Archive for June 2012
(To check out songs 30-16 on our list, click here)
15. Peaking Lights – “Beautiful Son”
Far out, man. Far out.
Making a Top 30 songs list is a lot trickier than making a Top 30 albums list. One’s opinion of a song is rarely static, changing with the mood, the time of day, the season. Additionally, the shear volume of songs released in any given year ensure that any list will prove grossly incomplete. Why even bother?
Well: because it’s fun, I suppose. Because we get to have ridiculous debates about the quality of various 3-minute compositions. Because we get to listen to all of our favorite songs over and over again in preparation. And, most importantly, because we get to share them with you. Here’s hoping that you find something you like below, and if you think we’ve left anything out, please let us know in the comments section. Let the countdown begin.
(All week we’re counting down our favorites of the year to date. To check out albums 30 through 11 on our list, click here)
10. Andrew Bird – Break It Yourself
Birdman’s best disc since 2005’s Mysterious Production of Eggs, Break It Yourself finds the string virtuoso giving equal attention to expanding and restraining his unique songwriting style. Perfect for a sunny Sunday afternoon, Break It Yourself is as expertly produced as it is written, giving Bird fans a more rewarding listen than any of his interim discs. Extra points for the inclusion of Annie Clark. -PTL
I listen to hundreds of new records each year, and so I feel that I am as qualified as anyone to say that 2011 kind of sucked. Of course, like every year, there were a handful of outstanding releases, but there was a genuine lack of depth in the field. When the time came to fill in our year-end lists, coming up with 25-50 records that really felt like they belonged proved challenging to say the least.
No such problem in 2012. Already there have been more excellent releases than I care to count, so much so that our lists have undergone almost daily post-deadline revision. Hip-hop and straight-up guitar-based rock in particular have seem rejuvenated this year, as is reflected in the list below. While some of the year’s most lauded releases just didn’t strike a chord with our staff (Beach House, Grimes), and others have not been in the world long enough for us to digest (Fiona Apple), there is more than enough good music below to keep you satisfied through the hot summer months. And so, without further ado, the first part of our Top 30 Albums of 2012 so far:
Ai Weiwei with “Sunflower Seeds” at the Tate Modern
(阅读中文版本)
It may seem unfair to compare one of the most renowned artists and activists in China –and the world– to aspiring American painters, photographers, and sculptors. But the contrast between Ai Weiwei, the subject of a new documentary that screened last week in Williamsburg, and the dozen or so Brooklyn artists whose work I saw in Williamsburg and Greenpoint the prior weekend, could not be more severe. In the eight days of music, film, and art that comprised the Northside Festival, the documentary about Ai and the studio tour spoke to both the possibilities and pitfalls of contemporary art.
While I enjoyed the Northside Art as a casual fan and relished the chance to skulk inside apartments, studios, galleries, and warehouses in North Brooklyn, seeing the film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry a few days latermade me question the art’s depth. The epiphany reminded me of how I questioned Mexican food in New York after visiting Texas and California. (Stay tuned for the actual Mexico trip). In the film, which packed the house at Union Docs on June 21, Ai comes across as a master conceptual artist and tireless crusader for social justice. While his work is not always literal, it always communicates a clear message. In retrospect, the Northside artists made mostly abstract work that focused on color, light, and shadow, but did not convey much deeper meaning. If Ai’s work looked outward, his Brooklyn brethren looked decidedly inward.
Slaughter Is the Best Medicine: A Review of Ty Segall Band’s Slaughterhouse
Posted on: June 22, 2012
- In: Band Profiles | Music | Record Reviews
- 4 Comments
There is a school of thought that real balls-out, face-melting, teeth-gnashing, soul-blazing rock and roll doesn’t exist anymore. Those who subscribe argue that the contemporary indiesphere or popular music in general has passed on meaty guitars, soring solos and scorched vocals, favoring syrupy synths or jangly acoustics. If you’ve spent any time on FP this year, you’d know that this isn’t the case. Rock and roll is back in a big way, whether it’s the Sonic Youth-esque squalor of The Men’s Open Your Heart, the jet-black psychedelia of Royal Bath’s Better Luck Next Life or Cloud Nothings’ Steve Albini boosted emo-punk callback Attack on Memory. Never content to let others have all the fun, contemporary psych godfather Ty Segall sounds the alarm with this year’s most punishing record yet, and perhaps his best to date: Slaughterhouse, released 6/26 on In The Red and now streaming at Spin.
- In: Book Reviews | Books
- 6 Comments
Adam Levin, Hot Pink
A recent New Yorker article about good bad books asks why anyone would choose to read pulp instead over something intellectually stimulating (the illustration shows a man hiding a Stephen King novel inside the cover of War and Peace). The article makes a valid point. You don’t want to read Shakespeare all the time, and if you do, you’re probably a very boring person (consider how watching nothing but Godard films could become tiresome; you need a Farrelly Brothers every now and again). So while ‘genre novels’ may be considered formulaic and sometimes cheesy, they can be good for an overstimulated mind to take a break. What the article doesn’t consider, however, is the middle-ground. Here’s where Adam Levin’s short story collection comes into play.
The Sandwich of Champions
Posted on: June 20, 2012
- In: Food
- 4 Comments
The San Diego, with Ithaca’s famous (maybe) raspberry jalapeno spread
Last weekend I went to my college reunion. This experience was mostly eye-opening to me about how the last 5 years have negatively impacted my tolerance for alcohol, crowded bars, and greasy food at 2 am (can’t decide if this is a good or bad thing). However, it also served as a first class reminder of how wonderful the food is in my college town of Ithaca, NY. Go ahead, laugh. Yes, I live in New York City, home of all great food of every kind. I recognize this. But there’s something special about the food in Ithaca.
It might have to do with being in the Finger Lakes region, near a whole lot of farm land. There are dairy farms, where Cornell gets the milk for its homemade ice cream. There are apple orchards in the surrounding towns, which contribute to the annual apple festival. And their farmer’s market is more like a food truck festival, with tons of prepared food, like breakfast burritos and homemade oatmeal. There is so much wonderful local produce, meat, and dairy, and the city embraces it. So before you go assuming that good food only exists in major metropolitan areas, consider the advantages of the boonies. In my case, nostalgia probably also has something to do with how good everything tastes, but regardless, it’s a highly respectable food scene, all the way out in the middle of nowhere, NY. Read the rest of this entry »
- In: Interviews | Words
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Last week, we published Khaliah Williams’ What the Bay Broke, a somber short story about summer spouse swapping in Cape Cod. After its publication, we chatted with Williams via email about the inspiration for the story, her literary life, adultery, Vampire Weekend, and what her graduate work at Iowa Writers Workshop taught her about writing and whiskey.
Where did you get the idea for “What the Bay Broke” and where did the title come from?
I pulled that story from a lot of different places, including my own struggles with learning to love someone besides myself, unrequited love, and standing up for myself. I also like the idea of someone who is slightly terrified of the beach owning a beach house. But the real inspiration for this story came from a trip to Cape Cod in September of 2009. I was there with a group of friends for a wedding and sometime around midnight (fueled by wine) we decided to go down to the beach. I lost one of my sandals in the water and one of my friends found it two days later. That’s always stuck with me, that sometimes the water will take something away and it just might come back to you. This will sound silly, but I have no idea where the title came from. I’m terrible with titles, and I often run with suggestions from other people. T. Geronimo Johnson (whose book Hold it ‘Til it Hurts comes out in September) re-titled what eventually became my graduate thesis in workshop one day. The title story was “The Heart Stops Beating When You Least Expect It” and he suggested a more manageable “Until the Heart Stops Beating.” He probably doesn’t remember that. But the new title had so much elegance to it that I kept it and than began writing a lot of stories around that idea. Besides, I like titles that start with the word ‘what’.
- In: Books | Interviews
- 9 Comments
Dan Magers, Partyknife
Partyknife, the debut book of poems by Dan Magers published on June 5, has drawn attention not only from the usual lit mag crowd, but also from places far rarer for poetry collections, such as Vice Magazine and a blurb from Sonic Youth maestro and indie tastemaker Thurston Moore, who declared: “Writing poems like these is just as good as starting a band.” Magers is co-founder and co-editor of Sink Review, an online poetry journal, and founder and editor of Immaculate Disciples Press, a handmade chapbook press focused on poetry and visual arts collaborations. He grew up in Kansas City, MO and now lives in Brooklyn. Gina Myers first met him at The New School, where they both were pursuing degrees in creative writing. They recently caught up over e-mail to discuss Partyknife, his contradictory feelings about coolness, the awesomeness of T-Rex, and how he really feels about Billy Collins.
Partyknife appears to be a series of poems written from the perspective of a single persona. How would you describe the protagonist of the book, and where would you say you came up with him?
The poems that eventually became Partyknife started happening in September 2009 on an Amtrak train. I had my laptop and was culling through hundreds of pages of Microsoft Word documents that I call “sketchbooks” (which is where I had been drafting poems or writing out notes and ideas over the course of five years). I started pulling out my favorite lines and quotes of failed poems or just random notes and lines that seemed really awesome to me and started collaging them together into poems that were about the size of sonnets (but not sonnets). I realized that the lines I was pulling were less “poemy,” more like “everyday language”– funny/sad/angry lines and ideas I had written down at work or things overheard or spoken to me by friends.
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Frontier Psychiatrist 