The Summer That Never Ends (Until It Does)
Kristin Hersh – Rat Girl (memoir, 2010), Hips & Makers (1994)
WTF, was teenage Hersh really best friends with Betty Hutton? One could build a whimsical, entirely fantastical novel on such a relationship, but Hersh’s portrait of the aging actress is so psychologically precise and gives Hutton such a fair shake as a human being that I don’t doubt it for a second. Elsewhere, her description of her own music is so compelling that the only fair response is to dive back into it.
The Rosebuds – Loud Planes Fly Low (2011)
The breakup record, solemn and minor-key (except for bursting Arcade Fire moment “Woods”) but still every bit as textured and pretty as the Southern Gothic shoegaze of 2008’s Life Like.
Exlovers – “Blowing Kisses” 7” (2011)
Thanks, Jack, I’ll add it to the endless mixtape I keep under my pillow.
Art Brut – Brilliant! Tragic! (2011)
This has been touted as “Argos Sings!” even though he doesn’t do anything so absolutely as Greta Garbo talked in Anna Christie. He whispers and rasps, mostly, sometimes drawing out the words until they approximate musical notes.
Fucked Up – songs from David Comes To Life (2011)
Consider me still a bit skeptical that such an unchanging voice can undergo the transformation necessary for a punk epic, or that music of such buzzing, depthless grandiosity, so intensely sentimental and always aiming for maximum uplift, can even qualify as punk. But these are mere problems of definition. “Queen of Hearts,” “The Other Shoe” and “A Little Death” all surge with feeling.
Sloan – The Double Cross (2011)
Victory lap (which would explain why it’s their shortest record).
Elton John – Tumbleweed Connection, Honky Chateau, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1970-1973)
After my Patti Smith winter I hope to make this my Elton John summer, which doesn’t mean I’ll try living up to an example, only that I’ll imagine how it might have been if I’d been born brilliant.
Madonna – Like A Prayer (1989)
I can’t really think of any Madonna song that wouldn’t prove culturally relevant if played in heavy rotation today, but if music was really timeless, Born This Way wouldn’t need to exist. The world’s dreamlife is elsewhere right now, but at least we’re still hungry in our defeat. Gaga, meet the one who wanted to be good, not bad. We’d still follow her if they let her into the club.
Free music in the park
Low at a DFL rally in Painter Park, their set interrupted by an unrehearsed Al Franken talking about gay marriage and the Minnesota state budget. Debbie Gibson at the Gay Pride Festival in Loring Park, teen pop star in the body of a 40-year-old staying fit for the audience that will always be there for her. Such are the pleasures of summer.
Yo La Tengo – 400 Bar (Minneapolis, MN) – Friday, June 24, 2011
The best band I ever saw live (First Avenue 2006, gasp, sigh) continues to do everything well. On their second night at the 400 Bar with their spinning wheel (it landed on “songs that start with the letter S,” which didn’t put much of a limitation on their boundless eclecticism), they appeared exhausted (example: “Here To Fall” took a while to find its groove, all Sisyphean work for poor droopy-eyed Georgia Hubley until then) but mostly transcended. Ira Kaplan is a man of no rest anyway; his neat little floorward plummet and guitar wail after the “I will try” false-start denouement of “Sugarcube” bespoke true commitment. Later, second-set-ending “Story of Yo La Tango” built so methodically toward total mayhem that you’d swear for a minute they’re the only real musicians left on the planet. It’s all a function of time, but there are moments during the fever pitch, when we know we only have this band in our presence for a few more seconds, but suddenly time stops and they’re frozen in it, perfect in that silence that exists under or between noise. It would have been hard to sleep that night if they hadn’t returned for an encore: a weird, impromptu “Autumn Sweater” (it’s jazz, that song of limitless variations), the obligatory Dylan cover (“I Wanna Be Your Lover”) and an unexpected Big Star one: “Take Care,” rendered as soft flipside to the YLT squall, just as beautiful but a more fathomable send-off.
