit music (but you all should), but this album takes 8-bit up a notch. This album is polished enough for everybody to love AND dance to! As much as I love the idea of 8-bit music I will have to admit in the last 3 years I can only think of maybe 4 albums that most regular people wouldn’t detest. This is one of those albums. Elizabeth still finds it generally annoying, but I think it sounds like the future and the past combined, wrapped in hope and joy, then dipped in the indomitable human spirit. Hey, want to know what the best part of 8-bit music is? It’s free!! In fact, stop reading right now and go here and download this album.

Music from China that doesn't suck

I saw this band at Castle Bar, but I don’t remember when. I had heard a few of their tracks on their myspace page and was certainly intrigued. Their live show was pretty intense but had been prefaced by Nanjing’s finest punk bands and so I guess since I hadn’t cleansed my musical pallet I felt they were just par musically. Later my friend Jason went to Beijing and picked up a copy of their CD and brought it home. There was a song on the CD that I had heard live, but isn’t available on the CD called Kiss! Kill! Bang! that was instantly one of my favorite songs and is one of the very few songs in my iTunes Library that has five stars. The thing that really makes this band and this album an accomplishment is that it doesn’t suffer from the lack of creativity that most Chinese music does. Queen Sea Big Shark has a confidence and power that most bands in China just don’t have. Independent music in China is still very immature and sound like bad copies of other bands, but there are a few bands coming out of Beijing that have found a sound that is original and Queen Sea Big Shark is one of them.

Well there you have it. There are a lot of bands, albums, and songs I didn’t mention (and I might try later), but I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 7 hours and my head is too tired to write anymore. I’m really going to need to now wait until the end of the year to talk about all of this. But I hope I’ve given you some suggestions if you’ve hit a musical dry spell as I did. Happy New Year Everybody.

If you haven’t heard this yet, stop reading right now and go out and buy it (Jared Stilwell, I’m talking to you). Or download it. Do whatever it takes because your life is complete without it.

I first heard about Justice from an article in a wired I acquired from a recent trip to Shanghai. I shortly thereafter downloaded their debut album †, a.k.a. “Cross”, and was washed in electronic wonder.

I’ve been listening to 8 bit music lately, and so this was a nice break. Even if you don’t like electronic music, † is very danceable and great to bring to any party. I’ve passed it along to some friends and haven’t heard a single bad complaint yet.

Speaking of French djs, I also recently acquired Daft Punk’s Alive 2007. Now everybody knows that Daft Punk is awesome, so it’s a small wonder that this album was incredible. It’s a live album, which means not a lot of new material, but it does roll back through all of the Daft Punk songs you know and love mixed up brilliantly as only Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter can do. Live album’s may be annoying to some people (like Elizabeth), and I’ll admit it’s not something I could listen to all the time (since it is a continuous album of about an hour and a half), but while I’m sitting at my desk trying to drown everybody out, this album is perfect. The deluxe edition comes with a second CD with an additional 10 minutes live track on it, that may or may not be worth it to some.

Yes, I know I’ve been missing for like 2 months and I just made my triumphant return talking about awesome French music. Well work has been pretty crazy for the last few months. I’ve been struggling for the last 2 weeks or so to get it under control so I can have more free time to enjoy myself (and post on my blog). But we’ll see how it goes.

The next few weeks will see a whole mess of Christmas parties and 10 days off for the Christmas holiday. During which time, if I’m lucky, I might work on redesigning the site. I more into 8-bit now than I was when I designed the crazy colors for the current site about a year ago. But I’ve come to the realization that I don’t have time to post up pictures or fix the board or update links. So I’m going to try and scale the site down a bit into a more manageable state. Yeah, I know, more promises.

But, better news. In a few short months I’ll be back in the good ole’ US of A! I have tickets for February 3rd (or something like that) to New York and I’ll be coming to Arkansas a week or so after that. I haven’t been home in 2 years, so I’m getting pretty excited. Anyway, peace out for now.

My brother already mentioned it, but I had to point out that if you haven’t seen this, then you’ve never seen the guitar played. DragonForce is the most unbelievable band I have ever seen, and I don’t care what kind of music you like you must stand in awe of the awesome power that these mystic musicians wield. After you finish watching the video and pick your jaw up off the floor read the website because it’s pretty hilarious.