Let me fill you in on all the exciting stuff that's been happening in my quarantine stay - I'm not sure I'm going to be able to fit it all in!
Well, maybe not, but we're managing to fill our days pretty well. Today is our first day off work, but between breakfast, cleaning up the room, a quick session on the spin bike, and a walk around outside, I've got through to lunchtime, and there's a couple of cricket games to carry me through the afternoon.
Exercise is interesting, now that we've passed our first COVID test, we get three sessions a day to walk around the 'exercise area', which is the hotel parking lot, screened off from the outside world with black fencing. There's a couple of windows in the fence that people are using to chat with locals outside, but in general, each exercise session is the same 20 people drearily walking around the perimeter of the lot. Despite that, it's good to be outside and to see some different faces.
Alcohol is proving to be a minor problem - we are allowed 6 cans or a bottle of wine into the room every day, but if you get out of sync on your deliveries, it's pretty easy to run out. However, we will soldier on.
We took our Day 3 COVID test today, which means I'm only going to have my brain impaled by a swap one last time, on Day 12. Thank heavens for small victories.
The three meals are the highlights of the day, but the breakfasts are a little weird - yesterday was bacon and egg pie, which I thought was awesome, and today's was a doughnut and a brownie, which was a little much for 7 in the morning. Last nights dinner was roast lamb, and it was amazing. I forgot how good meat is here.
Alright, the cricket is starting, time to go. Go Black Caps!
Yesterday I flew from Vancouver to Los Angeles to Auckland
to Christchurch over about 30 hours, and if I have any advice for you about
flying in a pandemic, it would be “don’t”.
The flights themselves weren’t that bad, but from constant
worry that at some point an overzealous gate agent would tell us our COVID
results weren’t comprehensive enough to fly (we saw it happen more than once), to
nothing being open in the airports, to a surprise extra leg when we learned we
were being quarantined in a city 1000 miles from our destination, it was a long
and tiring day. So much so that I claimed I’d lost my bag, when I really just
couldn’t pick it out from the baggage claim.
However, we’ve now spent one full day in quarantine, and we’re
getting into the swing of it. So far, it’s not too bad. The team at the hotel
are wonderful – a mix of New Zealand Defence Force personnel, public health
nurses, and some hotel employees, and all are friendly, empathetic to what we’re
going through and incredibly nice, even when they’re confiscating your third
bottle of wine.
We got our first COVID test just after arriving (and I swear
they put the swab deeper up your nose than elsewhere in the world), and we’re
confined to this room until we get that result back. We get three meals delivered
a day (which is way more food than I can handle) and we’ve had a range of
things delivered – groceries (including the contraband wine), fresh ground
coffee, a pie, an extra desk, and even a spin bike that arrives later today. It
still feels a little weird having a uniformed soldier deliver your lunch, but I
guess we’ll get used to that.
The attention to wellness is pretty amazing – half of the
material the team has provided has been around keeping yourself sane through
this process, and we’ve had both phone and in-person checkins from the team
here.
It’s good to have work to do -spending 9 hours a day looking
into a computer screen fills a good chunk of time, and we’re still maladjusted
to the time, so we’ll sneak in a quick afternoon nap before dinner.
After dinner, there’s a cricket game to watch, then we’ll be
back up early for work again tomorrow.
After 5 years away, my first pie back in New Zealand was a
little inauspicious, but the circumstances around it were unique. See, I’m in a
Managed Isolation hotel for the next 14 days after arriving from Canada, and so
far, the food has been great. However, lunch today was smoked salmon, which is
not my favourite, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, within minutes,
Brent from Uber Eats was off to the local gas station to pick me up a Mince and
Cheese pie. I could quibble that it wasn’t as hot as it could have been, and
that they didn’t have the pepper steak flavor on the online menu, but at the
end of the day, I just ordered a delicious pie off the internet while being
housed in a military-run quarantine facility, and that isn’t a sentence I thought
I’d ever type.
After 11 years, I'm dusting off the blog to capture a very unique time in our lives. I'm currently in quarantine in New Zealand after traveling here to escape the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Here I'll share notes from my travels, and the feature that you're all here for, review all the pies I have.
For those who were holding their breath waiting for this, you can now exhale (hi Mum!). Here's a random collection of overshare, loosely based around my top 10 songs of the year.
10. Never Look Back - Slow Club Slow Club's 2010 debut album "Yeah, So" should really be my album of the year as it spent more time playing this year than any other record else I own, but rules are rules, and it doesn't qualify for this annual parade of indulgence. But this year's "Paradise" is pretty goddamn special too - filled with plenty of boy/girl angst, and a healthy dollop of ukelele picking.
This particular cut starts slow, but sweeps into a full orchestral chorus - and I think I also like the fact that it mentions a marching band, joining the lofty pantheon of other songs that are awesome that mention marching bands (American Pie, that Death Cab one).
They're coming through Vancouver in early March playing a 50 person venue, and I'm looking forward to being woefully awkward trying to talk to them.
9. Weekend - Smith Westerns Despite being roughly 11, the Smith Westerns have spent more time digging through crates of old T-Rex records than I have (not an elementary achievement), but they have mined 70s glam-rock for its best riffs, basslines and swagger. "Weekend is essentially just a single guitar riff, but its so good it doesn't even matter"
8. I Might - Wilco To an aging hipster such as myself, there's nothing more stereotypically appropriate than dropping a Wilco song into each year's year-end list. Sure, they're my dad's age, and their new record sounds like their last one, and the one before that, but they just keep writing fantastic songs, and putting on fantastic live shows full of musical mastery.
"I Might" was on repeat for weeks on end and is a perfect slice of Dad-rock.
7. How the West Was One - Kyprios
9 year-old me would think it was pretty awesome that 31 year-old me featured a rap about sports in his year-end list, but everyone else in the universe just thinks its lame. But for three months this year, pretty much all I did was watch the Vancouver Canucks play in the Stanley Cup playoffs. At a time where there wasn't too much other good news floating around, the playoffs were a wild ride, featuring a lot of mid-week drinking, a lot of nervously chewed fingernails, and ultimately, no parade at the end of it (we did muster a pretty sweet riot at the end of it). It was an amazing time to be in and around the city, and this tune from Vancouver's favourite hipster rapper (who has one hell of a live show) does a nice job of capturing the moment.
6. Kaputt - Destroyer Mostly because the cover photo is taken at the place I play pitch and putt golf 10 blocks from my house. But also largely because it features the sleaziest synths since the pinnacle of 80s porn, as well as an 80s porn themed video.
This is hands-down the most accessible Destroyer record, but still has more than it's share of weirdness.
5. Every Defeat A Divorce - Los Campesinos For the 5th year in succession, Los Camps! make this list - they're still my favourite band, and North America's favourite soundtrack for Budweiser commercials, and I flew across a continent to spend 24 hours in DC and see them play (and to earn enough airmiles to get access to the Air Canada lounge for a year - but that's a story for another time). This particular song seems to be about watching England get knocked out of the World Cup, which doesn't make it as cheery as something like "World in Motion", but it also doesn't feature John Barnes rapping, which makes it a win in my book. Like the rest of their last record, it's dark, churning, original, and compelling, and I'm still a mega-LosCamps! nerd. Go see them live this February, North America.
4. Need You Now - Cut Copy
I remember seeing Cut Copy when I was a precocious little shit of a 27 year-old and claiming they were just a shit Australian New Order (it might even be somewhere in the blog archives if you're feeling adventurous), but then I spent more and more time with In Ghost Colours, and was forced to quickly revise my hastily informed opinion.
I dunno if Zonoscope is as good as that first record, but it still has its fair share of hits, and Cut Copy and I spent a lovely autumn evening on an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
3. An Argument With Myself - Jens Lekman
This pretty much only makes the list because halfway through the song Jens Lekman actually has an argument with himself, which might be the most endearingly retarded thing I've ever heard in a pop-song.
2. Heart In Your Heartbreak - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The chorus "she was the heart in your heartache, she was the miss in your mistake" and I really like it when bands drop out the bass and drums for a verse. See, that's all you need to do to make this list - bands of the world, pay attention.
1. Revelations - Devon Williams I picked up this Devon Williams record after I read the most ridiculously emphatic staff recommendation blurb in Zulu records (as seen in the woefully underrated Jason Lee/Julia Stiles romantic comedy "A Guy Thing"). I think I bought it just so I could be smugly superior next time I went back in there, but I got it home, hit play, and was presented with this as a first track. Like a one-man Polyphonic Spree, the "bom-bom-bom" refrain, the strings, and the pure explosions of joy through this song send it straight to the top of this list.
If I had a dollar for every blog that started with a sentiment something along the lines of "Long Time, No Blog", I'd have $7.63 million (thanks, google), so I'm going to ignore the fact that I haven't posted on this blog in nearly 2 years, and just jump straight into the annual festival of self-indulgence that is the year end list.
One rule - each band is only allowed one entry overall, just to keep this list from becoming a Hold Steady and Arcade Fire love-fest.
Favourite Songs...
5. Younger Us - Japandroids
I can count the number of times I moshed at a show this year on two fingers, and during this song was one of them (for those keeping score, the other time was about four songs later, during Young Hearts Spark Fire). But this three minute nugget of distortion revels in nostalgia for the recent past, in which two 27 year old kids wistfully rock on their porch swing and remember their golden youth, the high point of which seems to be "that time you were already in bed and said "fuck it" and got up to drink with me instead". If I wrote the song, I'm sure I'd remember something a little more lofty, like "do you remember that time we were on the snuggie pub crawl of silicon valley and we got kicked off the caltrain for being a suicide risk". But I guess it doesn't roll of the tongue the same way.
4. Write About Love - Belle and Sebastian
I'm a sucker for Belle and Sebastian. I believe my entire year-end list of 2004 was merely an essay about how Belle and Sebastian were awesome because liking them made girls like me. I'm apparently much older, and wiser, now, but album and poster imagery featuring beautiful, pale-faced scottish girls gazing wistfully into the middle distance, and a song featuring a couple of lines extolling the virtues of being intellectual, some boy-girl call and response, and a Stevie Jackson surf guitar solo. and they're romping right back into 2010's year end list. (In other news, I saw them live for the first time in San Francisco, and they were charmingly awesome, and got cute girls (and Surfer Blood) up on stage to dance with them.)
3. Lingering Still - She and Him
Sure, the second She and Him record sounds a lot like the first She and Him record, but they're still fantastic, and M. Ward still has the shiniest guitar known to man. You can see that thing from space. This sugary pop-nugget wedges its way into my subconscious for months at a time, becoming the soundtrack to bus rides, showers, and marathon Angry-Birds playing sessions.
2. We Used To Wait - The Arcade Fire
Apparently its the year 2010 right now, so it is somewhat appropriate that at least one song on this list is based on a web experience - namely this amazing film here: (best viewed in Chrome) wherein a young man in a hoodie runs through deepest, darkest, Bucklands Beach, New Zealand, before arriving at my parent's house, only to be presented with a postcard from his older self, telling him that in the Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis is actually a ghost.
But in all seriousness, it was a good year for me and the Arcade Fire - "Suburbs" is a fantastic record, their Vancouver show this year was so epic I had a 50-year old asian man crowdsurf over me, and every time I hear Rebellion (Lies), I think its the olympics again, and I start to cry.
1. Tightrope - Janelle Monae
Again, another web-sourced piece of genius, but I'm glad I found it. Janelle Monae's performance on Letterman should a blueprint for how to perform on television. I see this song has made its way to a car commercial already, but if there's any justice, it should be propping up dancefloors the world over for the next 40 years. Doo Wop Motown Pop recast with an art-school aesthetic, and catchy as all hell. Plus, its from a record that seems to be about Robots.
Favourite Albums...
5. This is Happening - LCD Soundsystem
I think I've bought every LCD Soundsystem record to this point, and I can't honestly say I've ever sat down and listened all the way through any of them. For every fantastic slice of brilliance (daft punk is playing at my house, all my friends) they always seemed to be a couple of tracks that seem to be there solely to act as source material for amateur DJs to mash up. Hands up if you've ever made it all the way through the full 9 minute version of "Yeah" - nobody? I thought as much.
This is Happening seems like more of a pop record than a dance music record, and is filled with bullets, from the opening quiet, quiet, quiet, car-speaker blowing loud of "Dance Yourself Clean", through the best 4-song run of the year - "I can change", "All I Want", "You Wanted a Hit" and "Pow Pow".
If it really is the last LCD record, its a fitting bookend to their particular narrative arc. But if the amount of fun they were having the two times I saw them live this year is any indication, there's a good chance it won't be.
4. Astro Coast - Surfer Blood
These kids look like they're 12, but I suspect they're closer to 21 (and the singer looks like a tubby Kevin Arnold from the Wonder Years), but at either age they're still far too young to be this talented. The record is full of big, nuggety riffs drenched in distortion, and hooks thatsounds instantly familiar, and cause me to ask "what is this" every time I get in the car and it's playing.
3. Romance is Boring - Los Campesinos!
Disclaimer: I'm a Los Campesinos! nerd. I may have just signed up for their new zine subscription service, I may have driven to Seattle to see them play this year, and I may also be currently drinking tea out of a Los Campesinos! coffee mug. However, I still listened to this record more than any other this year, and there are redeeming features that should be appreciated by even non-fanboys.
Herewith:
a) Romance is Boring, the band's second proper "record", and third full-length, shows them shelving the all-out wall of sound that characterized the first two, and making use of space and lush instrumentation, best captured in "The Sea is a Good Place to Think of Future", linked below.
b) One song details a plan to move to Malta, get citizenship, and then get picked for the national football team, therefore being able to play England, France, Spain etc in World Cup qualifiers. This is notable, because I had the same plan, and would often discuss it with my co-conspirators, Messrs Dave Pearce and Christopher Burton. This is the part where you appreciate the irony of 3 people, who weren't even on the best team at their suburban football club, in a nation of 4 million people who aren't really very good at football, thinking that they could up sticks and head to Europe and waltz onto a national team.
c) Another song features the line "I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock", a sentiment we should all take to heart.
d) When you see them live, it is perfectly acceptable to shout "Can't we all please just calm the fuck down" over and over again.
2. Chant Master - Lawrence Arabia
The trainspotters reading this will note, quite accurately, that this record came out in 2009. However, I'm using the fact that this soundtracked my 2010, as well as the fact that it didn't get a North American release until this year, and the fact that I make the goddamn rules around here, ok, to sneak it under the bar into this years list.
It's somewhat gratifying to see someone who you've seen play in such luminary venues as the masonic, Edens (which still has the distinction of being the best club I've ever been to that was under a strip club) and that crappy flat party in Kingsland, show up in your transplanted home town playing a grand old theater, opening up for Crowded House. And then join you for a beer at the library square afterwards, where we tried to explain L&P to canadians.
The record is a magnificently listenable, totally unclassifiable, and stunningly unique. And James maintains one of the greatest twitter accounts ever, especially if you like cricket, or current events.
1. The New Pornographers - Together
The best New Pornographers record yet, it has all the elements of power-pop magic, but it sounds like an album of a proper band, instead of a disparate set of songs from a group of separate songwriters. Silver Jenny Dollar, Your Hands (Together) and If You Can't See My Mirrors are fantastic highlights, and showcase the individual talents of the group at large.Their show at the gorge during Sasquatch is the first time I've seen them play live with both Neko Case and Dan Bejar, and everything sounded fantastic, even if I did get myself in trouble in a rather unfortunate popcorn incident.
Best Shows... (Vancouver, unless otherwise specified)
7. Zeus/Jason Collett - The Biltmore
The first time I saw Zeus, in Victoria late last year, I thought they sounded like the Beatles. The second time I saw them, they still sounded like the Beatles, but at this show at the Biltmore they had some assistance, with Jason Collett, of Broken Social Scene affiliation, and Bahamas. Zeus apparently were Jason Collett's backing band for a while, before striking out to create their own pop gems. At this show at the wonderfully cosy, low ceilinged Biltmore nominally had three bands playing, but mostly had the same 10 musicians on stage throughout all three sets. Zeus were a particular highlight - the band constantly change instruments and lead vocals, and even threw in a Genesis cover for good measure.
6. Wilco - The Olympics
I could write any number of posts about the awesomeness that was the olympics. Put aside the corporate sponsorship and non-stop TV coverage that you get from afar, when you're in the host city, your olympic experience becomes a 2 week party, where every non-working hour was spent strolling the streets, pavilions, and licensed establishments of the city, trying to absorb a constant onrush of cultural experience, from watching curling at the Saskatchewan House, to a 2am Cadence Weapon show (at which the curling team was present, I believe) at Alberta House, to high-fiving cops while drinking beer on a streetcorner after the hockey final, it was amazing madness
One particular highlight on day one of the olympics was the city-run livesite, which featured international-caliber bands playing live for free less than a kilometer from my house, and the opening act on the first day was none other than Wilco. It was rainy, and nobody really knew how busy the shows were going to be, so we showed up at 2pm for a 7pm show, and got good and wet through, but within 30 seconds of Wilco stepping on stage, it was instantly worth it. The joy of the Wilco live experience has been extensively catalogued elsewhere in these pages, but their sound is always brilliant, they are incredibly talented musicians, Nels Cline plays guitar like a retard getting electrocuted, and Jeff Tweedy seemed comfortable in the spotlight, cracking jokes, making fun of Canadians, and totally revelling in the fact that playing a show at the olympics is kinda weird. >
The played their feelgood hits, Yea Yeah and Daylight, and I think I sweated out most of my bodily fluid. But that didn't stop Matt coming out after the show to give out hugs to anyone who wanted one. We got ours, and he was still giving them out half an hour later. It took two days to wipe the smile off my face.
4. Phoenix - The Orpheum
This show should have been an early indication of how awesome the Olympics were going to be - it was about a month before they kicked off, and this show was part of the "cultural olympiad", whatever that is. Regardless, it brought Phoenix to a grand old theater downtown, which normally hosts opera, orchestra, and the occasional adult contemporary reunion tour. The show was kicked off by local dance-poppers You Say Party!, who were great despite nobody being there (the joy of a 6pm show).
Phoenix came on stage, looking as stylish and french as possible, and played a solid set that spanned all three of their records, dipped into Air's Playground Love, and all was well, apart from the fact that most of the crowd was still sitting down.
Then they come out for their encore, and one kid jumped up on stage and danced around. He was expecting security to come out and turn him away, but nobody did. It appears they forgot to hire security for the show. Within seconds there were thousands of people on stage -I know for a fact that I stood on some of the guitarists gear, yet after initially looking terrified, the band played on, even playing 1901 while being completely surrounded by crowd. Excuse the sound in the video below, but otherwise its tres awesome.
3. Die Antwoord - Treasure Island Music Festival, San Francisco
I'm not much into Zef-Rap, but Die Antwoords live show is quite something else. It all starts off with them wearing boilersuits detailed with cartoon characters (one of which seems to be a caricature of the male singer holding his dick - which also seems to be tattooed on his arm)
There was much fist pumping, hip thrusting in inappropriate trousers, and ass flashing, but it was a train wreck I couldn't look away from. Couple that with the fact that I could look to the left and see alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco downtown, and it was a pretty satisfying afternoon.
2. The Hold Steady - The Showbox, Seattle
If you know anyone that doesn't believe in the beauty of rock and roll in its purest form, you need to take them to a Hold Steady show to convert them. These are 5 guys who love the simple action of standing in front of a crowd of people, and playing songs to them, and it shows in the grin on the face of the lead singer.
This show was one of those happy accidents - I was away on a work trip, and my plans changed last minute, leaving me in Seattle with nothing to do. A quick scan of the local street paper revealed a Hold Steady show, so within 4 hours of finishing work I had a ticket, and a couple of beers under my belt.
And I'm so glad I did - a Hold Steady show is a wonderfully awesome place to be - Craig Finn says things that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, like "Tonight we're going to have a lot of fun", and through his literate stories of teenage characters ("you're a beautiful girl, and a pretty good waitress" from Hurricane J), and his knack for getting people to chant unlikely things (the word "sequestered" doesn't feature often in rock choruses, but it does here).
Somewhere towards the end he said something along the lines of "all any of us ever need is this room, you people, and a whole lot of good times" and it made a lot of sense. Until I went outside and realized I'd forgotten where I was staying.
1. Pavement - Central Park, New York
I'm a nerd. And I'm proud of that fact. And myself, and a fair number of my peers made their way to Central Park in New York for the centerpiece of Pavement's reunion tour on a sunny September afternoon.
In order to get tickets for these shows, you had to purchase them nearly a year in advance, with only a day's notice between them being announced, and them being sold out. It takes a certain kind of person who is willing to take that sort of leap of faith, and it was evident when looking around the crowd.
I've been a Pavement fan as long as I can remember (i think I stole Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain off my then 12 year old sister), yet I'd never seen them live. I changed that three times this year, but the New York show was the best. The crowd was the nerdiest group of music snobs I've ever seen, but they saw no shame in belting out every lyric to every song Pavement played, whether it be MTV video hit, or unreleased b-side, and it was utterly fantastic.
The other two times I saw them, there was obvious tension on stage, but in New York, I think they could see the end of the road, and were just happy to bathe in the admiration.
For extra points, see if you can figure out how the song linked below is the inspiration for my blog/twitter name.
So its 19 day's late, and much more than a dollar short, but I wouldn't be an annoying idiot with a penchant for overwrought analysis of popular culture if I didn't put out a year-end list.
and songsmith can only entertain me for so long
So here it is - My Year In Lists
Song of the Year
1. My Year In Lists - Los Campesinos. You see what I did there? Just sit back and appreciate the irony of naming a song about not wanting to compile a new year list at the top of a new year list.
But happy coincidence aside, in 1 minute and 42 seconds, 7 precociously talented whippersnappers from Cardiff cram in enough great lyrics for Belle and Sebastian to build a career from, more glockenspeil taps than a Brunettes record, and the best boy/girl harmony since Ike and Tina or Lee and Nancy.
"I declined because I decided I do not believe in the new year any more"
Indeed.
2. Keep Me in Mind, Sweetheart - Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell
Mark Lanegan's gravelly baritone is a bit much on its lonesome, but on this highlight from his second collabaration with ex-Belle and Sebastian Yoko Isobel Campbell, it balances perfectly. There's a simplicity to it that brings to mind classic Johnny and June Cash, and proves that sometimes all you need is a melody, an acoustic guitar, and a couple of different voices.
Honorable mention to some of the stuff that Mark did with Greg Dulli, formerly of the Afghan Whigs as the Gutter Twins - which is also worth a look.
3. The Hold Steady - Sequestered in Memphis
The genius of Craig Finn and the Hold Steady is that he can write barnstorming festival- and dive bar-rocking anthems, without failing to be literate, obscure, and unfailingly witty. The sight of a sun-drenched field of college-aged hipsters chanting "Subpoenaed in Texas - Sequestered in Memphis" was one of the most gratifying things I saw this year.
At their live show in Vancouver, Reggie Youngblood prefaced this number with the statement - "This is gonna be one of your mad jamz, yo", and he was pretty goddamn close to the truth. It stomps, stamps and doowops, totally unhindered by the silliest couplet of the year, and really hits its straps when it breaks down and the twin female vocalists take center stage and play the song out. I'm not sure if it's just because of the memory of watching them grin, sparkle and shimmy their way through a live show, but it always makes me feel good.
5. I Know Your Girlfriend Hates Me - Annie.
Some may call it tokenism, and to a degree it is, but you can't fail but appreciate genius pop music. And in a year when Justin et al did nothing of note, the best pop song of the year came out of Norway.
It's marginally less sugary than 2004 year-end favourite "Chewing Gum", but it still is classic Richard X production pop, that reminds of those heady days in the early 2000 when that ruled the airwaves. Rachel Stevens, anyone?
She's the norwegian Kylie, don't you know? and the wikipedia entry for this song says it is inspired by Prince's Kiss, which should be the inspiration for much more stuff.
6. Knots - Pete and the Pirates.
The bastard child of a C-86 Sarah Records twee pop band and the Clash, Pete and the Pirates are one-part charming, and two-parts energetic. Everything about this song is dead simple, but it rollicks through and is good enough to force me to stick an extra song onto my top 5.
Albums of the Year
1. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, Silver Jews
2. The Luxury of Hysteria, Tim Rogers
3. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
4. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
5. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, Los Campesinos
Shows of the Year
1. Cadence Weapon, Vancouver
2. Jarvis Cocker, Pitchfork Festival, Chicago
3. Jonathan Richman, Vancouver
4. The Blakes, San Francisco
5. The Decemberists and Barack Obama, Portland
Five pieces of random culture that have re-entered my sphere of influence this year
1. The Thrills' So Much For The City
2. Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde
3. The Wombats' Let's Dance to Joy Division
4. Pavement's Brighten the Corners
5. Superchunk
Five other things that are rattling my dags
1. Songsmith
2. Physics raps
3. XKCD
4. The New York Times Crossword on Sundays
5. Entourage
more detail to follow...because I won't rest until this is at least 10,000 words
Live reviews and unrelated nonsense about bands you probably wouldn't want to see anyway.
The AYIS Nowcast
Things that AYIS would rather partake in than mop his floor this week.
1. The Deadliest Catch on Discovery I have no idea why watching crab fishermen is so compelling, but the tension of waiting to see if the pots contain any crab normally sees me punching the air when they come up full.
Sometimes, thinking about the LHC makes me feel all squidgy inside.
3. The Thrill's "So Much For The City" This record is what summer sounds like. A loving homage to west coast sunshine and unrequited love from a bunch of Irishmen.
4. "Pete And The Pirates" "Sometimes I can't see your face/It makes me sad." 'nuff said. I just wish someone would import their LP...
5. The new Silver Jews record. Although at the moment I listen to track 3, "Suffering Jukebox" over and over again, so I can't comment with authority on the rest of the record. But that song along could be the best Silver Jews song since Tennessee.
