Lost MP3 of the Week: The Dismemberment Plan, “The First Anniversary of Your Last Phone Call”
Friday, July 4th, 2008 by Taylor Long
Fourth of July is, without a doubt, my favorite holiday. Firstly, because it’s not religiously affiliated. Secondly, because it generally involves some combination of the following three items: fire, grilling meat and alcohol. All in the name of patriotism. I’m not sure how our fourth of July traditions evolved to include these potentially disastrous things together, but I’m thankful they did.
However, there are few songs that connect with the holiday for me. Sure, there are all the patriotic anthems if you want to get stereotypical. There’s really only one song that reminds me of a particular fourth of July.
While I was still summering at home on the West Coast, it was something of tradition to go out to the cabin of some family friends on Harstine Island, which is in Puget Sound. It’s right on the water, so it cools off at night, and it’s far from any big cities, so it gets really dark. Because it’s so quiet and woodsy, everyone is shooing off fireworks. You can stand on the shore and be surrounded by bright, colorful lights in every direction — including an Indian reservation. They always delivered. Big time.
I was more or less left to my own thoughts at these holidays, and often I’d clear my mind of everything associated with my life in the cities, my life in New York, my life in Seattle, and just spend hours using as many senses as possible. Watching the water roll in waves, skimming my hand on top of soft, pointed blades of grass, listening to the sounds of voices from far away, smelling the musk of the forest and the smoke of barbecues in the air… the taste of alcohol. (more…)
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Their fifth studio album finds My Morning Jacket attempting to fulfill their urge to not be evilly defined solely by one genre. They’ve banked on the same aesthetic for awhile: change is not only expected by this juncture, it’s generally welcomed.
For equitable purposes, it’s probably best to mentally separate Wolf Parade from their debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Not because it’s too good and they’ll never top it, and not because it’s bad: simply because Wolf Parade is quite a different band in 2008 than they were in 2005.
Comprised of material from their earliest singles, everything from Wooden Shjips’ Volume 1 was actually written before the material on their self-titled release from last year. Unfortunately, it shows.
Death Cab for Cutie isn’t the only band who threw fans off with an unusual single this year. Go ahead and add Sigur Ros to that list. When they released “Gobbledigook,” the single from Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, everyone was quick to point out how much it sounds like Animal Collective. And in a way, it does sound like Animal Collective: a more controlled, restrained Animal Collective. It’s upbeat and perky, two words which could almost never be used to describe anything the band did in the past. So was this it? Had they really changed their sound so drastically? The answer, unsurprisingly, is “sort of.”
For a band like Radiohead, making a “best of” is almost like a slap in the face. Limiting their consistently impressive catalog to a handful of songs completely out of context isn’t to their benefit. But these kinds of compilations have become an industry standard as an easy way for record labels to make cash, so it was only a matter of time until it happened to Radiohead, too.
The French Kicks have presented the same problem to music journalists for a third time in a row. How do you write about music that’s unremarkable but pleasant in a way that people will want to read it?
Listening to The In Crowd, the sophomore effort from Chicagoan rap duo Kidz in the Hall, is a lot like putting your R&B and rap collection on shuffle. Showing more versatility than on their debut, Double-0 and Naledge tackle an assortment of new styles, from dance and R&B to commercial rap, to old school hip-hop to trip-hop.
As we approach summer, I find myself somewhat unimpressed by 2008 as a new release year. Granted, the second half of the year is almost always stronger than the first, and 2007 was no exception. But 2008’s best releases, so far, don’t feel quite as important as last year’s.
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