Transition, self reflection, found percussion.

"Transgender Dysphoria Blues" has been eagerly anticipated for a while now, because of the backstory: lead singer Laura Jane Grace (formerly Tom Gabel) came out as transgender in 2012, and this was to be the first album since that revelation. So many questions: would her voice sound different? (Nope. Still freakin' unreal and focused.) Would the band's sound be different? (Yep. Stripped down, more punk, less produced.) It still carries a strong pop sensibility, but lyrically, it's more emotionally-charged and brutally honest than ever before.



One listen to "Eighteen Hours of Static" by Big Ups, and you might feel like you're in high school again—in the best, bright-eyed-and-idealistic-school-kid kind of way. Because Big Ups is punk with socially-conscious lyrics designed to make you feel things about stuff. And with their pitch-perfect, ultra-earnest delivery, it's hard not to. In their slower, more subdued moments, like the beginning of the track "Wool," they call to mind Fugazi, but they often switch gears and tempos mid-song, quickly careening off into frenzied distortion.

Here's the deal with Willis Earl Beal (that entire preceding phrase needs to be a book title someday): this guy started out in Chicago, attracting attention and an audience by posting flyers. FLYERS. On his album "Nobody Knows," he pairs his evocative baritone voice with a songwriting style that calls to mind "Bone-Machine"-era Tom Waits in its eccentricity. Though he sometimes performs with Cat Powers, as good as she is, she seems to detract from the main event. Beal's lyrics are shockingly (and refreshingly) frank, and his recurring theme of disconnection is something that's very relevant. This is experimental music with soul.

The first song I heard from the latest Cass McCombs album, "Big Wheel and Others," is a track called, "There Can Only Be One"—a sweet, bouncey, Dylan-esque love song with a bass line carrying the melody. And I'm sure glad I didn't stop there: McCombs is a skilled storyteller, and a master of using traditionally country guitar effects in a modern way. It's an ambitious album, both for the artist and for the listener, at 85 minutes long. But this is one that grows on you, and reveals itself over time in subtle and surprising ways.

Friends, fathers, jagbags.

Imagine you're a new father, but even more than that—more than keeping another human being alive—you're also a singer-songwriter. Imagine you record an album's worth of demos at your kitchen table, singing and playing in hushed tones because shoosh, you'll wake the baby. Imagine that someone deems your songs worthy of an actual album release. Imagine the warehouse that's storing your stock of CDs burns to the ground. That's the story behind the original 2009 recording entitled "Bad Debt" by Hiss Golden Messenger (guy's actual name: M.C. Taylor), now finally seeing the wide release it deserves. It's uncomplicated, intimate and lovely.

When "Scenario" by A Tribe Called Quest came out in 1992, I was bowled over by then-new Busta Rhymes. "Who IS this guy?" I remember thinking. I mean, Q-Tip's got the husky, boyish sound on lock—his voice is already so stand-out—and along comes another equally unique, Chuck-D-level voice? It felt too good to be true. And now, with the release of "The Abstract and the Dragon," a retrospective of the Busta/Q-Tip rhyme relationship with some new tracks to boot, it's an embarrassment of riches. Much of this is their legendary collabs, but the new stuff—like "God Lives Through," an old track with new verses thrown on it—is just as good.

Here's the thing to know about the writing of Stephen Malkmus, whether with Pavement or his current band, the Jicks: it's mad Easter-eggy. You'll find plenty of surprises and delightful references if you look, and you won't have to look hard. On his latest, "Wig Out at Jagbags," it takes many forms. On the track "J Smoov," for instance, a sad trumpet plays what can be best referred to as the "nanny nanny boo boo song." This is what has always gotten me about Mr. Malkmus—he's able to throw so many jokes at you that you can barely keep up, and yet you find yourself marveling at how gorgeous and heart-string-pulling the guitar chord structures are.

Taryn Miller is an up-and-coming songwriter in the LFK (Lawrence, Kansas—can't imagine what that F is about). She goes by the name Your Friend and has a singular-sounding voice that's lilting, melancholy, clear as a bell...Bon-Iver-esque in the best possible ways. She pairs it with reverbed-out guitar and manages to get a lovely, much larger sound than your average solo performer. I definitely dig the effect of all that reverb on her voice, but I'm excited to hear what else she has to offer, because hers sounds like a voice that would sound great completely devoid of effects.

An aside: Elliott Smith.

While the intent of this blog is to feature new (and new-to-me) music that I like and recommend, I'd also love the opportunity to talk about the influence that a single artist has had on my life, at a very visceral level.

Most people know how it ended for Elliott Smith. He stabbed himself in the heart, or at least that's what's believed to be true, even though it sounds unbelievable. Another theory is that his girlfriend murdered him, but given his own history of suicidal tendencies, that seems less likely.

There are a lot of male singers whom I've loved dearly who have taken their own lives. Nick Drake. Jeff Buckley. Mark Linkous. And while I still get wrecked thinking about those particular musicians and all that potential squandered, with Elliott Smith, it's different. It's like he was a friend, because he kind of was.

I was late to his music, and when I finally took my friend Al's advice that yes, this was a person worth listening to and yes, it might be depressing and quiet but just do it anyway, I found myself starting out with XO—an album that's the perfect midpoint in his career between his lo-fi beginnings and his over-produced, overly-orchestrated later years.

I was in a crap relationship. The kind that's doomed from the start, where you're together for all the wrong reasons for way too long, the kind where all your friends are like, "Really?" But they don't say anything, even though they probably should. The kind where you don't act like yourself, which should be Clue Numero Uno that you are not, how you say, meant to be. The super-fighty kind. Being generally non-confrontational,  this left me in a constant state of discomfort and second-guessing. Not, "Why is this guy a dick?" but, "What's wrong with me that this guy doesn't love the heck out of me?"

There was a day when I was driving down to Said Ill-Fitting Boyfriend's house, and "Waltz #1" came on. And it stayed on, for about an hour, on repeat. Somehow, I'd started the drive to his house, and the song came on, and suddenly I was just bawling. Just driving and bawling and talking to myself. And making u-turns. I'd drive toward his place, I'd make a u-turn, like, "Fuck that guy." I'd drive away, I'd make another u-turn, like, "Stop being dramatic." The song would end, I'd hit the back button and restart it. Like I was looking for an answer.

With the music you love, you always make it about you. And right then, and for the four-ish years surrounding then, Elliott Smith was writing for me. Those words, and the way he set them perfectly to almost-whispered vocals and lush guitars, well...he might've written it, but it was about me. So basically, we were tight. And because we were tight, I figured, who better to look to for an answer?

"Every time the day darkens down and goes away
pictures open in my head of me and you.
Silent and cliche, all the things we did and didn't say,
covered up by what we did and didn't do.
Going through
every out I used to cop to make the repetition stop...
What was I supposed to say?

Now I never leave my zone, we're both alone
I'm going home
I wish I'd never seen your face."

Not many lyrics, but "Waltz #1" didn't need many lyrics. It said what it needed to say, lyrically and musically. And in doing so, it was the benchmark for bad relationships in my twenties. I figured that if any relationship was bad enough that it felt like this song, then I knew: must abort. Leave immediately. Or not so immediately, but dammit, eventually. Grow a pair and leave.

Many eventuallys later, I drove to that guy's house and dumped him. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm certain—like in about a billion ways certain—that we're both better off. And I wish I could thank Elliott, but you know.

2013: The Year in (Music) Review

The top 12 albums of 2013, according to me. (Sorry. Couldn't stop at 10.)

12. Joanna Gruesome, "Weird Sister." While their name is a riff on the very different Joanna Newsom, their music has nothing to do with her, and though the name's jokey, the music's not.  What I love about them is the way they seamlessly alternate between super catchy melody lines sung in ear-pleasing octaves and cacophonous guitar shredfests. Favorite tracks include "Sugarcrush" and "Secret Surprise."

11. Vampire Weekend,  "Modern Vampires of the City." Hooky (without being trite) melodies, clever lyrics and thoughtful instrumentation makes this album instantly accessible yet something you'll keep with you for the long haul. Favorite tracks are "Step" and "Ya Hey."

10. Run The Jewels, "Run The Jewels." This is Killer Mike and El-P, putting their heads (and rap styles) together to great effect. The rhyme schemes are ambitious, their individual voices are powerful and memorable, but the thing that really makes it are the backing tracks by El-P. In a year full of solid hip-hop releases—notably Danny Brown and Pusha T—this one still manages to stand alone. Favorite track: "Sea Legs."

9. Fuck Buttons, "Slow Focus." This duo out of Bristol, England creates instrumental, electronic music that burns slowly but hotly. Repeated phrases with gradually building layers make for a meditative experience, though that's not to say it's relaxing by any means. I personally like to listen to this album while running, because you can really lose yourself in it. Favorite track: "The Red Wing."

8.  Savages, "Silence Yourself." This band's instrumental tightness is apparent from the get-go—they lock in on the opening track of this album and never relent. Singer Jehnny Beth, in contrast, sounds like her massive vibrato could easily throw her off the rails at any moment. Favorite track: "She Will."

7. Janelle Monae, "The Electric Lady." To me, this album has the cohesiveness, the emotional power, the range and the next-level funkiness of Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions." What it has that "Innervisions" doesn't is an over-arching conceptual hook—this album is the third in her "Metropolis" series in which she plays the role of fugitive android Cindi Mayweather. Favorite tracks are "Giving Em What They Love" and "Dance Apocalyptic."

6. M.I.A., "Matangi." A guilty pleasure, I realize. This album was way delayed because of label concerns over its overt positivity (which, I guess, feels "off-brand" for M.I.A.), but the final result felt no less bad-assy. Favorite tracks are "Bad Girls" (which was released well in advance of the album) and "Bring the Noise."

5. My Bloody Valentine, "mbv." After a lengthy (22-year!) hiatus, My Bloody Valentine pulled a Beyoncé (or, rather, Beyoncé pulled a them) by (a) releasing a surprise album, (b) limiting where you can find it (their website, yes, but iTunes and Spotify, no), and (c) charging an unheard-of-in-2013 price of $16 for it. It's every penny and more: gorgeous, expansive and wonderfully fuzzed-out. Favorite track: "only tomorrow."

4. Radiator Hospital, "Something Wild." Man, this guy's voice. It's exciting to hear a male-fronted band with a singer (Sam Cook-Parrott) who's actually concerned with the business of singing well. The songs on "Something Wild" range from power pop to pared-down ballad. In Sam's words, "I spend a lot of my time trying to escape. Into comics, records, movies. New worlds full of magic and wonder. The record is a tribute to those worlds. Favorite track: "Our Song."

3. Mutual Benefit, "Love's Crushing Diamond." Just plain lovely. While mostly centered around the efforts of songwriter/lead singer Jordan Lee, it's also about who else he brings to the table. The string section. Back-up singers. Guitarists. Hand drums. Random wind chimes. It feels very DIY, but in the best possible way. And refreshingly enough, it's so dang hopeful, in an authentic way. Favorite track: "Advanced Falconry."

2. Swearin', "Surfing Strange." After their first LP, I thought I had Swearin's number. Turns out, they had much more up their sleeves, including another singer. They alluded to some propensity for down-tempo, moodier stuff on their first album, but here, they embrace it. Doesn't mean there aren't rockers, though. Favorite tracks are "Dust In The Gold Sack" and "Echo Locate."

1. Speedy Ortiz, "Major Arcana." This album hits on all levels. Musically, it's amazingly not-straightforward—its guitar work surprises at every turn. Lyrically, it's full of just the right specifics, and in this department, it's certainly all killer/no filler. Vocally, it's got massive range—Sadie Dupuis can sound shaky and vulnerable or belty and self-assured. And overall, it's got the confidence of a much more well-established band. My favorite track is "No Below"—an ode for troubled middle-schoolers if there ever was one. As a Pavement fan, I've always enjoyed that band's more earnest numbers—sure, the clever stuff's dynamite, but in the rare instance when Malkmus' tongue wasn't so firmly planted in his cheek, he created some truly poignant stuff. And now Speedy Ortiz—who, incidentally, are also Pavement obsessed—bring the best of that tradition of 90s slacker rock to bear in the 2010s. And aren't we lucky that they do.

Thanks for reading and listening along in 2013.
*Cat

Church, sin, deals with the devil.

New favorite band alert: Hop Along is from Philly. Their sound is, jeez, indie-folk-rock-ish? (Like everything else I tend to love.) But listen, guys: this woman's voice. It is unreal. It shouldn't exist. It is definitely made-up by some magician somewhere, because there's no reverb bolstering it and no auto-tune in sight. And it also has a massively-unhealthy-sounding growl in it that seems unsustainable, vocally speaking. Which means: listen to her now. I really don't know how long her deal with the no-vocal-chord-nodes devil will last, but I'm not taking any chances.



Before you get annoyed by the spelling of "Chvrches," think of the internet search annoyance caused by searching for a band spelled "Churches." Now that that's out of the way, Chvrches is a trio from Glasgow that boasts a hugely 80s-derivative vibe and a lead singer with an effortless soprano school-girl sound, singing lyrics that are nowhere near juvenile. Hers is a hard sound to pull off live, and yet, clips from their late-night talk show rounds show that she's up to the task. And there are synths—not as part of a larger band, but exclusively, which makes this an album 80s babies will relate to on almost a cellular level, without even knowing why.

So Beyoncé basically just owned the world last week. She released a surprise album last Thursday, and even though the Billboard Top 200 tallies sales from Monday to Sunday, she topped that shiz easily by selling in excess of 600,000 copies in THREE DAYS. Disclaimer: it's way explicit. So if you're not into that, move along, but realize that in doing so you're missing an album that's epic in the for-real definition of the word. And honestly, seeing her go as far as she does is kind of awesome. Why shouldn't she be allowed to own that? What's not getting as much press: how impressive her lower vocal range is, and how vulnerable some of the lyrics are. It's massively hyped, for a reason. Just listen.

Run the Jewels is Killer Mike plus El P, two great hip hop artists in their own right. Bring them together and you unlock a next-level flow, as they themselves acknowledge on the first (and title) track: "Oh shit, what the hell have we done? /It's alive and it's hungry as fuck/Better hide all the snacks and the dough/It is out of my control, you are shit out of luck." And this pretty much sets the tone: you've got some standard-issue MC braggery, but because it's Killer Mike and El P, it's smart as hell and the rhyme schemes are intense. And thanks for El P, the beats bang and the bass booms.

Screaming, whispering, heavy breathing.

You may remember Death Grips from this video, which admittedly, is kind of funny. I mean, why is he in a car? What-goes-what-goes-what-goes-what-goes-what-goes-what-goes-what? These guys are like no one else, and their latest effort, "Government Plates," continues the mayhem with a higher level of production quality.  There are drum machines, way-distorted basslines, breaking glass, laser-beam-like synths, with some screaming mixed in. There are also f-bombs aplenty. It's jarring and unsettling, and that's the point. (And PS, it's a free download, available through the Third Worlds label.)

If you read my last post, you heard all about the awesome fury of Titus Andronicus. Discovering those dudes led me down a rabbit hole, which led directly to Andrew Cedermark, their former guitarist. His brand of lo-fi confessional indie rock is a whole lot more mellow than Titus Andronicus but equally emotionally charged. On "Heaps of Trash," one of my favorite tracks from this album, his songwriting takes surprising turns, at times sounding a little like southern rock and, at others, like something much more pared-down and quiet, all the while moving through unexpected chord progressions and somehow making it all make sense.

"Feast of Love" from Pity Sex is a fantastic album that is, in most ways, kind of a bummer. The vocals, which switch off between male and female (Brennan Greaves and Bitty Drake) are way down in the mix, competing with fuzzed-out guitars and 90s-cliche drum fills. The lyrics, when you can make them out, tell of love made and lost, and get their point across in a surprisingly succinct yet visceral way. It's a little like listening to the retelling of a one-night-stand, from meet-up to hook-up to walk of shame.

Slacker rock, contrary to its name, is hard to pull off, because sounding effortless actually takes effort. (I know. Weird.) The artists that have succeeded in this arena—Beck and Pavement, most notably—are not, how you say, frontin'. They legitimately  have actual chops. And likewise, Parquet Courts might sound kind of lo-fi and de-tuned, and their lyrics might be kind of silly, but behind the silliness is smarts and a strong pop sensibility. One of the highlights here, "Stoned and Starving," feels almost like we have Velvet Underground back in our mist, putting you in a very particular places and state of mind the way Lou could always do.

Nihilistic, harmonic, apocalyptic.

The new Swearin' album is out. (Insert bleepity bleepin' joke here.) "Surfing Strange" is less speed, more shoe-gaze splendor than their last album. Plus, they've added a new voice for a grand total of three vocalists (what are they, Fleetwood Mac?). Bassist Keith Spencer takes the mic for the first time, with admittedly mixed results. ("Glare of the Sun": awesome. "Melanoma": meh.) Swearin' seems to be garnering some criticism for taking their sound in a more down-tempo direction. To me, it seems like solid growth and evolution for a band who was great to begin with.

We must discuss Janelle Monae. First, she's originally from Kansas City, Kansas. (Affectionately known as KCK out in these parts.) Secondly, her trademark suits are an homage to the uniforms worn by the blue-collar family members who raised her. Third, girl can DANCE. This probably shouldn't come into play on a music blog, but having just seen her live, I feel the need to mention it. And we haven't even discussed her droid obsession. Lastly, have you heard her sing? Because hot damn! (In retrospect, this really should be firstly.) This here is a living legend—on par with Prince (a personal champion of hers) and Stevie Wonder ("Electric Lady" is very reminiscent of "Inner Visions" in its range and its downright funkiness). If you miss her, you will regret it.

"OK, I think by now we've established/ that everything is inherently worthless/ then there's nothing in the universe/ with any kind of objective purpose..." So begins "Local Business" from Jersey-based Titus Andronicus, an album of raw emotion with lyrics that are intensely confessional and, at times, hard to hear. Lead singer Patrick Stickles suffers from an eating disorder, a theme he candidly discusses here. As shades of Joe Strummer fade into nods to Black Flag, you'll get the sense that you're listening to a band who, while lyrically confessing to not believing in anything, is obviously of a mind that music can change the world. At least on a local level.

Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr has a name that might make you want to throw something, either because it looks like a typo or because, you know...hipsters. And perhaps you've avoided them up till now solely based upon the "double jr." (I did, until I received a recommendation.) But people: please listen to "The Speed of Things." It's a bit Beach-Boys-ish in its sweet Hubba-Bubba-esque melodies, while the synths remind me of the Postal Service. Yet the whole arrangement, while incredibly accessible, is also pretty complex upon closer inspection. And the harmonies are something I think even crazy old Brian Wilson would smile about.