SXSW 2012: Thursday

(Day One for me, Day Two-ish or more for the conference.. the sloppiness has already set in. Aw, Austin, I missed ya.)

"Torreblanca & Amigas" (Ximena Sariñana, Natalia Lafourcade, Javiera Mena), 3pm, Austin Convention Center
Much of my early afternoon was spent dealing with some logistical folderol around getting ahold of my badge – no major losses except for missing Bruce Springsteen's keynote speech (apparently he talked a bunch about his influences.) I did see a few songs apiece by cheerful '80s-babies Chairlift, Italian hairdos A Classic Education, and slightly poncy (in a nice way) surf-bouncers The Drums; all pleasant enough pop sorts – but my musical day proper really started with this loose "jam session" showcase of twenty-something Latina pop singers, including Ximena Sariñana and Natalia Lafourcade from Mexico and Chile's Javiera Mena, accompanied by the members of the band Torreblanca. Despite the sterile convention center setting, this was a loose and utterly charming affair; a sweet, low-key introduction to some very talented young ladies ("friends from a long time," explained Ximena, whose tiny frame – she looks like she's about fourteen – hides a huge, brassy pop/soul voice) who happen to be major stars in their home countries.

Andrew WK, 5pm, Scoot Inn

A total maniac, in the best possible way. A highly wise, intelligent man who's selflessly dedicated his life to the noble cause of throwing a totally kick-ass party. To which end: while WK's performance – his mere presence, really – was plenty inspiring in itself, the truly awesome thing is what it inspired: a cheerfully hyperactive audience ready and willing, at the slightest provocation, to toss any and everything – arms, beer, t-shirts, multiple simultaneous crowd-surfers – up into the air, and dive into a mosh-pit maelstrom.

Danny Brown, 5:40pm, Scoot Inn
Just sick. For a rapper who goes to considerable lengths to present himself as a certified weirdo – today, in addition to his distinctively asymmetrical kinked shock of hair, he was rocking a sequined, camouflage Adidas jersey (!) and some totally befuddling plasticky "cow-print" sneaker/cowboy boot things – Danny Brown actually seems like a reasonably down-to-earth, relatable guy. Whose favorite topics of conversation just happen to be Adderall and cunnilingus. He enlisted us to chant the hook of "Blunt after Blunt" (that's pretty much how it goes, and goes, and goes) after an audience member passed him one, using the opportunity to partake of said item, contributed by an audience member. Then he slapped everyone in the room five.

Dinner
Brazilian Churrascaria (though actually I just stuck to the salad bar) with a couple of Swedish high school girl interns. Long story.

Fiona Apple, 8:00pm, Central Presbyterian Church
She opened with four spot-on favorites from When the Pawn... – rushing out and ripping into a furious, feral "Fast As You Can," then "On The Bound," "Paper Bag" and "A Mistake." Man, watching her notoriously stick-like frame and her uncomfortably frail, anguished-looking physical/facial mannerisms as she sang some of those lyrics really drove home the dark, dark pathos – self-hatred may not be too strong a word – that runs through those songs ("I know I'm a mess no-one wants to clean up"?), in a pretty powerful way. Almost chilling. Started to feel a bit less painfully vulnerable as she moved on to the self-righteous defiance of "Extraordinary Machine" and "Sleep To Dream" (holy shit...) and cracked a few weird but half-decent jokes (something about her hairband being the elastic from a pair of sweatpants she got out of the trash?) She still looked too nervous and fearful to really smile, though. Still, as a presence, a singer, and just all-around singular and uncompromising artist, she's impossible to deny. The new songs – especially "Valentine," a relatively straight, but pithy piano ballad number – sounded exceptionally promising.

Bad Weather California, 9:00pm, Valhalla
These guys, on the other hand, couldn't stop smiling. Denver bros and Akron/Family pals/signees/tourmates, they've got a pretty versatile style...a little punky, a little retro, a lot jammy, mostly happy to lay back in an old-fashioned rock'n'roll sweet spot. At one point the lead singer took his shoe off and sang into it as a phone. Then he introduced his bandmates as horror-movie monsters. ("Wolfman on the drums!") Kinda felt like watching an especially goofy bar band. But a really happy bar band.

Javiera Mena, 11:00, Maggie Mays
After some annoying delays/runarounds due to set time confusion and general wonkiness (it turned out I probably could have caught both Grimes and Purity Ring if I'd handled things just a touch differently), I caught most of the set by this Chilean artist, in a totally different mode from the couple of acoustic numbers I'd seen her do in the afternoon. This was all-out electro-disco-pop en español, giddy and dreamy and really funky. She is adorable, and had a great rapport with the mostly-Latino, totally-enthralled crowd. She didn't even play "Hasta La Verdad," my favorite of her tunes and what I thought was her biggest hit, but it was hard to complain.

Miguel, 12ish, The Stage at Sixth
Bizarrely, this LA Afro-Latino R'n'B cat gave me some strong Little Richard vibes when he took the stage – not just because he rocks a pompadour. There's also some James Brown, definitely some Prince, and maybe a touch of Kanye in his DNA. What I mean is, he's a killer performer; dancing, mugging, hyping the crowd (who seemed a little weirdly less-than-responsive.) He does his silky-smooth lover-man numbers with a sorta punkish 'tude, and his ghetto swag numbers with a big ol' grin. Also, damn he can sing. Wow. His hit, "Sure Thing," felt beautifully lightweight and floaty pumping over the airwaves all last year, but it gained quite a bit of heft as he played it live, turning into an extended paisley-funk jam and eventually chanting to us, mantra-like: "You are all free to love!"

Jimmy Cliff, 12:45ish Hype Hotel
I walk in and he's singing "You Can Get It If You Really Want." I mean, what more do you want out of life? Also: "Sitting Here in Limbo," "I Can See Clearly Now," "The Harder They Come"... He's in fine voice, and looks great for 63, too. Beatific. And I almost managed to get a massage at the same time.

Buraka Som Sistema, 1:30pm, Beso Cantina
Instead I dashed out to catch these fierce, Afro-Portuguese party starters. Turned out to be just a DJ set, and a pretty brief one at that. But whatever, they know how to bring the funk, flat-out. And now my body is a sleepless wreck. Don't know how I'm gonna make it through two more days, but here we go...

[reposted from Philly City Paper]

Baby Steps to ATX

(hey, it rhymes, like Geidi Primes)

So sometimes I'm a little slow. Like yesterday, biking home, I realized what the title of my 2011 End-of-Year mash-up mix is/must be, just about two and a half months late. (Guess I'll make the necessary adjustments... of course I haven't given out any copies of it anyway, so no real loss...)

In case you haven't heard it yet, or you don't feel you've sufficiently performed the new/retroactive titular injunction:

2011: DANCE UNTIL THE MIX ENDS


Speaking of that mix: the other day I took one of my favorite moments from it (maybe the first time the mix really kicks into gear, about a quarter of the way in) and extended it into a stand-alone mash-up. Which may be the first time I've actually done that.

So here it is for your dreaming/ass-bumping pleasure. M83 vs. Big Freedia. I guess it's called "Get Back to Midnight City"? (Maybe I'll figure that out in a few months?) Would probably make a pretty sweet mash-up video too, but I'll leave that to somebody else...



grab it: y'all get FLAC now (okay, it's really just m4a.)


I am, as I type, on my way to Austin, gearing up for my fourth go-round at South by Southwest Music Conference. ('07, '08, '11, '12.) This'll be my first year doing it with a badge, coveted amulet of magical line-shirking powers. That's because this is my first time attending under an official capacity: I'll be blogging about the conference for ye olde Philly City Paper (and I'll riposte here too.) We shall see how these changes affect the experience; I'm predicting something of an increase in stress/self-destructiveness levels (if only because of sleep lost 2º writing), but hopefully a somewhat commensurate increase in awesomeness of experience 2º extra access/flexibility.

(Though that could totally just backfire and turn into a higher level of optimization crazymaking.) (Also, truth be told, I've only rarely found having just the wristband, and no badge, to substantially hamper my ability to see stuff I want to see. Not that I'm complaining...)

In preparation for SXSW, which is, I guess, as close to a real-life experiential distillation of Now in Music as there is; some musings on how I'm feeling about music, nowabouts.

I'm feeling: good! Pretty excited about things! After a less-than-enthralling '11, one of the first things I noticed about 2012 is something that reminded me of 2010 (which was, for me, truly a musical annus mirabilis): my two out-of-the-gate front-runner favorites, which i discussed in detail in my last post, bear some notable similarities to my colossal, twin 2010 #1s, which were similarly early to reveal themselves.

[Even numerologically speaking...if that was a year of Ones, the year of said favorites – #1 Life Stand and Have #1 On Me – (and also "O.N.E." and "One" and "One"), now we get the 2 Bears and Born 2 Die. And there are two 2s in the name of the year! I'll stop.]

Okay, so of course The 2 Bears correspond very readily and obviously to Hot Chip (since Joe Goddard is in both groups, and they're roughly the same sort of music), and no I'm not going to try to make a case for Lana Del Rey being anything like Joanna Newsom, since both of them are just utterly singular, Joanna especially so. But there is something about the duality/dichotomoy represented by both pairs of albums – more or less the old dancing/crying split (which is, at its best, never a total split): warm/aloof, positive/bleak, loving/miserable, [gently] extroverted/[gently] introverted... they seem to occupy similar holes.

More broadly, I've been thinking a lot about the two-year cycle, because 2010 really does seem to be coming around again in the form of all my fave artists from that year hitting with new albums.

already we've got: Sleigh Bells, Dustin Wong, School of Seven Bells, The Magnetic Fields, The Chap, Foxy Shazam, Tanlines, The Mynabirds, Die Antwoord, and [most importantly] Allo Darlin', all with albums that play like subtle-to-substantial refinements that are as good or often greater than their 2010 counterparts. (or in the case of the MagFields, slightly less mediocre.) (or, in Lindstrøm's case, something totally different and utterly incredible.) plus Zammuto taking the [undefinable]-shaped niche left by the Books [r.i.p.] and, similarly, Pond as the new Tame Impala.

and it feels like a week doesn't go by without the announcement of a forthcoming record by another of my 2010 faves: Free Energy (!), Scissor Sisters (!!), Best Coast (not my complete fave in '10, but i've been listening to the new album and it is ace!), Simian Mobile Disco, Nicki Minaj, and, what is this... not only are we getting not one, but two excellent side projects (those 2legit2quit Bears + the excellent New Build, whose "Misery Loves Company" is my absolute jam of the moment, and looking to be my sxsw anthem for the year), but it turns out the motherlode itself, Hot Chip, are also dropping a new one in june. hosanna! for we are well and truly blessed...[i think it is official at this point: HC are my favorite band in music.]

and based on tour activity (and in some cases their presence here in Austin), and/or general two-year-cycle dependability, I'm guessing we can probably look forward to new ones as well from: Dragonette, Vampire Weekend, Javelin, Teengirl Fantasy, Matthew Dear, maybe Four Tet, The New Pornographers (or at least AC Newman?), Retribution Gospel Choir (whose new EP rips!), Taylor Swift, Alphabeat. Maybe Spoon? Maybe Tunng? Then there's M.I.A., who's in a pretty interesting spot right about now. (and if she doesn't redeem herself, at least we've got Santigold, blasting back from 2008) and does anybody remember Justin Bieber?

[there'll be no LCD, of course (though James Murphy does seem pretty active lately...), and almost certainly Joanna or Robyn.. but still. as two-year class reunions go, this thing already feels ridiculously well attended; and there's obviously still plenty more year to come.]

2012: born 2 be strong

and we're off to the races! or the watering hole, i guess, to go by my basically arbitrary alcohol-themed sidebar ranking metaphor for the year*

2012! @)!@ [that's "2012" in "caps"] good stuff! after a kinda lackluster 2011 – at least, until the very end when i figured out what i'd been missing (though even then pretty much just singles, mostly in the dance/hiphop/rnb singles dept..) kinda feel like i and music alike are coming back a little refreshed. good things poppin' all over. it feels so good, it almost feels like 2010 all over again.

specifically, there are my two absolute hands-down favorite albums of the year so far – both of which i was already completely smitten with as of late january (both released 1/31, as it happens), and there's no real competition in sight. and the nominees for let's-just-call-it-a-wrap best album of 2012, yes already: be strong by the 2 bears**, and born to die by lana del rey

the 2 bears!! the 2 bears!! oh, my, god, the 2 bears. well. i know i'm a little weird and all, but why is nobody else running around the internet proclaiming this album the best thing since whatever? srsly. (yup, i've got officially the highest critical opinion in meta-land, by a solid 10 %pts.) (and lets not mince tapes here: this album is unquestionably a 10 in my book, but amg writers are basically not allowed to rate anything newly released at more than four and a half stars.) (and, ok, yes, pretty much every reviewer out there gave this 80% or at least 70%, but they're talking about "fun" like it's some kind of "novelty" or something. people, FUN is at the core of being don't you get it?)

but forget numbers. on the one hand, i basically already said everything i needed to say about be strong in my review. on the other hand, that review is just a lot of words put together, and words are pretty much boring. be strong is the opposite of boring. it has words, most of which are about music (and/or life, usually at the same time), but it says things about music (and/or life) that i couldn't hope to put to pixel with one whit of the oomph. and when it doesn't have words, it says those same things even better. okay, i need to stop this paragraph. just dance with me, ok?

[i just thought of: joe goddard's middle name should be "puts the god in"] [also: i had a fantasy of meeting hot chip, and telling joe and alexis how amazingly awesome i think they both are, but also having to tell joe, still in alexis' presence – after first, of course, telling him that i want to give him a bear hug – that he is the awesomest of the awesome. in fact, that he is hands-down my favorite person in music. especially now that james murphy is out of the running. though i guess that's not technically true.]

born to die, on the other hand... well, i said almost nothing i needed to say about it in my review. because, well, what can you really say in 75 words about something this ambiguously complex (/complexly ambiguous... that is: it's unclear whether it's really simple or really not simple.) [or even 90, since i totally went over word count and got cut; i'll post the full version hear when i get around to a round-up; we're about do.]

mostly, it's a hard album to write about. or, i should say, i have a lot of feelings about it which are hard to express. naturally i was pretty predisposed to like it (or, at least, have feelings about it) considering that it contains my #1 and #2 favorite songs of 2011. that's a pretty improbable head-start on my heart.

and i didn't know what to expect from the rest of it; "born to die" suggested it would be more like "blue jeans" than "videogames" – which turned out to be true, and which, to some extent, seems to be at the heart of the problem some people seem to have with the album. i can sympathize with that: an album more in the mode of "videogames" – one focused primarily around a smart, powerful, poetic songwriting voice – a voice with the degree of nuance and insight that song seemed/seems to contain – could have been something pretty incredibly great.

that's not really what born to die is. lizzie grant is, of course, a songwriter, and i would say a pretty good one, perhaps better, and she definitely has a hell of a voice (writerly that is, not to mention singerly) which is plenty powerful – or at least effective – in its way; which is full of – if not poetry, exactly, certainly poetics, and which, i am gonna say, is smart enough to know that there's more to being smart than being smart. (nuance and insight? i'll let that one slide for now.) but no, she isn't chan marshall. (which, honestly, i guess i'm just not a cat power person.) or whoever else "videogames" might have suggested. (in a weird way – in the way it discourses with melancholy, devotion, and indifference, perhaps – might i propose edith frost?)

instead, she wrote every song on the album with a collaborator – including "videogames," it turns out. (apparently, he supplied the chord progression. we'll probably never know how much of the lyrics on the album are solely hers, though it's certainly conceivable that most or even all of them are.) (which isn't to say that songwriters, of any caliber, can't collaborate while still maintaining their voice and self – that's probably a good hobblehorse to poke a few holes in one of these years.) (besides, forget "videogames" – after all, it was only my second favorite song of 2011. and it came to me at such a different time and with such a different set of associations that it doesn't really feel of a piece with the album anyway, yet, still.)

and, instead, born to die is an album of aesthetics, rather than an album of songwriting. damn is it ever. a super-pow wham-whomp aesthetic, full and fleshy and forceful – a musical aesthetic and a lyrical/linguistic aesthetic and a symbolic/poetic/conceptual aesthetic (not to mention visual, and also vocal) all of which fit together almost seamlessly, in a so-uncanny-it-seems-obvious way, though they could also stand separately, i think.

and basically, to get specific for a second, i think it's doing something really original, just in purely musical terms (setting aside, for now, any question of persona/content/context/subtext): there is nothing that sounds like this album. (is there?) really. it seems like such a basic, obvious formula – slow hip-hop beats, big gushing orchestral bits, and pop songs – but i can't think of anybody who's really made anything like it.

[matt proposed portishead and garbage, and yes i can see how those are prefigurations to some extent – and plus, it would be totally awesome if more bands decided to sound like those bands (and were actually able to do it) – but, no, not really, no way: portishead are spooky and alien and/or utterly detached/monotonically depressed, plus they don't really write pop songs; garbage are edgy and punkish and also schmaltzy and effusive and urgent, plus they are an electronic/rock band – lana del rey is none of these things, and more importantly she is hardly anything like either shirley manson or beth gibbons.] [here's one though: fiona apple. should have thought of that before, maybe. but i never completely loved her either...]

it's big, lavish, "produced," "pop," but it's not "pop" in any kind of familiar, narrow sense – it certainly doesn't sound like anything "on the radio" these days – the beats are sort of hip-hop (or possibly, if you like, trip-hop), as is some of the production personnel, but this is obviously not hip-hop music (even if, i will assert, lana does rap at numerous points throughout the album.) so, it's ...pop-by-default, i guess (cuz it's clearly not rock or folk.)

more interestingly though – and i have a little suspicion that this is lurking somewhere behind the issues/confusion/difficulty some people seem to have around the album, it's neither self-evidently "indie" nor clearly "mainstream" – in its sound, signifiers, anything. it's not readily recognizable as belonging to any particular established world/scene/concept. [<<it came from the internet....>>] even to hear her sing "i'm playing on the radio" feels weirdly incongruous (as in, how is this music that can coexist alongside other music?) – even if she probably actually is. (though, obviously, that's not the point... she is not actually telling us to "love [her] because she's playing on the radio." right? are you with me there?)

oh yeah, the words. i probably need to talk about the words. to be honest, i'm more interested in the lyrics of the album (or rather, they have, as yet, mostly presented themselves to me) as a collection of images; a lexicon of tropes; a bright smattering of clichés both old and newly-turned; a piecemeal articulation of an aesthetic or worldview (not, to be clear, one i would presume to ascribe to lizzy grant), than as direct, literal, content.

i would agree, sure, that there are some potentially substantially troubling things going on in these songs from a feminist/gender/sexual politics standpoint (not to mention from an emotional health standpoint.) and, yes, extremely similar lyrical themes are repeated quite frequently, ad nauseum perhaps (if you're prone to lyrical nausea) throughout the album. (in general, the album is extremely samey in most respects – something that definitely ties in with it having a strong, emphatic aesthetic – though that's not to say that the similar songs don't distinguish themselves as more individual – and some stronger, some weaker – with repeated listens.)

somehow, though, those things don't really bother me too much when i'm listening. maybe it's because almost nothing here comes across as "real": the album is so wholeheartedly wrapped up in fantasy, fantasies, of various kinds (wealth, fame, love, sex, youth, glamor, misery, hollywood...american dreams), it feels more like an exploration of fantasy worlds within worlds than anything really relevant to lived reality. (though, arguably, issues of sexual politics have as much to do with what's in our heads and dreams as anything else.)

anyway. forget the haters. screw the hype. i like it.

------
* not exactly sure how i arrived at that, or how "cheers (drink to that)" became the theme tune for it either – maybe i should switch it to "tubthumper"? – tho i do rather like it. but anyway h/t to bedbugs for the format; glad to see he's still using it. but why so samey, ernold?

**i called this "my favorite album of 2012, so far," and my roommate turned to me and said "um... it's like january 10th."

2012: stop stringing adjectives together

2011 in heaven: muddled, muted, moody, mature

that'll do, 2011, that'll do. i think we agree by now that there's no such thing as a "bad year in music" but at least from where i was sitting this last one felt a little less than exciting, both in terms of the stuff i was listening to myself (and i listened to a ton – once again, probably more than any previous year, if i had to guess – which might after all have been part of the problem...) and also the consensus faves (meh..Bon Iver, Drake, Destroyer, M83, Adele, Watch Jay-Z + Kanye fail to get us to call them The Throne – sure i listened and enjoyed plenty well enough, but none of that felt especially momentous or truly substantial. tUnE-yArDs and shabazz were intriguing at first, but neither really got its hooks in me. which basically leaves us with azealia and lana, each with ≤2 tracks apiece.)

hard to find any major patterns in my listening... my lists are a pretty typical mish-mash of singer-songwriters both newly discovered (Frank Turner) and long-beloved (Devon, Paul, Jens); pop-minded soul both retro and nuevo (Mayer Hawthorne, Beyoncé, Miguel),
funky-future-dancemusik (Chrissy Murderbot, Four Tet, Jacques Greene) and, sticking out like three ugly blue sore thumbs, one unconscionably old-fashioned record of pure-power pop (Peter Bjorn & John) which i readily forget to care about whatsoever except for whenever it's actually playing...

there was, though, what felt to me like a distinct, prevalent 2011 sound, or sound-world, or sound-concept, that was something of a through-line through many of my favorites: a lush, warm, synth-heavy but also organic-feeling aesthetic that was sometimes woozy and swoony, but not in a warped/texturally-distressed/chillwavey sense; sometimes subdued, often sophisticated-seeming, but definitely still pop and very melodic; definitely focused on sonic prettiness, but also surprisingly emotionally deep and complex.

i heard it throughout my (in some ways very different) three favorite albums of the year: When Saints Go Machine's Konkylie, Ada's Meine Zarten Pfoten, and Architecture In Helsinki's Moment Bends. (my "official" ranking of these three has been shuffled and reshuffled innumerable times by now; suffice to say i think each of them is something pretty special – all of them, incidentally, were pretty much completely unexpected discoveries for me.) i also heard it in much of Hercules & Love Affair's surprisingly varied and largely underrated (/misunderstood, i'd say) Blue Songs, not always in the danciest tracks (though sometimes) but in the more understand < songs > which form the album's heart.

i heard it in Wild Beasts' soft but squirmy Smother, in Twin Sister's dreamy, dappled and ultimately aptly-titled In Heaven, in Young Galaxy's lusciously thick-sounding Shapeshifting (which, like Taken By Trees' utterly phenomenal East of Eden two years back, owes much of its greatness to the sonic wizardry of Studio's Dan Lissvik), in the gentle meandering of Dixon's elegant Live at Robert Johnson mix, in the lovely soft pop of my friends Xylos, in ArchInHels's utterly lovely acoustic/electronic rework of Cut Copy's "Need You Now." and i heard shadings of it – in mood, if not necessarily sound – in music by Active Child, Austra, WhoMadeWho, Pallers, Panda Bear, Joan as Police Woman, Art Department, and total-fave-2011-discovery,-if-only-they-had-more-music, Benoit & Sergio. (and even, to some extent, and for what it's worth, in Bon Iver, Drake, Destroyer and some of M83.)

so, i guess, it was a great year for this particular muted, moody interstitial muddling of pop, rock and electronic. not necessarily what i think of as my favorite kind of music, but somehow that's what did it for me in 2011. and it did it just fine.

~

these are already on the sidebar. but just to make it officialishial, and put some pretty pictures together (eh, no great shakes really. devon's puppy wins this batch hands down; with ada's furry-paw donkey as a runner-up...) my favorites of last year: songs, albums; twenty, eleven.




[SONGS]
1. Lana Del Rey: "Blue Jeans"
2. Lana Del Rey: "Video Games"
3. When Saints Go Machine: "Kelly"
4. Ada: "Keep Me In Mind"
5. Jens Lekman: "Waiting For Kirsten"
6. Azealia Banks: "212"
7. Beyoncé: "Countdown"
8. Xylos: "Not Enough"
9. Young Galaxy: "B.S.E. [Black Swan Event]"
10. Allo Darlin': "Tallulah" [*2010/2012]
11. Jacques Greene: "Another Girl"
12. Four Tet: "Pyramid"
13. Low: "Try To Sleep"
14. The Dø: "Too Insistent" (or Trentemøller remix)
15. Pallers: "Wicked"
16. Benoit & Sergio: "What I've Lost" [*'10]; "Walk and Talk"
17. Frank Turner: "Peggy Sang The Blues"
18. Soulja Boy "Zan With That Lean"
19. Hercules & Love Affair: "Boy Blue"; "Painted Eyes"
20. tUnE-yArDs: "Bizness"




[ALBUMS]
1. When Saints Go Machine, Konkylie
2. Ada, Meine Zarten Pfoten
3. Architecture in Helsinki, Moment Bends
4. Hercules and Love Affair, Blue Songs
5. Devon Sproule, I Love You Go Easy
6. Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What
7. Mayer Hawthorne, How Do You Do + Impressions EP
8. Beyoncé, 4
9. Peter Björn and John, Gimme Some
10. Cults
11. Chrissy Murderbot, Women's Studies

the mix ends before the world

Happy February! So I guess I still owe us an albums list for 2011? I've sort of got one (check the sidebar) but I'm not particularly attached to it –I've switched things around a bit since completing my pazz'n'jop ballot and I'd probably rejigger it more (and possibly sneak in a couple of late-breaking discoveries straddling the 2011/2012 divide) if I were to post about it in earnest. We'll see.. Basically, 2011 felt like a pretty unexciting year for albums – in fact, I've already heard a couple of 2012 releases that I like way more than anything that came out last year (more on those soon...) And it kind of felt like an off year for music in general (though I've now come around to the feeling that it was an excellent year for singles, many of which I didn't fully catch on to until the final round of list-scanning and binge-downloading.)

In fact, I wasn't even sure if I was gonna make a year-encompassing mash-up dance mix this time 'round. But, of course, I did.

And here it is:

[now with a title!]
DANCE UNTIL THE MIX ENDS


[download here]

ETA: back once again with a tracklist:
Cults: Go Outside (2 Bears Remix)
James Blake: Limit To Your Love
Kelly Rowland ft. Lil Wayne: Motivation
Skrillex: Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites
Britney Spears: How I Roll
Wiz Khalifa: On My Level
Magnetic Man ft. Angela Hunter: I Need Air
YC: Racks
Soulja Boy: Zan with that Lean
Sepalcure: Pencil Pimp
Chris Brown ft. Busta Rhymes: Look at Me Now
DJ Khaled ft. Drake: I'm On One
Reema Major: I'm The One
DJ Diamond: Decoded
Kreayshawn: Gucci Gucci
Miiguel: Sure Thing
Kei$ha ft. Andre 6000: The Sleazy Remix
Deerhoof: Super Duper Rescue Heads
Star Slinger: Mornin'
Charles Bradley: The World is Going Up In Flames
Beyoncé: Countdown
The Throne: Otis
Washed Out: Amor Fati
Das Racist: Celebration
Lykke Li: Get Some
Big Freedia: Y'all Get Back Now
M83: Midnight City
Adele: Rollin in the Heat (Jamie xx remix)
Africa Hitech: Do You Really Want To Fight
Architecture in Helsinki: Escapee
tUnE-yArDs: Bizness
Fool's Gold: The Dive
Atropolis: Huepa Je
When Saints Go Machine: Kelly
Pictureplane: Body Mod
The Bees: Gaia
Rebecca Black: Friday
Katy Perry: TGIF
SebastiAn: Tetra
St. Vincent: Cruel
Bullion: Magic Was Ruler
Escort: Cameleon Chameleon
Twin Sister: Bad Street
Hercules & Love Affair: Painted Eyes
Hercules & Love Affair: My House (Stopmakingme remix)
Beyonce: End of Time
Todd Terje: Snooze4Love
Cut Copy: Need You Now
Coldplay: Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall
The Rapture: Come Back To Me
Lana Del Rey: Blue Jeans
Lana Del Rey: Blue Jeans (Penguin Prison Remix)
DRC Music ft. Washiba: If You Wish To Stay Alive
Pallers: Wicked
Blawan: Getting Me Down
Yelle: Comme Un Enfant
DRC Music ft. Love: LOVE
The Very Best: Super Mom
Robyn: Call Your Girlfriend
The Kills: Nail In My Coffin
Kathryn Calder: Who Are You
Purity Ring: Ungirthed
Jamie xx: Far Nearer
Drake ft. Rihanna: Take Care
Benoit & Sergio: Walk and Talk
Lady Gaga: The Edge of Glory
Nicki Minaj: Super Bass
Azealia Banks: 212
Beyonce: Run the World
Nicola Roberts: Beat of My Drum
SBTRKT: Pharoahs
Peter Bjorn & John: Dig a Little Deeper (Mayer Hawthorne Remix)
Foster The People: Pumped Up Kicks
Big K.R.I.T. ft. Ludacris: Country Shit
Rihanna: S&M
Chrissy Murderbot ft. MC Zulu: The Vibe Is So Right
Jacques Greene: Another Girl
Maroon 5: Moves Like Jagger
Ill Blue: Meltdown
Rihanna: We Found Love
LMFAO: Party Rock Anthem
Omar ft. Don Lucenzo: Danza Kuduro
Buraka Som Sistema: Candonga
Jens Lekman: An Argument with Myself
Rustie: Ultra Thizz
Britney Spears: Til The World Ends
Four Tet: Pyramid
#OWS: 99% Chant

2011, all mixed up

In the past, I've had a policy of "saving" my emerging favorite favorite songs from an unfolding year – i.e. refraining from including them on mixes (or at least mass-distro mixes) and holding them back instead for a big bang-up year-end mix of songs. That delayed-gratification approach has resulted in some satisfying summing-ups which have stood up to time – notably, 2003's Such Great Heights [aka the duct tape mix]; Fun and Interesting: 2008 in Pop; and last year's H'010nanny! Other years I haven't made a year-end songs mix at all, or else I've made one that I didn't like much at that time and have forgotten about since (like the 2009 two-fer at the bottom of this post.)

This year, breaking my own rules willy-nilly, I made several mixes over the course of the year which did include most of my current-listening favorites – and what's worse I rejiggered the tracklists of these mixes and cherry-picked songs from them for use on later mixes – without necessarily ever settling on a finished stand-alone mix that I was completely happy with. (a similar process has happened with my year-end top ten lists this year – it's been that kind of year.) So in effect, I guess, my B3ST 0F 2oII M1XT@P3 has been a work-in-progress all year long.

Here are some tracklists – they may or may not exactly reflect the versions of mixes I may or may not have given you over the course of the year, but in the end why fuss; it's all good musik!

We Need a Mix*
1. Cults - Go Outside
2. Dom - Living in America
3. James Curd presents Ziggy Franklin - Shelter
4. Cornershop with Bubbley Kaur - Double Decker Eyelashes
5. Xylos - Not Enough
6. Britney Spears - How I Roll
7. Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge
8. David Wax Museum - Yes, Maria, Yes
9. The Kills - Nail In My Coffin
10. The Strokes - Taken For A Fool
11. Peter Bjorn and John - Dig A Little Deeper
12. Yelle - Comme Un Enfant
13. Zoey Van Goey - You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate
14. The Mountain Goats - Estate Sale Sign
15. About Group - There's A Way To End This Run Of Doubt
16. The Decemberists - Calamity Song
17. Deerhoof - Super Duper Rescue Heads!
18. Young Galaxy - B.S.E.
19. Revolver - Monk (Mini Mansions Cover)
20. Panda Bear - Slow Motion
21. Cut Copy - Need You Now (Architecture in Helsinki Version)

*titled in homage to the epic Okkervil River song which I liked [and whose title I especially liked, and took as sort of the thesis statement of their fascinating-but-not-quite-lovable album in my annoyingly non-linkable cowbell magazine article...come to think of it that album got weirdly and also unfairly shunted out of pretty much all year-end coverage i've come across, mine included...] but which I didn't manage to actually include on this or any mix...but equally as an appropriately descriptive/meaning-empty response to a slightly alarming feeling of having to do something with the already-overwhelming glut of sure-fine-yeah musical detritus that was accumulating in my 2011 headspace circa april, which must have been about when i made this.

i like the hipster/anti-hipster move of opening with two of the biggest blog hits of 2010, for the very sane reason that i was only just hearing/really getting into them. i also like lots of these songs, but ultimately the ones i really like the most are the ones that got pillaged for later editions...see below...

Summerville*
1. Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
2. Beyoncé - Countdown
3. Mayer Hawthorne - Work To Do
4. The Cool Kids ft. Mayer Hawthorne - Swimsuit
5. Dennis Coffey ft. Mayer Hawthorne - All Your Goodies Are Gone
6. Sebastian ft. Mayer Hawthorne - Love In Motion
7. Pictureplane - Real Is A Feeling
8. tUnE-yArDs - Bizness
9. When Saints Go Machine - Kelly
10. Architecture in Helsinki - Contact High
11. Ford & Lopatin - World of Regret
12. Wild Beasts - Lion's Share
13. Rye Rye ft. Robyn Never Will Be Mine
14. Teddybears ft. Robyn - Cardiac Arrest
15. Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum
16. Kissy Sell Out ft. MC Zulu - Turn It On
17. Austra - Lose It
18. Ada -Keep Me In Mind
19. Benoit & Sergio - What I've Lost
20. Allo Darlin' - Tallulah
21. YACHT - Shangri-La

*because what we really need most is a summer mix, and can't get much simpler cuz i didn't think i could really pull off the Mangumian po'etry of "Cum Trees in the Summerville Breeze" q.v. the ginkgos outside my Inman Sq. [but over the line] Somer sublet., which was the phrase in my head every time i biked up prospect street past the field (The Field!) etc.... anyhow this is more like it. Mayer Hawthorne and Robyn get to be MVPs even tho they hadn't (yet) even put out anything much new of their own in 2011... some versions of this also included Junior Boys' "Banana Ripple," which (like the rest of their album) i kinda like but mostly just don't know what to do with. the closing sequence is really the clincher; I played it to end our midsummer backyard pool Shlock Party, and I kept it for what is essentially a cannibalistic combination of the two above mixes:

Glow in the Dark, Arrow in the Heart*
1. Cults: Go Outside (Menahan Street Band Remix)
2. Beyoncé: Countdown
3. Mayer Hawthorne: Work To Do
4. Xylos: Not Enough
5. Young Galaxy: B.S.E.
6. Pictureplane: Real Is A Feeling
7. ANR: It's Around You
8. tUnE-yArDs: Bizness
9. Cornershop & Bubbley Kaur: Double Decker Eyelashes
10. When Saints Go Machine: Kelly
11. Architecture in Helsinki: Contact High
12. Wild Beasts: Lion's Share
13. Abigail Washburn: City of Refuge
14. Mark McGuire: Chances Are
15. Active Child: Hanging On
16. Hercules & Love Affair: Boy Blue
17. Ada: Keep Me In Mind
18. Benoit & Sergio: What I've Lost
19. Allo Darlin': Tallulah
20. Y∆CHT: Shangri-La
[packaged in a pink sleeve]

*maybe not my favorite lyric from "Kelly" (the whole thing really is brilliant, even perversely so), but it's certainly a potent summation of what the song feels like, and likewise the love of any good song or season or, sure, boy. when i made this it was just early fall and i was touring through the southland, so the working/burning title of this was dixieville. i could've jiggered it more (maybe swapping in a MayHawt album original for the Isleys cover from the EP, but it just didn't feel right) but decided to let it stand as-is as one-half of my "official" "best of 2011" mix-package, along with:

A Swastika In Your Cappucino*
1. Lana Del Rey: Video Games
2. Jens Lekman: Waiting for Kisten
3. Frank Turner: Peggy Sang The Blues
4. Wilco: Dawned On Me
5. Lykke Li: I Follow Rivers
6. Low: Try To Sleep
7. When Saints Go Machine: Add Ends
8. The Dø: Too Insistent (Trentemøller Remix)
9. Paul Simon: Love Is Eternal Sacred Light
10. Kathryn Calder: Who Are You?
11. Peter Bjorn and John: Dig A Little Deeper (Mayer Hawthorne Remix)
12. Cults: Walk At Night
13. Baby Dee: The Pie Song
14. They Might Be Giants: Cloissoné
15. Devon Sproule: The Warning Bell
16. Darren Hayman: I Taught You How To Dance
17. James Blake: Lindisfarne II
18. Gillian Welch: Hard Times
19. St. Vincent: Champagne Year
20. The Throne: Made In America (Ft. Frank Ocean)
21. Joan As Police Woman: Human Condition
22. Cut Copy: Need You Now (Architecture in Helsinki Version)
[packaged in a baby boy blue sleeve, though come to think of it maybe they shoulda been switched]

*probably is my favorite lyric from "Kirsten," which is equally the most brilliant, heart-wrenching and hilarious lyric of the year, even if the string parts do cannibalize his past work. not sure it's a great mix title, but it's a great image, mental or actual (i drew it on some copies.) i agonized over this for a long time in isolation, and i guess i'm pretty happy with it by now. might have actually been easier to slim down to a single disc of for-sure favorites, but i like having space to include things like "Add Ends" (a more representative and possibly of-greater-wide-interest WSGM selection) and "Cloissoné" (definitely the standout of the semi-let-downish Join Us) and "The Pie Song" (hard to satisfactorily integrate, but equally hard to safely ignore) and especially "Human Condition," which I'd mostly forgotten about but does include some truly poignant lines which have made me almost cry multiple times (the opening verse, basically.)

....and then... all the end of year lists and whatsits started coming out, and i went on my usual year-end catch-up downloading rampage, and started totally jamming out to all these awesome techno/hip-hop/weirdpop/rnb songs i'd mostly not even heard previously, plus a few poppier jams that hadn't quite fit in with other iterations. and, mostly, i just wanted to dance, and jam out. so i burned this one up quick, and gave it to some of you. it's a mix of my favorite songs in the history of the world ever, circa the last week of december 2011. and i would like it to be called:

Teeth Ring, Ears Click
1. Jai Paul: BTSTU
2. Purity Ring: Ungirthed
3. Miguel: Sure Thing
4. The Weeknd: The Morning
5. Kelly Rowland ft. Lil Wayne: Motivation
6. Jacques Greene: Another Girl
7. Jamie xx: Far Nearer
8. Adele: Rolling In The Deep (Jamie xx Shuffle)
9. Soulja Boy: Zan With That Lean
10. Big K.R.I.T feat. Ludacris & Bun B: Country Shit (Remix)
11. Azaelea Banks: 212
12. Ill Blu: Meltdown
13. Blawan: Getting Me Down
14. Don Omar ft. Lucenzo: Danza Kuduro
15. Modeselektor ft. Busdriver: Pretentious Friends
16. Lana Del Rey: Blue Jeans (Penguin Prison Remix)
17. Franz Ferdinand: No You Girls (Trentemøller Remix)

okay, i give up... maybe next year i'll just make some mix tapes for the sake of making some mix tapes, and leave it at that. or maybe i'll just make spotify playlists, once i figure out what that's supposed to be, exactly? i just joined, i'm intrigued...we'll see? well anyway, hope you like the music.