My Top Five Records of 2007

Yes, yes, I know. End of year lists are cliched and annoyingly ubiquitous. You can’t get away from them right now, so why do you need another one from me? Well, for this reason, even though I’ve got about fifty favorite records from 2007, I’m going to limit myself to my absolute top five favorites, the ones that I’ve played nonstop for months and months. I’m not going to sequence them numerically because I love all five about as much as you can love a record—except for the Times New Viking jams. I love those more than anything I’ve heard in years.  Also, this is probably the only year end list for 2007 without inclusion of Radiohead’s In Rainbows that you’ll ever see.  Yes, I like Radiohead, but you don’t need to hear about Radiohead again.

Sonic Chicken 4 – Sonic Chicken 4 [In the Red]

They hail from Perpignan, France and bear one of the most ridiculous band names ever, but Sonic Chicken 4 sounds like they’re one of the best bands from 1968, except they’re not (from 1968). They’re brand of oldfangled garage stomp is tight, yet super catchy. These guys sound as if they easily could be openers for We Are Paintermen-era The Creation, or maybe as if The Creation should be opening for them. In the Red Records has done it again. They cull the best rock bands from everywhere, it seems.

Japanther – Skuffed up My Huffy [Menlo Park]

Prior to the “bike-punk” of Huffy, Japanther’s releases were often messes of meandering noise and pop hooks with lots of goofy cassette overdubs. They were good, but, this year Japanther took their sound to more accessible and louder punk territory. Skuffed up My Huffy is rife with huge, blasting hooks of distorted bass and anthemic choruses about River Phoenix and kids who watch too much TV. It’s hard to imagine art-punk without guitars, but Japanther is about as fast and as punk as you can get with mostly just bass and drums.

Pterodactyl – Pterodactyl [Jagjaguwar]

Like their namesake prehistoric dinosaur, Pterodactyl’s brand of noise-rock is fierce and relentless, but somewhat controlled, never reaching the point of annoying, reckless racket that so many noise-rock bands do. The repetitive, chiming guitars are reminiscent of their labelmates, Oneida, and, in fact, their sound as a whole, which seems to be somewhat of a melding of post-punk, psych-rock, and noise, is pretty indebted to Oneida, but their album is a hell of a lot better than the past few Oneida records, and I love me some Oneida. Oh, and the drumming is masterful.

Times New Viking – Present The Paisley Reich [Siltbreeze]

Times New Viking is probably the best band going right now, but, “because the recordings still sound as if Bob Pollard himself, circa 1993, rubbed his cigarette butts all over the tapes,” to quote myself from a previous post, it’s not likely that they’ll see more than marginal commercial success beyond the lo-fi fetishist fanbase. Times New Viking were obviously raised on a healthy diet of Guided By Voices’ Alien Lanes and lots of Strapping Fieldhands, and like those heroic bands from yesteryear, underneath all the fuzz, scuzz, and feedback, Times New Viking has some great pop hooks and clever lyrics. “Devo & Wine” and “Teenage Lust” are two of my favorite songs of all-time. Hell, the whole record is filled with my favorite songs of all-time.

Deerhunter – Cryptograms [Kranky]

Like Joey Ramone, Bradford Cox, the frontman of Deerhunter, has Marfan syndrome, which results in thin, abnormally long limbs and causes people to mistake him for a heroin addict. Sadly, Deerhunter’s music has largely been overshadowed by Cox’s physical appearance, his on-stage antics, and his deeply personal daily blogging which has revealed a great deal about his painful coming-of-age as a homosexual with Marfan syndrome. But, Cryptograms is beautiful.  The first side is a tad avant-garde and exploring ambience, but the second side is pure shoe-gazery pop bliss.  On the second side, Deerhunter sounds like the Velvet Underground would have if they’d had lots of delay pedals.  Cox is a big fan of Dennis Cooper’s novels, and that kind of realistic morbidity is evident in his lyrics: they are cryptic, but relevant and resonant when deciphered (at least I think so).  Like the best VU and Galaxie 500 records, Cryptograms rewards repeated listens–I hear different layers every time I come back to it.

Times New Viking – “(My Head)/R.I.P. Allegory” 7″

“(My Head)/R.I.P. Allegory” is the newest recorded output by the frantic lo-fi scuzz fuzz wunderkinds from Columbus, and one of my favorite bands, Times New Viking. This 7″ is the first thing they’ve put out since signing to Matador, and the title tracks will be featured on their forthcoming album, Rip It Off. Don’t worry, folks–Times New Viking hasn’t taken Matador’s big city money and abandoned their paper cup and string recording technique, or however the hell they manage it. The guitars still crackle, howl, and sting. You still can’t tell what the hell they’re singing about half the time because the recordings still sound as if Bob Pollard himself, circa 1993, rubbed his cigarette butts all over the tapes, but it doesn’t matter. Times New Viking resurrected the mighty Siltbreeze label a couple of years ago; they were the perfect band to do so, since they embody the Siltbreeze sound better than any band since The Dead C, and now they’re going to infuse some life in the lackluster Matador Records lineup. These songs are some of their best yet, and I’m finding myself playing them on repeat. The move up to a bigger label was inevitable for TNV, and I’m really glad that they stayed true to their East Coast roots and went with Matador. No matter how many boring records Matador puts out, the fact that they released Guided By Voices’ Alien Lanes, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282’s Strangers from The Universe, and, most obviously, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted means that they’ll always be cool, and they’ll carry even more clout now that they have the new kings (and queen) of lo-fi harsh pop jangle.

Take a listen for yerself: “(My Head)/R.I.P. Allegory” MP3

Oh, and here’s some live Times New Viking action, which visualizes the white noise, via some righteous YouTube member:

Joe Strummer Documentary

I had a chance tonight to go see the new Joe Strummer documentary at the Little Theatre in Rochester with my friend Kevin, who I hadn’t seen in way too long–a few months. I’m a big fan of The Clash—many of you know that my ringtone, the only ringtone I’ve ever had, for the past few years has been “Should I Stay or Should I Go”—but, I never really followed Joe Strummer’s post-Clash work with the Mescalaros. My friend Kevin has though. He’s a much bigger fan than I am. The film chiefly focused on Strummer, from childhood to death, and surprisingly, the best parts weren’t the parts covering The Clash’s height of success; they were the bits about his childhood and his depression and soul searching after he stupidly disbanded the group.

I wouldn’t recommend this film for the casual fan or one who is unacquainted with the rough biographical details of The Clash because throughout the film there are no tags or titles introducing the people on screen being interviewed or the voices narrating or the periods of time in which certain things occurred. The film is a bit over two hours long, and it probably took me thirty minutes to figure out who many of the people talking were. Some of the interview bytes included are from really unsuspected sources, like hollywood actors such as Steve Buscemi and Johnny Depp (who is completely ridiculous in his segment—looks just like Captain Jack, so he must’ve been in the middle of filming Pirates—and had nothing important to say and no firsthand knowledge). I had no idea that Joe Strummer’s Hollywood connections ran so deep. Even Jim Jarmusch was involved in the making of the film.

Joe Strummer’s story is a big and important one to tell, and even though the film runs over two hours, it still seems as though the viewer is being sped through certain segments of the story. Some of the transitions are really abrupt. But, one of Strummer’s big things after he broke up The Clash was having big bonfire parties with his friends, and the whole film was interspersed with beautiful clips of his friends at a bonfire in London talking about his life. In fact, the celebrity interviews were shot at the bonfires as well, and all of these segments are really gorgeous and work seamlessly with the thematic tone of Strummer’s life.

The Clash, even after many, many years, are still refreshing to listen to and never feel outdated. This film did the same thing for me: Strummer’s simple philosophy and political and intellectual activism are refreshing. People don’t really say it or think it enough, but Joe Strummer did every single day of his life: “Remember that you’re alive” and that “The future is unwritten.” I mean, he was by no means a perfect guy in his family life or the public eye, but he was certainly living, and it’s immediately evident the profound effect that he had on not just the people he knew intimately, but the millions of people around the world who know his records intimately. I gotta go relisten to all The Clash records now.

Oh, and I still need to go see No Country for Old Men and Margot at The Wedding. I’m hoping to see both of those in the next week or two.

Change of Location

I’ve decided to move my personal blog, Andy and His Ephemera, which I formerly used blogger to host, over here to WordPress.  There are lots of reasons.  First and foremost, I think I’ll blog more because being able to manage both of my blogs on WordPress with the same account is super easy.  The WordPress layouts are cleaner looking, and I really love the easily customizable headers.  Blogging at Digerati Boombati using WordPress really grew on me in the past few months, so moving my personal blog over was inevitable.