WMCN 91.7FM - Macalester College Radio

2008-07-24T11:36:00.002-05:00

one of the many endearing things about thurston moore--who is a big nerd--is how he likes to act like he's really tough, and might actually believe that he is. i guess no one wants to hurt his feelings by telling him otherwise, because he was doing it during the 80s and was still doing it last year on that pretty decent solo album. here's proof he was just as deluded in the 90s;

2008-07-15T23:15:00.003-05:00

This past weekend was the National Folk Festival in Butte, Montana, and me and the family traveled down from Helena for the music on Saturday. It was a great time, not the least because Butte is a wonderful town, whose historic uptown was the site of the festival’s seven stages. (Note to readers: Butte will be host to the festival for the next two summers, and it’s not just for locals. It’s worth traveling for, and it’s free!) Despite not being very familiar with any of the featured acts, I caught four really good ones.

The Quebe Sisters:

Three young ladies with fiddles, and voices that can make you believe you’re listening to a vintage 1940s recording.

Wylie and the Wild West:

Fairly well known country rockers, led by yodeling maestro Wylie (fun fact: he is the voice of the Yahoo! soundbyte). Food purchasing kept me far from the stage, but I got close for the finale, during which Wylie announced the show wouldn’t be complete without a great cowboy song, and then launched into a bit of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

The Seldom Scene:

Apparently they are legendary within the bluegrass scene, if that is your thing, and for good reason: these four guys have beautiful voices and are fantastic harmonizers, and have a good wide-ranging repertory of songs. They got their start in Washington D.C. in the 1960s, so unsurprisingly they know what they’re doing.

Le Vent du Nord:

The crowd loved these guys, partly because they are the types of handsome young men that middle-aged women find enormously attractive. They are also exotic but not too exotic, hailing from French-speaking Canada (hence the name). Good earthy time.

---------------------------

Also, has anyone seen the recently released tracklist for Rock Band 2? I played the original Rock Band for the first time this summer, but I might have to make a habit of it now that I can jam out to the likes of Dinosaur Jr, Bikini Kill and The Replacements.

2008-07-12T23:29:00.002-05:00

another year, another sebadoh reissue, and this year it's the excellent "bubble and scrape". some wisdom from the liner notes:

eric: "In 1992 I hadn't worked in a year...and was living in a tent."
lou: "Eric Gaffney would not become the Brian Wilson of sebadoh."
jason: "Wow...THC is not a memory enhancing drug, is it?"

eric gaffney seems like a terror of a human being--his contribution to the liner notes is basically a list of things he accomplished between 1992 and 1993, and this album was his last with the group--but he wrote some classics, including this favorite:

sebadoh--"telecosmic alchemy"

2008-07-07T19:18:00.006-05:00

who's the boss?

It was a particularly nice day in the liberal arts mecca that is Portland, Oregon a few weeks back and so my dad and I decided to make an impromptu drive to Mount Hood. Most drives with my dad are the same: driving in a mid-life crisis sports car, we speed a little more than we need to and always listen to the same music, which my dad claims makes you drive faster.

And you know what? He's right. Springsteen is just pretty damn good driving music. So I've been blasting this in my Camry whenever I get the chance for the last week, and all of a sudden I remembered a record that I bought back in January: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and his brother Concern's collaborative 7" covering Born In The U.S.A. and Streets of Philadelphia. A friend of mine conveniently has one of those newfangled vinyl-to-USB decks so I was able to rip it to MP3.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Born In The U.S.A. (mp3)

You can hear Streets of Philadelphia on CFTPA's MySpace.

2008-06-27T02:23:00.006-05:00

sick hot summer jamz
nothing says summertime like some summer jams, and i've found a couple i'm pretty fond of. not only is this song getting infrequent play on fake (i.e. non-college) radio—it deserves way more—but the other week i stumbled upon an amazing remix of beck’s “where it’s at” (his second most iconic single and definitely one of his best) called “lloyd price express”. better than the original?:

beck--"lloyd price express" (mp3)
i've also be rocking the first album my minneapolis r&b legends the time. adult-themed opener “get it up” is the best song, a nine-minute burst of summertime eroticism that sounds an awful lot like prince’s “controversy”-era jams. anyone know anything about that jamie starr guy who produced, wrote and played almost every instrument on the entire album?:

the time--"get it up" (mp3)

your favorite summer jams?

2008-06-24T13:01:00.003-05:00

last night i finally got a chance to watch the low movie annie let us all know about. i think i'm paying it the ultimate compliment when i say that it reminds me in a lot of ways of a low song: a bit slow and simple at first, but ultimately something really subtle and beautiful. i also appreciated how it’s about a part of america we don’t often see on our tv/movie/computer screens.

anyways the movie nicely incorporates some low songs, and has a respect for the acutal music in a way a lot of rock docs do not. in particular there's a gorgeous live version of one of my low faves, “when i go deaf” off 2005’s “the great destroyer”:

low--"when i go deaf" (album)

2008-06-22T13:19:00.003-05:00

I think a lot of people are aware of Supergrass, without being aware that they are a band truly worth caring about. They have a new album called Diamond Hoo Ha, their sixth (check out the beautiful airbrushing on the cover), and while it’s not their best work, it once again showcases their many strengths. For example: They’ve always been reliable for a killer riff, but with the dense riffage on Diamond Hoo Ha, they are in a way encroaching on White Stripes territory, succeeding where another band might embarrass themselves. Gaz is still a true showman on vocals, nowhere more apparent than the shameless Bowie-isms on “Rebel in You.” It’s worth waiting three years for 11 new Supergrass songs, because of the implicit guarantee that each one will be elaborate and intricate, executed with care and finesse, and exist in the context of the history of rock music.

[I will try to add an mp3 here soon.]

The band got their start in the mid-90s Brit-pop scene, but even from the beginning, they were more like a cross of the hyper-melodic adrenalized pop of the Damned and the Buzzcocks with the cuteness of the Monkees than they were like their more overblown contemporaries. Debut I Should Coco is the place to go for that sound in its earliest incarnation. Follow-up In It for the Money does the expected by adding horns and more acoustic guitar, but it’s a stronger batch of songs, probably their best to date (and since then, they’ve often suggested a great 70s band still relevant in the modern era). The difficult (and self-titled) third album is also strong, but for all its beauty (a more pastoral and somber work) it somehow always fails to connect. That album started a pattern of moving back and forth between the reflective and the energetic on each subsequent release, and fourth album Life on Other Planets couldn’t possibly be more energetic, like Rubber Soul turned up to 11. It plays like a headlong rush toward an increasingly more hummable melody, and the fact that it doesn’t collapse under its own giddiness is a testament to the band’s talents. Album number five, Road to Rouen, is a great title and also some sort of masterpiece. It may be a cosmic fluke that its 35 minutes weren’t pressed on vinyl in 1972, but it’s not an album that sounds like it’s locked in the past. Its extremes of sadness and joy are potent in the 21st century in which they were conceived. In a nutshell: I love this band.

2008-06-16T14:25:00.004-05:00

A review from a ne'er released edition of Liner Notes. The CDs called "Beat Pyramid" and it's by a Southend group called These New Puritans. Enjoy it, and give the CD a listen. Hope this thing called summer is going well for everyone. Here goes:

It’s no secret that I’ve been on a post-punk streak of late, listening to some of the great British bands from the 1970s and 1980s, but I hadn’t really ventured into modern music that could be considered post-punk. That was until I came across These New Puritans. Their sound is reminiscent of the lively pub and club scene that the elder statesmen of post-punk were a part of, yet this British group is almost hypnotic on this effort. For example, on the track “Numerology,” they time guitar slides so that they directly time with the snappy, yet almost paralyzing lyrical hook, “What does it mean?/ what’s your favorite number?”. “Colours” is completely uptempo, with repetitive lyrics and synchronized drums that would have even the most timid of clubbers shuffling their feet on the dance floor. “Swords of Truth” is a track with slashing urgency, fading in and out quickly, constantly leaving a listener on edge. The album sours a bit with the slower, electronic tracks “Doppelganger” and “En papier,” but the band never allows the drum beats to drop off, and the single, “Elvis,” feels like an awakening from a rhythmic slumber. It’s a British Invasion-era track, showing some edginess and unwillingness on the part of the band to label itself as purely post-punk just yet. The album is truly an uncompromising ensemble effort, with multiple vocals as the norm. It’s an album with no filler material, but rather short transition tracks. And they lead into tracks with stuck-in-your-head lyrics delivered as if they are propaganda on a town loudspeaker. The album not only a giant leap musically, but it’s a work of engineered art, with precision being the key throughout. There’s a sense of satisfaction in listening to the stunning debut of a band that has potential to revive a critical genre in British musical history, and adapt it to the modern dance floor.

2008-06-09T12:03:00.005-05:00

i think it was at last year's sometimes-annual low christmas show that a cameraman managed to obscure even the famously good sight lines at first ave. i remember being irked at the time, but the fruits of a little annoyance have proven great. the dutch documentary "you may need a murder," which follows mimi and alan and their kids cyrus and hollis on tour, at home and on stage, is (in my huuuuuumble opinion) amazingly beautiful.

while alan sounds like a bit of a crazy (LSD+LDS=delusions of antichrist), you can see how much he loves mimi and how heavy the world is on his shoulders. with interviews at their home in duluth and in alan's hometown of leonard, mn, the filmmaker lets his subjects wax philosophical, but stops short of revealing a tragic flaw. i admired this band before for their honesty and simplicity, and now i admire the individuals for the same reasons. what you see on stage and hear in the music, it seems, is as deep a truth as any.

for a while, at least, you can stream the movie here.
the introduction is in dutch, but the film is in english with dutch subtitles (strangely understandable to this german speaker, who knew?)

anyways, enjoy.

2008-05-27T12:33:00.003-05:00

*sigh* i logged on to spanish-language wikipedia today to find the phrase of the day was this:
neil young's true as it ever was "better to fade out than to burn away" lyric (from "My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)") erroneously attributed to kurt cobain* for the nine millionth time. this was the only thing able to cheer me up:

*although it would seem neil himself lifted it from james joyce

2008-05-22T13:59:00.003-05:00

I was listening to Slanted and Enchanted on the train (which won't make you pay $15 to check a bag) a few weeks ago, and realized that my favorite albums fall into two groups: those that continue to surprise me and reveal something new every time I listen to them, and those that I’ve internalized so thoroughly that I just don’t need to hear them anymore. Lamentably, I found that S&E falls into the latter category. As it played, I don’t think I registered for even a moment what I was hearing, but the music did seem to calm me and make me feel at peace with myself. Perhaps this is the greatest compliment I can give an album: that it is a part of me now, that listening to it is like looking at my hand, totally mundane but totally comforting.

But for every S&E, there’s an album like Bee Thousand, which I’ve loved forever and which still blows my mind in unexpected ways. Last time around, I realized that it’s the most beautifully produced album I’ve ever heard, so that its fragile melodies are even more precious (and something about the aesthetic of lo-fi being philosophically sound). And so on. I’m not sure what makes an album fall into one category or the other, but I find the division curious. There are other pairs like this: Up on the Sun (internalized), Double Nickels on the Dime (external wow); Rubber Soul (dusted treasure), Pet Sounds (eternal gee whiz). What are yours? Bonus question: Am I making sense?

2008-05-15T18:50:00.006-05:00

so my next post will be about a musical artist currently under the age of 40 i swear, but right now i can't help but share my enthusiasm for the new spiritualized single, from the forthcoming songs in a&e, which i found on the (actually quite good) pitchfork.tv:

the video makes it pretty clear what the song's actually about, but if you only listen it almost sounds like a love song.

2008-05-12T18:00:00.004-05:00

not sure if there's been a better album released in 2008 than the new nick cave and the bad seeds record, but i know there hasn't been a more badass one. check the charmingly low-budget and over-acted video for the title track, "dig!!!, lazarus, dig!!!":

and that's probably the seventh best song on the album. if this guy's not on top of his game right now, i don't know who is.

2008-05-06T16:19:00.002-05:00

Destroyer is one of my all-time favorite bands. I've spent more time on the Destroyer wiki, spent more money on eBay buying all of the albums, and gotten more frustrated with people not seeing Trouble in Dreams as a nod to early-2000 Destroyer (the rating WMCN's own Liner Notes gave the album was disappointing) than I'd like to admit.

So I was pretty happy to see this Washington Post feature pop up on The Catbirdseat today. It's about as obsessive and nerdy as you can get when you put two huge fans of a band with as much content as Destroyer together to argue about the best album. The article itself reads like a Destroyer song, filled with references such as "Pistols at dawn can only work for so long" and "Destroyer's The Temple."

Personally I've never been able to come to a conclusion with these albums, and usually just give up and go back to City of Daughters.

2008-05-05T23:19:00.002-05:00

Thanks for the boost, Aaron. Perhaps we'll soon be seeing posts to help kill precious paper writing time, and pass the precious summer hours, from the following gentlemen, recently chosen for WMCN's 2008-2009 staff.

Corbin Cavallero, Rock Director
Andrew Berger, Rock Director
Reed Boskey, Electronic Director
Nolan Levenson, Hip Hop Director
Sean Hickey, Tech Director

Keep it tasteful, everyone, and enjoy your blogging rights.

2008-05-05T15:06:00.005-05:00

finals have been pretty bad this year, and are only about to get worse. but, as with most things (not feeling twee enough, crippling sorrow), i find that a little calvin johnson can help out a lot.

i recently discovered his post-beat happening (there's a reunion that needs to happen) collective dub narcotic sound system. their sound has been called 'indie-funk', as it incorporated a lot of stuff (r&b, reggae, primitive electronica) you didn't see a lot in 90s indie music. "monkey hips and rice" is the most fun example of what they do--it's got a classic motown riff, but it's the most shambolic, unprofessional-sounding motown riff you could possibly imagine. which is to say that it's got that classic k charm.

here's to paper-writing:
dub narcotic sound system--"monkey hips and rice"

2008-05-01T14:41:00.003-05:00

April showers bring May flowers. Or make that May post-punk. Here's a video I really dig, by a band I adore...The Chameleons! Even YouTube can't kill the intimacy of the space where they played this charming number, called "Nathan's Phase," back in 1982. Perfect for a gloomy spring day like today...sometimes joy, sometimes despair...it's just a phase we're going through.

Also, congratulations to WMCN's new staff for 2008-2009 (staff listings and blog contributors will be updated soon). Don't miss the last five days of spring broadcasting, or our super sweet spring concert, this Saturday in 10K. We'll be selling more of those t-shirts, which are proving so popular.

2008-04-28T08:37:00.004-05:00

Thank god the phone is working again because tomorrow is the day we've all been waiting for...THE SCOTT TRIBUTE SHOW! Tuesday 4/29 8-10PM! Hosted by Nick Kahn and Gautam Mani, the show will feature many great musicians, including...

Will Scott break his all-time record of 8 calls in an hour? Will Scott make a guest appearance at the station? Will we push the emergency alert button just for Scott's amusements? You'll just have to listen in tomorrow night and see for yourself!

2008-04-22T16:48:00.000-05:00

2008-04-17T23:45:00.004-05:00

some dude suggests that 2 minutes and 42 seconds is the perfect song length:

" You need more proof? Jerk. Let’s look at Sgt. Pepper. “Lovely Rita” is two minutes, 42 seconds. It delivers that psychedelic vibe and a coda but then gets the hell out of your life.

Compare that to 'With a Little Help From My Friends.' It’s a mere two seconds longer but feels like it drags on for hours. Maybe it’s Ringo, maybe it’s the tedious melody—or maybe it’s the two goddamn seconds.

Then over here we have 'Good Morning Good Morning,' rightfully discarded by the masses as a throwaway. Why? Two minutes, 41 seconds."

he then mentions a few 2:42 songs by r.e.m., tom petty, the breeders and the smiths, among others. i'd add yo la tengo's "center of gravity". it might actually be a perfect song. all songs that sound like the velvet underground's "after hours" are perfect songs, imo. anyone else have favorite 2:42 tunes?

yo la tengo--center of gravity

2008-04-14T16:52:00.003-05:00

Just look outside your window and you'll find that spring has arrived (read: if you live in the Twin Cities). No shirtless men (read: boys) playing frisbee on the Macalester campus yet, and the trees are still without clothes, but nonetheless, it's time for a lighter music. The Massive Attack and Burial that got me through last week's somber slush have given way to the often melancholy but sometimes joyous synth pop sounds heard on the new ones by M83 (Saturdays=Youth) and Cut Copy (In Ghost Colours--Pitchfork-approved, for what it's worth). For all the nostalgic stylization, these albums are more about recalling the atmosphere of a bygone musical era, rather than straight-up appropriation of past styles. For those interested, Cut Copy will be at the 7th Street Entry early in May (with Black Kids opening, the real reason to attend), and M83 are dropping by the Triple Rock later in the month. Check it out:

[mp3] M83 - "Kim & Jessie"
[mp3] Cut Copy - "Feel the Love"

2008-04-02T12:58:00.006-05:00

The new R.E.M. album “dropped” yesterday. It’s called Accelerate and it’s the loudest they’ve been in years. The band certainly sounds reenergized, but to call the album a “return to form” is disingenuous, as R.E.M. has never limited its musical horizons and have been generally successful in all their endeavors (count me among the champions of 2004’s longish, slickly produced, but often magnificent Around the Sun). The songs on Accelerate aren’t as consistently memorable as on some of the band’s past triumphs, but the new direction is certainly exciting. I’ve often thought of my beloved Scottish rockers Idlewild in terms of R.E.M., but now Stipe and Co. seem to be following the example of that band’s recent Make Another World: big, bold, and bombastic, with production that may obscure the intricacies of the musicianship but that is so thick with R ‘n’ R that none shall care. In celebration, I’ve concocted the following…

Ten Great R.E.M. Songs (The Very Best?) In Chronological Order

Ultimately, it’s all about the songs, man, and our story begins some 25 years ago…

Whether the band’s second album Reckoning was an improvement on their milestone debut Murmur (it was) or a marginal step down is a conundrum that will never be solved, but there’s no denying that it features a trio of R.E.M.’s greatest songs, demonstrating their many strengths. They were never more post-punk or “angular” than on "Harborcoat," Michael Stipe never bared his soul for a greater ballad than "So. Central Rain,” and "Rockville” is the sort of melancholy jangle that will never fail to bring a tear to your eye. "Driver 8” from follow-up Fables of the Reconstruction, maximizes sing-along appeal through the strange and beautiful interlocking of the verse and chorus; never has a lyric carried through from the verse to the refrain been so pleasurable.

Three albums later, on 1988’s Green, the political messages embedded in the band’s songs were as obscure as ever, and God knows what "World Leader Pretend” is trying to tell us. But the song itself is staggering, something akin to a statue, noble, gray and weatherworn. And those shuffling drums, oh yeah! After that, there’s "Orange Crush” to rescue the listener; it’s also certainly about something, but it’s built around such a monstrous bass line that it doesn’t really matter.

Let’s give Mike Mills some credit. His golden voice graces the two best songs on 1991's Out of Time, and "Near Wild Heaven” is tops, the sunniest pop song the band ever wrote that isn’t simultaneously trite. Follow-up Automatic for the People found the band embarking on a mission of pastoral musicality that would eventually put them out of favor with just about everyone, but "Monty Got A Raw Deal” is the most haunting song on an album that introduced R.E.M. phase II (or was it phase IV?). Two rock ‘n’ roll albums later, the band was in reflective mode again, sans Bill Berry the energizer. Don’t write off 1998’s Up as mere middle-aged noodling; it really does push the envelope, if the layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of electronics in "Hope” is any indication. It’s also a mighty fine synth-pop song, and Michael Stipe hadn’t crammed so much language into a single song, while making every word count, since “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”

Time now to espouse my extreme affection for 2004’s Around the Sun, the album most critics lamented as the moment when the increasingly irrelevant R.E.M. hit rock bottom. Not so! The band was never so mellifluous, the songwriting as strong and subtle and ennobled as ever. "Aftermath” in particular, a song about getting nothing right (is our protagonist GWB?), generates as much pathos as the aforementioned “Rockville,” and that horn section bubbling under the chorus is quite something.

That brings us full circle to Accelerate, which for my money is the musical event of the season, even if I can’t share in the “R.E.M. is back!” enthusiasm. They never went away.

[mp3] R.E.M. - "Accelerate"

2008-03-31T22:16:00.002-05:00

Famous pairs in history: peanut butter and jelly, Romeo and Juliet, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, and, most importantly WMCN and Scott. Gautam and I feel so guilty because we, and most other WMCN DJ's, never play the JoJo, Traveling Wilburys, and Nat King Cole that he requests day after day. That is why on Tuesday, April 29 from 8-10pm, Gautam and I will be taking a well-needed breather from our battle of musical imperialism to honor Scott, our most loyal listener. Obviously, Scott doesn't request the same artists and songs to every DJ, so if there are any memorable requests that you recall, let us know! We must honor our friend and keep him as our most loyal listener for life!

SCRABULOUS

2008-03-31T20:56:00.001-05:00

someone told me about this video, and i thought it would be pertinent to this blog because it's a) music-related and b) ridiculous. enjoy!

2008-03-30T17:21:00.002-05:00

low's alan sparhawk—the lennon AND mccartney of slowcore (mimi is maybe the george?)—has been touring of late with his side project, retribution gospel choir. they hit the turf club last weekend, you’d be right to be plunged into despair over missing it, as wmcn hall-of-famer nick m. was last year.

r.g.c.’s just-out self-titled album is pretty great. it sounds quite a bit like low, it's just way more rockin’—most low songs take 4 minutes to reach the volume retribution gospel choir songs are at for their entire (usually very short) length. i can never stop myself from turning up the volume more and more whenever I listen to the album. anyways my favorite track is called “kids”. it's got some classic a-spar lyrics, and wouldn’t have sounded too out of place on “the great destroyer”:

retribution gospel choir--"kids"