Another Autumn Playlist

Posted: October 31st, 2009 | Author: Nathan | Filed under: Articles About Music | Tags: broken social scene, conor oberst, explosions in the sky, gillian welch, grand archives, iron & wine, m83, matt pond pa, neutral milk hotel, the radio dept., tv on the radio | 1 Comment »

So after listening to Brady’s Autumn Shuffle last week, I was inspired to create a seasonal playlist of my own. I didn’t put quite as much thought into my list as Brady, rather I simply chose to create a list of songs and albums that I feel both musically and lyrically fit the mood of the season. Let me know if you have any songs or albums that you really fall for this time of year. I hope that this playlist makes your ears bleed til winter comes.

matt pond PA

I really love this group a lot and in fact I find that almost their entire catalog fits that autumnal season very well, especially Several Arrows Later. But instead of choosing a track from that album I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and include this excellent cover of another band that fits the fall season very well, Neutral Milk Hotel.

matt pond PA – In An Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel)

Iron & Wine

Here is a guy I am sure you are all familiar with by now. Someone who like Nick Drake also got his first big exposure through the “Garden State” soundtrack. Well I find his contemplative lo-fi folk music to be great company on a sunny fall afternoon. One of my favorite things to do is to go for a drive in the fall while the leaves are in transition and this song I chose for you here is one of my favorite companions along the way.

Iron & Wine – The Trapeze Swinger

M83′s Saturdays = Youth

Saturdays was an album that I heard last year and it went in one ear and out the other without making much of an impact. But this fall it has penetrated down to my very core and has become one of my favorite records. And I attribute a lot of that to the season in which it was heard, both physically and in my personal life.

M83 – Graveyard Girl

Explosions in the Sky’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place

One of the best experimental quartets around. They were the first instrumental band that I was able to really get into and I find myself consistently going back to this album each fall. You might recognize them from their work for the soundtrack to “Friday Night Lights,” the television show.

Explosions In the Sky – Your Hand In Mine

The Radio Dept.

Here is another group that I would say has an autumn feel to their entire catalog. Something about their music just takes me back. It just puts me in this very retrospective mood. It’s not uncommon for music from my past to take me back to the time when it first captured me. But I just discovered this band about a year ago. I don’t know how they do it.

The Radio Dept. – Pulling Our Weight

Here are a few more tracks to help round out the playlist.

TV on the Radio – Family Tree

Grand Archives – Torn Blue Foam Couch

Broken Social Scene – Guilty Cubicles

Conor Oberst + Gillian Welch – Lua

Massive Attack’s Minor Failure

Posted: October 16th, 2009 | Author: Nathan | Filed under: Album Reviews, Articles About Music | Tags: massive attack, tv on the radio | Comments Off

The organ stabs on “Splitting the Atom,” the title track from Massive Attack’s new EP, are almost so self-conscioiusly spooky that one wonders if the group is performing with a wink instead of a grimace. The song, with its twirling synths with whispered harmonies, is Dracula’s hoedown sing-along.

It’s still Massive Attack’s world-weary sense of foreboding, but something has changed. The group has upgraded from eerily organic to starkly dystopian.

It’s been six years since the group’s last proper album and Robert Del Naja (3D) and Grant Marshall (Daddy G) have spent the time listening: to their new spouses, to British politics and to the rock band TV on the Radio, according to a recent interview with “Under the Radar.”

Little remains the same. Gone are the Eastern flavors of Massive Attack’s past work, replaced by disfigured click tracks and ominous sheets of digital sound. The clumsy thud of the two final tracks (both of which are throwaway remixes) is just lazy coming from the production team that crafted “Teardrop.” The songs stalk around in circles, eternally builing up to nothing.

It’s odd then, that this lonely dance music was such a collaborate effort. The group shares vocals with longtime friend and dub legend Horace Andy on the title track and the results are familiarly unsettling. TVOTR’s singer Tunde Adebimpe guests on “Pray For Rain,” the release’s best song, while Guy Garvey and Martina Topley-Bird whine the EP to a close. So much talent, but where is the songwriting?

Not here. Splitting the Atom is a release that vainly searches for humanity in spite of its own electronic trappings. The band has finally escaped to the club scene that their past work merely flirted with, to make the kind of monochromatic dance music that floats in and out of listeners’ minds. Massive Attack, for the first time in their career, holds tone above song.

If Splitting the Atom is a taste of Massive Attack’s next full-length, which is set for a February release, it’s like to sound unlike anything the group has released. That’s a shame.