Rachika Nayar OUR HANDS AGAINST THE DUSK (2021)

I really dig the liminal zone where ambient and instrumental/post-rock music wash against each other. Ms. Nayar carves out a welcome space for the waters to pool, deepen, reverberate.  Steph and I visited one of the largest (inactive) lead mines in the world in the limestone of southern Missouri.  It was an immense cavern, like the Vatican inverted, with crystal clear waters that scuba divers used in order to be certified.  This album reminds me of the calmness there, the serenity, 98% maternal security, like an enormous womb, 1% eerie lack of men, machines and mules, and 1% fear that the New Madrid fault would crush us, buried for the bipedal dolphins and aliens to find.

The godfathers of this genre IMO are 1 Mile North, who had a great album last year that I didn't get around to posting:

The Weather Station IGNORANCE (2021)

RIYL Big Thief and jazzy little jewel heists, songs for cars without microchips, cruising shirtless with coffee and a wish for a cigarette

                            ↑↑↑↑My politics in two images ↓↓↓↓

Mark McGuire OUR FAMILY (2021)

my man makes the most uplifting good morning Sunday morning jams, just full-hearted, wise and uplifting odes to a brief life lived well

Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders/The London Symphony Orchestra PROMISES (2021)

Les anges reviendront, et quand vous verrez celui qui est censé vous aider, vous pleurerez de joie

Quand les anges

Jonathan Hultén CHANTS FROM ANOTHER PLACE (2020)

This is some otherworldly stuff.  Hultén is a guitarist for Tribulation, which is by all accounts one of the best European metal bands, but I have enough trouble trying to keep up with PNW metal.  This is extreme in the other end, soft as anything Trees or The Roches put out, but adorned with bones and ash--to me it sounds like Celtic private mourning music, grief ethered into the constellations, spinning madly, dutifully above us.

stay for the guitar solo and then vaya con Dios

Willie Dunn CREATION NEVER SLEEPS, CREATION NEVER DIES (anthology)

do you dig Gordon Lightfoot but wish he was more timeless and had God's own baritone?

Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great microcosm of the late 20th century American tragedy. High school football is thrilling, mesmerizing, and needs to be abolished immediately.

View all my reviews

Anita Baker RAPTURE (1986)

 

 Haché et Vissé de Houston à Bordeaux. Bon courage!    

Anita Baker owns. Her record label makes it a little hard to hear her stuff, they got it locked up in the glass case with all the single malts, ah! the peat

the singles were the best tracks from LDR's new album but we got a new one on the way this summer.

  No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

beautiful. had me fighting back tears. Lockwood is the most essential writer of the Twitter age.

View all my reviews 

 PS That Touché Amoré album got me so fired up I went from being comatose to unable to sleep for four hours, proceed with caution!

Touché Amouré LAMENT (2020)

Lead track slays, clearly the albums high-point...wait track 4 rules maybe these boys work...ok track 5 should be played before each and every storming of the ramparts... we lived through the shift of Indie into a genre that essentially produced demos for car commercials, which then begot the footstomp-folkrock for insurance commercials, and now no one knows how to drum any more in the indiesphere, they just keep 4/4, snare and hi-hat virtually gone, truly a desiccation scheme, a cardiac-repression regime, and the lockdown killing touring led to an explosion of fake bands on Spotify that have never played a gig in their life, a guy and a girl and a laptop like musical oil diffusers, like the way the New Age mental program has some points but essentially exists to de-politicize the otherwise-intelligent population into narcissizing all problems with their life, not identifying the class warfare they're suffering personally and on behalf of their fellow citizens, imagining that they can choose-their-own-adventure into a fulfilling life by managing their thinking and expectations and aspirations perfectly. 

This is the neoliberal training that subtly reinforces consumerism--the correct consumerism will solve your problems!  Your parents bought silly mass-market stuff!  They just accumulated things!  You are much wiser, your purchases reify what a clever lad or lass you are!  

At this point, anyone that remembers how to chuck a shoe at a ghoul  is worth their weight in gold.  

Our Iraq war (born 19 March 2021) is now 18 years old.  The quieter dismantling Libya (19 March 2011) is 10 years old. Syrian 'intervention' is a little fuzzier but 8 years ago it ramped up. Something fell regarding the Spring Equinox, some horrid blood offering 

chuck your Chucks my beautiful friends. 

Lancez vos chausseres vers vos ennemis!

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ CHARMED (2020)

(skip back to track 1 for the proper effect)

Bonjour, mes camarades français!  Ma femme parle couramment le français, hélas j'ai perdu mes capacités il y a longtemps.  J'espère que vous endurez bien le verrouillage et que vous serez bientôt libre!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if vaporwave had some Go! Team energy, like you washed down a handful Excederin (65mg caffeine/pill) with some Orange Julius and wandered Lloyd Center, seeing all the public school girls who seemed decades older, like Leonard Cohen mistresses meeting for their séance

Fleet Foxes SHORE (2020)

I was an early adopter of Fleet Foxes. I thought their Sun Giant EP had some really great moments ('Mykonos' in particular) and was disappointed by the subsequent albums, in relation to the promise I thought they had and the overboard critical adoration. They took a lengthy hiatus, during which we were subjected to the loathsome Father John Misty, and they quietly returned last year with a very fine album.  The scenester zeitgeist has moved on and left them behind, but that doesn't mean you're obliged to do the same. 

PS I had a weird thought the other day, that if kids eating lead paint chips (and really, how many paint chips were these kids eating?  Not exactly Doritos) gave them brain damage, what the hell did breathing in leaded gasoline do to the brains of urban dwellers before it was banned? Turns out they've done the research, and it correlates nearly identically with the rise and fall of violent crime rates in America.  In summation, nationalize the energy industry.  

Library Tapes SUMMER SONGS (2020)

 

 13 minutes of holy 

over a year since we got to see Bernie at the old opera house.  just after Super Tuesday, still a bit of hope.  yelled myself hoarse.  as we were leaving, I spotted him exiting the stage door and yelled "BERNIE!" so loudly he visibly startled and a big crowd gathered to say goodbye.

 keep swinging and you'll die beautiful, no matter what

The Pilgrim WALKING INTO THE FOREST (2019)

I'd really like to post more but the weather has been ideal for like 5 straight months and there's lots of hikes and beaches to explore so I'm gonna do that until I twist an ankle or something (I AM *NOT* MANIFESTING THIS, MR. UNIVERSE)but in the meantime keep cool my babies! I ran 20 miles Friday before last from Downtown Monterey to Moss Landing (the fishing village that is about halfway up Monterey Bay to Santa Cruz) and I forded the Salinas River with my shoes and running pants held aloft and yes it was a sandy bottom and yes the quicksand tried to eat your beefy boy, but never fear, I was borne up on eagles' wings and made it back home, thanks to the Good Lord and a loyal wife and dog that waited past sunset for me and drove us home, where I drank a half-pint of TJ's purple drank, threw up, and went to bed. A supposedly fun thing that I'm never doing again. the world is so goddamn beautiful I hope some good humans survive and see it back again