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2006:04:30:14:43. Sunday. MUSIC IN 2005: TOP 25 ALBUMS. I finally got to the end of my podcast stockpile (and skipped going to a couple shows I'd thought about attending last weekend), so while you wait for Mike Doughty clips to arrive next week, how about I finally finish my best of 2005 write-up? I got an iPod last year, which means that almost all my music consumption was done using one form or another of the iTunes interface. This was a pretty big change from my previous primitive MP3 player, and it allowed me to start actually using the iTunes rating function. So for this year's list, I came up with a formula* based on the song-by-song ratings to see how well the quantitative results matched up with what I thought my favorite records were. It actually tracked pretty well, as you can see from the ratings below. * The final scores are out of 10, but it would be basically impossible to score that high -- every song on the album would have to get five stars.
2006:04:28:08:00. Friday. NO!: CENTRO-MATIC (#78, APR 9 2006).
I've gotten pretty lucky in my recording this year -- this is already my third favorite song from a favorite 2006 album I've happened to record. And as much as I love Jenny Lewis' "You Are What You Love" and Rainer Maria's "Life of Leisure," this might be the best song of the batch. The soft melancholy of this tune recalls both the recent vintage indie tones of bands like Matt Pond PA and the early Warner days of R.E.M.; if you squint, you can kind of hear Michael Stipe singing, "You can't touch the feeling of our hurricane hearts." This is the song that really launches Fort Recovery, and toward the end of the set it's a song that can make an annoying crowd or an extra-dark stage just disappear. Pure awesome.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:26:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: CENTRO-MATIC (#77, APR 9 2006).
The King Club turned out to be kind of a weird venue for this show. First of all, there's a disco ball and crazy stage lights going the whole time, which is kind of odd in a club that's about 10 feet wide. When the first band up, Goat Radio, took the stage, there were maybe 15 people in there and most of the lights were on. Their sound fit the headliners well, but the next band, Toronto's Great Lakes Swimmers, were a surprising choice. Their folky, acoustic-y ballads -- played in near-complete darkness -- wowed some of the crowd but put me to sleep. Sorry. It seemed to actually get darker when Centro-matic come out. Frontman Will Johnson's banter -- much of it about baseball on the cold weather from their last Madison show -- helped to bring the audience in through the darkness, but I was shocked to be able to get anything out of these clips. I'm going to another King Club show this Friday, so we'll see if that's just how shows are there or if it was particular to Centro-matic's stage presence.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:24:08:00. Monday. NO!: CENTRO-MATIC (#76, APR 9 2006).
I had no idea what to expect from this show. I'd never been to the King Club before and I'm a recent convert to Centro-matic, a band which turns out to be much more well established than I'd realized. Not only have they been around and prolifically recording for much longer than I knew, they seem to have a dedicated fanbase made up primarily of former frat boys who need that southern rock twang to enjoy what is, essentially, emo. My theory goes like this -- Centro-matic : Cracker :: Braid : Pixies. Reasonable? Maybe? The reason I bring SAT-style analogies into this is that there were no fewer than three of these former frat guys standing adjacent to me who had to constantly bite their lower lips and close their eyes so that they could really get into it. One of them said, "Oh, YEAH," as every song began; another said it as every song concluded. I don't want to make too much more of them, because it kind of undercuts my own enjoyment of the band, but it just seemed like the only outlet they had for, you know, really feelin' it, man.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:23:19:20. Sunday. THE BIRDS AND THE... BIRDS. Zöe and Reggie have a nest under a bookshelf, where they have eggs and stuff. That's not a big shock -- they're both cockatiels. But now, Franny and Dinner have a nest. If you haven't followed the bird posts in the past, this is Dinner:
Dinner is a parakeet. This is Franny:
Franny is a green-cheeked conure three times Dinner's size. And yet, we walked into the birds' room today and found Dinner humping her and her going crazy. A little while later she was back in her nest. So... yeah.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:21:08:00. Friday. NO!: METRIC (#75, APR 12 2006).
The thing I forgot about Metric before the show was how damn long their songs tend to be. This was the first show at which I filled up my entire memory stick -- it cut off just a few seconds before this song actually ended. If only they'd played the amazing "IOU," which precedes this song on Old World Underground, I'd've had plenty of free MB's to spare. (By the way, it was National High Five Day yesterday -- did you do your part?)
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:20:08:00. Thursday. NO!: METRIC (#74, APR 12 2006).
It would be easy to tire of Metric if not for songs like this. They have probably four or five really great songs in their catalog, and this one might be the best. At any rate, it's the one that I've perceiving as the most important -- I included it on my best of 2005 compilation, it'll be on the 2006 DVD and they played it on Late Night a couple months ago. This performance fits the song perfectly. It's both frantic and manic, subdued at times and lost in outsized anger in others. As a piece of social commentary, it's less harsh and pointed than "IOU," the best song from their first LP, but it's just right (and coming at just the right time) to break into the mainstream consciousness. I just hope some programming directors out there are listening.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:19:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: METRIC (#73, APR 12 2006).
Like the Nada Surf show, the Metric show produced noticeably distorted bass on my recordings, and this clip is probably the worst of the bunch. I don't know if the Annex has a new sound guy this year or what -- none of my pre-2006 stuff from there sounds like this. I think it's more of a problem with relatively soft songs like this one that get laid over prominent bass lines. Of course, the much more interesting thing about this clip is that singer Emily Haines took time out before it to talk about Madison's apparent reputation as a werewolf town. No, really. She's been hearing this from everybody while on tour -- Madison has a werewolf. I don't think she was joking either, as she seemed genuinely stunned that no one in the audience knew what she was talking about.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:18:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: METRIC (#72, APR 12 2006).
The first thing I noticed about this show: Metric's t-shirts, none of which were very eye-catching, were $25. The second thing: The opening band they'd brought along from Toronto, playing their first American show, was awful. The third thing: Metric really is a Big Band, and ought to be playing the kinds of venues where $25 t-shirts and lame openers that are friends with the headliners are the norm. Their music may or may not be enough to make that happen in America, as it already has in Canada. They have a handful of transcendent tracks, but the album cuts like this one don't seem to be what the American pop audience is necessarily looking for. It'll be a delicate balance of songwriting for them to keep growing in the States, but as far as the live show goes, they start strong and stay strong.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:17:08:00. Monday. NO!: THE ELECTED (#71, APR 12 2006).
If Motion City Soundtrack was my most highly anticipated show of the year thus far, Metric was by far and away Emily's. She's completely nuts for those guys. She likes Rilo Kiley, too, so you'd think that an RK side-project opening for Metric would be a perfect setup. Not so much, though. After the first openers, From Fiction, ended their painfully bad set, the Elected came on and were kind of disappointing. I've found both their records to be kind of mediocre, but I thought it was maybe the kind of mediocre music that was impressive when heard live. Instead it was the kind that stayed mediocre no matter what. This was probably the best song of their set, one of their many 70's AM pop gold soundalikes. It's a little catchier than the rest, and a little less like a CSNY reunion.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:14:08:00. Friday. NO!: OK GO (#70, FEB 16 2006).
This was the song -- according to the geniuses at Crapitol Records -- that was supposed to make OK Go huge. Instead it peaked around the mid-30's on the modern rock charts and their first album fizzled. But it's such a great, anthemic tune, and an important part of their live act. What's clear from this performance is that they don't just do a club-sized piss-take of a big rock show -- they really do a big rock show, but for power-pop nerds. Their first album reminded me a lot of Elvis Costello, but their follow-up and general evolution smacks more of Cheap Trick now. They're a treat to see in person, and not just for the dance routines that have gotten them some minor mainstream success, albeit novelty success. They're top-quality showmen doing terrific music, and I hope they swing back through Madison this year.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:13:08:00. Thursday. NO!: OK GO (#69, FEB 16 2006).
I'm writing this blurb in the middle of the night, so I'll keep this short. OK Go seemed very at-home on the big stage, even though their set had to be redesigned from the club tours they're used to. I'll get into what this means for their dance routines tomorrow, but suffice it to say that they are ready for prime-time, even if prime-time's not ready for them.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:11:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK (#68, FEB 16 2006).
Ever since I first got hold of a copy of Commit This to Memory -- my #1 record of 2005 if I ever finish my write-up, which I swear will be soon -- I'd been anxious to see the new songs performed live. Part of it was that there were spots in both of the first two tracks that just begged for big crowd clap-alongs. They just seemed to have been designed out of the same rave-up mold as songs like "The Future Freaks Me Out" and "My Favorite Accident." But, oddly, when the weird keyboard guy stepped to the front of the stage to get the crowd going, it was never during those songs. There were a couple other moments from the new material, but the explosions I was waiting for in "Attractive Today" and "Everything Is Alright" just weren't there. So now I'm wondering if I just hear these songs differently than everybody else or what. Either way, I still find myself clapping along when it's not too conspicuous.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:10:08:00. Monday. NO!: MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK (#67, FEB 16 2006).
I usually run all the clips from one show in chronological order but in this case I'm posting the headliner before the opener to put all the clips in context. The day we drove over to Milwaukee for the Motion City Soundtrack/OK Go show, there was a blizzard and a half and we briefly considered not going and just eating the cost of the tickets. Instead we decided to leave early, take it slow and see what happened. We got there just fine, though it took forever, and were kind of surprised to see that the show was packed despite the weather. Even weirder, they were having some kind of marathon high school rock band extravaganza in the Rave Bar before and during the main show. For the first opening act, the Spill Canvas, we went up to the balcony to wait it out and see if there were any decent spots up there. The band had this weirdly active cell of fans down in the middle of the floor, but I found them as insufferable as all those Fall Out Boy/My Chemical Romance clones that somehow manage to be less compelling than their influences. The balcony was really too crowded to be any good anyway, so we kind of wandered around and checked out the merch before moving into the main crowd for the next set. Luckily, the second scheduled opener, Plain White T's, were nowhere to be found, and it was straight on to OK Go. We got to a place where Emily could see reasonably well, and usually I wouldn't ask her to go into a pack of tall people like that. The reason I did was this Motion City Soundtrack song. I've seen them twice, but only in the small campus venues in Madison. What I wanted was to see the big Rave crowd go completely insane for this song -- mayhem and chaos with a camera in the middle. It's a little hard to tell quite what's going on in most of this clip, which is a lot like how you feel when this song comes on.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:09:13:41. Sunday. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES (AND GAINED). I've been missing shows left and right lately. I missed both the Gossip and Smoking Popes last week so that I could get two papers submitted to the AEJMC conference (deadline April 1 at 11:00 PM) and missed the Appleseed Cast on Thursday so I could go to Wisconsin's national semifinal in the college hockey tournament. But they wound up winning the championship on Saturday, and getting into AEJ means a free trip to San Francisco in August, so I suppose it's not all bad. And anyway, in the next two weeks I'm seeing Centro-metic, Metric and the Elected, and possibly the Crystal Skulls and Shiny Toy Guns, which I guess is enough.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:07:08:00. Friday. NO!: RAINER MARIA (#66, MAR 24 2006).
For right now at least, this is by far my favorite song on Catastrophe. It gives the band, and particularly singer Caithlin de Marrais, a chance to really display their musicianship and the growing they've done in the last few years. Unfortunately, they got sabotaged by the crappy sound equipment in Club 770 -- about a minute and a half into the song, the vocals cut out, and it was neither the first nor the last time that would happen. They stopped, regrouped and dove back in without missing a beat, so to speak, but is it really too much to ask that Club 770 (and the Memorial Union, for that matter) have some decent hardware and mixing expertise on hand?
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:06:08:00. Thursday. NO!: RAINER MARIA (#65, MAR 24 2006).
During the opening sets, the stage lights were unusually bright for Club 770. If you've seen some of my other clips from there (particularly Of Montreal and Divide By Zero) you might have noticed the dark red cast that is ever-present in them. For MadisonFest, the lights were on, bright and full-spectrum, which was too much for Rainer Maria. They spent a few minutes at the top of their set finding out that Club 770's light don't really "dim," per se, they just go on or off or turned in a different direction. They ultimately found a solution that worked to a) not blind them, b) allow their drummer to see what he was doing, and c) not have them in full upstage darkness. Kyle Fischer wound up almost completely unlit, unfortunately, but I think I tweaked the clips enough that you can still kind of see him.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:05:15:39. Wednesday. FINALLY! Well, it's been a long three years, but the troops are finally coming home. The policy-making power of 24,000 Madisonians has done what Scott Ritter, Joe Wilson, Pope Jizzy Pizzy, the Democratic Congressional Caucus and tens of millions of protesters couldn't -- forced the Bush Administration to end its long-term treasure hunt in the Middle East. Wait, that's not the case? So the non-binding resolution to bring the troops home that attracted a whopping 15% of Madison voters yesterday has no binding effect? Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? I voted yes on the referendum yesterday, but I steadfastly refused to sign petitions for it last year when people were trying to get it on the ballot. Why? Because a 69/31 win for this referendum, in Madison, was a foregone conclusion. It tells no one anything that they didn't already know. How much time, money and effort went into this whole thing? How much of that could've been spent on candidates who could've actually effected policy change? "Winning" this resolution carries with it no benefit. Losing would've been disastrous (frankly, I think winning with only 69% is pretty close). How much did all those lawn signs cost? All the lit drops? How much more beneficial would Democratic control of the 110th Congress be?
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:05:08:00. NO!: RAINER MARIA (#64, MAR 24 2006).
There are a handful of songs on Catastrophe Keeps Us Together that are especially good and a bunch more that haven't clicked with me yet; this is one of the terrific ones. Most of the crowd didn't seem to have downloaded the leaked album, but many got into this song and the other new ones. Guitarist Kyle Fischer took advantage of the reaction to show off for the crowd, slinging his axe around his back in what turned out to be a darkened corner of the stage, and Caithlin de Marrais made the most of her yet-again improved voice to really belt this one out. The last (and only previous) time I saw them they were much more distant, but at this show they really had something organic going.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:04:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: RAINER MARIA (#63, MAR 24 2006).
"Artificial Light" was probably the first Rainer Maria song I ever heard, after some browsing at the All Music Guide led me to download A Better Version of Me, maybe the last great record of the genre that we used to call "emo." I was glad to hear it at this show -- and, indeed, a fairly wide selection of earlier material. They played a couple from Version, a few from Long Knives Drawn and at least two from their late 90s output (no "Planetary," though). The nice surprise was that the crowd of mostly mall-hipster undergrads seemed genuinely into it and knowledgeable about the band. Somebody called out for "Breakfast of Champions" at one point and a number of people were dancing and singing along. These kids are easy to make fun of for the most part, but they know how to be a good audience.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2006:04:03:08:00. Monday. NO!: RAINER MARIA (#62, MAR 24 2006).
The marquee attraction of MadisonFest -- and a pretty good "get" for free event like this one -- was Rainer Maria, formerly of Madison themselves but currently trying to make it big in New York. They've been hard at work on their fifth full-length for about three years and it hits stores tomorrow. The songs are a little cleaner and the songs less pock-marked than their older material; some of it is great, some is not. This song feels like an ambition that didn't quite get all the way done; it's different for them but not quite a fully working Big Piece Of Guitar Pop. It's more successful in a live setting, especially as an early-in-the-set energy-builder.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
Motion City Soundtrack / Commit This to Memory
