Ramsayings

Here’s something I scribbled about @TheRealYLT back in 2007. It’s still so true. Need more proof? Fine. Check out these clips of a reunited Pussy Galoredazzling the crowd at Maxwell’s last week. Let’s not forget the fact that Yo La Tengo are still playing their standard 8 night Hanukkah run while Ira recovers from an undisclosed illness. Since I couldn’t make it to any of their shows this week, I’m listening to everything Yo La Tengo on Spotify. Unsurprisingly, it’s perfect for this week.

These guys are seriously the greatest, most generous act in indie rock and I can’t help but think people still take them for granted, because, well, they do.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t link over to Jesse Jarnow’s online home, Frank & Earthy, for full setlists from these shows.)

This is how I used to feel about music 2.0. Now I’m more than willing to spend $10 a month to listen to whatever I like, give or take. I will say that the playlists feature is pretty great, especially now that I’m not a music editor who would’ve been tasked with assembling them. Tedious work, that. That said, I’m enjoying the Pitchfork Top 100 songs playlist right now. Point me toward good playlists and I will add them.

I’d love to see them add a bookmark feature so I could catalog titles I find as I surf around the web. Think Instapaper, but for music.

2011 was exceptionally quiet for me on the musical front. After keeping tabs loosely through the tail end of 2010, I left the music critic rat race altogether this year, barely bothering to see what even my favorite critics thought about music. Why? Well, it’s an ongoing trend that I disliked from the moment I started getting paid for writing about music: niche sensationalism. When I realized I couldn’t get worked up (or excited about) microgenres like “chillwave,” or that I didn’t feel an urgent desire to have a take on artists ranging from Gaga to Odd Future, I knew my days as a critic were numbered.

Sad to say, I don’t miss it. Yes, it was often fun to shout words of encouragement from the critical sidelines as real critics battled for primacy in online forums of all  kinds, but I had no real stake in it. I didn’t feel that participation was vital to my life in any way. It just seemed silly that adults were making these impassioned, intelligent arguments about artists whose impact was felt by a dwindling number of listeners. How guys like Tom Ewing find the time and energy to write such thoughtful pieces as this recent Poptimist column while balancing work and a young family amazes me. By the way, that piece I linked sums up my feelings on this phenomenon — Tom calls it “nanoculture” — far more eloquently that I can muster. But the sense of world-weariness that I felt when commiserating via chat with Maura and Chris was more than I could bear. There was no sense in pretending that I cared at all about the subject. It was simply time to go.

What did I actually listen to this year? Old stuff and lots of it. I now unashamedly listen to music that I’ve loved for a decade or more. It’s nice to return to old favorites. I’m loving what some of my old favorites are releasing now, too, another sign that the game has passed me by. When you find yourself enraptured with a new J. Mascis album in 2011, chances are you’re too hopelessly nostalgic to be relevant to any audience outside the Magnet Magazine set and that’s someone I never want to be. Befriending Mark made it clear that I simply didn’t have the stamina or endurance to be a critic in the age of Tumblr.

But you know what? The flipside of this is that “discovery,” a term that made me retch as a critic, is something I truly can enjoy now. When you’re not being bombarded by emails offering interviews and tickets to artists you’ve never heard of, it’s much easier to filter out all that noise and just enjoy reading about artists, sampling their music and making choices about what you want to hear. When the pressure of trying to hear everything melts away it’s nice to be selective and really immerse yourself in a recording. It breathes new life into the year end lists I’ve spent the better part of a decade ignoring. I find myself wanting to read about music again in a way I haven’t since blurbs in the margins of Newsweek first caught my attention 15 years ago. It’s exciting!

So tell me what I should check out in 2011? Did I miss anything? Still haven’t listened to that Odd Future record…

I know people have cooled on their steely grooves, but I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through 2002-2007 without steady doses of Spoon. Two songs in particular that galvanized my will when it was bent near the breaking point: “That’s the Way We Get By” and “The Underdog.”

Can’t listen to either of these tunes without being transported back in time. The former reminds me of a sweaty summer spent in Brooklyn, punching F5 on craigslist or interviewing for jobs for which I was but one of hundreds of applicants. I’d turn this all the way up as I sat on my futon, scraping by on adjunct lecturer’s wages and whatever was left on my student loans. The latter takes me to a better place: finally back on the job after nearly a year out of work. It was their brand new album at the time and I had a hard time believing that “The Underdog” wasn’t my personal anthem that summer.

A few years on and I keep finding myself coming back to these records. I can’t think of a band whose body of work has more closely fit my moods over more than a decade of fandom.

Stopped over at Sharkey’s place last night (welcome to the ‘hood, guy!) to pick up his new album under the Puerto Rico Flowers moniker, “7.” This is just what I needed right now. And I know lots of people play the Joy Division card here, but I think Marc Masters nailed it with the Depeche Mode nod. And I can’t be the only one who thinks this could go very PiL if the mood struck, right?

Also, can I just say how hard it is for me to get out of the house now that I’m a dad? Hats off to Sharkey and his family for knocking out actual art while raising a beautiful baby boy. Congrats!

Oh, how about a Neil Young cover for good measure. God, this is just such an amazing tune to cover.