Dancing About Architecture Indie Music News 01.26.10: Top 30 Albums of '09

Posted by Ian Wright on 01.26.2010

New music from The Tallest Man ON Earth, new album from Caribou, The Coachella lineup revelead, Franz Nicolay leave The Hold Steady, the Pavement best of tacklisting, NEW JOANNA NEWSOM SONGS, and more.

The bit at the start

So over on my blog for the past couple of months I've been running down my favourite albums of the last year and decade (30 and 50 respectively) in installments of 5 at a time. I'm hoping to get the decade list finished this week but the one for 2009 is finally wrapped up. And so, as I'm sure very few of the DAA readership follow the blog I'm posting it here.

The Thrill Pier DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE Ian's 30 favourite albums of 2009

	30. Groom - At The Natural History Museum (Tight Ship) The first release from Dublin based indie-pop-alt-country outfit Groom that features the band's current lineup (now including a double drum attack and the addition of a Belgian guitarist whose name none of his bandmates seem to be able to pronounce properly) was a 6 track "mini-album" featuring prog length epics, moments of gentle Belle And Sebastian style pop and searing guitar solos right out of the Wilco playbook. Not to mention Mike Stevens' always clever songwriting. New full length due next year is being very much looked forward to around these parts. Top track: Moving West
	29. The Horrors - Primary Colours (XL) Probably the surprise album of the year if only for the fact that The Horrors circa their first album made some awful, awful, awful music (as bad as "they" said it was) and second time around they did something that was really rather good. Bringing in Portishead's Geoff Barrow and video director Chris Cunningham as knob twiddlers seem to have been an inspired move because the band took a reverb drenched step in the right direction when they decided enough was enough with the garage rock bullshit. Top track: Sea Within A Sea
	28. Why? - Eskimo Snow (Anticon) Just how do you follow up what is widely believed to be a career highlight (I know, I know "Elephant Eyelash this, something eles they put out that", I said WIDELY)? Well in Why?'s case you go back and finish off some of the tracks you were working on during the Alopecia sessions. There's much more of a live feel to Eskimo Snow comparred to the obviously studio magiced sound of its predecessor, in fact it's more similar in tone to the live tour EP they put out last year and while it doesn't quite stack up to what came before it (and I fell mostly that's because of the production, Why? are studio wizards, the the stripped back thing doesn't make best use of their talents) it's still a very strong collection of songs. Top track: Berkley by hearseback
	27. Patrick Kelleher - You Look Cold (Osaka) One of the bedroom albums of the year. Though joined by a band for live performances Patrick Kelleher played pretty much every note on this record whether they be produced by guitar or drum machine or child's toy or cheap Casio keyboard. Sounding very much like it was recorded late at night (it was) You Look Cold is one of the most charmingly imaginative records of the year. Top track: Oh, they're all good.
	26. Sonic Youth - The Eternal (Matador) Most of the albums that Sonic Youth made this decade were fairly contemplative affairs that missed out on the rocking out and the unflinching willingness to experiment that so characterised their earlier albums. The SYR series of releases has probably allowed them to scratch that experimental itch and I'm not sure we'll ever hear anything completely head fucking on one of the band's "normal" albums ever again. But on this, the band's first album since they moved from Geffen SY certainly brought the rock. "Sacred Trickster" and "Anti-Orgasm" do not sound like songs by a band whose members are all pushing 50 at the very least. It's been a while since Sonic Youth have sounded this vibrant and engerised. Top track: Walkin' Blue

	25. Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem (P.W. Elverum & Sun Ltd.) There can't be many people making music today whose catalogue varies between epic ambient works, contemplative folk and black metal but Phil Elverum is one of the few dudes who can pull it all off. His latest album, only a year after the very quiet Lost Wisdom is an almost shocking about turn towards what is probably the most ominous sounding music of his career. Of course this isn't the first time that Elverum has dipped his toe into this sort of stuff, there are a couple of songs on The Microphones' The Glow, Pt. 2 where he initially started incorporating metal into his music, but he's never before thrown himself into it with such gusto. Top track: Between Two Mysteries.
	24. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs (Matador) Much like the above mentioned Phil Elverum Yo La Tengo are total slaves to their whims and seem to make whatever sort of music they feel like seemingly without any particular thought paid to what came before or after. However over the years they have sort of settled into a bit of a grove and most of their songs can either be divided in to the long droney instrumental ones, the Velvet Underground circa their third album pop ones, the noisy guitar or keyboard workout ones and the kickass pretty conventional indie rock ones. But they've been a band for 25 years and this is their 14th album so I think that at this stage they deserve a little slack be cut. And anyway, they're still doing really good stuff. Top track: More stars than there are in heaven
	23. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport (ATP Recordings) Note: Also the winner of the "ugliest cover of 2009" award A less punishing listen than debut album Street Horrrsing on this album Messrs Hung and Power drafted in Andrew Wetherell and unsurprisingly he brought a dancier element to their sound in places but what makes Tarot Sport such a compelling listen is the way that those tracks contrast with the type of material more similar to that on the debut. More significantly than a cleaner and more precise production aesthetic what Wetherell gave to Fuck Buttons (not that a song like "Olympians" didn't benefit from the impeccable mixing it was given) was that he helped add a new string to their bow which could have been very, very important for them as there was little point in merely rehashing Street Horrrsing. Top track: Olympians
	22. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino) At this point you nearly have to categorise the music that Animal Collective make under a heading all their own such is the distance that they've strayed from the pack. There's a strong chance that they'll go down as the most influential band of the decade and even though, as a friend claimed when he was talking to me over a year and a half ago, we may musically be living in a post Animal Collective world where their influence on the landscape is already being felt they still push themselves further and further with each new record and much in the same way that over a decade ago in the wake of The Bends and then Ok Computer saw a raft of Radiohead imitators spring up a new release from Animal Collective nearly seems to throw down the gauntlet to those that might hope to bogart their ideas and say "Follow us now motherfuckers." At it's best MPP manages to pull off the unlikely feat of being both incredibly dreamlike, almost intangible in places, and tightly focused. No better example then on album opener "In The Flowers" which begins with wave after wave of ambient washes, pulsing samples and gentle arpeggios before suddenly it all pulls together into a section of straight ahead 4/4 drums and a regular synth bass before it all falls away again. At it's worst it's a triumph of ideas over execution. Top track: My Girls
	21. Deerhunter - Rainwater cassette exchange (Kranky) There just ain't no stopping the Deerhunter juggernaut is there? Ropey first album aside everything that the band has released (and there's been a lot) since Cryptograms has been gold. In a year when its membership released two side project albums the band also managed to fit in another EP to their bulging discography. It's Deerhunter Jim, and mostly exactly as we know it, but when you're talking about a band that I'd argue are one of the best of the decade then you'll get no complaints from me on that score. Top track: Circulation

	20. Condo Fucks - Fuckbook (Matador) The 5th album (and first in a decade) from New London, CT 3-piece The Condo Fucks sees the garage rock legends take on 12 cover versions in their own inimitable style. Okay, it sounds "awful," almost like the band simply threw up a couple of mics in their rehearsal room, hit play and then cranked their amps but it does go to help prove two things: 1. If the songs are good enough the quality will shine through no matter how poorly recorded they are. 2. Yo La Tengo have some balls to follow through on a joke that began in the liner notes of I can hear the heart beating as one back in 1997 and pull this shit off. Top track: A girl like you.
	19. Atlas Sound - Logos (4AD) A record that almost never made it into the shops. An unfinished, unmastered version of Logos slipped out on to the net last year when someone went snooping around Bradford Cox's Fileden account and emerged with it as well as Weird Era Cont. which was intended to come as a bonus to Deerhunter's Microcastle and a justifiably angry Cox declared that the project was dead and that he'd never finish it. Cooler heads prevailed though and Logos thankfully did see the light of record shop shelf day. It's something of a hodgepodge of sounds and styles with no two songs sounding all that much like each other and over its running time it touches on ambiance, psychedelia, acoustic tunes, sprawling and chilled electronica and on the Noah Lennox guesting "Walkabout" gorgeously realised pop. Thank heavens for time to reconsider things. Top track: The light that failed
	18. The Thermals - Now we can see (Kill Rock Stars) Not big, not clever, not challenging, not avante garde, willfully difficult or any of the other bullshit that often gets me all tingly. Now we can see is one of that most precious of things, a brilliant power pop record. Quite simply, catchy as hell. Top track: Now we can see
	17. Burywood - There exists an abstraction ladder (Tasty Wallpaper) I've been unwell for basically the last 3 months so in the absence of being able to engage in more strenuous exercise I've taken to going for MP3 player accompanied walks through the dark evening countryside. For most of the nights in recent weeks There Exists An Abstraction Ladder has been my companion on those strolls. And nothing else that I've taken out with me on the roads has made me pause to smile at how good it is than this record so often. Come to mention it I think that it's the only thing that has made me do that, actually stop moving and smile. Austinite Philip Woodbury's first proper (or third overall if you're counting his teenaged home recordings that were passed around to his mates) album is a compelling mixture of pop variants that sees him skillfully and successfully try his hand at garage rock stonkers ("Minor Infractions"), jaunty acoustic dittys ("(It's just) you you you"), vaguely absurdest drone underpinned workouts ("What I've learned" which also contains one of the lyrics of the year in "Your mother said 'Child you care not for reputation, well if that's so be prepared to have one.'"), bizarre power pop/arcade fire hybrids ("FCC"), country pop ("Put Me Away", side question, is all that a band needs to sound country a trem pedal and some reverb?), and all manner of things involving sterile sounding drum machines and odd synth tones ("Northward" and "Things Which Gives Us Pause") which recalls the best parts of Islands, The Unicorns and Destroyer. Oh wow, I think I've just talked myself into regretting not putting this higher than I did. Top track: Minor Infractions
	16. Jim O'Rourke - The Visitor (Drag City) Jim O'Rourke's first record on Chicago's Drag City label in 8 years to my ears, even though it's an instrumental, is the closest that he's got to the loveliness of Eureka since he put that album out a decade ago. It's possibly a shame so that in a recent interview with The Onion's AV club he expressed huge dissatisfaction with that, my personal favourite release of his. "The Visitor" is a gorgeous, gently meandering piece of music that when placed within the context of a body of work that has seen O'Rourke compose (and compose well) in a vast array of styles and not just limited to everything from garage rock to impeccably precise pop to improv jazz to noise to experimental drone pieces to straight ahead indie rock (dude was in Loose Fur and Sonic Youth ferchrissakes) easily stands up to almost anything in the more melodic end of his musical spectrum Top track: Well it's one single track so ...

	15. Bruce Peninsula - A mountain is a mouth (Bruce Trail) Bruce Peninsula make music that's very much informed by long established musical traditions. It just so happens that the traditions that they borrow from aren't really ones that you might expect to go together, okay fair enough you might find an overlap between folk and country but there's also gospel in there with more modern pop, in a very 60's sense of the word, and prog elements. A mountain is a mouth may be a terrible hodgepodge of a record but it's a fantastically well realised one Top track: Crabapples
	14. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns (Saddle Creek) Note: Winner of the "Bryan Devendorf, wow their shit hot drummer totally makes this record" award for 2009. It's a huge failure on my part that I've got all the way through to December and this is the first time that I've made mention of The Rural Alberta Advantage. Hometowns was described by the allmusic guide as the "most likable album of 2009" and it's hard to disagree. The Toronto 3-piece's debut record is a charmingly ramshackle collection of lo-fi pop songs written by Nils Edenloff and augmented by economical but effective synth tones and furious drumming. Top track: Edmonton
	13. St. Vincent - Actor (4AD) Musically a far more ambitious record than Marry Me, Actor is arguably the best arranged record of the year with Annie Clark's songs carefully ornamented by woodwinds and strings, as well as by the fuzzed up dissonant guitars that were such a feature of her first record and which prevent the Disney Soundtrack leanings of her scores creating too overtly saccharine a mood. Top track: Actor out of work
	12. Dent May - The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele (Paw Tracks) A bit gimmicky on first inspection yes but such is Dent May's knack for knocking out a pop song the quirk factor of his primary instrument of choice is rendered a secondary concern not very far into the record's running time. What might initially seem really knowing quickly reveals itself to merely be very smart and May's songwriting recalls the most joyous parts of Brian Wilson and Jonathan Richman's back catalogues. Top track: The girls on the square
	11. Phosphorescent - To Willie (Dead Oceans) Is it a cop out to have a covers record in a list like this? I don't think it is but if it is then boy are you going to be pissed when we get to the top 10. Matthew Houck's tribute to Willie Nelson is a lovingly chosen selection of songs mostly but not all written by Texas' greatest pothead tax cheat (the remaining 3 are all merely strongly associated with Nelson) and performed in his inimitable hushed voice and Southern Gothic style. Lovely stuff. Top track: Reasons to quit.

	10. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer (Jagjaguar) The 4th album from Sunset Rubdown is the most raucous and energetic one that Spencer Krug, Camilla Wynne Ingr, Jordan Cramer, Marc Nicol and Mike Doerkson have yet released. Possibly that's because following the recruitment of Nicol mid-way through the tour for Random Spirit Lover the band has become a settled unit and it's finally worth noting precisely who besides Spencer Krug is actually in the band (though in fairness some SR members have been playing together for years now). Sunset Rubdown, live at least, have in the last 18 months become a very robust band whose members seem very comfortable with each other musically. Dragonslayer reflects this insofar as it sounds and feels as though much of it was recorded live with the band in a room together as opposed to carefully overdubbing the players track by track (Krug has spoken in interviews before just how precise he can get in the studio if given free reign over a mixing desk and nothing else to distract him). This looser feel to the sound means that Dragonslayer while not the best thing that Sunset Rubdown have put out (that'd be Random Spirit Lover) it's certainly the most accessible, think Bowie in Berlin for a point of reference. Top track: Idiot Heart
	9. Antony And the Johnsons - The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian) Perhaps a little overlooked in other end of year lists due to it's early in the year release The Crying Light nonetheless is a superior album to its Mercury award winning predecessor I am a bird now. The songs here are still built around the piano playing of Antony and that otherworldly voice of his but thanks to string arrangements from Antony and composer Nico Muhly they soar to heights unreached by the last record. One of the most affecting albums of the year. Top track: Kiss my name
	8. Clues - Clues (Constellation) Nick Thorburn wasted no time in kicking his post Unicorns career off and since that band became extinct and he declared that "Islands are forever" he's released 3 albums with his new band (plus a Human Highway record and started another band with Honus Honus of Man Man). His former bandmate Alden Penner has been far more low key. He formed Clues with ex-Arcade Fire (he left pre-Funeral) drummer Brendan Reed and they spent a couple of years writing and gigging around Montreal before releasing their self titled debut. It was a wait well worth enduring. Clues (the album) is a brilliant alt-pop record record, possibly the best one to be released since, without wanting to devote much more time to Nick Thorburn than I did in the opening paragraph, Return To The Sea in 2006. It's a record that's both immediate and yet it takes a number of listens to reveal all its charms to the listener, unassuming and yet quirky and it draws from a wide enough range of influences; art-rock, psych-rock, folk, whatever it is you call Supertramp, brit-pop and even no wave to avoid ever sounding samey. Top track: You have my eyes now
	7. Various Artists - Dark Was The Night: A Red Hot Compilation (4AD) Hmm, should a compilation album be included in these sort of lists? Well when the album in question contains all previously unreleased material and it's as good as this one then it kind of has to be. Curated by the Dessner brothers from The National Dark Was The Night serves not only as a fundraiser for the Red Hot organisation but also as a marker to where indie rock (or at least the Pitchfork variety of it, minus the lo-fi noise rock thing) was in the final year of this past decade. Looking at the list of contributors to this record it's quite the who's who with elder statesmen such as David Byrne mingling with young pups like Dirty Projectors (the song that they worked on together "Knotty Pine" is just about he only thing by Dirty Projectors that I like) and the likes of Bon Iver, The National, Buck 65 and Grizzly Bear all turning in first class efforts for the cause. Of course at the same time there was also going to be a few duds here and there, Arcade Fire's "When Lenin Was Little" has been hanging around for years and is probably the worst song that they've ever released, the Ben Gibbard/Feist song is pretty pedestrian and I plain don't like the music of The Decemberists. All other 30 songs on the record though are completely eclipsed by Sufjan Stevens' sprawling, epic "You Are The Blood", a 10 minute plus scenic route tour through pretty much all facets of his musical career to date. If it's a sign of what's to come from his next album proper then there's a whole load of people that might want to consider just giving up. Top track: Sufjan Stevens - You Are The Blood
	6. Lotus Plaza - The Floodlight Collective (Kranky) I do believe when I started this countdown business off last month that I wrote "chances are, if you were in Deerhunter in 2009 I dug your shit." Well we finally come to the end of the raging Deerhunter fanboy section of the affair with the debut solo record from the band's ever so shy guitarist Lockett Pundt. If you were aware that Pundt was responsible for writing "Strange Lights" and "White Ink" on Cryptograms then it should come as no surprise that The Floodlight Collective is as good as it is. If you weren't, then SURPRISE, I'm sorry there is no cake. The Floodlight Collective is a very lush sounding album that is, despite the layering and layering of many guitar and synth overdubs on top of each other, for the most part based around very simple and very pretty melodies that float along in a gorgeous dream-like manner for it's 44 minute duration. It's difficult to pick a highlight from because the whole thing works so well as part of a unified whole which I'd wager is what Pundtt was shooting for, Top track: Sunday Night

	5. Handsome Furs - Face Control (Sub Pop) If I were to look for a single word adjective to describe Handsome Furs debut record Plague Park I'd have to settle for "cold". Husband and wife duo Dan Boeckner and Alexei Parry's use of sparse, mechanical drum beats, synths and Boeckner's guitar playing made for a fine record but boy did it not make you want to get up and dance. Touring the album the couple discovered that the live shows only really worked if they cranked the tempo up a little and, due to the on the button rhythms of their drum machine played a little harder and looser with those instruments that they did have more control over. Those lessons learned on the road remained with them when they went into the studio for their second album. The resulting 12 songs about, "fucking and being sad" as they joked that all their songs were about in the Academy last year, are far more up tempo then those on the previous record and are characterised by rasping, hissing synths and fuzzed up, typically vicious sounding guitar from Boeckner. Oddly enough, despite that the record sounds quite a bit like New Order at times. And for those keeping score it ranks at #3 in my borderline autistic Wolf Parade and related projects best albums list. Top track: Radio Kalingrad
	4. Bell Orchestre - As Seen Through Windows (Arts & Crafts) What to do when your regular band, one that's on the verge of maybe becoming one of the biggest in the world, has a year or so off? Well if you're Richard Reed Parry and Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire you use the time to return to the group you were in before you made it big and record that band's second album. Produced in Chicago by Tortoise's John McEntire As Seen Through Windows is a sweeping set of instrumental pieces that despite the band members' prominence in indie-rock circles and the similarity at some points to the more orchestral sections of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven could never accurately be described simply as a post-rock record. As Seen Through Windows is a very cinematic work which, and not just thanks to the choice of instrumentation which included Double Bass, vintage keyboard devices, French Horns and Violins but also to the tone and texture of the music, owes more to jazz, to modern classical composers like Arvo Pärt and to film composers such as Ennio Morricone, than to Slint or Mogwai or whoever you might want to mention from the instrumental rock arena. Top track: Air Lines/Land Lines
	3. Dan Deacon - Bromst (Carpark) Dan Deacon already has a pretty sizable discography at this relatively early stage in his life but following the release of Spiderman Of the Rings, which thanks to a couple of genuine stonkers on it in the form of "The Crystal Cat" and "Wham City" first grabbed the public's attention for him as well as the following year and a half or so of touring behind it which gave him a reputation as one of the most enjoyable live experiences on the tour circuit for the first time in his life a lot of people were looking forward to a new release from him. Bromst did not disappoint. To say that it's a more mature record would be a disservice to what he's done before, much of the public may view him as something of a wacky oddball but Deacon's compositional background is very well grounded and despite his absurdest leanings the music that he's made before has mostly been based around some quite sophisticated thinking about what he's trying to achieve (Using a Woody Woodpecker sample, that wasn't a joke). What Bromst is though is the most focused and on the money realisation of what he's been doing up till now, his big thing is attempting to polygamously wed pop elements with noise and absurdism and with this record he managed to pull it off better and more concisely than ever before. It's also the best sounding record that he's made. Deacon certainly made the most of the hi-fi opportunities that recording in Snow Ghost studios (as opposed to his apartment) offered him. Top track: Build Voice
	2. The Antlers - Hospice (Frenchkiss) A few months ago I spoke with someone who had just recently interviewed Peter Silberman and that person expressed some doubts to me over the legitimacy of the story behind Hospice. Silberman was too willing to talk about it he said, as opposed to James Murphy's steadfast refusal to divulge details about the background to "Someone Great." "It's personal," is all the LCD Soundsystem head honcho would say during their interview. Whether or not the story described over the course of Hospice's ten songs is authentic isn't really that important in the long run, when you listen to it it feels authentic (and besides that it's not like songwriters have traditionally been "method" in their songwriting, Johnny Cash might have spent a few nights here and there in the clink over the course of his life, but live album recordings aside he never spent time in the joint). It's an utterly gorgeous record too, one that's both a major progression from when The Antlers was just Silberman on his own and at the same time something that you might have expected someone who made In The Attic Of The Universe to come up with, with channels filled by crashing crescendos of synths and pitch-shifted guitars dreamily set against Silberman's soft, plaintive, desperate voice. The most moving record of the year. Top track: Two
	1. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains (Sister's Den) Cymbals Eat Guitars main dude Joseph Ferocious (a.k.a. Joe D'agostino) is barely old enough to walk into a bar in his home borough of Staten Island and order a beer but this fucking whippersnapper and his band which was assembled through an ad. on Craigslist, have made what for me is the album of the year. Taking pointers from a whole bunch of indie guitar heroes like Steve Malkmus and Doug Martsch "Why there are mountains", perhaps understandably due to Ferocious' tender age, doesn't feature a whole lot of original thinking but it does announce him as a serious talent and it's probably the best 90's indie guitar rock record of this decade. Where they go to next could be really great. Top track: The Living North

Beg, borrow, buy, steal or download this album.

Four Tet – There Is Love In You



Kieran Hebdon's first proper album in half a decade. Magnificent.

You news, you lose

New music, album from The Tallest Man On Earth.

I caught Kristian Matsson a.k.a. The Tallest Man On Earth live a couple of times last year and on both occasions one of the highlights of the gig was a tune called "King Of Spain" which was not on either his self titled EP or full length debut Shallow Graves. Matsson has recently signed with the Dead Oceans label and on April 13th they are releasing his second record The Wild Hunt. The tracklisting for the album includes "The King Of Spain" and you can listen to it by clicking the link at the bottom.



Tracklisting:

01 The Wild Hunt
02 Burden of Tomorrow
03 Troubles Will be Gone
04 You're Going Back
05 The Drying of the Lawns
06 King of Spain
07 Love Is All
08 Thousand Ways
09 A Lion's Heart
10 Kids on the Run


MP3: The Tallest Man On Earth - King Of Spain from The Wild Hunt.

New Caribou album.

Following his crushing victory in the 2007 Polaris Music Prize for Andorra Dan Snaith (aka Caribou aka Manitoba before the lawyers got involved) is preparing to release his follow up to that record. Swim will be released on April 20th via Merge or City Slang depending on where you live in the world.

The album was recorded at Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys' studio in Hamilton, Ontario and in Wales and features guest spots from a free-jazz horn quartet player Luke Lalonde of Born Ruffians.

Speaking about the record Snaith said, "I got excited by the idea of making dance music that's liquid in the way it flows back and forth, the sounds slosh around in pitch, timbre, pan... Dance music that sounds like it's made out of water, rather than made out of metallic stuff like most dance music does."

Tracklisting:

01 Odessa
02 Sun
03 Kaili
04 Found Out
05 Bowls
06 Leave House
07 Hannibal
08 Lalibela
09 Jamelia

You can download "Odessa" from this site.

Coachella time.

The lineup for this year's Coachella festival was announced last week. It'd probably just be easiest to put up the poster (click here from larger version …



First two days lineup are okay, 4-6 things I'd fancy seeing. The Sunday though, holy shit. All the same, it's in a fucking desert so I think I'm better off going to Primavera Sound.

Bye bye to the hipster Super Mario.

Last week Hold Steady pianist/accordionist/harmonica player Franz Nicolay announced that he was leaving the band. Nicolay, who has been in the band since their second album Seperation Sunday wrote, "You should know: I've left the Hold Steady. I told the band I'd be leaving in early September, played my last show with them in Minneapolis around Thanksgiving, and dotted the t's and crossed the i's this week. Five years seemed like a nice round number. Thanks to everyone who was a part of the experience, especially the Unified Scene, who are nice folks."

Part of the reason for his departure might be because he's got so many irons in the fire. He released debut solo album Major General and a 10" single last year. He's also got a collection of short stories entitled Complicated Gardening Techniques due out next month. He's also got another band on the go called Guignol and is producing an album for The Debutante Hour.

Pavement best of tracklisting revealed.

Shit, I just gave away the crux story there in the headline.

What else can I add? Well it's going to be called Quarentine The Past: The best of Pavement and it's out on March 9th.

Oh, and here's what's on it …

01 Gold Soundz (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
02 Frontwards (Watery, Domestic EP)
03 Mellow Jazz Docent (Perfect Sound Forever EP)
04 Stereo (Brighten the Corners)
05 In the Mouth a Desert (Slanted & Enchanted)
06 Two States (Slanted & Enchanted)
07 Cut Your Hair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
08 Shady Lane / J Vs. S (Brighten the Corners)
09 Here (Slanted & Enchanted)
10 Unfair (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
11 Grounded (Wowee Zowee)
12 Summer Babe (Winter Version) (Slanted & Enchanted)
13 Range Life (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
14 Date w/ IKEA (Brighten the Corners)
15 Debris Slide (Perfect Sound Forever EP)
16 Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) (Watery, Domestic EP)
17 Spit on a Stranger (Terror Twilight)
18 Heaven Is a Truck (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
19 Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite at :17 (Slanted and Enchanted)
20 Embassy Row (Brighten the Corners)
21 Box Elder (Slay Tracks 1933-1969 EP)
22 Unseen Power of the Picket Fence (No Alternative compilation)
23 Fight This Generation (Wowee Zowee)

The YouTube video of the week

Joanna Newsom was in Australia last week and performed a number of songs from her forthcoming (out next month eeeeep) album Have One On Me. You can see them below.









If you can you should go to these gigs.

The National

03-26-28 Knoxville, TN - Tennessee Theatre (Big Ears Festival)
04-22 Richmond, VA - The National
04-23 Richmond, VA - The National
05-06 London, England - Royal Albert Hall
05-07 Paris, France - Le Zenith *
05-09 Berlin, Germany - Astra
05-22 Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern #
05-23 San Diego, CA - Spreckels Theatre #
05-27 Oakland, CA - Fox Theatre #
06-02 Boston, MA - House of Blues
06-05 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory
06-06 Washington, DC - DAR Constitution Hall
06-08 Toronto, Ontario, Massey Hall
06-16 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall

* with Pavement
# with Ramona Falls

Writing under the influence

Without which this column would not have been possible:

Talk Radio
Four Tet – There is love in you.

The bit at the end

That's me done. I'll be back in seven, hopefully with my 50 best of the decade.

You can follow me on twitter, I'm endlessly fascinating.

Semi permanent plug for my blog