
I haven't posted in a while because I was on vacation (Boston's awesome - most polite drivers of any city I've been in, most random spaghetti bowl of public transit, made me depressed about massive Minneapolis front yards, stuffed my face with seafood etc) last month and we moved across the lake last week. I have a couple of mixes for the three of you left that RSS this bad boy and still download them. We don't have the internet yet though (I'm tethering on my iPhone at the moment - it's too slow to seed, plus it goes away when I go outside) so I'll be posting a mix in the next week or two, and another mix shortly after that. The music is there, it's just waiting to get out.
I saw this sign on Cedar & Lake. Too bad I'm not in the mood for any sarcastic furniture.
There's some good music by new artists here. Some of it came out at the very end of 2008 and took a while to move through the filter. Some of it is brand new. Don't mistake the inclusion of a Decemberists track as an endorsement of the album. It's a horrible record, just with one good pop song near the end. If a band is going to move away from pop music and attempt some serious music, we're going to judge it based on real things now. You can't just fly by on catchy melodies and a cutesy voice anymore. This album is just painful to listen to. A lot of people are calling it brilliant, but it's not brilliant to write a rock opera when you don't know anything about writing actual music. It's pathetic. There's one passage that made me want to throw my iPod in the river, where there's about 45 seconds of parallel sixths in the harmony in this melodramatic duet between Mr Meloy and some woman. They really should have stuck to their schtick. It was a good one (listen to the song here - even that is schmaltz) The Hazards of Love is a poor man's Dream Theater, and that's being generous.
Passion Pit seems like kind of the star here. I feel weird falling for hipster electro dance pop, but this gets catchier every time. It sounds like Jay Dee producing for the Dirty Projectors.
Baseball starts tonight!
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Previously: Mix #38, March '09
If anybody's looking for a fantasy baseball league, let me know. We've got one opening in our 14 team head to head. The draft is tomorrow at 1:30 central, but email me anyway if you're too late and want to play anyway.

It must be singer songwriter month. I hurt myself so I had to buy a car to get to work.
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Previously: Mix #37, December '08, 2008 Songs
So Sigur Ros made the upbeat mix, and there wasn't really debatable. It's not even the most chipper song on the album. There are always great songs on EPs, singles, and otherwise awful albums that are pretty great. This year, 16 of the 42 songs are from artists who aren't on the albums list. Even Conor Oberst, who had never written a song worth anything, suddenly has a pretty good song closing out his new record.
Part One
Part Two
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Previously: 2007 Songs, 2008 Albums
Me: (clinking my glass with Eliot's) Salud!
Eliot: Salud!
Me: Pass the carne roast!
Eliot: Pass the daddy horse!
I should have comments fixed. Email if there's a problem. Ryan at cedarave.com
First of all, Bon Iver is not on the list because you're a year late to the party. Secondly, every time someone talks about how great the record is, they talk about one thing: the first track. There are awkward sentences spoken like "All I could listen to all summer was Flume. It's such a great album." You fail. I've even heard people try to extrapolate some sort of metaphor for the current state of the economy from the style of the album, which is interesting, since when the album was actually released in June 2007, everybody thought Google was going to hit $1000. Plus Damien Jurado's been doing the exact same thing since before the last recession. As Eliot would say when her brother tries to eat her cereal in the morning, "Go away, you bother me."
All in all, 2008 was pretty tepid. Like Bon Iver, the year was much better for individual songs than for albums. Blame iTunes if you want, I don't care. The top 10 is pretty good though. Sigur Ros went all Avey Tare on us. The Plastic Constellations went all Brett Favre* on us. Ben Folds made a terrible terrible terrible record.
* How many times have they broken up and put out a new album? Plus just when you think they might be as good as any band, they throw an interception at the exact moment that ruins every thing. Aaron Rodgers looks pretty freaking awesome. I just wish he'd grow that awesome moustache again.
The Dead Science did on this record what they do on every record. It's just brilliant stuff that's criminally underappreciated. The Walkmen came up with a fantastic return to relevance after their disaster of an album last time around. David Karsten Daniels had the best newcomer album, but I was also very very interested in Throw Me the Statue, who might have written the best song of the year, and the Morning Benders, who also might have, although it's been all over their first couple EPs. Parenthetical Girls are getting more consistent, and I like that direction.
One more year.
Year end mix soon.
Previously: 2007's best, 1994-2006We took the kids to the Macy's 8th floor thing last night. Eliot was wide-eyed and loved it. Turns out, I was there as an elf. I made sure I didn't touch him, just in case we'd blow up or something.
I've been working on finishing my top 65 records list (not to mention being outnumbered by people under three feet tall and watching Mad Men), and I got sidetracked, forgetting to put up December's mix. We'll have to see if anyone other than Zakcq still reads this thing. The year end mix and top 65 list should be up very soon.
Stupid Mark Teixiera and CC Sabathia.
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Previously: Mix #35, September '08