Best of 2010

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

There were about four zillion records I should've heard this year that I didn't, but the following list - organized in no particular order - includes some of my favorites.

Surfer Blood - "AstroCoast"
Woods - "At Echo Lake"
Spoon - "Transference"
Arcade Fire - "The Suburbs"
The Radio Dept. - "Clinging to a Scheme"
The National - "High Violet"
The Apples In Stereo - "Travellers In Space and Time"
Tracey Thorn - "Love and Its Opposite"
Vampire Weekend - "Contra"
Belle & Sebastian - "Write About Love"

Honorable Mention:
Free Energy - "Stuck On Nothing"
Fyfe Dangerfield - "Fly Yellow Moon"
Best Coast - "Crazy For You"
Standard Fare - "The Noyelle Beat"
Band of Horses - "Infinite Arms"

Best Jamz of 2010
CeeLo - "Fuck You"
Surfer Blood - "Anchorage"
Boston Spaceships - "Come On Baby Grace"
Band of Horses - "Laredo"
Standard Fare - "Philadelphia" (I reserve the right to like an above-average song more than it deserves solely on the basis that I lived in the city it's named for).
DJ Khaled - "All I Do Is Win" (for serious.)

Can't wait for 2011...
New Decemberists LP (it's great!)
New Strokes LP
um...some other stuff...

Rediscover: PAS/CAL - "The Handbag Memoirs" and "Oh Honey, We're Ridiculous" EPs

PAS/CAL weren't a band made for these times. A bit too fond of themselves and their own urbanity and sophistication, the Detroit-area pop collective flamed out in 2008 after finally releasing their long-delayed debut LP. But in the current climate of (relative) austerity, their uppity, high-gloss act wouldn't play as well as it did in the early 2000s, when the band emerged tailor-made for listeners who thought the Decemberists weren't bookish enough, or who considered Belle and Sebastian too gritty and urban.

Released in 2002, debut EP The Handbag Memoirs was anchored around "The Bronze Beached Boys (Come On Let's Go)," the disc's first track and supposedly the band's attempt to construct the perfect pop song in just one evening. (If you don't know it, you've still probably heard it, as a year or so later the track served as the backing to a ubiquitous Saturn commercial that helped finance the group's second EP). In a number of ways, that opening salvo was as good as they ever got: a short, sunny burst of acoustic guitars, bubbly "ba ba ba"s and frontman Casimer Pascal's affected, falsetto vocals that made its point and got it over with before wearing out its welcome. At only six tracks it's still overly long, though "I'd Bet My Life That You Bet Your Life" swung with a western bounce, while "I Wanna Take You Out In Your Holiday Sweater" proved perhaps the band's best-ever attempt at an up-tempo Belle and Sebastian pastiche. Elsewhere, however, the EP sputtered ("Grown Men Go-Go" and "Marion/Mariam") and downright failed, especially on the overcooked "This Ain't For Everyone."

Still, it was a promising first try, and it's hard to think of that offering without also considering the follow-up EP, 2004's Oh Honey, We're Ridiculous. Both discs feel cut from the same cloth, though on Oh Honey the band attempted to turn its faux-refinement on its head with the raucous (by their standards) "What Happened to the Sands?," while also broadening their horizons - a sign of what was to come. PAS/CAL's greatest failure was always an inability to rein themselves in and limit the number of ideas crammed into one song, exemplified by the fact that the band (or, more specifically, most likely Pascal) never met a coda he didn't like, often stretching songs way beyond their logical end point (see: nearly every song on their lone full-length LP). On standout track "Dear Maude," Pascal serenades a 115-year-old woman whose only wish is to not see another birthday. "Dear God, please deliver a swift blow/ At least let me catch a bad cold/ And I'll be gone in a fortnight," he sings, channeling the wit of Jarvis Cocker, who surely would have had the good sense not to tack on another 90 seconds at the end of the song. "Bem, Please Come Home" could have soundtracked a Wes Anderson film, though one gets the sense that the pretensions of Whit Stillman might be more to the band's liking.

After those first two releases, the magic was basically gone. Between Oh Honey and the 2006 Dear Sir EP, the band released a vinyl holiday single, covering Wham!'s "Last Christmas," as well as "Summer is Almost Here," part of a 12-inch split, all the while continually promising that a full-length was on the way. Dear Sir, then, was meant to be a holdover and a tease to the forthcoming LP, though it ended up as a collection of tracks with very little binding them together as a unit, most of which shouldn't have been released in the first place.

In 2008, PAS/CAL finally released the long-awaited I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke and Laura LP, though by that point it seemed less like a victory lap and more like the last few drops coming out of the tap after the water's been shut off. For starters, at least a quarter of Luke and Laura's material pre-dated the rest, as the band recycled and/or revised tracks from previous releases. But the larger problem was that much of the disc came off as having spent too much time in the percolator: too few songs stuffed with too many ideas, to the point that there are any number of magical moments within songs, but few songs that actually carry that magic all the way through. For a band that had simply nailed it on their first try in "The Bronze Beached Boys," it was a lackluster finale, to say the least. After six years of waiting, we expected more.

After the album was released, that was essentially it for PAS/CAL. The band rarely played live in its hey day (and certainly not much beyond Detroit and New York), and there were few (if any) shows to support the record and no new music since then. A visit to the group's website redirects to a dormant MySpace account, and Wikipedia lists them as having been inactive since 2008. It's a disappointing end to what could have been, though those first two EPs still hold up, their best moments a promise of something great that never really fully materialized.

(Originally posted 11/9/10 at SpectrumCulture.com)

Review: Africa United by Steve Bloomfield

Talk about a thankless task: writing a book about a sport that few people in this country cares about, as played on a continent that few people in this country seem to care about. The World Cup in South Africa, however, provides British journalist Steve Bloomfield with an opportunity to shed a little light on the world’s most disadvantaged continent and its most popular sport – and the many ways the two are intertwined.

Bloomfield is a Nairobi-based correspondent for several UK media outlets, including The Independent, Monocle, and formerly The Observer. As he writes in the acknowledgments, Africa United was spawned by an attempt to understand the complexities of Kenyan politics through its soccer. That strategy works surprisingly well, as each of the ten chapters – covering 13 nations across the continent – touches on that particular country’s history, wars, recent political struggles and other conflicts. Investigating all that through the lens of soccer, both local club teams and the national team, Bloomfield also examines the people playing the sport and those working behind the scenes.

His thesis, then, is that states are only as honest as the people running the institutions, and in most cases here – such as Zimbabwe – if the men and women behind the football association are corrupt then odds are things are also rotten at higher levels. He’s a firm believer that sports can unite divided peoples, and while that’s not a new idea, Bloomfield expresses it in a breezy, readable way that’s entertaining and informative.

There’s no shortage of football travelogues, but {Africa United} bests many of them right off the bat with two distinct advantages. For one thing, Bloomfield approaches the material from a reporter’s point-of-view, writing as much about the socio-economic situation in each country as much as he does the soccer. Secondly, he’s judicious with the soccer, writing only as much as necessary without going overboard – a critical problem in many similar books, such as Jonathan Wilson’s Behind The Curtain, which chronicles football in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Too often in Wilson’s book and others like it, too much focus is placed on recalling games, leaving the casual reader lost amid descriptions of grounds, teams and players he or she knows little or nothing about. Granted, there’s plenty of match descriptions here, but Bloomfield has an eye for color and catching the entire scene of the experience, not just the action on the field, making for a livelier read than just a play-by-play commentary.

Most memorable, however, are Bloomfield’s excursions beyond the pitch, including visits to a Coca-Cola plant in Somalia, run-ins with Zimbabwean police and matches between Sierra Leone’s amputee football league. As with similar titles, he also touches on the worldwide dominance of the English Premiere League and illustrates that in nations with struggling soccer teams, clubs like Chelsea, Manchester United and Bloomfield’s beloved Aston Villa are often more important to the people than their own local clubs, such is the reach of globalization.

The author’s background as a news reporter – as opposed to a sports correspondent – proves a huge advantage, as Bloomfield is adept at succinctly summarizing complex ethnic, tribal and regional conflicts in many African nations without getting bogged down in details or letting it overwhelm the reader. Furthermore, each chapter is peppered with anecdotes – such as his visit to a South African soccer stadium being renovated for the World Cup – that flesh out the particular story he’s trying to tell, never coming across as forced or over done.

The stated, altruistic purpose behind having the World Cup in South Africa was to show that Africa is more than just wars, famine and disease. Africa United, then, is a timely look at one of the world’s most misunderstood regions and the crucial role soccer serves there, both in bringing peoples together and – often more importantly – providing a unifying, entertaining diversion from everything else going on in that part of the world.

(Originally posted 6/27/10 at SpectrumCulture.com)

Rediscover: Omega (Redstar): - "Trombitás Frédi És A Rettenetes Emberek"

When you think about Communist Hungary – assuming you think about it at all – the first thing to spring to mind probably isn’t Eastern-tinged soundscapes and mind-fuck guitar licks. It’s time to rethink why the West won the Cold War.

Released in 1968, Omega’s Trombitás Frédi És A Rettenetes Emberek(loosely translated to Trumpeter Fred and the Terrible People) was Omega’s first offering in a career spanning more than 40 years. Though the band was always Omega, they were rechristened as Omega Redstar for their debut, though went by Omega on all future releases. Looking at the band’s record covers over the years is something of an abbreviated study in rock n’ roll album design and hairstyles over several decades, as they go from the Rubber Soul-esque 10,000 Lépés to 1975’s English-language The Hall of Floaters In The Sky, with its giant eagle clutching a sword; there’s the Bowie-fueled Omega X: Az Arc and 1978’s prog-inspired Skyrover, one of the many platters the Budapest-based quintet released in both English and Hungarian (a few English-only albums are also out there).

The band formed in 1962 but didn’t release its debut until six years later, and while six years isn’t all that long, it’s an eternity as far as the evolution of ‘60s rock. So, not surprisingly, Trombitás Frédi is a mish-mash of sounds from the era, though the Beatles seem to always be the chief musical reference point.

A track like “Vasárnap” could’ve been a {Revolver} cut solely on the strength of its McCartney-esque melody, which bears a striking resemblance to that record’s “For No One,” whereas “Rettenetes Emberek” feels like an early-‘60s dance hall track that transforms into a more psych-oriented mid-‘60s garage jam that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Nuggets collection. “Holnap” alternates between tiptoeing guitar and bass lines, offset by schizophrenic guitars and keyboards and “Ha Én Szél Lehetnék” is whistle-laden ditty that moves back and forth between a bouncy and childlike vibe before turning 90 degrees to add a Far East flavor, then turning back to the whimsical.

The brief instrumental “Kállai Kettős” opens with reverb guitars and a flute solo before the ominous bass and drums come in, building toward a guitar workout influenced by Hungarian folk melodies. (Psych revivalists, take note: when attempting to recreate this stuff, it’s best to include the bits that nobody likes, such as flute solos).

Sadly, Omega were left off of last year’s Psychedelic Super Piotr, a compilation of psych cuts from behind the Iron Curtain, including Illes, another Hungarian act, whose “Ne Gondold” comes across like The Beatles’ “Get Back” on steroids. Admittedly, there’s not a huge market for Eastern European psychedelia, but Omega at least deserved to be included in that sort of broad survey of the genre.

In an age when seemingly everything ever recorded is available with a mouse click or two, there’s a reason this sort of thing hasn’t been completely resurrected. For one thing, Hungarian psychedelic rock is an admittedly small niche market. Secondly, however, is availability: select bits of Omega’s catalog have been reissued via the Hungarian label Hungaraton, but even on the Web it’s not always the easiest thing to track down. (After a lot of searching I stumbled upon a copy at Philly’s AKA Records, home to one of the country’s the best selections of obscure foreign psych reissues).

Trombitás Frédi’s 2003 reissue contains seven bonus tracks – including the bluesy “Nem Szeretlek” and the Zombies-inspired “Rószafák” – and while the material doesn’t always gel together as a cohesive whole on account of coming from a number of different stylistic periods, it’s a fascinating time capsule from behind the Iron Curtain – and a peak into a regional genre that’s not often discussed.

(Originally posted 6/15/10 at SpectrumCulture.com)

Reviewapalooza!

Here's links to a bunch of stuff I've reviewed over the past several months but was too lazy to post individually each time it actually went up online. I'll try to be better about that.

"Red Riding Trilogy"

Freelance Whales - "Weathervanes"

David Hajdu - "Heroes & Villains"

Rediscover: The Rentals - "Seven More Minutes"

The Art Museums - "Rough Frame"

Miles Kurosky - "The Desert of Shallow Effects"

Free Energy - "Stuck On Nothing"

Woods - "At Echo Lake"

Standard Fare - "The Noyelle Beat"

Wednesday Comics anthology

I didn't see "War Games" until I was 29.

The Apples In Stereo - The Future Is Now

My piece on The Apples In Stereo, for Blurt Online

(Orig. published 5/14/10 at Blurt Online)

HAPPY ACCIDENTS: Fyfe Dangerfield

My piece on Fyfe Dangerfield, up at Blurt Online.