Approximately a minute and a half into my first spin of “Jesse’s Fashion Show,” the third song on Grass Is Green’s recently issued Ronson, I started getting the sense that the group made a quantum leap forward since 2011’s Chibimoon, like if my three-month-old daughter walked over to me and asked me to put on Fugazi’s Red Medicine. This feeling kept solidifying as the song continued and at exactly 3:13, it became a certainty: I wholeheartedly endorse whatever illegal riff-growth-hormone Grass Is Green imported from Mexico last year. They haven’t entirely lost the anxious angularity that appealed to me on Yeddo and Chibimoon, but the teasing nature of those albums—flashing a superb Polvo-meets-Faraquet passage in “Slow Machine,” then suddenly abandoning it—has been replaced by a new philosophy: write a great riff, then one-up it with a better one, then one-up it with a better one…

It’s a tall order to get past how smartly constructed “Jesse’s Fashion Show” is (the vocals dropping out midway through its four-minute runtime to prioritize the nimble lead exchanges, for one), but Ronson offers other expansions of Grass Is Green’s portfolio. “Panera” is the tightest, catchiest song they’ve written; it would have merited inclusion in nearly every mix tape I mailed out from 1997–2000. The slow-burning “Somebody’s Something” finds deeper catharsis with “It’s getting hard to ignite those kerosene eyes / Difficult for everyone else,” then allows Andy Chervenak’s vocals get overtaken by a pitch-perfect closing guitar part. The instrumental “Ruffleball” ends Ronson with satisfyingly bright interplay between the four members before fading to black. If you’d told me Grass Is Green had mastered any of these moves on their third album, I would have been impressed, but all of them? I’m still scratching my head.

It might sound like I’m disparaging Grass Is Green’s previous efforts, but it’s hard to go back to earlier records after a big leap. Returning to The Dismemberment Plan’s ! after Is Terrified proved largely impossible, I spent considerably less time with Smart Went Crazy’s worthy Now We’re Even after acquiring the superior Con Art, Shiner’s Starless felt like a dry run at a four-piece edition of Shiner after The Egg was birthed, et cetera. My question for Grass Is Green, now that they’ve written a score of guitar riffs I uncontrollably sing along to, is this: Where does Ronson fall in their evolutionary curve? Returning to the Dismemberment Plan comparison, is their Emergency & I coming up? That is what I’m so excited about: if they made this enormous leap for Ronson, imagine what could be next. Am I going to break my hands drumming on my steering wheel?

No pressure, guys.

There’s a distinct before and after for Northampton-based guitar rockers Speedy Ortiz. On last year’s Cop Kicker EP and The Death of Speedy Ortiz LP (both freely downloadable on BandCamp), guitarist/vocalist Sadie Dupuis did everything else, too, including “bass, drums, piano, cello, banjo, sound treatments, etc.,” with the end result often qualifying as endearingly ramshackle. In contrast, the “Taylor Swift” b/w “Swim Fan” single (available for a whopping dollar on BandCamp) features a full line-up, with guitarist Matt Robidoux, bassist Darl Ferm, and drummer Mike Falcone joining the fold, and the ’90s alt-rock polish of Boston-based producer Paul Q. Kolderie.

The sonic taste-test reminds me of two specific eras of ’90s indie rock. Cop Kicker/The Death of Speedy Ortiz are second-generation cassette dubs of a bedroom-recorded lo-fi solo project—think early Sebadoh/Sentridoh, Helium’s pre-Pirate Prude singles, or a guitar-overdosed version of Liz Phair’s Girly Sound demos. The inviting hooks of the highlights (“Speedy Ortiz,” “Thank You,” “Frankenweenie,” “Teething,” and particularly the key change in “Cutco”) deliver Dupuis’s sarcastic collisions of lust and violence. The combination reminds me of Mary Timony and Liz Phair’s glory days as the indie rock queens of beckoning with one hand and shoving away with the other. There’s filler here, just like on the original models back in 1992, but I’ve listened to “Cutco” more than enough times to make up for a few aimless companions. Plus, to repeat the obvious, it’s free.

The release dates says five months, but the sonics insist five years in ’90s indie rock time had passed before “Taylor Swift” b/w “Swim Fan” came out this March. With a full band and studio production in tow, the single recalls mid-to-late ’90s indie rock that unabashedly pushed hard for college radio play with big guitars, bigger melodies, and indie-rock referentialism. A specific comparison (that admittedly might be lost on 2012 listeners) is the Scottish group Urusei Yatsura, whose “Slain by Elf” from the Slain by Yatsura LP mined a similar merger of indie-rock culture with alt-rock production. (And yes, there is a difference between indie rock and alt-rock, goddamn it.) The chorus of “Taylor Swift” swaggers with newfound confidence and broader lyrical appeal (“Cuz now I got a boy in a hardcore band / I got a boy gets it on to Can / Then there's the boy sings those sad songs I like / I got too many boyfriends to see you tonight”) but I prefer the less-on-the nose sentiment of “Swim Fan,” which revisits the murkier lust of the earlier recordings. Both choruses have floated around my brain for weeks, especially the smeared syllable-play of “Hello magneto metal coney / You got bronze you found me out” in “Swim Fan.”

Speedy Ortiz isn’t alone in reviving ’90s indie and alt-rock, as a slew of recent bands—Yuck, The Joy Formidable, Cymbals Eat Guitars, etc.—has demonstrated a similarly genuine appreciation for the era, but what gets me about these releases is the specificity. There’s a key difference between sounding eerily like Where You Been and evoking memories of flipping through paper mail order catalogs (RIP Parasol Mail Order) and massive CD bins hoping to finally discover what some heralded but unfamiliar band actually sounded like, and Speedy Ortiz could pass for a great find in the latter scenario.

If you’re wondering how Speedy Ortiz will follow up “Taylor Swift” b/w “Swim Fan,” you don’t have to wait long. Exploding in Sound Records will issue the Sports EP on 10” vinyl in June, with the knotty guitar work and clean vocal hooks of “Silver Spring” out there as a teaser. (For a final ’90s indie-rock throwback, the EP’s title reminded me that Versus’s The Stars Are Insane had a working title of Meat, Sports and Rock.)

Following the recent passing of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch, I found myself tracking down countless memorials for MCA. They varied from superb (Passion of the Weiss, Grantland, this MetaFilter post) to bizarrely off-point (Washington Times) to economic and incisive (a friend’s “He was ill for a very long time”), but the general narrative of Yauch’s life was consistent: he transitioned from wild-and-crazy youth to socially conscious adult without losing his fan base, which was no minor achievement.

Yet I’m not here to relive and relay years of listening experience, because in comparison to the cited retrospectives, I simply didn’t log the hours. I was a dabbler, plain and simple. I remember being energized by their live-instruments performance of “Sabotage” at the 1994 MTV Music Video Awards, but if there’s stereotypical indication of my default setting as a guitar rockist, that’s it. When they had a video on MTV, I’d gladly watch it, when my friends put on one of their albums in high school, I enjoyed it (at least until I heard “Intergalactic” for the eight-millionth time in the summer of ’98), when they made a heads-only guest appearance on Futurama, I laughed. But to qualify myself as a true-blood fan—one of the people who poured over issues of Grand Royal magazine—would be disingenuous.

Instead, I’m here because those memorials prodded my lingering curiosity over the group’s full discography—something that’s been festering for years—over the edge. In addition to my excitement to spend time with Paul’s Boutique, I have plenty of questions. What kept me from digging deeper earlier? Did they really start out as a hardcore band? Does License to Ill hold any appeal for a 31-year-old dad? Will I recognize the countless samples? Could I reflexively recite “Intergalactic”? Are their late-career records under-appreciated?

To find out, I’ll cover their eight full-length releases and the key singles/EPs from their thirty-year run.

Polly Wog Stew EP, Rat Cage, 1982

Highlights: “Egg Raid on Mojo”

Lowlights: The possibility of hearing it twice

Yes, the Beastie Boys began as a hardcore band. It’s fun to imagine other ’80s hip-hop notables arriving with equally bizarre musical origin stories: Eric B. and Rakim starting out as a jazz-fusion duo; Kool Keith housing things as a synth-pop troubadour; Salt-N-Pepa authoring chipper Go-Go’s-esque power pop; Biz Markie bringing the laughs with “Weird Al” Yankovic-style parodies. But whereas the transition from Point A to Point B for those hypothetical scenarios would mimic the slipshod plotting of a direct-to-video action flick, there’s a logical arc between the Beasties’ earliest days as NYC hardcore punks and their coming of age (sort of) as beer-swilling MCs on License to Ill.

The seeds of the Beastie Boys were planted in 1981 with Michael Diamond’s involvement in The Young Aborigines, a four-piece described as “experimental” and supposedly influenced by Siouxsie & the Banshees and Joy Division. (Either these were the hippest fourteen-year-olds in existence, prior to Spencer Tweedy of course, or both points are complete bullshit. Not knowing how to write or perform songs does not mean you’re experimental; wandering through a murky outro does not mean you’re post-punk.) Mercifully for my ears, there’s no official document of those songs, although rehearsal tapes, a live recording, and a failed studio session exist. The group’s default lineup was Diamond on drums, Kate Schellenbach on percussion, John Berry on guitar, and Jeremy Shatan on bass, but the members switched instruments for one song called “Asshole,” with Diamond singing and Schellenbach drumming. When Shatan left NYC for the summer of 1981, the three other members indulged their hardcore leanings and that alternate line-up as the Beastie Boys. Adam Yauch replaced the hardcore-averse Shatan on bass and the earliest incarnation of the Beastie Boys—the one documented on Polly Wog Stew—was solidified.

The Beastie Boys played their first show on August 5, 1981, Adam Yauch’s seventeenth birthday. Michael Diamond and Kate Schellenbach were still fifteen. Unlike later gigs at name venues like Max’s Kansas City, Irving Plaza, and CBGB’s, this show occurred at John Berry’s house, presumably his parents’ house. I stress the members’ ages and the show’s location for a reason: Polly Wog Stew is the music of teenagers.

A spin of Polly Wog Stew whopping eleven-minute runtime reveals the following subjects: jumping turnstiles, fondness for Batman and Crass, not fighting on Friday night, smoking pot vs. being straight-edge, hating farms, throwing eggs. It’s delivered with at top speed (excluding the two drifting, faux-experimental passages in “Jimi” and “Ode to…”) with Diamond’s snotty yelp leading the way. Praising a group’s “youthful energy” is a gentle way to imply that the musicianship is sloppy, and on that tip, the Beastie Boys had a lot of youthful energy. “Egg Raid on Mojo” is the highlight, but unless you’re a Beastie Boys super-fan or a historian of early ’80s NYC hardcore, one spin of Polly Wog Stew will be more than enough.

Then again, I don’t currently qualify as either of those things. I prefer post-punk to punk, post-hardcore to hardcore. Both punk and hardcore can be viewed as ends to themselves or gateways to something new. You can master the tenets of punk (thereby leveling up to “punk as fuck”), you can play harder and faster hardcore, but once you perfect the formula of either, you’re steadfastly avoiding change as the aforementioned “youthful energy” runs out and you turn a decrepit 22. On the other side, you can recognize the need to evolve, not merely refine, and incorporate elements outside of the defined parameters of the genre. In the latter scenario, Ian MacKaye forms Embrace and then Fugazi, J. Robbins begins Jawbox, and Drive Like Jehu issues Yank Crime. No, I’m not biased at all to one side of the ledger.

The gradual process for those artists of going from point A to point B, Minor Threat to Fugazi, often involves the following steps: slow down, find new and possibly better collaborators, identify what’s important to your music to begin with (social/political awareness), grow up as individuals and as writers (no more “Guilty of Being White”), expand your influences (reggae). Applying that to the Beastie Boys, they slowed down enough that you could understand what Michael Diamond was saying, brought Adam Horowitz on board in 1983 and left Schellenbach behind in 1984, extracted the prankster appeal of “Egg Raid on Mojo,” matured got laid, and jumped on the growing hip-hop trend. Abandoning hardcore made too much sense from both commercial and creative perspectives, but as Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and especially the Aglio e Olio EP prove, they didn’t leave it completely behind.

The video evidence of the Beasties’ hardcore days—a 1984 cable access spot with Adam Horowitz on guitar—is more enjoyable than the EP. There’s also an eighteen-minute program on The Young Aborigines / The Beastie Boys with interviews from John Berry and Jeremy Shatan. The latter includes snippets of some YA music, so proceed with caution.

Cooky Puss EP, Rat Cage, 1983

Highlights: “Cooky Puss”

Lowlights: “Beastie Revolution”

“Cooky Puss” was the Beastie Boys’ first hip-hop song, or, less generously, first hip-hop skit. Their last release as a four-piece, “Cooky Puss” lays prank calls to Carvel Ice Cream over turntable scratches, Steve Martin samples, and live bass and drums. Its success in NYC dance clubs encouraged the Beastie Boys to continue in this direction and a settlement over British Airways’ illegal use (imagine that) of “Beastie Revolution” funded the time and space to improve their act.

Although “Cooky Puss” remains a semi-amusing lark, the EP longs for more ballast. After the title track, there’s “Bonus Batter,” an instrumental extension of “Cooky Puss,” “Beastie Revolution,” an initially amusing but ultimately interminable piss-take on reggae, and a censored version of “Cooky Puss.” It was later bundled with Polly Wog Stew as Some Old Bullshit, a remarkably apt title.

Most importantly, it’s time to say adios to Kate Schellenbach. The sample-oriented Cooky Puss wrote her departure on the wall, and after going away for a weekend in 1984, she returned to find her bandmates wearing matching track suits and chilling with new cohort Rick Rubin. In essence, the female drummer was replaced by a giant inflatable penis. To their credit, the Beastie Boys did sign Luscious Jackson (the ’90s alt-rock group containing Schellenbach and “Holy Snappers” name-drop Jill Cuniff) to their Grand Royal imprint in 1992.

Rock Hard EP, Def Jam, 1985

Highlights: Ad-Rock's verse in “Beastie Groove”

Low Points: "Party's Getting Rough"

Cooky Puss pushed the Beastie Boys most of the way toward Def Jam hip-hop, but Rock Hard is the first full embrace. Three MCs bobbing and weaving through verses, exhibiting no small debt to fellow Rubinites Run-D.M.C.? Check. Up-front drum machine beats? Check. Sampled guitar riffs? Check. Turntable scratching? Check. The pieces are in place, but the execution needs some practice.

The title track’s use of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” caused the initial release to be recalled and prevented a reissue for 22 years, when it was finally repressed in Europe. Mike D. said that “AC/DC could not get with the sample concept” but there’s nothing subtle or ingenious about the use of that song’s instantly recognizable guitar riff here. First, it’s not part of the guitar riff, it’s the entire verse. Second, aside from the presence of three guys rapping over it, there’s no contrasting element. Replacing the drums with rudimentary 808 beats makes little difference. Licensed to Ill isn’t particularly coy about its samples; opening track “Rhymin & Stealin” is appropriately titled, but at least there are three sources on that song. “Rock Hard” is that riff, over and over again.

I realize that harping on a 1985 hip-hop record’s production values as being limited is an obvious, tired argument, but keep “Rock Hard” in mind as a starting place. It establishes the path of least resistance (or perhaps effort) to Licensed to Ill’s “loud guitars and drum machines” success and later the actual recontextualization of samples on Paul’s Boutique. But as-is in 2012, “Rock Hard” sounds like a mash-up, something that should be tiresome to anyone who read a music blog from 2000-2005.

As for the rapping on “Rock Hard,” it’s also a work in progress, to put it gently. If not for MCA’s gruffer delivery, it would be difficult to tell the three MCs apart. Lyrically the theme is “We’re here and we’re great,” which occasionally stumbles onto a worthwhile nugget like “Like claps of thunder from the cumulus clouds” but mostly offers eye-rollers like “Sometimes I write rhythms rather write rhymes / He writes his and I write mine” when put in print.

The two other real tracks on the EP further their pre-Licensed to Ill development. “Party’s Getting Rough” is looser, to say the least: a six-minute hip-hop jam ambling between “[Insert Name] has got the groove!” shout-outs, a mid-song skit about the Beastie Boys’ taking over the song’s production (get this, they make the drums louder), and an extended, scratch-heavy outro. Much like “Beastie Revolution,” it’s initially appealing but quickly wears thin. “Beastie Groove” gives each MC some breathing room, with MCA taking the lead, Ad-Rock showing off with a speedy passage, and Mike D. pulling up the rear, literally and figuratively. Ad-Rock’s verse prefaces the sexed-up focus of Licensed to Ill with “Cause I'm a man who needs no introduction / Got a big tool of reproduction.” Like everything else on Rock Hard, it’s a dry run.

As per mid-’80s regulations, an instrumental mix of “Beastie Groove” closes out the EP, offering you a chance to better Mike D.’s insightful “Take that if you think you can / Meet the floor and that to this here rap” couplet.

A better pre-Licensed to Ill track appears on the soundtrack to the 1985 Def Jam feature film Krush Groove. “She’s On It” draws a much clearer blueprint for the album: less obviously canned guitar riffs, more obvious sexual innuendo, and sparse verses. In addition to roughly 200 white girls running around in bikinis, the video shows Rick Rubin “producing” the Boys' Looney Tunes hijinks and underscores just how damned young Ad-Rock was in 1985.

The fifth annual Record Store Day is almost upon us, and I await it with equal parts excitement and disdain. I’m thrilled that people will descend upon my favorite shopping establishments in droves. I’m happy that some artists and labels have come up with interesting exclusives for the day. I’m particularly excited for the 20% off vinyl discount at Newbury Comics. But for all of the positives, RSD is hardly above reproach. Many of the exclusives are downright lazy, slapping a new sleeve on old songs and writing “limited edition” in all caps on the front. While some of the exclusives are legitimately hard to find (in part because eBay resellers get up earlier than you do), most are still floating around in May. Unfortunately, without any day-of discounts, you’ll have to choke down an inflated price tag for a “limited” run of vinyl that would more than suffice for the majority of indie rock bands. Waiting would, however, allow you some much-needed elbow room for browsing, which is in short supply during the zoo of Record Store Day.

As much as I hate helping out other shoppers on Record Store Day—it’s just not the same experience if you don’t growl “I saw it first” at a timid fifteen-year-old before he keys your car in retribution—I have sifted through the towering list of exclusives to provide you this handy guide.

Buy: Mclusky’s Do Dallas LP: If I had a stitch of honor, I’d boycott this release in lieu of singer Andy Falkous’s comment on Twitter that Too Pure hadn’t even mentioned the tenth-anniversary vinyl reissue of Mclusky’s 2002 opus to him, let alone consulted him for a jaded retrospective in the liner notes. An intern at Too Pure likely noticed that the original pressing, out of print for years, goes for $100 on eBay, and nudged their superiors. But I don’t have the moral fiber necessary to make a stand. I missed the boat on Do Dallas when it came out and have spent the past few years shouting along to “To Hell with Good Intentions” and “Day of the Deadringers” to make up for it.

Don’t Buy: The Clash’s London Calling 2012 7”: If you’re searching for the least essential single to purchase on Record Store Day, consider poking Joe Strummer’s corpse with a sharp stick until a cavity opens up to reveal a stack of this wholly unnecessary retread. Boasting a digital remastering job from Mick Jones—who assures me that it will sound better than ever on your analog turntable—on the a-side and an instrumental version on the flip, London Calling 2012 is an unrepentant cash-grab. It may be a test from Epic to see if Clash fans will actually look at what they’re purchasing, so let’s hope literacy triumphs over a misplaced Summer Olympics tie-in.

Buy: St. Vincent’s “Krokodil” b/w “Grot” 7” Wait a second—new songs? On Record Store Day? Annie Clark, you crazy for this one.

Don’t Buy: Jimmy Fallon’s “Tebowie” b/w “Reading Rainbow”: Without the presence of The Lonely Island or Flight of the Conchords, the void of joke-rock novelty vinyl has to be filled by late-night host Jimmy Fallon’s rock star impersonations. Nothing against Fallon’s mimicry of David Bowie or Jim Morrison, but would you want to hear a parody of “Ziggy Stardust” about the Tim Tebow / Peyton Manning saga a year from now? What about two months from now? If you need it to complete your late-night host vinyl collection (joining Conan O’Brien’s 7” and LP), fine, but you’re contractually obligated to buy Craig Ferguson’s forthcoming Teenage Fanclub tribute album.

Buy: Various Artists’ Bring Beer compilation LP: Gerard Cosloy of 12XU is the rare record label owner who recognizes the day’s deficiencies: “While the rest of the nation celebrates Record Store Day 2012 by fighting over White Denim picture discs and Lars Ulrich spoken word albums, let’s spare a thought for the stores that are largely shut out of the party…and in one prominent case, has hosted far superior parties several times a week. Specifically, Austin’s Trailer Space, where proprietor Spot Long hosts countless free, all-ages shows in a decidedly R-rated environment.” While I would gladly purchase a Joel R. L. Phelps flexi disc box set from 12XU on RSD, Bring Beer is a welcome alternative, a compilation of 12XU artists and Austin bands. Here’s the kicker: the proceeds from Bring Beer actually go to Trailer Space, an independent store that isn’t large enough (Reckless, Amoeba, Newbury Comics) to qualify for many of the exclusives I’ve mentioned. If you don’t find Bring Beer at your local store, you can order it from 12XU along with a warehouse find copy of Phelps’s superlative Blackbird.

Don’t Buy: Pelican’s Australasia: The description for this release says “available [on vinyl] for the first time on Hydra Head since the album‘s 2003 release,” which isn’t remotely true. Not only did Hydra Head milk Australasia for four different pressings in 2004, Interloper followed it up with three more in 2006 and 2008 and Viva Hate included it in their Wooden Box collection in 2010. Play & Record highlighted one of those Interloper pressings in a recent post, and I’d rather have that one than this straight reissue (if I didn’t already own a Hydra Head original). Unless you’ve somehow managed not to score a copy of the record since it came out, pass on completing the set. Given the pressing history of Australasia, you need to stop the bleeding before Hydra Head drains your savings account.

Buy Unrest’s Perfect Teeth 7” box set: Included on the list of Record Store Day exclusives despite being available for pre-order from TeenBeat, this reissue of Unrest’s 1993 classic is worth picking up in either avenue. Finding common ground between the energetic pop of “Cath Carroll” and “Make Out Club” and the down-tempo meditations of “Breather XOXO” and “Angel I’ll Walk You Home,” Perfect Teeth is a precise achievement. This reissue is equally impressive: six seven-inch singles (five on colored vinyl) and a 24-page booklet in an Independent Project Press box. Sadly, unlike the similarly minded Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde singles box set, Perfect Teeth won’t say, “Oh, shit!” when you open it.

Don’t Buy: Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium: The greatest joke of them all? “On April 14, 2012, the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and to commemorate this historic event, this classic deluxe box set of the band’s first number one album will be specially priced for Record Store Day.” Let me translate that press-gasm: “Record stores are tired of having this behemoth of a box set sit on their shelves, so we’ve allowed them to mark it down enough that someone might actually buy it, even though it’s not Blood Sugar Sex Magic or Californication. But it’s not just a regular markdown, it’s for Record Store Day. Please buy it. Please?” They should have just quoted Rolling Stone’s review of Stadium Arcadium, which anointed it the group’s most ambitious album (and later the second-best album of 2006 behind Bob Dylan, if you can believe it): “The guy [Kiedis] who once yelped, ‘I want to party on your pussy!’ whisper-sings a gentler, though not unrelated, proposition: ‘All I want is for you to be happy/And take this moment to make you my family.’” Why yes, Anthony, it truly does sound like you’ve maintained your edge 23 years into your career. Let me waste shelf space on that sentiment.

Buy: Mastodon’s split singles with The Flaming Lips and Feist: The reward of Mastodon covering the former’s “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and the latter’s “Commotion” (and Feist returning the favor on Mastodon’s “Black Tongue”) will not be worth the $16 to $20 you’ll have to pony up, but think about the long-term investment. Next year Mastodon has split singles with Sharon Van Etten and Mercury Rev. The year after it’s a split LP with Godspeed You Black Emperor. The year after it’s a cassingle box set with Fine Young Cannibals. 2016 they forgo the one-off approach and use Record Store Day to welcome Nicky Minaj and Will Oldham to the group full-time.

Don’t Buy: Genesis’s Spot the Pigeon LP: In case you think every RSD exclusive is aimed at modern rock enthusiasts dabbling in the vinyl format (the people you’ll hear gasp “Whoa check out this copy of Dark Side of the Moon”) or Stereogum-reading hipsters aching for Animal Collective exclusives, every year you’ll find a few items like this reissue of an obscure 1977 Genesis EP aimed at the baby boomers who kept their vinyl collection instead of donating it to Goodwill or gifting it to their kids. Credit where credit’s due: Spot the Pigeon is legitimately hard to find, so this reissue is a greater service to fans than an audiophile pressing of Invisible Touch would be. The last release to feature guitarist Steve Hackett, Spot the Pigeon offers three Wind & Wuthering outtakes, including Hackett’s dexterous “Inside and Out.” None of that makes Spot the Pigeon a crime like London Calling 2012, but here’s why you don’t buy it: Unless you’re a prog-rock obsessive, you’re better off sifting through dollar bins for Genesis’s ’70s output, which you can acquire in total for less than the price of this reissue, than grabbing a copy of this away from someone’s dad. What else does he have to look forward to? Grandkids?

Buy: Cursive’s Burst and Bloom LP: Spinning Cursive’s newest LP, I Am Gemini, made me yearn for their solid run of Domestica/Burst and Bloom/The Ugly Organ. Saddle Creek must have heard my thoughts, since they’ve repressed this 2001 EP on colored vinyl. Marking the debut of cellist Gretta Cohn and the emergence of Tim Kasher’s meta-awareness (which spiraled into self-parody after The Ugly Organ), Burst and Bloom holds up as well-constructed turn-of-the-millennium indie rock / emo, especially post-intro “Sink to the Beat” and “Tall Tales, Telltales.”

Don’t Buy: Minus the Bear’s “Your Private Sky” b/w “South Side Life”: Given the recent reissues of Minus the Bear’s first two releases (This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic EP and Highly Refined Pirates LP), your money would be better spent remembering those salad days, not collecting the scraps from the group’s 2010 nadir Omni. These songs were initially released as iTunes bonus tracks, and “Your Private Sky” could have made Omni based on quality, but again, that album stinks.

Buy: Music not associated with Record Store Day: Lost in this deluge of largely inessential exclusives are albums you should buy because you will enjoy them, not because you feel a completist duty to a favorite artist, suspect you can fetch three times the asking price on eBay, or want to cause personal pain to the shopper behind you. Go into your favorite store, ignore the swarms surrounding the above releases, and flip through the racks for records you actually want. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed Sharon Van Etten’s Tramp, The Twilight Sad’s No One Can Ever Know, or The Life and Times’ No One Loves You Like I Do this year but haven’t grabbed them yet. Maybe you just read Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life and have some SST and Dischord classics on your list. Who knows, you’ll recognize an album a friend recommended you a few years back and buy it on a whim. These exclusives get people into record stores on April 21, but stopping with them would be a huge mistake.

In response to a growing amount of review requests, it’s time to lay some groundwork for submissions. Just imagine this post is a well-attended press conference.

What will you cover? I will write about albums, singles, and concerts. I would prefer not to write about demos.

How will it be covered? Albums will either get a full review or be bundled in a bi-weekly edition of my new series Tracking Sounds Alone. Singles will also be covered in Tracking Sounds Alone. Concerts will get full reviews, unless I only catch one band on the bill, in which case they’ll be in Tracking Sounds Alone.

Wait, what’s Tracking Sounds Alone? A Castor fan site? Tracking Sounds Alone is a new bi-weekly series picking up where Quick Takes left off. My tendency for super-high word counts runs counter to consistent posting, so this route should allow me to cover more music, more regularly. It will cover both submitted music and things I ran across on my own that don’t necessitate a graduate thesis to explain.

What music do you like? Check out the site’s about page for a woefully short list of albums I wholeheartedly endorse. Consult my various year-end lists for recent favorites. Scan the site index for a broader scope.

I would like to submit music for review. What should I do? Send an e-mail to sebastian@thisdomainname.com and include the following: 1. An easy-to-download link to whatever you want me to review; 2. A clear description of who you are, where you’re from, what it is, when it came out, and who released it.

What about a physical copy? If you want to send me vinyl, I won’t argue with you. (Compact discs, however, will just end up in my basement.) Send an e-mail and I’ll give you my mailing address. But I fully understand that digital promos make far more fiscal sense.

I would like to invite you to a concert. What should I do? If you would like me to attend / review a Boston-area concert, let me know when it is, who else is playing, and whether you’ll put me on the guest list. (It’s a tedious but essential point of clarification.) I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to attend—fatherly duties and weekly rec hockey games take precedence—but if I like what I’ve heard from your recorded material, I will try to attend.

Anything else? I’ll avoid grandstanding about the value of constructive criticism over enthusiastic cheerleading, thanks.

Back in high school I absentmindedly plotted out the Slint / Rodan / Tortoise family tree in the margins of my notebooks. Slint was always the epicenter, but Rodan and Tortoise had an ever-growing number of branches. I practiced this history in isolation, since my geographical location (near Poughkeepsie, NY) might as well have been the moon in comparison to Louisville and Chicago. Thanks to my age and location, I hadn’t actually seen any of these bands yet, if they even still existed by that point. But my obsession willfully ignored this outsider status. Even if Poughkeepsie didn’t have a burgeoning scene, I could memorize the bands, labels, venues, and people of Louisville, Chicago, Champaign, D.C., and Chapel Hill.

Unlike the hard-and-fast plots in my notebooks, scenes don’t linger in stasis. This point was made clear my first night in town upon moving to Champaign for college when I attended Braid’s (then) last show. A week later, I missed C-Clamp’s last show in town, hearing about it a few weeks later. Castor was gone, Hum was effectively gone, Honcho Overload and Love Cup were long gone. The scene wasn’t dead—my first English class was taught by Matt Mitchell, the guitarist for Rectangle (a band I’d later see almost a dozen times and help with the artwork for their sophomore release)—but there was no doubt it had changed. I knew this fact going in, but I learned it fresh again and again as new bands formed, old bands broke up, venues opened and closed, labels went dormant, record stores closed, and, most routinely, people moved away. The names change, but the pattern remains.

Michael T. Fournier’s debut novel, Hidden Wheel (named after a Rites of Spring song), runs on this pattern. An art scene pops up in the university town of Freedom Springs, fueled by a few genuine talents, a driven promoter, some historical ties, and an underpinning of second-tier bands, sketchy venues, and outside fascination. The specifics merit a family tree of their own: former chess prodigy (and dominatrix) Rhonda Barrett creates enormous autobiographical canvases, which are then promoted by Ben Wilfork, a former Chicago scene kid who opens an art gallery / performance space. In turn, bands like Stonecipher, a collaboration between an ex-Dead Trend bassist (more on them later) and quickly improving drummer Bernie Reese, and artists like Max Caughin, who paints on discarded CD cases, gain interest. This scene is documented via interviews, journals, tour diaries, press clippings, and show flyers in an academic overview some 300 years later (!), with footnotes explaining what these archaic physical and digital formats were.

That’s admittedly a ton to process at first, like being introduced to the Rodan family tree with an Everlasting the Way single and knowing you need to hear everything else, too, but it’s important to get to the details. As you might expect from someone who taught punk rock history at Tufts, Fournier drops in enough wry references to connect Freedom Springs mythology to the larger world. To wit: Dead Trend was Freedom Spring’s founding hardcore group who went through constant line-up changes (six bassists, three drummers), evolved into a “Buddhist rap-metal” group, and went back to the basics for their reunion tour. The book includes a few flyers for their shows, including a Photoshopped billing with Operation Ivy that recalls a similar move in Jud Jud’s liner notes. Dead Trend is fictional—mostly—but it’s hard not to read Bad Brains and Black Flag into their history. Nautically obsessed math-rock group Coxswain is a proxy for June of 44, with mock lyrics like “Stem and stern! Cape of Hope! Humble spice! Periscope!” jabbing at “Sharks and Sailors.” Venues like Chicago’s Lounge Ax and Cambridge’s Middle East are worked into the story. Even recent Boston band Ketman gets a quick nod.

Fournier also excels at depicting the daily grind of scene life. Living in communal houses, working shit jobs, eating at ill-maintained burrito huts, having brief romantic relationships with other members of the scene, conversing about the importance of vinyl, scraping together enough money to record an album that people are just going to steal off the internet anyway—the names and places in Hidden Wheel may be fictional, but those points will be familiar to anyone who’s attended a show in the basement of a punk rock house.

Hidden Wheel could have simply been a de facto memoir, smudging the details on Fournier’s time at Three Wadsworth in Allston via Bernie Reese’s journals, but two things keep it closer to fiction. First, Rhonda Barrett’s artistic output is the center of this scene, not Stonecipher or Coxswain, and the drive of the narrative is seeing how the events of her life brought her to create her autobiographical canvases and why future scholars would still be interested. Second, those footnotes from the future add a perspective beyond merely commenting on the changes in content delivery. The idea of people still caring enough about this scene 300 years after the fact to document it (noting that the Library of Congress has a copy of the Stonecipher LP in its archives) is a slick validation of this sub-culture.

One intriguing wrinkle: ostensibly fictional band Dead Trend isn’t that fictional after all. Fournier plays drums in the group, who’ve posted some acoustic demos of their vintage ’80s hardcore songs on Bandcamp and have an official 7” coming out soon. Less surprising: they hate Reagan, love the Minutemen, and, in true ’80s hardcore fashion, will likely fit eight songs on that single. Whether they stick around long enough for a Buddhist rap-metal phase is up for debate, but the real-life existence of Dead Trend makes Hidden Wheel an open dialogue on scenes like Freedom Springs. It’s part promotional gimmick for the novel and part DIY statement, recognizing that you can always switch from outsider to insider.

Hidden Wheel is a compelling complement to Michael T. Fournier’s enthusiastic and informative 33 1/3 on the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime. Whereas Double Nickels is a factual account of one band, one record, one town, Hidden Wheel generalizes the appeal and histories of scenes like Louisville and D.C., recognizing the familiar pattern driving those DIY spaces and local record labels and recreating it as a narrative. Fournier recognizes that scenes are forged by the energy of the people involved and remembered by the artistic tomes they leave behind, and nails both perspectives. It's managed to make me excited about albums both real and fake, which is no small achievement.

Keep an eye on Fournier’s Tumblr for upcoming Hidden Wheel readings and Dead Trend live shows. The latter will be at O’Brien’s in Allston on April 28th; don’t miss the chance to be a part of semi-fictional history.

I’m excited to report that I’ll be over at One Week // One Band until Friday writing about the songs of Silkworm. By all means head over there! In between my posts, check out their archives, to which many writers I respect and enjoy have contributed. Many thanks to Hendrik for this opportunity.

If you’re coming from One Band // One Week and wondering “Who’s this guy writing about Silkworm? Is he ever going to stop? Does he write about any other bands?” here’s a quick sampling of the better work I’ve done in recent years.

The Ten: J. Robbins: A run-through of ten of my favorite compositions he’s written as the frontman of Jawbox, Burning Airlines, Channels, and now Office of Future Plans.

The Ten: Girls Against Boys: A sampler platter for their double-bass assault.

Discographied: Sonic Youth: Catching up with the storied noise-rockers’ canon proves insightful and exhausting. Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four.

Discographied: Mogwai: One of the most prominent post-rock bands (who insist they’re not a post-rock band) offers fifteen years of notable releases and occasionally essential extras to track down.

Covering the Smiths: I convince my best friend, a Smiths fanatic, to endure eighteen covers of “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” from artists like Muse, Hootie & the Blowfish, Third Eye Blind. Yes, we’re still on speaking terms.

If you’re somehow still craving more, I recommend clicking through my year-end lists in the masthead and checking out the nowhere-near-comprehensive New Artillery Index. Thanks for reading!

First things first—go see my top twenty-five albums for 2011 here, then come back and comment on this post to tell me how wrong I am about my choices.

Now that the essential business is out of the way, allow me to go broad. I have a love/hate relationship with year-end lists. I love reading them. I love making them. I love debating them. But I hate the increasingly impossible logistics involved in them. I hate that I’m expected to have figured out my list by December 10th. I hate floundering when I see a trusted source recommend an album I haven’t yet heard on December 15th. I hate knowing that I didn’t spend enough time with an album everyone else loves. I hate the fact that so much stock is put into a sampling (top 25) of a sampling (top 30 or 40 candidates) of a sampling (all of the albums I heard this year) of an ocean (all of the albums released this year). I hate skirting the issue between “best,” “favorite,” “top,” and whatever other markers of greatness are used. But I love making my yearly list too much to stop.

This year I approached it differently. Instead of taking stock of my favorites on December 1st and creating my list, I took stock of as much as I possibly could. Virtually every 2011 release I had in iTunes. (This choice excluded a huge chunk of material I'm simply too lazy to port into iTunes.) Notable or intriguing albums that appeared on other year-end lists. During December I listened to 150 albums from start to finish, proving that there’s no obsessive-compulsive task I won’t stupidly tackle. True to form, I mostly listened to these albums in alphabetical order. I made ridiculous charts, shown above, to track which records I listened to when, whether they were candidates for the final list, and my favorite track. All normal stuff.

I have done insane, ridiculous projects before, but this one might take the cake. Considering that I barely did any listening during a four-day vacation early in the month, I plowed through an average of six albums a day. Whatever I was doing—driving, working, washing dishes, reading, wrapping presents, painting—had an arbitrary soundtrack. (The strangest pairing? Painting the nursery to Tyler, the Creator’s Goblin.) I even found time to revisit favorite albums to let them sink in.

The biggest conclusion? It helped, adding three albums to my list, but it wasn’t enough. I could listen to another 100 worthy records and still have that sinking feeling of missing out on great music. I wasn’t dismayed by this conclusion, however, since it confirmed my suspicion that there’s no perfect list, even/especially my own. There are hundreds of excellent albums released every year and variables like taste, exposure, and audience dictate how various publications/writers sift those albums into their own lists. There’s plenty of cross-over between my list and Pitchfork’s, for example, but significant departures as well. If nothing else, I now feel capable of determining which albums would be appropriate for particular publications' lists. It's like I'm an actual music critic!

My initial intent was to write fifty-word blurbs for each of the 150 albums (I somehow completed 120+ of these), but midway into the project I realized that my comments on individual albums were less interesting than the connections between releases. I may complete/post those blurbs a few weeks from now, but the talking points below are of greater importance. I’ve also included a supplemental list of honorable mentions. After all, there’s no use in listening to 150 albums in a month if it doesn’t produce heaps of self-indulgent writing!

Catching Up Is Hard to Do

There’s an unrecognizable moment when the arrival of old favorite’s newest release switches from “I’ll listen to this album immediately and half-heartedly enjoy it” to “I’ll download this album and never put it on.” My iTunes is littered with previously unplayed records from past notables—Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Centro-matic, Glossary, Twilight Singers, etc.; releases that fans of those artists recommended wholeheartedly, recommendations I then ignored. When I finally heard these albums, I had three divergent responses. In the case of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, I recognized that Wolfroy Goes to Town was very good at what it does—stripped-down folk—but my appetite for that style went away years ago and has not returned. In the case of Twilight Singers, I struggled to ascertain why Greg Dulli’s songs no longer appeal to me. Ten years ago I couldn’t have imagined that a new Dulli album would fester on my hard drive for months. Is Dynamite Steps the latest in a string of fandom-testing releases (Amber Headlights, She Loves Me, Powder Burns, The Gutter Twins), has the appeal of Dulli's sex-driven noir worn off, or have I changed more than Dulli has? Perhaps that’s the problem. I'll be a father next year and the thought of bringing my future daughter into a world with Greg Dulli in it gives me the creeps. Finally, in the case of Centro-matic (and to a lesser extent Glossary), I slipped back into my old fondness with ease. A superlative rock song like “All the Takers” certainly helps matters.

I’ve thought about this issue plenty before now, but there’s an obvious reason why I haven’t written about it: I don’t write about albums that I haven’t listened to. I’ve been tempted to make an entry into The Ten for favorite artists/bands who’ve inexplicably fallen off my radar—Do Make Say Think after You, You’re a History in Rust and Dirty Three after She Has No Strings Apollo to name a few—because it gets at the heart of the “Is it you or is it me?” It’s much easier when a band drops precipitously in quality (I’m looking at you, Minus the Bear), but much harder when there’s nothing obviously bad about their new output. Perhaps at some point, you've just had enough.

Subjectivity/Objectivity and Best New Music Achievements

The biggest thing I struggle with when listening to and writing about music is my preference for the subjective over the objective. There’s a sense of relief when a great album appears that I can relate to—hello, Wye Oak’s Civilian—but I’ll be the first to admit that records that don’t apply to my social situation or even strive against relatability often fall outside of my listening pile. Hearing music on a purely objective level isn’t impossible for me, but it’s not something I often choose to do.

No time better than the present to change that habit, since this undertaking required heavy doses of objective listening. The subjective listener in me would quickly changed records when something like Das Racist’s Relax came on, but if I’m going to listen, I might as well make the best out of it. This tact mandates an objective approach: can I understand why this record garnered critical acclaim, even if it doesn’t suite my tastes?

For the most part, the answer was yes. I can understand how Girls’ Father, Son, Holy Ghost’s referential streak mines decades of pop music (although the tired boogie-rock riff of “Die” nearly gave me an aneurysm). I can see how PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake is an important album for that nation in this era, even if it feels like assigned reading to me. I get how Cut Hands’ Afro Noise I reconstitutes African rhythms as percussive noise treatments without sounding like an imperialist incursion. (If the whole album sounded like superior versions of Brian Eno’s ’80s records, e.g., “Rain Washes Over Chaff,” it would have made my list.) I can see how Destroyer’s Kaputt thoroughly modernizes late-period Roxy Music and saxophone-heavy yacht-rock, even if I view the latter point as a war crime.

Here’s one notable exception: I enjoy past M83 releases, but Hurry Up We’re Dreaming confirms my suspicions that they’d be better as a singles band. Citing Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness as a dominant touchstone but not correcting its hubristic indulgence is a huge misstep. The issue here is that Hurry Up needs to be heard subjectively, since Anthony Gonzalez’s fixation on youth kills even an objective view of his own influences. I suspect that sixteen-year-old girls aren’t complaining about excessive filler.

If Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming mandates a particular subjectivity, does the inverse exist? Is it fruitless to even try to hear some albums subjectively? Do certain albums require objectivity? It’s hard to apply that designation across the board, but on a personal level, I’ve started calling albums that only appeal to me on an objective level “achievements.” Ironically, I came up with this idea while listening to St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy, an album that initially appealed to me because of Annie Clark’s bonkers guitar tones, not her role-playing-centric songwriting. There’s still the icy chill of art-rock to Strange Mercy, but “Surgeon” and “Year of the Tiger” prompted me to keep with St. Vincent and now I’d exclude it from the backhanded compliment of “achievement.”

Token Selections

Pitchfork’s recent dismantling of Childish Gambino’s & started with a hilariously accurate line: “If you buy only one hip-hop album this year, I'm guessing it'll be Camp.” (The review may have been directed at Community super-fan Todd VanDerWerff of the AV Club.) It’s not applicable to me in the specific case of Donald Glover’s attempts to mimic Kanye West—which I nevertheless suffered through as part of the 150—but it does touch upon the general sense of tokenism I feel when only one hip-hop album, Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80, makes my list.

Listening to 2011 releases en masse made me appreciate such variety, however selective it may seem. When I looked to add recommend titles to my list, many of them were hip-hop albums. Even I get exhausted of gauzy dream-pop, nu-gaze rituals, and dude-rock abrasions. (You got me—I never tire of dude-rock.) Most deviations from my standard sub-genres were appreciated, especially the joke-rap of The Lonely Island, even if I knew it had no shot at the actual list.

This thread ties into that overall sense of flustered inadequacy: you can only spend quality time with so many albums per year, which means some genres/artists/styles are ignored. There’s also a dog-chasing-its-tail element at work; since I listen to less hip-hop, I’m less comfortable writing about hip-hop, so I’m less likely to listen to it in order to write about it. (Exhale.)

There is a silver lining. Not only was I energized by listening to Kendrick Lamar, Shabazz Palaces, DJ Quik, and A$AP Rocky, meaning that I’ll likely spend more time with Passion of the Weiss’s highlighted titles in 2012, but there’s precedent of my shifting genre preferences. Back in 2005, my fondness for post-rock was apparent, but it hadn’t crossed over to ambient yet. Tim Hecker appeared in 2006. Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, and Nadja appeared in 2007. This year, five artists (Christina Vantzou, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Grouper, Tim Hecker, and list-topper Julianna Barwick) qualify as ambient. Tastes change; a “token inclusion” genre from 2006 now dominates my listening.

Wife-Core

When coming up with the master list of albums to hear, I made a few exceptions for albums already in iTunes—I’d previously reviewed …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and National Skyline’s latest releases and could safely bar them from consideration—but titles added for my wife weren’t given exemptions. There’s enough cross-over in our taste (Wye Oak, The Antlers, and Low would also make her hypothetical list) that I’m rarely forced to endure indie-folk water-torture. I also act as a filter for what she would enjoy—in the case of new spins, Ohbijou’s Metal Meets—so the surprises are few and far between.

Her favorite album of the year, Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, is hardly a surprise. It’s topped big year-end lists. It’s sold 300K+ copies. I saw a performance of “Calgary” (with Colin Stetson!) on The Colbert Report. But had I actually listened to it before? No. While I’m unlikely to join the Paste Magazine white-power movement on Bon Iver, I’ll admit that aside from the Richard Marxist “Beth/Rest,” it’s worthy of obsession… for those who practice yoga weekly. Which my wife does!

Three other wife-core notables proved more difficult spins. Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues is a remarkable replication of the lush harmonies and thoughtful arrangements of ’60s and ’70s folk, but subjectively, it could not appeal to me less. Iron & Wine’s Kiss Each Other Clean is a further abandoning of Sam Beam’s old whisper-folk days, even catching the Great Saxophone Plague of 2011, but hearing him play ’70s funk-rock is not on my to-do list. Death Cab for Cutie’s Codes and Keys technically appealed to both of us, seeing as its twenty-something chick-rock was purportedly influenced by Brian Eno’s Another Green World, but it lacks the big hooks its core audience salivates over and the level of songwriting detail that appealed to me about their early work. The irony of these three albums came when I told my wife I wasn’t a big fan of them—turns out neither was she, having barely listened to any of them.

Stumbling Block

There’s a single characteristic that can prevent me from enjoying an otherwise commendable release: vocal style. I have a gag reflex to certain styles that I’ve worked hard to correct—I came around on Björk just in time for her string of concept-heavy, songwriting-light releases—but sometimes there’s not much I can do beyond writing a formal apology.

Dear Marissa Nadler, I know I would love your newest self-titled album if I could get past your vocal mannerisms. When you dial them down on “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning,” I’m on board, but elsewhere I can only shrug at my own hurdles. Someday I’ll get over it, I swear!

Dear Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs, I am terribly sorry that your penchant for Bob Dylan’s elongated enunciation, e.g., “leeeee-nan” for “leaning,” has prevented me from fully appreciating your band’s newest release, Slave Ambient. Between the Dylan-esque delivery and Tom Petty tempos, you’re inadvertently channeling the six songs my sister played over and over when she was in high school. Nice guitar work, though! P.S., please do not cover Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” It would kill me.

Dear Hayden Thorpe of Wild Beasts, a friend continues to plug Smother and I want nothing more than to agree with him on it, but your highfaluting delivery is denying that opportunity. That delivery’s appropriate for your Talk Talkian music, too, so I’ll admit to being in the wrong. Perhaps this situation was fated by your parents, who could have named you Ralph or Chuck.

Honorable Mentions

Astute readers will notice that I bumped my usual 20 selections up to 25 this year, but I could have easily gone higher. The following ten albums were the last cuts. I've included a favorite track from each, but spared you the wrath of more blurbs.

Battles’ Gloss Drop: “Africastle”
Brief Candles’ Fractured Days: “Small Streets”
DJ Quik’s The Book of David: “Killer Dope”
Dominik Eulberg’s Diorama: “Wenn Es Perlen Regnet”
Ford + Lopatin’s Channel Pressure: “Too Much Midi”
Iceage’s New Brigade: “White Rune”
Idaho’s You Were a Dick: “Flames”
Junius’s Reports from the Threshold of Death: “Transcend the Ghost”
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’ Mirror Traffic: “Stick Figures in Love”
A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s A Winged Victory for the Sullen: “A Symphonie Pathetique”

There you have it! I conquered 2011!

The Dead Texan, a seemingly one-off collaboration between Stars of the Lid’s Adam Wiltzie and visual artist Christina Vantzou, has gained a second life in 2011 with a full slate of connected titles. I’ve previously written about Sleepingdog’s With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields, which sees Wiltzie working with Dead Texan guest vocalist Chantal Acda. More recently Kranky issued A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s self-titled debut, an inspired meeting of pianist Dustin O’Halloran and Wiltzie that features album art from Vantzou. O’Halloran’s 2011 solo album Lumiere includes Wiltzie on guitar, while Vantzou contributed visuals to his live shows and put together a mesmerizing video for “We Move Lightly.” Completing the circle, Vantzou has emerged from behind the projector with her solo debut on Kranky, No. 1, which explores semi-symphonic arrangements with the San Francisco-based Magik*Magik Orchestra.

That No. 1 explores somewhat similar terrain as The Dead Texan is both understandable and a bit of a surprise. Vantzou’s musical involvement in that album was limited to a few vocal spots and mellotron performances, with much greater emphasis placed on the accompanying DVD. But a 2007 collaborative tour between Sparklehorse and The Dead Texan encouraged her musical side (covered nicely in this interview with The Muse in Music), which resulted in the long-gestating No. 1. It would have been entirely plausible for Vantzou’s solo work to lean closer to the slow-drip pop of Chantal Acda’s more straightforward Sleepingdog tracks (or something entirely different), but if anything, No. 1 leans further away from the occasional dream-pop leanings explored on The Dead Texan into glistening, amorphous drone symphonies.

The process behind the album is enlightening. Vantzou spent three years writing and recording a demo version of No. 1 as 45-minute-long piece, which involved layering keyboard tracks, exploring her options in available synth samples, and pulling textures from voice, instruments, and records. She then brought the demo version to Minna Choi of the Magik*Magik Orchestra, who added live instrumentation and altered some arrangements. Finally, Adam Wiltzie helped mix the finished product, which merges Vantzou’s original textures with strings and horns.

This process isn’t hidden in No. 1. The layers are apparent, especially when one side of the equation overtakes the other. The synth textures of “Prelude for Juan” billow to the surface, while the affecting cello vibrato on “Super Interlude Pt. 2” cuts through the mix. More often there’s an uncertain balance between the two, with the smudged synth palettes sounding like distant echoes of the live instruments. It’s a telling difference from Stars of the Lid’s exquisitely mannered performances on And Their Refinement of the Decline and Kyle Bobby Dunn’s precisely refracted drones on Ways of Meaning; No. 1 matches their overall minimalism but not the starkness of its creation.

This difference means that No. 1 relies more on textural dynamics than most records in the Stars of the Lid universe. There are moments, especially in “Super Interlude Pt. 2” and “Your Changes Have Been Submitted,” that use dramatic chord changes to spine-tingling effect (a tried-and-true tactic in Wiltzie and McBride’s oeuvre), but more often emotion comes from hearing something emerge that you didn’t think was there, like the ghostly vocals in “Joggers.” No. 1 is an album of discovery for both composer and listener, a duality that’s often expressed but rarely rings as true or essential as it does here.

If Christina Vantzou’s solo debut and the three other Dead Texan-related records from 2011 aren’t enough to check out, Vantzou will follow up No. 1 with a remix album/DVD. I’m particularly interested to see how Vantzou the visual artist comments on Vantzou the burgeoning musician; videos for “Homemade Mountains” and “Prelude for Juan” gives an early taste of patterns overtaking colors. It will also be interesting to see if Vantzou’s future recordings maintain the same sense of discovery now that she’s more familiar with the processes, but that’s a debate for another year.

Fool, Redeemer (full stream here) is a semi-collaborative effort from two Toronto-based groups, blurring together the disorienting folk of Picastro and the ambient drone metal of Nadja. The LP is split evenly between four shorter Picastro compositions and one typically mammoth Nadja track, but the smudging of their respective aesthetics forces each group outside of its usual comfort zone. Considering that neither Picastro nor Nadja is a group I listen to for comfort, I’ll chalk that up as a positive.

Picastro’s half of Fool, Redeemer picks up the looser structure of Nadja songs. Picastro’s four LPs offer their share of drifting, but here the vocals are pushed to the periphery. Opening instrumental “Skullduggery” doesn’t feature any direct involvement from Nadja, but it’s easy to hear that group’s threatening rumble encroaching on Picastro’s usual terrain. “Fire Perfect” is built on the woozy sawing of Liz Hysen’s violin and Nick Storring’s cello, but Nadja’s Aidan Baker adds texturally appropriate bowed guitar. Hysen’s muffled vocals appear briefly near the end of the song, but they’re ushered out by the song’s concluding pizzicato. The wandering “Darnia” dwells mostly on Brandon Miguel Valdivia’s mbira melody during its seven-minute trek. Picastro’s final track, “A New Soul’s Benediction,” visits more traditional territory for the group with Hysen’s weary vocals and acoustic arpeggios leading the way, but it’s a cover of a Static Films song. The absence of a Hysen dreamscape like “Winter Notes,” “Sharks,” or “Hortur” makes the emphasis on texture here even more apparent.

Nadja’s “Venom” reminds me of a historical reimagining of existing source material, like Alien set in the Industrial Revolution. The set-up’s different, with acoustic guitars (including Hysen’s), audible vocals, and Valdivia’s wavering mbira supplanting the pedal-driven drones that curled into Thaumogenesis and Radiance of Shadows. But these unfamiliar accents are delivered by familiar archetypes; it doesn’t take too long for “Venom” to lurch forward into heavier, louder terrain. And whatever era Alien is set in, you know it won’t end well for the majority of the cast, especially after 23 minutes of Nadja’s drone violence.

Thanks to the smearing of styles and cross-pollination of personnel, Fool, Redeemer holds together well as a single piece. I hesitate recommending it as a starting point for Picastro, however, since the textural, loosely structured compositions here aren’t as gripping as the eerie Metal Cares. Nadja’s catalog offers few typically inviting entry points aside from the 2009 covers record The Sun Always Shines on TV (which features massive, impossibly slow renditions of My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow,” Codeine’s “Pea,” Elliott Smith’s “Needle and the Hay,” and others), so the 23-minute “Venom” is a good sign (warning?) of what you’ll get, initial acoustic guitars excepted. Even if you start with Metal Cares and Thaumogenesis, Fool, Redeemer is worth circling back to hear.