Remember when you used to make mix tapes to make friends and impress girls? So do I. And, I miss it. Therefore, I bring you the new endeavor from our humble little blog; The Sabauteur Radio Hour.
To kick off my excitement of all things musical in 2012, here is the very first episode of a new podcast type effort I'm calling The Sabauteur Radio Hour. The concept is pretty simple: There are songs I like and some stuff I want to say about those songs. So, that is primarily what happens here.
Along the way, I will attempt to uncover the new, revisit the old and aged and talk about what's going on in music that excites me. In the first installment we check out the new single from the forthcoming Shins LP. I wax poetic about the first LP from Youth Lagoon, wish a happy birthday to a soul legend, mention many times, many bands on the playlist that will also be playing at Coachella, and I'll explain why The Eagles are a far greater scourge on society than Marilyn Manson or Judas Priest.
In our new weekly series, I will write about the five records I have been spinning regularly over the last week. There is not an expiration date. The records included can be from any time period at all. All entries are eligible to appear for multiple weeks. In fact, repetition is likely due to the fact that while I listen to a fair amount of music, it's not as much as I'd like to make time for. Also, as some of you may know, we have a vinyl only policy around our house, so as expected, all entries on the list are being listened to via turntable.
Ladies and germs, I give week one of Heavy Rotation . . .
Youth Lagoon | The Year Of Hibernation Fat Possum Records | 2011
I just recently posted a review of this terrific debut from 22 year old Boise, Idaho native Trevor Powers. Yet, even after listening to the album multiple times for the review I was still happy to slap it on the deck again the following day. A record that gets more interesting with each successive listen.
My favorite record of the David Bowie/Brian Eno collaboration. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this LP is its ability to simultaneously be of its time and still somehow timeless. There is a warmth about the recordings that feel like an old blankey you could just crawl right inside. But leave it to Eno and Bowie to also make it seem incredibly pioneering and just plain awesome. It remains one of the very best records of the 1970s. If Blade Runner were a David Bowie record, it would be this one.
Les Paul and Mary Ford | Hits Of Les And Mary Capitol Records | 1960
What is not to love? There are great songs like The World Is Waiting For A Sunrise, I'm A Fool To Care and How High The Moon. Les Paul (you know the guy that invented the prototypical rock guitar, multi-tracking and about a thousand other awesome musical things you take for granted) is a staggeringly beautiful player. His style isn't just unique or impressive, it's amazing, in that you are amazed by it. You hear it and stop in your tracks even when you've heard the record a dozen times. Mary Ford's vocals are just sweetly heartbreaking. If you think that standards aren't for you, drop the needle on this and listen to yourself start to feel stupid.
Grandaddy | Sumday V2 Records | 2003
Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the vinyl reissue of Grandaddy's Sumday arrived in my mailbox. Since then, it has been subject to myriad revolutions on the turntable. I have always had a soft spot for this album, but the vinyl reissue was done in all the right ways, and throwing it on the turntable now brings on the sense of sitting down for a beer with an old friend. Jason Lytle's hummable melodies, junkyard production techniques and anachronistic narratives weave together in an album that begs repeated listens.
Youth Lagoon | The Year Of Hibernation (2011) - Fat Possum Records
The Year Of Hibernation, the debut album from Youth Lagoon is an album that seems like an auditory oxymoron. On the one hand, there is a simple, honest and humble appeal to it. The songs sound very much like you'd expect from a record made by one young man, Trevor Powers, in the bedroom of his Boise, Idaho home. On the other hand, the arrangements are epic. The songs are mature and self-assured and the narrator through muffled voice and reverb drench often sounds wiser than his years would belie.
It is within these contradictions that the greatest appeal of this record lies. It would be easy for a 22 year old kid to make a bedroom record with a few twee instruments and a laptop. Yet, that would make these songs seem cute or cloying. Youth Lagoon never elicit any of those emotions. Instead, the simple melodies are repeated in almost Reichian fashion and are built upon so as to elevate the songs to ethereal planes.
In the title of the record, and throughout mush of the lyrical material, Powers writes about his own sense of loneliness and anxiety. But it almost always seems smarter than the songs we should expect from someone who is just entering his adulthood. The production value and subject matter evoke a sense of nostalgia that this young man has created for a dream world that never really existed.
The potpourri of influences here are part of what make the record so interesting too. In quieter moments, there is a sense of a piano style 70s solo act. Yet, at the moment that aesthetic becomes clear gears shift and a synth loop chimes to throw the listener off track. The guitar riffs owe a large debt to early New Order with their melodic repetition and simplicity. Yet they never feel forced or out of place.
Powerful moments are common on this record, but none is more evident than in the coda that ends the penultimate track, "Montana". As the a slow melodic whistle builds with a smacking, metallic anvil sound to the songs crescendo. It is haunting and beautiful and very much original. This is a melody you will have in your head for days.
The best compliment I can give this record is that when it's over, you'll want to flip it over and start again from the beginning.
Rating: 8/10
The haunting beauty and melodic charm of Youth Lagoon
are even further displayed in the marvelous video
for "Montana", which can be found below.
