To prove that I’m documenting every physical piece of music acquired in 2009, here’s what I bought at the Hum / Life and Times / Dianogah show.

1. The Life and Times – Suburban Hymns LP – Hawthorne Street, 2007 – $12 new

I can understand how some Shiner fans might have lost interest with the second incarnation of The Life and Times during the group’s transition to a shoegaze/math-rock hybrid, but Suburban Hymns is my third-favorite Epley album behind Lula Divinia and The Egg. I enjoyed The Flat End of the Earth EP, especially “Raisin in the Sun,” but I can’t fathom Epley releasing album after album of relatively dry, restrained indie rock. “Houdini” is essentially a shoegaze song stripped of its aesthetic, so the progression to the shoegaze-inflected Suburban Hymns made sense.

With the exception of the overly similar “Running Red Lights” and “Charlotte Street,” the variation from song to song keeps Suburban Hymns fresh. “Coat of Arms” revives War-era U2 drum fills, “Mea Culpa” is a pulsing, dynamic rocker reminiscent of Shiner’s epic “The Simple Truth,” “Muscle Cars” is a chiming, melancholic lament, “Skateland” lurks with seething menace, and “A Chorus of Crickets” somehow makes the apocalypse a rousing event. While there are moments of levity, like the rare Epley love song “Shift Your Gaze,” I tend to be drawn to the songs lingering between resigned pessimism and detached malaise, just like Shiner’s best single, “Sleep It Off” b/w “Half-Empty.”

If you haven’t picked the album up, Hawthorne Street’s clear vinyl pressing is a fine option. (The Magician is pressed on translucent yellow vinyl.) It would have been nice to have a gatefold sleeve with more artwork like the point-on cover, but considering that only one Shiner album (Splay) was pressed on LP, I won’t complain about the lack of frills. Not every group can be Pelican, after all.

2. The Life and Times – The Magician LP – Hawthorne Street, 2008 – $10

Unlike Suburban Hymns, The Magician takes a full step toward shoegaze, particularly on the first two tracks, “I Know You Are” and “Hush.” There’s too much low end to lump them in with most “nu-gaze” groups—Jon always complains about how Loveless needed a proper drum recording—but Epley’s effects-laden vocals and drifting guitar lines are a long way from Shiner’s “Brooks” and “Released.”

While I enjoy those shoegaze tracks and the up-tempo “Ave Maria,” “The Sound of the Ground” stands above the other songs on this EP. The melodies are clearer and more memorable than those on the other songs (“Ave Maria” is closest). The primary guitar line, drenched in delay, is completely absorbing. Just as important, you can actually understand Allen Epley’s vocals. My biggest issue with the shoegaze version of The Life and Times is how it detracts from Epley’s lyrics, since Shiner songs like “Fetch a Switch,” “The Situationist,” “Cake,” and “The Egg” are so compelling because of the combination of the lyrics and those mammoth, churning riffs. I can live without the weight of those riffs—begrudgingly—since there’s something filling the void, but placeholder lyrics are a disappointment.

It’s funny that my first two purchases of the new year are double dips—I own CD copies of both of these releases—since that’s something I’ve been trying to avoid doing. In this case, I try to support The Life and Times whenever possible, and I hadn’t seen them since the vinyl had been pressed.

Considering that the only bands I see nowadays—seemingly, at least—are groups that I loved in high school (Polvo, Shudder to Think) that have reformed out of some combination of nostalgia and profit, adding Hum to that list shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Hum’s been doing these semi-reunions every two to three years since they officially went on hiatus with a New Year’s Eve show 12/31/1999. They played Furnacefest in 2003 (with a warm-up show in Champaign) and Rockfest in Champaign in 2005, so the two shows at the Double Door were right on schedule. The surprise, however, is that I was scheduled to be in Chicago for these performances. I had assumed that Hum would only play shows when I was firmly planted in the east coast, whether visiting family or moving there for graduate school. I was initially afraid that I’d missed my opportunity by waffling on the $65 New Year’s Eve show until it had sold out, but the addition of more manageable New Year’s Day show for $20 made my prior hesitation easier. I was going to see Hum for the first time in almost eleven years.

The only other time I saw Hum was at Irving Plaza in New York City in February of 1998 as a seventeen-year-old junior in high school. As we drove to the Double Door, my wife asked me what I thought of that show and I laughed, because it’s impossible to look back at that show with any semblance of a critical mindset. Getting to see my favorite band at seventeen was all shock and awe. Heroic Doses and Swervedriver opened up for Hum and I remember absolutely nothing about their sets. What I remember is the push of the billowing mosh pit, the thrill of hearing those songs live, the ringing in my ears from not wearing earplugs, and seeing Bush’s Gavin Rossdale and No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani as we waited outside of the club to meet the band. Tim Lash’s guitar tone? Matt Talbott’s live vocals? Bryan St. Pere’s fills? Beats me.

While I still count them as one of my favorite groups, it’s been years since I’ve listened to Hum almost exclusively. I’ll save the details of my full-blown Hum obsession and its passing for a pending article on You’d Prefer an Astronaut, but the short version is that I still listen to their last three albums from time to time, but not on a daily basis like I did in high school. (Sorry Fillet Show.) As frustrated as I was with the eleven-year wait, it did help my recharge my potential enthusiasm and/or nostalgia for the concert.

The openers for both shows were quite familiar for any Hum fan who kept track of their touring partners. Dianogah’s opening set displayed their progress since 1997’s As Seen From Above. Still channeling largely instrumental double-bass math-rock, Dianogah added some flair with female vocals on a few songs, accompanying guitar or keyboard on others, and a few aggressive songs that presumably were from their newest LP, the nigh-unpronounceable Qhnnnl. I’m tempted to pick that one up to bolster my copies of Battle Champions and the Team Dianogah 2 Swedish single, but I opted to pick up the Bird Machine posters for both evenings from poster guru and Dianogah bassist Jay Ryan.

As excited as I was for seeing Hum, I would have been just as psyched for a Shiner reunion (a group I saw eleven times in six cities, or, in other words, the anti-Hum), but catching Allen Epley’s The Life and Times again was a fine alternative. Their shoegaze-meets-math-rock aesthetic loses some detail in the live setting, but the songs from their forthcoming Tragic Boogie LP (coming out on Arena Rock Records in April) came across well. I missed hearing a few of my favorite songs from Suburban Hymns like “Mea Culpa,” “A Chorus of Crickets,” and “Muscle Cars” this time, but at least they played the excellent “The Sound of the Ground” from the Magician EP. Look for them on tour in the spring when their album comes out.

With a seemingly endless string of Rush songs between sets, I began to wonder if Hum was playing an elaborate joke on the audience. But once the smoke machine started up and the house lights dimmed down to a blue glow, Hum came out to enthusiastic applause and launched into “Isle of the Cheetah.” It didn’t take long for the first coordination hiccup to hit, but once the song’s intro passed and it hit overdrive, they were back on track. Tim Lash’s leads were spot-on in this song and throughout, and he even added some flourishes. Immediately I was struck by how metal the guitar tones sounded, especially Lash’s guitar, but that influence was always present during his tenure in the band. Everything else was as I remembered it: Talbott’s nerdy vocals bursting out with emotion on “The Pod,” Dimpsey’s solid bass lines, and Bryan St. Pere’s forceful drumming. I don’t remember Talbott being quite so funny at the Irving Plaza show, but the numerous Centaur shows I caught during college were as memorable for his stand-up bits as the actual songs.

The set represented their final three albums equally, with “Iron Clad Lou,” “Pewter,” “Shovel,” and “Winder” from Electra 2000, “The Pod,” “Stars,” “Suicide Machine,” “I’d Like Your Hair Long,” and “I Hate It Too” from YPAA, and “Isle of the Cheetah,” “Comin’ Home,” “Ms. Lazarus,” “Afternoon with the Axolotls,” and “Green to Me” from Downward Is Heavenward, plus the unreleased rocker “Inklings.” I was a bit surprised to hear the throat-scraping screams of “Pewter” and “Shovel” in concert, but the encore of “Winder” was an absolute thrill. I could gripe about “Little Dipper,” “Dreamboat,” “Pinch & Roll,” and “Diffuse” being absent from the set list, but the arc of the night worked well, with the main set ending with the extended outro jam on “I Hate It Too” (marred slightly by Bryan St. Pere losing his place for a few bars) and the encore ending with a rock-solid rendition of “I’d Like Your Hair Long.”

The best part of the evening was remembering just how great those songs are, whether it was the thunderous drum salvo that launches “Iron Clad Lou” into gear, the churning bass line of “Winder,” the guitar coloring for the mid-tempo “Suicide Machine,” the quiet intro of “I Hate It Too,” or the Cadillac-selling riff of “Stars.” Talbott’s lyrics are still wonderful, especially on the You’d Prefer an Astronaut, and it’s easy to overlook a few musical missteps along the way with that set list. Unlike some of the other reunited bands that I’ve seen, Hum never went away for long enough to forget the muscle memory of how to perform those songs or to lose the passion for playing them, so they’re essentially the same band put into cryogenic freezing.

It’s still somewhat astonishing that I finally made it to one of these shows. While I’d be thrilled if Hum released new music or at least recorded a studio version of “Inklings” and put it out as a single, the odds of either of those things happening are nil, so I’m glad that I could add something to my lingering super-fandom. I’ll just have to remember to be in Illinois in 2011.

I'm starting a new feature called The Haul in 2009 in which I document all of the music I purchase during the year. It should help me keep Record Collection Reconciliation alive with my already existing records, which was the original intent, and help me keep track of just how much music I purchase in a calendar year. (Must block access of this meme from my wife.) While the following records won’t count for the 2009 tally, I’d feel amiss if I visited Amoeba Records in Los Angeles (which I did two weeks ago) and didn’t recap my finds. Even though I’d tempered my expectations for visiting Amoeba, it was hard not to be excited to enter such a huge record store and then feel a bit disappointed when I encountered the picked-over stock. Nearly every artist I looked for had their own plastic divider but no LPs to earn it. Granted, I didn’t have the necessary time—a half day, perhaps—to fully go through all of their seven-inches and their dollar-bins, but my educated guess is that their employees and patrons don’t let too many great finds slip through the cracks for long. I still need to go to the more heralded Amoeba locations in San Francisco with a weekend to kill, but that’ll have to wait for another cross-country flight.

Wire - Object 47 2LP: While this album was a slight let-down after the excellent Read & Burn 3 EP, my Wire fandom compelled me to buy this 2LP package that contains both releases. If the entire album was as good as its bookends—the overwhelmingly catchy “One of Us” and the thrashing “All Fours”—I’d sing a different story, perhaps one about how revitalized they are after the departure of Bruce Gilbert, but the blunt truth is that Object 47 is somewhat more listenable than Send, but far less challenging.

Matthew Robert Cooper - Miniatures LP: My copy of the Eluvium box set should arrive shortly into the new year, but it does not contain a copy of Cooper’s “solo” debut from this year, which I’d put off mail-ordering direct from Gaarden Records. I assume that it was grossly overpriced at $20, but I opted to buy it anyway since I’d never seen it in a store. Amoeba was exceptionally good at having recent releases in stock, even if they were a buck or two more expensive than I expected.

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead LP: After trying out the Festival Thyme EP, I found myself revisiting some of Trail of Dead’s earlier songs. I realized just how good the lengthy, drifting Jason Reese songs like “Novena Without Faith” and “When We Begin to Steal” from their self-titled debut were. Even though it was released on the now-defunct Trance Syndicate imprint, it doesn’t look like this LP is particularly hard to come by, but I was still excited to see it. I’d rather pick up old Trail of Dead albums than new ones.

Mekons – I Love Mekons LP: It’s frustrating when the main Mekons LP that I see (Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll) is one that I purchased on eBay earlier in this year, but I was fortunate to also find I Love Mekons at Amoeba for $7.99. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’m willing to trust most albums that they put out between 1985 and 1995, unless it’s Mekons Teen Pop or Hitler Loves Mekons. (I lie; I’d buy those if they existed.)

M83 – Run Into Flowers LP: Despite their presence on year-end album lists, M83 works best as a singles band and “Run Into Flowers” was their first great single. The three remixes on this LP are all excellent, taking different approaches (glitch-pop, cresting shoegaze, vaguely hip-hop) to reworking the song. If only they’d put the three or four good songs from Saturdays = Youth on a 12”.

What I Left Behind: I mainly passed on new LPs that I thought I could find at Newbury Comics or order from Parasol, like Gregor Samsa’s pricey 2LP for Rest and the reissue of Low’s Songs for a Dead Pilot EP, but I think there were a few other notable declines. Rapeman’s album and EP were both there, although neither is particularly hard to track down, and an EP for the Mekons’ “Empire of the Senseless” was there, although a bit too expensive for my tastes. I was surprised to see a copy of the Comsat Angels’ Sleep No More on LP for $4.99, but I already bought mine from Mystery Train earlier this year.

Next up are visits to two Reckless Records locations in Chicago later this week. I am foaming at the mouth in anticipation.

2008 has been a disappointment musically, something I’ve noticed as I’ve struggled to cull together twenty solid candidates for my usual year-end list. I’ve tried my best to stay on top of things, as documented by this list of some of the albums I’ve checked out recently, but it’s hard to say whether many of these will make the final list.

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Festival Thyme EP: To say that the Trail of Dead had lost the plot since 2002’s excellent Source Tags & Codes would be a vast understatement. I remember listening to Worlds Apart and thinking “This has to click at some point, right?” before recognizing that it had three good songs, tops, and suffered from an overblown rock opera fetish. (Is there any other kind of rock opera fetish?) I don’t think I’ve ever heard So Divided in its entirety; simply nothing that I’ve heard from that record appealed to me in the slightest, not even the cred-grab of the Guided by Voices cover. Yet I checked out the ill-titled Festival Thyme EP out of morbid curiosity and was marginally encouraged by the results. They’re still appropriating too much 1970s prog-rock without the requisite spirit of adventure or the sense of danger of their own early material, but at least these songs have melodies and some forward momentum. “Bells of Creation” backed with “Inland Sea” would make a good single, although the four-song picture disc ten-inch is a reasonable alternative if you’re fond of Warcraft. It’s no surprise that the nasal whine of Conrad Keely has wholly supplanted the evil Bono pipes of Jason Reece and the faux-British sneer of former bassist Neil Busch, but I still long for those other voices. Festival Thyme is a minor step in the right direction, but I don’t know if they’ll ever equal the combination of melodic indie rock and barely controlled abandon from their self-titled debut, Madonna, and Source Tags & Codes.

Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie: Nadja’s Radiance of Shadows made my top twenty list for 2007, but none of their 2008 releases (that I’ve heard, at least) has equaled the scope or depth of that release. It’s not for lack of trying, with eight releases coming out during this calendar year (including two following their strange penchant for re-recording their old albums), but Radiance of Shadows’ doom-metal Codeine approach still lingers with me. As if those eight releases weren’t enough, Nadja guitarist Aidan Baker also collaborated with fellow Canadian Tim Hecker for Fantasma Parastasie, which combines the electronic drones of Hecker’s excellent 2006 album Harmony in Ultraviolet with Baker’s guitar feedback to great effect. There are hints of Nadja’s signature menace on “Skeletal Dane,” but the crushing waves of distortion that highlight Thaumogenesis and Radiance of Shadows are nowhere to be found. The balance between Baker and Hecker is remarkable; some beautiful moments peak out from the haze of Baker’s guitar during “Dream of the Nightmare” and “Auditory Spirits.” It’s a solid listen, but whether it measures up to the evocative thunder of Radiance of Shadows has yet to be determined.

Benoît Pioulard - Temper: I fully expected this album to be one of my favorites of the year, given my ongoing fondness for his 2006 album Précis, but I keep coming away from it feeling underwhelmed. Sure, “Brown Bess” and “The Loom Pedal” equal the previous album’s highlights (“Triggering Back,” “Sous La Plage” and “Ash into the Sky”), but the novelty of his formula—bedroom singer/songwriter material treated with IDM textures alternating with sound collages—isn’t delivering the same punch this time around, despite more fleshed-out structures for the “real” songs. It’s still plausible that I’ll put it on and it’ll hit me differently, but I’m beginning to doubt the likelihood of that happening. Don’t let this stop you from picking up the 2LP set of Précis and Temper, which invalidated my begrudging CD purchase of the former upon its release.

Lukestar - Lake Toba: I heard “White Shade” on the Flameshovel site and then tracked down their web site since I couldn’t determine if it was a male vocalist or not from my brief, verse-only spin. After finding their astonishing promotional photo (there’s a dead ringer for Jim Carrey in this band, for starters) and confirming my suspicion of “high-pitched male vocalist,” I watched the video for “White Shade” on YouTube and tracked down the Norwegian group's newest album. I can’t say that I understand the post-rock tag that’s floating around in reviews and press clippings, since they’re basically doing catchy, slightly off-kilter indie rock with falsetto vocals—i.e., something that fits in perfectly on Flameshovel, their American label. Closer “Peregrin” and the aforementioned “White Shade” are highlights, but the falsetto wears thin on some of the poppier tracks.

Pocahaunted - Chains: I keep wavering on whether I enjoy the droning, pseudo-Sioux psych-chants of Pocahaunted or whether I simply lose focus after fifteen minutes (approximately a song and a half) of Chains and tune it out. Maybe that has to do with my preference of “The Weight” and “No More Women” over the final two songs on the album, but the intensity of the former and the drifting swells of the latter are compelling enough. The title track is a vague cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” and while I prefer the Silkworm’s gang-vocals version, I’m impressed that I could recognize the original song—its bass line, at least—underneath all the gauze. I don’t have enough of a penchant for psych-rock to explore Pocahaunted’s growing discography or the recreational drug habit to fully appreciate it, but Chains is a good sampler for anyone who can stomach the idea of listening to “The Olsen twins of drone.”

Marnie Stern - This Is It and I Am It…: I view making it through almost all of this record without itching to stop it—after several failed attempts—as a monumental achievement, one I’m unlikely to repeat. This Is It… is nowhere near as spazzy or Deerhoof-derived as her debut, which is a huge step in the right direction, but Stern’s still a highly idiosyncratic artist and too many of those idiosyncrasies irk the hell out of me. She’s made significant progress with her vocal melodies, but it’s easy to overdose on chirpy exuberance. Similar to my dreams of In Advance of the Broken Arm magically reappearing as a four-song EP, I’ll condense This Is It… to “Ruler,” “Transformer,” “The Crippled Jazzer,” “The Package Is Wrapped,” and the verses of “The Devil Is in the Details.” I can’t bring myself to say that I’d prefer an album of comparably more straightforward songs like “Every Single Line Means Something,” since I can appreciate what Stern’s doing in the songs I didn’t mention, but it’s a clear case of appreciation trumping enjoyment. And since I’m not getting paid to review records, I’ll stick with enjoyment and the pared-down LPs.

Although I’d prefer news of a follow-up to their outstanding 2006 album Working Nine to Wolf, two members of Pinebender have solo projects coming to fruition, neither of which channel their musical day job’s penchant for slow, epic noise-rock. (Think Dinosaur Jr. 45s played at 33rpm.) Guitarist/vocalist Chris Hansen is moonlighting as Paletazo, with four songs up on his MySpace page and a show on November 10th at Schuba’s in Chicago. Paletazo confirms my suspicion about Pinebender’s songs: Chris Hansen’s songwriting is solid enough to stand up even without the threat of guitar bluster. (See the thoroughly quiet “Peterson Home” from their 2003 album The High Price of Living Too Long with a Single Dream for concrete evidence.) “Nothing Wrong with Love” in particular is worth a few spins. No word of any pending record release.

Meanwhile, guitarist Stephen Howard steps into the frontman role for Quieting Syrup, best described as slowed-down bedroom-pop for the bedridden. Considering that he started out as Pinebender’s drummer and took over the role of baritone guitarist after Matt Clark left for Iowa, this change in roles isn’t surprising. His debut, Songs About a Sick Boy, will be released soon on Lovitt Records. It’s listed on Lovitt’s site, but I don’t think it’s available to preorder yet.

As if his solo debut wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Howard is also now a member of Tight Phantomz, a 70s-hard-rock–informed group fronted by former Lustre King guitarist Mike Lust and supported by former Hurl, Taking Pictures, Milemarker, Thee Speaking Canaries (etc.) drummer Noah Leger. They haven’t released anything since a 2005 EP, but I’ll probably check out their next album if Howard’s on board.

While I’m all for Hansen and Howard spreading their musical wings, I hope this trend doesn’t slow the already glacial Pinebender release schedule beyond the typical three-to-four year period.

I’ve done a good job sticking to my wait-for-the-vinyl policy since I adopted it a few years ago, but one artist that constantly tempted me to break ranks and buy CDs is Eluvium. I kept hearing rumblings about a possible vinyl box set from Temporary Residence Limited, but his catalog—especially the layered brilliance of 2005’s Talk Amongst the Trees, the solo piano of 2004’s An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death, and the symphonic leanings of 2007’s Copia—is so consistently great that I felt guilty for only owning his split LP with Jesu, nearly caving to pick up those releases. (I still haven’t picked up Miniatures, Matthew Robert Cooper’s first release under his actual name, but I’ll order it from Gaarden Records sooner or later.)

Thankfully TRL came through with that proposed vinyl box set, setting up pre-orders at the beginning of the month for a seven LP book that should be delivered before Christmas. Dropping $120 on the vast majority of Eluvium’s catalog (minus that split LP with Jesu, since it already appeared on vinyl, and Miniatures) made my stomach turn as I processed my pre-order, but at least I won’t feel guilty when I see CD copies of Talk Amongst the Trees at Newbury Comics. Given that this is a limited edition of 1000 and TRL followers hoard vinyl like gemstones (I’ve seen the 2LP of Tarentel’s From Bone to Satellite near $100 on eBay), I anticipate it selling out before long. Here are the details of the pressing:

Each record is packaged in its own full-color jacket, featuring exquisite new artwork from Jeannie Lynn Paske, drawn exclusively for this set. The seven jackets are then bound into a beautiful dark green hardbound, linen-cover book, with metallic gold foil stamping and embossed text on the spine, and a beautiful full-color print embossed into the front cover. The inside front cover includes a removable old-fashioned library card, complete with personalized signatures from the artists and designers involved in the creation of this package. The final name on the library card will belong to the purchaser, hand-written and dated when purchased. The inside back cover includes a mind-blowing 12x36" foldout double-sided full-color poster insert, featuring more artwork from Ms. Paske.

Other notes gleaned from the TRL forum thread on the release: the individual albums will not get separate vinyl pressings in the future; each record will be 140 grams, since 180 gram LPs would rip through the packaging; “Behind Your Trouble,” the song from Eluvium’s Travels in Constants EP, was too long to fit on a side of vinyl and was not included; and TRL has a miniscule profit margin on this release. I wish more bands and labels rewarded fans’ patience this well.

The only time I’d seen Shudder to Think or, more specifically, a member of Shudder to Think was at a Girls Against Boys show at the Mercury Lounge in early 1999. I saw Craig Wedren at the bar while on my way to the merch table and stopped for a second in a “Should I talk to you or leave you alone?” moment of panic. Being an awe-struck eighteen-year-old at the time of show, I opted for the latter option. I’ve occasionally regretted that decision, knowing that whatever I would’ve said—“Pony Express Record is one of my favorite records of all time! Could you make a sequel to it?”—would be an embarrassing admission from my inner fanboy, but other times I’m happy that I left Wedren in some higher rock star altitude.

The idea of a Shudder to Think reunion was never outrageous—Wedren and Larson are still touring musicians, the break-up wasn’t acrimonious, their best music isn’t dated—but my excitement was dependent upon the reunion’s focus. I admittedly lost some interest with 50,000 B.C., which I haven’t pulled out in years, and only dabbled in their soundtrack work. Their post-STT work is similarly disappointing—only a few songs from Wedren’s tepid Lapland and half of Larson’s Hot One debut have grabbed my attention. Clearly, their musical focus has changed since the epochal Pony Express Record, so which Shudder to Think would I get?

The opening band helped answer this question. I hadn’t previously heard Pattern Is Movement, but add them to this Spin article tracing the influence of Shudder to Think in modern and/or independent rock. (Deftones? I thought Chino pulled all of his effeminate focus styles from Smiths records.) The Dead Science’s broken glam/goth-rock is the closest relative on that list to PIM’s marriage of operatic vocals, vintage organs, choir samples, and powerhouse drumming, but how exactly they seem influenced by STT differs. Whereas The Dead Science—the one time I saw them, at least—extracts Craig Wedren’s vocal register and some of their guitar dramatics, PIM pulls from the most outré moments on Pony Express Record, like the seemingly shapeless middle section of “Trackstar.” Even with busy, forceful drumming, the vocals floated above the arrangements in frequently incomprehensible operatic phrases. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that the genial members couldn’t quite induce a convincing sing-along on a cover of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” or their own set closer. I respect the originality of Pattern Is Movement’s music (and their pro neck-beards), but like The Dead Science before them, it’s another instance of pulling the stranger elements from Shudder to Think and leaving the hooks behind.

Stealing a peak at Shudder to Think’s set list for the evening eased most of my fears—it would not be an evening of songs from High Art. Only one soundtrack song (“The Ballad of Maxwell Demon”) and two from 50,000 B.C. (“Call of the Playground” and “The Man Who Rolls,” which was cut), but six from Pony Express Record (“Hit Liquor,” “Gang of $,” “9 Fingers on You,” “Earthquakes Come Home,” “X-French Tee Shirt,” and “No Rm. 9, Kentucky”), four from Get Your Goat (“Love Catastrophe,” “Shake Your Halo Down,” “Pebbles,” and “She Wears He-Harem”), four from Funeral at the Movies (“Chocolate,” “Day Ditty,” “Lies about the Sky,” and “Red House”), and three from Ten Spot (“Rag,” “Jade-Dust Eyes,” and “About Three Dreams”). I typically don’t stress too much about set lists, but aside from wanting to hear the rest of Pony Express Record—I would’ve paid another $25 to hear “Chakka,” “Kissi Penny,” “Sweet Year Old,” and “Trackstar” as a second encore—their ability to recognize the best songs from their back catalog is impressive. I yelled for “Chakka,” but as I learned at the Juno reunion shows, if they didn’t rehearse a song, they’re almost certainly not going to play it, especially with new members in tow.

The Boston show marked the end of this “version” of the reunited Shudder to Think, with 50,000 B.C. drummer Kevin March giving way to Pony Express’s Adam Wade for their upcoming west Coast swing. Original bassist Stuart Hill opted out of the reunion, so Jesse Krakow was recruited as a replacement along with guitarist Mark Watrous. I understand the reticence involving bands reuniting with replacement members, but I’m happy with Wedren, Larson, and either March or Wade (although I would’ve preferred Wade, since he wrote the drum parts for Pony Express Record). While there were some telltale signs that this was, in fact, a reunion concert—Craig Wedren’s earpiece for the first half of their set, Wedren only playing guitar on every other song, Nathan Larson’s difficulties with his amp, the rhythm section getting a bit disjointed near the end of “X-French Tee Shirt,” those two guys onstage that I’d never seen before—Wedren’s stage presence and Larson’s guitar more than made up for any hiccups.

Whenever he wasn’t tethered to a guitar, Wedren hopped around the stage with surprising energy. He didn’t appear to have aged a day from the “X-French” video shoot. Larson, looking less like a glam-rock star and more like a communist insurgent, soldiered through those technical difficulties and sounded fantastic on the strafing lead guitar of “Gang of $.” Most of the stage banter was light, with Wedren trying to recall which girls inspired his earlier songs or joking that McCain was behind Larson’s amp difficulties. (Even with this approachable banter, I still left the club without haranguing Wedren with my decade-old anecdote. I’d rather maintain some of that awe, I suppose.) Wedren commented before “No Rm. 9, Kentucky” that the set felt very “punk rock,” an accurate statement that the dynamic “Kentucky” briefly refuted, but the low-key encore finished off the change, closing the night with the blissed-out “Day Ditty.”

The overall performance sat closer to the rejuvenated Polvo concert from this summer than the going-through-the-motions Pixies concert I attended back in 2004, but unlike Polvo, Shudder to Think didn’t revise their old songs or play new ones. They played their best songs and played them well, which was enough for the obsessive fans in the audience, but not enough for me to get my hopes up about a permanent reunion with new material (which Pattern Is Movement seemed to imply might happen, but Shudder to Think themselves did not mention).

It’s unfortunate, given the strength of the performance, that the Paradise didn’t look remotely full until Shudder to Think went on, and even then it did not appear to be a sellout. I could chalk some of this issue up to evening’s competition, since Les Savy Fav were playing over at the Middle East downstairs, the New Year was at the Middle East upstairs, the Feelies’ reunion show at the Roxy, and the Red Sox playoff game on television, but the truth might just be that Shudder to Think’s core fanbase hasn’t expanded like other reunited bands’ fanbases (Slint, Mission of Burma) have. Was this reunion too early? Did 50,000 B.C. turn off too many fans? Do Pony Express Record and their Dischord LPs not carry the proper cachet in today’s hipster enclaves? I overheard enough stories of people driving from nearby states or flying (from Scotland!) to know that the true devotees still care, but I’d hoped that more people had developed my awe of Shudder to Think since their initial demise. Even with that Spin article tracing their influence, I can’t think of any recent bands that have pulled off Shudder to Think’s blend of pop instincts and avant-garde tendencies in such an approachable package.

Ghost Wars, Arlie Carstens' post-Juno project with Eric Fisher of Damien Jurado's band, added two more songs to its MySpace page, bringing the grand total to six. The newest entries are "Divide and Conquer," a Hüsker Dü cover that “we slowed it down till it sounds like a Nick Drake song,” and "The Conductor," a lingering piano ballad. To those scoring at home, two more songs recallling the spacious feel of Juno's "The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow" and Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, like previous Ghost Wars songs "Virginia Long Exhale" and "Lay Down Your Weapons." If you're hoping for a Juno-esque guitar epic, have patience: I understand that more guitar-centric tracks wait in the wings.

If this glacial release of music seems cruel, here's a brief recap of why there isn't a tangible copy of Ghost Wars music in my (or your) hands right now: Carstens and Fisher had recorded the album on Fisher's laptop, which was stolen from him at a Jurado show in Toronto. The back-up external hard drive had data corruption issues, leaving them with raw, unorganized data. (Whether I would buy an album of such sounds is debatable.) Given that the project involves a wide variety of collaborators in a number of locales, the process of re-recoding this material has been arduous, but Carstens and company have been back in the studio several times since the hard drive disaster.

I'm still holding out a spot on my year-end list—whichever year it may be—for the (hopefully) inevitable Ghost Wars LP, given the strength of the available tracks, but I do wonder how much longer I'll have to wait.

From the three weeks of a temporary TextPattern design, you’ve probably guessed that my host transfer wasn’t entirely successful. Short version: be very, very thorough extracting your database before changing hosts. The new site design is now up—hopefully it’s an improvement—but much of the work has yet to be done. Over the next week or two I’ll be tweaking the new design, adding functionality (RSS feed), fixing the site’s infrastructure by setting clear sections and categories, adding images (album covers, book covers, etc.) to existing posts, and streamlining the site’s navigation. Once I resume posting, I’ll introduce a number of new memes that I’ve been working on. I’m excited about moving forward with what will essentially be New Artillery 2.0.

Please excuse any hiccups you may encounter during this process. I’d put up an animated gif of a construction worker, but it would go against my overall goal of modernizing this site.

In the growing stack of 33 1/3 books sitting on my desk hutch, five of the albums covered made my Record Per Year list (the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street and David Bowie’s Low might’ve joined this list if I had been born a decade earlier). Yet the Afghan Whigs’ Gentlemen sticks out as the album I was most excited to read a book about, owing to a combination of the Whigs’ comparatively relative fame (or perhaps, more appropriately, infamy), the deep-rooted emotional attachment I have for the record, and the strange circumstances involving my acquisition of a copy. I was a freshman in high school when I heard “Debonair” and “Gentlemen” on WDST, Radio Woodstock, but it took one of my friends mistakenly getting a copy of Gentlemen from BMG Music Club and then trading it to me for five bucks and an extra Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure for the album to make it into my hands. Trading a youthful artifact for Greg Dulli’s seedy, adult world and unrelenting self-flagellation seems like the devil’s own recipe for adolescent disaster, but even without a trace of the album’s sex and drugs, I was able to transfix my high school alienation to Gentlemen’s post-graduate despair.

I knew that Bob Gendron—a writer for the Chicago Tribune and editor of The Absolute Sound and Playback—was tabbed to write a 33 1/3 volume on Gentlemen, but its appearance in the Harvard Book Store took me by surprise. Unlike the lengthy delay for Mike McGonigal’s Loveless (which hardly lived up to the wait), Gentlemen snuck up on me and did not disappoint. Like the other volumes in the series that I’d recommend without hesitation—Michael T. Fournier’s Double Nickels on the Dime and Hugo Wilcken’s Low—I tore through the 114 page volume in a single sitting and immediately pulled out the album for a dedicated listen.

Gentlemen falls in line with more traditional 33 1/3 entries, covering the band’s back story, the album’s creation, the critical response, and the enduring legacy in lieu of a central conceit like Joe Pernice’s coming-of-age novella Meat Is Murder or Kate Schatz’s presumably catharsis-driven Rid of Me: A Story, but Dulli’s relationship trauma and coke binges hardly require fictional ballast. Solid coverage is given to the group’s early days on Sub Pop, but Gentlemen wouldn’t exist without the conscious decision to separate themselves from their flannel-clad peers and the lingering stain of the “soul grunge” label. Yet the core of the book comes with the investigation of Dulli’s relationship with Kris, which prompted the album’s conceptual focus, and the subsequent substance abuse. One night during the recording session in Memphis, a local stripper that Dulli brought back to the studio witnessed the coke-addled singer rip through final takes of five of the album’s songs. While the titillation of Dulli’s infidelities and drug usage reminds me of how entertaining the Replacements and Butthole Surfers chapters of Michael Azerrard’s Our Band Could Be Your Life were in comparison to chapters on preferred acts like Dinosaur Jr. and Mission of Burma, Gendron’s discussion of the group’s soul influences and fallout with Elektra Records is just as memorable. I had no idea that Terry Tolkin, the A&R man at Elektra, was partially behind the infamous Fat Greg Dulli fanzine, but this post at A Deeper Shade of Soul helps elucidate that particular topic with further comments from Dulli’s close friend, actor Donal Logue. (I remember the two of them hosting 120 Minutes and reenacting scenes from their favorite movies—I could only wonder if dudes got much cooler than them.)

My quibbles are minor. The opening of the book suffers from an awkward transition from Dulli’s near-death experience following an attack in an Austin night club in 1998 to a description of Dulli’s gallivanting playboy ways, but I prefer the former event being covered at the start of the book as opposed to the end. Gendron’s occasional dismissals of recent music trends might date the book, like a mention of the Juno soundtrack as an example of the lingering prudishness of indie/alternative rock, but I can’t harbor resentment about Gendron’s longing for the days of LP artwork in favor of iTunes thumbnails given my overwhelming preference for vinyl. The dismissal of Black Love in two short paragraphs as a bloated album choosing instrumental glut over clear melodies underscores Gendron’s clear preference for its predecessor, but I have little doubt that Black Love is the second-best Whigs album. My biggest complaint is actually a compliment in disguise: I simply wanted more.

Reading that Gentlemen sold only 160,000 copies and never cracked the Billboard Top 200 made me feel lucky to own a book on such a personal favorite. He also mentioned that few publications put the album in their top 10 lists for 1993 and Pitchfork’s Top 100 of the 1990s lacks even a mention of the group, but those critical blind spots made me proud to mention that Gentlemen was #33 in the Signal Drench 100 of the 1990s. (It would rank even higher in my personal list.) The Afghan Whigs have been a love-’em-or-hate-’em proposition, but those in the former camp would be wise to track down Gendron’s Gentlemen.