#for tweeting mountain goats lyrics
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i love and respect that post or tweet or whatever it was about how every mountain goats song is like whirring of the ac in a warehouse while john goes "the dog was. brown" but i do think it applies more to older songs. nowadays any mountain goats song is like [sexy saxophone riff] john darnielle sounding really excited: I HAVE A FIVE STEP PLAN FOR MAULING YOU TO DEATH [bass lick] WHEN THE COPS COME TO MY DOOR I'LL KILL THEM TOO [more saxophone]
#its good!#who doesnt love some righteous abuse survivor rage#are u all aware that there is a mountain goats lyrics bot on twt and it gets regularly suspended#for tweeting mountain goats lyrics#because theyre like 'im gonna kill all the judges'
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hand in unlovable fucking hand
Crosby & Ovechkin circa. 2013 // Richard Siken, "Detail of the Fire" // Ian Oland, "Sidney Crosby Explains Why He Got in a Yelling Match with Alex Ovechkin" // Brian Metzer, "Crosby, Ovechkin add fuel to rivalry" // sweethearts with The Mountain Goats, "No Children" lyrics written on them // Katherine Whitney, "Photograph of deer skulls, locked together in one final battle" // Hannibal S3. E6, "Dolce" // Crosby & Ovechkin 2018 // Rainbow Kitten Surprise, "Work Out" // Larry Brooks, "Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin are graying and fraying" // Tweet by Jenna Harner // Lidia Yuknavitch, "The Chronology of Water: a Memoir" // Tweet by Sammi Silber // Larry Brooks, "Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin are graying and fraying" // Crosby & Ovechkin 2021 // Sharon Olds, "The Father"
#i am so sorry for this. and like. in general#washington capitals#Pittsburgh penguins#alexander ovechkin#sidney crosby#webweaving#this post is lethal#hockey
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i already asked some but
down to the ark, catherine antrim's kid and we shall all be healed
i have so many unreleased tracks downloaded and all of them have the best lyrics :)
Ok, now you're just flexing :P I'll play though.
Down to the Ark: I'm going with the first refrain: And we pull down our blindfolds / Reach out for the lever in the dark / Get a sticker for our shirts / As we head into the sun / Proudly bearing the mark / Headed down to the Ark. This song is so bananas. I can't tell if it's about a Satanic cult taking over America, or if it's about how participating in liberal electoral politics is apocalyptically doomed to failure in the face of rising fascism and climate change. The image of someone voting blindfolded, then heading down towards Noah's Ark wearing an "I Voted" sticker sure is something.
Catherine Antrim's Kid: And the night wrapped me up in its long, dark embrace / I had that same expression on as that one picture of my face / Which was all anyone would ever know about me / After my visitors got done with me. These lines remind me really strongly of Tyler Lambert's Grave: Young man in a yellow tie / Hair gel in his hair / No context for the picture / Just kind of standing there. The idea of a person being crystallized down to a single photograph in the national consciousness, to the point where the photograph comes to epitomize them... There's a passage in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold about the murdered main character and how her school picture comes to encapsulate her for her parents. I don't remember the exact quote, but it talks about how the photo becomes how she always looked to them, "my eyes never bluer than they were in that photo" or something to that effect. I'd have to go find it again which would mean rereading half the book. The idea of this child narrator being the victim of some high-profile violent crime (murder, presumably? I'm assuming this is about a real person) and that one photo being all anyone would know about them ever again... It's a powerful concept. You don't get to pick that photo, you know?
We Shall All Be Healed: Much as I love it when JD names names, I'm going with the very end. And someday we will all never be alone again / When the sun comes up and the night has passed / We shall all be healed, at last, at last, at last. I find myself reminded of Steal Smoked Fish -- Some of you will be dead next year / I see your destinies above you / Like angels who don't love you / Let them kiss you and hold you tight. The "someday" referred to here is presumably after death, given that "we will all never be alone again." This song is more heartfelt than lyrical, and I applaud it for that. I think it's a song about grief, and about hope -- about mourning dead friends, or old friends or ex-friends who will die someday, and about having hope for them to find peace at last in the grave and beyond. We all love to hate that one tweet that's like "The Mountain Goats is just Christian rock for gay twentysomethings" but it's absolutely true, and I think this song kind of epitomizes that genuine prayerful impulse that threads through their work of, well, maybe Heaven is real. Maybe God does love us, after all. God bless all my old friends / and God bless me too, why pretend?
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Think you've made this post before, but what would you recommend for someone who wants to know why you like TMG so much? (Have listened to basically nothing by them)
this is a subtly different question than the usual "what should i check out from them". and its interesting! so to me there's a "classic trio" of mountain goats albums: all hail west texas, tallahassee, and the sunset tree. they tend to be more direct, and therefore more immediately achieve their goal, which is "make you feel something intensely, something youre not used to feeling, or which you dont have the words for". like...there's an *emotion* to no children, a specific and intense emotion, for which the language is lacking. theres this one tweet abt tMG that really clicked with me, that people who like tMG a lot are often distant from their emotions, and jd is really good at tunneling through your emotional walls and letting the dam out
so anyway thats the main thing, they make you FEEL a lot, with the words, and especially with the way john darnielle sings, which is not traditionally good but imo has an unusually large amount of emotion in it. but another major aspect is that a lot of his songs, especially the pre-2000 stuff, are telling a weird ambiguous interesting story. a lot of his early songs are these weird cryptic little poems, which i find very compelling. here's one, its called love hymn to aphrodite:
The sunset gets a little longer every night
And it's no good but I feel alright
The sky turns orange and the colors start swirling
You float downstairs, your body spinning in perfect circles
It's the 18th of July
What what are you doing
part of what makes this work is the trust i have in JD as an author. i dont know what he meant, but i believe he meant *something*, and something that was at least interesting to 90s-JD. which makes these songs fun impossible puzzles
ANYWAY so thats one thing. and then his modern stuff, the appeal there is like...so he used to do a lot of love songs, right? i mean thats sort of what he made his name in. but he hasnt made a love song in nearly 15 years, i think the last one was on heretic pride in 2008. his songs are are about rarely discussed events, emotions. hell make an album about professional wrestling, or goths, or the fall of paganism in the roman empire, and it feels silly when you say it but its not silly, theyre like...actually affecting! and part of this is that theyre often metaphors for more down to earth stuff but sometimes theyre not. sometimes its just a song about the band gene loves jezebel, and its a good song. anyway. theres a lot of novelty
but the CORE the core of all of it, is the lyrics are just...really really good. you mentioned earlier, that most song lyrics sound bad when you just write them out with no music. and this is true! but its not true of tMG, at least not imo. imo their lyrics stand up to a remarkable amount of scrutiny, their lyrics *make sense*, theyre talking about something, something specific, theres no...platitudes, no vague generalities. theyre telling stories! which is weirdly rare! when i was like 13 i was briefly really into fandom music (like, fan music for some property) for this trait, of music that means something specific. but yeah. the lyrics are good and jd makes them shine with the emotion in his voice
oh i spent most of the time explaining. i guess it depends a lot on what style you like. he had a period like 2001-2012 or so when he was doing a lot of stuff in a more like traditional "rock" ish style to varying degrees, the stuff before 2000 is mostly super lo fi which i love but you may not, post 2012 his stuff has often been like...idk, almost jazzy? not like jazzy jazzy. soft rock? i dont know music words. anyway. uh. yeah. i would rec listening to sunset tree, tallahassee, and all hail west texas, then try a song or two from other albums and see if theres any whose sound you like
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Okay after looking up my favorite tweet of all time (a tweet from the official account of my favorite band, The Mountain Goats), I remembered how the twitter bot that posts lyrics from Mountain Goats songs got shadowbanned for tweeting the lyrics "I'm gonna bribe the officials/I'm gonna kill all the judges" and I wanted to look that up too.
And I've stumbled into QUITE the saga here that really I should have expected from a bot that tweets Mountain Goats song lyrics. here are some highlights.
(Links to tweets in alt.)
First off, apparently someone reported the bot for its concerning lyrics, which is funny on its own, but the response from the person who wrote those concerning lyrics really kicks it up a notch.
[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading “twitter noooooo” and a crying emoji, followed by a screenshot of a Twitter Safety Notification that reads "Hello mountain goats bot, We're writing to you because a concerned individual has recently alerted us to potentially suicidal or self-harming comments posted on your account. In difficult times and when you need someone to talk to, it may help to speak to professionals who can assist you in coping with your current circumstances." There is a replied tweet from The Mountain Goats reading "looooool". End description.]
And then there are a few....poorly timed tweets with shocking prescient lyrics around the time of the January 6 insurrection.
[Image description: A retweet from mountain goats bot. The original tweet is also from mountain goats bot and reads "I hope it stays dark forever I hope the worst isn't over". The retweet reads "I'M SORRY" in all capital letters. Both the original tweet and the retweet are dated January 6, 2021. End description.]
[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading "It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage". The tweet is dated January 7, 2021. End description.]
And finally, the saga of the bot getting locked for tweeting a lyric from the song "Up the Wolves". A lyric that it apparently tweeted plenty of times before without getting in trouble for. I wonder if the timing of the leaked decision that overturned Roe v. Wade had anything to do with it...
(Note: the twitter account em (holland1945) is the creator of the mountain goats bot.)
[Image description: A tweet from em reading “tmgbot has tweeted this line dozens of times. wonder why twitter would suddenly be extra concerned about defending the poor little judges" followed by a screenshot of an email from Twitter. The email reads "Hi mountain goats bot, your account @tmgbot has been locked for violating the Twitter Rules. Specifically for: Violating our rules against abuse and harassment. You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm." The email screenshot includes a screenshot of a tweet from mountain goats bot reading "I'm gonna bribe the officials I'm gonna kill all the judges It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage". The tweet from em is dated May 6, 2022. End description.]
[Image description: A tweet from mountain goats bot reading "hey just a reminder this bot is not sentient and definitely DOESN’T encourage the killing of judges!" followed by an emoji of a red heart. The tweet includes a picture of a cat. Imposed over the picture are the addresses of the six US Supreme Court judges that overturned Roe v. Wade. End description.]
Anyways, go listen to The Mountain Goats.
#I know this is a super long post but I kept finding these and couldn't help myself#there are v few people on twitter that do twitter right imo#and The Mountain Goats and the mountain goats bot both are in that category#The Mountain Goats#current events#speecher speaks
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. I know many Vminies Miss Vmin so Let's have a Flashback to some of their Moments :) Get ready It'll be a long long long looooong post😘
*remember when vmin acted as two boys named 'jimin' & 'taehyung' who were actual boyfriends in a relationship and were breaking up with each other as the greek national anthem played on in the background
* remember when vmin acted as two boys waking up to a brand new world and jimin said, 'that's right, taehyung-ah. it's that place you've always dreamed of. let's conquer this new world together.'
*and then remember when jimin sang something along the lines of, 'up in the mountains, where the goats are, i want to live with my beloved taehyungie for the rest of my life.'
*and then remember when jin said he walked in on taehyung acting alone and talking to himself like,
'Jimin-ah, I love you!'
'Oppa, I can't!! ㅜㅜ'
'Jimin-ah, I really love you!!'
*and then remember when jimin said to taehyung in the manhwa cafe, 'if only we had a pc with us, we could live here together forever. we have everything we need.'
*then remember when jimin looked at taehyung and said, 'are we perhaps connected to each other? I think you and I are connected.'
& taehyung said, 'where do we begin and end?'
& jimin said, 'i was going to say that, too.'
& taehyung said, 'i will always be by jiminie's side.'
*and then remember when jimin said to taehyung, "oppa will buy you whatever you want, so tell me what you want to eat."
or that time jimin tweeted taehyung and said, "oppa will take care of you."
*and then remember that time taehyung was filming for hwarang and he missed out on a schedule, so he had to go to japan by himself for an event and jimin logged into the vlive chat and said, "taehyung oppa, i miss you 😢"
*and then remember when taehyung got drunk and spammed twitter and posted photos of himself making out with his (idk why he has his own jimin doll but) jimin hiphop monster doll, and tweeted the words, "good night to you too, jimin-ah, kiss kiss"
*and then remember when jimin said to taehyung, "i want to be with you even as grandfathers. you're more than a best friend; you're my saviour."
*and then remember when jimin got upset and asked taehyung, "then who would you date?"
& taehyung said, "maybe jhope?"
& jimin, embarrassed, said, "...shocking. I'd pick you, unconditionally."
and taehyung said, "maybe if jiminie's sense of humor improves, i'll reconsider it."
*and then remember when vmin laid in bed in nothing but hotel robes and took lots of photos together in bed on valentine's day, in 2014?
and then remember when taehyung's thanks to note for the dark & wild album addressed jimin as, 'my love, ddanji'
*and then remember when jimin, throughout the years on taehyung's birthday, said:
'love you, pretty'
'love & adore you'
'hyung loves & adores you, precious'
'my baby, all grown up, i love you'
*and then remember when taehyung wrote jimin a letter and cried and jimin later brought it up a year later and reinterpreted it as, "jimin, i love you. i live because you live. your eyes are pretty, your nose to," and then he looked at taehyung and asked, "don't you remember?"
*and then remember when taehyung said, "jimin is my one and only true best friend," and "jimin gives to me, an existence that only a unique best friend can have. he is the warmest person i've ever met."
*and then remember when jimin said taehyung is the 'ultimate of lovely,' and called him 'beloved'
*and then remember when taehyung wrote a christmas song that went like, 'brighter than the stars, your smile, it feels good', and said he wanted to sing it with jimin but the producers said no because the lyrics weren't suitable for a male x male duet
*and then remember when jimin said fuck that, and he became a producer and wrote a song he could sing with taehyung that went, 'you are my soulmate,' 'i know everything about you,' 'stay by my side for an eternity, even when these cheers die'
The space isn't enought so see u in next post <3.
Credits to @vmxn (twitter)
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bad post review: hozier?
I forgot this was in my screenshots, and found it again when I was searching for the Happiest Season post for the last Bad Post Review, so here goes.
I'll be upfront: I'm not a huge Hozier fan. I think his lyrics, much like those of Florence Welch or The Mountain Goats, are spectacular and would make for great poetry; in terms of musical sound, however, he's just not my cup of tea (nor are Florence nor TMG). That said, I appreciate the contribution he's made towards normalizing* Irish folk and the influence of Black soul musicians. I wish horny teenagers on Tumblr would retire the words "yearning" and "fae," sure, but that's nothing I can't fix with a handy word blocker.
Now, with that established: what the FUCK kind of bug crawled up this person's ass?
*Using this word in its actual context, not the definition armchair therapists on the internet like to use it.
No, Hozier does not "hate" his fans. Everything I could find in terms of articles, Tweets from the man himself, interviews, etc., seems to point towards the fact that... he thinks it's swell that people like his music. That's it! It's not that deep! That said, of course he, like everyone else, wouldn't appreciate if someone said something inappropriate (and there have been a couple of recorded instances where he's shut down someone nagging him about releasing new music or asking an inappropriate personal question), but disliking publicity and paparazzi does not "hating your fanbase" make.
As I mentioned, I'm not the biggest fan either of "grown adults [...] saying 'take me to church is a lesbian swamp witch anthem a sexy lady witch possessed this man to write this'" (to quote verbatim), no. I also don't think it's a genuinely harmful phenomenon. It's a bunch of kids and young adults fantasizing about a comfortable future, with a side of the allure of monsters thrown in as garnish. It's nothing that people haven't been doing since time immemorial.
The point this person makes about the music video's being set in Russia is simply inane. Music videos aren't inherently connected to the songs themselves, and songs can absolutely be divorced from the "context" of their music videos (if they even have official videos). Yeah, it could be seen as offensive to do something like project your favorite fictional characters into the music video's setting, I guess, but simply taking the song -- which came first! -- and applying it to your daydream about living in the woods with your sexy lesbian bog witch lover isn't actually harmful in any way whatsoever.
Also, "that song had such a serious message"? Bitch, no it didn't. Even Hozier himself said that it's "essentially about sex"! It wasn't until the music video that the song even garnered mainstream attention. Hozier has said in interviews that the song was inspired by a breakup he had with a past girlfriend. You can apply a deeper meaning to the song if you want, that's totally fine. But that's not the only valid interpretation.
To top it all off, my favorite sentence fragment from this post: "all of you lily white bitches...": what fucking skin color do you think the overwhelming majority of persecuted gay men in Russia have, OP? Is it white? Is it "lily white," OP? Do you have brain worms? Are there worms in your fucking brain?
#yikes#not me googling 'how does hozier feel about his fans' at nearly 2.40 in the morning#mine#Hozier#misinformation superhighway
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Silver Jews, Purple Mountains Leader David Berman Dead at 52
David Berman, the singer-songwriter and founder of Silver Jews and, more recently, Purple Mountains, died Aug. 7, his record company said.
“We couldn't be more sorry to tell you this,” Drag City Records said in a tweet.
“David Berman passed away earlier today. A great friend and one of the most inspiring individuals we've ever known is gone. Rest easy, David.”
Berman was 52; no cause of death was reported.
“He brought me and I’m sure all of you so much joy,” Ryley Walker said on Twitter. “Twisted eccentricities of the suburbs were psychedelic cartoons in his lyrics.
“Sad day. It’s raining in NYC.”
A poet and cartoonist who also released two books, Berman made six Silver Jews LPs with various lineups between 1994 and 2008, when he left music. In July, he returned with Blue Mountain’s self-titled debut and was due to start a tour this week.
“He had no competition,” the Mountain Goats said of Berman on Twitter. “He was the competition.”
8/7/19
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okay i have a really, really weird. problem? anxiety. that i would appreciate feedback on
if you follow me on twitter you may be aware that, a long time ago, i started a project in which i manually examined the lyrics for every mountain goats song i could find the lyrics to and coded them all on an excel spreadsheet based on whether or not the narrator was going to/coming from a place, with additional categories for whether or not that place was named and whether or not the name was in the title (e.g. the “going to” series). my initial idea was that it’d be funny, and then i realized that a pretty big percentage of his songs actually qualify for this! so then i thought, hey, maybe i’ll tweet it at him sometime and he’ll think it’s funny
i am currently ~70% done with the project. i have a ticket to a mountain goats show on friday. i have never been to a mountain goats show before, but have been informed by friends that he will sometimes meet people beforehand or afterwards. i kind of want to run some bayesian shit on a sample of this and write it up report-style and give it to him in person? but i’m second-guessing myself wildly because i have enough understanding of social norms to know that i am very bad at figuring out where they are, and there’s also the possibility he would find it insulting, like, “haha look at how many times you use this rhetorical device mr WRITER”, even though that’s totally not what i intended at all. and, in short, i’m dying
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I got locked out of my twitter account for tweeting mountain goats lyrics
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my introduction to the Mountain Goats was a tweet I saw that said “Newt Gingrich’s concession speech is just going to be the lyrics to ‘No Children’”
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tMG asks
Favorite song?
Favorite album?
Favorite single or EP?
Favorite Going To song?
Favorite Alpha song?
Lofi or hifi?
Favorite lofi album?
Favorite hifi album?
Favorite unreleased song?
Most underrated song?
Most underrated album?
Most overrated song?
Most overrated album?
Give me a hot Goats take.
Have you read any of JD's books? What did you think?
Funniest song?
Worst song? Not your least favorite, I mean objectively the worst.
Best song? Again, not your favorite, but objectively the best.
Least favorite song?
Least favorite album?
Tell me your favorite line/s from a song you love.
Got a goto feelin-shitty song?
A song that cheers you up?
A song you didn't know about for ages and then found one day and became obsessed with?
Favorite song to sing along to?
Saddest song?
Favorite live track?
Give me a good JD quote or tweet or something.
How did you get into the Mountain Goats?
Are you a tMG snob? Like for real tho.
People are always saying like "oh the Goats stopped being good after [album]." Are you one of them? What's the album?
Rec me a tMG blog.
Ever been to a live show? How many?
How much merch ya got?
Vinyl. Thoughts?
What's a song that you think deserves a close listen or 10? Why?
A song that is really, really personal for you?
A song that you just don't get?
A song you can't listen to?
A track with great instrumentals?
A track with great vocals?
A lyric that just obliterated you the first time you heard it?
A lyric you cannot fucking stand?
Got a Goats-only playlist you wanna share with the world? Post the link and tell me about it.
Got a highly specific song interpretation you wanna share?
The Goats have an obscenely huge discography. How much of it have you actually listened to?
How obsessed are you with tMG lore?
Do you only listen to the Mountain Goats?
Gimme a link to a cool Goats thing you want everyone to know about.
Rant about a song or album or blog post or whatever that you think is great or interesting or maybe extremely terrible. I don't care, just pick something Goats-related you have thoughts on and go ham.
#tmg#the mountain goats#I CANT SLEEP HAVE A POST#ask game#i have a vague memory of making one of these many moons ago but i cant be fucked to try to find it#whatever lol
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Sami Zayne tweeting mountain goats lyrics girl HELP.....
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does John darnielle speak latin? either way he’s such a cool guy
John Darnielle DOES know Latin!
First, look at the album liner notes for earlier albums as recorded on the annotated mountain goats website ( http://kylebarbour.org/tmg/ ) . There’s an album called transmissions to Horace and an EP called songs for Petronius so there’s that. On the album liners, there’s quotes from Suetonius, Horace, Plautus, Seneca, Ennius (?!) in Latin, and English references to Apuleius, Sophocles’ Ajax, and to Aeschylus (my question is, does he know Ancient Greek bc I sure as hell don’t and that’d be very impressive)The Mountain Goats’ discography also contains references to Euripides (the Title Alpha in Tauris is confirmed in fact to reference Iphigenia in Tauris, + we might think about ‘Faithless Bacchant Song’), Aeschylus (The House That Dripped Blood + Have to Explode confirmed to be House of Atreus Inspired and the lyrics reference Aeschylus’s Oresteia directly), Sophocles (Against Agamemnon is pretty clearly an adaptation of his Ajax) Cicero (song for Cleomenes), Caesar (Anglo Saxons references his Gallic wars), aaaand I’m probably forgetting some. AND the extent of his Latin knowledge is pretty great considering he translated Seneca’s Thyestes (which is directly quoted on one of the album liners and which that tweet convo was about) for his senior thesis (as told to me in a tweet)… so at least Someone else loves Seneca’s Atreus House tragedies as much as I do.
#PEPE_SYLVIA.MP4#the mountain goats#kind of#the alpha couple is confirmed to be house of atreus adjacent... h*ll yea
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Minor Disappointments’ Least Disappointing of 2017
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2017 has been my seventh year as a music critic and also the one where I’ve been most confounded by year end lists. More than ever,the lists give the impression that an algorithim has plugged the same 50 or so albums into empty slots, with the order slightly altered each time. Without trying to be willfully defiant of the more ubiquitous albums, here is a list of 10 releases from 2017 not featured on many year end lists (with a few givens thrown in, because sometimes the bots are right).
The moral is, if you liked something a lot this year, but it wasn’t on a year end list, it’s probably still very good (and lists are still fun to read):
1) Wolf Parade -- Cry Cry Cry: Here is my most “mountain out of molehill” statement of 2017: the lack of exposure and praise this record got is simply obscene. Not only is Cry Cry Cry a rare case of a band returning from a hiatus to show an energy and progress completely at odds with its six year dry period, it is also a record that is highly relevant to our times, a defiant last cry from the sinking ship that is North America (and yes, Wolf Parade is Canadian, but just go with it). You may think that an album whose opening song has a refrain of “we’re all gonna die” and closes on “...coming down the hall to kill us all” would be a bit of a downer, but Cry Cry Cry is wholly invigorating throughout its 11 prog-power-pop-hypersynthed-indie(I guess) jams.
Furthermore, Spencer Krug is a gift to us all, whether he’s applying some Leonard Cohen-esque phrasing, playing the synths like the devil or doing his signature “oh!oh!oh!”-ing. But enough of my fawning -- let’s allow the lyrics to speak for themselves:
“ And then it rains on you, and then it pours
And then the angel of the future is locking all her doors
And then you're shocked at how you have become some crocodile form of the truth
Like a forest coming up through the floor
So may I hang my hat in this hallway, dear
I've made it almost halfway, dear
May I hang from the branches of the past above that crocodile and his crocodile tears.”
WOW
2) Shilpa Ray -- Door Girl: No disrespect for the Hurray for the Riff Raff record, but I’ve been seeing things about it being the sound and soul of New York right now, and I feel that title (and so much more) should go to Shilpa Ray’s 2nd Happy Hookers-less full-length instead. As I’ve sort of said in the past, Shilpa’s music is a perfect confluence of New York-specific styles, from no wave to old school hip hop to doo-wop, and never has that merging been stronger than on Door Girl. Add in Shilpa’s wry narration and almighty vocals, and you have a near-flawless collection of catchy, smart, funny, and timely yet timeless multi-genre gems. That this record didn’t make more waves this year is as clear a testament as there is that the music industry is, in fact, a burning ruin.
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3) Kendrick Lamar -- DAMN.: Now this one, this one everybody got right. Much more straightforward than To Pimp A Butterfly but just as vital.
4) Protomartyr -- Relatives in Descent: This is the sort of music that I had hoped would come out this year: anxious diatribes on the state of things that never lose their potency on repeated listens.
5) Sparks -- Hippopotamus: It’s a little overlong, but there are six or so songs that are more joyous than anything I’ve heard all year. I can’t believe it took Sparks this long to write a song about the missionary position!
6) Mountain Goats -- Goths: A loving chronicle on gothhood, that period of adolescence that only the lucky among us get to experience. In any other hands a loungey song called “The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement” would be an utter joke, but when John Darnielle does it, it’s surprisingly moving.
7) Mount Eerie -- A Crow Looked At Me: I nerve out about death so frequently that it took me eight months until I was able to listen to this. Nearly had a breakdown at my work cubicle. Well done, Phil.
8) Destroyer -- Ken: I’m not going to lie -- I listened to this because Dan Bejar got the title from Suede’s “The Wild Ones” demo. The sound of Ken is more New Order meets Pavement (and yes, that sounds terrible; this is why it’s OK to cringe when you read music writing sometimes), and each song is a dreamy puzzle filled with quality Bejar-isms. I hope all the Destroyer bros on Reddit (there are a few) listened to “The Wild Ones” a bunch while they waited for this to leak.
9) Afghan Whigs -- In Spades: Just a wonderfully performed rock record with gorgeous string arrangements and really cool cover art. Sometimes those sorts of things still get made!
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10) LCD Soundsystem -- American Dream: Like the Sparks record, I found half of American Dream to be a banger, and then the rest just very slightly boring. That said, it had the strongest four-song opening run of any record I heard in 2017.
10 good songs:
Algiers -- The Underside of Power: I didn’t get to listen to this album enough to form an opinion, but this song is terrific melding of what Algiers is about.
Liars -- No Help Pamphlet: Latter day Liars releases have been a bit mixed for me, but TFCF, the first Angus Andrew-only Liars release, was a surprisingly solid outing filled with surprises, the least not being this straight-up beautiful number that takes unexpected turns.
King Krule -- Dum Surfer: Singlehandedly giving me hope for the youth of today.
Horrors -- Something to Remember Me By: I’m so happy that these reformed goths are still around and still delivering. As a live band they’ve definitely improved, they still look cool, and, with “Something to Remember Me By,” they may have put out their best song yet. Clever video, too.
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Sparks -- Missionary Position: “It ain’t no joke / it ain’t baroque / it’s the missionary position.” Classic Sparks.
Future Islands -- Shadows: Although it was Future Islands’ breakthrough, I thought 2014′s Singles was kind of a step down from 2011′s excellent On the Water. The Far Field saw the band return to very fine form, but not even Debbie Harry guesting on this track seemed to get anyone to care that much. You all missed out.
Veda Rays -- False Coloured Eyes: In the past, I guess it could be seen as kind of conceited to put your own band on a “best of the year” list. Considering it’s so hard to get through to anyone unless you have the dollar for excellent PR, I think it’s almost necessary to sneak your own material on to a list. So, here’s our song about surveillance, it’s got one hell of a riff.
Thundercat -- Bus In These Streets: "Opening your mouth removes all doubt / so be quiet.” Very zen and very wise words for basically anyone who tweets / leaves a comment somewhere on the internet.
Wolf Parade -- Lazarus Online: And now I’m the one crying.
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