Stereogum Year End Charts

01. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
02. Drake - Take Care
03. Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver
04. Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
05. The Weeknd - House of Balloons
06. Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact
07. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints
08. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
09. ASAP Rocky - LIVELOVEA$AP
10. Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch the Throne
11. Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
12. M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
13. Yuck - Yuck
14. Austra - Feel It Break
15. Zola Jesus - Conatus
16. Neon Indian - Era Extraña
17. Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica
18. Beyoncé - 4
19. Iceage - New Brigade
20. Real Estate - Days
21. Clams Casino - Instrumental Mixtape
22. Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire
23. Wild Flag - Wild Flag
24. Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra
25. Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
26. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
27. Destroyer - Kaputt
28. Pictureplane - Thee Physical
29. Washed Out - Within and Without
30. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Santa's Surrounded

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(Thanx Sam!)

Wilco (Daytrotter Session)

It was the day after my birthday and nobody had gotten me a thing. Just treated myself to a rental car and an early morning drive into Chicago. The weather was a piece of shit on this early September day, the cirrus clouds forming and moving in weird, clumping patterns until they turned into something otherwise and began to piss out the gray rains they'd stored for god knows how long. Everything had cleared up mostly by the time I arrived in just north and east of the Loop, or it's at least where it felt like I'd been directed. There was a conspicuously available parking space in a residential neighborhood - near a church and an elementary school and a dry cleaning establishment - about three blocks away, so the car I'd just met hours before was paralleled there for a few hours. As you get closer to the Wilco Loft - the one that we saw so much of in Sam Jones' documentary film "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" - the smell of what you imagine might be the best chicken ever to be had, gets stronger and stronger. You feel like it will be on your skin and in your hair for days and it's not all bad. You wonder if they eat there a lot, but you think that they might go for great soups and salads more often than rotisserie chicken. These are all just hunches about Wilco, America's band.
The directory on the outside of the warehouse building has typewritten names next to buttons and their floor simply says, "Foxtrot." You stop questioning if you're in the right place anymore. Ascending the steps in the concrete stairway, you can hear the very familiar sound and as you get closer, you begin to make out Jeff Tweedy's voice. The door opens and you immediately comprehend where you are, but you feel like an intruder, even though you've been invited. Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotche, organist Mikael Jorgensen, guitarist Nels Cline and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone couldn't be kinder or more personable, but you feel like you're intruding on something that comes close to being a mythological band, in many ways. It feels partly wrong that you're drinking their spectacularly tasting coffee and snagging handfuls out of their bag of tortilla chips because you shouldn't be here, peering behind the curtain. You shouldn't be looking at the prized autographed photos of Bob Newhart and Don Rickles, both made out to who we're led to believe are each comedian's biggest fans. There are bunk beds and desks and more privately owned musical equipment than you've ever seen - all of it used to make and perform some of this generation's finest collections of songs.
When you think about Wilco, it's nearly impossible not to start with Tweedy and that voice. He's surrounded himself with some of the best players in the world - guys like the effortlessly phenomenal Stirratt, the every-dude genius in Kotche, the versatile Sansone, the flawless Jorgensen and a guitarist like Cline, who even when he "clams" a note, it's a masterstroke - but it nearly always begins with his words and the way they sound when he half-smiles, half-grimaces them out in that wonderfully raspy way of his. "Whole Love" is another stunning chapter of Tweedy getting himself caught up in all of the vagaries of the heart and the mind and all of the ways that things get painful and only sometimes turn beautiful. He reminds us of a passage from Barry Hannah's novel, "Ray," in which Hannah writes, "Americans have never been consistent. They represent gentleness and rage together. One lesson we as Americans must learn is to get used to the contrarieties in our hearts and learn to live with them." The character that gave the soliloquy in a speech is then seen thinking about himself and it seems to be where many of Tweedy's characters come from. Hannah writes, "I am infected with every disease I ever tried to cure. I am a vicious nightmare of illnesses." "Born Alone," features Tweedy singing, "I have heard the war and worry of the gospel/Ferried fast across the void/I have married broken spoke charging smoke wheels/Spit and swallowed opioid/I am the driver at the wheel of the horror/Marching circles at the gate/Mine eyes have seen/The fury so flattered by fate," and there are illnesses within, always being battled. We all fight our problems, the ones that gnaw at our ankles and get into our bloodstreams. They slow us down and they speed us up and all that we can do about them is to acknowledge that they're ours. They belong to us and we can still get along happily if we try our hardest to make it through. Wilco has taught us that. We owe them a lot. We shouldn't have drank their coffee or eaten their chips. We should have brought them a few of those tasty chickens from across the street. Next time, if they'll have us.
Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Tom Schick and Mark Greenberg

I Might
One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)
Born Alone
Rising Red Lung
Download @'Daytrotter'

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DreamHub Says Tower Idea Not at All Set

♪♫ Nick Lowe - Cruel To Be Kind

Q&A: Nick Lowe on Dying Arts and Second Acts

This week, Nick Lowe reunites with Wilco for another leg of American dates in support of his latest album, The Old Magic, his first full-length since 2007's At My Age. Magic is a boutique pop offering that finds the pub-rock pioneer playing with far smoother, gentler textures than those that defined much of his '70s and '80s heyday. But there's a great deal of mischief to be heard, too. It comes, after all, from a guy they once called "Basher." SPIN caught up with the 62-year-old songwriter to chat about the difference between Tom Waits and Chuck Berry and his newfound female audience.
Having been a pop star and produced the records you did in the '70s, is there an overwhelming weight of history when you're sitting down to write another album?
No, I must say there isn't. It's so hard to write a simple two-and-half minute song that if you saddle yourself with any other extraneous shit, then you really have had it. With my songwriting process, I try to remove myself from the equation as much as I can. I have to wait for some sort of inspiration. Writing songs is sort of a dying craft; I think in 20 or 30 years it'll be gone.
Why?
At one time, classical music was a popular art form. But, people's tastes change and I don't think that people can be kind of bothered to write songs. It's quite tricky. Songwriting is a bit like knowing how to thatch a roof or make one of these stone walls you see in the country that are just made of stones without any cement holding 'em up. It's like a country craft and I don't think people will have any use for it in a few years time. And I'm not whining about it, you know, it's just sort of the way it goes. It's here and then the human race is sort of done with it.
What do you see taking its place?
It's getting so much easier to make a pretty good sounding record now in your bedroom. So pretty good is the new shit. And there is sort of a tsunami of pretty good that we're in at the moment because everyone can do it themselves.
How much do you follow what's happening with young up-and-coming songwriters?
I don't, really. I know it's nothing to be proud of, but I really only kind of listen to dead people's music, because I don't know where to find the good stuff. I've sort of given up looking because I just can't find anything that's for me. You're not supposed to be doing it at 63 years old. So I don't really. I'm doing my thing, trying to make as many hits as I can and not try and interfere with anybody else.
In a song like "Sensitive Man," how much of you are we hearing in those words?
Oh, I don't write autobiographical stuff. I write a lot of songs with "I," the first person, but the characters are made up. But I know what I'm talking about, I know how it feels to feel abused and used and have your heart broken and to feel happy, all those human emotions. I'm sort of a hack really. An old-fashioned hack, Tin Pan Alley guy really. I just make it up...

Continue reading

 David Bevan @'Spin'

Interfering!!!

Image:['Zapple' by TimN]

Unfortunately Mona's sins of her past finally caught up with her and she has been undergoing treatment for her HepC for the past three months.

What started as her feeling not too bad has now reached a stage where she feels that she really needs some time to herself.

The halfway stage has been reached but she felt that she just needed a break from a lot of things and she has therefore decided to hand over the reins of the blog to me for a while.

I have known Mona for as long as I can remember and I know for a fact that we both feel exactly the same way about most things. 
So hopefully dear reader if you enjoy the blog now you may not even notice the change in editorship! (Hopefully!!!)

I also hope to entice a couple of other people to contribute to the blog over the next week or so and Mona has promised to pop her head in from time to time.

Stay well Mona and I am sure you will be back in no time at all...

XXX

Where is Mona?

She's long gone!