TSP: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America

As I'd said, there are about 7 or 8 albums in my collection that I simply do not like. This is definitely one.

John's then-girlfriend-now-wife Jenny recommended them to me. I'm not sure if she'd heard the album or if she even liked the band. But her taste in music was pretty decent, so I gave it a whirl. Here is why this album just doesn't do it for me:

1) The vocalist. He always sounds like some burnt out dipstick who can't quite get his voice to sound less vapid. Sometimes he manages to sound more like a normal human being, but he's just so grating the rest of the time.

2) Drugs. Everywhere there are drugs. Out of 11 songs only 2 or maybe 3 do not mention getting drunk or high. Seriously, what the fuck. Drugs are ubiquitous in rock and roll, and omnipresent in rap, but these guys have a pathetic obsession. None of the songs inspire me to think these guys aren't losers.

3) Repetition. Obviously lots of drugs ties into this, but most songs have overdone choruses, and it's not like they're very good to begin with.

I don't know, I listened to this while driving to work, and I apparently left my headphones at home so I can't listen again, but that's okay.

Anyway, the least-bad song is Chips Ahoy, about a girl who can guess which horse will finish in first. It's somewhat catchy, though very annoying. Oh well.

Thank God that one's over.

TSP: of Montreal - Aldhils Arboretum

Upon further reflection this project seems much harder than I initially thought. Despite the thinness of my collection, I have 60 albums and albumlettes from between 2000 and 2009. At least 7 or 8 I don't really like, but at least 20 or so have a very special place in my heart. The sheer time involved in going through all of them, plus the difficulty of picking the best of something mediocre or something superb will make this one tough.

But that is only more reason to soldier on! Besides, I allowed myself the right to comment as much or as little as I like.

Aldhils Arboretum would be excellent but for several songs towards the end that feel like placeholders. Simply cutting them and leaving the album like that would be a great improvement (I'm looking at you, We Are Destroying the Song, Predictably Sulking (or fucking) Sara, A Question for Emily Foreman, and Kid Without Claws). This is about singles, though, so I will focus on my choice:

Jennifer Louise.

If I used iTunes or found a way to check my most played songs, I'd happily wager $100 before taking a peek that Jennifer Louise would show up in the top 20. It is a brisk 2 minutes, the peppiest of the album, and it is fun to listen to whether you're paying attention or not. The song's sentiment is oddly familiar to me, thinking of people who are only very distantly connected to you. I don't know if I ever do that, especially since I am far closer to my cousins than Kevin Barnes seems to be, but something about that theme resonates within me.

It doesn't linger overlong, and it leaves you wanting more, which is partly why I play it so goddamn much. Congratulations, Jennifer Louise! Honorable mention goes to Pancakes for One and Kissing in the Grass, which are both very good songs, but they just are not singles the way our victor is.

Next up will be something I don't want to listen to! I'll get it out of the way early. Sweet.

TSP: Arcade Fire - Funeral

Wake Up. It's the track that got this whole damn thing started. It even made me mildly interested in the film "Where the Wild Things Are", but admittedly not enough to actually see it. Killer opening, killer vocals, interesting lyrics. It is made for mass consumption and I love it. But how did I get to it?

It was an unpleasant, rainy day in the Boston area today. As I was leaving work the rain was coming down hard enough such that it would be very difficult for me to listen to my normal commuting fare, the audio edition of The Economist. I don't have a stereo, and my car has practically no noise-proofing, so listening to British people talk about Infosys and fruit flies through my small portable speaker is already difficult enough; any significant rain means I have to crank up the volume so high that the distortion is painful.

By the time I realized this I was already underway, and had no more red lights where I could focus on changing the track selection on my Sansa. Keep in mind that I'm not the greatest driver, and that I'm driving stick, surrounded a bunch of Massachusetts drivers in the rain. I needed both hands.

As I glided down the long freeway on-ramp I managed to navigate through the menus and get all the way to At the Drive-In's In Casino Out. I like that album, but it was not what I was in the mood for at all. As I thought about it I realized that I wanted something cool, like Wake Up. If it weren't for Arcade Fire's place at the top of my Sansa's artist list it wouldn't have been practical to find it, and we probably wouldn't be here. Five minutes later I was able to get it started, so we are here.

Wake Up is like the theme from "Kill Bill", Battle Without Honor or Humanity, which Randall Munroe of XKCD aptly describes as a track that "improves *any* activity." My journey was surprisingly quick considering the rain, and I was just arriving home as Wake Up finished. It was a beautiful moment.

A new project!

This evening, as I should have been winding down and getting ready for bed, I had an irresistible urge to listen to Arcade Fire's Wake Up, which prompted me to listen to Of Montreal's Suffer for Fashion and Jennifer Louise, after I which I hopped immediately to The New Pornographers' Use It. Frenetic and characteristic of hypomania, yes; yet more characteristic of listening almost exclusively to The Economist for the past several months. It's like bingeing after a diet or something. Not that there is anything wrong with The Economist, but I've been consuming so much of them that I'm even siding with their spelling of words like "bingeing".

So I've decided that I will attempt to handcuff myself to something that will be fun and good for me: I will go through every album I own from 2000 - 2009 and select at least one track that I arbitrarily decide is "the best". I will make a note of it, and write as much or as little as I care to about it. Once I'm done I'll select my x favorites and post them in one place for all the world to see!

This project will embarrass me a bit as my collection's puniness becomes apparent.

Nevertheless, onward!