Fall Playlist

October is my favorite month: longer nights that make the shorter, sunny days seem sweeter, even as the sun loses its heat.  A "back to school" feel long after you've stopped going back to anything.  A Presidential election and a World Series that leave us all expectant and stuff.

Take a chilly run outside or sit by the fire with this stuff in your ears and see if this fall harvest helps you find a new attitude.


Divine Fits, Would That Not Be Nice - Remember "supergroups"?  Blind Faith, Band of Gypsies, CSN? Inspired pairings that stretched everyone involved?  Get ready to be stretched by this amalgam of Spoon and Wolf Parade.   A top ten 2012 pick.  (Well, it's the fourth quarter already, c'mon).

Solange, Losing You - Beyonce's baby sister hits it out of the park on a tune that sounds like Madonna back in the day, the day being sometime in 1986.  Got a problem with that? 

Storm Queen, Look Right Through You - Note to self:  Get the New Year's Eve party started with this.  

Lianne Le Havas, Is Your Love Big Enough?  23 year-old Brit serving up a spicy stew of folk and soul that just won her a Mercury Prize nomination.  Move over, Adele.  

Bloc Party, Day Four - New British Invasion.  I surrender. 

Daphni - Ye Ye - An electronic wash that will make you hear the sound of your synapses firing.  Interested?  Read Sasha Jones-Frere on Dan Snaith (a.k.a. Daphni) :

 http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2012/10/08/121008crmu_music_frerejones 

Boo!

My Favorite Channel

It’s time to talk about Frank Ocean and his latest release, a lock for my top ten list of 2012.  I have three words for you:  Stevie, Marvin, Maxwell.   Yup, Channel Orange earns him a place in this top shelf company.  

Let’s get some things out of the way.  First, Ocean is a pro, an accomplished songwriter long before this first release of his own and it’s the songwriting that shines here.  Second, this is not the hooky pop stuff you get from Timberlake or Beyonce; it’s mining the same vein but in a more restrained way.  Third, the “coming out” that accompanied the release of Channel Orange (Frank said his first true love was a man) may lend it a zeitgeist-y air of right now, but it should not distract from the fact that this is richly romantic R&B. 

Listen to “Sweet Life” and ask why Lauren Hill isn’t making music like this (or why she doesn’t run right out and cover it):

“Super Rich Kids” is as hip-hoppy as it gets, but it wouldn’t have sounded out of place on “What’s Going On”:

Finally, here’s “Crack Rock”.  Somebody say “Stevie”.  

August Playlist

Another summer well past the halfway point --- the corn is as high as an elephant's eye and all.  Here are some rave new sounds to see you through 'til September.  Your mission if you choose to accept it: remember glorious summers past, but savor every remaining moment of this actual one.

Passion Pit, Take A Walk - Like some social commentary with your electro-pop?  Radio ready.

The Gaslight Anthem, 45 - If your idea of an epic summer song is Blue Cheer banging away on Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues,  then this Bud's for you,  from somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.  From Red Bank, actually.

Frank Ocean, Sweet Life -  Frank who, you say?  What, did you spend the summer on the moon and miss the biggest thing in R&B since, like Frankie Beverly and Maze?

The Tallest Man on Earth,  1904 - He's Kristian Mattson, a Swede, and at first listen, his music sounds like lost tracks from an early Dylan album.  But, as Ira Glass might say, "stay with us."  Brilliant.

Beat Connection, The Palace Garden 4AM - Meet Seattle's answer to Vampire Weekend's clipped, trippy pop sound.  Top down, people.

See you in September.

Step Into Liquid

Pacific Standard Time by Poolside

If you lived in Los Angeles where all of the KCRW DJ's have this on their list of fav's for August, you wouldn't need me to put you wise to Pacific Standard Time.  Poolside is an unlikely pairing of a Dane and San Franciscan dedicated to daytime disco, rhythmic stuff that chugs along with a heavy bottom and an airy top. (Face it, we've all known someone like that, haven't we?)  

Pacific Standard Time is Poolside's debut album, after singles and mixtapes. Consistent from end to end, download all sixteen tracks fearlessly.   Hell, be old school and buy the damn CD for the car or that paint-spattered boom box you keep on the work bench in the garage.  You'll wear it out by Labor Day. 

But take note:  buried in the middle of this disk is a killer remake of Neil Young's Harvest Moon.  I double-dog-dare you to resist it.  

Beach Book

"The Dawn Patrol" by Don Winslow

I'm so not a detective fiction buff.  I get the whole thing, the complicated plotting, the eccentric protagonist with the smart mouth and the platform it provides for social commentary (usually poking fun at liberals).  I make exceptions. I'm a complete sucker for the hardboiled banter of Raymond Chandler;  "The Long Goodbye" with Eliot Gould, made from his best novel, is one of my all time favorite movies. But it's not what I grab for a plane ride or a week at the beach.  Until now.  

In a recent pre-flight visit to B&N, I was ready to grab "Savages," the Don Winslow novel that was adapted for Oliver Stone's rough new film.  Instead, I picked up, "The Dawn Patrol," Winslow's 2008 surf noir  and read it in a single sitting.  Boone Daniels (I know) is the surfing PI enlisted to investigate an insurance scam that takes a darker turn, with a Chinatown-like back story about the development of the coast south of San Diego.  Like crack on the page.  


Take a break from the Booker Prize winners and suck this up with Sublime and Guster playing on your iPod.  

Coming Attractions - New Music from the XX

The XX's debut made my "best of" list in 2010 and has remained in heavy rotation on all my, how you say, devices.  (If you haven't listened to it, for God's sake stop right here and go find it now.) Since its release there have been echoes of their airy, but tuneful sound in tracks released by Jamie Smith (aka Jamie XX) or produced by him, most especially his remix of Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here (a 2011 "best of" JFJ pick).

But new music is coming.  See if Angels, from their forthcoming disk Coexist, will tide you over or make you an anxious convert.  This is beautiful music, quiet but deeply felt, soothing even though it's suffused with sadness.

Can't wait for more?  See what Jamie did to (for) Adele:

Or how the band transforms (which is to say renders nearly unrecognizable) a soul number like Womack and Womack's Teardrops:

Just for a sanity check, here's the original in all it's mid 80's glory:

See if the music of the XX isn't the perfect antidote to the heat.

Deerhunter Nation

No, this is not me going all Red State on you. This is fan mail from some flounder to Deerhunter, the alternative band fronted by Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt, whose side projects Atlas Sound and Lotus Plaza make up the Empire part of this thing.  Ambient psychedelia?  Maybe so.  Chiming guitars, metronome drumming and minor key introversion are the pulse running all through this music.

Where to begin?  Start with"Agoraphobia" from 2008's Microcastle, by which time the band's sound has gelled from their noisy 2001 beginnings.  The noise quotient is toned down, the jangly guitars that Pundt contributes and Cox's introverted sentiments are all here in the prettiest little song you'll ever hear about a panic attack.  

Then it's on to Cox's efforts as Atlas Sound.  Away from the band, his work can verge on chamber pop, somewhat sunnier (what a relief) and rhythmically complex.  This stunner "Walkabout" is from 2008's Logos and features Noah Lennox of Panda Bear (but he's for another day):

I've saved the best for last, the Luna-like sound of Pundt's Lotus Plaza. If LP is the most accessible of these three collectives, you're still not gonna hear it on the radio anytime soon.  Hypnotic and trippy, those reverb-soaked guitars are all over his Spooky Action at a Distance, released this year.  "Remember Our Days" is my pick on a disk full of gems.