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This week’s Top-10 from Chris C. Davis (in no particular order).
What I’ve been listening to this week.
Teenage Fanclub – Shadows (Merge)
For whatever reason, I was not immediately hooked on this album from one of Scotland’s 2 or 3 best exports of all time. At first there were a few songs that I kept listening to, “Baby Lee” and “The Past”. Now, that passive interest has grown into full blown obsession. I don’t think a day has gone by in the last 2 weeks that I haven’t listened to Shadows in its entirety. It’s a winner in any circumstance, but from a band that has been around for over 20 years, it is almost unheard of for a release to be this essential. The addictively catchy melodies and swoonworthy harmonies on display here are enough put this in any discussion of the Fannies’ best releases. Oh, and as evidenced at Lincoln Hall this week, the live show is just as good!
Superchunk – Majesty Shredding (Merge)
At long last, a new release from Mac McCaughan’s main band, Superchunk (when he isn’t busy with them, you can find him putting out fantastic albums with Portastatic)! One of my Top 5 favorite currently active bands, this is their first new full-length since 2001. Here’s the scoop, if you loved Superchunk nine years ago, then you’re going to love them now. If you weren’t such a big fan then, you probably still aren’t going to be one. In other words, for better or worse, Superchunk has done little to mix things up here. For big fans like myself this is not only fine, but expected, as despite numerous albums to their credit, the recipe has almost never varied. You’re still getting 11 peppy, poppy, punky, anthemic, tracks that epitomize the sound of 1990’s American indie-rock, and as well as these guys do it I’d gladly buy an album of samey tunes from them a month. If that sounds good to you, then pick this, or any, Superchunk album up and you’re in for a treat. Here they are doing “Digging For Something”, the first single off of Majesty Shredding at this year’s SXSW:
The Joy Formidable – “I Don’t Want To See You Like This” (single)
Joy Formidable let this one go on their website not long ago in advance of a limited edition 7” that will feature this on the A-side and a B-side cover of “Whirring” by harpist Joy Smith (right around the corner on Oct. 11). “I Don’t Want To See You Like This” is nearly sure to get you excited for what Joy Formidable has in the works as it equals the quality of just about anything that precedes it. The most exciting up-and-comers in the biz have done it again!
Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country (Merge)
This week has been a little warmer during the days than what i expect from Fall. However, the nights have still been crisp and put me in the mood and mindset to welcome my favorite season of the year. And there are few albums that come to mind that evoke this time of year as perfectly as this 2006 gem from Camera Obscura.
The Posies – Blood/Candy (Rykodisc)
I haven’t really loved a full Posies album since 1993’s Frosting On the Beater, but Blood/Candy is doing its best to make me reconsider this assertion. Maybe the less full-time approach that primary players Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer have taken for much of the 2000’s (working with bands such as R.E.M., Big Star and The Minus 5 as well as on consistently good side projects) is a good thing for them. You’ll still find the trademark powerpop hooks and so-good-you-could-melt harmonies here, but there is also a sense of nuanced experimentation on display that makes this more compelling than most of their work as The Posies in recent memory.
Crystal Stilts – Shake the Shackles 7” (Slumberland)
With Shake the Shackles, the A-side of this single, which one imagines will end up on a full-length somewhere not far down the pike, Crystal Stilts have perhaps bettered anything that they’ve done prior to now. This song is still heavily indebted to such classics that I’ve mentioned in relation to them in the past as Shop Assistants and Black Tambourine as well as Uncoffined era Terminals (thanks to Big Takeover contributor Jeff Kelson for the tip on this one), but it also seems to be less plodding, more energetic than most of what was on Alight of Night. The B-side, “Magnetic Moon”, is somewhat bluesier affair than one expects from the Stilts, and while good, not on the same level as its flip.
Guided By Voices – Mag Earwig! (Matador)
Guided By Voices being my favorite band, I could pretty much pick any of their releases to highlight here. I’ve had most of them in constant rotation for the past few months since I heard that the premier lineup of the band was taking to the road this Fall, featuring Tobin Sprout, my favorite non-Pollard sometimes-member and the only one that could hold a candle to Pollard in the songwriting department. With the Chicago show finally being only days away my excitement and anticipation is nearing a fever pitch. This release was the first LP following the Sprout, Pollard split. It sounds markedly different in many ways, namely in its better production quality, but still sticks to the primary GBV formula; Pollard throws 15 or 20 songs, inspired by the rich tapestry of 60’s and 70’s rock and pop which always informs his writing, against the wall, some fully fleshed out, others the type of things that artists with a greater attention span (and without another 40 or 50 songs on deck, just waiting to spill out) would consider works in progress, and nearly all of them work on some level or another.
Tobin Sprout – Moonflower Plastic (Matador)
As I said above, Tobin Sprout was the one member of Guided By Voices that could write them on a level with Bob Pollard. While he mostly concentrated on his painting career after leaving GBV, Sprout put out consistently high quality albums like Carnival Boy, Let’s Welcome the Circus People, Lost Planets and Phantom Voices, and my favorite of his solo releases, Moonflower Plastic every few years as solid reminders of just how great he is. For being “side gigs” these all sound better than most artist’s best work.
Simon Reynolds – Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews (book)
This book serves as a nice accompaniment to Rip It Up and Start Again Reynolds’ solid 2005 chronicle of the beginnings of the postpunk era. It comprises excerpts from many of the interviews Reynolds did with key figures from that era, such as Jah Wobble, Alan Vega, and Edwyn Collins, as well as a handful of further essays on the subject.
Jonathan Franzen – Freedom (book)
When I’m not busy being a music dork, or working on ad school assignments, I’m a bit of a book dork as well. As such, I can comfortably say that this is the best new book that I’ve read in a decade. Every bit of ink that has been spilled about Freedom is deserved and none of it could do justice to how truly fantastic this instant classic is. It will be of interest to readers of this site most of all for the fact that one of its main characters, Richard Katz, the lead singer of various punk and indie acts through the course of the book. And unlike other contemporary books with characters like this as major players, Jonathan Lethem’s pretty horrible You Don’t Love Me Yet comes to mind, Katz never feels like a cliche or simply an opportunity for the author to drop knowing points of reference (though he does, and you’ll all recognize them), but rather he is a very believable character that easily could have ended up an interview in the pages of The Big Takeover.
