Ingen radio

So. There is currently no snow in the air or on the ground. Thus, I went ahead and walked all the way over to KPSU -- with my computer, which is not exactly a bag of feathers -- only to find that, while I got into the building just fine (my access badge still works) the fire doors to the basement were locked tight. Terrific. Since I know of no other way to access the basement or the sub-basement, where KPSU is located, there will be no show this evening. I’m sorry. I was really looking forward to this one, too.

There will also be no shows for the next two weeks, because I will soon be leaving town -- unless, of course, we finally get the massive snow and ice storm people keep shutting things down in preparation for. Maybe I will do a best of 2008 show on January 2, 2009, when I come back -- if I make it back, and if I manage to get in to the station. In the meantime, expect my 2008 albums list tomorrow or the next day, and, probably, since I will get bored, another post or two at least.

Besked

It's been snowing on and off all morning, but so far doesn't seem to have stuck. At the moment, I'm still planning on going in for the show -- which will be my favorites of 2008 -- tonight, but if the weather takes a turn for the worse, I may change my mind. In case anyone (alarmingly) checks this thing more than once a day, I'll try to keep you posted.

Even though there were several other, far more pressing, things I should have been doing, I spent the morning deleting all my deep links and mp3s no longer offered as free downloads by the artist and/or label. Since I went through the entire archive -- almost two years' worth, and for the first six months or so, I was apparently living in fear of the RIAA, as I refused to host any mp3s myself -- there were quite a few. But I think I got them all. I love cleanliness and order.

Now I will go do something productive -- like actually plan my show.

Yndlinge sange af 2008

First, a few things to keep in mind:

I don’t listen to a lot of new music, and what I do listen to is not very diverse. These are probably not the best of the year; they are my favorites of the year. Also, unlike many other blogs/websites, I will not repeat artists -- otherwise these lists would be even more homogenous.

Even with all the rules I set for myself, I had a terrible time narrowing this list down to ten, and then, once I’d finally managed that (actually, as you can see, I didn’t), I had just as much trouble putting it into order. The numbers -- 1-10 -- really don’t mean a whole lot.

These are my ten favorite songs that didn’t appear on one of my ten favorite albums:

Except I have two honorable mentions:

12. 7-11 (from the album By-The-Numbers) – the Postmarks
7-11 is a cover of a song by the Ramones, but it sounds like the Shangri-Las. That should be recommendation enough. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m so attracted to this. I was never a huge fan of girl groups, and this sounds, from the ooh-ooh-las to the string instrumentation, exactly like a sixties girl group song; everything is spot-on. My inability to pinpoint just what it is that I like is probably the reason this is an honorable mention instead of being on the list proper. But then again, maybe that uncertainty is what makes me like it.
By the way, if I ever hear the original Ramones version of this song, I will probably have some kind of a seizure. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must sound like.
(stream full album)

11. In the New Year (from the album You & Me) – the Walkmen
The first time I heard this song, I had already pretty much decided on my top ten songs -- but this is so good I decided to tack it on at the last minute. Lately especially, I’ve gotten to really like year songs -- and this, lyrically like many of the others I know -- is bittersweet; looking forward, but tinged with unhappy memories. Even with all its competition, In the New Year probably wins best lyrics of 2008 for me; I would love to quote them all. And sonically, it’s fascinating. I don’t know what those instruments are -- maybe just a really awesome organ? -- but wow. The song starts out like an electric Bob Dylan ballad and retains touches of that sound throughout, but it quickly grows into a tortured yet soaring, crashing, almost anthemic thing. It’s almost off balance, but it hits just right.
(stream)

Now, the actual ten:

10. Travel as I Wait (from the album The Anger) – Tomas Halberstad
I can’t quite place what I like about this one, either. It doesn’t sound much like the other songs on my top ten. I think what I like best is the sound. This is just one guy, but the vocals are layered on thick (and the voice and lyrics go together well) and there are so many little hints of different instruments, many of which you rarely hear elsewhere (by which I mean in other music). This strikes me as a very Swedish song, but it’s also very unique.
(mp3 -- also available at tomashalberstad.wordpress.com)

9. Godzilla vs the Island of Manhattan (with You and I Somewhere In Between) (from the album I Worked on the Ships) – ballboy
This is a silly love song that’s serious. It could mean so many things. Every time I listen to it, I think of a new one.
(stream full album)

8. Two Skylights (from the album Hurry Up and Thrill Me) – Southern Belle
I did a fantastic write-up for Hurry Up and Thrill Me, and then realized the entire thing was about Two Skylights. Not only is this my favorite Southern Belle song (unfortunately, it sounds very little like the rest of their album; I’m reminded more of Ross McLeron’s solo work), but it’s also one of the most appropriate songs I’ve heard in a long time. Even the name -- which doesn’t appear anywhere in the lyrics -- is very fitting. I first heard Two Skylights this spring, and it’s a good spring song -- a bit morose, but also hopeful -- or even a summer song -- uncomplicated and, dare I say it, somehow very pure. You can hear their youth.

7. How Did We Forget (from the album From the Valley to the Stars) – El Perro del Mar
This is such an old-sounding song. My grandmother would love it. I love it, too. The first time I heard it, I knew -- this song was made for vinyl. I can imagine it most, in fact, as a scratchy record with a skip in it, the same loop playing over and over. Of course, I’d keep my record in pristine condition, if I had one, but this is one of those songs that would still sound terrific with a bit of dust and a few scratches. To add character, though it has plenty of that already. Yes it’s slow and yes it’s repetitive and yes it’s true it doesn’t really go anywhere, but something about it is -- God -- just gorgeous.
(stream)

6. Arrows (from the EP Favors and Fields) – Einar Stray
This is a really pretty song -- layered, beautifully orchestrated; delicate; soothing. Instrumental for nearly the first two minutes, Arrows has that Icelandic sound -- think Seabear, think Múm -- despite Einar Stray’s being from Norway. I don’t know much about Norwegian music, but if the rest of it sounds anything like this, I’ll be listening a lot more.
And I will refrain from being jealous because this is so good it’s beyond me. Yeah, jealous -- because this guy (not band -- one guy) is eighteen. I’m amazed.
(mp3 -- also available at nrk.no)

5. I’m a Lady (feat Trouble Andrew) (from the album Santogold) – Santogold
I didn’t like Santogold at first, and once I started liking her, I still didn’t like this song for quite a while. It’s different from my usual fare; poppier somehow (though I have no idea what genre this belongs to). And, of course, it’s catchy as hell. I appreciate it, though, especially the changes in pitch and inflection. The production is good, too. Not to sound too technical, though -- I’m a Lady is (in my opinion, at least) a perfectly executed fuck-you. And it’s a versatile one -- it could go so many ways. That kind of thing is hard to come by.

4. Lucky (B-side from the single Neo Violence) – the Tough Alliance
The lyrics (which are not the Tough Alliance’s own; it’s a cover) are not the most brilliant. I don’t really know what this song is about. Listening, I pay more attention to the sound. It’s floaty and ethereal and, as I wrote before, “sounding as if they’re shouted down a long tunnel, the vocals are echo-y, far away, perhaps almost all the way gone… To me, it sounds kinda like a memory.” That’s still what I’m most likely to think of with this song -- a memory, a lost childhood, or maybe just a dream from a childhood I never had. Definite melancholia.
(mp3 via Pitchfork)

3. Lovesong (B-side from the single Weekender) – Oliver North Boy Choir
I wrote about this one before, too – “It’s the right kind of love song -- one for the broken-hearted. I guess nearly all (good) love songs are somewhat broken-hearted, but this one seems even more so. It’s perhaps what happens when you’re still in love, but don’t want to be, kind of; the lie that you need to tell yourself, even though you know it’s not true.” There’s only one thing I’d like to add to that. It’s slow and delicate and lovely enough, instrumentally, but it’s the lyrics that really kill. Once I tried to listen to this ironically and it just didn’t work. It doesn’t want to be, but this song is totally a lie. And that makes it even more painful, and even more real, and an even better song.
(stream)

2. Oh! You Pretty Things (from the album Life Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered) – Au Revoir Simone
Au Revoir Simone made my list last year, with their sophomore album The Bird of Music. They released a remix album this year, but I didn’t like it. What I did -- do -- like is Oh! You Pretty Things, a weird, vastly slowed-down cover from an even weirder tribute album. My favorite part, I think, is the last minute and a quarter or so, which is instrumental and sounds like a lullaby, but I really don’t know what it is about this song that makes me so like it. Perhaps it’s something about the slightly fuzzy organs, the echo, the three-part vocal harmonies… I don’t know. I do know that it’s good, though. And, even as much as I like David Bowie, Au Revoir Simone have got him beat on this one.
(stream)

1. In a Jar (from the album Best of Bakers at Dawn) – Bakers at Dawn
If I were asked to choose a favorite new artist for the year, it would easily be Bakers at Dawn. In a Jar is only one of my favorite of his songs (and its not even one of the ones where he sounds exactly like Elliott Smith!). It’s short and demo-y, very raw. The lyrics aren’t terrific (although, admittedly, the voice pretty much is), and the guitar isn’t all that special. Two other instruments appear briefly, though, and while they’re oftentimes background, almost indistinguishable from the guitar, both lend the song an interesting texture, and all of it fits together perfectly. It sounds good -- really good.
Other songs may be catchy, may appeal to some fleeting sensation or resonate only among a select few, may hit and then fade quickly away. It’s rare that a song comes along that doesn’t do any of those things, but is instead simply and in its own right a good song. In a Jar, I think, does that. This song is gonna last.

--DL--
Travel as I Wait (Tomas Halberstad)
Arrows (Einar Stray)
Lucky (the Tough Alliance)

Bedste ti musik-beslægtede tinge fra 2008

10 Best Music-Related Things of 2008 -- I think that's pretty self-explanatory. No actual songs or albums included here.

10. Attending the Roskilde Festival. I guess it would be pretty lame of me to not put that on here.

9. Discovering some really wonderful stuff on albums/by bands I thought I hated. I’m thinking of two songs in particular: Heartbeats (video) (thanks Rasmus), from the 2006 album Deep Cuts, by the Knife (who I otherwise can’t stand), and The Twist, from Metric’s (still pretty blah) album Grow Up and Blow Away, originally recorded as their unreleased debut in 2001, and officially released for the first time early last year.

8. Becoming friends with Arya Imig. (I needed another one, and if that’s not music-related, I don’t know what is.)

7. Turning 21. (This would be higher on the list if I had actually utilized this even once.)

6. Seeing VEGA. All wood, all original (from, I believe, the 1950s), acoustics that I could tell -- even without a band in it -- would be beautiful. Possibly the most perfect venue in the world.

5. Rock camp kids. I worked briefly with two different groups this summer, doing sound, and as jealous as I am of these thirteen-year-old guitar virtuosos and shy seventeen-year-old singer-songwriters, I’m even more pleased by their talent. No matter how terrible they might sound (usually not so much so), any band whose members are visibly underage gets a plus in my book and a smile on my face.

4. Starting to like garage rock again. To explain this, I should explain my listening history, which is a bit weird. I’ll try to be brief: the first band I remember listening to, when I was VERY young, was the Beatles. The sixties and seventies have always been present. When I was a little older, I listened to mid-nineties sugary alternative pop, which gradually turned into alternative rock of the embarrassing sort by middle school. Midway through high school I convinced myself to like punk rock (PS Josh I never liked the Casualties) and this persisted through my first year of college. In my second year, I began studying Danish and listening to Danish streaming radio, which begat my current love of indie pop and twee.
With each new period, I suppressed the ones before it. Of course, there was always some overlap, both forward and backward -- I’ve liked Sigur Rós since I was about sixteen; I still occasionally listen to the Distillers -- but largely, previous tastes were eradicated. The sounds of the sixties, while still floating, annoyingly, around the peripherals, took the hardest hit. But in the past year or so I’ve been realizing more and more that many of the bands I like most are heavily influenced by music from that era, and I’ve been able to appreciate again the simultaneously jangling and fuzzy sound. Still, it’s only in the past few months that I’ve begun to really enjoy garage rock and psychadelia -- both new and old -- without feelings of derision and guilt, and I’m so glad for it.

3. These emails... Yeah, right. Like I am really going to let strangers read my mail.

2. Being in a position to take these photographs. It’s not actually the pictures that I care so much about -- it’s where I was standing. And what I was hearing.

1. Doing sound for bands whose singers run their vocal mics through guitar pedals. As far as I can recall, this has happened twice -- first with Andy Combs and the Moth (Let’s Ride – mp3) and more recently with Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk (full set – mp3) -- and it sounds awesome. Both the bands and the way the vocals turned out are really different, but wow -- people should do this more often. It’s only rarely that I make my own copy of a live recording, but I did that in both these cases, and I’ve listened to them over and over and over.

Best (favorite) songs and albums will be here soon.

--DL--
Let's Ride (Andy Combs and the Moth)
Live on KPSU (Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk)

Ærefulde omtaler?

While I wait for a couple mp3s to upload, here is yesterday’s playlist:

1. Warm Hands – An Horse
2. Tonite – Jarvis Cocker
3. Tell the King – the Libertines
4. Drama Queen – moi Caprice (DK)
5. Heartbeats – the Knife (SV)
6. The Squirrel and the Pine-Cone – Girls Love Rallie (DK)
7. Seconds Away – the Legends (SV)
8. Mom and Dad – the Bear Quartet (SV)
9. Relay Race – Billie the Vision and the Dancers (SV)
10. The Room, Tarzana – the Radio Dept. (SV)
11. Fish and Shark – Jonas Game (SV)
12. Love No (Delorean Remix) – the Teenagers
13. Soundwaves – Attention Now! (N)
14. Let’s Go Hunting – Blue Horns
15. Oh My God – Ida Maria (N)
16. Dance, Dance, Dance – Lykke Li (SV)

The past two shows (yesterdays and Wednesday’s) I tried to play songs I liked from 2008, but which for one reason or another probably won’t wind up on my forthcoming best-of lists.

The hour following mine (as well as Live Friday, to a lesser extent) also features a bunch of songs/albums which I had not previously heard (Lykke Li’s Dance, Dance, Dance should be included in that list) but that have been popping up on other people’s best-of lists this year -- including my personal favorite of those, the Walkmen’s In the New Year, as well as almost the entirety of No Age’s album Nouns.

--DL--
Ashtrays Podcast (12. december)

Sluttet

Ikke med radio, men med min slutprøver. Og måske også, for en gang, med skole. Jeg er så træt af, alt jeg læser, måtte jeg snart hoste op igen. Hvis skribenter tænker og mener halv af alle tinge vi skriver og siger om dem og deres historier, den hader jeg alle af dem. Det er kun for meget -- og det kan jeg mere...

Men, radioprogrammet fra i onsdags -- det var godt, og bedre fordi jeg havde endnu sluttet min sidst slutprøve. Her er min spilleliste:

1. And Sleep al Mar – Au Revoir Simone
2. La Strada nel Bosco – Jens Lekman (SV)
3. Exit Bag – Andy Love (SV)
4. The Sweetness of Air France – Taken by Trees (SV, SV)
5. English Music (Destroyer) – Cake on Cake (SV)
6. At Some Point – Bakers at Dawn (SV)
7. Junk Bond Trader – Elliott Smith
8. Mind Blindness – Dirty on Purpose
9. Explosions – the Mary Onettes (SV)
10. Black Pearl – Death Valley Sleepers (DK)
11. You Don’t Dance – Lupus (DK)
12. Den Støjende Tid – Lampshade (DK)
13. Going to Where the Tea Trees Are – Peter Von Poehl (SV)
14. Young Turks (Disco Pusher remix) – Au Revoir Simone
15. Stay (Just a Little Bit More) – the Dø (F)

Og næste onsdag (17. november) skal jeg have min “Bedst af 2008.” Jeg har ikke endnu bestemt, om jeg skal spille yndlinge sange eller et sang fra mine yndlinge albumer, eller hvad... men det skal altså være et meget godt program -- det skal jeg nyde, i det mindste.

Jeg elsker “bedst af” lister -- ikke kun mine eget. Men jeg er ikke særlig godt med at lytte til nye musik, da albumerne kommer først ud, og så mangler jeg meget af årets bedste plader -- men den, i december, men denne lister, kan jeg finde ud af, hvad jeg skal prøve for næste året...

Så skal jeg faktist skrive tre lister i år -- en for sange, en for albumer, og også en af den ti tinge som var, synes jeg, bedste musik-beslægtede tinge for mig i året. (Den sidste er kun fordi jeg vil gerne skrive den; den må du ikke gerne læse.) Jeg synes, albumlisten er meste vigtig, så skal jeg sætte den op her sidste, måske næste torsdag, efter radioprogrammet. Andre to lister skal kom før den, måske i morgen og sondag, men jeg ved ikke.

Og også, efter programmet næste onsdag -- 17. december -- skal jeg igen til hos min forældre, så skal der ikke være radioprogrammer igen før januar.

Du må download Jens Lekmans sang La Strada nel Bosco, som jeg kan godt fordi 1) han synger på italiensk, og 2) det kommer fra en EP hedder You Deserve Someone Better than a Bum Like Me. Fantastisk.

English (short version) -- Next Wednesday’s show (that’s 17 december) will be my “best of 2008” list. I haven’t decided whether I’ll play my favorite songs, try to represent my favorite albums, or what, but it will be good. Since it’s a Wednesday, I’ll be talking again in Danish (perhaps a little English, though, but perhaps not), but I will post in the next week or so three “best of” lists -- one for albums, one for songs, and one called “The ten best music-related things of 2008,” which may appear as soon as tomorrow.

--DL--
Ashtrays Podcast (10. december 2008)
La Strada nel Bosco (Jens Lekman)

Ekstra tid...

Back in Portland again and ridiculously busy.

Last night -- two radio hours, covering for Sound Judgment. The playlist is on the KPSU website, as are podcasts for hours one and two. Don’t expect a bonus Ashtrays, though; I played all of three Scandinavian artists. An okay program, though.

December’s upon us already, and I’m starting to think about my year-end lists (which will hopefully be completed a bit earlier than last year’s). Right now I’m listening to the new EP from the Fine Arts Showcase. It’s really good. And free.

More later.