I'M ON A BOAT, AND IT'S 2009, AND...

I don't know that we've posted too many songs so far this year that have been released in 2009. For that I...WE apologize.

These days when I'm listening to music I'm at a friend's house listening to music I've heard before or scrolling through my iPod listening to music I've heard before. I haven't really been too much on the internet, scouring torrents and websites and things for the new jams. I've been at school, reading books.

I mean, yeah, Merriweather Post Pavilion came out and how do you follow that? Say what you will about Animal Collective, but that was a thoroughly epic album. I was a bit bothered by the absence of a guitar, but I read an interview recently in Cyclic Defrost that sort of put my frustrations to bed.

Merriweather will always be an album I love, but I still think Sung Tongs and Strawberry Jam are better records altogether, but maybe it's just because I've heard Merriweather so damn often since it came out earlier this year. (I mean, the Virgin Megastore in Union Square in New York has a big advertisement with the album cover.) It's certainly the album that will get them HUGE, but I know I'll probably turn into one of those fans who "only likes their earlier stuff".

Bon Iver's Bloodbank EP was also pretty great, but I will say it was kind of a letdown although I've been wildly obsessed with "Woods" for periods of time. (I mean, it's like my guilty pleasure music fusing with music I actually listen to...what more could you want?)

Maybe I just haven't listened to it enough, or devoted much time to actually listen to it, save this once when I was at my friend's apartment, and she'd just bought the record. I found it and demanded we listen to it. I've never listened to DeYarmouth Edison before, but I can imagine it's a lot more like what they might sound write rather than Justin on his extremely personal debut album.

Really, though, I've been drifting lately. Oliver Ignatius' album, Demos for Secund was just put on iTunes. If you haven't checked him out already, please do. I don't care if you've flipped the bird to pop music forever, but you might want to go back and listen to him. I've posted a few songs before, just click his tag.

Other than that, this has been more of a year of literature and comedy for me so far. I've been reading a hell of a lot, so I'd be more suited to suggest books rather than songs:

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
A Handf ul of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire

But I don't really want to do that.

Anyways, if you have anything to suggest, let me know, I don't want to be reduced to posting nonsense like that last post...

Animal Collective on Take Away Shows

Recently, the awesome website, Take Away Shows (see link) posted two videos with Animal Collective as their featured artists. This matters. I told a friend a month or so ago that if they weren't the most influential band of the decade, I would give him permission to kick my ass (on a purposefully undisclosed future date). The cohesion of their band and the sound they create is evident in the grassroots publications, if you will, of their most recent work (see once again the Take Away Show Link). But one doesn't even need to look to the new year to see the evidence. Take for instance, their show in DC on September 28th of this past year, which NPR recorded and released as a free live podcast (still readily available on iTunes), which features their most cohesive confluence of ideas and influences yet. Animal Collective has developed into a vector of a band, sucking in any and all influences, be it Caribbean and African instrumental melodies, hip hop-like volume bass, drum circle percussion, synthesizer manipulation, mantra-like acoustic guitar looping, or even Beach Boys singing. They breath in their lives, mince up ideas like wild children abandoned by society, living like wolves in the forests of the world, tearing up their food, unadulteratedly howling, chanting, and banging. They are excited about nature and the simplest of social constructs. They dress like homeless young men from the pacific northwest or canada. They forget about manners, but do it without punk vanity or cultural disdain. Manners are a societal salad fork: pretentious and unnecessary- and therefore impure. 

Animal Collective's enthusiasm for being original unto themselves streams out so inspiringly, they begin to seem more than original. They begin to seem objective. So optimistically objective. And its great.

More on them later.