Entries from December 2008 ↓

Prescript: I have been tossing up whether to discuss the songs I have chosen for my soundtrack-to-this-year pretend mix CD that doesn't come on a physical disc. A lack of time has decided for me, so without further ado: My soundtrack-to-this-year pretend mix CD that doesn't come on a physical disc is yours to download here (63.3MB, complete with a sad monkey pretending to be the cover art). Offered without comment, because encouraging people to make their own wildly inaccurate interpretations and extrapolations is much more fun for everybody.

So, 2008. What a year.

It started with all the momentum of the extraordinary December that preceded it - still on a roll from arriving back home to find that I suddenly appreciated an Australian summer, then lucking into a job and a place to live with perplexing rapidity, all while coming to terms with the fact that an entirely unlooked-for relationship had shown up and looked to be making itself at home. January saw me making a silly amount of money by doing simple things well, going to see live music¹, even joining a band again. Everything was coming up me.

And then I got sick.

Weeks and months of 2008 blurred into an indistinct mess of exhaustion and waiting. Work, fitness, social life, creative pursuits, in fact almost everything I valued fell victim to the sudden collapse of my physical and mental capacities. Never before had I been forced to confront such limitations; all of my previous failures can, in the end, be attributed to apathy and weakness of will. Now, though, pushing myself meant being practically bedridden for days at a time. Various doctors ordered various tests, ruled out a handful of possibilities, and then handballed the case onto someone else, often necessitating several weeks of impotent waiting. Friendships suffered, inevitably;² isolation set in. It was not a good time.

However: I came to truly appreciate a dimension of friendship that transcends having shared history or emotional parallels or thinking the same things are stupid, a dimension that tends to be invisible until hardship strikes. There are a few people who stood by me in my uselessness this year, keeping the lines of communication open despite the cantankerous alignment of the planets, for which I am more grateful than I can say. It wasn't always the people I would have picked out of a line-up, and I suspect that some of those who kept the suckage at bearable levels weren't even aware of the good they were doing.

Mid-year, with little improvement in sight health-wise, I moved out of the share house I was in and then up to Brisbane. My communication with people in general had pretty much shrivelled up and dropped off by this point, so not only did my departure appear abrupt, I didn't even feel comfortable explaining it to those who asked. Not my finest moment, and in some ways I was vindictively happy to be leaving the city that I felt had let me down so badly,³ although there were pangs every time somebody said they would miss me (and every time some bodies didn't say it).

There followed some new challenges: adjusting to new living arrangements in a new city, while too unwell to get out there and stamp my stamp on this new life; reconciling homesickness with the desire to start afresh; getting better. That last, at least, is a struggle I am winning - looking back, the second half of the year looks like a long, slow climb upward, with the only serious dip being the entire month I lost to the aftermath of moving house again at the end of October. While I'm still not going to be capable of walking from Berlin to Postdam⁴ again any time soon, and it takes me hours to hack together a long piece of writing, things are looking up.

For all that it was miserable and pointless, it was impossible to come through this year without learning a lot. When all you can manage is introspection, for days on end, you discover how much time there is in a day, and how much it's possible to introspect without running out of navel to gaze at. I realised how many basic things I had always taken for granted, how little I missed some things that I had thought essential, how much I missed some other things that had always seemed fairly inconsequential. I guess you could say that I had no choice but to spend a lot of time nose to nose with myself, and there are no distractions or excuses in the world that can withstand such prolonged scrutiny. I'm really onto myself now (a mixed blessing, and no mistake).

A visit to Melbourne at the start of December was a wonderful chance to reconnect with people and places, and reminded me that for all its faults Melbourne still feels like home. Seeing the Mountain Goats for the first time⁵ was the highlight that really pulled everything together for me, though, and I returned to Brisbane newly energised and determined. On a mission from God, as Elwood Blues would have it.

I will not take good fortune for granted, ever again. And I am no longer prepared to sit around spinning my wheels, idly thinking about the wonderful things I want to do instead of freaking doing them. Heck, no. I am going to crack the bones of life and suck out the marrow. And if I don't? I'll have only myself to blame. I'm cool with that.

1. Including The National twice in two days, and getting to thank Matt Berninger personally after the second show. What a weekend that was. [↩]
2. I had sown the seeds of my own doom, never knowing it at the time. [↩]
3. It's easy to blame circumstances on anything but themselves. [↩]
4. Or Hampton to North Coburg. Ah, memories. [↩]
5. Or, to be more accurate, encountering John Darnielle in person for the first time. [↩]

Justin Vernon (who is Bon Iver) self-released this album in 2007, but I didn't get around to listening until this year (when it also got picked up by Jagjaguwar and re-released) so it goes on this year's list. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to only manage a year-end Top Four list?

Considering that "Bon Iver" is an approximation of the French for "Good Winter", it seems strange that this is the kind of music I can only really listen to and appreciate in summer (Sigur Rós are another good example of this odd phenomenon), but on reflection I suppose it is not so surprising. The atmospheric chilliness and claustrophobia¹ would threaten to stifle life altogether in winter, but in the lethargy of summer it's as welcome as a fresh breeze.

For Emma, Forever Ago is a contemplative, beautiful album, at once simple (a guy and his acoustic guitar, additional instrumentation sparse and unintrusive) - and gorgeously rich (Vernon's voice overdubbed so many times, sometimes, that you wonder how he can possibly perform these songs live). Never belabouring grief or sorrow, Bon Iver paints an intimate picture of time spent sitting alone, waiting for the thaw.

My love affair with Scottish indie rock began last year with The Twilight Sad (if you don't count Mogwai as indie rock, which I don't), and continued blissfully this year with Frightened Rabbit. Their previous album Sing the Greys was uneven and unremarkable enough that even the delectable Scottish accent on display couldn't get me to like it. Fortunately, The Midnight Organ Fight is much more cohesive, assured and just plain rockin'.

Scott Hutchison's lyrics have copped some flak for being clunky and "turgid", but they work for me (and I am usually super-picky when it comes to lyrics that sound naff). The album is blunt and honest - thematically centred around a breakup, it doesn't take the expected route of having the narrator play victim to an evil woman, instead frankly exploring the highs and lows of muddling through modern relationships. And it's not above being crude, either, most memorably in the immortal line You're the shit, and I'm knee deep in it.²

This was a 2008 release for me, because I didn't download the pay-what-you-like 168kbps version (I probably wouldn't have even had I not been travelling at the time), opting to wait for the delicious physical release. Even though I didn't have a turntable, listening to the CDs at a slightly more reasonable bitrate seemed worth the wait. It had been four or five years since Hail to the Thief, after all.

In Rainbows did not disappoint. Commenting further on any Radiohead album, but especially one as hyped and dissected as this one, would be superfluous.

If you have looked at this blog in the last couple of weeks, you may be aware that I love (love love love) the Mountain Goats. Three out of their previous four albums were absolute knockouts³, so to say that I was excited to hear Heretic Pride would be a gross understatement.

In some ways it is a departure from previous Mountain Goats material, in that the outcasts who populate the album aren't always regular, struggling people messing up their own lives anymore; John Darnielle has laid down an extra layer of metaphor along with the full-band sound and polished studio production, so that now we have actual monsters in amongst the emotionally troubled loners and desperately clinging couples. On the other hand, Darnielle's minutely-detailed lyrics and all of his esoteric references to weird culture reassure longtime fans that nothing has really changed, in the end.

Until Heretic Pride, all of the Mountain Goats albums since 2002's All Hail West Texas have been tightly held together by overarching themes and subjects, even those that were not explicitly autobiographical. The fact that this comes across more as a collection of songs, closely connected but still quite distinct, is probably the only reason why Heretic Pride doesn't take the number one spot for me this year; for all that I love every song on the album, it can't boast the strength of personality that my absolute favourite albums always have.

Rook is my album of the year. Flawless from beginning to end, it defies rational description. Some words that I have thought about in connection with this album and then failed to string into sentences: apocalyptic, swoop, majestic, dread, transcendent. Transcendent dread, apocalyptic swoop. Jonathan Meiburg, recent escapee from Okkervil River, sounds like a choirboy exploding and that is just the right thing for him to sound like.

1. Vernon recorded much of the album in an isolated cabin, having retreated from the wider world [↩]
2. If there exists a more brilliantly schizophrenic nine words in pop music, I have yet to encounter them. [↩]
3. I haven't been able to really get into Get Lonely. Someday, maybe. [↩]

Before I get to my list of 2008's top five albums, I would like to point out that there are only five albums from this year that I feel confident in putting on such a year-end list. Compared to 2007, which was an absolute bonanza when it came to amazing new music, 2008 has been a year of slim pickings. It's hard to tell if I have been largely unreceptive to new things because of external factors and blog-rock fatigue,¹ or just because there were not very many new things that were good. I suspect I need to broaden the narrow sweep of my musical radar, something I intend to do with a vengeance in the new year.

Here is what this year's releases have looked like for me:

A complete list of the albums that I have listened to more than once,² but that did not warrant any higher acclaim:

God Is An Astronaut - God Is An Astronaut

At least it's not as bland as Explosions in the Sky?

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Pleasant enough background music.

Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

Peter Peter Hughes once said that Trent Reznor is a goth Ryan Adams. That is more entertaining than this album.

Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

Some songs I really like, but the album has no real hook for me.

The Whiskers - The Distorted Historian

A strange and shambolic sort of beast, this may just need more time to grow on me.

Good albums that I don't love:

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Now, this is a lovely album, with lots of lovely harmonies and it's all very lovely, I just don't care about it. I don't quite understand why so many people are gaga over what feels like background music (albeit very nice background music).

Kaki King - Dreaming of Revenge

I would really like to like this more. I think I would love it if all of the tracks were in King's post-rockish instrumental mode but, alas, they are not.

Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

A typically frustrating mix of great tracks and tracks that are not so great. Okkervil River always seem to do this.

R.E.M. - Accelerate

What a pleasant surprise. The first really enjoyable R.E.M. album I've listened to since Automatic for the People.

Good things that were not albums:

Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP

A smaller serving size works wonders sometimes, and thanks to the inclusion of the wonderful "Mykonos" this rates higher for me than the long-player.

The National - The Virginia EP / A Skin, A Night DVD

In the absence of a new National album, a bunch of rarities and B-sides along with a strange, impressionistic Vincent Moon film will do me just fine, thank you.

The Mountain Goats - Satanic Messiah EP

Very different in character to this year's Mountain Goats album (on which I will have more to say in a later post), lovely and stripped-back and boasting one of the best song titles of the year.

The Mountain Goats & Kaki King - Black Pear Tree EP

I haven't even heard this in its entirety yet, but what I've heard is enough to make me WANT it.

The War On Drugs - Barrel of Batteries EP

I don't know what this is or where it came from, but I like it.

The one good thing that I will say about the dearth of awesome new music this year is that it has encouraged me to experiment. Some music that has been recommended to me has fallen flat³, but other stuff I've tried out has been surprisingly entertaining.⁴ I've even had my interest in classical music rekindled, although pursuing that tends to take more effort than simply wallowing in different flavours of pop song.

Tomorrow: the five albums I actually loved this year.

1. Oh dear god, everything sounds the same and everyone is saying the same things about all the things that sound the same. [↩]
2. Sometimes this just means that I listened to it once more to see if I had missed what made it worth listening to, the first time around. [↩]
3. Aimee Mann, The Zombies, The Kinks, Wax Tailor. [↩]
4. Demons & Wizards, DJ Shadow, Ulver, Torche, Jesu [↩]

One of my goals for 2008 was to see more live music. It started well - very well indeed - but then dribbled to a standstill due to circumstances largely beyond my control. The following is my completely subjective ranking of the bands I can remember seeing this year. I'm pretty sure this is actually the lot.

1-4. The National (January, times two) / The Mountain Goats (December, times two)

There is no way I can put any one of these shows above any of the others. What an amazing way to bookend my year. If these two bands ever play where I am on the same night, I think I might die. And not in the good way.

5. Low (January)

I hadn't heard a whole lot of Low before I went to this show, just a few songs from Drums and Guns (which I love). Gut feeling really paid off, because this was one of the best live performances I have ever seen. Alan Sparhawk is mesmerising, his chemistry onstage with Mimi Parker is a joy to behold, and between them they wring beauty and agony out of every moment.

6. Dosh ((January, supporting Andrew Bird)

What kind of heresy is this? Putting the support above the headlining artist? Well, Dosh was really really good. Simple as that. Oh, the precision.

7. Baseball (December, supporting the Mountain Goats)

I wrote about this here. Awesome show, and one that stretched my recently-myopic view of music in general, a more than welcome change.

8. Andrew Bird (January)

This might have been higher on the list - Andrew Bird is an extraordinarily accomplished musician, and even took his shoes off to wander about the stage in his socks¹ - but he was so uncomfortable on stage that sometimes I could hardly stand to be there watching him. Hello, overactive empathy gland.

9. Mick Turner (January, supporting Low)

When I saw Mick Turner's name on the bill I didn't make the Dirty Three connection, so I showed up with no idea of what to expect. Talk about exceeding expectations. If you had told me beforehand that a guy on a chair with a guitar (and occasionally some help from a drummer) who didn't even sing could so completely mesmerise a crowd I would not have believed you.

10. Okkervil River (February)

Okkervil River's albums have always been somewhat patchy for me, and I was apprehensive about how well (or badly) Will Sheff's often-tuneless yelp would come across live. The band put on a great show, and Sheff acquitted himself fairly well if I forget about some of the

11. Armen Firman (mid-year)

The only really "local" band I saw this year (I'm not counting support slots for bigger-name bands), I went along to see Armen Firman at a pub, at the behest of Stefan who used to live with one of the guitarists, and they were pretty good! One or two songs particularly caught my ear, and the rest were competent, surprisingly radio-friendly stuff.

12. Teeth and Tongue (December, supporting the Mountain Goats)

I wrote about this here. Not bad.

13-17(?). Various supporting bands (January/February, supporting The National, Andrew Bird and Okkervil River)

I think that I saw the Ned Collette Band twice (both supporting The National), but can't remember much beyond that. I do remember that Gaslight Radio came across as smug, arrogant and not even very good (although that was partly due to horrible, horrible sound). There were a couple of other bands whose names I don't even remember (and I don't care enough to try and look them up), although I have a sneaking suspicion that the dude from one of them showed up being a roadie for Baseball in Brisbane at the end of the year. Am I crazy and imagining things? Probably, but I got more entertainment out of that than I did out of seeing any of these bands.

??? A handful of the several million bands at Woodford (December)

By the time you read this I will have made my merry way to the Woodford Folk Festival and begun to drown in the deluge of hippies and bands with fiddles in them. Actually, there is quite a variety of local and international acts on the bill; I am particularly excited about Frightened Rabbit, some insane balkan/gypsy offerings, various Celtic things, the possibility of discovering something new and local and excellent, and watching circus people cavorting about the place. Oh, and maybe learning to play the tin whistle in a workshop. Awesome.

1. That originally came out as "Andrew Bird is an extraordinarily accomplished museum, and even took his feet off to wander about the stage in his socks. [↩]

Tomorrow I will be running away to the Woodford Folk Festival and not coming back until 2009. I expect to be pulled every which way - bands to see, workshops to do, poetry and spoken word to enjoy, circus things to watch, film festival roulette to play. And, of course, people to watch, pictures to take and surroundings to enjoy.

I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward to it a lot. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how much juggling I have been doing with the programme and calendars and bits of paper to make a schedule that I can base my improvisations on.¹

Over the last few days I have been happily tapping away at the sort of end-of-year posts that are far more fascinating to write than to read (and most of them are about music). I have enjoyed writing them mightily, though, so I will make no apologies. Because I am a clever sausage (and Wordpress is a cleverer one), the posts will automagically appear while I am gone.

And then I will come back, and it will be next year, and we will see what happens.

1. Or maybe you would. It is hardly a closely-guarded secret that I am a huge nerd. [↩]