Month In Tunes Administration: I Will Admit I Almost Always Underestimate It

In "Month In Tunes Administration," World's Biggest Corporation loads music onto USB sticks to be dropped in bulk upon villages in the developing world. Great for whittling, boiling, or experimental nutrition.

March 2008

As the year goes on, it gets slightly more exciting to have middle-of-the-road-to-mildly-odd white-guy indie-rock tastes. In all sincerity.

DeVotchKa, A Mad And Faithful Telling (Anti-): "Transliterator" wins song of the month, the blustery high point of this disc, and one where DeVotchKa gets so on top of its sounds that it gets harder to pick out the different bits. Gypsy, mariachi, romantic old movie scores may all figure in, but it's all swept together by Nick Urata, a much more powerful songwriter than I'd noticed before.

Retribution Gospel Choir, s/t (Caldo Verde): It's the band Alan Sparhawk uses to get away from Low and rock out, but the best moments are still the frail and quiet ones, the gaps in the wonderful sludge. That said, watching him wrangle a huge, messy guitar sound was pretty much the best part of a month full of awesome shows.

Sun Kil Moon, April (Caldo Verde): Maybe the best set of Mark Kozelek songs I've heard yet. But I feel like the jury will always be out on that, because his stuff has a way of blurring together, in a good way. For whatever reason, these songs do more to bring out the definition that's always under the lilt of his voice and pleasant haze of his guitar.

Jim White, Transnormal Skiperoo (Luaka Bop): Jim White comes back to that bizarre, spirit-twisting intrigue, refreshed with a blast of serenity. Instead of just getting old, he captures the feeling of a new start with the benefit of hindsight.

Make A Rising, Infinite Ellipse And Head With Open Fontanel (High Two): When you unfold the CD booklet, it expands into the most obvious candidate for album cover of the month:

During their show here, those two fish got stabbed by another fish. You could probably take it for granted now that more bands are layering on more instruments, opening up their song structures, and blending pop sweetness with weird abstraction, yet Make A Rising fills it with all these eerie crawlspaces, making for complicated music that never quite crowds out the wondrous and stretched-out hooks.

Destroyer, Trouble In Dreams (Merge): Less like Rubies, more like Streethawk, no complaints.

Random-ass discovery: Of all things The New York Times has a songwriting blog called Measure for Measure. Because songwriters are a breed of people who need yet more excuses to dwell on their own problems. At any rate, Andrew Bird's contribution is already pretty intriguing.

Shows of the month: Circles with El Valiente and The Cemetery Improvment Society; Colony Of Watts with Zebras; Jonathan Richman; The Runners-Up; The Magnetic Fields; Ladyhawk; Make A Rising; X; Retribution Gospel Choir; Black Mountain; Jens Lekman; The Weakerthans; Black Moth Super Rainbow; Phosphorescent with A Catapult Western and Vid Libert.

Month In Tunes Administration: So Relatively Fucked

In "Month In Tunes Administration," World's Biggest Corporation will sample the music used in our FDA-condemned seasonal-affective disorder experiments.


FEBRUARY 2008

A 30-degree day seems like a treat right now: Stupid people are less irritating; food tastes better; everyone's more attractive. Still, it's been hard to get excited about a whole lot of shit. In fact, the well-circulated "recorded in a lonely Wisconsin cabin" story behind Bon Iver's For Emma, For Ever Ago made it all the more tempting to retreat back into the album when Jagjaguwar formally released it this month. A mega-hyped indie record that sounds like the opposite of mindless chatter: That kind of balances out psychologically, right? So, anyways, February at least provided a few ideal records for being left the fuck alone to. Yay!

Earth, The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (Southern Lord): This post is late because I got my hands on this pretty late in the month and deserved a few good, slow listens. Seven instrumentals basking in open spaces and some amazingly patient playing. Also, album cover of the month goes to Arik Roper:


Promotional snack tie-in, anyone?

Spires That In The Sunset Rise, Curse The Traced Bird (Secret Eye): If Earth's latest recalls a gauzy sunset over a canyon, Spires That In The Sunset Rise recalls, say, a fever with a side of fleas. Ghastly, beautiful vocals scratch up against the sounds of mbira, spike fiddle, and abused banjo. Eastern-folk sounds unravel into free-flowing disorientation.

Vid Libert, A Return To Mayaguez (s/r): Vid Libert is a Madison singer-songwriter. When he pokes his head out, he's arguably the best in town. Here's the intro from my local A.V. Club feature on him:

Vid Libert’s new album, A Return To Mayaguez, dips into an isolated seam between his own little world and the real one. Following up on 2005’s Mayaguez, the Madison singer-songwriter filled his eight-track recorder with his own unassuming voice, drums, guitars, melodica, percussion, keys, toy instruments, and more, spacing it all out with a dub-inspired ear for warm layering and reverb. It’s a very good record, to borrow phrase from his song “Make No Mistake,” for getting through the day, whether Libert’s calmly philosophizing about fulfillment on “Maybe That’s Enough” or drifting through the glittery instrumental “Oh, Osho.”

Headlights, Some Racing, Some Stopping (Polyvinyl): Reviewed here.

Todd Barry, From Heaven (Comedy Central): February got a crucial Valium-powered cheer-up from Todd Barry's latest. It matched not only the pace of life, but also the graying snowbanks. "I challenge you comedically!" "No, honey! Not again! Remember when we went to that play and you wanted to challenge that actor theatrically? You got your ass handed to you!"

American Music Club, The Golden Age (Merge): February got a crucial Valium-powered cheer-up from American Music Club's latest. It matched not only the pace of life, but also the graying snowbanks. "Will there be a band? God, I hope not!" Song of the month: MP3: "All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco"

Random-ass surprise: My friend Shelby was kind enough to introduce me to the work of western-swing standby Bob Wills. Despite his talents as a bandleader, it's hard not to giggle (and improvise along) when he cheers on his bandmates in that ridiculous Mickey Mouse voice (see "Quoted"). Also, hardly random, but I didn't get around to picking up St. Vincent's 2007 album, Marry Me, until a few days ago. Same goes for Pissed Jeans' second album, Hope For Men:

Shows of the month:The Blind Shake (2/6, High Noon Saloon, Madison); The Midwest Beat and Plexi 3 (2/9, Crystal Corner Bar, Madison); Icarus Himself and Sleeping In The Aviary (2/16, Mother Fool's Coffeehouse, Madison); Say Hi (2/21, Project Lodge, Madison); Sleeping In The Aviary, The Dark Horse Project, The Scarring Party, Crochetd Machete, and The Cowboy And The Frenchman (2/23, Project Lodge, Madison);
Dub Trio (2/25, High Noon Saloon, Madison); Zebras and Czarbles (2/28, Nottingham Co-op, Madison).

Month In Tunes Administration: Now Is The Winter Of Our Psychedelic Indulgences

In "Month In Tunes Administration," World's Biggest Corporation will sample the music we virally market to our own employees via disposable Zunes issued in our 2,000 break rooms across the globe.



JANUARY 2008

We at World's Biggest Corporation didn't suck up a ton of records this month, due to the unexpected clusterfuckery of daily operations, the shit-ass Wisconsin weather, deteriorating attention spans, re-allocation of resources, and that pesky competition.

Hell, at one point early in the month, this place even had some guests: Louisville, KY band People Noise got caught in a bad pileup on the way into Madison, made it to the venue that night, and played a solid set for about, oh, 20 people. They crashed here while awaiting repairs and were very friendly, then made it out in time to bolt to a gig in Minneapolis. Last year's Ordinary Ghosts is a fine debut, slathered in glistening keyboards and mega-fuzzed guitars. Currently, the band has to sample the keys live, but that somehow doesn't make things stiff or awkward.

Dead Meadow, Old Growth (Feb. 5, Matador): Who knows, maybe this one will fall to the side after a couple weeks. It's a battle between how blatantly this band reaches back to all manner of olden psychedelia and blues-rock, and how sweet and earthy it all sounds.



Which brings us to...

Black Mountain, In The Future (Jagjaguwar): I won't even pretend that I've learned my way around this one yet, but I do think singer Amber Webber is one of the main reasons this record sticks. Whether she's on backing vocals or taking the lead, as on "Queens Will Play," she's got this frightening shudder in her voice--one of a few things that keep the band fresh as it stomps and riffs through some very familiar pleasures.



Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark (New West): Another one that's gonna take a few months to sink in, or maybe all year. "Self-Destructive Zones" is gonna have to be WBC's song of the month. If it's got any competition, it's another highlight from this album, "The Righteous Path."

The Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch): The Magnetic Fields' habit of packaging albums with gimmicks really strikes me as a form of self-deprecation. "Let's write a batch of solid pop songs and give them a vaguely country-ish feel (The Charm Of The Highway Strip), make sure they all start with 'I' (I), or just release 69 of them for no reason (69 Love Songs)." This time, the band cheeses itself up with buckets of feedback and fuzz, arbitrarily paired with songwriting that, at heart, doesn't seem much different from anything else Stephin Merritt's ever done. "Old Fools" is just a step away from Highway Strip's "I Have The Moon," both unabashedly maudlin and affectionate songs. They're those moments where Merritt isn't afraid to lay down something universal, a little less disposable. If he weren't so self-conscious, kitschy, and clever, his body of work would make people cry themselves to death. (In a good way?) Hell, I know this is beside the point, but I'd almost like to see him do a completely humorless, gimmick-free record, just for the sake of experiment. At any rate, at least two songs on Distortion--"Please Stop Dancing" and "California Girls"--are new Magnetic Fields disposable-essentials, almost up there with "A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off" and "Two Characters In Search Of A Country Song."

Protest The Hero, Fortress (Vagrant): Imagine Dillinger Escape Plan backed up by a choir of magical horseys, and the mystical glitter-dust that implies, but rammed up against the staggering tightness of super-technical post-hardcore stuff. Weirdly enough, the most tricky-sounding shit here--the operatic vocals and classical-inspired guitar flurries on "Sequoia Throne"--adds a dreamy layer of lightness to the crunch and drudgery. Plus, it's really too bad this blog doesn't have a headwear-design award:



Dub Trio, Another Sound Is Dying (Ipecac): I still think New Heavy is better and more well-rounded, but this new one is pretty gratifying, too, especially for those who favor the instrumental band's brutal, smart-assed side. Also, album cover of the month goes to Martin Kvamme:



Wow, I didn't know you could leave them in the microwave that long. I'm here all week, folks...

Future Of The Left, Curses (Too Pure): The only record I heard this month that's snotty, bratty, and scary enough to excite me on that level.



...And it turns out they're a tad boring to look at. I guess I expected someone with more visible bones, and maybe some boils.

Vampire Weekend, s/t (XL): Review here. It's pleasantly underwhelming, I guess. VW's show in Madison this summer was fun as shit. Outdoors on a warm, breezy night on campus, with sailboats in the background--can't imagine a more ridiculously appropriate venue for it.

Random-ass surprise: The utterly perplexing, primal, and enticing Japan-funk of Yamasuki, as unearthed by Soul Sides.

Shows of the month: The Black-Eyed Snakes and Decibully at the High Noon Saloon, Madison, 1/5; People Noise, High Noon Saloon, Madison, 1/6; The Walkmen and White Rabbits, 1/19 High Noon Saloon, Madison; El Valiente, 1/11, King Club, Madison; The Runners-Up and Patchwork, 1/17, High Noon Saloon, Madison; Editors, 1/29, Majestic Theatre, Madison.