I know I put M. Mucci's "Moments Between" on that mix I recently made, but Time Lost is so sweet that 2 posts in a row with Mucci Music is not only tolerable, but encouraged.
This record is an utterly fantastic showcase of supreme guitar pickin. I'm no guitar pickin expert, but I'd say Mucci's talents are gonna take him places. His hi-fi dusty Americana is classic & engaging, pretty much perfect for every occasion. Strolling through dead crunchy leaves by the brook, riding the subway, laying on your back in an open field, baking pies, stomping through puddles, chillin on the night beach, non-raging parties. You can listen to it anytime. Dinner, literally, anytime.
Time Lost is top notch lush & twangy guitar, with the occasional percussion. It just fills the room with delicate dreams and makes everything all right. Stream the whole thing on Bandcamp then grab the limited LP, complete with amazing encaustic artwork, and be happy for the rest of your life.
This is the one you wanted. Sweetest mix of the century.
Be back soon. Going to read Being & Nothingness.
Isolated Lakeside Cabin Mix 1. The Great Valley - Lucky Me! 2. Boy Without God - Call A Yellow Taxi 3. Shai Erlichman - The Season 4. M. Mucci - Moments Between 5. Master Musicians Of Bukkake - Cascade Cathedral 6. Lungfish - Sands Of Time 7. Uriah Heep - I'll Keep On Trying 8. Mugstar - Technical Knowledge As A Weapon 9. Prince Rama - Lightening Fossil 10. Billy Nichols - Life Is Short 11. Imbogodom - Of The Cloth 12. PKE - Grounded 13. Talk Normal - Outside 14. DOOMSTAR! - Rainbow BLoodsucker
I generally try to stay away from reviewing records like Carnival. The ones where each song is different from the next and it's really hard to peg the album. I feel like I inevitably talk about the record on a song-by-song basis, and that makes me it seem like I don't "understand" the album. If I can't talk about the mood or overall sound, then it feels like I'm not doing my job right.
Sleep In's newest release from the inininfinitely unstoppable Enemies List is one of those records. He dropped it in my inbox over 2 months ago and I've been listening to it ever since, hoping to get a grasp on what kind of shit was going through this guy's mind. No luck. The only thing I've taken from my numerous Carnival listens is that 1: it's totally fucking rad and 2: it doesn't fucking matter if I can't pigeonhole this beast.
I could take the route and say Carnival is like a carnival, you get all sorts of weird shit and random experiences. But I'm not gonna do that. Promise.
So what does this record sound like? First off, it's pretty different from anything Enemies List has done before. It's not some twisted black metal Nahvalr, epic doom pop like Planning For Burial, or the industrial metalgaze of Have A Nice Life. Carnival isn't very metal at all. It gets heavy at times, but more like a psych noise freakout kinda heavy. There's backwoods swamp folk, electro-acoustic doom, warped guitar ambience, sprawling drone, feedbacked squalls, and plenty more that's just weird as fuck.
This is where I say, "But despite all these disparate sub-genres, Carnival still works because it keeps the thread of BLANK going through the whole thing." But I can't do that. I don't know what that thread is.
Despite not being able to decipher the overarching theme, I can still tell you Carnival doesn't seem haphazard or disjointed in any way. It works great as a record, everything flows and sounds perfect together. It's an album that's actually an album instead of simply a collection of songs. It's refreshing and original and 100% awesome.
Nope. That's not a typo or a joke. There has been one thing this year that completely surpassed everything else in terms of sheer awesomeness. This has honestly changed my life more than anything else this year. I have already heaped endless amounts of praise on this the first time I posted it yet it still deserves more.
I can't even imagine how many spiders I killed in 2008. I think I killed one since I saw this video, which, by the way, is shamefully underviewed on YouTube, especially considering that I account for half of the 290,000 views.
I love everything about this song and video. Let me re-cap from my original post:
I love the rhythm. I love the flow. I love every single lyric. I love the story. I love the animation. I love the imagery. I love the dad. I love the dad's voice. I love the son's voice. I love the old timeyness. I love the (faux?) outsider feeling. I love the dad's long nose and weird hair and worm nipples. I love the opening line. I love the dad caressing the spider's delicate legs. I love the page turning. I love that the dad decided to teach his son a lesson about morals upon being woken up in the middle of the night. I love that it ends with the dad saluting the spider and wishing him "Godspeed." I love every single thing about this video. I love Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore for making this. I hate Garrett for not making more music.
I present to you Garrett Davis' & Kirsten Lepore's "Story From North America"
Ok, this is going to be difficult to explain. I know I get really excited about a lot of things and routinely profess my love for them. But you see, this video is different. It's different because I love it SO MUCH MORE than all of those other things.
I love the rhythm. I love the flow. I love every single lyric. I love the story. I love the animation. I love the imagery. I love the dad. I love the dad's voice. I love the son's voice. I love the old timeyness. I love the (faux?) outsider feeling. I love the dad's long nose and weird hair and worm nipples. I love the opening line. I love the dad caressing the spider's delicate legs. I love the page turning. I love that the dad decided to teach his son a lesson about morals upon being woken up in the middle of the night. I love that it ends with the dad saluting the spider and wishing him "Godspeed." I love every single thing about this video. I love Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore for making this. I hate Garrett for not making more music. In the past 4 days, I have watched this more times than I can count. I am currently memorizing every word.
Back in August of '07, loud as fuck metal mathy hardcore crazy awesome band Big Bear played a rare all acoustic set due to David (the bassist) fracturing both of his arms in a bike accident. It was amazing and hilarious (the show, not the accident). Amazing because Big Bear is infinitely amazing and hilarious because they all did a shot of Jäger after every other song. So their normally witty stage banter turned into exceptionally ridiculous banter.
The best part of all of this is that now everyone can hear how Big Bear sounds acoustic, what Jordyn sounds like when she's actually singing, and how funny they are live because they posted the whole set as an MP3 on their website.
What I did for you was chop it up into bite size pieces (aka songs) so you don't have to listen to the whole set all at once if you don't want to. I didn't delete any banter or anything, just made 7 individual files, one for each song. This is Big Bear unlike you've ever heard them before and it's one of the coolest things ever. Seriously, even if you're a modest fan of Big Bear, this is absolutely necessary.
Download Big Bear - Live Acoustic Set At The Middle East 8-6-07 Part 1 Part 2
Staples is a feature about, you guessed it, staples in my music diet. Albums that no matter how (im)perfect they are, or how old or new they are, I always come back to them because they're that awesome.
A little known guy from the Providence area (I think) who is quite multitalented. I'm not very knowledgeable about his other talents, though. Only his musical ones. But boy oh boy does this Jacob Berendes guy have some serious chops.
Foreign Policy is one of his few records and you know what? I fucking love it. It's one of those records I put on when I'm in the mood for some seriously peppy music. But not the dancey kind. More like the kind that I want to sing really loud to. Jacob's lyrics are so catchy and light hearted, even if they're about sad things (which is pretty much every other song), that you want to sing every one of them. "H. E. L. L. Ooooo. And I say hello! Hello Kitty never looks away she's always watching you. But it's not creepy, it's kind of nice."
I'd rank Berendes up with the likes of Jeffrey Lewis and The Moldy Peaches. His sense of humor fits right in with theirs and the music is acoustic and super lo-fi. It sounds like when he recorded the album, he took his guitar and put it right next to a 10 cent mic he bought at a garage sale and played as loud as he could. The songs are totally blown out in the red fun.
You know how I do those Catch Of The Week posts every now and then? Well, this entire album gets stuck in my head all the time. The first words, especially. The opening track, "JLA Dreamer" starts out "My name is John Jones. You can call me John Jones. I'm a cop by trade. Oh ohoh." That gets stuck in my head all the time. And one of my favorite song lyrics ever comes from "Parakeet Illnesses." "All of my insecurities get in the way of his birdities." Awesome.
Seriously, I can't get enough of Foreign Policy. I've never bothered looking for other Berendes records but if they're anything like this, it's very possible there's a hidden musical genius living in New England.
I Want To Review Your Music If you make music and you want it reviewed on my blog, just send me an e-mail. I would love to hear what you're making and give you a little more exposure in the process.
Disclaimer All of the music on this site is for promotional and sampling purposes only. If you enjoy it, please consider buying the record or going to see the band live. They will appreciate it, I promise. If you own the rights to a song on this site and you would like it removed, please contact me and I will do so as quickly as my tiny paws allow.
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