Where did the light go?

Our friends at The Fader (ok, they aren't our real-life friends but we look at them and talk to them in the magazine and on the website and sometimes imagine ourselves having conversations with them and saying "hey people at Fader isn't the new Clipse song really kind of lame? Yeah it is.")posted the most recent installment in the We Make It Good mix series...and it's from death-grind cough syrup Satanists Salem.

The entire "We Make It Good 11" mix by Salem is exactly what you'd hope for if you vibe on their "death metal as heard in Lil Wayne's nightmares" modus operandi-screwed and chopped nightmare hop and The Beach Boys slowed to terrorshine speed, like the fucking sun itself plans on exploding just to murder you slowly in your sleep. Listen and download for yourself here.

And if you're too afraid of leaving the light, there's still the bleakest of hopes contained within "Brustreet", the Salem cover of "Streets of Philadelphia" that isn't on the mix but serves as a perfect hand-hold into their dark den.

Salem: Brustreet

Wisdom is learned

I have many, many problems with Bradford Cox's sudden overwhelming superstardom, like the fact that he seemingly has chosen to re-write history and declare himself as being Brooklyn born and bred. Dude, if you're seeing this-and you aren't-you're from Marietta, the literal other side of the same tracks as I am.

Also, Deerhunter used to suck, massively-let's not forget about that.

Regardless, though, as Fader put it so well, for a full generation of aural junkies when we look back on our 20s the music Cox has made in any and all his various incarnations will play a major soundtracking role. For all his hissy-fits and freakouts, the guy is sitting on a mountain that will eventually be labeled "music genius".

All of this is to say that I don't really know where I stand with Logos, the new album from his solo Atlas Sound project. Bits of it are absolutely chilly and frigid, perfect for New York winters where it gets pitch-dark at 4 P.M.. Moments, though, like his Panda Bear collaboration "Walkabout", are fantastic individual songs-unusual for anything taking the form and shape of an Atlas Sound composition-but feel anachronistic. The album's one knot, though, the thing that holds it all together, is "Quick Canal", a Bradford Cox/Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab) collaboration. It's eight minutes of bliss that isn't bound to seasonal or emotional restrictions. It can be uplifting or heartwrenching depending on what it needs to be-it shapeshifts like that. I can see how, with Bradford's "la la la"-ing right behind Laetitia, it could be mistaken for a beach party anthem, but no-there's something cold and chipped hiding right beneath "Quick Canal"'s surface that isn't there on "Walkabout".

Video for "Quick Canal" by Fitz Vladich, from the 4AD site.

BeautifulDirtyLoveSick

A year or so ago, I fell in love with the combination of southern-fried gruff haze and gorgeous British noise-wash, essentially introduced to me via Atlanta band All The Saints. This year, my new scruffy, fuzzy-around-the-edges, shake-and-bake in a haze of prettiness ("prettyscruff"?) band is Bear In Heaven, who take All The Saints highs to an entirely new ledge and then jump off the cliff entirely.

Their recently-released Beast Rest Forth Mouth album runs song into song and joyously familiar synth buildup into plummeting claustrophobic guitar assault. Think a John Hughes film trapped in crashing car, or M83 with dirtier fingernails, and you about have it.

Bear In Heaven: "Lovesick Teenagers"

On "Lovesick Teenagers", there's a look back to the highschool notebooks and stammering that Hughes would've been proud to remember, but the cover's been ripped and the ink's smudging as the drugs slowly take over. This lovesick teenager is heartbreak-stoned and nostalgic, but not without the smallest bit of hope behind those bleary, red eyes. 

If you show you show, if you go you go

One of my favorite MCs, rapper Jean Grae, once summarized the state of music best when she said, simply, "don't download the record". That came to my mind this morning as I heard Tegan and Sara's 2007 album The Con in its fully-mastered entirety for the first time ever. I'd been having a discussion with new soldout writer Liz at the Amanda Palmer show about the new Tegan and Sara record, which a simple scroll through this site will reveal that I am completely over the moon for. "The Con," Liz kept repeating, "The Con."

My memories of The Con consisted, until this very morning, of a low-quality, muddled, 9-track burned copy playing in my car stereo while a girl I was far too obsessed with talked over it. Not, per the version I'd grabbed from Soulseek, that there was anything to be missed.

I was wrong, I learned on the N train into Manhattan this morning.

Tegan and Sara, "Are You Ten Years Ago?"

The Con is a textural wonderland, a fucking masterpiece of drugs and darkness and heartbreak that, due to whatever leaked form I based my experience of the album on, I never gave a proper chance. Songs like "Like O, Like H" leave me feeling stupid and shaky, unable to stand properly, and "Are You Ten Years Ago?"... Hands down this was the song that left the biggest impression on me from the shitty pre-release copy of The Con I pirated two years back, but in this form it's a show-stopper, entirely.

I'm left unsure as to how to approach Sainthood now-can I really say it is Tegan and Sara at their loudest, darkest, most raw, when in fact all of those things describe The Con (and, frighteningly, the relationship I was in at the time I first heard it)?

In the words of Amy Sedaris: quandry. It's highly likely at this point that, in my top albums of 2009 list, there'll be a little darkhorse from 2007 sneaking her way in.

Amanda Palmer at Music Hall Of Williamsburg NY, 11/14/09

What is it about Amanda Palmer that causes every little dose of her to leave one wanting more? Maybe it’s that, live, her raw magic is very much akin to raw sugar:

Click to read more ...