Last Christmas my friend got his niece the first High Places album and she gave it her coveted best new music designation. Like much of the stuff coming out around that time, it wasn’t hard to imagine it as a fitting soundtrack for playtime. Pots and pans, whimsical use of world music sampling, and saccharine vocals held the LA duo guarded from rigorous criticism in it’s naive execution. On their upcoming second full-length, High Places vs. Mankind, they haven’t abandoned this aesthetic entirely, but it is, to my pleasant surprise, a slightly different beast. The drum beats crack and shuffle with renewed confidence and guitars take a higher seat in the mix to create more complex moods. A little dissonance is a welcome addition to the percussion-heavy minimalism we’ve come to expect, and Mary Pearson explores darker textures for her voice that really pull this out of it’s niche. We know you’re already excited about this, and for good reason. Out with the cute, in with the new.
High Places vs. Mankind will be available April 6th on Thrill Jockey.
MP3 :::
Files removed per request
Last week, I had part one of the 26-song, seasonally-inspired, massive clusterfuck mix. Guess fucking what! This is part dos, just in time to send March off like a lion (or a lamb, depending on where you are I suppose). Spring rules, and I want you to have the jams I’m cranking in my car with the windows down and rims still spinnin’. Below are 15 more songs that are one million times better than the new Phoenix or St. Vincent or Lykke Li albums (or whatever the other blogs are poppin’ boners for). Fuck that shit. String Band, Meadow, Growing, Yoko, the Banke, Lilys, some Ghost Box, some insane old and obscure psych… I even put ol’ Ginger and Eric on here. I mean, Jesus, I wish someone had made me a mix like this.
No annotations just time. Just enjoy the jams. As always, if you think these shits is tight, support the artist and grip their album(s).
As a visual aside, I took some photos yesterday evening of the beautiful seasonal unfurling in the Old Louisville neighborhood. For our readers in the area, you should grab this mix (as well as the samples from the new Akron/Family and Lotus Plaza albums), load the tracks onto your iPod, iPhone, iCranial RFID chip, pipe ‘em through some big headphones (not shitty earbuds), and take a stroll down South 2nd Street between Magnolia and Lee Streets for a most transcendental time. Nature owns.
MP3 :::
The Incredible String Band – Koeeadi There
Penny Arkade – Woodstock Fireplace
Tower Recordings – Other Kinds Run
Belbury Poly – Scarlet Ceremony
Dungen – Familj
Dead Meadow – Stacy’s Song
Cream – Passing the Time
Growing – Wrong Ride
Margo Guryan – Sun
High Places – Namer
The Left Banke – Desiree
The Free Design – Now is the Time
Lilys – FBI and Their Toronto Transmitters
Sun City Girls – The Flower
Yoko Ono – Mind Holes
Nooooooooooo!!!!!
An intense ice storm swept over Louisville this week. Something like a quarter million people around Louisville are still without power. Things are apocalyptic. And my car has a branch on it.
It makes you think. I can remember, lucidly, what he was like before he had a huge fucking branch on him. He’s a 1996 Toyota Camry. He’s got four doors that open, as well as close. The “y” is missing on the rear end, so when you ghost ride up from behind, my automobile reads more like “Camr.” That’s where he got his name – Camr’on – named after one of my favorite songwriters (though the apostrophe is in a different place than the actual Cam’ron for logistical purposes). Camr’on and I shared good times and bad. He trudged on like a fucking champ all throughout the holiday pilgrimage quest. He takes me to and from work. He was excited to take us to camping trips in the spring, as well.
Camr’on was efficient – usually scoring 28 to 30 MPG highway. He’s top of his class. Camr’on has a V6 and does not fuck around. It’s not easy being green, but Camr’on pulls it off well. Under some light, he looks blue. And under other light, he looks happy.
Though I will also cherish the memories that I had of Camr’on before he had a branch on him, I will love and accept this new Cam’ron. It’s just like when my grandfather got Alzheimer’s. You learn to love the new person just the same. I’ll miss you Camr’on Sans Branch, but I’m ready to help you (and I as well) learn to accept your new branchful life, Camr’on.
MP3 :::
Incredible String Band – Swift As the Wind
High Places – The Storm
Grouper – Wind and Snow
Swirlies – Park the Car By the Side of the Road
Mayo Thompson – Around the Home
Can – Swan Song
United States of America – Coming Down
Oh good, glad to see you like my illustration. Yeah, I had some downtime and wasn’t feelin’ too creative or too much in my graphic design game as far as doing something special for The Decibel Tolls year-end list. So Lana and I started talking, and it came to us that it would be hysterical to do a collage with people like Bradford Cox eating that Ezra Comma dude from Frankenstein Weekday or whoever, and Franz Ferdinand… stuff like that. I didn’t have time to add Lil’ Wayne. And then I had to make, like, the fuckin’ universe as the backdrop. That’s how we roll here at the Decibel Tolls – no fun, tasteful graphic to designate this article as the accumulative best-of list. Nope, just crude images of artists I like with their heads detached eating shitty bands. I’m additionally thrilled that I was able to describe the image even further despite the fact that it’s already annotated. I rule.
I put some serious thought into this list, and did a bunch of narrowin’ down. There were other jam hives I was rather infatuated with this year, such as releases from Magik Markers, Burning Star Core, and Vivian Girls. But I wanted to do just the standard top ten this time around. No reason to not do things standard every now and again… Continue reading ‘The Decibel Tolls Best Albums of 2008′
