GUEST: Chris's Top 15 Albums of the Decade

Hello internet, hi hello konnichiwa.  So Carrington asked me to do this best albums of the 00s list under the assumption that I have good taste in music, and I’m kind of worried that it may not reflect such an assumption in practice.  It’s going to include the stuff I liked the most over the course of the decade, weighed on some subjective sliding scale balancing how much I liked it at the time and how much I like it now.  Also, before you start reading, you should know that this list will not contain any Radiohead.  I just never got into Radiohead.  Sorry.

Oh, and I hope this doesn’t look too much like the Pitchfork list.

Alright, let’s get into it: 

15)  Silversun Pickups – Carnavas

Usually I care a lot about a rock band’s lyrics.  After a few listens I can sing along with most of the album.  Not so much at times with Silversun Pickups, maybe because they don’t always make a lot of sense, but it’s actually not a problem at all.  They get the atmospheric rock thing down very well, and the basslines and hooks are tight enough to just groove along with even without the vocals.  And I actually think it’s pretty clever when they do the minute-long outro in “Dream at Tempo 119” only to burst back in with another verse beginning with “I couldn’t end it there.”  I need a little more time to really evaluate this one, I think, but it’s definitely quite a solid rock album if you’re into that kind of thing.

14)  The Blood Brothers – Burn, Piano Island, Burn

In all honesty, I would probably hate these guys if I hadn’t seen them live before hearing the record.  Whatever freaky nightmare world Piano Island is located in is probably home to a lot of the kids that shop at Hot Topic, and the back-and-forth vocals kind of sound like all those Hot Topic kids screeching in unison.  But it’s somehow really catchy.  I don’t know what the word for it is.  Raw, maybe?  Yeah, let’s go with raw.  They also have a song that I’m fairly certain is loosely based on one of my favorite short stories (“The Salesman Denver Max,” based on Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”), so props for that.

13)  Minus The Bear – Highly Refined Pirates

Minus The Bear’s kind of a one-trick pony, but that’s not such a bad thing if it’s a good trick.  Guitarist Dave Knudsen’s two-hand tapping guitar technique really drives the band, and I think his skills are best displayed on Highly Refined Pirates, an album about racing yachts and bumming around in Paris and various other key elements of living the good life.   They’re not popular in many circles for basically coming off as a bunch of frat douches, which might not be too far from the truth, but what can I say?  I dig the aesthetic they’re workin’ on.

12)  Junior Senior – Hey Hey My My Yo Yo

So a skinny straight guy and a fat gay guy walk into a bar in Denmark.  Then a funk band comes from somewhere and they all ROCK YOUR DAMN FACE OFF.  Yeah, look, I know it’s not smart music or anything with lines like “Hello darlin’/pardon my French/we been lookin for a guy with a monkey wrench/Talkin’ trash/into a can/onto a record/and then you can dance.”  But sometimes you just gotta dance, right?

11)  Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala

I wonder what they put in the water in Scandinavia to make everyone so happy despite the gross weather.  There’s a weird unbridled joy in most of Jens Lekman’s music, replete with sweeping harps and jazzy basslines and goofy barbershop quartet backup vocals, even when he’s singing ostensibly sad songs like “I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You” and “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This).”  Dude carries a certain naiveté about him that’s kind of disarming and pretty great to listen to.  Can’t wait to see what the Swedish boy wonder does next.

10)  Junior Boys – Last Exit

I actually feel pretty weird about putting this so high on the list, but it really is an amazing album.  It’s atmospheric without being boring, occasionally danceable, and always has a mysterious and sort of ethereal quality to it.  It’s perfect night driving music.  My favorite electronic album of the past 10 years for sure.  Why didn’t these guys get in the UPS commercials instead of the Postal Service?  Don’t you realize you’re just giving publicity to the competition???

9)   Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – The Tyranny of Distance

Ted Leo is pretty much what every musician should try to be, I think.  Consistently excellent live shows, pretty frequent album releases, and on top of his game when it comes to the issues.  Dude’s a consummate professional.  And he did a Halloween show as Glenn Danzig, playing only Misfits/Danzig songs and not breaking character the entire time.  Seriously, how do you not love that?  Anyway, it’s hard to pick a favorite between this and Hearts of Oak for this spot, but I have to give Tyranny the edge because I think the guitar work is just a little more interesting.  One of the few legit guitar masters in indie rock, that Ted Leo.

On a semi-related note, there’s something that’s always bugged me about the Pitchfork review of the Ted Leo album Shake the Sheets, which did not make this list.  The reviewer says, “You find yourself strangely aggravated by Leo's characteristic punk-scat; especially unforgivable is a Jacko-like "shebooyah" in "Walking to Do".  Aoyama and Shibuya are places in Japan and I’m 98% certain that is what Ted Leo is talking about in this particular song.  EARN YOURSELF SOME GEOGRAPHY, PFM.

8)   Cursive - Domestica

Screeching, discordant guitars and much wailing and gnashing of teeth about a relationship that apparently involved a lot of screeching, discord, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.  David Byrne once said that the worse someone sings, the easier it is to believe what they’re saying, so it’s pretty easy to take Tim Kasher seriously on this album as he’s tears apart the power dynamics and other foundations of, well, everyone’s relationships, I guess.  I sometimes feel a little ripped off by albums that are only 9 tracks long, but I think it works here.  Spending any more time with Sweetie and Pretty Baby would be too much.  Maybe that’s where they went wrong in the first place.

Fun story, Kasher was incredibly drunk while performing one particular Cat’s Cradle show and referred to The Blood Brothers (the openers that night) as “The Blood Buddies.”  This is still hilarious to me.

7)   Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV

Alright, so maybe this is a little shameful, but just shut up about it okay?  I just really dig any band who will shamelessly bust out riffs that sound completely stolen from Rush or Iron Maiden, and Coheed delivers these in spades!  I think this is probably my favorite album of theirs because Claudio Sanchez finally learned to stop sounding like a girl at all times and the big Willing Well series at the end is a pretty epic little chunk of proggy goodness culminating in some kind of bizarre steel guitar-fueled hoedown.  I could really give a shit about the associated sci-fi comic books and all that, I’m just in it for the movie trailer-approved catchy faux-metal riff bonanza.  And if that’s not good enough for you well you can just KISS MY GRITS, SALLY.

6)   The Wrens – The Meadowlands

When you have that first big high school/college breakup, this is the kind of album you need to have on hand to help you wallow in your misery.  In that respect, I guess it’s kind of like a modern-day Pet Sounds, except with fewer harmonies.  Aside from the couple songs about touring with your band, the whole album is just a big parade of misery and bitterness that somehow never becomes overbearing.  Additionally 13 Months in 6 Minutes may be the saddest song ever written.  There’s so much helplessness and despair and disappointment contained in that song that it’s really just impossible for me not to listen to it multiple times, secretly hoping that our narrator hero will figure something out the second time through.  About a minute from the end, there’s a big crescendo that changes the whole mood of the song, and it’s just enough to give you a little hope that he’s sprinting to the airport to stop his dream girl from getting on the plane after saying goodbye for what he knows will be the last time.  He never does, but you get the sense he’s come to terms with it.  Yeah, maybe it’s not romantic, but it’s real at least.

5)   Andre Nickatina – Conversation with a Devil

This is my favorite hip hop album of all time.  Almost certainly not the best, but my favorite.  In case you are not familiar with Mr. Nickatina, well, don’t feel too bad because I still am not either.  He’s a San Francisco Bay Area rapper who makes a ton of records and a lot of them aren’t all that well-made.  He might be big in San Francisco, but I’m not even clear on that.  But Conversation with a Devil, man… there’s just something about it.  It’s like rooting for the ragtag group of misfits in Mighty Ducks or something. 

The album is apparently the soundtrack to a movie he made that’s kind of a Scarface knockoff, and it kinda follows the general plot of: guy sells a lot of drugs and has a pretty sweet time doing it, gets set up by his friend and goes to jail, does some time and gets out of the drug game.  It seems to me the album conveys the point better than the movie would, though.  Andre Nickatina doesn’t really have a powerful rap voice, but somehow it fits with his lyrical style, which is somehow braggadocios but still down to earth.  The beats are unusually melodic, perfectly produced, and have instrumentation ranging from minimal, fuzzy bass to acoustic guitar arpeggios to bagpipes.  It’s unlike any hip hop record I’ve heard before or since.  And by the end of the record, you feel like you know this guy—just an everyday dude telling his story.  I mean, look at that album art.  You think Jay-Z would even put that on one of his mixtapes?

4)   Jon Brion – Meaningless

Jon Brion is mostly known for being a producer and for scoring Charlie Kaufman films and I Heart Huckabees these days, but this is about as close to a perfect pop album as you’re gonna find.  It’s funny, catchy, and has a little bit of that ol’ emotional resonance to boot.  “Walking Through Walls” also has the absolute most cheerful way to say “motherfucker” in recent memory.  I that contend you could play it on the radio – who could be offended?  Some PopMatters reviewer named David Medsker called this the Album of the Decade back when it came out in 2001.  Turns out he might be right.

3)   The Mountain Goats – We Shall All Be Healed

I’m one of those people who always liked John Darnielle better with a band and decent production value instead of a 4-track recorder droning away in the background.  If you are also one of these people, this is the album for you!  Cotton and Palmcorder Yajna are two of my all-time favorite lyrical songs, but there really isn’t a weak one on the whole album.  It’s kind of weird to see The Mountain Goats live and watch John cheerfully recount his days as a junkie in his Mitch-Hedberg-on-Ecstacy banter style before playing any of these songs, but I think that’s part of the charm of it maybe.  The guy can make you smile as he’s making you feel about the stickpins in the cotton that he left in the top drawer.  Poor little fellers.

BONUS FUN FACT:  I once tried to write a short story based on the song Against Pollution, about a liquor store clerk who shoots a would-be robber in the face, but eventually decided against it because I felt like I didn’t know enough about liquor stores or shooting people in the face.

2)   The Avalanches – Since I Left You 
There are some albums that you should really only listen to straight through, and I think this TOE-TAPPIN’, HEAD BOBBIN’ CLASSIC is one of them.  I have a hard time separating the tracks from one another in my head (aside from Frontier Psychiatrist, which is really a monster unto itself), and I think that’s the real strength of The Avalanches – so many little disparate parts combine to form a thing so cohesive you can’t even tell where one track ends and another begins.  If you’ve never heard their Australian Breezeblock mixes, do yourself a favor and check those out—it’s the best we have until they decide to put out another proper album. 

1)      Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica

My freshman and sophomore years of high school, I was really into pop punk.  The Ataris, The Vandals, all that stuff.  I forgot where I actually heard of Modest Mouse in the first place, but this album was the catalyst for my interest in the broader “indie rock” genre and is really responsible for a lot of my musical taste from 2001 onward.  So like, 95% of the rest of the stuff on this list.  When all you’ve been exposed to musically is Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Loggins, and the Warped Tour crowd, a song like The Stars Are Projectors is pretty mindblowing.  Nearly ten years later, and it’s still just as good.  Which is to say, really, really, really good.

It's the End of the World as We Know It (...or is it?)

      It’s odd to have spent nearly 10 years within the confines of a ‘decade’ and still not know what to call it.  The ‘aughts,’ the ‘naughties,’ the ‘2000s,’ et cetera have all proven to be ill-fitting monikers for a period that has kicked off a new century and a new millennium. It’s strange that no nickname has caught on considering how modern media outlets have become so adept at naming things that within hours a label can become wholly inextricable from the original event (see ‘Balloon Boy’). Perhaps we are just living in completely indefinable times.  Well, whatever you want to call January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009, one thing I know for sure is that it is almost over.  While this period has provided some majorly negative events (September 11, 2001, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the recession, etc.), it hasn’t been all bad.  All told, it’s been a pretty interesting time to have gone through high school, college, and the beginnings of my post-graduate life, thanks in large part to the internet explosion (not sure how the universe could have existed before Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, College Humor, et al.)

     Seeing as the change from 2k9 to 2k10 will be sort of a momentous occasion, it seems to be an appropriate time to quantify and qualify some of what happened in these last 10 years.   I figure there is no better way to make sense of it all than to do countdowns of some of things that helped define the decade. (The Rolling Stones and Pitchforks of the world should not have a monopoly on the list-making business, after all).  Starting later today (hopefully), and intermittently thereafter, I will post lists about this decade’s best music and (ideally) other things from friends and myself.  At this time of year when everything seems to be moving at a dizzying pace, it’s important to slow down and reflect for a minute about what has been going on while you’ve been busy updating your Facebook status. So, please enjoy.

holidaze (premature)

in case you haven't noticed, the 'holiday season' is upon us (at least according to wal-mart commercials, store displays, etc). though it has become somewhat needlessly protracted, i do really like this time of year. for this reason, i have been having an ongoing debate on the merits of various holidays.

one of my favorite websites, the online etymology dictionary, notes that the term 'holiday' quite obviously came from the old english words for 'holy' and 'day.' by the 14th century it meant both a 'religious festival' and 'day of recreation,' but its meaning had diverged even further from its origins by the 16th century.

today, i'm not exactly sure what 'holiday' really means. a day off work? a day to be with family? a day to 'get crunk'? there is a day for seemingly everything at this point, which begs the question, can every day really be a holiday? part of what i like about major holidays is that they are infrequent and break up the normal routine in some way, so i'm not so convinced.

some days, purportedly 'legit' holidays, are puzzling to me; rubber duckie day (january 13), middle name pride day (march 12), and national two different colored shoes day (may 3) all sound pretty awesome, but i don't really know much about what or why i would be celebrating. i mean, just this week, we will have to cram in homemade bread day (november 17), married to a scorpio day (not applicable, but november 18), and world toilet day (wtf, november 19). too much for me to handle right now. (btw, this website is a good source of random holidays if you are interested).

in spite of this confusion, i decided to make a list of my 10 favorite holidays of all time. a forewarning: these choices have obviously been influenced by my american and christian upbringing, so your favorite holiday may not be listed. apologies.

10. valentine's day: i literally like this day only because there is an off chance i will eat candy from a heart-shaped box/receive a card from my mother with $20 inside.

9. st. patrick's day: i haven't done much in the way of celebrating this day, but i like ireland and i like the color green. i also find the concept of putting food coloring in beer to be very intriguing.

8. groundhog day: who doesn't love a large, sagacious rodent who provides weather forecasts?

7. memorial day: the unofficial start of summer pretty much unfailingly equates to seashores, sunshine, and relaxation, and with those elements, i can take no issue.

6. easter: we still have easter egg hunts every year, and the easter bunny still leaves reese's cups, a yo-yo, and the occasional new pair of flip flops in my yellow easter basket. so that's good. this holiday also gets points for signaling the start of spring.

5. 4th of july/my birthday: not really the same day, but close enough for this list. this day was pretty lame to me when i was younger because everyone was out of town, meaning i had to throw bday parties in may or june (once in april), but now i realize it is pretty chill to combine national holiday/birthday celebrations if you plan correctly. as a lover of both fireworks and attention, i find the beginning of july to be particularly exciting.

4. thanksgiving: i like the way peoples' homes smell at thanksgiving, namely of delicious food being cooked. i also like any day that includes the opportunity to over-eat comforting food, watch football, nap, then over-eat leftovers.

3. new years: usually debaucherous, occasionally celebrated in interesting locales, always a good time. there's a great deal of anticipation and it's a nice time to get together with old friends. and as may be apparent already, i like counting backwards from 10.

2. halloween: this holiday has changed a great deal from my 'dressing-as-batman-and-knocking-on-neighbors'-doors-and-hoping-to-get-a-regular-sized-(and-not-fun-sized)-snicker-bar' days, but it's still a great excuse to dress up, hang with friends, decorate a house in cobwebs, and dance to 'thriller.'

1. christmas: kind of an obvious choice, i know. much different than any other holiday, christmas for my family is reduced to a clockwork ritual from about 3:00 pm christmas eve until 11:00 pm christmas day, and i wouldn't change any of it. great food (holla at a chick-fil-a party tray), great drinks (brandy alexanders), great company (lots of cousins), and tons of decorations up in the house. plus there's 'a christmas story' on tv, the smell of a live tree in my living room, and of course, presents. in spite of having 'a kenny g christmas' playing on repeat from sun up to sun down, it really is the best day of the year.

2009 troika festival, or a lengthy explanation of why i was in downtown durham

from an early age, i was fascinated and puzzled by the concept of place. i really liked looking at maps and finding out what tibet and iceland looked like in my world book encyclopedias (pre-wikipedia source of random information). when i finally started to travel myself, i was constantly trying to evaluate what made maine or france different from my backward corner of eastern north carolina.

place was not something I readily related to music, though, until sometime later. i likely connected bluegrass-type music with my own state, but it took me a while to wrap my head around the idea of a ‘scene’ defining a location musically. as someone who grew up in the shadow of the 1990s, seattle comes to mind as an example of a ‘scene’ that spawned bands that had a ‘sound,’ but this concept has likely been around as long as music itself. one can imagine how cavemen in one area influenced each other to clap rocks together in similar ways so that each tribe was its own ‘scene’ with a unique ‘sound’ of prehistoric ‘rock’…

i really grew to appreciate north carolina music when i got into ben folds five, and then superchunk, archers of loaf, and polvo. since then, i’ve realized what a fertile ground this state has been for all kinds of music—especially in the triangle. the sound can range from gentle folk to hip hop that makes me want to take my shirt off and twist it round my head like a helicopter, which is pretty cool.

with all this in mind, i stepped into the chilly november air at durham central park (really a covered space near downtown used as the farmers market) to see the start of the 2009 troika festival, a three-night music showcase of mostly local bands at venues all over durham.

the first act to perform on the outdoor stage was the beast, a group who quite capably meld hip hop, jazz, and apparently latin sounds. i must say, I missed most of their set, but i did hear the song featured on the recent “hear here” compilation, “my people,” and a song about going to puerto rico in which the gathered audience was asked to sing in spanish (i declined the invitation). the group had a captivating energy and they seem worthy of being checked out, especially considering the awesome rhyme i picked out of one song that involved r.l. stine and goosebumps.

after the beast finished, the crowd moved in closer to the stage to hear the grizzled harmonies of megafaun. i have trouble describing their sound adequately; they are kind of folky, kind of 70s throwback rock, very much americana (whatever that means). the band are extremely entertaining live—they provided witty banter about borrowed amps, the city of rochester, minnesota, the kansas city chiefs, and they were very gracious and very supportive of the local music scene. their set included “lazy suicide” and “the fade,” two excellent cuts, alongside some other hand-clappin’ jaunty numbers. audience participation was again encouraged, and this time i obliged the request. as i stood there clapping my fingerless target gloves and providing off-key vocals under my breath, i felt a sort of swelling of pride (or was it the chicken wings i had just eaten?) for the triangle music scene. it is so very much unlike what i imagine the magical, musical land of brooklyn is like when i close my eyes at night. and then, at that moment, i realized that was a very good thing.

after megafaun closed out with everyone in attendance belting out in unison, my friend and I made the short trek through the bull city to the durham performing arts center (the absurdly dubbed ‘D-PAC’). it is a fancy, new facility with a column of light out front that shoots straight up into outer space. we flashed our orange arm bands and passed through a blood red tunnel into one of the nicest theater spaces i’ve seen. it was quite massive. the set-up of this show was pretty strange: the bands were “backstage,” more or less to the side of the stage, and the audience stood on the stage facing them. they had a couple bars and a merch table set up there too. there was a decent-sized crowd there, but not nearly as large as i had expected.

the first band we saw, which we unfortunately missed most of, was humble tripe. i had not heard of them beforehand, but i definitely want to learn more. the last song they performed was especially impressive. the singer/guitarist has some gnarly pipes, which grew in force as the song progressed. my friend compared it to a neutral milk hotel song, which was fitting considering the presence of a trumpet and a pretty gut-wrenching vocal delivery. but yeah, that’s pretty much all i gathered.

next were the future kings of nowhere, about whom i had heard a lot, but had never seen live. they are a well-oiled machine. the music is pretty jumpy and driven by the acoustic guitar of the lead singer. i really liked the way he intonated his voice, highlighting the self-referential and often humorous lyrics. they reminded me at times of bright eyes or tom waits. overall, the FKON were an entertaining lot, a solid, confident band i wouldn’t mind seeing again.

the headliners for the evening were bowerbirds, who apparently have just arrived back in the states from europe. the first thing i noticed was that the singer’s voice was amazing; then I realized everyone in the band could also sing. like megafaun, they seem to function best when harmonizing the pants off a song. their music is very delicate, very listenable, and very musically engaging. the accordion, occasional organ, and violin add a great depth to their sound. all this being said, the mood in most of their songs is so similar and the melodies are so slight, that after a while, i felt like things were dragging a bit. don’t get me wrong, what I was hearing was beautiful; excellent harmonies and very poignant lyrics, mostly dealing with nature. but aside from standouts “in our talons” and “northern lights,” the songs are neither particularly catchy nor memorable. however, i don’t think the band’s primary goal is to create foot stomping excitement, so ill take it as it is.

night two of troika brought me to the trotter building on foster street. i have no idea what this building is normally used for, but it had ads for yoga lessons, nice big windows with a view of downtown, and a decent-sized open floor space, though not the best acoustics, which was really okay since the subtleties of sound were not really as vital to the bands on night two as the previous one.

the huguenots played first. i’ve seen them once before and i think they’re an enjoyable band. they all wear ties and seem to be really into what they’re doing, which always helps. they remind me of an early 1960s band, expect a bit louder and more rocking. it was a late-arriving crowd, so unfortunately, most folks missed them.

brett harris followed, accompanied by four other guys. the sound was very MOR, poppy, just the right amount of volume. i don’t recall a great deal else, though i remember thinking they’d be a fantastic band to have at a party.

the band i really came to see was the legendary hammer no more the fingers. they easily had the largest following, which included fans that sang single every word out loud and clapped at exactly the right moments. to me, all the HNMTF material is really fantastic, especially tunes like “the visitor,” “shutterbug,” and “radiation.” they are an exciting band live, mixing emotive shouts with memorable guitar riffs and compelling melodies. they craft really strong, bouncy tunes that you can sing along to, nod your head, and even pump your fist every once in a while—pretty much all i ask of a rock band.

the next band was actually from atlanta, so i don’t know if i should say much about them. gentleman jesse and his men play a type of rock that is reminiscent of that band from the movie “that thing you do,” but a bit more ragged around the edges. they had a ton of energy and put on a good show.

i have to admit i was too tired to stick around for the last act (which is acceptable if you are in your mid-twenties, i think). but I felt I had gotten my money’s worth anyway. overall, the 9 acts I saw at the festival were all pretty amazing—some extremely talented musicians all doing really interesting, creative stuff. there isn’t an act i saw that i wouldn’t see again.

despite the fact that the triangle is a pretty large metropolitan area—one of the fastest growing in the country—there is something about it that is much less urban than a lot of the places similar to it in population numbers. that characteristic comes through in the music, which often appears fixated on the pastoral, on the banjo, on good honest rock music, and on the small-town community feeling of having grandma, a 3-year-old, and a college hipster all clapping hands to the same song. whether or not anyone else in the music world cares, the triangle has some great bands making exciting music. so i guess if everyone has to be from some place, i’m definitely fine calling the triangle home.

young hearts spark fire

what are sundays good for? other than sleeping in, lazing around the house and nursing self-inflicted wounds from the night before, it’s hard to say. my sundays never get started before they wilt again into a type of eerie stillness that doesn't seem to exist on other nights. i guess the world is just hiding and waiting for another week to jump out from behind a bush and pummel them.

it was 9:47 p.m. before i realized other people may actually show up to see real estate and japandroids at local 506 this past sunday night. folks cautiously trickled in out of the foreign cold and stood wingspans apart in the uneasy dark. no one really said anything. i sat by the wall, swirling my beer, obsessively checking my phone for new text messages. when real estate finally took the stage, the slight crowd that had gathered inched forward but stopped about 10 feet from the band. everyone is wary on sundays.

from the first note, real estate were (and this is not gushing) everything i'd hoped they'd be. i'd been collecting their splashy tunes dispersed across the internet since the beginning of the year, but i really didn't have any frame of reference on them, except that they were from new jersey and were seemingly fixated on the seaside. the good thing about seeing bands who haven't been around the block for years and years is that when you see them live, you are pretty certain to hear the vast majority of their canon. real estate, graciously, played among others, 'green river,' 'suburban beverage,' 'fake blues,' and 'beach comber' (which may or may not be my favorite song of this year). every song resolved itself like i remembered, but they all (unsurprisingly) felt heavier and more expansive live.

though much has been made of real estate and their ‘beach aesthetic,’ the more i thought about it that night, the more i realized they reminded me of something more complicated-- i didn’t see myself sitting out by the water, skin burning from the sun, feet burning from the sand. the music feels more like the act of looking at faded pictures of yourself at the beach when you were younger—questionable swimwear fashion, sandbuckets, ambivalent smiles drawn out from summer living. these kinds of pictures may be more perfect than reality, but they feel depressing because they are either not entirely true or too distant to be verified. with all this in mind, i realized real estate seem to be a better winter band than summer one—they make the music of grasping toward lost warmth. it is the fleeting feeling of heat and glistening sunlight on water somewhere back in your head and not in front of your eyes that i get from their shimmery guitars and wistful vocals. it is a louder dreamlike version of false memories of sand and surf conveyed through a sound that's distinct and hauntingly familiar. perhaps i need to visit atlantic city.

on that cold night, likely the coolest we’ve had in central north carolina in the second half of 2009, another band (that somehow also reminds me of warmth) took the stage and rocked out to exact extent necessary for a late sunday evening. japandroids are from vancouver and mostly play loud, energetic songs about girls and love and stuff like that. this band’s songs remind me of spring rather than summer, how you get that nervous bouncy glow inside about the sun and the flowers coming back after a long, cold winter. japandroids (there are but two of them) pack the stage with various shapes and sizes of amps, a drum kit, and a fan (which is a good idea since the guitarist, brian, thrashes about a lot while he plays). the songs are built on propulsion, reverb, and some nice drum work, but they all have just enough melody to keep you interested and wanting to sing (shout) along. unfortunately, the set was a little short, likely on account of the fact that brian started losing his voice midway through. nevertheless, they played all the hits-- 'heart sweats,' 'the boys are leaving town,' 'young hearts spark fire,' etc. towards the end, a few people actually began to nod their heads a little. then it was over. i threw my empty high life into the bin and made my way back to a deader than dead franklin street.

there is probably no help for sundays. monday will always be there staring over your shoulder, gnashing its teeth. the world will still be huddled inside watching football or counting down the hours until work starts again. i guess in spite of that, it’s good to venture out and try to put your mind somewhere else (idealized forms of the beach, memories of springtime butterflies, etc.), if only for a little while.

real estate: www.myspace.com/letsrockthebeach (their self-titled LP is set to come out november 17, so you should definitely try to pick it up)

japandroids: http://www.myspace.com/japandroids (their first LP ‘post-nothing’ came out a couple months ago, so get it)