Category Archives: Listening

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.

We had this series at Sty­lus Mag­a­zine called “On Sec­ond Thought” and I’m por­ing over the archives tonight. Wish I could right­ly say how many bands I dis­missed sim­ply because Pitch­fork hyped them to the moon. Have you real­ly ever lis­tened to that band called Black Kids? You have?! Wild…

When that col­umn was­n’t ded­i­cat­ed to some mad­ness, like ele­vat­ing some sec­ond rate album to cult sta­tus, it was real­ly good. Right now I’m draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from that spir­it of re-dis­cov­ery and lis­ten­ing to Ted Leo with fresh ears. I only ever saw him play once and that was at teen­sy tiny Brown­ies on the LES. It was so loud I could­n’t prop­er­ly hear for a good three days. Went with friends who were wild for him. I was­n’t feel­ing it. Bought Tyran­ny of Dis­tance, lis­tened to it a few times and felt like it was too poppy.

It’s fun­ny how will­ing you are to lis­ten to stuff like Wolf Eyes and Burzum before you have a kid who’s bounc­ing off the walls and your atten­tion span flies out the win­dow. Now I crave thought­ful pop like nev­er before. Ted Leo’s sud­den­ly right in my wheel­house. Does­n’t hurt that the guy is one of the most good-natured indie rock guys out there, hav­ing fun with his brand of celebri­ty in videos like the one he did for “Bot­tled in Cork” above.

Lov­ing this album. Feel like J. Mas­cis’ voice has always cap­tured that spir­it of not real­ly try­ing, which was the apoth­e­o­sis of all things good in the ’90s. Along those lines, I’m catch­ing up with Wild Flag, too. ’90s nos­tal­gia real­ly has trans­formed into some­thing else entire­ly, has­n’t it?

Real­ly like the new Moun­tain Goats, too. You can lis­ten to that one here. What’s become of me?

An aside: I blame “Port­landia” and Com­e­dy Death Ray for my new­found appre­ci­a­tion of Aimee Mann. Helen was way ahead of me on this one. The lat­ter show is also respon­si­ble for my renewed appre­ci­a­tion of Ted Leo, even though the “Bru­tal­ist Bricks” was qui­et­ly one of my favorite records last year.

Kurt Vile and Cold Cave are ear­ly win­ners, too.

Feel like this is as good a time as any to men­tion that the ex.fm Chrome exten­sion final­ly has me lis­ten­ing to music tum­blrs. Maybe that whole “blog j” thing Gerd Leon­hard men­tioned ages ago was­n’t as sil­ly as I thought.

Not only was V/A — Casu­al Vic­tim Pile Vol 1 one of my favorite records last year, I just ponied up and bought Vol. 2! You can snag copies of both LPs for just $20. Val­ue, people!

(Con­fi­den­tial to Mr. Cosloy: please don’t let this series die. I will be so sad.)