okay, so we all know my intense devotion towards american water, one of my favorite records of all-time (along with neutral milk hotel’s in the aeroplane over the sea and the microphones’ the glow, pt. 2). but what you may not know is that silver jews are playing here in seattle, at neumo’s, on october 2nd, which also happens to be my 25th birthday. which means, if you go to this show, i’m probably going to be really shitfaced if you come up and say hi. but do say hi, because i’d love to see you.

in celebration of the joos playing my hometown on my birthday, i’ve decided to cover the closing track from american water, “the wild kindness.” it was the only song from the album that i thought would sound okay without me trying to create a cheap replica of stephen malkmus’ incredible guitar work. it’s a lot more sinister than the original. that was intended.

MP3: fresh cherries from yakima- the wild kindness (silver jews cover).

LOCATION: atlanta, georgia.
SOUNDS LIKE: an introverted offspring of person pitch.
WHY YOU SHOULD BLOG ABOUT HIM: because you love person pitch, amirite? dog bite, the solo project of a young man named phil jones, fuses together repetitive (but not in a negative way) samples (and reverb) just like the aformentioned panda bear record, only jones pulls them from even more disparate sources, such as doo-wop (”on the air,” “indian houses”), the opening riff of madvillain’s “great day” (”goodbye mrs. fierce”), and even of cassius clay (bka muhammad ali)’s pre (or post)-match poetry. the vocals, as mentioned earlier in the paragraph, are caked in reverb, and the samples are added with a tribal, world-beat thump, but giving off a vibe that sounds even more homespun and intimate than damn near everybody’s favorite record of 2007.

READ AND DOWNLOAD: fader magazine’s write-up on dog bite (along with a free download of the owls and eyes EP).

ZIP: dog bite- the yellow springs EP.

there a moment on “line of best fit,” the closing track of the band’s debut album, something about airplanes (and my personal all-time favorite death cab song), where, for a band eternally recognized as a pop group, everything goes terribly fucking wrong.

at the end of the track, after the band completely rocks out to the same eight-bar coda for nearly three minutes, things come to a crashing halt, and there’s this bleating drone that pulsates through the speakers, floating through the air like smoke floats over debris after an inner-city riot. over the wreckage, a female voice softly sings, “i remember being inside/something more than you.” and then, the drones pack themselves up neatly, and the song’s over.

WTF THAT WAS SO COOL.

MP3: death cab for cutie- line of best fit.

pitchfork has details. i’m going to go change my pants.

all of you know that your boy douglas martin is a product of the 90’s. you know, when the east practically ruled hip-hop with an iron fist (well, if you look past death row’s stranglehold on the charts), when shoegaze blew everyone’s minds (okay, maybe not everyone), and when indie-rock was still largely unmarketable? well, treble has created an exhaustive look back at the decade, and have made lists for each year of the nineties. of course, there are no brainers (ok computer and in the aeroplane over the sea took top honors of their respective years, and either/or came damn close), and there are glaring omissions (how could you choose a series of sneaks and not american water for 1998? seriously? a series of sneaks?!?!), as is the case with most lists, but it’s still an interesting and somewhat overwhelming read. i spent hours reading the reviews last week as they were being posted.

READ: treble’s best albums of the 1990’s.

so, if you stalk look at my last.fm page and check the artists i’ve been listening to for the last seven days, you’ll see that i’ve been listening to an obscene amount of grouper’s latest album/masterpiece, dragging a dead deer up a hill. and i’ve been meaning to review the record for a long, long time, but couldn’t find the words. however, THIS pitchfork review, written by yeti magazine’s mike mcgonigal (who is a great writer with great taste– these two things are, more often than not, mutually exclusive) says everything i wanted to say about the album, only worded much more eloquently than i would have been able to muster.

MP3: grouper- tidal wave.

NOTE: i was going to wait until the physical release of the record, but since the album is now available on i-tunes, i thought now would be as good a time as any for the review.

let’s get this out of the way: all of you know that i think bradford cox is a genius. over the course of the past year-and-a-half, cox has shot right into the indie-rock A-list. just two years ago, he was the frontman of an obscure psych-punk band from atlanta (and close friend of then-up-and-coming “flower-punk” band the black lips, who were starting to gain notoriety around that time) called deerhunter, dropping their self-titled debut (with the alternate title being the utterly lovable turn it up, faggot [editor’s note: sarcasm isn’t read very well.]). at the beginning of last year, they released their very-promising sophomore disc, cryptograms, and pitchfork kinda went nuts over it, and that’s where the escalation began. there’s really too much controversy to report (if you have a full day to kill, google the band and you’ll see what i mean), so let’s talk about the music, kay?

anyone who faults the first-half of cryptograms for being obtuse and dense is probably missing the point, being as though the album was sequenced in chronological order of recording. through all the ambient experimentation and dark songs like the title track, the second-half of the album really was better, mostly because that’s where the bulk of the actual songs are. i described “spring hall convert” as sounding like “pinback on laced hallucinogens,” and i stand fully behind that statement, as cryptograms as a whole sounded kind of like a bad acid trip, which really added to the appeal of the album. with all of that said, i thought cryptograms was a promising album, but not quite a great one.

then, a scant three months later, bradford and his crew dropped the fluorescent grey EP (SPOILER: pitchfork loved that one, too, with reviewer marc hogan referring to them as “a stubbornly visionary young band”), which was my favorite EP of 2007, and a thrilling document of where the band was headed, from eerie pop songs (”brand new”) to punkish barnburners (”wash off”) with almost the flick of the wrist.

when cox stated his case (in a joint interview with liars) against people calling microcastle “deerhunter’s pop record,” it sort of sounded like he was specifically addressing my succinct evaluation of the record, which was not meant to be an insult by any means. in fact, the self-titled album from his counterparts in the drowned in sound interview was their pop album, and it’s also my favorite album of theirs by far (and i did really like drum’s not dead).

again, microcastle is deerhunter’s pop record, but is it any good?

(Continue reading…)

the rain’s gone, but i’m still feeling kinda gloomy. but not really gloomy-as-in-depressed, but gloomy-as-in-i-wanna-sing-along-to-sad-bastard-indie-all-day. i leave you for the weekend with ryan adams playing “this house is not for sale.” as i’ve told my dear glaswegian friend, love is hell is the perfect record to put on when you’re looking to get your mood ruined.

the rain has me in somewhat of a gloomy mood this week. i’ve been mainly staring out of my window and listening to dragging a dead deer up a hill, the ethereal folk opus (and third album) from portland-based grouper. here’s something for you: this is a recent demo of a song i wrote in like 2005, which will be on honest kids, the next fresh cherries from yakima LP, in which i’m slowly writing songs for. enjoy.

MP3: fresh cherries from yakima- eleanor, flower in the dirt (demo).

a cigarette for breakfast with toast
a fleeting cure for nightmares, chasing ghosts
peering out my window in disdain
watching the pavement drink glasses of rain

[chorus:]
eleanor, i slow-danced with your scented perfume
couldn’t tell before; the way your aromatic compounds filled the room

the sunrise hit the picture frame where you slept
fools got sprinkled with april showers and wept
i couldn’t tell the difference between airplane lights
and those bright stars in the nighttime sky

[chorus 2:]
love is merely a socially-acceptable form
of self-mutilation

not a day passes without
chemically-induced slumber in my house
the art of starvation takes the place
of the fresh-scented flowers that smiled in your vase

[chorus 1 (two times)]

DISCLAIMER: this is not a critical reevaluation, but a personal story.

alligator came to me at the perfect time.

after blogging for quite a few months, and hearing about this album that was supposedly excellent from this band that was touring with clap your hands say yeah (do you remember blogging in 2005? it was a different world back then), i went to borders (don’t laugh) with my girlfriend at the time, and picked up the national’s third and breakthrough album.

it just so happens that day was the beginning of the last leg with my girlfriend.

after the breakup/subsequent messy aftermath with said girlfriend (details in my revisit of death cab for cutie’s we have the facts and we’re voting yes, the other album that got me through the breakup), i was, naturally, a complete fucking wreck. the songs that i had only spent about a week with started to take shape much differently.

“daughters of the soho riots,” with its somber acoustic guitar picking and matt berninger’s ruminations on having good clothes in the car, and having fingernails painted, and remembering everything wrong obviously tugged at the heartstrings, as she grabbed what few clothes she kept at my house, clutched in her painted fingernails (even though berninger was talking about his own, but let me have my moment, please).

the very next song, “baby, we’ll be fine,” over the driving percussion and a pretty great guitar line, displays imagery paralleling my own life (the boss saying “i’ve been hearing good things,” taking a forty-five minute shower and kissing the mirror), and right before more paralleling (”i put on an argyle sweater and put on a smile/i don’t know how to do this”) comes the kicker line, and a motto of mine for the past few years: “baby, we’ll be fine/all we gotta do is/be brave and be kind.” as the strings swell the song to emotional heights (or depths) my eyes cannot take without welling up a little, the final line, “i’m so sorry for everything,” made me want to call her and say the same, even though it really wasn’t my fault.

while we’re sticking to the sad songs on alligator, the song after that, pierced a hole in my heart with the line, “you should have looked after her better/you should have looked after her more.” “val jester” holds significance with the line, “all the most important people in new york are nineteen,” due to the ex in question spending her nineteenth birthday in college in upstate new york. damn you, personal significance!

now, onto a not-so-dark song: “all the wine,” with its self-aggrandizing imagery (”big wet rose in my teeth,” “i’m a festival, i’m a parade!”) and the somewhat nonsensical lines i liked to sing along to (”i’m a birthday candle in a circle of black girls/god is on my side”), always put a smile on my face, but it was the bridge and its exclamation of “all safe and sound!” which really lifted my spirits. “the geese of beverly road” was pretty much the same, with its “we’re drunk as fuck/and our legs are open/our hands are covered in cake/but i swear we didn’t have any” eliciting a few needed chuckles from yours truly, and the line, “we’re the heirs to the glimmering world” putting a little hope in anyone’s heart.

“city middle,” being the last spot of darkness, held the moments where i would stare at my drink and try not to remember when me and my girlfriend went to where they hang the lights. and although i’ve never seen her do anything like piss in the sink, the song did spark some weird memories. more uncomfortable than unusual, you know?

and, of course, there is the exclamation point of the album, “mr. november,” which should inspire anyone. if “i won’t fuck us over/i’m mr. november!” is a mantra that doesn’t get you off of your ass, then you’ve obviously never been through the hell that is the post-breakup blues.

MP3: the national- baby, we’ll be fine.