FAVORITE 2013 SONGS THUS FAR 1"Step" // Vampire Weekend 2"Mute" // Youth Lagoon 3"She Found Now" // My Bloody Valentine 4"Give Life Back to Music" // Daft Punk 5"Retrograde" // James Blake 6"White Noise" // Disclosure ft AlunaGeorge 7"Shut Up" // Savages 8"Wakin' on a Pretty Day" // Kurt Vile *OTHER GREAT SONGS* "Dumb Disco Ideas" (Holy Ghost!) "Suit & Tie" (Justin Timberlake) "So Good (Good Ass Intro)" (Chance the Rapper) "Get Lucky" (Daft Punk)
FAVORITE 2013 ALBUMS THUS FAR 1Modern Vampires of the City // Vampire Weekend 2Settle // Disclosure 3m b v // My Bloody Valentine 4Random Access Memories // Daft Punk 5Wondrous Bughouse // Youth Lagoon 6Yeezus // Kanye West 7Silence Yourself // Savages 8You're Nothing // Iceage *OTHER STUFF I'M DIGGING* ...Like Clockwork (Queens of the Stone Age) We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic (Foxygen) Wakin' on a Pretty Daze (Kurt Vile) Shaking the Habitual (The Knife)
:( DISAPPOINTING ALBUMS :( The 20/20 Experience (Justin Timberlake) Amok (Atoms for Peace) Monomania (Deerhunter)
* The year holds more great tracks, great albums and great disappointments to come. My opinion could very possibly change over time. *
Does anyone remember The Great Singer-Songwriters? Not me. I wasn't alive for any of them.
The term "singer-songwriter" doesn't have a strict definition. I suppose if you look at the album covers on this blog, you could say a "singer-songwriter" is a person who gets pictures of themselves with their name next to it. I suppose there are a lot of artists like that these days. The difference now is the personality behind that picture. Or more importantly, the personality behind the microphone.
All (or most) of the artists portrayed here actually have unique voices and full sounds to back up their names. Some are born entertainers (Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen). Some never even toured (Harry Nilsson, Nick Drake). Some were just flat-out depressing (Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake again). I believe there are still great singer-songwriters out there, but the title doesn't mean the same thing as it did in the early-mid-70s. I'd say there's a difference between being a "singer-songwriter" and a "solo artist." There are plenty of great solo artists out there talented in lyricism and songsmith. There are even great artists who are frontmen for great bands, but their solo work doesn't add up. I think that singer-songwriters have a different edge though. What artists these days live up to the title next to folks in these pictures? That new Fiona Apple album definitely does. Joanna Newsom. Sufjan Stevens. Nick Cave. What else do all these artists have in common? They're not popular.
Looking back on the 70s, I could've added plenty of other artists to this blog post- Elton John, John Denver, Carole King, Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce- and you would all totally know who I'm talking about. But today? The billboard chart is full of solo artists, and for that matter, CRAPPY ONES. Not like there wasn't any crappy music back then, but you gotta admit, it was a better place. The singer songwriter died. I couldn't tell you when, but looking at these album covers tell me when they were alive and kicking. So here's to one man or woman who uses all their energy, heart, wit and honesty behind the microphone.
Now go make a serious face and put your name next to it!
I am wearing this hat today for the first time since this very backpacking trip. I thought I lost it in the mountains that week, but found it in my closet about 5 years later. I put it on this morning, and all the sudden, it was the summer of 2008 again! All these songs I was into at the time kept popping into my head! It was like something from a cheesy fairytale movie full of nostalgia! All morning, I've been listening to bands I got into at that time of my life. I was 17. I just finished my junior year of high school. I followed Rolling Stone and the alternative rock chart, in the music world. My favorite
song was "Time to Pretend" by MGMT. I was working part time at Ridley's. Life was a joke.
When it comes to the cliche definition of summer, I feel like I never really had one in my youth. 2008 was the summer where I stayed out too late and got grounded. AKA, it was awesome. I, of course, was 17, so I was awesome, too.
I remember my brother Kieth was engaged, and that was weird. Todd was on his mission. I had an excellent trip back to my homeland, CA, with my family. I was doing The Laramie Project with the RAT Performers, which was one heck of a show. I met a lot of new friends from that. I remember after each rehearsal, a few of us would ride
our bikes from the high school to the county fair. One night in particular, Mr Brown and Patrick Rexroat created the classic "Mutton Busters" story that Brown still tells his students. I remember me, Tom, Michael, Jeff and Luke all asked people for quarters so we could play a game to win a poster of a hot chick. It totally worked, and we came across this Creepy Black Carnie Guy who was serious about his posters. Meanwhile, Joey Avila lost millions of dollars to Bingo.
Another highlight was a 3-day backpacking trip to Alice Lake with Jeff Horgan, Wade Sugden and Wyatt Shewmaker. It was my first time in the Sawtooths, and little did I know that I would be spending my next summer there.
I didn't have a crush on anyone that summer... I may have had a cliche summer, but it wasn't that cliche.
I remember watching The Dark Knight with a bunch of guys, and Michael Rexroat and Ross Irwin came up with the series of "Man, f*** you, Batman" stories. Why do I still remember those? I'll never know.
I could go off on a list of names of people I met that summer, but that's not the point. The point is: Being young and stupid with a lot of free time is awesome. And I think there is a magical time machine in that "England" hat. And my summer ended like all good stories:
EVERYONE GOT MARRIED!!!
"This is our decision/To live fast and die young/We got the vision/Now lets have some fun"
Today is the 72nd birthday of one of the greatest artists/musicians/poets of the last 3 generations: Bob Dylan. Just yesterday, I woke up wondering what I thought the greatest albums of all time were. I made a list of about 30 albums. 4 of them were by Bob Dylan- Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home, Blood On The Tracks... I'm sure that if I thought of absolutely everything out there, we'd come across The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Basement Tapes (amongst others) eventually. Rolling Stone's #2 greatest rock artist of all time and definitely deserving of it.
NOW LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT:
There will be a very special concert in Salt Lake City on August 1, 2013: The Americanarama Tour. This includes My Morning Jacket, Wilco (whom made my favorite album of the last decade, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and the man himself, Bob Dylan. It will be held at the USANA Amphitheatre and tickets range from $80-$33. NOW LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT:
THESE GUYS...
These days, I have a part time job, looking for full time. Until then, I've been itching to post some videos of myself playing stuff on my guitar in different parts of Logan. I mostly have covers in mind, but I've been cooking up some stuff of my own. Problem is, I keep coming up with tons of song names/song concepts, but writing full lyrics to an entire song is kind of a drag. So screw it.
When it comes to what kind of genre I play, it's a tough call- especially considering the only instruments I own are a 45 year old acoustic guitar, an electric guitar I bought in the 8th grade, and a harmonica I can barely play. No keyboard, no laptop. And I'm not in a band or anything either. So screw it.
I've been listening to hipster disco/dance music all morning. Irrelevant.
I've got lots and lots of lyrics/musics sitting on my shelves right now. And I think I'll take some of the most stripped down ones and put some stuff up on the internets- uh, facebook- uh, soon. So, uh, yeah. Here are some things I've been experimenting with. Stuff that I kinda put into my own hands, may or may not sound much like the original. Amongst the covers:
"Sail Away" (Randy Newman)
"Grown Ocean" (Fleet Foxes)
"Walking the Cow" (Daniel Johnston)
"All Apologies" (Nirvana)
Amongst my own stuff: (sigh) It never begins, it never ends.
But I promise at least 1 video before next week.
So, I decided not to go to the Built to Spill concert in SLC this Sunday. Quite the drive, don't really know anybody in the area willing to go. If you know of Built to Spill, you know we are a cult and this would be a sick show. Dang. Anyways, I took a few minutes to rally up my 3 favorite BtS tracks:
Solid track right here. Dang.
A 90s classic, by any standard. Dang again.
Not sure if they'd actually play this one, but if I was 100% sure, I would probably just screw everything and go to the show. Dang.
Bon Iver
I wrote this note about 3 months ago saying I'd write a blog about 3 albums that have changed my life. I've written about my junior year of high school, spending late nights listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco. I wrote about the senior year sunny swagger of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by Pavement. But this one's different. I bought those records 4 or 5 years ago, while I got this one a few months ago; Bon Iver's Bon Iver. How do I know it's "changed my life" if I've only liked it for a matter of months? Maybe my life, or at least my mind, has changed in that amount of time. I definitely can't say this album's my absolute favorite of all time, but it's my favorite thus far from the 2010's, and since it's had a more recent effect on me, this blog post will be a lot longer than the other 2. It also might be the most personal thing I've ever written, so beware. Here it goes.
This album was released in July of 2011. At this stage in life, I was serving a 2-year LDS mission, currently serving in the city of Langley. For the record, I was not allowed to listen to anything but soft instrumentals and church hymns for these 2 years, so I never actually heard this album until latter 2012. My mission had been a rough venture through mental health Hell. Not being able to explain the feelings of loneliness and being overwhelmed from before my mission, I entered the field self-consciousness beyond all reason, losing feeling and excitement by the day while experiencing annoying physical pains. I was about 6 months in when a doctor in Vancouver diagnosed me with General Anxiety Disorder. I was convinced I should just go home by November 2010, but something just kept me hanging in there. I was in Langley when I started to feel a sense of comrade re that I kept throughout the mission. But I still struggled to feel any intense emotions or focus on things. This struggle stayed with me throughout the mission and even afterwards. I was on anti-anxiety medication up til October of 2012.
I got home from my mission almost exactly 1 year from today. The first thing I felt like I had to do was to catch up with all the music I missed! It was a harder process than I thought. I tried listening to old favorite hipster stuff- Wilco, Pavement, Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective- but I couldn't actually feel it like I used to. After my emotional mess which was my second summer at Redfish Lake, I started studies at Utah State University. Things got better, and I was getting into bands, but nothing really hit me. I even remember listening to Bon Iver and I didn't get it at all. "Holocene" was one of my favorite tracks just getting off my mission,
but I wondered why the rest of the album didn't sound like it. Anyways, I was dating a lot, going to lots of social events, talking to lots of people- I was doing a lot of really confident things without ever feeling confident. I was scared of the upcoming winter, knowing that my moods always change with the bitter weather. November came.
November 2010 was spent in darkness and anxiety, spending too much time with my head over the toilet bowl, trying to get myself to FEEL something. In November 2012, I did feel something. I was just walking on campus through the snow when all the sudden, I had "Michicant" got stuck in my head. Now I get songs stuck in my head all the time, but there was something about this song being in my head with snow falling around me that was magical. I later had "Calgary" in my head and it gave me this calming feeling, like everything around me was real again. So I had to listen to the album again and it sounded TOTALLY different this time! I saw why Pitchfork called the album of 2011, but I actually cared more about- like- as cheesy as this sounds- how it made me FEEL. I will always remember this record for being the first music I could naturally feel for the first time in years. I mark it as the end of my struggle with clinical anxiety.
First off, I'd like to say this album is a miracle in engineering. In this area, I'd rank it next to Kid A or OK Computer any day. The sound is like an album within an album. Each song sounds like its meant to be louder, but there's a thick, soft blanket covering each track, and it never actually breaks through. The crashing guitar climax of "Perth" has potential to be a Doug Martsch anthem, but is actually very comforting. "Beth/Rest" could be the cheesiest, most epic adult-contemporary hit of the 80s, but is almost the furthest from cracking the ice. There are always different sounds to listen for, hiding in the songs- mostly a crackling sound, like ice fizzing in a cold drink. It's oddly experimental- almost every song contains a saxophone(!), trumpet section(!), and/or steel guitar (???), with some random synth sounds in there as well. Lyrically, the album is incomprehensible, which is what alternative music is all about. (I dare you tell me what each song is specifically about!) My official decision is that the album's central themes are memories and story-telling. There's a combination of mystery and reality in the song titles alone, half the tracks being named after geological places, half of these places not even existing. Justin Vernon's voice is amongst the most distinct voices of our time, if not all time. 6 out of 10 songs have him singing words that start with "cl" and you have to hear it to understand why I am deeply in love with it. I didn't get this album at first, but you can't really understand it's emotional heaviness until you try to sing along with it. It's soul food.
The songs? I could go on forever, in case you couldn't tell. I have a million things to say about each one! But I'll just narrow it down: "Holocene" is one of my favorite songs of all time. It's a song to play when you wake up in the morning, it's what you play when you go to bed. It's a song to cry to, a song to make you happy. It's like- THE song. Instrumentally, it's glorious, and maybe random. The first chorus features these
covered/cuffed hand-claps that I feel like I've been secretly waiting to
hear my whole life. And I couldn't name every instrument! Based around a repeated Nashville-tuned acoustic guitar riff, Vernon just
gets the whole gang together for this one. It's the definition of
brooding. "Holocene" is actually a scientific term referring to the state the earth was in within its first billion years. So this song could be about the beginning of freaking time. Although it's epic enough to fir that title, he sings mostly about his adolescent memories. "Someway baby, it's part of me, apart from me... and at once I knew I was not magnificent... but I can see for miles, miles, miles." This is what life is all about- looking back, feeling humbled, then looking forward. And though the rest of the album doesn't sound like this, most tracks on here don't sound alike anyway. Bon Iver is the album that brought me comfort in my days of intense stress. Still today, I get stressed to an extent beyond what I was comfortable with in high school. But everyday, I learn more about myself and find more ways out. Amongst any spiritual and psychological reasoning, Bon Iver is the soundtrack to my recovering mental health.
Thanks Bon Iver.
