2 LEGIT 2 CRIT
1. I have proof that I listened to music last year: BEHOLD! (P&J ballot is identical, except I took out Rihanna -- not techincally a single -- and stuck in Soulja Boy.)
2. Now listening to Vampire Weekend. Thoughts in REAL TIME.
First track: Phillyish rag-tag meets Canadian-collective violinist meets the DECEMBERISTS (no more admirals or fleets EVER, plz) trying to do a Strokes riff. Next track: Calliope + stick-ass drummin' + uh, Spoon? Now stick-ass-disco drumming into stick-ass-regular drumming, stopped paying attention to the lyrics but haven't heard of any admirals or captains or barges or complicated boy scout knots or sailor uniforms or pirates or hidden treasure (phew). Um, this is nice enough. (Why are people excited about it? Am I missing something? Aren't these guys supposed to sound like Afropop or something?) Oh wait, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa." It's about as Afropop as Paul Simon, but I'm not going to pretend to hate on Graceland. I get the sense of a semi-competent indie rock band being backed conspicuously/incongruously, like that video of a live performance of "Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes" we watched in our middle school Foreign Language Exploratory (FLEX) program -- Paul Simon looking like a total inconsequential schlump and this big chorus behind him, all dressed alike, very sharp, coordinated. Or a makeshift college rock band who found that really good bongo player across the hall from their dorm room and caught him before he had the sense to join some school-sanctioned unit (or drop out and start a band in West Philly). Oh now they've got some fiddlin'. Eclectic! I mean, it's not bad. But it does seem like someone stuck a bunch of recent (and a couple of RETRO) indie trends into centrifuge instead of mashing 'em all together, they're all clinically separated out. Not sure how I feel about it -- I actually kind of like the concept, but in practice it leaves me totally cold (Wolf Parade did something similar with the sound on their first album, which really turned me off and definitely wasn't "concept"-anything as this might be). God, who the hell does this guy remind me of? (Side note: Why do they keep doing Strokes choruses when their hearts obviously aren't in it...or out of it enough to at least be really coldly proficient and economical and such?) Is it just one of those things where he reminds me of so many people my brain short-circuits? Ooh, a song in six.
I'll listen to the rest later, maybe. PROCESSING. Someone please to defend this band!
3. Techno nap album of the year in mid-January! YES! Not ephedrine, it's...(looks it up) Efdemin. Quite the opposite effect of Ephedrine. From Pantha Du Prince (aka HOTTIE OF 2007 WOO!)'s label Dial, similar in sensibility. Link to the Lex's piece on minimal for the Guardian goes here.
4. What else I done bought...Coloratura by James Rabbit, which I'll need to listen to in headphones before I can pass judgment. It's not familiar/"pleasant" enough to be backgroundable (yet), but I already get the sense that it's very charming on its own terms, and I'm hoping the words won't let my gut down. This is also the first album that I've bought independently through the actual artist since...well, Hoku, I guess. Or DaHv. Or Katy Rose. Or Katie Neil. What happened to the INDIE TEENPOP AWARDS?
5. Da Capo is revving up to do their next music installment. I submitted a couple of Sugar Shocks, plus a few of Frank Kogan and Tom Ewing's columns (this and this and this and this) and some sidebar-accessible miscellany. (And this, obviously.) Wasn't able to think of anything else that really set my hair on fire, though -- there were a lot of great but unpublishable conversations that happened all over the place this year.
6. Which reminds me (Skye Soldier Alert), haven't made the SKYE FRIDAY announcement but might as well do it now: SKYE SWEETNAM IS IN THE BEST MUSIC WRITING 2007 EDITION. Honorable mention for the MySpace profile that I nominated last year! So Skye, you have officially been inducted into the Rock Critic Hall of Fame (sort of). Before me, even.
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