12.27.05
The truth (ok, just an article) about power naps. Synopsis: 5-20 minutes, good. 20+ minutes, not good.
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12.26.05
The Double Feature Finder might be a very useful site to have around. Now you can actually plan which movies you're going to sneak into. Check it out if you have $10 and an afternoon on your hands.
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Just a quick note to any mac users who might possibly have waited to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 — like me — but if you're using Safari, you might need to point the browser to MT's style sheet (in your static folder) in order to get it to properly update from the cached version. Otherwise you're in for a little bit of a UI shocker.
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12.24.05
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Christmakah.
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12.20.05
It's time! One of my favorite past-times is telling you what I think of things, and hopefully telling you how to think of things. Here's my Top 10 songs of 2005. Honorable mention after the jump.
- The New Pornographers - The Jessica Numbers
Great, big staccato drums, full three-part harmonies, pop swagger and Neko Case. What more could I ever possibly want? Twin Cinema is everything I had hoped for from The New Pornographers this time around, and they deliver the entire album on this song alone.
- Spoon - I Turn My Camera On
I went back and forth on this one, knowing that there are so many other truly amazing songs on this album, but iTunes tells me that I've listened to this one more than any other single song this year. Add to that fact the track's immediacy, it's inventiveness and it's enormous tension (building up for the rest of the album to swing into gear, really) and you've got a winner. I had to go with my instinct here.
- Wolf Parade - It's a Curse
The best piece of spook-rock I've heard all year (compare to: Spoon's Merchants Of Soul). I love the warm, thick guitar hooks, hammering piano and the Dracula keyboard and reverb combo. It's not the prettiest track on the album, and not the most ear-catching, but it's easily my favorite.
- Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
When I first heard this album, I didn't know what to make of it. When it was finally over, I was exhausted. Sufjan Steven's isn't a musician so much as a writer armed with a band. And this story more than any of the others struck me with it's painful beauty. The part where he drops the bottom out and gets all silent and confessional? I almost cry every single time.
- Fiona Apple - O' Sailor
I love Fiona Apple. There's nothing more to say about that. It's maybe the same story of lovelessness and pain, but it's thrilling and sexy every single time she sings it. Sing me those alliterations, Fiona.
- The Decemberists - The Engine Driver
This was the track that broke The Decemberists for me. Strip away the costumes and the fantasy, all of the imaginative and fascinating posturing that they always seem to wrap themselves in, and here you'll find a beautiful, striking, simple love song. This song changed everything they've ever done for me.
- Final Fantasy - The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead
Canadian Owen Pallett makes beautiful music that you've probably never heard. His work on the string arrangements for Arcade Fire are probably as close as most people would have come to the one-man band, but Evan and I saw him open for as well as play with them. Evan locked onto the music well before I did, and is really the only reason I was graced with this beautiful album. Full of delicate keyboard rhythms, lush strings and overwrought lyrics, this song is easily my favorite (of many) on the album. And it's a perfect close for the quiet, emotional core of any mix cd, including this one.
- Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah - Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood
One part Bowie, one part Talking Heads and a handful of klonopin and you might be able to replicate these guy's uniquely loose, jangly pop energy. The tripping drum line and the catchy but almost-unrecognizable vocals make this song.
- Beck - Earthquake Weather
I love Beck. I've loved everything he's done. And I love that, by and large, every album sounds different from the last. But not in an obnoxious kind of manic reinvention way. There are definitely some songs on this album that I find uninteresting. But I love the super-approachable single Girl, and I love this song even more. It's laid back groove is great, the production is stellar, the bridge is a treat and the chorus sticks to your ribs. Also, I love earthquake weather anyway.
- Antony and the Johnsons - Hope There's Someone
This is a beautiful, wrenching song. All of Antony's music is. I love it but I always feel like I should love it even more than I do. It's so utterly unique in today's music scene, and the fact that it's been able to reach such critical acclaim continually surprises me. His soft warble telegraphs such a deep, resonant emotion that it's impossible to ignore. Maybe one of the most impossible to ignore songs that I've heard this year. The piano crescendo, a kind of heavenly ascent, moves me to tears.
- Architecture in Helsinki - It's 5!
Quirky, funny, catchy. It's everything I never got from the Firey Furnaces.
- The Lovekevins - Blame the English
The guitars! The guitars!
- Hey Willpower - Hundredaire
A local favorite, they're too high concept (or low thought, depending on how you want to look at it) to get very far, I'm afraid. But that doesn't stop me from loving this song oh so much.
- The Mountain Goats - This Year
The opening bars of this song, the chorus, the upbeat spirit of it despite the utter despair of it's subject; if I could pick a theme song for 2005....
- Sufjan Stevens - The Lord God Bird
Another testament to Sufjan's amazing abilities. This intricate, winding little piece of Americana was written for an NPR story about the Lord God Bird, a particularly spectacular species of woodpecker that was recently rediscovered in Arkansas after being believed extinct. Throw anything at this man and he'll make gold from it. I know he's kind of preaching to me a little, but if this is what preaching sounds like, I'll take all I can get.
- LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations
Listen to this song and tell me you don't have to move your fucking ass.
- Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To
No matter how hard they try, I don't think anyone will ever quite be Franz Ferdinand. They can't make a cohesive album to save their soul, but they can write a single like no one else.
- Gorillaz - El Manana
For a second, I thought Blur was back. I hate Damon Albarn and I love Damon Albarn.
- Calexico & Iron and Wine - History of Lovers
This is the year I fell in love with faux-country.
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I'm still working on my Top 10 list for music in 2005, but while skimming the various lists over at Pitchfork, I noticed that Carl Newman (of The New Pornographers) seems to share exactly the same tastes as I do. Should this even surprise me?
Update: Also worth checking out is Said The Gramophone's top songs of 2005 — like my friend Evan, they just didn't have the self control to keep it to 10. Not that I mind.
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Do you like Country music? I mean the good kind, the foot stomping, whiskey swilling kind? My close friends Kate and Jen have a great country band called Axton Kincaid that they play in. They have a fair amount of shows around town and they're always a good time. Just last week they went into the studio with the full band to record some songs. A handful of those are posted on the band's website. Check them out if you get a chance, especially hey donna which I think is far and away their best song. I was never really a fan of country music, but if only more of it sounded like this, I think I would be. And if you can, come check out one of their shows. update: I just went ahead and posted the song here for you to grab, in case you're too lazy. And I've been listening to it over and over this weekend.
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Microsoft puts the screws on laggard Mac users who still try to get by with the clunky, decrepit Internet Explorer. Maybe this will finally get the IT department at my office (and many, many other places) to proclaim the crown of "official" support for Firefox or Safari. One can hope.
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I've been off for a while from here. I think I left off just before Thanksgiving, more or less. Which was lovely, thank you, spent at my little sister's home down in Orange County. It's been a hard year for me, and a harder year for my parents, and an even harder year for my sister. And just this week even, things got just a little worse. So it was good for all of us to get out of the rut of year's past and spend a little nuclear time together, removed from all of the trappings of normality that we don't quite feel entitled to this year.
I concluded my whirlwind November of traveling, racking up something in the range of 10,000 frequent flier miles hopping back and forth from here to LA for work. It was fun at first and exhausting in the end. And all the while, friendships were rolling on and new relationships were struggling to take root. Which made the weekly departures that much harder to work around.
Things are, on the whole, quite good right now. I've started to see someone seriously, and I'm trying to make my way through that without a flashlight or a compass. He's a really great guy, a friend I've known for a little while, and I can only hope to be as good for him as he is for me. Time will tell.
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12.13.05
Listening to some internet radio this morning, the morning news guy on KCRW just called it Bareback Mountain. I thought that was just us that said that?
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12.07.05
Happy birthday Jessie!
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12.03.05
Has anyone tried Flock yet? Or rather, has anyone used it for more than a few minutes? Update: the blog editor adds p tags. Damn.
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Last.fm is getting better and better every day. Their new recommendations engine is pretty great, and the latest version of the radio player application is super solid. I'm in love with the personal radio function and actually considering a subscription so I can get access to the other personalized channels.
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12.02.05
The new version of Firefox (1.5) seems like a much zippier browser than the previous version, but on the mac, it still uses QuickDraw (instead of OpenGL, I think?) to paint it's windows. Which is fine and dandy, but if you're a picky user (such as myself) you'll find the occasional lag to be annoying. Luckily, there's a G4 and G5 optimized version available. And the difference is noticeable. Check it out if you've ever felt like the Fox was too slow for your taste. Or even if you loved it anyway. And of course if you have a Mac. (I think there's a version available somewhere that optimized for some Intel or AMD processors too, but I wouldn't know about those things.)
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