According to iTunes, I have 1556 plays of The Dead Texan’s “The Struggle” logged on my iPhone. I take this statistic with a glacier of salt; that’s 143 hours of “The Struggle,” and I don’t recall going on a six-day bender with the song. But like the other inflated play counts on my iPhone,* there’s a kernel of truth buried in that glacier. “The Struggle” is a perfect hybrid of dream pop and ambient, tailor-made to play right before I drift off to sleep. Even the lyrics, delivered in a hushed duet between Stars of the Lid’s Adam Wiltzie and guest vocalist Chantal Acda, encourage such behavior, reminding that “the sun cannot last.” A thousand plays—now that’s believable.

I’ve gotten considerable mileage out of The Dead Texan’s lone 2004 eponymous album, but I’ve had to, since Adam Wiltzie and Christina Vantzou have not reconvened for a follow-up. Sleepingdog offers a reunion of sorts, especially for those drifting off to sleep with “The Struggle.” Sleepingdog started out as the solo project for Chantal Acda, but Wiltzie became an official member after mixing the 2006 debut Naked in a Clean Bed. For 2008’s Polar Life and now 2011’s With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields, Wiltzie has provided electronic strings and background vocals. It’s always nice to find another branch of the Stars of the Lid family tree, but this one was a particularly exciting discovery.

Does Sleepingdog live up to my unreasonably expectations for “The Struggle, Part II”? Yes and no. There are moments of somnambulist bliss, but that’s not the focus here. The Dead Texan was Wiltzie’s show—no slight intended to Vantzou, whose involvement was primarily seen on the DVD of videos for each song on the album. Likewise, Sleepingdog is Chantal Acda’s show. Her songs form the basis for any further aesthetic explorations. There are stretches of With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields when it’s just her soft voice and minimalist piano. Eight-minute-long opener “The Untitled Ballad of You and Me” takes two minutes before Wiltzie’s presence is felt, allowing Acda’s storytelling to grab hold before chill-raising strings come in and amplify the drama of the song. For the minimal pop of “It Leaves Us Silent” and “He Loved to See the World Through His Camera”, the emphasis is on nearly naked emotion, which occasionally skews sentimental singer/songwriter over ambient-classical-informed lullabies. Reset your expectations to the mesmerizing slow-core crawl of Gregor Samsa's excellent 2008 LP Rest, and you'll approach With Our Heads in the right mindset.

There are a few songs that lean closer to The Dead Texan, specifically the instrumental “Kitten Plays the Harmony Rocket” and the near-instrumental “Horse Lullaby,” the latter of which offers a “Struggle”-esque economy of lyrics. These tracks satiate my appetite for drone classical, but those aren’t the songs I go back to. Instead, I find myself revisiting the tracks like “The Untitled Ballad of You and Me” and “Scary Movie” where Acda and Wiltzie meet halfway.

The realization that Sleepingdog’s With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields excels when Chantal Acda and Adam Wiltzie find equal footing seems obvious in hindsight. I’ve gone back to the Dead Texan’s “The Struggle” so often because it’s a rare blend of both dream pop and ambient. When With Our Hearts splits its focus, emphasizing either Acda’s straightforward musings (with the acoustic guitar duet of "From Where It Was") or Wiltzie’s drones, it loses the power of the merger. When With Our Heads hits those passages of entrancing accord, however, it's compelling enough to keep me awake a while longer.

If you're interested in acquring a copy of Sleepingdog's With Our Hearts, you'll have to import the very limited vinyl pressing from Gizeh Records.

*The current leader is Julianna Barwick’s “Envelop” with 1612. Other impossibly frequent spins include Grouper’s “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping” at 1218, Errors’ “Supertribe” at 1049, Me You Us Them’s “Any Time” at 1028, Mclusky’s “To Hell with Good Intentions” at 937, Marnie Stern’s “Gimme” at 857, and The Forms’ “Bones” at 431.

One of my earliest memories of a home-run band comparison was Parasol Mail Order’s catalog description of Paik’s 1998 debut album Hugo Strange as a cross between Polvo and My Bloody Valentine. Those bands were titans of my late ’90s listening habits—not that I’ve abandoned those predilections—and I watered at the mouth at the promise of a new group combining Polvo’s tunings and My Bloody Valentine’s textures. When I heard Hugo Strange, I immediately understood where the comparison came from, but also grasped that there was more to Paik’s woozy instrumentals than a genetic splicing of those two aesthetics. (This point was hammered home by Paik’s superbly sprawling 2002 LP The Orson Fader and its tidier 2006 counterpart Monster of the Absolute, both highly recommended.) If only all such tantalizing comparisons could bear such fertile fruit.

Perhaps it’s déjà vu, but more than a decade later, Me You Us Them signals the same touchstones. The specters of Polvo and My Bloody Valentine cast spells on their 2010 debut LP Post-Data. You could hear opening track “Any Time,” check the properly formatted citations of Polvo’s queasy riff-bending and My Bloody Valentine’s gossamer shine on the lead guitar, and chalk it up to a perfect hybrid. But that song’s clear vocal melodies, which culminate in an earworm of a falsetto chorus hook, break the equation. Much like Paik, the merger of My Bloody Valentine and Polvo is only a starting point for Me You Us Them.

Post-Data offers plenty of other head-turning points of comparison. “Re-Entry” starts out by pairing jet engine swooshes with “ba-ba-ba” vocal hooks, but its half-shouted chorus recalls Pinback’s more energetic moments. The chorus of “Pretty Nettles” could have slipped onto Self’s Subliminal Plastic Motives. The wistful shoegaze of “Wish You Luck” hits the sweet spot of late ’90s groups like All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, while the loping arcs of “Drugs” mine similar terrain as contemporary acts like The Depreciation Guild. “Big Time” and “iQuit” step through the haze for urgent indie rock, complete with tricky guitar breaks. The group’s self-titled song layers guitar and keyboards over a nearly spoken-word delivery reminiscent of DC’s great Candy Machine. “As of Now” hits the cool stride of Sonic Youth. In case it’s not obvious, all of these comparisons are flattering, recalling broad swaths of my record collection.

Post-Data closes with its standout track, “Loving like Lawyers” (which they recently performed as a seven-piece, accompanied by fellow New Yorkers Appomattox). Starting out with pounding drums, then adding tremolo-heavy guitar, longing vocals, and a slippery bass line, “Lawyers” offers no obvious points of comparison, just a surplus of confident songwriting. The song head-fakes a fadeout at 2:48 before launching into a soaring, texture-laden outro. “Loving like Lawyers” acts as both a summary of what preceded it and glimpse into Me You Us Them’s possible future. (I underscore possible, since “Research,” their scream-laced contribution to a 2011 split single with Bloody Knives, is a wonderfully unexpected left-turn from the majority of Post-Data). Returning to the Paik parallel, if Post-Data is Me You Us Them’s Hugo Strange, I cannot wait for their Orson Fader, when those initial touchstones have completely vanished, leaving only own signatures behind.

Me You Us Them’s Post-Data hasn’t strayed far from my listening pile, especially in the car, since I first heard it a few months ago. That’s high praise—I will never underrate an indie rock record with intriguing riffs and compelling hooks, since those are increasingly few and far between. Perhaps that’s why Post-Data recalls so many ’90s groups; that was when I spent plenty of time with each album because my financials (and the lack of file-sharing) dictated it. Now it’s all by choice, and I’d simply prefer to hear Post-Data again. Allow me to take a mulligan and slip Post-Data onto my top albums of 2010 list.

Has it really been twelve years since Allen Epley of The Life and Times / Shiner released new music on seven-inch vinyl? 1999 is when the superb “Semper Fi” b/w “A Sailor’s Fate” came out on DeSoto, part of a banner year for the label which also included Juno’s This Is the Way It Goes & Goes & Goes, Burning Airlines’ Mission: Control!, the Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency & I, and Faraquet’s “The Whole Thing Over” b/w “Call It Sane.” (Kim Coletta got a lot of my money that year.) I understand the drastic dip in interest in seven-inch singles during that span, but as I’ve noted before, Shiner excelled in the format. What I wouldn’t give for a seven-inch of the Japanese bonus tracks from The Egg (“Dirty Jazz” and “I’ll Leave Without You”) or the group’s cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow.” Seriously, I’ll probably dream about finding these items tonight.

With The Life and Times’ home studio all geared-out, it makes sense that Epley returns to trickling out a few new songs as they’re ready. Sometime later this year, The Life and Times will follow up 2009’s Tragic Boogie with their third full-length, but in the interim, they’ve issued “Day II” b/w “Day III” through Hawthorne Street Records (who’ve pressed vinyl editions of Suburban Hymns, The Magician, and Tragic Boogie). It marks the debut of the four-piece version of the group, having added Robert Culpepper Smith of Traindodge, Riddle of Steel, and Roma79 as on marimba (and keyboards, if these songs are any indication).

So how do “Day II” and “Day III” stack up with The Life and Times’ previous releases? Quite well: this single is a welcome, recommended return to (seven-inch) form. The former is an atmospheric rocker with Epley repeating “Nothing fools me” as the song shifts from a bass-heavy groove into a racing, riff-driven chorus. The latter calms things down considerably, pairing strummed acoustic guitars with woozy synth lines. The lyrics are intriguingly vague—“They said that mistakes were made / The very same mistakes we made / And history will eat itself”—fitting the song’s disorienting feel. Both of these songs rely on texture, but the strong riff of “Day II” and the lyrics of “Day III” provide stable footing.

Will these songs make the upcoming full-length? My guess is no. They stand alone nicely, perhaps acting as a bridge from Tragic Boogie to The Life and Times’ next album like Shiner’s “Sleep It Off” b/w “Half Empty” did between Lula Divinia and Starless. With any luck, The Life and Times has “Day IV” and “Day V” in the can, ready to hit colored wax in the fall after the LP’s out.

The packaging for Explosions in the Sky’s Take Care Take Care Take Care is overwhelming. The double LP set is sheathed in a full-color slip-case displaying the ivy-choked door to their world. The hefty sleeve inside folds outward from a center panel with four wings: one side showcases the exterior of the house, the other covers the interior. If you ordered the vinyl directly from Temporary Residence Limited, you’ll have one of three sets of colored vinyl incased in weathered paper sleeves. The fourth side of the vinyl is etched with the floorboard design from the center panel. Along with the download code and a Temporary Residence catalog, you’ll find an antique-style postcard with the album’s credits. The kicker is the included poster: a nine-panel (36” x 36”) behemoth with tangled ivy/growths on one side and their muddy roots on the other that can serve as a mat for your EITS house play-set (action figures sold separately).

This packaging is thoroughly impressive, if not unprecedented. Post-rock bands have been known for going overboard on vinyl even before the recent resurgence in the format—remember the crushed penny in Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s F# A# Infinity?—but now it’s a trope of the genre. Few major releases from Temporary Residence, Hydrahead, and Mylene Sheath come without a gatefold sleeve and your choice of limited-run color vinyl. And with fans eager to collect all the variants, escalating the range of available options is a fiscal necessity.

It’s tempting to remind gotta-have-’em-all collectors that records are meant to be heard (glib response: “Duh, that’s why I bought an extra copy on black vinyl!”), but this stock retort nevertheless carries a kernel of truth. There’s a thin line between artwork which perfectly complements an album and artwork that overshadows an album. As floored as I am from the thoughtfulness of Take Care’s packaging, I haven’t said anything about its musical contents yet. With 28 panels of artwork to cover, can you blame me for skimping on the details?

What I keep wondering is why Explosions in the Sky have positioned themselves at the forefront of this packaging escalation. To use their native parlance, this isn’t their first rodeo. By the numbers, they’re the most popular instrumental post-rock band, with Take Care debuting at #16 on the US charts. (In comparison, Mogwai’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will matched the group’s highest US chart position at #97.) This popularity is owed in large part to EITS’s soundtrack for Friday Night Lights, which gave the genre an enormous boost in visibility and ensured the use of troubled-yet-hopeful instrumental rock in television segments about high school football for years to come. In turn, that exposure made their stripped-down aesthetic (three guitars, drums, no vocals, little extraneous instrumentation) the blueprint for your town’s up-and-coming post-rock band. For a band of their stature, the packaging bundle for Take Care usually accompanies the high-priced special edition, not the standard vinyl offering.

The question remains: Why go all-out? To one-up their packaging-crazed progeny? To give their wordless compositions the context that lyrics might otherwise provide? To reward fans who’ve stuck with the group from their early shows in college-town basements to their recent headlining gig at Radio City Music Hall? To demonstrate how seriously they take all aspects of their craft? Most likely it’s as simple as their in-house (pun unintended) artist Esteban Rey coming up with a great idea for the artwork and Temporary Residency signing off on it. (Once you’ve assembled Eluvium’s Life Through Bombardment 7LP book, anything else must seem like a relief.) Regardless of the specific why—I’m sadly not a mind-reader and I haven’t found an interview with the band that dives into the packaging angle—I’m left with a hefty package that says as much, if not more, about the state of Explosions in the Sky as its musical contents.

Here’s my potentially controversial assertion: Take Care’s artwork has to make a big statement about the group’s return from a four-year layoff because its music can’t make that statement on its own. Barring a stylistic sea change, Explosions in the Sky’s aesthetic won’t offer any surprises. It’s built on simple pieces—the affecting melodies of spiraling guitar leads, quickly strummed blocks of chords, skyward arcs of feedback, martial snare rolls—and its success comes in how those pieces fit together to elicit gut-punching emotions. But you know that trick already. It was clear when their high-water mark third LP The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place came out in 2003, and if it wasn’t, the 2004 Friday Night Lights soundtrack and subsequent emergence of EITS clones working with the same raw materials killed the mystery. That’s the price of heavy exposure and widespread influence: people will expect you to change the classic formula to compensate.

Yet EITS hasn’t shown a propensity for such seismic shifts in approach. The remix CD which accompanied 2007’s All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone offered an alternate-reality version of the album with predictably mixed results (although the Jesu remix of “The Birth and Death of the Day” is essential), but outsourcing your evolution is a cheat. The most you can reasonably expect from Take Care is a nudge in a slightly different direction, like the more prominent use of piano on the 2006 EP The Rescue and their 2007 LP All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, but that’s not how earth-shaking statements of purpose are written. And for post-rock, such statements are essential for critical standing.

Like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky views itself as a rock band, not a post-rock band, even though both groups operate within the boundaries of that subgenre. This distinction is key: rock bands can make fine-grained adjustments to their approach, like The National’s High Violet, and receive passionate acclaim, while sudden changes in course like Radiohead’s Kid A are more often met with quizzical looks if not dismissive glances. In comparison, post-rock bands are expected to evolve, since the nature of the genre is, supposedly, to keep moving forward. Having strong songwriting simply isn’t enough to offset the perceived need for change.

Is this situation fair to Explosions in the Sky? Should they have to switch to New Coke on their fifth proper LP? It’s not like they’ve flooded the market with material—prior to Take Care, they’d released fewer than 45 songs. They haven’t released anything approaching a bad record, and I sincerely doubt that they will. No, they’re not the most post- of post-rock bands, but that’s never been their appeal. It may seem out of character for a curmudgeon like me, but I feel for Explosion in the Sky’s predicament: either make a dramatic change and risk losing the essence of what you do, or maintain course and have that material be greeted with “more of the same.” It’s a familiar scenario for post-rock bands (lord knows I covered it in Mogwai Discographied), but Explosions in the Sky reached it in record time.

Let me go back to the artwork, since it provides the band’s answer to that quandary before the needle touches down on side A. The end product of all of those panels and the poster is an ivy-covered house. The mailbox is overflowing with letters, the ivy has worked its way around the bicycles, and the window and door are shut. Presumably, its occupants are cloistered within or just now returning from their journeys. When viewed from the inside, the open door and window show a distant tornado. My take-away from this artwork is that Explosions in the Sky are well aware of the dangers of the outside world—after all, they’ve previously gone through the destruction and renewal of The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place and the floods of All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone—but they’ve found safe haven and comfort from those dangers. Unless you’ve bank-rolled your career on misanthropy, “comfort” rarely signifies change. So what does this artwork accomplish?

Take Care Take Care Take Care’s artwork does two key moves. It deflates the need for a grand gesture from the music contained within by being its own grand gesture, then reinforces the stability of their sound, thereby negating the expectation of a major shift. Nothing here signals a journey into the unknown. Instead, you’re promised the loving embrace of home. Even if Take Care is “more of the same,” it’s the same you want. That’s a rather miraculous reversal of expectations.

For the majority of its forty-six-minute runtime, Take Care is the same you want, provided, of course, that you want more of it. The most successful stretch of Take Care is side C, which features “Postcard from 1952” and “Let Me Back In.” These two compositions stretch out in familiar ways: lurking in quiet valleys, riding snare rolls and pounding toms through intense passages, relaying memorable melodies with intersecting guitar lines. The end results are as powerful as anything else Explosions in the Sky has recorded. The formula hasn’t changed, but it’s still paying dividends to committed investors.

Take Care does venture outside of base camp for a few reconnaissance missions. The patter of hand percussion gives depth to the muted arcs of “Human Qualities,” at least until it hits a distorted lead in the final minute. “Be Comfortable, Creature” thrives on deftly arranged strains of feedback. The biggest curveball is “Trembling Hands,” the three-and-a-half-minute advance single for the album which gets too much mileage out of an “Oh! Oh! Oh!” vocal chant. That new element overshadows a propulsive performance from drummer Chris Hrasky and an otherwise tidy condensation of their dynamic range.

That lone misstep is oddly reassuring. When you tore off the shrink wrap on Take Care Take Care Take Care’s packaging and built its house, you entered its comfort zone. Why wouldn’t the lone anomaly feel out of sync?

That’s the ultimate achievement of Take Care Take Care Take Care’s artwork. If you’ve put yourself in its context, Explosions in the Sky’s lose-lose dilemma turns into a win-win scenario. They’re rewarded for maintaining their genetic code and let off the hook for not evolving. That ruse doesn’t extend to the broader context—Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die… and The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place still reign as the band’s essential albums—but unlike those albums, this one comes with a completely awesome house to build.

Oh, you bought the album digitally? Good luck with that one, pal.

There’s a remarkable consistency displayed in Damien Jurado’s fifteen years of carefully crafted songs. Sure, the general aesthetic varies from album to album, particularly on his decidedly rocking 2002 collaboration with Gathered in Song, I Break Chairs, and his 50s-pop-infused 2010 LP Saint Bartlett, but the many of his records subsist on a steady diet of acoustic guitar. It’s the songwriting that provides the strongest continuity: a melancholic cloud enveloping lived-in stories of lost loves and tragic histories in Middle America. Sufjan Stevens turned state-based storytelling into a gimmick for Michigan and Illinois, but Jurado’s longing cartography pops up when needed, anchoring the heartbreaking “Ohio” from 1999’s Rehearsals for Departure and the flickering nostalgia of Saint Bartlett’s “Arkansas.” What Jurado lacks in flash and fashion he more than makes up for in lasting appeal.

Despite my fondness for Damien Jurado’s catalog, I hadn’t seen him live before this week. Blame me, not him—it feels like he rolls through Boston every six months, usually on a bill with like-minded folk singers. It took a live album issued for Record Store Day to push me out the door to catch his latest tour.

Live at Landlocked catches Jurado at an in-store performance at Bloomington, Indiana’s Landlocked Records from June 13, 2010. Understandably heavy on Saint Bartlett, released the previous month, Landlocked offers five songs from that Richard Swift-produced album and one from the accompanying Our Turn to Shine EP, along with one apiece from 2006’s And Now That I’m in Your Shadow and 2008’s Caught in the Trees, and three new songs. It’s somewhat amazing that Jurado already had three new songs a month after his newest album came out, but each is a worthy addition to his catalog. “Thax Douglas #1” commemorates writing impromptu poems about bands and reading them prior to their sets. Thax recently moved down to Austin, but this song is a welcome tribute. (It also provides “Illinois” for Jurado state-name bingo.) No, “Diamond Sea” is not a Sonic Youth cover, but its yearning chorus is equally wonderful. Finally, “You for a While” head-fakes at more reserved emotion, but its enthusiastic whoops pull me off the couch.

While it doesn’t spend much time combing through Jurado’s ever-expanding back catalog, Landlocked nevertheless does an excellent job of melding past, present, and future. Saint Bartlett’s reverb-heavy production is washed away here for straight acoustic and vocals takes on those songs, and it’s compelling to hear how easily they sit alongside the older “Denton, Texas.” Jurado’s likeably sheepish stage banter cuts through the resonant melancholy of his songs, giving Landlocked the warmth of one of a living room performance. If you’re a Jurado fan, it’s a must-have; if you’re a newcomer fortunate enough to find a copy, it’s not a bad starting place.

Landlocked convinced me to finally stop waffling and catch Damien Jurado in concert, which came in an opening slot for John Vanderslice at Brighton Music Hall on May 15th. Perhaps the pairing with the unrelentingly gregarious Vanderslice made Jurado seem bashful in comparison, but Jurado’s long stage banter was the introduction of Melodie Knight of Campfire OK, who joined him for half of his set. Knight’s background vocals provided the lone accompaniment for Jurado’s acoustic guitar and expressive voice, echoing lines from Saint Bartlett’s “Cloudy Shoes” and adding harmony to several others. Jurado’s on-stage reservation was curious in comparison with Landlocked, but hardly off-putting; a gray and rainy Sunday night worked too well with the lingering sadness of his songs to worry about a less-than-chatty singer.

The song selection was a bit more varied than Landlocked, starting off with Caught in the Trees’ “Sheets,” sampling his back catalog, debuting three new songs (none of which were on Landlocked), and peaking with a spine-chilling rendition of “Ohio,” which may very well be Jurado’s finest song. If you’d like to hear the set, There There Li’l Bear has an excellent recording of it. I’ll gladly hear those new songs again.

I still have miles to go in my trek through Damien Jurado’s discography, but for once, I’m not in a hurry. While Live at Landlocked and the performance at the Brighton Music Hall underscored his strengths, they also pleaded for patience. The more time I’ve spent with each of Jurado’s records, the more I’ve enjoyed them, so giving cursory spins to the loose ends won’t help. I may advocate taking your time with his ten full-lengths (not counting the largely overlooked Hoquiam collaboration with his brother Drake), but not with starting the journey. See him live, track down Rehearsals for Departure, or snare one of the remaining copies of Live at Landlocked.

Belying his recent forays into stoner comedy, David Gordon Green started his career with a pair of oblique independent films: the childhood drama George Washington and the romance All the Real Girls. My viewings of these films had several prompts: recently catching up on Terrence Malick’s first two films (1973’s Badlands and the 1978 stunner Days of Heaven), both of which cast heavy shadows on Green’s work; former Parks and Recreation cast member Paul Schneider’s appearance in both films and co-writing credit for the latter; and the lingering suspicion that the lovely cinematography of Pineapple Express should be seen in its natural habitat. Such curiosity paid off; both films have stuck with me, particularly the inexperienced cast of child actors in George Washington and the worn-in relationship between Schneider and a young Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls. Tim Orr’s cinematography guides both films, most notably during a pair of lengthy montages ending their respective second acts. It’s here that Green’s visual storytelling shines brightest.

Those montages are not purely visual, as you might suspect, but they’re not the ham-fisted musical montages skewered by South Park. I immediately recognized the music of the passage in All the Real Girls as the Mogwai remix of “Mogwai Fear Satan” from Kicking a Dead Pig, but the strangely familiar ambient soundscape accompanying the passage in George Washington made me rush to IMDB for the credit. Sure enough, Stars of the Lid was somehow involved. Brian McBride’s side band The Pilot Ships contributed “Pilot Suicide Theory” from its 2000 LP The Limits of Painting and Poetry to George Washington’s soundtrack, and its backwards drones capture the range of emotions swirling around in the film. To Green’s credit, that’s no easy task.

Between “Pilot Suicide Theory” and McBride’s recent score for the documentary Vanishing of the Bees, I found myself wondering why contemporary ambient music hasn’t found its way onto more film scores. (Full disclosure: I rented The Lovely Bones because of Brian Eno’s soundtrack, but not even the use of “The Big Ship” over its closing credits could align the tonal mess which preceded it. Avoid.) Matt McCormick’s debut film Some Days Are Better Than Others had a head-start to finding its score from Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper, since it stars two notable indie rockers: Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag, and the IFC sketch comedy show Portlandia, and James Mercer of The Shins and Broken Bells. The film is currently making the rounds at festivals and limited-run screenings, while Cooper’s score is now available on Temporary Residence.

Given the variety of sounds Cooper has delivered in Eluvium’s discography—the woozy drones of Lambient Material, the solo piano of An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death, the symphonic swells of Copia, the Eno-esque vocals of Similes—his score for Some Days could have gone in any number of directions. Picking up on the film’s thematic exploration of throwaway culture, Cooper opted to record the soundtrack with broken/malfunctioning keyboards, a decision which establishes the score’s aesthetic. There’s a playfulness to tracks like “Drifting” and “Worry and Care” that suggests both a church organ and a run-down carnival. Cooper manages to hit the droning palette of his early records on “Into Dust” and the tinkling, heavily backmasked “Pursuance.”

The best pieces on Some Days recall the interwoven layers of Eluvium’s finest work, 2005’s Talk Amongst the Trees. “Reprieve” carefully balances delicate details and thick blocks of keyboards. The title track starts with that curious carnival organ, but like Talk’s astounding highlight “New Animals from the Air,” keeps adding counterpoint melodies and textures. By the end of the song, the organ has disappeared and the tone has changed dramatically, but when exactly that happens is difficult to ascertain.

Cooper works best in these long pieces, since the shorter interstitials often lack depth. Not having seen the film, I can’t say if the church organ melodies of “It’s Never What It Seems” and “What You Leave Behind” are the perfect accompaniments for their respective scenes, but on record they’re gone too soon and don’t leave much of an impression. This issue made much of Cooper’s 2008 "solo album" Miniatures a fans-only concern, so perhaps he should stick to his stage name.

I hope that the film Some Days Are Better Than Others gives the song “Some Days Are Better Than Others” a fittingly evocative context. It’s the centerpiece of the soundtrack, much like “Pilot Suicide Theory” and “Mogwai Fear Satan (Mogwai Remix)” anchored George Washington and All the Real Girls respectively. It’s an excellent gateway to Matthew Cooper’s work, the best of which comes under the Eluvium banner, so if you’ve seen the film and liked what you heard, start there and then circle back to this soundtrack.

The first song on Kyle Bobby Dunn’s Ways of Meaning is called “Dropping Sandwiches in Chester Lake.” It might be easier to extrapolate Dunn’s aesthetic from the titles of tracks three and four—“Canyon Meadows” and “New Pures,” respectively—but the seeming nonchalance of “Dropping Sandwiches” has stuck with me. Given that Chester Lake is located in the Canadian Rockies of Dunn’s former home of Alberta, the title likely carries some anecdotal resonance that the wordless drones can’t transcribe. I’m inclined to believe that Dunn broke the stillness of the lake’s surface with the sandwiches in question, hearing the distant plunk as they slice through the surface and watching each one ripple out in concentric circles. Their trajectories intersect and then glance off one another, creating a silent network of arcs both perfect and imperfect. These arcs distort the reflection of the surrounding mountains in Spray Valley Provincial Park. All of this filters back into Dunn’s composition, a work of clock-stopping tranquility. The only thing I can’t intuit is why Dunn brought so many sandwiches with him.

To a certain extent I’m cheating with this localized discussion, since Dunn’s been in Brooklyn since 2007. But as “Chester Lake” implies, Dunn hasn’t lost his connection to Alberta. His 2009 Rural Route No. 2 EP was inspired by the childhood locales of Calgary. He’s performed in Banff National Park. These songs are open-ended enough for other mental journeys, but once I thought about Chester Lake as the destination, I kept going back to it. These ambient classical compositions make more sense aligned with regal open spaces than metropolitan clatter.

Each of Ways of Meaning’s six pieces offers a unique arrangement of those intersecting sets of concentric circles. “Canyon Meadows” stands out with the close proximity of its drones, which brush against each other like reeds in the wind. But the album’s centerpiece is the fifteen-minute-long “Movement for the Completely Fucked,” which loses all track of time as it gradually ebbs and flows with volume swells and overlapping tones. Without a watch you could mistake it for one of its five-minute-long neighbors. These specific pieces are the highlights of Ways of Meaning, but as my six full spins of the album will attest, it’s remarkably easy to get lost in this album.

I’ve filed Dunn’s geographical projections alongside Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina and Stars of the Lid’s And Their Refinement of the Decline, bridging the gap between Dunn’s minimalist composer influences and his contemporary counterparts. Pärt’s influence is apparent in the moments of near silence, especially the gradual decay that comprises the final minute of “New Pures.” Stars of the Lid is an unavoidable touchstone for ambient classical, but Dunn’s purified guitar and synth drones reside in the same aesthetic sphere. I wouldn’t mind Dunn branching out with more ensemble-based recordings like this exquisite performance from the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn last year, but I'm certainly not tired of his current palette. (The very end of the clip also shows Dunn’s sense of humor and is worth waiting for.)

Ways of Meaning will be out May 23 on Desire Path Recordings, with a special art version of LP on the verge of selling out. If you need to catch up—and Ways has prompted me to do just that—the 2CD A Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn compiles his 2009 full-length Fervency with another hour of material.

If there’s one undeniable fact about Matador Records’ hardcore punk outlier Fucked Up, it’s that they do not lack material. While the upcoming David Comes to Town is only their third official full-length, there’s no shortage of loose ends to track down: a towering stack of singles, their zodiac series of EPs, a debt-reducing 2LP singles compilation Couple Tracks, the Coke Sucks Drink Pepsi live album pressed with Chunklet’s endlessly quotable Indie Cred Test book, etc. I both pity and envy any souls brave enough to attempt to collect them all.

Until now I’ve stuck with the “major” titles in Fucked Up’s discography, but David’s Town was too intriguing to pass up. A tie-in release for the concept album David Comes to Town, David’s Town is tagged as a compilation of bands from Byrdesdale Spa, England, from the late ’70s. Spoiler alert: it’s actually Fucked Up channeling bands from the era with a smattering of guest vocalists. If you’re expecting progressive-leaning hardcore, wait for David Comes to Town; if you’re up for a loose romp through Brit-pop, early punk, and pub rock, by all means, come on in.

The fun of David’s Town comes from figuring out which songs evoke which bands. I won’t spoil that for you, since knowing all of what to expect from David’s Town lessens its impact (and I’ll likely be off anyway), but highlights include Grain’s “Light Rain,” which is dead-on Fleetwood Mac pantomime with Simone Schmidt donning Stevie Nicks’ gypsy wardrobe, the charging Brit-punk of Hateful Coil’s “Bull Thunder,” the girl-group perkiness of Redstockings’ “Unrequited Love,” the insistent melodies of In Good Company’s “Harmony’s Double” (guest vocals from A.C. Newman), and the goofy charm of Wonderer’s “It’s Hard to Be a Dad” (with Cloud Nothings’ Dylan Baldi). Like any compilation, real or fake, there are both hits and misses. Be prepared to stand by your turntable and move the needle past a few of the less inspired tracks after your first spin.

I won’t claim that David’s Town is essential listening. This sort of record is always in danger of being more fun for the band to record than for the fans to hear, and there are certainly a few points when that’s the case on David’s Town. What I will claim is that it’s a perfect Record Store Day release. It’s an entirely optional lark for fans and a chance for the band to continue stretching out their wings. I’d much rather bands do something like David’s Town for RSD than repress one of their albums on a previously unavailable color of vinyl or in double ten-inch form. David’s Town is a reward for fans, not an obligation, and that’s an essential distinction.

If you missed out on grabbing a physical copy, don’t lose sleep or your kid’s college fund acquiring a copy on eBay: a download of this album will be included in the massive pre-order package for David Comes to Town (along with four seven-inches, five non-album tracks, and a gallon zip-lock bag full of Pink Eyes’ body hair).

Pinback’s been awfully quiet of late. With only a 2008 tour EP (Ascii) and an appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba since their 2007 full-length Autumn of the Seraphs, the group has been put on the backburner for its primary members. Armistead Burwell Smith IV (or Zach Smith, for brevity’s sake) polished off an excellent solo debut in 2009, Systems Officer’s Underslept, a natural extension of Pinback’s intricately layered pop. He also returned to his pre-Pinback outfit, Three Mile Pilot, for their 2010 reunion album The Inevitable Past Is the Forgotten Future. I recently ran through Rob Crow’s labyrinthine discography in a write-up of Heavy Vegetable’s two full-lengths, but he’s been less frenzied of late, offering the 2008 sophomore release from his metal band Goblin Cock (Come with Me If You Want to Live) and an internet radio show. But their primary outlet is slowly waking up, starting with this Record Store Day single.

Information Retrieved, Part A is Pinback’s first release with Temporary Residence Limited since signing with the label in 2009 after the demise of Touch & Go. If you’re worried that time or the label switch has altered the group’s DNA, fear not: “Sherman” and “Thee Srum Proggitt” are immediately recognizable as Pinback concoctions. Crow and Smith trade off verses on “Sherman,” then cascade over each other on the chorus. Tightly snapping rhythms, back-masked guitar, and vocal-mimicking keyboards lay the instrumental foundations, but the song’s success comes from those exquisite vocal arrangements. “Thee Srum Proggitt” is a languid Crow-fronted song loaded with Dark Star samples (the John Carpenter film which provided the group its name), but Smith pops in for a few lines. I’ll likely stick to the a-side for future spins.

It’s unclear whether these songs will appear on the full-length Information Retrieved, which has now been pushed back to 2012. I chose to willfully ignore that possibility and grab this nicely packaged single, which comes in a sealed paper bag, offers a nice picture sleeve inside, and may be on colored vinyl (I got marbled blue). If your local store sold out, Pinback’s on tour through the middle of May (although I'm just guessing that they'll have copies with them) and Temporary Residence Limited will put a small amount of singles up for sale on May 1st.

This post of rankings and ephemera wraps up Mogwai Discographied. If you’re wondering “What is Mogwai Discographied?” it’s a deep dive into the catalog of one of the foremost purveyors of post-rock. Consult the first nine parts of the series for the gory details: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Each post tackles two or three entries in Mogwai’s catalog. If you’re not interested in reading 16,000+ words on Mogwai to figure out a starting point, the following list should help.

Rankings

I’ve ranked these albums/compilations with two considerations in mind: personal preference and best starting points. I’ve excluded lesser releases (singles and remix albums), and bundled the 4 Satin, No Future = No Education (Fuck the Curfew) and Mogwai EPs under EP+6, since that’s the most cost effective way to acquire those releases. Everything on this list is worth hearing at some point, but if you learn a single lesson from Mogwai Discographied, it’s that you should pace yourself when consuming Mogwai releases. Start with the top four, then progress down the list as your appetites allow.

1. Young Team: Mogwai’s first full-length features towering highs (“Mogwai Fear Satan,” “Like Herod”), glorious guitar tones, and powerful dynamic range.
2. Special Moves: A long-overdue live album for fans and a sampler platter for newcomers that excels in both departments. Get a version with the Burning concert DVD included.
3. EP+6: This must-have three-EP compilation offers brass bliss (“Burn Girl Prom Queen”), fuzzed-out crescendos (“Small Children in the Background”), unrelenting noise (“Stereodee”), and whirring beauty (“Stanley Kubrick”).
4. Rock Action: Mogwai’s shortest LP does not lack inspiration, loaded with fruitful forays into electronic (“Sine Wave”), folk (“Dial: Revenge”), and symphonic impulses (“2 Rights Make 1 Wrong”).
5. Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003: This compilation offers alternate views of known songs, a few of which (“Secret Pint,” “Like Herod”) are definitive versions.
6. Ten Rapid: Collected Recordings 1996-1997: This compilation of Mogwai’s early singles exhibits their innate melodic touch and a greater reliance on open spaces.
7. The Hawk Is Howling: Achieves length without excessive sprawl, in large part because of its exceptional last four songs.
8. Mr. Beast: A 40-minute block of well-crafted songs (like the riff-machine “Glasgow Mega-snake”) that lacks the evocative mystery of Mogwai’s best works.
9. Come on Die Young: A handful of extraordinary tracks (especially the slow-core ballad “Cody”) are brought down by an exhausting mid-tempo stretch.
10. Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will: Their newest album shows off a few new tricks (the motorik drive of “Mexican Grand Prix,” the ambient companion piece “Music for a Forgotten Future”), but mostly sticks to known terrain.
11. Happy Songs for Happy People: This mostly subdued collection of songs never hits Mogwai’s top gear, but does provide some worthy additions to their catalog.
12. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait: A calming, if repetitive soundtrack that shows off Mogwai’s quiet side.

Ephemera

I’ve covered all of the key Mogwai releases in detail, but there’s plenty more to track down for the tireless completist. This list is not comprehensive, but it’s a good starting point for that journey.

“Sweet Leaf”: Mogwai reveal their fondness for Black Sabbath with this cover of Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” which appeared on a split single with Magoo in 1998. Not their best vocal performance, but you can hear the influence of those slow, heavy riffs in countless Mogwai songs.

“Hugh Dallas”: Mogwai’s contribution to the Everything Is Nice 3CD compilation for Matador’s 15th anniversary is a haunting nine minutes of slow-core. Drifting along on Stuart Braithwaite’s hushed vocals and gentle strumming until the guitars crash down, “Hugh Dallas” is a lo-fi companion to Ten Rapid’s vocal tracks. Well worth hunting down.

Split 10” with Bardo Pond: Two pleasantly mellow songs from a limited-edition tour EP. “D to E” drifts semi-aimlessly with its blurred guitar, keys, and trumpet. “Drum Machine,” a collaboration with The Remote Viewer, offers a subaquatic companion piece, with the titular element bumping quietly beneath the surface. These songs reappeared on Mogwai’s 2001 UK Tour Single. Neither is easy to find.

Japanese bonus tracks: Heeding to the tradition of adding bonus tracks to the Japanese pressings of their albums so consumers don’t just import the American versions, many Mogwai albums have received additional material abroad. Rock Action received two bonus tracks: “Untitled” is a longer take of “D to E,” while “Close Encounters,” a collaboration with David Pajo, is one of Mogwai’s mid-tempo, crescendo-free meditations. Happy Songs for Happy People offers “Sad DC,” which emphasizes Luke Sutherland’s mournful violin. The Hawk Is Howling has “Dracula Family,” an upbeat instrumental that would’ve made a nice b-side for “The Sun Smells Too Loud.” (This song also appeared on a Rock Action sampler.) Collect these songs and you’ll have a pleasant, if inessential EP of bonus material.

The Fountain soundtrack: Clint Mansell scored Darren Aronofsky’s ponderous 2006 sci-fi romance, recruiting the Kronos Quarter and Mogwai to perform it. Mogwai presumably contributes guitar arpeggios, foreboding textures, and drumming to “Holy Dread,” “Stay with Me,” and album/film centerpiece “Death Is the Road to Awe”—just don’t expect to proclaim “A lost Mogwai song!” The soundtrack holds up reasonably well without the film, but context won’t hurt. The Fountain tends to be a love/hate proposition, but I’m somewhere in the middle, enamored with the cinematography, set design, and boundless ambition, but aware of its repetitive structure, muddy thematic arcs, and the danger of such boundless ambition.

“Gouge Away”: Mogwai contributed a noisy and accented cover of the Doolittle favorite to the 2007 Dig for Fire: A Tribute to the Pixies compilation. It’s not astoundingly great, but it’s still a thousand times better than The Promise Ring’s line reading of the song for the prior Where Is My Mind? tribute (from which I recommend The Get-Up Kids’ energetic rendition of “Alec Eiffel”).

Fuck Buttons Split Single: Mogwai and Fuck Buttons toured together in 2008, releasing this split EP for the occasion and then issuing it on vinyl for Record Store Day 2010 in the UK. Mogwai contribute an excellent remix of Fuck Buttons’ “Colours Move” from their 2008 debut LP Street Horrrsing, while Fuck Buttons add buzzing synths and tribal drumming to their cover of “Mogwai Fear Satan.” Both songs are worth checking out, as is Fuck Buttons’ superb 2009 LP Tarot Sport, which picks up that “Mogwai Fear Satan” thread within their own aesthetic.

Hardcore singles: Mogwai’s newest album has garnered two singles: one domestic, one import. The Sub Pop single for “Rano Pano” offers “Hasenheide” on the flip, a charging, drum-driven rocker that carries a bit more emotional weight than its sonic counterpart on the album, “San Pedro.” The Rock Action single for “Mexican Grand Prix” features sleeve design reminiscent of Mogwai’s earliest singles and the b-side “Slight Domestic.” It’s a carefully crafted mid-tempo instrument midway between “Death Rays” and “Letters to the Metro.” I don't know where or how they'd fit on Hardcore, but arguments could be made for their inclusion.

Remixes: In addition to having their own songs remixed, Mogwai has returned the favor on a number of occasions. Here are some notable ones:

• David Holmes’ “Don’t Die Just Yet”: Most notable for pulling the rhythm section from Slint’s “Good Morning, Captain,” this remix also offers a climax of distorted guitar. Fellow Scots Arab Strap also remixed this song.
• The Paradise Motel’s “Drive”: The original version of The Paradise Motel’s cover of The Cars’ classic single features tasteful strings and reserved female vocals, but Mogwai’s reworking is a brilliant bit of ambient drone with garbled vocals.
• Bloc Party’s “Plans”: They retain most of the rolling rhythms of the original, but slice up the vocals and exchange the rousing guitar melodies for squelched-out electronics. Mogwai also remixed “Biko” from Intimacy, but my patience for Bloc Party wore thin after Silent Alarm.
• The Twilight Sad’s “The Room”: Mogwai take the yearning ballad from Forget the Night Ahead and add fuzzed-out guitar textures and a tinny drum machines. “The Wrong Car” alone is worth the price of its 12", so consider this track a major bonus.
• Errors’ “Supertribe”: Mogwai pay Errors back for their excellent version of “Auto-Rock” with a darker, more club-friendly take for Celebrity Come Down with Me that excises the insistent synth melody of the original for some morse code bleeps.

I’m currently determining the subject of the next round of Discographied, but I can tell you one thing: it will not be a contemporary post-rock band.