TELL ME AGAIN

Volcano Choir - "Island, IS"

I'm going to be one of those old men who can't remember anything. I just know it. I already have some trouble. It's bound to get worse. It's that some moments just don't find their foothold, they never tether to another - so they drift out, away from me. The first hummingbird of summer (and mom in grassy shorts, watching expectantly) is still here, slower than I've ever seen it, and each feather, each bounce of light and shadow, each small gesture large enough to see, they're still here.

OOOOOOOOO

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(album out in September, on my birthday; thanks, Lindsey)

ooo-ooo-ooo

SO IMPROPER

Saint Seneca

Improper post. Real write-ups later. I'm beat, it's been a whirlwind week. But before I sleep, before you do anything else, listen to some Saint Seneca. I was fortunate enough to see these folks two nights back-to-back last week, and they were heart-warming and foot-stomping, audible "Wow"z and all, smiles everywhere. And honestly, that's what I want to see all the time. (They're also very nice, funny people. We went out to a diner and they had me covering my mouth way too much.)

Also: they have a 7" out now. BUY IT!

WE GIVE YOU MUSIC

THE WATTLED SMOKY HONEYEATER PRESENTS:

BACKYARD SHOW!
POTLUCK!
HOOTENANNY!

POTLUCK begins at ONE O'CLOCK.
HOOTENANNY from ONE to FIVE.
PERFORMANCES beginning at 6 O'CLOCK!

PERFORMANCES by:

THE ACCIDENT THAT LED ME TO THE WORLD
BARNA HOWARD
FRANK HOIER
MUTINY AMONGST FRIENDS
OLD HANNAH*
VIKESH KAPOOR
WHISTLE JACKET


HOOTENANNY means ANYONE can perform -
whether it be a dance, a poem, a song, a joke -
whatever you want to do!
But the limit is TWO songs -
or poems, or jokes, or whatever -
at a time.
That way, everyone gets a chance.


So bring your instruments!
And sweet eats!
And smiling faces!
(And your friends ~ the more, the merrier!)


THE BACKYARD can be found at 11 HOLMES COURT
in DARIEN, CONNECTICUT.
The show is FREE,
but donations (for hard-travelin' musicians) encouraged. <3


*Full disclosure: this is Tyler's band.

Grace runs up to me (this is the part of the story I don't see) and I jump a little bit in my chair when she touches me. Part of me wants to jump, hop, skip and run, most of me wants to lie down and fall asleep because I'm sick, drinking bottle after bottle after bottle of water, pilling every twelve hours and not sleeping too well at night. But Grace runs up to me and I jump a little bit in my chair when she touches me. The part after that, most of it doesn't matter, doesn't merit being put down, including these parts I'll put down now: the way she says "Do you want food?"; the bottle of Welch's I pick from her bag; the shyness she exudes when I point out how colorful she looks today. I used to write songs that froze my skin, a whisper inside my voice; I used to write songs that burned me alive, songs that need to be shouted more than sung, barefoot on tops of tables. Right now I want to write neither, I want to write something else, something that isn't about me but from me, to something that's in me: a plea, an appeal, a beg. Begging to be alive in the way I was that second where all my senses drop beneath the wonder of where and why that touch came.

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I'll write about songs I love soon, I've been busy with less important things.

AM I, DON?

This guy blows me away. I feel like a paperweight next to his boulder.

YOU CAN FIND ME IN A CAVE

Bon Iver - "Woods" (this is for sampling purposes)

Last week I was invited to a friend's home for dinner. I was not the only guest, and then there was her family, there were maybe eight or nine of us altogether so we had to collect chairs. I took an office chair, spent most of the meal rolling back and forth between the dining table and a computer, playing DJ. I played the new Bon Iver EP in its entirety and I couldn't contain my excitement for "Woods", which meant I blabbed all about the song, what it is, what it's built out of. I played it loud and I smiled BIG, BIG, BIG. One of my friends laughed and kept laughing; vocoders crack her up, auto-tune cracks her up. Her husband (an incredible musician, a thoughtful man) was struggling not to. He told me that, to him, the use of vocoder and/or auto-tune auto-matically "makes the song so urban." I felt compelled to recite the lyrics to them --

I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still to slow down the time.

It was a coat-of-arms, a panoply, not like prayer but like worship -- ostentatious, but beautiful. I listened through the table sounds. I thought if I told everyone to keep going with me, to wait until the end, then they'd listen too and they'd get it. I told them it was like Prince and I was mostly kidding. I told them it was like T-Pain and I was flat-out lying. I couldn't imagine how anyone could hear this music, really hear it, and hear urban, which to me suggests at a minimum that people run rampant, that the heat you feel comes from living bodies. The landscape knows your secrets. "Woods" is the landscape. It's dead, celestial and full. It could never be alone, it's too free.

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[photograph by {the excellent} Derek Vincent]

THE END

I'm lazy and it's late and all I want to say now to finish what was kind of a weak year-in-review:

- get Lykke Li's debut, it's the best happy-sad music in the world; great when you're lonely and even better when you're not
- get Sun Kil Moon's new album, even though it's no Ghosts of the Great Highway
- Damien Jurado inspires me, confounds me, mesmerizes me, I hope he does the same for you and frankly I wouldn't be one bit surprized
- it's tasking to post mp3s when yr laptop is broken, but I'm working on it
- I can't wait for the new J. Tillman record
- music is good for living things

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It was a good year, a lot changed for me. I'm hoping the wheels keep turning. Good night. See you next year.

PART III of Tyler's YEAR-IN-REVIEW!

4. FLEET FOXES.

At first, I was infatuated, bowled-over, stupefied with glee as though deep-down I'd been waiting for a band just like this -- chamber music, hymns and west-coast blissed-out prettiness and bits and pieces of American folk music and artrock, these are all things I like quite a bit from time to time and it's all there.

So why am I so indifferent to this band now?

And why -- I mean, REALLY? WHY? -- is their self-titled record so many people's favorite album of the year?

I don't have answers for the second question, and only a scattershot guessing mess of reasons for the first one.

Maybe I got bored of the record; I listened to it a lot, and while everything is very neatly arranged, it's not deep, not the kind of record where you notice something new every time. It's not filled with subtleties. It just is what it is. It's also terribly monotonous; when I first discovered them early in the year, I noticed on their Myspace that they'd made it a point to describe themselves as "not a rock band" and while at first I thought that slightly misleading, it turns out to be true in an unfortunate way: they are hardly exciting. (Anyone else notice that the bassist always and I mean always looks bored?) They are content to make pretty music with pretty harmonies, and too rarely do they push the decibel meter. It makes all the very-hushed parts in their songs feel cheaper for the lack of dynamic. (Quiet is the new loud? Again?)

Most of all, I get tired of wading through songs with uninspired segments. Off the top of my head, there's moments in "Ragged Wood", "Quiet Houses" and "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" that actually annoy me, passages that seem to try too hard to be melodic or weird, instead of just sounding good, instead of really waiting for inspiration -- and these are three of my favorite songs on the record, in spite of their flaws, which only makes it more maddening. The album is absolutely thick with ideas, most of its songs have more ideas than some whole albums, and most of the melodicism is highly sophisticated. Yet it gets too melodic, as if they don't know anything else, as if they think music can only be carefully composed, as if chance doesn't belong.

I think it was Clay who said that the album almost sounds like an assignment. I wish that didn't sound right, but it does.

With all of that said, the fact of the matter is that Robin Pecknold is oftentimes very inspired -- take "Blue Ridge Mountains", "White Winter Hymnal", "Oliver James", all of which are vivid and warm, melodic and ageless. And it's a mightily impressive debut record, despite its flaws (again). I think the main reason I've fallen out of touch with Fleet Foxes partly has to do with what I thought they were when I first heard them. Nowadays, I hear The Beach Boys, sun-baked and immaculate, and brilliant. Before, I heard The Band in all their early glory, in their strange still-unmatched way of singing through and above and past one another. Back then -- think Music From Big Pink -- The Band was both crazy-loose and crazy-tight. While I like The Beach Boys, I hardly ever listen to them -- mostly I admire and respect what they could do, but really enjoying it, or more importantly loving it? Not-so-much. The Band is a different story. (Go on YouTube, check out Fleet Foxes' video for "He Doesn't Know Why". See the resemblance?)

I've got a prediction. Whether or not Fleet Foxes trims the fat and comes up with something truly great next time around, a lot of folks will at some point in the next few years re-scan their best-of-2008 lists and wonder, When was the last time I listened to this album?

PART II OF TYLER'S YEAR-IN-REVIEW

3. AUTO-TUNE.

I don't really know where it began in earnest. Of course it's been going on for a long time, but I don't know when it really took off, when people started to take notice -- I remember reading about it a few months ago in The New Yorker, and before that in a profile of T-Pain.

Ah, T-Pain. Maybe I don't know exactly what it is I love so much about you, maybe I never will. Yr music conjures drinks and dancefloors and the nighttime-as-the-righttime and excess and indulgence and fun -- little to none of the hazards, and when things go wrong it's funny, like "that'll be sixty bucks" and the one-drink-too-many. I think when I first heard you I must have thought This is so not me and at the same time I love this to death, what the fuck? In some crucial ways it is me because -- how do I say this -- I like being taken out of my element, I want to be bewildered once in a while.*

And "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" is absolutely bewildering because it never lets up and yes it has hooks but it's more than that, it bleeds you to death before you even hit the bridge (which is AWESOME) and it's like everything I loved about that Basement Jaxx record Kish Kash condensed into one perfect pop song (almost?), a song that if it doesn't get you going it makes you feel helpless because what else could possibly get you going if not this? The first time I heard it was after they made fun of it on Saturday Night Live and all I could focus on was the dancing and how they looked like weird mechanized bird-humans running around in circles and WOW THIS RHYTHM IS HYPED UP and it was all very funny to me but now I hear this song on the radio and it feels like exploding non-stop for three-and-a-half too-short minutes. And when the hooks pile on at the end it's like Beyoncé is telling you this weird secret, unraveling this mystery: It's fabulously easy, you just need to sing all the best notes in the best way.

And then Kanye West comes in and he's melancholic and he's the biggest pop star in the world (right?) but he's a hip-hop star, I thought; and he's making a record about death and break-ups and fame and disappointment but none of that matters so much as the example he's setting as a pop star. And it's a good example: make what you want, what you're feeling. Get away from yr bread-and-butter, pivot toward yr milk-and-honey. West's first three albums are genius and he's always made it look easy, but this is more than just great music, this is his Sgt. Pepper, his Bringing it All Back Home, his middle finger to Nashville, his true colors in other words; and maybe the best part is the irrational distaste so many people are going to have for it and how he knew that and did it anyway. (Unbridled emotion and simplicity don't sit too well with the in-crowd. Or the critics. All the better.) This is what "psychedelic" should mean because it's an out-sized, out-of-body, larger-than-life thing that's going on and forget about wishing that Kanye was more humble or down to earth -- shine on, you crazy diamond.

*Addendum: On second glance that sounds like a shallow appreciation, and the last thing I want to suggest about this music is that it's somehow shallow, or that I think it's shallow. So let me clarify: I think it's GRAND, particularly because it does so completely what all my favorite music does, it transports you into a not-real-until-right-now place, and in T-Pain's case it's the club-circus, the bar-sitcom. Like a dreamy Alice-in-Wonderland vision of the best party ever. That's what it does for me. Down the rabbit hole...

--------------------

More later this week! Finished with finals today, so I'll have more time.

The Year, Sorta Discussed

(Subtitle: Favorite albums of 2008?!)

THE PROBLEM: Digitalageayedeeachedee. Trends galore. Broken laptop. Singles-prominence. Googlepediatube. Autotune/T-Pain.

THE SOLUTION: Listen to the radio. Leave the house. Buy music MAKE MUSIC. Unplug the stereo when you're not using it. Autotune/T-Pain.

--------------------

I couldn't even begin to give you an honest Top-5 or Top-10 or Top-Multipleof10 list this year. I just didn't listen to that many albums. Maybe I'm losing patience like everyone else, or maybe it was just that kind of year; music and I fall in and out of love. (Sometimes, for months at a time, it's nuthin but lust.) But I could really only name you six or seven albums I even listened to the whole way through, and while they're all worthy, I bet that if I'd been more adventurous, if I'd soaked up more content (digital sponge) those 6-or-7 would be in considerably hotter water.

So instead, I'm just going to list, in no particular order, new music that I loved, whether it be an album, a show, a song, or a video. What-fucking-ev-fucking-er. While I am utterly ambivalent about the structure this list takes, all the music is earnestly and passionately loved from the bottom of my heart, music I savored and learned inside and out and will keep listening to for -- well, let's be honest, at least months to come. (But probably more.)

Today is PART I. As you'll see, each entry is a little long, so I'm going to space this out over the next week or two. As of now, I don't know exactly where this list will go or who/what it will include -- you'll know when it's over around the same time as I do.

------------------------

1. BON IVER.

I went to two "shows" this year -- quotations meaning I'm not counting shows I played or shows my friends played; only two shows where I went to see a band whose record I liked. The first one was Bon Iver, back in February. (Here's what I wrote about it.)

For Emma, Forever Ago has nothing if not staying power: these are songs that have real emotional depth, by which I mean the more you listen to them, really listen to them, the more they reveal their insides, hurts and joys, hopes and wants, scars and mistakes. Musically it seems innovative and forward-thinking, but what it boils down to is that even if you stripped away the words, the stories you've heard about the album's maker -- its sound is startlingly, intensely personal -- and therefore unique. It's an album that gets better, which is really another way of saying it gets truer.

Justin Vernon self-released For Emma in 2007, but the record didn't see official release until February, through Jagjaguwar; anyone who has been paying attention since then already knows that it's been a huge year for Vernon. Bon Iver is now a band, and an exciting one at that: at this point, Mike and Sean are inextricable, as much a part of these songs as Justin -- I forget at times they're not on the album. Bon Iver was my first show this year, and they'll be my third in a week and a half -- and just to witness the journey this music has taken, to see its growths, has my head swelling with excitement.

Then again, that has a lot to do with who'll be opening for Bon Iver...

2. THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH. (Previously on TWSH.)

The day I heard Kris for the first time, I'd spent some time teaching myself one of my favorite folk songs: "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground". I stumbled on TTMOE the way I usually stumble on new music -- through browsing music blogs -- and these were the first words I heard: "If I ever see the morning / just like a lizard in the spring."

Now, I'm typically a rapt listener, I don't make up my mind about a song within the first few bars and turn it off if I don't like it. Songs hold and keep my interest, even bad ones, and unless it's physically hurting me I'm not going to reject it that quickly. With that said, I can't remember ever feeling so immediately attached to a piece of music as I was to "I Won't Be Found" that evening. It may have been the connection to "Mole in the Ground" in the lyrics, which admittedly made me feel what I guess you might call a fast kinship with Kris, like when the pretty girl on the bench has "over a cardboard sea" written on her shoes.

But in contrast with that feeling of closeness was the sense that this was something foreign, something unlike any folk music I'd ever heard. The singing has a lot to do with it: Kris doesn't sound distinctly Swedish or distinctly American, and his lyrics have (for me) no obvious lineage, though they are as rich and poetic as any I've heard. There's an air about him, a gulp of syrup and a handful of myth in that voice.

His debut album, Shallow Graves, might as well be legendary, considering how flabbergastingly great it is. It's the album I listened to most this year, at least in part because it's the most elliptical, the toughest egg to crack. It made me wonder: where are these songs coming from? How is he doing this, goddamnit?! Every melody so instantly infectious, not in the way pop music is, but the way it feels when you create something -- the way it feels in the exact moment something rises out of you, and then when you fall in love with what you (little strange unknowable you) made. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn't, but that's what listening to these songs feels like for me now -- I'd probably hate Kris if I didn't love his music so much, because he's done exactly what I wish I could. In that way, it's strangely the most personal record of the year for me, for all its otherworldly strangeness. (Obviously, I'm especially excited to see him perform next Monday night.)

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MORE LATER THIS WEEK. Or next week. Expect words about Fleet Foxes, Lykke Li, Damien Jurado, Kanye, Sun Kil Moon . . . and . . . yes . . . T-Pain.

YES, I'M TALKING TO YOU

I'm sitting at Table 7 at the library, reading about music and thinking about music and the people who write about it. And there's just one thing I got to know.

Do you like what we're doing here?

I'm looking for ways to mix it up over here at the Honeyeater, ways we can make it better, more interesting, more adventurous, more creative, more fun. I attribute part of the problem to simply not having time and energy for it, and more specifically the fact that I'm just not as musically knowledgeable as a writer-about-music should be -- most of my friends have a much stronger handle on contemporary stuff, and as for my awareness of older music, well, I was going to use the word "grasp" in place of "awareness" but that sounded too strong, you dig?

One thing I think might help: SEND US SONGS. We will write about the things we love. Please and thanks! I think that right there takes care of the interesting-adventurous-and-fun parts; I guess you'll still have to trust us with the creative part. (And all I can give you there is a maybe. Have a little faith, though.)

If you'd like to send me anything, I'll always -- ALWAYS -- listen to it. My e-mail is:
tyler.bussey@gmail.com

I'll leave it up to Will and Clay to provide theirs.

And also, please, flood this post with comments -- constructive, derisive, knock-knock, anarchic, whatever. (In other words, the only way I'll know if this is working fine, or if it might be time to retreat, is from hearing your thoughts, dear reader.)

So. HOLLER BACK --------------------

UPDATE: Yo, ANYBODY?!

BREAK A SWEAT, THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES

The Tallest Man on Earth - "The Gardner"

This song is about things we all share, even things we'd not-so-much admit to sharing. It's the lift and the ache of knowing that being just who we are makes even one someone want to try harder. It's the thrill, the glee of a good old-fashioned killing spree. (Figuratively, of course.) It's unbridled absurdity (love), it's separating the wheat from the chaff, it's casting yourself in a winnowing sliver of light. (Borrowed that one.) It's about everything we can't quite put our fingers on. We can't because we can only be in it: you can't be on music, on air, on her eyes. Even on time. (A river is not a line.) We're in this together, when we sing together it's the same time, the same air, we're seeing with the same swirls of twilight. "There is no need for suspicion / There ain't no frog kissing your hand / I won't be lying when I tell you / That I'm a gardner, I'm a man / In your eyes, babe."

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I don't know how Katy Horan would feel about me using her artwork for this post, but it's just SO PERFECT for the song; I'm almost surprised one didn't inspire the other. Though I'd assert it stands alone just fine, more than fine -- lately I'm just plum enamored with her work. Please give it a look. The piece I jacked is from her new solo exhibition (!) -- please check it out here.

If you haven't yet, check out Soirée à emporter n°2. All the videos are worth your time -- I'm partial to The Dodos and Fleet Foxes, of course, and Essie Jain was a welcome discovery -- but the real gem, the really real gem, is hidden in the really real sounds and smiles and stomps and clomps and shaking excitement of Vandaveer's all-too-brief performance. It's given me chills, welled up tears, made me miss my family. It's that good.

I wrote the man an e-mail, asking when and where a studio version of "A Mighty Leviathan of Old" might, um, surface, and here's what he said: "We actually have recorded that very tune for the next record, but we haven't set a release date yet ... most likely will be in early '09 ... but we may post it on Myspace or some other place before then to whet the collective whistle." WhoooooooOOOOooooo!

ELEVATOR MUSIC

Ella Fitzgerald - "Stairway to the Stars"

You shouldn't destroy what you can't rebuild,

like the earth, or the stars,

a stairway from here to there.

(Maybe we could rebuild the stairway but personally I wouldn't risk it.

Because HEY!

That's where heaven is.

On rungs, on beams,

on hands and feet!

Perilous! Off-balance! Lovely, lovely!)

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It would be heaven to climb to heaven

with you.

Up there.

Up there there's a darkness so bright,

there's violence but it's not scary,

it's so blue, and it's just beginning.

And that moon (the same one, not the same as before)

and that driftdriftdrift, oh my -

and the rim of that hill, oh yes -

and the crest of that thrill, oh to be...

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I hear your o-so-slow,

seductive "let's" -

for heaven's sake, LET US! but you play it cool -

and good heavens the sound of your voice:

that's heaven

to you, heaven to me.

Shhh - that's heaven

and I'm clean-break fresh-out of waiting.

HOW THINGS CHANGE, THEY CHANGE US

Sun Kil Moon - "Glenn Tipton"

Mark Kozelek sings I CAPitalized, an upright word, a word that matters - matters because I meant something to someone, now she's gone and "place ain't the same" and he's back in memory, he's singing for intimates past and (therefore) present - donut shops, cops at the table; the fighters, the guitar-flashers; the unsent letters & the heart-soft hours of the night. And these scenes just pass by, the hurts and the mends all know their time is coming and really, what can you do, what are love and sorrow anyway but lights and shadows, colors off the leaves, never remaining for long. Refusing to just repeat. The foggy-eyed awe of what next together, hand-in-hand, with the delirious stillness of what was.

Bowerbirds - "Bur Oak"

Remember those kids in grade school and the nicknames we came up with? Nick drank Sunkist, we called him Orange. Alex was a rascal, we called him Spanky. (Nobody remembers how Zack became Stella.) But we all know that these kids are grown, that they are trying to grow now - next time you see them, call them by the names we gave 'em. Maybe they'll say "no one's called me that in years" and maybe also swell a little and maybe, but only just barely-maybe, pine too for that shared impulse we had when we didn't need to search to impress or amaze: that stupid sudden spark that sticks and sticks and sticks.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS FORTUNE

some things about me worth knowing:

- I hate receiving compliments because I generally disagree with them
- I am wrapped up in my own state of mind to the point that imagining someone else's perspective is harder than Chinese algebra
- I am genuinely surprised whenever good things happen
- I usually expect the worst

so when good fortune comes my way it gives me a lot of pause. the feeling produced is a mix of trepidation (expecting the worst) and at least a little bit of shock, not enough to bring it all to a halt but enough to slow me down some.

context: through a strange and bewildering chain of events I have organized two free potluck hootenannies scheduled to occur here, in Darien, the first on July 10th and the second on the 19th. strange and bewildering because of the bands scheduled to play these hoots.

on July 10th:

WHISTLE JACKET
THE BOSSETTES
MILO GREENE
MONSTERY

on July 19th:

HISTORY OF LOVERS
VIKESH KAPOOR
NICHOLAS BEAVEN
BRUHDER

and I keep wondering: how did something this great chance?!

last semester I created a myspace page for my music. (seems weird to plug it here, so I won't.) over the course of a few months, I corresponded with several of these people - in many cases, the bands initiated the contact, leaving me a comment or sending a message. it would be overlong to go into how I came across each of these performers, but let's just say that with the exception of History of Lovers (very old friends) everyone was either met randomly in person (at a party, for instance) or met randomly through the web. (I heard Whistle Jacket on Said the Gramophone, but my relationship with them began when Michael sent me a complimentary message, setting off a chain of back-and-forth messages. we won't meet in person until the hoot.) what this all amounts to: serendipity, and more flattery than I like to keep track of.

so I cannot believe this fortune. "whatever can go wrong, will" - some band will have to cancel, some equipment will break. that's the conventional wisdom, or my gut feeling, but fuck it - this is going to be spectacular. just listen to the music and you'll know. even though the shows are in the future, and the line of fortuitous events is far from reaching its eventual conclusion, already so much good has happened that I can't help but feel grateful.

like I said, the hoots are taking place in Darien, at 11 Holmes Court, in Will's backyard. and it's gonna be something else. flyers coming soon!

"overnight indie stardom"

I was just over at Small Town Outside of Boston, reading the post about Pitchfork. Some thoughts:

- Colin's right about the effect of the "Best New Music" tag (he calls it "a coronation and an instant catalyst to overnight indie stardom", which is pretty hilarious). But it's not just that achieving "Best New Music" status is the equivalent to fast-lane hipster acceptance/reverance; that alone wouldn't bother me so much. The problem is that EVERY Pitchfork review counts, and not just the totally negative reviews, a la the new Weezer, but especially the middle-of-the-road ratings. If a band gets a 7.3, it seems as though that's an obstacle, not an advantage: you can only get so far with a score like that. I think it's because the rating system itself is totally fucking ARBITRARY and that the words themselves don't really count; I've read plenty of reviews that were very flattering and positive that haven't even made it into the "Recommended" column. So regardless of how flattering the written review itself might be, it all comes down to a stupid, arbitrary (at best) scoring contest.

Instead of giving musicians exposure, anything less than BNM status does zilch for most indie acts, because the majority of Pitchfork's viewers - which I imagine is a substantial portion of the indie scene - won't even read the review unless it's either no-holds-barred scathing or lavishly approbatory. (And why should they have to? It wasn't listed under "Best New Music"! And for the record, I'm certainly guilty of this.)

- Pitchfork is contributing to the inceasing homogeneity of the entire indie scene, or, you might say if you were being more blunt, its increasing BORINGNESS, by which I mean its increasing resemblance to the mainstream. It's not the music that makes this happen - the music's as great as it's ever been - but the attitudes and the cliques that cluster around the music. Unfortunately, you see Pitchfork syndrome wherever you go nowadays - the rigid, self-imposed (but culturally endorsed) confines of liking only the right music, only the right styles, knowing and saying only the right things. Didn't we worry about that enough in high school?

I guess this isn't so much about Pitchfork as the indie scene in general, but I was drawn to underground or "indie" music at least in part by the overall sense of inclusiveness. Now it seems more exclusive and status-driven than ever before, and worst of all, I don't think we really appreciate what we're losing.

- Have you ever actually READ most of their reviews? Maybe it's that there's too much to write too often (I think they should cut down to three reviews a day or less), and at least part of it is because writing about music is pretty fucking hard, you know, but nine times out of ten I can't even skim that shit.

- Since I don't want to be a negative nancy, I'll end on this note: they're doing a ton of cool shit with the whole Pitchfork TV thing so far, and the Forkcast feature is generally pretty great.

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What do y'all think?

Memorial Day

Sometimes it's hard to choose between blogging and going outside. It's easier when the weather's this nice ... and you don't have a computer.

Emily Gould, are you reading this?

ohmygod.

ohmygod. it's summer.

let's go to some shows.

ASH TO ASH

J. Tillman - "Steel on Steel"

Your shirt as a pillow, the skin of your back touching the floor of the boat. A sky full of lion-clouds and a sun, our brightest star, in fact. You compare the different shades of red, eyes close and the sunglasses come off, then back on, things are darker again and this whole time, you haven't once noticed your breathing - the waves and the bobbing of the boat being more insistent, they tempt your interest. But you are neither here nor there. These strange things just pass right through you.

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Fleet Foxes - "Oliver James"

Here, Robin Pecknold doesn't need his bandmates - at 1:10, when his fingerpicking brings out a harmony above his vocal melody, and suddenly the hills come alive and the town is bustling with spirits. This, my friends, is a song: taking you through its own full day, like a mother would her child, singing to you until you're awake, singing you back to slumber.

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It was announced today that J. Tillman is the newest member of Fleet Foxes. What happens when one of your favorite songwriters for years teams up with one of your favorite new bands? (And by new, I mean to me.) The most gorgeous harmonies this side of CSN&Y / The Band / The Beach Boys / "Because"? I'm all excitement today.

Also - goddamnit if the tunes on Tillman's Myspace page aren't some of the best I've heard in a long, long time. I hope this Vacilando Territory Blues of his gets finished, released, whatever, and soon. So fucking great. In Robin's words, prepare to have yr mind blown -

INDIE'S NOT DEAD, IT JUST DESERVES TO DIE

Great post at Moistworks today. ESPECIALLY the comments. READ 'EM.

My two cents (and I realize that I'm horribly undermatched, compared to all those professionals): Stephen Malkmus made an interesting distinction in a recent interview, something about the difference between Pavement-style indie and what he called (to paraphrase) the "Rilo Kiley, Myspace-era indie". (He called it that elsewhere, I think. Don't remember the source. I'll look for it later.)

Mostly, I just think this whole discussion shows that what "indie" has turned into, as a signifier, is mostly comical in nature. Like someone in the comments said, the only anti-mainstream thing about indie anymore is that the anti-mainstream stance itself is a method of induction, it's a cultural signpost, a badge of authenticity. But isn't the idea of an annual "indie"-themed FESTIVAL, like Pitchfork's, for instance, kind of in direct opposition to the values "indie" originally held? I think it goes without saying that "indie" has by and large shedded both its initial values and aesthetics, but the reasons still don't seem clear. Maybe it's not so much about the mainstream stealing "indie"; maybe it's "indie" trying to steal the mainstream. That would better explain the monumental changes to both the economical and aesthetic traits "indie" started with.