today's playlist

[novaheat]

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Apparently I can't decide if I want to be grim or have fun.

[davy]

Apparently I can't decide if I want to be grim or have fun.

you can have it all!

[auto-da-fey]

Momus, on the other hand, I've been a fan of for a decade and had a burned copy of this--Don't Stop the Night--for a few years without ever playing it once. I finally did, and it's terrible, a mix of tinny synth-pop and blandly lecherous lyrics, so I figured it must have been his debut. I'm surprised to see it came after The Poison Boyfriend and Tender Pervert, both of which I like a lot. I can't figure out what he was thinking here.

I really like 'Don't Stop The Night'! But I agree with your description of it. I think he went a lot further down the 'tinny synthpop' road after that too.

Nick, what do you think of Voyager? I just played that for the first time, and while it left me cold, I think that can be at least partly chalked up to its departure from my (apparently quite misguided/overly limited) notions of Momusosity. I'm gonna try it again soon.

[auto-da-fey]

also today, in addition to new Bob Mould:




I burned the Tom T. Hall off my father over Christmas. I grew up with him raving about Hall, but to me the guy was always a schmaltzy old asswad who sang about loving little baby ducks and big pickup trucks. Turns out he's a sharp songwriter with a gift for narrative, and what the hell is up with "Strawberry Farms"? That's one odd, and oddly haunting, country song.

[Nick Ink]

Nick, what do you think of Voyager? I just played that for the first time, and while it left me cold, I think that can be at least partly chalked up to its departure from my (apparently quite misguided/overly limited) notions of Momusosity. I'm gonna try it again soon.

I must admit I don't know that album very well, although it seems to be the point at which he got interested in a kind of Japanese inspired, softer sentimentality, and it's that philosophical/political level on which I connect with him really, rather than on a musical one.

The Momus records I really liked were Tender Pervert, The Posion Boyfriend and the Monsters Of Love compilation, but I did lose track of him completely during the 90s. When I went to Korea in 98 though, I started getting into the internet and one of the dirst things I discovered was his site, and especially the essays and photoblog he did back then. Over the last 4 or 5 years I've been reading his Click Opera livejournal blog too. Considering he cranks those essays out on a near daily basis, there's a high proportion of interesting and stimulating stuff there. I enjoy the cultural/political ones more than the art/design ones.

I think he's an interesting character, but not so much for his music (although last year's Otto Spooky had a couple of really nice songs on it, especially Nervous Heartbeat), but as a free thinking, provocative and original kind of renaissance man. I don't agree with everything he says, but he invariably annoys the right kind of people and is fantastically contradictory. I think it's his take on the cultural textures of Japan (many of which I recognise in my experience of Korea) that I identify with most.

Anyway, here are some Momus links, in case they're of interest.

Click Opera
http://imomus.livejournal.com/

Momus daily photos 200-2004
http://imomus.com/dailyphotoindex.html

Momus essays 1999-2004
http://imomus.com/thoughtsindex.html

Momus art
http://www.whitney.org/www/2006biennial/artists.php?artist=Momus
http://imomus.livejournal.com/177166.html

Early Momus B-side - Right Hand Heart
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=9213CB432C5B2DB4

Late Momus video - Nervous Heartbeat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvYByg9HN64

Nick's favourite Momus lyric - What Will Death Be Like?http://www.phespirit.info/momus/19900106.htm

Momus nemesis
http://neojaponisme.com/
http://pliink.com/mt/marxy/

Momus penis (NSFW, obviosuly)
http://imomus.com/dailyphoto280403.html

[coldforge]

Momus talks shit about rockism and it makes me craaazy!

[Nick Ink]

he he - yes, you're not alone there, he certainly gets up a lot of noses.

[auto-da-fey]

Thanks, Nick--I'll check those out, but first things being first, holy hell, that cock has more girth than I would have expected. Also, yeah, I guess Voyager is the first in a trilogy of albums "addressing the near-future sci-fi androgyny of Japan," as allmusic has it. Somewhat like you, perhaps, I like him best when he's singing about being a Maoist intellectual in the music industry or contemplating the cultural meanings of coming in a girl's mouth.

[RavingLunatic]

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

This is a great indie-rock album, catchy and with shades of NMH. One of the best records I've heard in what is becoming an increasingly great year for music for me.

edit: figure I might as well include a YSI or two

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 04 - Don't Haunt This Place
Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 12 - Edmonton

[DanielBurns11]

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

This is a great indie-rock album, catchy and with shades of NMH. One of the best records I've heard in what is becoming an increasingly great year for music for me.

edit: figure I might as well include a YSI or two

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 04 - Don't Haunt This Place
Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 12 - Edmonton

Those two songs make me want to buy that album right now.

[auto-da-fey]

as best I can recall, this was the playlist that took me from Los Angeles into Colorado:

Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue
East River Pipe, Shining Hours in a Can
Alkaline Trio, Agony & Irony (holy FUCK this album is awful, and I say that as quite the Alk3 apologist)
Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust
Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine, x2 (forgot how much I like this album)
Shearwater, Rook
Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight
Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Os Mutantes, s/t

shit, I know there were more--that's not 12 hours there. I guess if I don't record that one album that played while I crossed into Arizona it won't be a great loss for this thread.

[Nick Ink]

Poker Night Soundtrack

Goldmund  - Image-Autumn-Womb
Goldmund - In a Notebook
Goldmund - Finding it There
Songs: Ohia - Gauley Bridge
Songs: Ohia - Blue Factory Flame
Magnolia Electric Co. - Give Something Else Away Every Day
Songs: Ohia  - How to Be Perfect Men
Burial - Raver
Grouper - I'm Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
The Soft Boys - Vegetable Man
Sylvain Chauveau - Nuage III
Ricardo Villalobos - ErSo
Grouper - A Cover Over
Willits + Sakamoto - Chi-Yu
Boards of Canada - Kaini Industries
Jason Molina - Long Desert Train
Robyn Hitchcock - The Black Crow Knows
Thee, Stranded Horse - Misty Mist (Tyrannosaurus Rex)
Boards of Canada - Wildlife Analysis
Sylvain Chauveau - L'Oree du Bois
Battles - Ddiamondd
Songs: Ohia - Hearts Newly Arrived
Akron Family - Oceanside
The Caretaker - False Memory Syndrome
Thee, Stranded Horse - Tainted Days
The Soft Boys - Dreams
Junior Boys - Count Souvenirs
Sylvain Chauveau - Symptome No 1
Menomena - Rotten Hell
Junior Boys - FM
William Basinski  - Unnamed 1
Grouper  - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping
Songs: Ohia - No Limits on the Words
Songs: Ohia - Lioness
Beach House - Wedding Bell
Goldmund - Gifts
Songs: Ohia - Cabwaylingo
Julianna Barwick  - Scary Cat
Goldmund - In A Notebook
Burial   - Etched Headplate
Songs: Ohia  -  Program: The Mask
Jason Molina  - Spectral Alphabet
Boards Of Canada - The Color Of The Fire
Songs: Ohia - Champion
Grouper - Stuck
Songs: Ohia - I've Been Riding With The Ghots
The Soft Boys - Positive Vibrations
William Basinski - Unnamed 10
Robyn Hitchcock - Winchester
Robyn Hitchcock - The Leopard
Burial - Untrue
Burial - Endorphin
Sylvain Chauveau - Marianne (Variation)
Julianna Barwick - Unt3
Songs: Ohia - Just Be Simple
Songs: Ohia - An Ace Unable To Change
Junior Boys - Caught In A Wave
Boards Of Canada - Roygbiv
Burial - Shell Of Light
Animal Collective - Cuckoo Cuckoo
Robyn Hitchcock - Man With A Woman's Shadow
Sylvain Chauveau - Marianne
ISAN - Cinnibar
Robyn Hitchcock - Sinister But She Was Happy
Songs Of Green Pheasant - Wolves Among Snowmen
William Basinski - Unnamed 2

[slow west vultures]

where's the Kenny Rogers Nick?

[dieblucasdie]

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

This is a great indie-rock album, catchy and with shades of NMH. One of the best records I've heard in what is becoming an increasingly great year for music for me.

edit: figure I might as well include a YSI or two

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 04 - Don't Haunt This Place
Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - 12 - Edmonton

Dude this album is killer, thanks for the recommendation.  I have a pretty low tolerance for folk-tinged indie rock records these days, but this is awesome.

[RavingLunatic]

Sweet, I'm glad you guys dig the Rural Alberta Advantage. I haven't discovered very many great new bands this year, but they're at the top of the list. And today, I listened to a couple albums I bought recently:



Greg Summerlin - All Done In Good Time
Kenny Tompkins - The Beautiful Death of Everything

I've talked about both albums here before. Tompkins now records with a band called the Royal Army Recording Co, whose latest album was even better than this one. That Summerlin album is the one that really blew me away today though. It's a story-album, and while the story is pretty simple and straightforward, I think it adds tremendously to what I had previously only comprehended as (very good) unrelated songs.

[RavingLunatic]

Poker Night Soundtrack

That's a killer playlist. Heavy on the Molina. Nice to see "Long Desert Train," which might be my favorite Molina song. Also, I see a song from the latest Junior Boys album. Last Exit is a favorite of mine, one of the best albums of the last 5 years really. For some reason though, I cannot get into So This Is Goodbye at all, despite the fact that it ostensibly sounds virtually identical in style and execution to Last Exit. I have no clue why one sounds so great to me and the other mediocre.

[slow west vultures]

i've been slowly getting more and more into So This is Goodbye.  it would be a retrospective favorite of my 2006 list.  i never got into Last Exit much more than "Can you teach me how to fight" and "Birthday".  i need to import that into my itunes and listen to it more. 

[in jest]

Sunday-morning-uni-work-mosh.

[Nick Ink]

where's the Kenny Rogers Nick?

I must admit my knowledge of this Rogers character is limited to the admittedly awesome Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) and the beard. I tend to mix him up with Larry Hagman.

[Andrew_TSKS]

He turned into a longrunning country singer after that song, and his best-known song is called "The Gambler". It's about an old poker player telling his life's wisdom to a young guy, and the chorus is all "you got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em", etc. Very famous song, at least in America.

[Ignatius]

He also sells fried chicken.

[davy]

i thought it was roasted.

[Robert]

It was.

My former roommate used to work at the one in Athens (apparently, there's only one Kenny Rogers' Roasters location left in north America and it is in Canada, anyway...)  and when he lived in the Athens area, he'd stop in occasionally, which must have been really weird.

I sat right behind him when I saw the first Men In Black movie, and I was his ex-wife's FedEx delivery person for a few months.

[Ignatius]

oh! roasted...  sorry, I guess I don't get out much.

[DanielBurns11]

Already played

Prolyphic & Reanimator - The Ugly Truth

Now Playing

Sigur Rós - ( )

To be played

Elliott Smith - XO


Say Anything - In Defense of the Genre


Shakira - Dónde Están los Ladrones?

Then, if there's time, maybe some Mozart.