According to Ghost Wars’ MySpace page, their album is almost finished. Ghost Wars, for those caught unaware, is Arlie Carstens’ post-Juno project with Eric Fisher and a rotating cast of additional musicians. The three tracks posted are unfinished demos, but they offer considerable promise in terms of aesthetic variance and songwriting depth. I still don’t know when their album might actually be released—the fear is that this becomes my personal “follow-up to Loveless” dilemma—but any news is great news. I mention this because I’m going to list my top 20 albums of the year to this point, and if Ghost Wars were to be released up to and including December 31, 2006, everything would likely shift down one spot.

Other potential caveats include my inexplicable inability to grab the new Tungsten74 (Binaurally Yours), my baited breath for the new Pinebender album (Working Nine to Wolf), the forthcoming Life and Times EP, Mt. St. Helens’ Of Others (pending a new label; Divot folded), the next Lights Out Asia (Tanks and Recognizers), and the potential that something great comes out that I wasn’t even anticipating. This list is organized in tiers (starting with 20–15) and commentary is sparse. It’s August, so there’s a lot of listening (and purchasing) to come before December, but keep these in mind.

Isis and Aereogramme - In the Fishtank 14
Judah Johnson - Be Where I Be
Mock Orange and the Band Apart - Daniels EP
Norfolk and Western - A Gilded Age
Vetiver - To Find Me Gone

Mock Orange has been my band of the year for 2006, but that’s primarily been because of the First EP and Mind Is Not Brain, not this grab bag of a split EP. Judah Johnson resides on my new favorite label, Flameshovel, but I’m torn over whether this record shifts them toward AOR yearning (see also: Jeremy Enigk’s World Waits) or more successful songwriting.

Channels - Waiting for the Next End of the World
Hammock - The Sleepover Series Vol. 1
Radio Dept. – Pet Grief
Russian Circles - Enter
Timeout Drawer - Alone EP

Hammock’s excursion into strictly ambient music is a success, even if that means it’s less memorable than their other records. The synth-pop of the Radio Dept. is more oriented for successful singles (“The Worst Taste in Music,” “Every Time”) than consistency, but they give it a shot.

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness - Fear Is on Our Side
Jesu - Silver EP
Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
Nina Nastasia - On Leaving
Paik – Monster of the Absolute

Paik’s album is a close second to The Orson Fader in their catalog; cutting the expanse makes it easier to digest, but eliminates some of the appeal. Jesu’s Silver EP emphasizes the shoegazing tendencies of the full-length to the absolute benefit of the material.

Chin Up Chin Up – This Harness Can’t Ride Anything
Cursive - Happy Hollow
Errors - How Clean Is Your Acid House?
Isis - In the Absence of Truth
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

Chin Up Chin Up was a big surprise—the title track and “Water Planes in Snow” had me absolutely hooked—and as an added bonus, the vinyl comes out on Flameshovel. Errors is only available on import from Mogwai’s label, which is unfortunate because their electronic-enhanced post-rock is far more memorable than Mogwai’s Mr. Beast. I need to hear the TV on the Radio more in its “official” track order, but the songs are excellent however you arrange ’em.

In other news, I had no clue that Zach Barocas of Jawbox fame wrote a book of poetry.

I caught This Flood Covers the Earth on Tuesday at the Lily Pad in Inman Square (an art space that doubles as an independently operated venue). I’d been in contact with their singer, Charlie, for quite a few years now (he was once in a band with Western Homes/Mark T. R. Donohue, famed baseball blogger). Aside from a few telling exceptions, I am neither a huge fan of or well versed in contemporary hardcore music, but This Flood quickly became one of those very exceptions. After a brutal opening salvo, moody instrumental passages and dynamic shifts evocative of Drive Like Jehu and June of ’44 defined the edges of their genre overlaps and helped sharpen the teeth of those sweaty, guitar-swinging bursts of aggression. Their split LP with tour mates Lanterns actually captures a good amount of the energy and expertise displayed live. I wish I could comment more on Lanterns (or headliners Motionless), but I spent most of their sets outside of the Lily Pad, talking to Charlie and the men behind History Major Records (one of whom is, appropriately enough, entering the graduate History department at BC). I highly recommend catching these bands on the last month of their tour and/or picking up the split release.

When I got home from that show, I found out TV on the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing a free show courtesy of WFNX in downtown Boston on Thursday. I’d seen both bands on separate occasions at the Empty Bottle in Chicago, a considerably more intimate environment for rock concerts, but free is free, particularly in Boston. TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain (released domestically in the fall of 2022) is on the short list of 2006 records I recommend sans qualifiers, but a muddy mix didn’t help their live set. I’d say that they’re more of a studio band if I didn’t recall how stunning the rocked-out version of “Blind” from the club show was, but “Wolf Like Me,” “Staring at the Sun,” and “Dirty Whirlwind” were highlights. For their next record, I hope the guitar players learn another trick beyond “fast indie strumming,” but that’s at least thirty years away.

I didn’t particularly care for Show Your Bones, the most recent Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, but it’s tough to deny their charisma or execution in the live setting, even if some of the songs are duds. Nick Zinner’s guitar tone puts most bands’ to shame, while Karen O. does justice to her current “space prostitute from Blade Runner” attire. Not that I brought my camera, but she has thankfully toned down her destructive impulses toward electronic equipment since I saw them as the first band in a four-band set (with Girls Against Boys headlining). I could have done without the slow-jams near the end of their set, but the encore of “Y-Control” rewarded my patience.

If WFNX decides to continue this trend of having former Touch and Go bands play free shows at Government Center, perhaps the aforementioned GVSB, the Jesus Lizard, Slint, Polvo, Seam, and Big Black would make an excellent line-up. Hell, it might even continue past 8:30pm.

I feel like mentioning this excellent video stream of a recent GVSB concert. The band is playing the Touch and Go anniversary party, but a warm-up/cool-down/anything show in the Boston area would be amazing: one more time with feeling/style.

Dusty’s ExplodingNow! is my current must-read, particularly his ongoing top 500 albums project. Knowing something about assigning numerical values to massive amounts of music (and even more about not finishing such endeavors), I’m a bit surprised that he’s starting at the top of the list, but he’s still going strong and not looking back. I’ve always thought that we have fairly similar tastes in music, stemming not just from our formative years on the Hum mailing list and a slew of tangential alignments, but this project underscores some of our primary rifts. Naturally, I’m playing along at home to some extent, trying to merely come up with a list of my top 500 albums (in no particular order, although guessing the top spot would be a rather easy task). If I ever reach that number, maybe I’ll come up with a competing project, but at this point, sitting at 145 albums and having other projects in the queue (no, I haven’t forgotten about 1000 Songs), odds are against it, so perhaps you should enjoy ExplodingNow’s.

Of course, that won’t prevent me from discussing that hypothetical list. One of the most difficult artists to place on the list would be Silkworm, as I’m a fan of nearly their entire catalog and my preferences have shifted from year to year. Firewater, for instance, never clicked until this past year, when “Drag the River” opened up the album for me in a way that the first half never could. Since that point, Firewater has been my decided favorite of theirs, with Andy Cohen’s solos having a profound effect upon how I view the rest of their catalog. It’ll Be Cool remains in the upper echelon of their albums alongside Libertine and Lifestyle, but the a-side of Developer ranks among their finest moments as well. What about Italian Platinum, Blueblood, and In the West? I’m not sure if they’d make it as albums, but within a sampler of Silkworm, they could easily be heartily represented. Unlike Pavement (a early comparison made primarily because of the nod to “In the Mouth a Desert” in “Raised by Tigers”), whose catalog has settled in terms of my preferences (Crooked Rain a definite first, then Slanted followed closely by Wowee Zowee and the Watery, Domestic EP), I’m not sure how I’ll feel about the current second-tier Silkworm albums in a year or two. But this situation makes me appreciate them even more as a band, not less. (Silkworm’s final release, Chokes, is closer to an EP in execution and obviously not what the band intended to issue, but I await it nevertheless. Bottomless Pit, however, is Andy Cohen and Tim Midgett’s new band, and I hope I’ll be able to catch them in September.)

In non–obsessive list making news, I sense another redesign afoot, since the current layout utilizes approximately 40% of my new laptop’s screen resolution. I should also have far more time to actually use my site now that I won’t have to hover over the screen reset button anticipating my backlight flickering off.

Since my early record shopping days at various Rhino Records locales throughout the Hudson Valley, I’ve loved rifling through dollar bins in search of overlooked treasures or misplaced greats. The main Rhino find I can think of off the top of my head was Thingy’s To the Innocent, one of Rob Crow’s better efforts. Particularly back in high school, when I actually sold CDs back in order to fund the purchase of new discs, every dollar counted. I couldn’t necessarily hear a record from start to finish before purchasing it, so being able to take a chance on a hunch or a whim was refreshing. My record collection is littered with near hits from the dollar bin—discs no one would buy back, so I kept—but I look at these as fond mementos of a few hours spent looking at everything a given record store had to offer.

Reckless Records in Chicago not only surpassed Rhino’s dollar bin selection, but the two and a half hours between their locations and Champaign compelled me to pick up everything that triggered the slightest nerve for fear that I would never see it again. With a campus job in tow, I was fine with dropping seventy five bucks on a single trip, and I wanted to bring home as much as I possible could. The weighty bags typically contained a few full-price CDs, a smattering of lesser-priced used discs, a handful of cheap ’80s vinyl, and a lining of dollar bin selections. Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis typically forced me to go for the higher priced material, but I remember one time when all seven inches were on sale for a buck apiece. I recall buying around thirty of them.

Even Parasol Records—the bastion of my full-price indie rock purchases even before learning of Rhino Records—got in on the act when they moved to their Griggs Street location, setting up a nice sized dollar bin which provided a rare moment of finding what I was actually looking for in Sixto’s lone, self-titled album. This set-up was especially great because Record Swap, a longtime Urbana store, charged three (yes, three) dollars for selections from their wall of forgotten ’90s indie rock, a price I was largely unwilling to pay. Parasol deserves even more credit for the lasting effect of their old print catalogs, with one line descriptions of every band that I circled and memorized for future reference. Between these catalogs, the Trouser Press Guide to ’90s Rock, and recommendations from friends and magazines, I knew what I was looking at when I skimmed through a huge bin of cheap discs.

Throughout these adventures in dirtying my fingers and bolstering my stacks, I started noticing the trends, the various discs that would be in every dollar bin in a given city or in every dollar bin in every city; Agnes Gooch, I’m talking to you. Occasionally I even felt bad for such bands, but typically the response was more of a “How did they get this many CDs pressed?” I could understand why Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase, R.E.M.’s Monster, every Sugar album, and every Candlebox album litter higher priced sections in used stores (I blame record store hubris for not putting such frequent residents in the cheapest of cheap bins, or, preferably, their own landfill), but it was always the unknown bands, the complete failures of the post-grunge major label signing rush, that baffled me the most.

When I found In Your Ear in Harvard Square and its massive, double-layered dollar shelf, I figured that this finally might have lent some depth to the largely disappointing array of Boston record shops. Newbury Comics is passable for relatively new material, CD Spins (or whatever various locations are now called) typically has a few worthy used selections, and Twisted Village is excellent for when I want some bona fide psych-rock (which, sadly, is not that often), but the dollar bins attached to these and other stores have been small and underwhelming. In Your Ear took all of my prior assumptions about the residents of dollar bins and amplified them a thousand times.

Have you been searching for the complete discography of Claw Hammer? What about seven copies of Dig’s Dig? Do you need copies of their other material as well? What about Lucas maxi-singles? Would you prefer not to recognize the band name at all? Wait a second, everybody remembers the self-titled Tesla album, right? I bet you need that in the most carnal way possible.

If I had taken notes, that paragraph could go on forever.

The best thing I found in that bin was a promo of Knapsack’s This Conversation Is Ending Starting Right Now, and unlike my pre-.mp3 willingness to pick these up in order to hear an album on the cheap, there is almost no reason (besides supporting a record store in the most middling way possible) to pick up a cardboard sleeve–encased disc anymore. Perhaps at some point I would have buckled to the whim of hearing TripleFastAction’s first album on six different stereos (an experience akin to the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka, I can only imagine), but I slinked up the stairwell with nothing in hand, passing a crate of absolutely free Barbara Streisand LPs on my way to the door. There’s even another In Your Ear location over by the Paradise in Boston University turf, but unless I have some inkling for the complete output of J-Bird Records, I will not enter it.

I have two theories on this situation. First, In Your Ear had its heyday in approximately 1994. Since then, they’ve restocked the absolute bare minimum to remain open—a copy of the Killers’ Hot Fuss on LP, for example—while continually picking up marginal vinyl selections from estate sales and Goodwill stores and overpricing any album that seems remotely intriguing. (Big Black’s Songs About Fucking for fifteen bucks? No thanks.) The dollar bin filled up in 1998 and local residents simply knew better than to look through it. It may already be categorized as a landfill, but the store owners refuse to put the permit on display just in case someone comes in desperately searching for their college roommate’s frat brother’s cousin’s band, which put out one record on Atlantic in 1995, selling 1,600 copies of their 100,000 copy pressing.

Second, I’m finally tired with the process of record shopping. Whereas in 2000 I could easily outlast any companions on trips to record stores, at this point I just don’t care to see everything a given store has to offer. I’d rather find a way to purchase a disc new from a band or a store I like (Parasol, Tonevendor, even Newbury Comics in a pinch) than to pick it up for eight or ten bucks used from a store I dislike. Nine years of dollar bin shopping has taken its toll on me, sure, but I’ve also probably hit the reasonable limit of forgotten ’90s indie rock discs that my CD cabinet will hold without vomiting them out in disgust. Thanks to .mp3s, I purchase discs that I know I like instead of discs I think I might like because they’re on a familiar label or feature the first guitarist of a band whose second record showed promise. Taking chances requires a considerable amount of time and patience and results in more disappointments than crowning achievements, so I’m more willing to play it safe, even if it means paying more per disc.

Of course, there’s a third option in which this is just a phase and I’ll grow out of it, but I’ve already seen used book shopping surpass used CD shopping in my priority list. The best thing about buying used books is that virtually all of the authors I care about are dead, meaning that unlike the moral dilemma of buying used CDs of active contemporary bands and thereby not contributing to their capacity to make new music, proceeds from buying new books would only allow their families to enjoy more royalties and publishing companies to live off made commodities. The ironic thing is that even though I’m a graduate student in English, I probably know more about lesser-known ’90s indie rock than I do about lesser-known modernist poets. I’m sure there’s a Trouser Press Guide for this somewhere.

Between going to Atlanta for a wedding and being neck deep in research at the various libraries at Boston College, I’ve been busy, but I don’t know how well that translates to entertaining reports. I’d never been to Atlanta before and besides suffering in the sweltering heat, I don’t know if I “experienced” it in any notable way. The library research has been somewhat interesting, as I’ve spent a number of hours determining the degree of fame that minor literary figures received from scholarship to see if they would be worthy topics for my annotated bibliography. Finding that certain degree of fame—not as big as National Skyline, not as small as Days in December—is a bizarre process.

Through my travels in the stacks of the BC libraries, I noticed that Anthony Cronin, who wrote a biography of Flann O’Brien called No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien, is also a noted poet. (He also wrote a biography of Samuel Beckett that I should check out at some point.) I took his Collected Poems out early this week and enjoyed what I skimmed. Last night I happened to find a signed, used copy of said book at Brookline Booksmith. I typically don’t care much about rare editions or signed copies, but since I just spent a few hours in the rare books library hearing about signed editions and inscriptions, I figured that ten bucks was hardly an exorbitant price to pay. As it turns out, that’s on the absolute low-end of any online listings I found.

I picked up two somewhat recent math-/post-rock hybrids, Russian Circles’ Enter and the Timeout Drawer’s Alone EP, at the usually frustrating Newbury Comics. (I have a rant about how Boston record stores make me long for Parasol, Reckless, and Vintage Vinyl, but I’ll save that for another day.) Russian Circles frequently sound like the logical midpoint between Pelican and Explosions in the Sky, and though they never quite reach the heights of either band, Enter is a consistent, muscular debut. I hadn’t heard anything from the Timeout Drawer since I received their debut, A Record of Small Histories, as a promo back in the day, but I saw some positive press and downloaded it. Thankfully, they have moved past the “instrumental Cure” sound of that era, choosing a better balance between aggressive post-rock and their past synthetic urges. Semi-epic opener “Man Must Breathe” is the obvious highlight, but the rest of the EP is solid and the video from a song from their previous record is well done.

Of course, if any record store in the Boston area stocked Mock Orange records, I would gladly forgo purchasing the above book and records in order to pick up the excellent First EP or Mind Is Not Brain. Jon pines for The Record Play, but there are some fantastic songs on these records. The jury’s still out for the split with the Band Apart, but I harbor no illusions of ever finding that.

I missed out on quite a few presumably excellent concerts this semester—Isis, the Terrastock Festival in Providence, Mogwai, Part Chimp, Arab Strap, Silver Jews, Minus the Bear, to name a few—but I did manage to catch a few shows here and there. I’ll recap them here, but hopefully when I get my photos in order, I’ll have pictures from a few of these sets.

My friend Ryan Chavez is now the drummer for the Smoking Popes, who I’d heard briefly during their mid-’90s heyday, but who were an alt-rock radio staple for my wife’s high school days in the Chicago suburbs. We caught a date from their reunion tour at the Middle East, and while I can’t say I rushed out to buy any of their records, they put on a good, tight set. It was fun seeing Ryan play a different instrument than his guitar/singing duties in Panic in Detroit, and I hope to catch his former bandmate Melissa Lonchambon’s new band Sharks and Sailors if they ever make it up to New England.

During spring break, two of my grad school compatriots and I drove to New York City to wander around Manhattan for the day and catch the Life and Times at the Mercury Lounge. (For those wondering, I have now seen Shiner or TLAT fifteen times in seven cities—Champaign, Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New York—and eight once TLAT finally comes to Boston.) Adam and I got to the club just in time to suffer through the entirety of Langhorne Slim’s lengthy set. Langhorne already seemed to be a bit of an over-eager showman, but bolstered by his local, adoring audience, he used every opportunity to tell inane, rambling lead-ins to his hodge-podge of alt-country, blues, and honky tonk. Naturally, the majority of these fans left after his set.

The Life and Times played another solid set, playing some of the new material destined for their split ten-inch with Nueva Vulcano (the new-ish band from Artur from Aina; he sings in Spanish) and their EP on the Japanese label Stiff Slack, both slated to arrive later this summer. Nothing completely revelatory (I reserve this for the first time I saw “The Egg” and “The Simple Truth,” long in advance of the record), but “Mea Culpa” in particular sounded great. I cannot emphasize enough how much this band needs to come to Boston after their tour of Spain.

I missed out on attending the convergence of notable drone-/psych-/post-rock acts at Terrastock, but I caught Paik, the band I most wanted to see, and a few other acts from the festival playing a warm-up gig at PA’s Lounge. The Kitchen Cynics were actually a one-man band from Scotland, an older, charismatic gentleman who told humorous anecdotes disguised as songs. His guitar work was presumably got him into the Terrastock set, featuring some looped backing parts and intricate arpeggios. Thought Forms, a three-piece “post-rock” band from England, followed this surprise up with a far more typical set, sounding like they’d done their homework on early Paik and more recent Explosions in the Sky records but hadn’t figured out how to make those structures their own. Landing played next, building up small waves of gurgling electronics and shimmering guitar into controlled swells. I would have enjoyed their set a lot more if nagging thoughts about a presentation the next day weren’t pulling me away from the Darla-endorsed Bliss Out.

Paik headlined, focusing on material from their new album Monster of the Absolute. I had only learned of its impending existence when checking out their site before the show, and from a low quality clip of “Phantoms,” I knew I was in for a treat. I had never seen Paik before, but I scored a VHS of a performance circa Corridors during a Parasol clean-up, which showed the band’s affinity for dizzying light shows, but didn’t stray too much from the source material. This time, however, they built up the basic structure of the songs with guitar loops, and then added woozy slabs of feedback over top. The volume was pummeling in a way I haven’t felt since seeing Mogwai a few years back, and I was glad to be sitting in front of the band taking pictures instead of standing with the rest of the crowd. Monster of the Absolute displays some of this layering, but not to the gut-punching depths of the live performance.

Last night I saw Murder by Death, Langhorne Slim, and Metal Hearts at the Middle East. I hadn’t heard too much about Metal Hearts (Pitchfork said they sound like Arab Strap, but that comparison did not come to mind) and perhaps that’s because they’re not exactly memorable. The first few songs had more of a laid-back Modest Mouse meets American Football vibe, but keyboards and saxophone rotated into the set and confirmed that, yes, I was watching background music. Adam and I had already suffered through Langhorne on his home court in NYC, but we watched a few songs to prove to our ladies that our complaints were valid. Lo and behold, they were. He told far fewer stories, but played the same songs, so we left until Murder by Death’s posted start time.

This show marks the first time I’ve seen Murder by Death without a keyboard player (if memory serves, the ninth time overall), and while most of the material didn’t seem lacking, playing “Those Who Stayed” without “Those Who Left” to close the set ended the night on a strange note. I’ll admit that Adam Turla’s voice fits their new western-themed songs far better than their early “pretty” songs like “Intergalactic Menopause” or “Canyon Inn, Room 16,” but it’s rare to see a band take such a drastic shift away from their previous material. Tipped by “Sometimes the Line Walks You,” Johnny Cash and Tom Waits have replaced the Cure and Mogwai as latent reference points on In Bocca Al Lupo. I long for more post-rock inflection to creep into the new material, but the tighter structures are preventing that for the time being.