Happy Monday, folks. Busy business on the plate for today. Before I get to enjoy watching the City of Ithaca's premature Blowing Up of Things Day fireworks, I have to get through a meeting with my shelf-builder to discuss the cabinets vs. legs issue (that is, should the cd racks have cabinets or legs underneath them. I'd been leaning towards cabinets, just in the interest of storage space, but it involves a lot more wood, and after watching the Other Music clerks video on You Tube this morning, I kind of like the openness of just legs. Anyone else care to ring in?), followed by a meeting with The Talent to discuss the upcoming release of No Radio Records catalog item #001. Long, involved conversations about lumber followed by long, involved conversations about fonts. Also, today I'll be calling in the order for the first batch of No Radio stickers.
More tracks!
Mornings Eleven- The Magic Numbers
"Mornings Eleven" is a terribly cute mini-epic of a song (although according to the rules, a mini-epic must clock in at under five minutes. Prime example: "Alec Eiffel" by the Pixies). Unimpressed by brother/sister duos like the Fiery Furnaces, the Magic Numbers decided to be a brother/sister/brother/sister quartet, believing this would make them exponentially superior. Next they locked themselves in a house in England and listened to everything ever recorded by the Mamas and the Papas, including demo tapes and home movies. Finally, they unleashed their self-titled album onto US shores like a quadripedal pop monster. With harmony claws!
Shame- Devendra Banhart
Remember when Devendra Banhart recorded his albums on people's answering machines? If I was surprised by the quiet, tongue-in-cheek goodness of "Rejoicing" and "Nino Rojo", I was stunned when I first heard "Cripple Crow" and found that the Reigning Lord of the Wizard Beard Set had reinvented himself as Marc Bolan fronting the Coasters. This b-side from the "I Feel Like a Child" single plays around with the more rollicking elements of the album, Mr. Banhart and the kids prancing and sprightly.
Diary- Saturday Looks Good to Me
Technically, this is not a new song, but the massive SLGTM compendium, "Sound on Sound" is, so I'm allowed to include it here. I don't have enough superlatives on hand to talk coherently about Saturday Looks Good to Me, so I'll just mention that this is yet another of Fred Thomas's perfect pop songs, a straight-ahead rocker with few of the accoutrements common to Saturday tunes, just Fred's vocals barrelling through.
The Party's Crashing Us- Of Montreal
Is it even possible the same band that laid down the low-fi jangling accoustic guitars of "Cherry Peel" are also responsible for the disco-synth of "The Sunlandic Twins"? Of Montreal manages to surprise with every album while remaining unmistakably the same band. I heard they married a whole audience at a show. I'm incredibly enamored of the upsweep in Kevin Barnes's voice on the chorus's dizzying last word.
The Henney Buggy Band- Sufjan Stevens
I know it's way cooler to bash Sufjan than praise him. I know "The Avalanche" is not going to be radically different from the material that made it onto the stunning "Illinois" album and probably won't complete the album the way the plaintive hymns on "Seven Swans" completed the odes to urban planning on "Michigan". But I also believe Stevens crafts these songs with a savant-like belief that the songs NEED trumpets and glockenspiel and a backing chorus, and that he's written nearly fifty songs about the state of Illinois because that's how many songs about the state of Illinois he had in him. This little confection doesn't have the sheer weight of some of the pieces on "Illinois", but it does have that dash of glockenspiel that's been lacking in your life.
Enjoy the Blowing Up of Things Day festivities, all. I am going to attempt to make the fabled "Bloobarb" pie suggested to me last night, using the fresh rhubarb I found in my mailbox this morning. It probably goes without saying, but "bloobarb is my new favorite word. We'll see if it becomes my new favorite pie.
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