Daily Listen by Brian Brock

First Aid Kit - Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes cover)

This is a just deadly performance.  It makes my head feel mushed, how what might be my favorite music of the last several months is just a couple of kids sitting on a log, singing into a video camera.

I haven’t yet been particularly moved by Fleet Foxes, even their version of this song.  Nor have I really listened to much of First Aid Kit’s music.  Like how the intersection of two lines defines a space, but the lines individually are just breadthless length.

Wagon Christ - Sorry I Make You Lush

A decent sally forth from the WC, although I still haven’t liked anything from Luke Vibert as much as Tally Ho! The defining character of Wagon Christ, as opposed to his other projects, seems to be a certain approach to rhythm.  I like the samples of Tally Ho better than the synths here.

If you’re waiting to see if the video does anything, don’t bother. There’s nothing, not even a sunset.

Bonus post-apocalypso superworld wonderfulliness.

[robot-heart:inky:Barack OBollywood (via expo7000)]

Beck - Modern Guilt

I think Beck has finally left Odelay behind.  That album is one of the best albums of the 90’s - perhaps tied for best album in the mainstream - but Beck’s way of walking away from Odelay (Mutations, Sea Change) and then running back (Midnite Vultures, Guero) only magnified his failure to top it.

What has he done now?  Where Odelay mixed garbage noises and big beats with lyrics inscrutable in a tantalizing “let me just try to scrute that after all” mixup of culture references and big ideas, Modern Guilt’s lyrics remain difficult to scrute, but span from mopey to dire; references to pop culture are primarily musical, and very slick at that.

Here’s some lyrics:

Down by the sea
Swallowed by evil
Already drowned
You and me
Watching the sea
Full of people
Already drowned
So many people
So many people
Where do they go?
You and me
Hit by a cloud
Full of evil
Watching the jets
Pass go by
You and me watching
You and me watching
Chemtrails is where we belong
That’s what I mean
When we talk
In this jetstream
We’re climbing
A hole in the sky

(Chemtrails)

Yikes, right?  Modern Guilt indeed.

Listening to Gamma Ray, above, is the first time I got really excited listening to Beck since Mutations, even with mope-lyrics - the music is just great.  The whole album has really great sounds and structures.

OK, I completely hate this song and I love the video.  The lyrics go “what do I do, whaddueyedo, whaddueyedo” and the singer thinks he is a chipper Nick Drake and the melody, chords and song structure are totally average, but I nonetheless hold onto my Received Idea that the Mountain Goats is a good band.

The video is really cool, and everyone who didn’t think of it is joined in the corner by everyone who wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

brothersbloom:

Mountain Goats - ‘Woke Up New’ (Music Video Directed by Rian Johnson, whose tumblelog this be)

Captured in-camera with no special effects