A Year in Review: My Favorite Albums of 2018 (Part 3)

This is the third and final part in a series exploring my favorite new albums of this year. If you follow the hyperlinks, you can read Part 1 and Part 2. Without further ado...

The Light is Leaving Us All - Current 93
Bandcamp
DJ John Peel famously described The Fall as "always different, always the same." I think the same, largely, could be said for Current 93. The undercurrent of England's Hidden Reverse flows through group leader David Tibet's lyricism and composition, as does the looming spectre of apocalypse, sometimes in the shape of black ships eating the sky and sometimes in the shape of giant Noddy dolls crucified over London. In later years, Tibet's lessons (mean to type lyrics there, but I'll leave it) have predominantly dealt with and been drawn from early Hellinistic apocalypse literature (though it's still easy to see the influence of William Blake here, too -- the rose was sick, and things are only worse). This album is the hypnotic high-point of this point in his career. Indeed, it's one of Current 93's best albums and their best album-length piece of output since 2006's magnum opus Black Ships Ate The Sky. Behind Tibet's singing/recitation (which is more repetitive than in past albums, a perfect choice for this album) is great accompaniment from one of my favorite lineups of Current 93 yet, including, among others, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), Ossian Brown (Coil, Cyclobe), Andrew Liles (Nurse With Wound), and Michael J. York (Coil). England's Hidden Reverse has been rather quiet over recent years, with Coil fully inactive since the death of Peter Christopherson in 2010 and Nurse With Wound attending to the auditory operating table less and less. It's good to see the stream still bubbling furiously in this, the latest dispatch from the incomparable Current 93.
Favorite Tracks: "The Birds Are Sweetly Singing," "The Policeman Is Dead," "The Postman is Singing"

Songs of Love and Horror - Will Oldham
Spotify
Things have been pretty quiet from the erstwhile Palace Brother over the past few years. The rushing stream of releases has slowed to a trickle since his marriage and the last few releases (Best Troubadour and Wolf of the Cosmos) have been covers albums. This one continues that trend, but, here, the artist being covered is Oldham himself (under his Palace and Bonnie "Prince" Billy monikers). This isn't the first time he's done this (Bonnie "Prince" Billy's country-fried Sings Greatest Palace Music takes a totally different approach to, in a number of cases, the same material), and this album proves just as essential as the earlier one. Here, though, there's something of a fragile, quiet reckoning with mortality while Oldham picks and sings songs from over half a lifetime ago, like "Ohio River Boat Song." I'd love to hear an album of totally new material, but, when you can revisit your back catalog and find something new in each of the 12 songs delivered (well, 11 and an outtake), I'll gladly take what I'm given.
Favorite Tracks: "I See A Darkness," "Ohio River Boat Song," "New Partner"

Throne - Heather Leigh
Spotify
Somehow, Heather Leigh manages to maintain the adventurous and unexpected nature of her earlier improvisational work on this, 2018's best pop album. And, despite what it sounds, despite lyrics that range from the extreme oversharing of "Prelude to Goddess" to the "What exactly happened in that garage?" of "Lena," this is a pop album. But it 's a pop album that shows how far you can go, both lyrically and musically, and still operate within the realm of pop. I listened to this for weeks on end when it came out, and I'm still surprised by it. I still can't get enough of it. It repays in measures, especially 16-minute album centerpiece "Gold Teeth." And somehow I made it this far without mentioning that the album is almost entirely pedal steel (somehow both the most overused and most underrated instrument in American music), with some bass assistance from Leigh's husband, David Keenan, one of the greatest writers working today. If you're a fan of pop music, experimental music, or are drawn to phrases like "cracked Appalachia," check this one out.
Favorite Tracks: "Prelude to Goddess," "Lena," "Gold Teeth"

Suspiria - Thom Yorke
Spotify
The horror releases of 2018 (e.g., Hereditary, Ghost Stories, Mandy) make it easy to make a case for this year as the greatest year for horror since the 1970s. The crown jewel of this year's releases is Luca Guadgnino's reimagining of Dario Argento's Suspiria, and Thom Yorke's score for the film will certainly go down in history as one of the all-time great horror scores. But it's more than that -- It's the most vibrant, interesting work Yorke has put out since Radiohead's decade-old masterpiece, In Rainbows. Moving between quiet, hypnotic piano balladry ("Suspirium"), kraut/prog-rock score cues ("Has Ended" sounds like something Pink Floyd would've contributed to the Obscured By Clouds soundtrack had they been listening to enough Can), and culminating in the 14-minute vocal ambience of "A Choir of One," Yorke's score provides a perfect backdrop for Guadgnino's 70s Berlin. Like the greatest of scores, though, the album doesn't need the film to land successfully. Indeed, it was just as gripping of a listen before seeing the movie as after, and I find myself returning to it regularly. This one will definitely stand the test of time.
Favorite Tracks: "Suspirium," "Has Ended," "Volk"

This Is My Dinner - Sun Kil Moon
Spotify
I already talked about this album's genesis as a European travelogue in my write-up of Mark Kozelek's recent gig in Chico. Rather than reiterate that here, I'll point you towards that review and talk about the elements of the album that I didn't get to cover there -- in particular, the strong, memorable second disc. The disc starts with "David Cassidy," Mark's paean to the recently deceased Cassidy (as well as AC/DC's Malcolm Young). It's obviously from the lyrics that the lyrics were written to be delivered live, but, amidst the encouragements for the crowd to cheer for the late Cassidy, are some incredibly heartfelt lyrics about how David Cassidy and The Partridge Family (along with AC/DC, Glenn Tipton, KK Downing, etc.) changed Mark's life. The next two tracks are covers. First up is a pretty joyous run-through of The Partridge Family's "Come On, Get Happy." Next is Kozelek's third recorded cover of AC/DC's "Rock 'n' Roll Singer," and I think it's his best one yet. Again, it's clear that Mark is singing in the studio as if he were still on-stage. (I find myself wondering throughout how This Is My Dinner would've been received as a true live album. Some of Neil Young's greatest songs first appeared in live versions -- Why not the same with the Koz?) Rounding out the second disc are the finale, a reading from John Connolly's "He," and the penultimate track (and my album favorite), "Soap for Joyful Hands." It's the best song ever written about washing your socks with hotel soap, and, as usual, it's about an awful lot more. Mark intends to release at least two albums in 2019, and his 2018 output has made me incredibly eager for those to come out. Thankfully, the first comes in March, which is just around the corner.
Favorite Tracks: "This Is My Dinner," "David Cassidy," "Come On Get Happy," "Soap for Joyful Hands"

Mogic - Hen Ogledd
Spotify
This is the latest from Richard Dawson (check out last year's Peasant) and friends, and, although I haven't had the chance to spend a ton of time with it yet, it's on my mind a lot, and I think I'll be remembering it as one of the best of 2018 in years to come. The title (a combination of "Magic" and "Logic") sums up central themes of the album pretty well -- What place do magic, myth, & romance have in this cold, logical, rational age? Having only heard the album a few times, I don't know Hen Ogledd's answer yet, but tracks like "Sky Burial," "Problem Child," "First Date," and "Etheldreda" make me certain I'll continue returning until I know for sure. One part improvisational experimentation, one part freaky folk, one part classic pop songwriting, and one part driving rock, this one has something for most everyone.
Favorite Tracks: "Sky Burial," "Problem Child," "First Date," "Etheldreda"

Thanks for reading! If you've created a similar list yourself, please share it in the comments!

A Year in Review: My Favorite Albums of 2018 (Part 2)

With 2018 rapidly dwindling, I wanted to take a little time and wrap up the 2018 album recap I started last week. If you've seen that post, you already know I can be pretty long winded when talking about music, so, without any further introduction, I present you with more of my favorite albums of 2018.

Mark Kozelek - Mark Kozelek
Spotify
This is the first album of completely original material Kozelek has put out under his own name, although a number of Sun Kil Moon albums have only featured him and his guitar (and, indeed, Mark had said this album was going to be released under the SKM moniker until a couple of months before release). The lyrics on this one can be be described as stream-of-consciousness, but, rather than focusing on experiences on tour, this album focuses a bit more on Kozelek's life in San Francisco and the memories stirred during day-to-day life there (and other places he considers home, like New Orleans). Indeed, opening track "This Is My Town" is a hymn to how much Mark loves San Francisco. I spent quite a bit of time writing about tracks off of this album in my write-up of Mark's recent gig in Chico, so I'll point you there for further musings on the tracks. This album was recorded in San Francisco hotel rooms, largely with a 1960 Fender Jazzmaster guitar. The music is some of the most hypnotic of his career, and, as much as I love the lyrics and vocals, I'd gladly buy an instrumental version of this one. On album highlight "My Love for You is Undying," Mark sings "Though some may find my specifying agonizing and trying, long-winded and unsatisfying, others may find it hypnotizing, comforting, and inspiring, relatable and consoling." I'm definitely in the latter camp, and this one is definitely hypnotizing, comforting, inspiring, relatable, and consoling.
Favorite Tracks: "My Love for You is Undying," "666 Post," "I Cried During Wall Street"

Age Of - Oneohtrix Point Never
Spotify
Age Of  is the central part of Daniel Lopatin's MYRIAD story. The album is described as a four-part "epochal song cycle." I totally love this sort of thing, and I find Lopatin's concept fascinating. There's a great Fader article on it. But, even if the high concept thing isn't your bag (baby), there's a lot to love here. Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project has been putting out essential experimental electronic releases (check out Replicas and Garden of Delete) for over a decade. This album is still built around OPN's typical tropes (sampling, vintage synths), but, here, we learn that Lopatin is also a hell of a pop songwriter, as best evinced on the stunning "Babylon." Age Of paints a pretty dire picture of the state of things. Indeed, he seems to think we're getting towards the collapse part of the cultural cycle. However, it is still a cycle, and rebirth is promised on the other side. Regardless of whether such collapse happens (my money is on yes), this album makes for a good primer for understanding apocalypse.
Favorite Tracks: "Age Of," "Babylon," "The Station," "Black Snow"

Pastoral - Gazelle Twin
Bandcamp
By far the most political album on this list, Pastoral's opener, "Folly," kicks off with a nightmarish voice asking "What species is this? What century? What atmosphere?" From here, we immediately leap into the pulsing beat of "Better in My Day," with its repeated chants of "Just look at these kids now (no respect)," a song from written from the perspective of backwards-looking British citizens who clearly think the Golden Age has passed. What we get with Pastoral, one of my very favorites of the year (and certainly one of the creepiest on this list), is a folk horror reading of Brexit, where the exit of Great Britain from the European Union is read as summer icumen in. This is a fascinating song cycle, and, regardless of whether you agree with Gazelle Twin's Elizabeth Bernholz or not, it's worth engaging with fully. This is one to be heard on headphones without distractions. The album fades out (or, should I say, drops out) with a field recording of British folk staple "Over the Hills and Far Away," reminding you of the tradition that, behind all of the electronics and distortion, Gazelle Twin is operating from: that of the English using song to explore the most difficult aspects of being English.
Favorite Tracks: "Better In My Day," "Glory," "Tea Rooms," "Hobby Horse"

Everywhere at the End of Time (Stages 4 & 5) -The Caretaker
Bandcamp
Boy, this one would've been tough to write about back at Stage 1, and so much has happened since then. Back in the fall of 2016, Leyland Kirby informed the world that The Caretaker, the musical persona that Kirby has released his ballroom meditations on memory through since the late 90s, had been diagnosed with dementia and that his final project, Everywhere at the End of Time, would document his neurodegeneration. Truly, Stage 1 was some of the most pleasant listening of Kirby's career, but the knowledge of what was to come hung heavy over it. This project uses the 78rpm big band samples that The Caretaker has utilized through his entire career, but takes their ultimate distortion to fully unseen depths. In the first few stages, the pain was felt most acutely through the titles of the songs ("Things that are beautiful and transient," "A losing battle is raging," What does it matter how my heart breaks," "Last moments of pure recall," and "The way ahead feels lonely," a title that nearly reduces me to tears every time I read it). Before proceeding, it's worth letting you know that one of my best friends, my grandfather, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's shortly before these albums started being released. His situation isn't as dire as what The Caretaker describes, though, of course, that nasty word "yet" hangs like an atom bomb over this statement. For Stages 4 & 5, we've left the point where the pieces still have typical titles (& simple, short durations) and moved into long pieces composed of incredible, growing, jumbled distortion of the pieces that have grown familiar since the start of the project two years ago. Here, we've instead got stabbingly descriptive titles like "Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions," "Stage 4 Temporary Bliss State," "Stage 5 Advanced Plaque Entaglements," and "Stage 5 Sudden Time Regression Into Isolation." Although I eagerly ate up the first two phases when they came out, I've been more and more hesitant to engage as the series moved on and waited months on Stage 5. Never has music which could easily have been termed "easy listening" at the start distorted into something so damn hard. This can't be easy for Kirby to put together, and I've never encountered something tougher to listen to, but it's worth it. I won't jot down any favorite tracks from this one. This needs to be experienced as a whole to really feel the pain and confusion of familiar sounds being distorted. Indeed, as the hours go by, the repeated (I think? It's disorienting like that) samples feel more and more like very personal memories fall apart and becoming entangled.  Listening from Stage 1 to Stage 5 takes just over five hours, and the full piece, which will be completed in March of this year, will likely last close to 7 hours. It'll be harrowing, but it's worth it. With the high prevalence of neurodegenerative disorders, I find it very unlikely that anyone reading has remained untouched by these (sometimes slow, sometimes criminally quick, always too quick) ransackers of the mind. Expect a longer post about the series as a whole (and on The Caretaker's unrivaled body of work) when the last installment comes out in a few months.

I was intending to get a little further down the list tonight that I did, but, man, writing about Everywhere at the End of Time really took it out of me. I'll write about the last six albums on the list tomorrow or Monday. Tonight, I'll leave you with a short list of the best reissues of the year.

Best Reissues of the Year
Love and Work: The Lioness Sessions - Songs: Ohia (Bandcamp) [Seriously, this is a must-listen, even if you don't already know Molina's Lioness album. Even just the outtakes are better than most albums, full stop. More on Molina, and on this album in particular, in a later post.]

Life Is Unfair - Black Box Recorder (Bandcamp) [Some additional live recordings appear to be available exclusively (?) on Spotify.]

Cherry Red's totally essential Felt reissues (Spotify) [It was the Year of Lawrence. If you've never check these out before, do it. I especially recommend Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty, The Splendour of Fear, The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories, Ignite the Seven Cannons, The Seventeenth Century, Forever Breathes the Lonely Word, Poem of the River, The Pictorial Jackson Review, Train Above the City, and Me and a Monkey on the Moon. Yep, that's the whole discography. If you want a good starting spot, you could go with Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty. Or The Splendour of Fear. Or The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. Or... You get the picture.]

Cherry Red's pREServed deluxe editions of The Residents' Meet The Residents, Third Reich & Roll, Duck Stab/Buster & Glen, and Fingerprince (Only the deluxe version of Fingerprince is available on any streaming service, but here are links to the standard versions of Meet The Residents, Third Reich & Roll, and Duck Stab/Buster & Glen so you can see if this is something you'd be into.)

Cherry Red's (man, these guys are delivering) reissue of The Fall's criminally underrated Levitate, their 1997 album featuring, for the last time, Steve Hanley, Martin Bramah (on one track), Simon Wolstencroft, and currently missing colossus Karl Burns (Spotify) [MES is dead; Long live MES!]

[Part 1 of this list is available here and Part 3 is available here.]

Proceedings of the Society for the Preservation of Everyday Ephemera and Detritus (S.P.E.E.D.) Vol. 1

From time to time, I'll be sharing photographs and cultural artifacts I've found at various antique stores. There's something pretty melancholy about going through pictures that have ended up in unsorted boxes at antique shops. At one point, the moment in the picture felt important enough to someone that they wanted to capture it forever. At some time between then and now, though, the person who cared stopped caring, either through the circumstances of passing time or death. (This, of course, omits situations in which the person lost the photograph, which I'm sure is the case for some pictures.) The vast majority of the pictures in most stores I've been to consist of portrait photographs from the first half of the last century. Although still interesting, those are not what I'll be (mainly) focusing on in these posts. Rather, I'll be sharing pictures that capture moments of day-to-day life, hence the title of this post. The mission of S.P.E.E.D. (the Society for the Preservation of Everyday Ephemera and Detritus) is to seek out and share otherwise forgotten cultural memories, predominantly in the form of photos and trinkets. I find these sorts of things incredibly meaningful, and I hope they make you think about how you engage with your day-to-day, too. I also have a plan to use some of these photos in an upcoming creative project. More on that later. In the meanwhile, here are the first nine pictures in this ongoing series.

The photographs below were purchased at Main Street Antiques in Woodland, CA. I've included dates and rear captions when applicable, save when the captions provide identifying information. (Believe it or not, I've already located people from two of the pictures presented below.)

1.1 Unknown Date
Rear Caption: "Jennifer's Datsun car leaving [illegible] for Santa Barbara"

1.2 Unknown Date
Rear Caption: "Sorry I don't have a better picture, but the one in the middle is me. (Clara)"

1.3 Unknown Date
Rear Caption: "Thanks for being you! I love you so and I just hope that someday I can mean as much to someone as you do to me. Loving you always, Barbara"

1.4 Unknown Date
No Rear Caption

1.5 Unknown Date
Rear Caption: "Miranda S*******"

1.6 Unknown Date
No Rear Caption

1.7 Unknown Date
No Rear Caption

1.8 June 1970
Rear Caption: "Bruce + Susan T***** June 14, 1970"

1.9 November 1968
Rear Caption: "George is really not unhappy here. The sun was making him scowl and I had him turn but I should have waited to take the picture and I should have had more film with me. George, Susan, Jim, Janice"

Photo Dispatch #2: 12/29/18 (Woodland, CA)

These photos were taken today at the County Fair Mall in Woodland, CA. It is very much a dead mall and I've photographed it a number of times in the past. I'll share pictures I took at the mall in March of this year sometime soon, but now seemed like a perfect time to share these post-holiday snaps.

County Fair Mall, Woodland, CA (12/29/18)

County Fair Mall, Woodland, CA (12/29/18)

County Fair Mall, Woodland, CA (12/29/18)

A Year in Review: My Favorite Albums of 2018 (Part 1)

The interior of America's greatest record store -- Reverberation Vinyl in Bloomington, IL. If any of these albums are as good as I say, chance are John has them in the store. Photo Credit: Reverberation Vinyl

Late December, the time of the year-end list, is full upon us. In this first in a series of posts I'll be making ahead of New Year's Eve, I wanted to talk about some of my favorite albums that were released in 2018. I'm not sharing anything ranked (last year's list was ordered by a random number generator; going a little simpler this year and just writing about albums in the order they were released). I'm not necessarily claiming these are the "best" albums that came out this year. This isn't an exhaustive list of albums I enjoyed. These are just the albums that, sitting at this moment at the end of December, define 2018 in new releases for me. Below, I've included brief notes on each album, as well as links for where you can stream or buy them. Enjoy, and, if you've created a similar list, please share it with me!



Knickerbocker Glory - John Moore
Bandcamp
Former Jesus and Mary Chain-er and once & future Black Box Recorder co-pilot John Moore, the best dressed man in  kicks off our list for this year. Beginning with the initialing twinkling and subsequently rocking "Rabbit Hole," Knickerbocker Glory takes us on a funny, eccentric walk through John's psyche, particularly the edges dedicated to romance. Alternating between heady rock (with some of the guitar tones, particularly those in album closer "South of Heaven," recalling JAMC) and Spector-era pop, Moore's album is a great reminder that, contrary to detractors, rock is alive and well (and living in somewhere in England). Moore released a number of great tracks through his Soundcloud pages this year, too, which have yet to make it to an album. I especially adored the four-track Excerpts from a Blind Beggar's Opera and the 1996 demo for Black Box Recorder track "England Made Me."
Favorite Tracks: "Rabbit Hole," "Philosophical Man," "South of Heaven"

Little Dark Age - MGMT
Spotify
Since I was very young, my dreams have revolved more around place than around people or narratives. One of the places that have appeared in my dreams as long as I can remember is a large shopping mall. When I was a kid, this place was booming and we could spend hours shopping at various stores. Now (and I do mean now -- my most recent mall dream was within the past week), my Dream Mall has gone the way of real malls. Most stores are closed (though, lucky for me, a used bookseller moved into the old Waldenbooks location), the atrium is always nearly deserted, and only a lone restaurant (which seems to alternate between pizza and Chinese) inhabits the otherwise destitute food court. I can't recall there being music piped through the mall anymore, but, if there was, it'd be MGMT's Little Dark Age. Finally taking a full leap into the hypnagogic pop that their classic single "Kids" emotionally alluded to, MGMT have made my favorite album of their so-far-very-solid career. Album opener "She Works Out Too Much" takes me back to early mornings with my mom's Redbook exercise videos, though I have no idea if those tapes actually had synthpop soundtracks. The only reason I don't feel confident saying that the third track, "When You Die," is the greatest retro pop single of the 2010s is that another serious contender comes immediately after with "Me and Michael." There's more here than nostalgia, though. Check out, for instance, the very really engagement with the idea of ego death in "When You're Small." This album's a must for anyone who thinks back on their childhood and senses a real hidden meaning beyond the warm fuzzies.
Favorite Tracks: "Little Dark Age," "When You Die," "Me and Michael," "When You're Small"

Skellington 3 - Julian Cope
Not Streaming -- Download/Purchase at Head Heritage
The Arch Drude returns with another worthy addition to the Skellington series. If the first Skellington album, released in 1989, felt like having the deepest truths you could handle delivered alongside a flagging campfire at the latest, darkest moment of night, Skellington 3 is a reminder that things can always get deeper and later. Opening track Times Change contains the spoken line "The road kills, the road destroys, but how else do we travel?" It changed my life. This isn't hyperbole. Ask me.
Favorite Tracks: "Times Change," "Stop Harping On About the Way Life Used to Be," "Catch Your Dream Before They Slip Away"

Dungeness - Trembling Bells 
Bandcamp
It looks like we'll be saying our goodbyes to the Bells for the time being. The rock world will be much poorer for it. However, their finest album, Dungeness, leaves us a lot to chew on in the long years to come. The tightest musicianship and best vocals the band have ever delivered (Lavinia Blackwall on the outro to album highlight "I'm Coming" is easily one of the greatest vocal showcases recorded this decade) intertwine with their best songwriting. Again harping on "I'm Coming," the erotically, philosophically, and spiritually charged lyrics to this one are still ringing in my head
Favorite Tracks: "My Father Was a Collapsing Star," "Christ's Entry into Govan," "I'm Coming"

The Horizon Just Laughed - Damien Jurado
Bandcamp
Damien Jurado's 2018 album is the first following his Maraqopa trilogy with late producer Richard Swift. While Swift certainly added something incredibly special to the three Maraqopa albums, Jurado reminds us he can fend for himself with his own (fair, Swift-inspired) production. The album begins with a delicate swirl of Hammond B3, acoustic guitar, and strings ("Mr. Percy Faith..."), setting the mood appropriately for this album of "goodbye" songs. This past year, Jurado left his long-time home in Washington to resettle in California, but whispers (and lyrics on the album) suggest that more permanent goodbyes may have been considered. I, for one, am incredibly thankful that it seems like Damien will be around for a long time to come. (As an aside, one of my all-time greatest concert memories is of Damien playing a truly acoustic [i.e., no amplifications or microphones whatsoever] set in the candlelit apse of an old church in Coralville, Iowa, on an absolutely frozen winter's night.) The whole album is well worth a listen, but the three tracks that end the first half (included in the "Favorite Tracks" note below), particularly "The Last Great Washington State" are sufficient to declare this album one of Jurado's biggest triumphs.
Favorite Tracks: "Percy Faith," "Over Rainbows and Rainier," "The Last Great Washington State"

I Sometimes Dream of Glue - Luke Haines 
Spotify
Luke Haines, who originally came to prominence in the 1990s with his bands The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder (who had one of the most unlikely sex-ed lessons of a UK chart-topper -- linked in the band name -- of the turn of the century), has easily been my most-listened-to artist since I moved to California. He's spent his career telling stories of the famous, the infamous, outsiders, and fever-dream memories. The first three discs of his solo-career-so-far-anthology, Luke Haines is Alive and Well and Living in Buenos Aires (Heavy, Frenz -- The Solo Anthology 2001-2017) which Cherry Red released early this year (at risk of making this the longest sentence so far committed to this blog, his first box set, which covered the band years, was called Luke Haines Is Dead), are called "Professional Rock 'n' Roll," "No Mans Land," and "Unprofessional Rock and Roll." (I'd love to go on and on about Haines's career -- for example, the man's first solo album was a concept album about the militant East German Red Army Faction, considered by most to be terrorists, under the moniker Baader Meinhof, thus inventing and, so far, making the sole contribution to a genre I call terror-funk -- but I'll save that for a future post and focus on the album in question from here on out.) We're still in this third phase, and, since it's "unprofessional," Haines is allowed to do gloriously non-commercial things like write a song cycle about Glue Town and its residents. who, due to a solvent spilled "in the war," don't grow to more than 2.5 inches in height. On the surface, it sounds like the residents of Glue Town spend their time mainly engaging in joyfully amorous pastimes ("At It with the Tree Surgeon's Wife," "Everybody's Coming Together for the Summer") or playing soccer ("The Subbuteo Lads"). But, as always, there's more going on here. Rather than turning this "short note" on the album into a feature-length report, I'll just encourage you to listen to the album if you like Robyn Hitchcock, The Incredible String Band, and their ilk (or if you like short, bizarre stories that might just manage to teach you something in 30 minutes). Before wrapping, though, I want to address two songs in particular. Opener "Angry Man on a Small Train," and its titular refrain, has become my mantra whenever I'm getting fumed about something minor. At this point, I just about consider it my theme song. On the far other end of the album, half an hour down the line, comes finale "We Could Do It," another tale of a horny Glue Town resident. But something's different here. The accompaniment, just acoustic guitar and droning melodeon, underscores the title character telling his partner all the different places they could "do it" ("on that hillside," "down in the valley," "in the field next to the car park" to name a few). Mixed in here, though, are a couple of lines that really gripped me emotionally, and they mark Haines grappling, in a really new way for him, with morality. "We could bring a hip flask. And my dad's ashes, we can scatter on the way. And my dad's ashes are really heavy, because size matters, despite what they say." I recall reading that Luke lost his dad in the recent past (career highlight 9 and 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early 80s was a reaction, in part, to his father's battle with Alzheimer's -- more on music and neurodegeneration in our next post!), and this feels like a real, concrete, peaceful confrontation with that. The album ends with the line "And the sun rose, and we live for a few more hours." Some pretty profound stuff for an album ostensibly just about Polly Pocket-sized horndogs.
Favorite Tracks: "Angry Man on a Small Train," "At It With The Tree Surgeon's Wife," "Oh Michael," "We Could Do It"

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for Part 2 & 3 of this list, coming within the week!

[Update: Part 2 is available here and Part 3 is available here.]

Concert Review: Mark Kozelek Live at the Chico Women's Club (12/16/18)

Taken from markkozelek.com

2018 has been a really memorable year for concert experiences for me. It's hard to even get into highlights without devoting a ton of text here (and, since I'm planning a post for next week reflecting on some of my favorite shows of the year, I won't bother), but the year was bookend-ed by two performances featuring one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Mark Kozelek. The first show, at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma this past January, was a benefit for the Sonoma and Santa Rosa fires of October 2017. This was my first time seeing Mark in the full Sun Kil Moon band setting, and I'll spend some time talking about that in the upcoming post I mentioned earlier. Last night's show in Chico was also a fire benefit, this time for the historically destructive Camp Fire that destroyed homes, took lives, and darkened and choked our air last month. The year beginning and ending with benefit shows were a stark reminder of how dire the climate situation has become with no solution in sight. In both cases, though, Mark was eager to play benefits with all proceeds going toward fire relief. I already have a huge amount of admiration for Mark as an artist, and this sort of thing just increases my admiration for Mark as a person.

Last night's show took place in the 200-capacity auditorium at the Chico Women's Club in Chico, CA. I was up front, so I'm not sure how packed the venue ended up being, but there was already a substantial crowd when I arrived around 7:15 for the 8pm show. For the concert, Mark was accompanied on grand piano by Oakland-based musician Patrick Main, who Mark had met at this year's San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival. This was their first time playing together, though (with the exception of a little bit of difficulty starting My Love For You Is Undying), you couldn't tell. Patrick's playing throughout the evening was very much the perfect accompaniment for Mark's singing, with appropriately alternating (& sometimes simultaneous) intensity and tenderness.

The show opened with a peaceful, melodic performance of Night Talks from last year's EP of the same name. Mark may be the master of saying something universal while detailing something incredibly personal (something which has become all the more clear with his increasingly diaristic songwriting over last half-decade), and I definitely experienced a feeling of warmth thinking through all the conversations I've had while falling asleep next to my love over the past few years. This was followed by one of the highlights of the night, Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails, off of 2013's collaborative album with Jimmy LaValle, Perils from the Sea. I've seen Mark perform this song a number of times before, though this was certainly the most passionate reading I've heard. The song mixes melancholic memories from Mark's Midwest upbringing and other years gone by with thankful meditations on his life in California and Northern California's picturesque landscapes. I found myself a bit choked up by this song (not a huge surprise). As a fellow Midwesterner, I often get nostalgic pangs when I hear Mark sing about Ohio -- It's not hard to find parallels between Mark's Massillon and the Peoria, IL area that I grew up in, and a lot of what he says, both about places and people, ring true for me (again, universal in the specific). Last night, though, I was thinking about how, when California is someday a place I used to live, as it almost certainly will be, Mark's lyrics about the beauty of California will elicit the same feelings.

Next up was one of the standout tracks from this year's self-titled Mark Kozelek, 666 Post. This one is a lot of fun live, building in sometimes hilarious intensity through the dream sequence where Mark first talks about terrifying an SPCA employee with a video showing how his "kitty cat barks," his "duck goes quack," and his "puppy dog goes meow." This is followed by another dream where he lives at 666 Post and his neighbor, who may just be Satan himself, is coming over to babysit. Following this, Mark took one last dip into his "deeper" back catalog with Dogs from 2014's Benji (a later attempt at playing I Can't Live Without My Mother's Love was abandoned before it started when Mark couldn't find a woman in the audience willing to sing it as a duet). When I first listened to Benji, Dogs was easily my least favorite track (although I still liked it quite a lot). After seeing the two quite different live versions this year, it's certainly climbed in standing for me. This one built throughout, landing in about as cacophonous of a climax as you could get from a singer and a piano.

The next four songs were drawn from this year's two releases (Mark Kozelek's Mark Kozelek and Sun Kil Moon's This Is My Dinner) and from next year's I Also Want to Die in New Orleans (a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring, among other's, Blackstar's Donny McCaslin and the great Jim White). First up was This Is My Dinner, the title track from the Sun Kil Moon album released at the beginning of last month. Ahead of the song, Mark explained how each of the songs were written fairly quickly on planes and trains on the way to shows during last year's European tour. Each song was written specifically to be sung in a given city. This track, for example, was written for the city of Oslo. Mark noted that they were trying the songs out in different cities to see if they still landed without the audience knowing the local references. (He also promised to work Chico into the lyrics, which he did deliver on.) I'm not sure how much the rest of the audience enjoyed the song, as this was around the time parts of the audience started to depart, but I thought it was a lot of fun, and Mark was definitely not phoning-it-in with his performance. (This is a good time to make the comment that I've never seen Mark give as great of a vocal performance as he did last night. Wow, wow, wow.)

This Is My Dinner was followed by my favorite song Mark put out in 2018, My Love for You Is Undying. The song is series of pretty banal vignettes about day-to-day life in San Francisco (dropping his wallet and knocking over a glass in a restaurant, getting into an argument with a vaguely gas-lighting bookstore employee) linked by the repeated titular refrain. Patrick couldn't quite seem to figure out how exactly to play the riff the runs through the entire song, but his alternative rendition of it seemed perfectly acceptable to Mark and made for a fun alternate version of the song. The version of this song played in Sonoma was marred by a drunken fan who Mark couldn't resist responding to lyrically ("My love for you is undying" became "Would you please shut the f*** up?" and the fan was removed from the venue). Last night's rendition was a lot looser, with both Mark and Patrick regularly cracking grins and even laughing as Mark told the stories that make up the song.

Next up was I'm Not Laughing At You, a song off of the upcoming Sun Kil Moon album about other nations' impressions of Americans. My favorite part of this song came with Mark's defense of America (I can kind of boil it down to "Yeah, we suck sometimes, but we did produce Bob Dylan and Jonathan Richman") and the sections that included particularly inspiring lines from Bob Dylan ("Bob Dylan said that") and from Mark's older work ("I said that").

The Mark Kozelek Museum was initially going to be the last song of the main set, but, as the audience continued to dwindle, Mark decided that he'd forego an encore and instead follow this one with a brief Christmas set. The Mark Kozelek Museum was my least favorite track off of Mark Kozelek, but it landed a lot better live, particularly in the impassioned ending sections. Mark insisted the audience singing along to the "diarrhea" section could've been beautiful had the Liverpudlian in the front row who chose to shout loudly between each song not been overwhelming everyone else's voices. Here's a nice moment to address how non-curmudgeonly Mark was last night. Even when the guy ignored Mark's repeated pleas to shut up, he was really cordial. I've seen him have rowdy crowd members thrown out before (something that sits poorly with other music fans I know, though I'm wholeheartedly in favor of it and wish more artists would refuse to tolerate asshole-ry in the audience), but he was able to gently defuse this guy and give him just enough attention to keep everything lighthearted. Though Mark famously sometimes has an aggressive stage presence, I've always thought this was way over-exaggerated by (and, okay, maybe sometimes for) online media. He reminds me a lot of one of my uncles from back home, which might explain why (1) that sort of behavior really doesn't bother me and (2) it might seem unfamiliar to audiences who aren't from the kinda down-and-out Midwest.

The show was just about wrapped up with (no pun intended) a trio of Christmas covers (The Pretenders' 2000 Miles, the Charlie Brown classic Christmas Time Is Here, and The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)). Christmas songs have long been a part of Mark's repertoire (his first two solo live albums are called Little Drummer Boy Live and White Christmas Live and the follow-up to 2014's Benji was Mark Kozelek Sings Christmas Carols), so, given the time of year, it wasn't surprising that these appeared in the set. I really love Mark's Christmas songs (particularly the more religious ones, like What Child Is This, as they really convey the solemn, quiet peacefulness of Christmas Eve services I remember from growing up), and it was great to hear him play a few. It was especially exciting to have Mark point at me ahead of Christmas Time Is Here and tell me he'd need me to come up in the middle of the song ("But don't worry, it'll be really easy"). About halfway through, he beckoned at me and held up the lyric sheet and microphone for me to read the "of all the Mark Kozeleks in the world, you're the Mark Kozelek-iest" bit of dialogue, one of my favorite moments of humor in his catalog. It's the least I possibly could've done and still be able to say "Yeah, I got to perform with Mark Kozelek once," but it's already a special memory and I'm really thankful I happened to be in the right place.  

To finish, Mark chose A Dream of Winter off of the second Jesu/Sun Kil Moon album, 30 Seconds to the Decline of Planet Earth. This one took my breath away the first time I heard it, because it spoke so much to how I've always felt around the holidays. "Wintertime is melancholic and sometimes gets me overthinking." "And the downtown Christmas decorations make me want to cry. When you're young, it takes forever for Christmas to come around, and, when you're older, it comes around the corner faster than a greyhound." I feel a lot of emotion just retyping the lyrics here. In the chorus, Mark sings about how he hopes December passes slowly, as he gets to rest from the fast-paced grind of the rest of the year and spend time with the people he loves. Man, I feel that. This is my last Christmas without a child, and, while I absolutely can't wait to meet him in February, I do hope this December, the last one with just the two of us, passes slowly. I so wish I could see the people I love at home in Illinois this year, but my heart still echoes Mark's last line: "I'm more grateful for this Christmas that's approaching than any Christmas ever before." (One fun aside about this song: Mark mentions that he's been "everywhere from China to Iowa City" -- My first time seeing him was at that Iowa City show in 2014. It feels like a lifetime since, and it makes me smile to hear a little callback to that show at the end of a hot, rainy Iowa summer, the first summer living away from home, the first summer married to my beautiful wife).

I think this review, which may have more words than any of Mark's recent songs (quite a feat!), goes to show how much this show meant to me. It was a wonderful way to wrap up concert-going for 2018 and to celebrate Christmas, which is somehow now only just over a week away. I hope these days pass slowly. Merry Christmas to all of you. If you're interested, I'll have some year-end recap posts about favorite albums, concerts, etc. up in the next week or so. Thanks for reading!

Setlist

Night Talks

Somehow the Wonder of Life Prevails

666 Post

Dogs

This Is My Dinner

My Love for You is Undying

I'm Not Laughing At You

The Mark Kozelek Museum

2000 Miles

Christmas Time Is Here

The Christmas Song

A Dream of Winter

Photo Dispatch #1: 12/17/18 (Davis, CA)

From time to time on this blog, I'll share pictures I've taken, usually without much comment. Here are the first two, taken this morning in Davis, CA.

Hanover Drive, Davis, CA (12/17/18)

The Laundry Lounge, Davis, CA (12/17/18)

From December 13 On: My Exit from the Vampire Castle

This post is presented with endless apologies to the late Mark Fisher, whose essential essay on Twitter discourse (and much more) I co-opted for this post's title.

Good morning, and welcome to my blog! My name is Austin and I'm a Social Psychology PhD student in Northern California. Yesterday, 12/13/18, I finally made the decision to exit social media. I've been kicking around this decision for months, maybe years, but decided yesterday to really think through what social media was doing for me (and to me). This real reckoning was spurned on by Jaron Lanier's excellent short read, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. In the book, tech philosophy legend Lanier, founding father of virtual reality, Internet2 pioneer, and one-time Atari guru, takes a very non-Luddite stand against social media on the basis of what it has been co-opted to do to us (rather than against what it was "originally" made for). I can remember my now-wife's mother saying "If it's free, then you're the product" over and over again about ten years ago. Lanier outlines how right this assertion is. I'm not going to rehash his arguments at any length here, although I will reprint the ten chapter headings in a moment. I can't encourage you enough to check this book out (or at least to check out one of the videos of Jaron talking over the ideas.)

Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

1. You are losing your free will.

2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times.

3. Social media is making you into an asshole.

4. Social media is undermining truth.

5. Social media is making what you say meaningless.

6. Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.

7. Social media is making you unhappy.

8. Social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity.

9. Social media is making politics impossible.

10. Social media hates your soul.

If true, any one of these reasons is sufficient to warrant an exit from social media. The goal here, though, isn't to convince you that that's the right thing to do. It's barely to convince you that what I did was the right thing. It's just my story. Here are the facts: My engagement with (or, as Lanier would put it, manipulation by) social media was once a lot of fun, reaffirming of my social connections, and truly information-rich, and it just isn't anymore. 

When I was right on the edge yesterday, I took a step back and scrolled through my timeline on Facebook for two or three minutes. In that span of time, I saw maybe two posts containing any content generated by people who I personally know. Everything else I saw was sensationalized or even dishonest news reporting from around Sacramento (as an aside, of the places I've lived, nowhere reports their online news in as misleading and infuriating way as the local television stations in Sacramento; thank God for the Sacramento Bee), ads (how was I not already aware of how many Facebook posts are just ads???), or shares of religious or political content designed to polarize. Reflecting on my reaction to other posts, even from good friends, over the last few years, I see myself as a jealous, covetous, angry, and sad person, constantly ruminating on how people don't deserve the good things that happen to them, how people "shouldn't have the money to do that, because I work harder," how people are naive or stupid for thinking the way they do. These thoughts were often immediately followed by a bit hit of negativity toward myself for being that sort of person. So, Lanier's Points 3 & 7 (and, to a point, 6) in vivo. Why would I want to keep engaging with something that leads me to think about my friends like that? And so with Instagram (more jealousy) and Twitter (political anger and the desire to buy everything I see promoted). If you want to talk more specifically about my exit, just reach out, but I've already gone on about it longer than I intended to. 

Step 1 was deleting the apps from my phone and tablet. Step 2 was logging out on my browser from Instagram and Twitter. My Facebook remains "up" until they give me my data file (which I requested almost 24 hours ago!), but, after that, I'm going to deactivate it. I'm not sure I'll be away forever, hence my not deleting the account outright. I see myself enacting almost hypnotic behavior. (For example, I keep performing the motions with my hands that it'd take to pull up Facebook on my iPad -- I don't think my scanner app has ever been opened so many times in one day). But, from December 13th on (or, more accurately, from whenever Facebook gives me my data file on...), I'm going to give going social media-free a whir and see if/how it improves my daily life, externally and internally. With that, I'll end this particular discussion, because it's clear I could go on endlessly.

I'll be documenting my reactions to living social media-free sporadically here, but, largely, this blog is going to serve one of the purposes that Facebook, Twitter, etc. once did. I'll be posting reflections on art, culture, & politics, things that I used to spend time talking about on Facebook before it felt so crushingly overfull and disinterested. I'll look at the comments section from time to time and am happy to engage with any of your thoughts on what I have to say. First up will be some posts looking back on things I enjoyed this year (specifically, new music, books, and movies). Expect the first of those in the next week or so. Thank you for reading this long first post!