St. Vincent - Black Rainbow

In an attempt to fully utilize my endless driving time on this vacation, I burned some CDs that I've been meaning to check out. My natural instinct on road trips is to listen to music I'm familiar with, but I really wanted to hear something new and interesting. Out of the seven or so CDs I've listened to thus far, the only one that's really stuck is this St. Vincent album.

I've long been enamored with eccentric female artists (Kate Bush [see a few posts below], Bjork, PJ Harvey, etc.). St. Vincent doesn't seem to be quite as "out there" as those three, but she's definitely got something interesting going on. I've only fully absorbed the first half or so of the album "Actor," and I haven't even listened to "Marry Me," her previous album that received a ton of praise, so there is much more to explore!

My determination to stick to new music has already shown cracks. I got so desperate that I stopped off at Atlantic Sounds in Daytona and bought used copies of Liz Phair and Devo albums for the drive up to Jacksonville. First time I'd been in a music store in a long time! It felt good, I must say. I should be able to make it up to Savannah with these CDs. Sometimes getting into new music can be a challenge when the old reliables are over there just staring at you, but inevitably an album like this comes out of the fog and makes it all worthwhile.

Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader

This is one of my favorite times of the year. School's out for two weeks, and along with all the usual holiday goodness of reacquainting myself with half the airports in the country, spending ridiculous amounts of time in rental cars, and trying to cram a year's worth of qt with family and friends into three day chunks, it's also fun to look at all the year-end music lists. As much as I try to keep up with new music, it is completely impossible to hear it all. Now that I have a little time off, I can check out a few of the albums I missed.

I couldn't really get into this band's first album. Granted I didn't try that hard, but it just seemed so sparse that at times it didn't even seem to be there at all. This album, however, is really good. This song is groovy from the get-go, and the languorous vocals add to the dreamy vibe. The vocal melody that kicks in at 1:25 is so great.

2 NOTES: I'm not happy with the fact that the first two seconds of this song are cut off in this Youtube! It might not seem like a big deal, but it's a damn good two seconds! Also, I know this is a music blog, but I'm so excited to (hopefully) read two books for pleasure over break! I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil to get pumped for my Savannah excursion, and then I want to try to squeeze in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Somehow I also have to read 140 portfolio letters, a few portfolio pieces, and re-read MacBeth in that time too. Anything is possible! Happy Holidays and enjoy your loved ones. They're good people.

B-52s: Dance This Mess Around

The B-52s are so freaking cool. Cool is an inherently silly term, but in this case it totally applies. They had something going on in the late 70s and early 80s that nobody else did. Totally unique style, attitude, and sound. And while a lot of people, myself included, associate them with cornier songs like Love Shack, this first album is so dark, with Spy Hunter guitar and such bad-ass rhythms and vocals. It's a perfect album.

There really aren't any studio versions of tracks from their first album on youtube (just get the whole thing!!), but maybe that's for the best. Their live performances were so great, and I'll just point out a few chunks of awesomeness that stand out to me on this one. At 1:21 , when Cindy Wilson sings "When you held my hand" and extends her hand directly to the camera, and then a few seconds later she screams "Why don't you dance with me?!?! I'm not no Limberger!" Her vocals are borderline tortured-sounding, but the mood of the song changes fairly quickly.

The song absolutely blows up at 3:03. Fred Schneider yells, "DANCE THIS MESS AROUND!" and they all start doing psychotic 50s dances, the guitarist and drummer totally rock out, and Kate Pierson just stands there, the foil to the two tweakers with her strident, steady vocals. The call and response vocals are also hysterical. "WHAT'D YOU SAY?!??!" "I'M JUST ASKIN!" But maybe the best thing about the B-52s is the stuttering starts and stops. "Shake!" dur, dur,dur, "Woah oh oh oh oh oh." All the stops and starts and angles to their songs make them feel more like dance music than rock.

If you want a fun, smart, accessible, danceable album at a price you and your family can afford, run, don't walk to your nearest retail outlet or electronic device and grab yourself a copy of the B-52s self-titled debut. It rules.

Guided by Voices - Smothered in Hugs

Robert Pollard, the lead singer/songwriter of Guided by Voices, writes tons of songs. TONS. A lot of them are great, but some of them are crap. Nature of the game, I suppose. I recommended Bee Thousand to one of my music-crazed students the other day, and instead of listening to the album he just checked out a random Pollard/GBV song on Pandora or some other site. He wasn't crazy about it, and considering the sheer number of songs Pollard has released, I wasn't overly surprised. Most people in "the internet generation" (I'm talking ages 18 and below, wi-fi in the womb here) don't listen to an album to initially check out a band, but I think in this case they really should.

Bee Thousand has purposefully sh*tty production, abbreviated tracks, and is absolutely crammed with amazing song after amazing song. "Smothered in Hugs" might as well be called "Vocals Smothered in Guitars," but that amazing vocal hook at 1:26 can't be submerged. "But I believed you. No need for further questioning. I'm gonna leave with you. You can teach me all you know. Which way will we go now on our trip to taller windows. I really don't know now. I really don't know." So great!

This album is like Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen. You can kind of get an idea of how great a band this is by one song, but you should really start at the beginning of the album and just hit play. By the time I got to the 7th or 8th song it started to seem like this guy could just sh*t out a great song. And I was only halfway through the album. :)