Monday Music Roundup

As excited as I am to bust out my near-expert turkey skillz this week, I kinda hate late November. Around this time of year I suffer from unrelenting twinges of anxiety every time I listen to part of a new album, because great is my worry about excluding a late-year release for consideration as one of my favorites of the year. What if I just don’t know it yet, and mistake that for not loving it? Will I adore it come February? What kind of a huckster am I?!

I’m reprising my talking head role (like Max Headroom) on NPR’s World Cafe this year, and I am so aware of all the wonderful music this year held, and the inverse proportion to my amount of listening time. Sigh. I think I have 8 of the 10 favorites nailed down with two dark horse spots left to be filled. Wish me luck. What are your favorites of the year?

A few more tunes from 2008 that are very good:

City of Electric Light
Chad VanGaalen
The opening lines of this song are among my favorite this month: “And I thought you were the moon in the sky, but it turned out you were just a streetlight, you were burning like a hole in the night.” Ah, the old story of mistaken identity; an error that many of us make. This track traces the journey from infatuation to disillusionment, and uses what sounds like xylophones. You cannot go wrong. Calgary’s Chad VanGaalen makes shiny, multi-instrumental homespun recordings, with his newest release Soft Airplane out now on Sub Pop.

Not The One
Francois Virot
My NYC friend Cara posted this track from Francois Virot out of Lyon, France, saying that he had a “sort of shambolic happiness, a violent acoustic guitar player type. he’s got the right kind of crazy going on in his voice.” I love the torrent of strumming acoustic guitar as percussion, and the way he flirts with an untamed edge throughout this song. As he repeats, “It’s over now; I’m not the one, not the one, not the one…” it’s as if he is primarily trying to convince himself. Virot has a bunch of tour dates coming up, but mostly all in France. My brother is teaching English in Calais for the year, so maybe he can scrape together the funds to see this guy — this kind of passion would be amazing live. Yes or No is out now through Red Eye Distro.

To Ohio
The Low Anthem
Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, The Low Anthem has made a fantastic album that friend Bruce says sounds like a night ride home in Joni Mitchell’s car. That’s the best way I’ve heard yet to capture what this song feels like, from a band who hand silk-screens their CDs with love and says their ethos is “not entirely jaded yet: music that really is music, not an advertisement. Imagine that.” Citing influences in the vein of Dylan, The Band, Tom Waits and Neil Young, they vacillate between stripped-down acoustic arrangements and a more rollicking jam that echoes modern contemporaries like The Felice Brothers. The female vocal harmonies on this song also add such a warm and bittersweet undertone. The band is currently unsigned, and their album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is out now.

The State I Am In (live on BBC)
Belle and Sebastian
From 1996-2001, Glasgow’s twee extraordinaires Belle & Sebastian recorded five sessions at the BBC for folks like John Peel, Mark Radcliffe, and Steve Lamacq, and they are now releasing this look into their early years as a band. If it’s possible for the songs to take on an even more vulnerable timbre, they do here. I enjoy hearing the intimacy of these sessions, the acoustic takes on favorites, and the four previously unreleased songs. The BBC Sessions is out now as double-disc on Matador (second disc is a live gig from Belfast in 2001).

GMF
The Features
In 2005, I fell in love with the awkward indie pop of Nashville’s The Features, with their song “Blow It Out” (celebrating sitting between a pair of speakers and playing vinyl very loud) making it onto pretty much every mixtape I created that year. This first single from their new album Some Kind of Salvation pulses with darker textures, and surprisingly reminds me more of The Killers. How did that happen? It’s an interesting development for this ebullient band.

Warchild Music, for a good cause

So. Your resolutions for 2006 are varied. You want to cuss less when driving. You vow to eat more whole grains, be less (embarassingly) talkative when you are intoxicated, and STOP singing along to Kelly Clarkson when she “happens” to come on the radio. Right?

How about helping children affected by war? Now there’s a resolution I can help you keep. Warchild Music’s mission is simple:

“One child dies every three minutes because of armed conflict. War Child believes children should never be affected by war. Full stop. Our campaigning seeks to address this gross injustice. Sanction action with us now.”

Back in September, I came across their compilation/benefit album Help: A Day In The Life, which is stuffed to the gills with great tracks to raise money for their organization. Includes brand new songs by Coldplay, Razorlight, Keane & Faultline, Emmanuel Jal, Gorillaz, Manic Street Preachers, The Kaiser Chiefs, Damien Rice, The Magic Numbers, Tinariwen, The Coral, Mylo, Maximo Park, Elbow, Bloc Party, Hard-FI, The Go! Team, Babyshambles, Belle & Sebastian, and George & Antony, plus these two sample tracks below:

I Want None Of This – Radiohead
From the Warchild Music website: A circular piano riff with Thom accompanied by what could well be a choir of angels, ‘I Want None Of It’ is a thing of awe and wonder. In short, it’s quite, quite lovely. The lyrics deal with a parting of the ways that hasn’t gone too well: ‘You can keep what you want, I want none of it/They’re just bad memories I don’t want’. Very beautiful, very wonderful, very Radiohead.

Hello Conscience – The Zutons
From the Warchild Music website: We are looking here at a brand-new, never-before-heard Zutons track in which singer Dave McCabe wrestles with his conscience over the rights and wrongs of going out drinking until you don’t know who you are or which way up you should be. By the sound of the rollicking chorus, his conscience doesn’t get a look in. With fuzzy guitars, rasping sax and a sly wink to The Smiths, you’ll be dancing to this right through the Indian summer.

You can buy it from Warchild Music online, or download it from iTunes. You can also get it on Amazon. Twenty-two varied and excellent tracks for about $12, depending on your method of purchase. Help do something good in the world to kick off the new year!

And since you asked, I made two resolutions: Take my vitamins every day, and diligently continue on my path to becoming a kick-ass drummer.