Juned, Every Night for You

A remarkable document of an odd moment in Seattle’s music, Juned’s second and final album finds them stretching out far beyond the punky/poppy vibe of their first. (Its first song is named after stoner-metal icons Kyuss; its last is an airy waltz that’s a showcase for Seattle experimental violinist Eyvind Kang.) One of Juned’s escape routes from alt-rock purgatory was the delay-heavy guitar sound Dale Balenseifen and Claudia Groom had picked up from British new wave; another was their feathery two- and three-part harmonies. The result is a little bit like an Americanized version of Lush, except with a rhythm section that kicks extra-hard — the bridge of its single “Possum” is basically Juned demonstrating that they can do metal too.

Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West

Modest Mouse were already experienced road warriors by the time they released their second full album, and it’s very much a record about spending enormous amounts of time on highways: its longest jam is unsurprisingly called “Truckers Atlas.” (See also “Convenient Parking,” a thrilling chant-and-scream piece that’s built on cyclical repetitions large and small.) Isaac Brock’s voice isn’t just dry, it’s parched; his favorite trick as a guitarist is to hit a single note and let it wobble and arc; his lyrics call up gas stations, drinking binges and obsessive existential meditation. And this lineup of Modest Mouse was, more than anything else, a wildly unusual groove band — almost every song is built on tightly arranged rhythms more than riffs.

Quasi, Featuring “Birds”

The duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss nailed their sound on this record — Coomes hammering at an electric harpsichord (as well as other instruments), Weiss driving the songs with pyrotechnical drumming, the two of them harmonizing with a sweetness that’s very slightly sour. It’s also one of the greatest, darkest, most self-and-other-lacerating breakup records ever made, from its brilliant opener “Our Happiness Is Guaranteed” — a hilariously horrifying sci-fi scenario about the only way romance can last for sure — through its later songs of undiluted despair. Coomes offers a few side-trips, too: “The Poisoned Well” seems to be obliquely addressed to a self-destructive friend, “California” is an ice-pick aimed at that state (“Life is dull, life is gray/ At its best it’s just okay/ But I’m happy to report/ Life is also short”), and “It’s Hard to Turn Me On” is, for all its ground-down cynicism, an honest-to-goodness love song.

Who AreSlug Guts

Maybe it’s the country’s colorful history, maybe it’s the giant beer, maybe it’s sense of frontiet, like an alternate-universe Old West (see also the amazing Western “The Proposition” for the full story), but there is noise rock and then there is Australian noise rock. From the Birthday Party’s shirtless, godless mega-throb to today, Strine (Australian for “Australian”say it out loud) noise rock seems fundamentally looser, more chaotic, more willing to embrace truly deviant sounds.

Slug Guts are the current kings of that particularly muddy mountain, and their newest studio album, Playin In Time With the Deadbeat, their third overall and second for Sacred Bones, is one of the finest such slabs to drunkenly shimmy its way onto our comparatively tame shores in quite some time. Songs boot and rally, surge ahead and scream away. An oddly thrilling cover of Public Image Limited’s “Order of Death” is just the gravy.

Slug Guts have not been without controversy. Hell, their own label’s press release noted that band members endured “trips to the mental hospital, jail, court trials, death, rehab, and bouts of violence following thousands of kilometers spent in a van.”

eMusic’s Joe Gross interviewed Slug Guts guitarist and prime mover Jimi Kritzler about what the hell was going on during 2011, bands that inspired them and seeing the Meat Puppets at SXSW.

On the battle conditions surrounding the writing and recording of Playin’ in Time With the Deadbeat:

We recorded the record over the course of several Australian tours in this house in this fucked suburb in Melbourne, it was after our American tour to promote our last record on Sacred Bones. At the time we were going on, our indulgences and subsequent behavior hadn’t effected us that badly, a few near misses but it was only on the last Australian tour we did to promote the live album [Livin' Evil] on Negative Guest List that everything kinda hit a wall, certain members’ indulgences became more important than actually doing what we needed to do, people got violent, people got busted, people got done, cops became involved on different occasions. It was shitty but we still finished the record and moved city. Unfortunately some members and good friends stayed behind. But I think record captures this strange time really well.

On the late Brendon Annesley, a stellar young writer whose zine and record label Negative Guest List (which he started as a teenage and named after a Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments song) played a large role in defining the current wave of such killer punk such as Puerto Rico Flowers, Homostupids, Watery Love and Total Control. (Annesley died unexpectedly at the age of 21 in January.):

No part of the record is about him, but the record is dedicated to him. Brendon was fuckin’ on it. He was a fuckin’ good friend of mine and we held tight a lot of the same things: records, good writing and getting messed up. He was the guy, he breathed life and fucked-upness and humor into a stale city. We shared a lot of fucked-up and good times. I leftAustraliato live inBerlinat the end of last year, and got this call when I was coming home in minus-17 degrees, Brendon had died. It was fucked, it still sucks and the only good is that his amazing girlfriend Mariah is finishing and releasing all the records he had planned.

On their experience at South By Southwest:

[I saw bands I liked] but I saw the Meat Puppets and it was the worst thing I have ever seen, it fucking sucked. It was so bad it overshadowed the good shit I saw. I spent the morning organizing shit so I would be messed up when Meat Puppets played. They sucked. What a drag.

Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West

Modest Mouse were already experienced road warriors by the time they released their second full album, and it’s very much a record about spending enormous amounts of time on highways: its longest jam is unsurprisingly called “Truckers Atlas.” (See also “Convenient Parking,” a thrilling chant-and-scream piece that’s built on cyclical repetitions large and small.) Isaac Brock’s voice isn’t just dry, it’s parched; his favorite trick as a guitarist is to hit a single note and let it wobble and arc; his lyrics call up gas stations, drinking binges and obsessive existential meditation. And this lineup of Modest Mouse was, more than anything else, a wildly unusual groove band — almost every song is built on tightly arranged rhythms more than riffs.

Land of the Loops, Bundle of Joy

Up’s roster was mostly artists from the Pacific Northwest, but not entirely: Alan Sutherland’s one-man sample-and-loop project first recorded in Seattle, but by the time Up released its records, Land of the Loops was (and still is) based on the East Coast, and this album’s only direct connection to the I-5 corridor is vocals on a few tracks by Beat Happening’s Heather Lewis. There were a lot of cut-and-paste acts operating in the mid ’90s, but most of the ones who were willing to create recordings with a not-perfectly-squared-off, DIY vibe were more interested in laughs than in beats. Sutherland can be funny when he feels like it (“Multi-Family Garage Sale,” which appeared in a beer commercial, has some nutty vintage movie samples), but his prime gift is figuring out how to get to the intersection of “awkward” and “funky.”

Juned, Every Night for You

A remarkable document of an odd moment in Seattle’s music, Juned’s second and final album finds them stretching out far beyond the punky/poppy vibe of their first. (Its first song is named after stoner-metal icons Kyuss; its last is an airy waltz that’s a showcase for Seattle experimental violinist Eyvind Kang.) One of Juned’s escape routes from alt-rock purgatory was the delay-heavy guitar sound Dale Balenseifen and Claudia Groom had picked up from British new wave; another was their feathery two- and three-part harmonies. The result is a little bit like an Americanized version of Lush, except with a rhythm section that kicks extra-hard — the bridge of its single “Possum” is basically Juned demonstrating that they can do metal too.

Quasi, Featuring “Birds”

The duo of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss nailed their sound on this record — Coomes hammering at an electric harpsichord (as well as other instruments), Weiss driving the songs with pyrotechnical drumming, the two of them harmonizing with a sweetness that’s very slightly sour. It’s also one of the greatest, darkest, most self-and-other-lacerating breakup records ever made, from its brilliant opener “Our Happiness Is Guaranteed” — a hilariously horrifying sci-fi scenario about the only way romance can last for sure — through its later songs of undiluted despair. Coomes offers a few side-trips, too: “The Poisoned Well” seems to be obliquely addressed to a self-destructive friend, “California” is an ice-pick aimed at that state (“Life is dull, life is gray/ At its best it’s just okay/ But I’m happy to report/ Life is also short”), and “It’s Hard to Turn Me On” is, for all its ground-down cynicism, an honest-to-goodness love song.

Who Are…Slug Guts

Maybe it’s the country’s colorful history, maybe it’s the giant beer, maybe it’s sense of frontiet, like an alternate-universe Old West (see also the amazing Western “The Proposition” for the full story), but there is noise rock and then there is Australian noise rock. From the Birthday Party’s shirtless, godless mega-throb to today, Strine (Australian for “Australian” — say it out loud) noise rock seems fundamentally looser, more chaotic, more willing to embrace truly deviant sounds.

Slug Guts are the current kings of that particularly muddy mountain, and their newest studio album, Playin In Time With the Deadbeat, their third overall and second for Sacred Bones, is one of the finest such slabs to drunkenly shimmy its way onto our comparatively tame shores in quite some time. Songs boot and rally, surge ahead and scream away. An oddly thrilling cover of Public Image Limited’s “Order of Death” is just the gravy.

Slug Guts have not been without controversy. Hell, their own label’s press release noted that band members endured “trips to the mental hospital, jail, court trials, death, rehab, and bouts of violence following thousands of kilometers spent in a van.”

eMusic’s Joe Gross interviewed Slug Guts guitarist and prime mover Jimi Kritzler about what the hell was going on during 2011, bands that inspired them and seeing the Meat Puppets at SXSW.

On the battle conditions surrounding the writing and recording of Playin’ in Time With the Deadbeat:

We recorded the record over the course of several Australian tours in this house in this fucked suburb in Melbourne, it was after our American tour to promote our last record on Sacred Bones. At the time we were going on, our indulgences and subsequent behavior hadn’t effected us that badly, a few near misses but it was only on the last Australian tour we did to promote the live album [Livin' Evil] on Negative Guest List that everything kinda hit a wall, certain members’ indulgences became more important than actually doing what we needed to do, people got violent, people got busted, people got done, cops became involved on different occasions. It was shitty but we still finished the record and moved city. Unfortunately some members and good friends stayed behind. But I think record captures this strange time really well.

On the late Brendon Annesley, a stellar young writer whose zine and record label Negative Guest List (which he started as a teenage and named after a Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments song) played a large role in defining the current wave of such killer punk such as Puerto Rico Flowers, Homostupids, Watery Love and Total Control. (Annesley died unexpectedly at the age of 21 in January.):

No part of the record is about him, but the record is dedicated to him. Brendon was fuckin’ on it. He was a fuckin’ good friend of mine and we held tight a lot of the same things: records, good writing and getting messed up. He was the guy, he breathed life and fucked-upness and humor into a stale city. We shared a lot of fucked-up and good times. I leftAustraliato live inBerlinat the end of last year, and got this call when I was coming home in minus-17 degrees, Brendon had died. It was fucked, it still sucks and the only good is that his amazing girlfriend Mariah is finishing and releasing all the records he had planned.

On their experience at South By Southwest:

[I saw bands I liked] but I saw the Meat Puppets and it was the worst thing I have ever seen, it fucking sucked. It was so bad it overshadowed the good shit I saw. I spent the morning organizing shit so I would be messed up when Meat Puppets played. They sucked. What a drag.

Built to Spill, There’s Nothing Wrong With Love

The second album by Doug Martsch’s long-running band is a declaration of his awesome powers as a songwriter and guitarist. Martsch makes it clear how ambitious he is — his declaration in “Car” that “I wanna see movies of my dreams” is hardly an exaggeration — but there’s also a bracing emotional vulnerability and specificity to his lyrics, especially coming from his high, weedy voice. (“Big Dipper” includes the devastating line “He thought an Albertson’s stir-fry dinner would make his apartment a home.”) The brief hidden track at the end, a string of deliberately awful variations on Built to Spill’s sound, is pretty hilarious, but it also illustrates how carefully Martsch has shaped the rest of the album. There’s Nothing Wrong With Love is the work of an artist who gets to treat Boise, Idaho, as a rock capital because he can outplay anyone: The sheer variety of instrumental textures Martsch crams into these songs’ riffs and fills and raw solos is amazing on its own.

Don Cherry, Organic Music Society

This is the first official digital release of a storied double LP that often roams as far away from jazz as this pivotal figure in the ’60s avant-garde dared on record. Having moved to Europe in the mid ’60s and traveled around the world, Cherry began incorporating world music into his style, but at first, he was the only player on his albums to do so. After settling in Sweden, he and his wife, Moki (their daughter is Neneh Cherry) created a musical commune where Cherry taught his iconoclastic approach and made these 1971-72 recordings with a variety of musicians, little known aside from Brazil’s versatile Nana Vasconcelos and talented Turkish drummer Okay Temiz. Cherry plays pocket trumpet, percussion, harmonium, flute, conch, piano and xun (Chinese clay vessel flute), and often sings. There are just a few minutes of jazz on the first half of the album. “North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn” opens it hauntingly with 12-plus minutes of a slow, wordless vocal embroidered with percussion and a light drone, signaling that this won’t be like Cherry’s American recordings. On “Relativity Suite, parts 1 & 2,” he sings and speaks the OMS’s philosophy over quietly thrumming patterns. Things get jazzier on the second half, including versions of Pharoah Sanders’s “The Creator Has a Master Plan” and Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro.” Best is the beautiful modal song “Hope,” one of Cherry’s most memorable melodies, which reappears a few tracks later on “Utopia & Visions.” Highly recommended to fans of multi-cultural music.

Don Cherry, Organic Music Society

This is the first official digital release of a storied double LP that often roams as far away from jazz as this pivotal figure in the ’60s avant-garde dared on record. Having moved to Europe in the mid ’60s and traveled around the world, Cherry began incorporating world music into his style, but at first, he was the only player on his albums to do so. After settling in Sweden, he and his wife, Moki (their daughter is Neneh Cherry) created a musical commune where Cherry taught his iconoclastic approach and made these 1971-72 recordings with a variety of musicians, little known aside from Brazil’s versatile Nana Vasconcelos and talented Turkish drummer Okay Temiz. Cherry plays pocket trumpet, percussion, harmonium, flute, conch, piano and xun (Chinese clay vessel flute), and often sings. There are just a few minutes of jazz on the first half of the album. “North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn” opens it hauntingly with 12-plus minutes of a slow, wordless vocal embroidered with percussion and a light drone, signaling that this won’t be like Cherry’s American recordings. On “Relativity Suite, parts 1 & 2,” he sings and speaks the OMS’s philosophy over quietly thrumming patterns. Things get jazzier on the second half, including versions of Pharoah Sanders’s “The Creator Has a Master Plan” and Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro.” Best is the beautiful modal song “Hope,” one of Cherry’s most memorable melodies, which reappears a few tracks later on “Utopia & Visions.” Highly recommended to fans of multi-cultural music.

Various Artists, Shutter Island [Music from the Motion Picture]

Fans of Martin Scorsese know that the director is almost as creative with the sound of his films as the look and the story. Shutter Island is a moody, spectral tale — and you don’t need to have seen the film to know that. The score, assembled mostly from well-chosen excerpts of 20th-century classical music, does two things: It creates and sustains a mood of unease, of haunted landscapes and uncertain journeys; and it displays the striking emotive power of so-called “avant-garde” music, which is often dismissed as being unnecessarily cerebral or academic. Here, electroacoustic soundscapes by Ingram Marshall (his masterpiece, Fog Tropes) and Brian Eno rub elbows with the high modernism of Krzysztof Penderecki, the prepared piano experiments of John Cage, an early tape-and-orchestra piece from John Adams, and the post-minimal/post-Romantic music of Max Richter. In this setting, hearing Johnnie Ray’s classic single “Cry” almost sounds like an aural hallucination.

The individual pieces are all worthy, and most can be found separately on eMusic, but to get the full effect of this remarkable score, you have to hear it all the way through. (Not that you have a choice — this is a full-album download.) In the arts as in so much of life, context is everything, and hearing Dinah Washington sing “This Bitter Earth” over a plaintive string work by Max Richter hits with a real emotional force after you’ve been through the sonic rollercoaster of Morton Feldman’s eerie choral piece Rothko Chapel and Giacinto Scelsi’s alien Uaxuctum. Divorced from the film, this is a rare soundtrack that not only works as pure music, but still has an inevitable sense of narrative.

Various Artists, Shutter Island [Music from the Motion Picture]

Fans of Martin Scorsese know that the director is almost as creative with the sound of his films as the look and the story. Shutter Island is a moody, spectral tale — and you don’t need to have seen the film to know that. The score, assembled mostly from well-chosen excerpts of 20th-century classical music, does two things: It creates and sustains a mood of unease, of haunted landscapes and uncertain journeys; and it displays the striking emotive power of so-called “avant-garde” music, which is often dismissed as being unnecessarily cerebral or academic. Here, electroacoustic soundscapes by Ingram Marshall (his masterpiece, Fog Tropes) and Brian Eno rub elbows with the high modernism of Krzysztof Penderecki, the prepared piano experiments of John Cage, an early tape-and-orchestra piece from John Adams, and the post-minimal/post-Romantic music of Max Richter. In this setting, hearing Johnnie Ray’s classic single “Cry” almost sounds like an aural hallucination.

The individual pieces are all worthy, and most can be found separately on eMusic, but to get the full effect of this remarkable score, you have to hear it all the way through. (Not that you have a choice — this is a full-album download.) In the arts as in so much of life, context is everything, and hearing Dinah Washington sing “This Bitter Earth” over a plaintive string work by Max Richter hits with a real emotional force after you’ve been through the sonic rollercoaster of Morton Feldman’s eerie choral piece Rothko Chapel and Giacinto Scelsi’s alien Uaxuctum. Divorced from the film, this is a rare soundtrack that not only works as pure music, but still has an inevitable sense of narrative.

Who Is…Michael Kiwanuka

Before Michael Kiwanuka topped BBC’s Sound of 2012 poll and earned himself a thousand comparisons to Bill Withers, the singer-songwriter wanted to sound like Jimi Hendrix or The Band. He pined for a Fender Stratocaster, instrument of choice for both Hendrix and Robbie Robertson. However, things don’t always work out the way you plan them, and Kiwanuka ended up reaping the lion’s share of attention for an instrument he already had: his rounded, worn voice, which the BBC  showcased beautifully via stripped-down, acoustic title track “Home Again.”

Kiwanuka has since outgrown the smaller clubs where he began, performing at major festivals like Bonnaroo and in front of U.S. crowds for the first time. He’s found that songs like “Home Again” do not always translate quite as well in open spaces. (“It can get kinda lost if you’re not careful,” he says.) However, he remains humbled and level-headed about these opportunities to perform as he’s come. “I always felt like slightly left of center from anything else that’s really going on,” he says. “I never thought my music would fit into something that’s mainstream, you know?”

eMusic’s Christina Lee spoke with Kiwanuka after a slew of festival gigs, about Home Again, the frequent comparisons to Bill Withers and the hazards of drinking beer with dinner.

On subtle influences that pops up in Home Again:

Roberta Flack’s first one — I really like that album. First Take really influenced me, at least in making this album. There’s a song on the album called “Always Waiting,” and the sound of that is kind of influenced by her first album. That’s one that’s not easy to get. The rest of the songs sound like some country songs, but the recording of it was largely influenced by Shuggie Otis and stuff like that.

A lot of what I like about [Flack's] albums is the sound. Her voice sounds amazing — this really, really lovely voice. And her songs are kind of this mixture of folk songs — I love how well those kind of songs are written — and soul music, hearing her voice with the band. You hear a little bit of jazz as well. Those are all the kinds of things that really influenced me as a teenager. Her album of kind of tied together all of those things that I really enjoy in music.

On earning the top slot on BBC’s Sound of 2012 list:

It’s encouraging. If you’re making music, you know you like the music. When people hear and like it, it encourages you to do it more. So it keeps you going. Like a pat on the back, it feels quite nice. Because you like the music yourself, but you never quite know if you’re doing the right thing until people hear it. That was definitely a great indicator. It was also encouraging because I always felt like slightly left of center from anything else that was really going on. So I thought to get on a list like that was quite encouraging. I never thought that my music would fit into something that’s mainstream, you know?

You know, as an artist as well, you always get pressured to sound like everyone else. So this kind allowed me to sort of, just, sound like myself. Because it was picked by the BBC, I guess that gave me a bit of breathing space. All’s well.

On his first guitar:

I remember it really well. It was called a Peavey Raptor. It was like a cheap version of the Fender Stratocaster, so we got it with a small amp called a Peavey 158 or something like that. So I could practice with that, too. Altogether, it was about £150, and my mom bought it for me at a small guitar shop called Rock Around the Clock, which is just down the road. I’ve actually had that for about two years. It was cool; I played it quite a bit. I was listening to the Band at the time, so I wanted a Fender guitar, but I couldn’t really afford that; it was too expensive. [My mom and I] went to the shop together, and so I just told her that this kind of guitar would be good.

On covering Bill Withers’s “I Don’t Know” at New York’s Highland Ballroom:

I’ve only ever covered that song when I played there; I’ve never covered any other Bill Withers songs. I remember that I was just listening to one of his albums and really liking that song. It kind of worked, and it was fun to sing. The Bill Withers [comparison] is kind of weird, because I don’t really listen to him that much. I love his music and the songs, but it’s kind of weird. I’m inspired by loads of other stuff, and I guess it’s my fault for covering one of his songs too, but I don’t think there’s that much on the album that sounds like Bill Withers. But, maybe it does, and I’m just not the best judge.

On the first time he heard the Band:

I was around 15. Basically age 14, 15 was a pretty cool year in terms of listening to music. So I had a friend who was just listening to all kinds of music, from new music to ’80s — and every style as well, everything from Prodigy to Bob Dylan. And I remember, I think we were going camping with his parents, and the song “The Weight” came on in the car. I think he was playing his CD, and I loved that song. I just really love the sound of “The Weight” — the way it feels, the way everyone was singing. It was kind of a rough recording as well, so you can tell it was, like, a band. I was trying to be in a band at that point, and that’s when I started listening to them as well.

On his ideal day off:

I’ll be off in August, so I’m trying to go to my friend’s house in Devon, which is in England. We’ll just kind of settle at his mom’s house, sit and listen to music, go for walks and play football, go to a pub — pretty chilled-out stuff. I love performing music and playing it, but I also just love hanging out when I’ve got time off. I just like conversation, and I like pubs.

On what he drinks:

I love beer, but it depends on what time, because it kind of bloats you. So if you have beer with dinner, you’ll feel about 10 pounds fatter than before because it just sits there. Usually I drink ales now, or some single-malt whiskey — drinks that are flat so you don’t feel bloated.

New This Week: Rick Ross, Blur, & More

This wasn’t supposed to be a big release week, but somehow, when I start sorting through what came to the site, I end up overwhelmed with new things anyway. Let’s start with the big obvious new ones, and then drill down to the weird/cool little things I found like change in the couch.

Rick Ross – God Forgives, I Don’t - The big, inescapable summer victory lap from the man who has come to dominate commercial rap. Ian Cohen has this to say about the outsized kingpin’s long-delayed fifth studio effort:

If you judge a hip-hop record’s impact simply by its ubiquity in radio playlists, YouTube rotations and passing cars, Rick Ross’s fifth LP God Forgives, I Don’t will be an unqualified success, 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV. For everyone else, it will also be 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV, an overlong and oversafe victory lap that proves its creator is far more interesting when he’s got something to prove. Which isn’t to say God Forgives doesn’t get the job done in a lot of ways. It’s every bit as much of a rap-as-videogame diversion as his previous work — while the boasts are increasingly absurd and outlandish, Ross continues to grow as an actual technician on the mic. Likewise, the beats are every bit as expensive and domineering and they will dominate hip-hop radio because they’re defining its sound in real time.

Blur, Reissues:  Leisure, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, Blur The Great Escape, - The greatest Brit-pop band of all time (you can argue Oasis, but come on) gets the deluxe-reissue treatment. Instead of rambling on, I will instead point you to two places: 1) Hua Hsu’s excellent, comprehensive Damon Albarn and Blur Icon piece, and 2) Lindsay Zoladz’s must-read piece on Blur over at Pitchfork today.

Christian Scott, Christian Atunde Adjuah- Bold, convention-busting new record from jazz-trumpet phenom Christian Scott. Ken Micallef writes:

New Orleans native Christian Scott has often shown a penchant for pushing the envelope. Though reliably anchored by his warm, typically muted trumpet work, his previous albums have incorporated influences from fusion to funk to world music. But with ChristianaTundeAdjuah, the 29-year old takes a bold leap: A two-CD release comprised of 23 tracks, ChristianaTundeAdjuah draws on New Orleans second-line rhythms, the African Diaspora and the electronic loop programming of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. These influences aren’t always literal, but they dance around the edges of Scott’s charged compositions like ghosts haunting a dream.

Ice Choir, Afar -Gentle, prismatic, heavily-80s synth-pop heart-bleed from Kurt, the drummer from Pains. Lovely.

R. Stevie Moore, Lo-Fi High Fives (A Kind of Best Of) - Before there was Ariel Pink, before there was Bob Pollard, there was this guy: R. Stevie Moore, a maker of homemade tapes of warbly, heartsick pop music that caught the attention of just enough music fanatics to stoke a low-level cult. He sounds startlingly current at this indie moment: It’s time he was given his due as a true godfather of the Lo-Fi movement.  This is an excellently curated “Best of” of sorts, as the title indicates.

Shoes, Ignition – Long-lost, quietly legendary power-pop group (from the first wave, the one that really went broke) reform and return with more winsome heartache, “woos,” and “sha-la-las.” This stuff never goes out of style, because it was never in. But this is a welcome return.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard – Comic-books-and-gore garage-pop, shot through with goofy spazz-swagger and sweetened withBrillBuilding chord changes.

Jesse Harris, Sub Rosa - Agreeably bopping rock-pop with a jaunty jazz angle from Jesse Harris, who employs guest turns from Norah Jones and Conor Oberst.

Conan, Monnos - Powerfully sludgy stoner-metal, La Brea tar-pit drop-D guitars, cleanly wailed vocals, the whole nine.

Nachmystium, Silencing Machine – The sixth album from theChicago black-metal stalwarts re-embraces the frosty Norwegian root of their sound, burn off some of the more experimental touches of recent efforts and bear down.

Blackalicious, Melodica – Indie-rap stalwarts return with more of the playfully verbose, gently thoughtful hip-hop with which they made their name.

La Coka Nostra, Masters of the Dark - Glowering, textbook roughneck rap, full of tough guys, twisted syllables, and broken-bottle-on-concrete beats.

Serengeti, C.A.R. – Dazed impressionist spoken-word-poet-and-rapper Serengeti takes us on another abstracted stroll through his consciousness. On Anticon.

Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Le Sacre Du Printemps - Great recording of a classic, still-modern work. The jazz combo Bad Plus, who have made their name tearing into rock touchstones by Nirvana and Black Sabbath, are currently applying their talents to The Rite of Spring.

Gaza, No Absolutes In Human Suffering - Pummeling, remorseless noisecore fromSalt Lake City. These guys remain no fans of organized religion, and are not at all shy about telling you so. Jon Wiederhornon the 1s and 2s:

For six years now, Salt Lake City abrasive noisecore band Gaza have combined cacophonous blastbeats, angular death metal riffs and trudging rhythms into an unrelenting barrage of hostility aimed at squarely organized religion. The band’s third album, No Absolutes in Human Suffering, shows no end to the biting animosity. “It sure was nice of Jesus to take time away from ignoring ethnic cleansing genocide and famine-bloated children,” roars vocalist Jon Parkins over a bed of pummeling drums and buzzsaw guitars on “The Truth Weighs Nothing.”

Johann Johansson, Copenhagen Dreams - Minimalist composer Johann Johannsson wrote the forlorn, murmuring, subdued score for the dreamy documentary Copenhagen Dreams.

David Greilsammer, Baroque Conversations - Wonderful collection by one of the most incisive Mozart interpreters around.

Osvaldo Golijov,  La Pasion Segun San Marcos - Composer Osvaldo Golijov’s red-blooded, incendiary Arrival Work, recorded by the group of musician that made it famous. If you haven’t experienced this culture-melting work yet, this is your time.

DAVE SUMNER’S JAZZ PICKS
A huge drop of new releases this week. I probably could’ve listed another five to ten more that deserved some mention. A couple familiar names to Jazz Picks readers, and a bunch who are making their first appearance in these columns. A couple albums on today’s list that will be getting some album of the year recognition when those lists start getting compiled in December. Let’s begin…

Laurent Coq, Rayuela: Based on the literary work Rayuela by Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar. Pianist Coq, with collaborator Miguel Zenon, may have created one of the most beautifully textured albums of 2012. Coq’s piano, Zenon’s alto sax, Dana Leong working both cello and trombone, and Dan Weiss employing drums, tablas, and other percussion, they all work to make a very massive, though light and pretty, set of compositions that mesh brilliantly. Zenon has been one of the more fantastic players on the scene. When Leong’s cello and Weiss’s tablas drift through tunes, it’s pretty damn magical. Pick of the Week.

Christian Scott, Christian aTunde Adjuah: Describing his music as “stretch music,” trumpeter Scott doesn’t look to shed jazz traditions so much as make his music genre-blind. By utilizing elements of other musics on this album, he may have succeeded. Of greater importance, however, is that Scott has created an immaculately dynamic double-album that’s almost impossible to appreciate the breadth of. Scott’s trumpet taking long soaring arcs over an octet that includes guitar, alto sax, drums, bass, tenor sax, trombone, and piano. An album full of life and expression. Highly Recommended.

Ralph Peterson, The Duality Perspective: Drummer Peterson combines songs for his Fo’tet and his Sextet, really giving two albums under one cover (download). First five tracks are the Fo’tet, a wonderful mix of modern avant-garde and Roots of Blues musics. The mix of Peterson’s percussion, Felix Peiki’s clarinet, and Joseph Doubleday’s vibes really carry the session. What’s nice is that the oddities of the first half of the album lead nicely into the more straight-ahead jazz of the Sextet’s half of the album. Highly Recommended.

Fred Lonberg Holm, Gather: Strong line-up for cellists newest release. Holm’s Fast Citizens ensemble is made up of Aram Shelton on alto and clarinet, Keefe Jackson on tenor & bass clarinet, Josh Berman on cornet, Anton Hatwich on bass, and Frank Rosaly on drums, with some shared responsibilities on trumpet. It’s an intriguing mix of noisy improv, straight-ahead modern, and hazy interludes of a rock-like nature. Recommended.

Matt Otto, Broken Waltz: Album with an easy sway, even as it takes asynchronous steps. Tenor & soprano saxophonist Otto leads a sextet that brings Rhodes, bass clarinet, drums & bass, and the vocals of Sara Gazarek into the mix. Tunes drift way more than they groove, which lets the bass clarinet use its nuanced range and lets Rhodes try something a little different. Neat album. Find of the Week.

John Abercrombie Quartet, Within A Song: Guitarist Abercrombie records again for ECM, and again, it’s very tasteful music. Quartet includes Joe Lovano’s tenor sax, Drew Gress’s bass, and the drumwork of Joey Baron. Plenty of classic tunes get covered. Nothing particularly new is getting stated with this music, but considering Abercrombie’s typical level of quality, that isn’t necessarily a criticism.

Michael Pedicin, Live at the Loft: Tenor sax vet Pedicin has been making quality jazz under the radar for a little while now. He’s back with another recording, bring a quintet in for a live date that features only ballads. Most he stays true to form on, though a few nice up-tempo surprises. A special treat is his version of Coltrane’s “Africa,” which gets a nice bit of swing into it.

Senri Oe, Boys Mature Slow: Title refers to Japanese pop star Oe’s decision to walk away from stardom and move to New York to study jazz at 47 years of age. Leading this quartet of piano, trombone, trumpet, bass, and drums, it appears to have worked out pretty well. Plenty of chipper straight-ahead jazz. Decent solos, decent interplay between quintet members, and good ol’ fun music to kick back and listen to. Recommended.

Sean Noonan, A Gambler’s Hand: Drummer Noonan’s music takes a storytelling approach. Noonan likes building a narrative for his music. Definitely the case here, a suite of compositions for drums and string quartet. Very much a Third Stream recording, mixing in classical and jazz… heavier on the former in this instance. Really one of those albums that moves beyond the concept of genre. Some breathtaking moments on strings, like the “I Feel the Clouds,” but also plenty of bluster and drama to keep the heart racing. Something different, for sure.

Fischermanns Orchestra, Conducting Sessions: Big band that’s way more avant-garde than anything your parents used to dance to in the ballrooms. Squaks and skronks aplenty throughout the compositions, though even with the dissonant noises, there are times when forms become apparent. Neat album, definitely not your everyday thing.

Duo Hatti, Beaute Ma Toute Droite: Interesting duo album that has pianist Matteo Mengoni doubling up on melodica, and teaming up with Gerard Premand’s clarinets. The album is best reflected through the clashes of jazz composition versus free improvisation, as well as jazz vs. tango and Latin music vs. classical. Can’t say the album has a lot of cohesion, nor would I say it’s an obstacle to enjoying it. I love finding albums like this.

Kyle Shepherd, South African History !X: Pianist Kyle Shepherd tells the history of his home through music, offering up a nice array of Cape Jazz. Piano and saxes are the primary instruments, but others get into the mix, and he adds a little bit of samples of local chanting. “Song for Theo” is the album’s charmer.

Le Rex, Ascona: Swiss quintet of alto and tenor saxes, trombone, tuba, and drums. They work the groove and the melody in equal doses, which leads to a lot of catchy tunes in a party time atmosphere. They toy with the “off-mic” sounds that bleed onto the recording, adding to the music’s overall cheerfulness.

Szilard Mezei Szabad Quintet, Singing Elephant: Violist and composer Mezei continues to find the balancing act between compositional form and improvisational approach. This time he leads a quintet that includes tenor sax, trumpet & cornet, bass, and drums in a set of modern avant-garde music. Sometimes the tunes have a pleasant drift, other times they announce themselves with audacity. Fans of Harris Eisenstadt’s work might want to spend some time here.

Flip Philipp, Duffin’: Vibes led quartet that includes organ, guitar, and drums. Consistently up-tempo, plenty of warm bright notes, nothing too daring, but also no glaring weak spots. Just a solid jazz album that deserved some mention.

For you ECM fans, a couple 3-cd “box sets” have hit the site. They both re-release albums from the 70s from each artist, and one adds some previously unissued music. There’s one from saxophonist Jan Garbarek and one from guitarist Terje Rypdal. The Garbarek album collects his 70s albums Sart, Witchi-Tai-To, and Dansere. The Rypdal album is a re-issue of his Odyssey double album, plus some unreleased music from that time.

SINGLES

2 Chainz, “Birthday Song”- All I want for my BIRTDAYYYYY is a bigbootyGUHL.” This is the hook to 2 Chainz’s big new single, “Birthday.” It’s not-very-novel sentiment delivered in a very novel, catchy way. Kanye is on this too, and he is hilarious. The beat sounds like three or four beats that all equally want your attention.

Dum Dum Girls, “Lord Knows” - Beautiful, early-Pretenders seductive gloom from Dee Dee, who just keeps improving.

Kendrick Lamar, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” - Kendrick Lamar, the melancholy poet prince of West Coast rap, releases his new tongue-twisted, gently blunted single, a crooned ode to the numbing immersion of cough syrup.

Mastodon/Feist, Record Store Day 7″ - Record Store Day split from unlikely bedfellows Mastodon and Feist (although the guitar tones in Feist’s Pitchfork set were getting pretty dark and witchy. It would be awesome if she released her version of a Heart record next.)

Icon: Damon Albarn and Blur

There is a clip of Damon Albarn being interviewed in August of 1995, on the eve of his band’s chart showdown against Oasis. This is the moment right before “Britpop” becomes both an inescapable and utterly meaningless term – in retrospect, that’s all so obvious. Yet Albarn, Blur’s clever, knowing narrator, gamely accepts his part in this competition, admitting a faint anxiety that Oasis’s single will outsell theirs but expressing a confidence that they’ll do just fine. It’s clear that he has thought about this far too much. Within days, their single, “Country House,” ends up outselling Oasis’s “Roll With It” by a decent margin. But by the end of the year, Oasis will have comprehensively won the war, making just about every other band in the U.K. seem irrelevant (or, in the case of Blur, inauthentic).

For many, this is as famous as Blur will ever be. But in history’s longish view, Blur’s defeat only hastened Albarn’s maturation as an artist. While Blur’s albums, most of which have aged wonderfully, were brilliant commentaries on modern British life, Albarn’s creative ambitions have blossomed in magically unpredictable ways in the decade since “Britpop.” His able, grainy voice and passionately obtuse lyrics have remained constant, but his career has been renewed, time and again, by a deep-seated sense of exploration. From Blur to the “virtual band” Gorillaz to his taste-making Honest Jon’s record label, Albarn’s absorbing and unlikely career inspires no obvious comparisons. He seems to have finally realized that there is no worthier competitor than the obscure corners of one’s own imagination.

Where Were You in ’72?

“Five years stuck on my eyes,” sings David Bowie in the title role of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. “What a surprise.” More astonishing is the intervening 40, in which the futuristic world he envisioned surpassed even his moonage daydreams. Redrawn lines of communication — broadband signals in the air and the cloud — carry the news. Yet in the albums released in the year of 1972, recorded examples of the analog age, caught by the magnetic tape and 24-tracking of the ’70s, a new paradigm is both hailed and given a final hurrah. A time before drum machines, sample rates, cut and paste, amp modeling and downloads. Before the Fairlight and Synclavier and DX-7 and auto-tune. Before New Wave. You received a gold record if you had a hit; and if not exactly heralding a golden era, surely 1972 carbon-dates as silver.

In some ways, the year is when the last vestiges of the free-for-all ’60s are declared done, or at least ready for revival. I can’t speak for everybody, only my personal taste and agenda, but a shortlist of my faves of the year, chosen randomly with no sense of critical responsibility, show where my leanings were.

It was a debut year for Roxy Music, Blue Oyster Cult, Big Star and Lou Reed as a solo artist (later in the year, Transformer would solidify his unique urbanity, containing the unlikely hit single of “Walk On The Wild Side”). Taking hard rock ever further out on a limb was Alice Cooper with School’s Out, the Rolling Stones and their Exile on Main Street, Deep Purple’s Machine Head, Black Sabbath‘s Vol. IV, and Budgie’s Squawk. The soundtrack to The Harder They Come, featuring Jimmy Cliff, prophetically introduced reggae into the worldwide arena. Some sentimental highlights include Eric Andersen’s Blue River, the Kinks’ Everybody’s In Show-Biz, Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, and the lightning-strike of home town friends and comradely band rivals Looking Glass, whose “Brandy” went to No. 1 on the pop charts as the summer crested.

I was toiling away in the dog days of that summer, shuffling and seguing the varied tracks that would make up a double-disc anthology that Elektra Records, in the persona of Jac Holzman, had asked me to gather. Much like this look over my shoulder, I was retrospecting a time which seemed in 1972 to belong to another world; and yet was young enough in era that I had lived through it myself, as eyewitness and earwitness. History once removed.

My brief, according to Jac, was to gather those cuts on albums that had one stand-out track (I’ve always thought he had just gotten one of the first cassette recorders, and was making his own mix tapes, winnowing his record collection). In my spin, it allowed me to gather those groups that had formed in Americain the wake of the Beatles’ tsunami, and pick those that seemed to embody a new sense of possibility sparked by the English Invasion. The sea-change was dramatic, as the aspirations of the street-corner harmony group was replaced by the garage band, and rock’s renewable life-source was once again given a jolt of current. The term garage bands came after the fact, as if to emphasize their domestic untutored roots and untrammeled desire; but really, at a remove of five years, I only knew that these were great records, regardless of genre purity, and the fact that it uncovered a sliver of rock’s many gene pools was because, for me, it was nearest at hand. I had played in a band called the Zoo, had a nom de tune of Link Cromwell from a folk-protest single my uncle, Larry Kusik, had cooked up with an ex-member of the Fireflies (“You Were Mine”), and though we never came up with any original material, surely learned our trade doing four sets a night of cover versions that enlivened many a college fraternity house or swim club.

With Elektra’s encouragement, I got to re-enact my parabola of ’60s transition from British Invasion to acid-rock of the Fillmore variety, beginning with the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” (we dressed in animal skins), and ending with the paisley’d Zoo sitting cross-legged on the floor raga-ing “My Generation.” When it came time to assemble the chosen tracks, a game of chance often dictated by licensing rights and shattered dreams along the wayside, the world in which Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era essentially re-appeared was one in which its virtues seemed to be in short supply, when the edge and the off-balance and the desperation of desire needed a new formulation. The word “punk” was in the air, and 1972, I recall, was also the year of the New York Dolls, and their imagining of rock ‘n’ roll’s perfect shape-shiftings (though their album wouldn’t be released until the following year); the Stooges had crafted much of Raw Power, the Flamin’ Groovies were in London keeping the flame alive, and glitter-rock was in the air.

In thinking about Nuggets, as I’m often inclined to do, since those who listened have bought me a beer many times over these ruby-flected years, I am surprised that it managed to encapsulate a moment in time without getting too protective of its parameters, partially because I was making it up as I went along, and hadn’t figured out a way to fuck it up. Many of the 27 songs on that initial volume stretch garage-rock beyond the considerable tune-up benefits of owning a car. There is symphonic studio production (Sagittarius‘s “My World Fell Down”), Brill Building songsmiths (Third Rail‘s “Run Run Run,” the Strangeloves‘ “Night Time”), and of course, one-shot wonders galore: The Seeds‘ “Pushin’ Too Hard” (actually their point-and-shoot glory encompasses four albums of grandiosity), the double-or-nothing of “Talk Talk” (the Music Machine) and “Liar Liar” (the Castaways), the Blues Magoos‘ version of “Tobacco Road” contrasting with the Blues Project‘s “No Time Like The Right Time,” the howl of the 13th Floor Elevators‘ “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” and then the scratch of guitar strings going haywire with the Count Five‘s “Psychotic Reaction.” These are great records, regardless of what your listening post is, and that was really my only imperative; not really an album for collectors, who as they have proved, are quite capable of mining their own gold-dust.

Today such an assemblage might be called a playlist, as if you came over to my apartment in 1972, when the index cards were on the floor and I was spinning the Chocolate Watch Band into…hmmm…”Farmer John?” I had the opening side figured out. Gotta lead off with the Electric Prunes‘ “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” ’cause that backward vibrato is the sound of that moment in time. True pitch-shifting. The Standells‘ “Dirty Water” lets you catch the coast-to-coast continental drift, the west of Los Angeles singing about the east of Boston. “Oh, you’re my home…” The Knickerbockers to solidify the British roots of where all these bands were inspired. And so we’re on our way…

It may be strange to be writing about 1972 through the prism of the mid ’60s, but that is when it started to become clear to me that the ’70s were at hand, in all their Taxi Driver splendor (“You talking to me?”), the generations about to begat, and so too until today, when I write this with the counterweight of time’s passage. Still, as ever, you need a great hook-laden song that gets inside you and doesn’t let go; and in this cornucopia that is our modern playlist, sometimes the finding is the important part.

I should know. I’m still looking…

thenewno2, thefearofmissingout

What binds the latest release from thenewno2, Dhani Harrison’s experimental outfit with producer Paul Hicks and an adept supporting cast, is its lack of cohesion. thefearofmissingout owes its success to its fearlessness. Unlike 2008′s more-direct You Are Here, its follow-up swerves across musical lanes, all the while remaining supremely tasteful.

Harrison’s falsetto, sounding uncannily like Papa George, serves as an anchor — see the lush, sweeping “Wide Awake” — but it’s Hicks’s chopped-and-screwed production — whether he’s dropping Massive Attack-esque trip-hop (“Timezone”) or soaking guitars in bleached reverb (“Hanging On”) — that sells the scattershot shtick. Guest spots feel forced:  RZA, who appeared on last fall’s EP002, and Ben Harper, one third of Harrison’s acoustic outfit, Fistful of Mercy, show up for unmemorable turns. And lyrically there’s ground to gain (“I’ve been waiting so long/ just to know if you made it home that night”). But thankfully Harrison and co.’s innate fits of audible ADD offset any generic gesticulating.

Where Were You in ’72?

“Five years stuck on my eyes,” sings David Bowie in the title role of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. “What a surprise.” More astonishing is the intervening 40, in which the futuristic world he envisioned surpassed even his moonage daydreams. Redrawn lines of communication — broadband signals in the air and the cloud — carry the news. Yet in the albums released in the year of 1972, recorded examples of the analog age, caught by the magnetic tape and 24-tracking of the ’70s, a new paradigm is both hailed and given a final hurrah. A time before drum machines, sample rates, cut and paste, amp modeling and downloads. Before the Fairlight and Synclavier and DX-7 and auto-tune. Before New Wave. You received a gold record if you had a hit; and if not exactly heralding a golden era, surely 1972 carbon-dates as silver.

In some ways, the year is when the last vestiges of the free-for-all ’60s are declared done, or at least ready for revival. I can’t speak for everybody, only my personal taste and agenda, but a shortlist of my faves of the year, chosen randomly with no sense of critical responsibility, show where my leanings were.

It was a debut year for Roxy Music, Blue Oyster Cult, Big Star and Lou Reed as a solo artist (later in the year, Transformer would solidify his unique urbanity, containing the unlikely hit single of “Walk On The Wild Side”). Taking hard rock ever further out on a limb was Alice Cooper with School’s Out, the Rolling Stones and their Exile on Main Street, Deep Purple’s Machine Head, Black Sabbath‘s Vol. IV, and Budgie’s Squawk. The soundtrack to The Harder They Come, featuring Jimmy Cliff, prophetically introduced reggae into the worldwide arena. Some sentimental highlights include Eric Andersen’s Blue River, the Kinks’ Everybody’s In Show-Biz, Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, and the lightning-strike of home town friends and comradely band rivals Looking Glass, whose “Brandy” went to No. 1 on the pop charts as the summer crested.

I was toiling away in the dog days of that summer, shuffling and seguing the varied tracks that would make up a double-disc anthology that Elektra Records, in the persona of Jac Holzman, had asked me to gather. Much like this look over my shoulder, I was retrospecting a time which seemed in 1972 to belong to another world; and yet was young enough in era that I had lived through it myself, as eyewitness and earwitness. History once removed.

My brief, according to Jac, was to gather those cuts on albums that had one stand-out track (I’ve always thought he had just gotten one of the first cassette recorders, and was making his own mix tapes, winnowing his record collection). In my spin, it allowed me to gather those groups that had formed in Americain the wake of the Beatles’ tsunami, and pick those that seemed to embody a new sense of possibility sparked by the English Invasion. The sea-change was dramatic, as the aspirations of the street-corner harmony group was replaced by the garage band, and rock’s renewable life-source was once again given a jolt of current. The term garage bands came after the fact, as if to emphasize their domestic untutored roots and untrammeled desire; but really, at a remove of five years, I only knew that these were great records, regardless of genre purity, and the fact that it uncovered a sliver of rock’s many gene pools was because, for me, it was nearest at hand. I had played in a band called the Zoo, had a nom de tune of Link Cromwell from a folk-protest single my uncle, Larry Kusik, had cooked up with an ex-member of the Fireflies (“You Were Mine”), and though we never came up with any original material, surely learned our trade doing four sets a night of cover versions that enlivened many a college fraternity house or swim club.

With Elektra’s encouragement, I got to re-enact my parabola of ’60s transition from British Invasion to acid-rock of the Fillmore variety, beginning with the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” (we dressed in animal skins), and ending with the paisley’d Zoo sitting cross-legged on the floor raga-ing “My Generation.” When it came time to assemble the chosen tracks, a game of chance often dictated by licensing rights and shattered dreams along the wayside, the world in which Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era essentially re-appeared was one in which its virtues seemed to be in short supply, when the edge and the off-balance and the desperation of desire needed a new formulation. The word “punk” was in the air, and 1972, I recall, was also the year of the New York Dolls, and their imagining of rock ‘n’ roll’s perfect shape-shiftings (though their album wouldn’t be released until the following year); the Stooges had crafted much of Raw Power, the Flamin’ Groovies were in London keeping the flame alive, and glitter-rock was in the air.

In thinking about Nuggets, as I’m often inclined to do, since those who listened have bought me a beer many times over these ruby-flected years, I am surprised that it managed to encapsulate a moment in time without getting too protective of its parameters, partially because I was making it up as I went along, and hadn’t figured out a way to fuck it up. Many of the 27 songs on that initial volume stretch garage-rock beyond the considerable tune-up benefits of owning a car. There is symphonic studio production (Sagittarius‘s “My World Fell Down”), Brill Building songsmiths (Third Rail‘s “Run Run Run,” the Strangeloves‘ “Night Time”), and of course, one-shot wonders galore: The Seeds‘ “Pushin’ Too Hard” (actually their point-and-shoot glory encompasses four albums of grandiosity), the double-or-nothing of “Talk Talk” (the Music Machine) and “Liar Liar” (the Castaways), the Blues Magoos‘ version of “Tobacco Road” contrasting with the Blues Project‘s “No Time Like The Right Time,” the howl of the 13th Floor Elevators‘ “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” and then the scratch of guitar strings going haywire with the Count Five‘s “Psychotic Reaction.” These are great records, regardless of what your listening post is, and that was really my only imperative; not really an album for collectors, who as they have proved, are quite capable of mining their own gold-dust.

Today such an assemblage might be called a playlist, as if you came over to my apartment in 1972, when the index cards were on the floor and I was spinning the Chocolate Watch Band into…hmmm…”Farmer John?” I had the opening side figured out. Gotta lead off with the Electric Prunes‘ “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” ’cause that backward vibrato is the sound of that moment in time. True pitch-shifting. The Standells‘ “Dirty Water” lets you catch the coast-to-coast continental drift, the west of Los Angeles singing about the east of Boston. “Oh, you’re my home…” The Knickerbockers to solidify the British roots of where all these bands were inspired. And so we’re on our way…

It may be strange to be writing about 1972 through the prism of the mid ’60s, but that is when it started to become clear to me that the ’70s were at hand, in all their Taxi Driver splendor (“You talking to me?”), the generations about to begat, and so too until today, when I write this with the counterweight of time’s passage. Still, as ever, you need a great hook-laden song that gets inside you and doesn’t let go; and in this cornucopia that is our modern playlist, sometimes the finding is the important part.

I should know. I’m still looking…