2011

1. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man
2. Bomb The Music Industry! - Vacation
3. Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
4. The Wonder Years - Suburbia
5. Kevin Devine - Between The Concrete & Clouds
6. Into It. Over It. - Proper
7. GDP - Useless Eaters
8. All Get Out - The Season
9. White Wives - Happeners
10. Bright Eyes - The People's Key

Honorable Mentions:

Horrible Crowes - Elsie
Mansions - Dig Up The Dead
Okkervil River - I Am So Far
Pteradon - Viva!
Tom Waits - Bad As Me
Drake - Take Care
The Taxpayers - To Risk So Much For One Damn Meal

The best goddamn albums of 2010

Let's get this out of the way. The Hold Steady are dead to me. Heaven is Whenever is an abomination. I'm bitter. They're not on this list. OK, onto the good stuff.

There's a lot of pop punk on this list. There's a little bit of indie. It's cold out.

10. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
9. Frightened Rabbits - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
8. The Extra Lens - Undercard
7. You, Me, and Everyone We Know - Some Things Don't Wash Out
6. Motion City Soundtrack - My Dinosaur Life
5. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
4. Bad Books - Bad Books
3. The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
2. Bomb The Music Industry! - Adults!!!... Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!!!!!
1. The Wonder Years - The Upsides

Other blogsz

Haha, I haven't listened to that Damien Marley/Nas CD since May.

I finished the Britney's Spear CD, which I alluded to ever so briefly in one of the other entries here. They'll eventually say how to get it at myspace.com/britneysspear.

In the meantime, I'm making a record again and I have decided to make a new blog about that and use what I think is blogger's most ridiculous template. That can be found at http://sistercityband.blogspot.com.

Will I update this blog again in another four months? Anything could happen?

First Listen: Nas & Damien Marley - Distant Relatives

My hip-hop credentials are pretty solid, I feel like, so I'm just going to go right into this. Nas and Damien "Jr. Gong" Marley made a record together called Distant Relatives. It's been getting near perfect reviews from a bunch of hip-hop websites; I'm not so sure it's perfect, but it is one of the only decent hip-hop albums to come out in a long time. The record is thematically centered around Africa, past and present, and the common ancestry of the human race (like KevDev's Brothers Blood kinda sorta. Probably the first and last time Kevin Devine and Nas will ever appear in the same paragraph). When the record sticks to those themes, it's very good.

Honestly, I have almost no idea what Damien Marley is saying most of the time, but the meaning still comes through. Tracks like "Tribes at War" and "Africa Must Wake Up" are pretty self explanatory; there are a lot of didactic songs on the album, but the album manages to stay away from sounding kitschy or corny. Nas gives a consistent performance across the thirteen tracks, mostly rapping about the general theme of the song. Despite the occasional dig at his unfaithful milkshake-having ex-wife and the child support system ("Strong Will Continue"), Distant Relatives is a mostly positive group of songs. Unity features prominently: The first track, "As We Enter" features both Marley and Nas in a fast paced call and response, showcasing the best of both their abilities. "In His Own Words" is a vow of solidarity despite different religions, and "My Generation," (featuring both a kids choir and Lil' Wayne!) is a call to arms for change.

Distant Relatives is best when it's thematically in line. The songs with the best production are the ones with aspects of all three backgrounds: hip-hop, reggae, and traditional African music). The straight reggae songs are a little too reggae for my tastes, but there aren't too many of them. The record clocks in at thirteen songs in just about an hour. That's a lot of music, but thankfully they've got a lot to say. It's a lyrically and musically sound collection of songs, and it's hard to argue with their intentions. Maybe there's hope for non-trap music hip-hop after all?

Rating: Prittay, prittay good.

Fight dat Entropy

And so the mixing begins in earnest today.

SO FRE'

It is sometimes important to cleanse and to detox and to wipe your C: drive and to put a shiny new operating system on your shiny old machine. Today I underwent one such rebirth and for compatibility's sake I thought I'd make sure Cubase still played nice with that album thing I'm working on. It does, and so I mixed for a bit and came up with this:

Sister City - 20 (Mix 1) - http://www.box.net/shared/joqnyhu5dp



REBIRTH MOTHAFUCKA

Types of songs..

First song in a month and a half, reminding me I can still write songs, song.

1 vs 7 Billion

Inspired by my friend Greg, who released an EP today (on the off chance you are reading this and don't also read Greg's blog, download the EP here: gregburton.bandcamp.com), I decided I would record some stuff today. Here is a song called "1 vs 7 Billion." It's going to be on the (Person) (Noun) record. It's a little quiet. Deal with it.

http://soundcloud.com/fivekidsdown429/1-vs-7-billion

I'm sorry for the dying puppies
I'm sorry for the dying kittens
I'm sorry for the dying humans
That I found out about on a commercial break
Right before the million dollar question

And confetti rained down from the ceiling
And someone had to sweep that shit up
At least we're creating jobs
Man sweep that shit up
Man sweep that shit up

And if the highway signs don't make you think of genocide
I fear you're blind, you're blind
And if the starless sky doesn't bring to mind a lack of poetry
You've died, you've died inside

I'm sorry for the starving children
I'm sorry for the unskilled workers
I'm sorry for the third world countries
I can't find on a map
And I'm sorry for the spoiled college students
Who would chastise me for that

And how big can you talk?
Man shut up the fuck up
That's not the way to solve a problem
Man shut the fuck up

And if the highway signs don't make you think of genocide
I fear you're blind, you're blind
And if the starless sky doesn't bring to mind a lack of poetry
You've died, you've died inside

I turn my frustration and my guilt into self-loathing
And I turn my self-loathing into song
In turn I just feel empty
Because my singing isn't helping anyone
It's a paralyzing cycle
Acceptance to denial
Disgust to denigration into song
In turn I just feel hopeless
Because my singing isn't helping anyone

There's tons of good that won't come out of this
But in a superficial way I think we're better off
If we don't think of circumstances
It will be easier to fall asleep at night

A Veritable Wall of Text

The night I got home for winter break I semi-facetiously made up a To-Do list that I taped to a shelf on my desk. It says:

HI ADAM PLEASE DO THESE THINGS ALREADY

1. FINISH YOUR GODDAMN RECORD
2. Make the b-sides comp
3. Demo all those new songs
4. Figure out holiday gifts
5. Play more video games (reclaim lost youth)

I've been doing mostly #5, but no amount of zombie death seems to mix Carbon Footprint, nor does beating every challenge the original Peggle has to offer make any progress towards demoing the 20 or so songs I've got that haven't been turned into 1's and 0's yet. The b-sides compilation isn't going to end up happening, in large because the songs I was going to put on it aren't as good as I had thought they were. They're also a fair amount more depressing than I'm okay with, or comfortable releasing for mass consumption. So that idea is dead.

I'm writing the following in the sincere hope that when this god damn record is finally complete and released, I will look back at this and laugh and think "stop whining, January-Adam. It wasn't nearly as difficult or as daunting as you thought." For now though, the task of actually releasing this record seems damn near impossible.

On every listen to every song there's something glaringly obvious that needs to be changed or added. And if I want trumpet and violin and timpani, it would seem that I should probably arrange those instruments, find people to play them, teach it to them, and record it. Once it's all recorded, it has to be mixed. Jeezus I hate mixing. Once it's mixed it has to be mastered. I can't master.

When it came time to mix Burning Up, I originally gave it to someone else to do. I paid him and everything. The guy did a piss-poor job of it and I deleted everything and did it myself. Back then I knew way less about that sort of thing, but I still did a better job than him. I'd mix everything completely differently now, but that's irrelevant. I brought the CD to a local studio to master it. The guy did a fine job, but it cost tons of money, and he went on multiple 10 minute cigarette breaks. Not cool.

Part of what has got me so wound up is that I feel like if I want something done right, I have to be the one to do it. I've turned that into an exclusive DIY ethic. I could bring these tracks to a studio, throw down $200-400 per song to mix and $600 for mastering and walk away with something that will sound better than what I'm going to end up being able to do, but at this point I see that as inauthentic. I want to take responsibility for everything. I don't want anyone I don't trust compromising my creative control. I could do it, but it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be the record I need to release.

For that matter, I don't want to sign to a record label. Nothing would make me happier than being a donation based band. I want to know that I am doing everything I can do. I have always said that I will never require payment for anyone to hear my music. In a perfect world, people are paying what they think the record is worth. The music is in the hands of the fans. It should speak for itself. I know these songs do.

At the risk of sounding like Nietzsche or Kanye West, I know for a fact that I write very good songs. I like them and hundreds of anonymous people on the internet have said very nice things. They didn't have to say anything. In fact, people on the internet are more likely to troll the hell out of you than say one nice thing. Yesterday I got a message on a site I'm on that says this:

"I was looking at you avatar and realized your none other than the Adam Linder my friend that invited me here introduced me to about 2 years back. I just wanted to let you know I loved Burning Up (Lonesome, No More! gives me chills everytime I hear it) and I used to blare it for the entire shopping center to hear when I was the manager at a pizza shop. Anyway, can't wait to hear the Sister City LP."

Some guy I have never met said that something I wrote gives him chills. That's insane to me. I know that I have something to offer. I'm not asking to give people chills. I'm asking for people to say "Yeah, that Sister City album is actually really cool" and maybe even for them to think that it's worth 5 or 10 bucks.

I will be up front. I mentioned that so I could gloat. People (not as many as I would one day like, but good enough for now) give a shit about what I'm doing. It's special. It means something. I have the next two records written. I want to release those. I want to live in a utopian future where I'm putting out albums and people care and I don't have problems falling asleep because the vocals sit *just* above the mix and they won't EQ otherwise without losing definition. I don't want to want to rerecord the vocals for one song and then decide maybe I should rerecord the vocals for all the songs, and honestly if I'm going to that I should probably retrack the guitars or maybe the drums. That is what's taking so long. King of the Hill and Peggle really only provided a venue for my desperate desire to think about anything that isn't the fact that I'm not going to be done with Carbon Footprint until summer at this rate.

I will conclude with a quote from the frontman of Los Campesinos. Their record recently leaked and he had this to say about it. I know what he means.

"We spent four months making a record. We argued, we made up, we started relationships, we ended relationships, we cried in recording booths because it was too much to deal with, we cried in recording booths because we thought we couldn't get it right, and then we cried when we knew we'd got it spot on. I put so much personal and biographical stuff into songs that it as good as breaks me"

tl;dr -- Record won't be out for a while. I have to do it right, even if it breaks me. I also think pretty highly of myself.

The Best Goddamn Albums of 2009

10. Say Anything - Say Anything -- Like I said in the Disappointments post, I hated this album on my first few listens. After I read a few interviews with Max Bemis, though, I realized that the record is still very good, it's just not what I wanted. And "spiritual..." but still. "Mara and Me" is a great song, as is "Fed to Death." "Ahh... Men" isn't as epic as it could have been, but I'm damned if Max isn't at least one of the ten best songwriters I listen to. Even if he found God and happiness.


9. Frank Turner - Poetry of the Deed -- Every album this man releases is great. The music and the lyrics are simple, but he's saying some profound things. These punx-ternt-folk singers are making some damn good music. Something about "Live Fast, Die Old" just resonates. A house with high windows.




8. fun. - Aim and Ignite -- I was so sure that I would hate this album. I saw them open for Manchester Orchestra in April and the music was just so damn cheesy live. There's still a little cheesiness in "Light a Roman Candle With Me," and "Walking the Dog" still sounds like a High School Musical song, but there's no denying that "Be Calm" is one of the best songs to come out this year. It's no Dog Problems, but it's a lot closer than I thought it would be.



7. Weatherbox - The Cosmic Drama - No one writes a song like Brian Warren. Great riffs and lyrics equal parts simple, powerful, and weird. Every song needs to be where it is. It's cohesive and complete. Mmmmm harshmellow. "Don't Say Nice Things" and "No Hands" are both great.





6. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Can't Maintain -- AJJ put on the best show I went to this year. They also released one of the best albums. They're earnest and honest and uncompromising. Plus the album is named after a Biggie line. It doesn't matter if it's with an electrified full band ("Heartilation"), a string section ("Love in the Time of the Human Papiloma Virus"), or just regular old acoustic folk punx. Every song is great.

5. Why? - Eskimo Snow -- When Pitchfork posted "This Blackest Purse" this summer I listened to it over and over again. To this day it's one of my favorite Why? songs. The rest of this album took a little longer to click, but once it did, it really clicked. The stark honesty of "Even the Good Wood Gone" and the more obvious "Into the Shadow of My Embrace" are great examples of Yoni Wolf's incredible songwriting.



4. Kevin Devine - Brother's Blood - If there's a more emotional song this year than "Brother's Blood," I don't think I want to hear it. The first true full band entry in Kevin's catalog is full of variety. "All of Everything Erased" is as simple and powerful as anything he's written, while songs like "Carnival" and "I Could Be With Anyone" showcase the different ways a group of talented people can make great music even better.



3. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come - 1,842 Mountain Goats scrobbles this year. This album only came out in October, but it's responsible for a fair amount of those. The only "loud" song on the album is "Psalms 40:2," so it takes a more active listen to really grasp the quality of songwriting in tracks like "1 Samuel 15:23." "Matthew 25:21" hits fucking hard. John Darnielle. Dayum.



2. Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing - I got a promo copy of this back in February (thanks Jen!) and listened to it nonstop. I kind of still do. Andy Hull wrote an incredibly powerful 11 songs (I'm including the bonus track here, to the exclusion of "100 Dollars"). Their new rock band direction may have alienated some people, but there's no denying "Shake it Out" or "In My Teeth," and "The River" is the best closer to an album I may have ever heard. "I Can Feel a Hot One" shows that he hasn't lost his penchant for slow emotional powerhouses.

1. Bomb the Music Industry! - Scrambles - Jeff Rosenstock wrote the 13 best songs he has ever written on this album. Each one is just goddamn amazing. From "Cold Chillin' Cold Chillin'" to "25" to "Saddr Weirdr" to closer "Sort of Like Being Pumped," he captures the human condition of the twenty-something like no one else can. All set against a background of some of the most complex and interesting music he's put on an album yet. Best of 2009. No doubt about it.

EPs of the Year

End of the Year: Most Disappointing Albums of 2009

In keeping with my general disposition (lol) I decided the first entry in my year end roundup would be the ten albums I found most disappointing. In descending order, of course!

10. Cursive - Mama, I'm Swollen - It wasn't bad by any means, it just wasn't on the level of Domestica, The Ugly Organ, or even Happy Hollow. Evolution! Monkeys! CRAZY MONKEYS!







9. Fake Problems - It's Great to Be Alive - How Far Our Bodies Go was fantastic. Like, made up for New Wave fantastic. A lot of the instrumentation on this record reminded me of New Wave. A lot of people really liked this album, so maybe I'm the crazy one.





8. John Nolan - Height - The musical direction on this one was a little weird. There was some awkward electronic stuff and some better straight ahead stuff. In any case, this album seemed kind of tired lyrically. Same with the Straylight EP that came out this year.





7. Monsters of Folk - Monsters of Folk - Supergroup fail. "Dear God" is awful. Every other song is pretty much just OK. Not capitalizing on enormous potential.






6. Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - Outer South - What I wouldn't give to be part of a musical community where everybody is constantly writing awesome songs... I get that Conor thinks that's what's going on here, but "Air Mattress" is just terrible. There's some good stuff on here, but it's hard to take it at face value, given what Conor has proven himself capable of.



5. mewithoutYou - It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright - If I had made a best of list in 2006, Brother, Sister would have been damn near close to the top. I understand what they were going for here and I guess it's cute, but I think this is the kind of thing you save for a side project that goes on Yo Gabba Gabba.




4. Two Tongues - Two Tongues - "Crawl" was just so goddamn good. Everything else wasn't at all. Supergroup fail pt 2.







3. Wale - Attention Deficit - Wale made a lot of hard-to-keep promises on his various mixtapes, mostly about how his major label debut wouldn't be watered down and lyrically weak. Guess what happened? He has maybe two good verses on the whole album. Consequently, it sold quite poorly.




2. Clipse - Til the Casket Drops - Ask any one of my white and jewish friends what the best rap album of the last five years was and we'll all say Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury. They had their work cut out for them and they fell a little short on this one. There are some incredible songs on here, but the middle of the album really falters. There wasn't a single weak track on Hell Hath there are plenty here.



1. Say Anything - Say Anything - When this album came out, I was talking shit about it to anyone who would listen. Is A Real Boy was so profound to me (and just about any other kid in the umbrella we call "the scene") and with every album Max releases that doesn't live up to its legacy, it's a personal hurt. I've since reconciled a lot of my initial problems with the record--SPOILERZ: it appears in my best-of list as well--but there's definitely still some filler. "Death for My Birthday" just sucks. Nothing more to say. And don't get me started on some of the religious/spiritual preachiness... In a few days I'll have nice things to say.

Next up, best EPs of the year. So exciting!

The contents of three hard drives I found in my room:

Maxtor SATA 160GB: 2GB of data. Daily Show/Colbert Report from 11/16/06 and 11/29/06, 1gb worth of music (Bad Astronaut, 2pac, Moneen), an application called Ipod Access for Windows. Boring.

Maxtor IDE 120GB: 100GB of data. The OS drive for my old desktop. My Documents contains: Old schoolwork, the WoW Burning Crusade installer, college applications, a bunch of old CD reviews. There's a miserably organized Recording folder, out of which I appear to still have everything, just organized better. Also pretty boring, although I don't know what I was hoping to find.

Seagate SATA 500gb: One Jack's Mannequin CD. BORING.

Turns out I've lead a boring life.

A second blog.

I had an idea, so I made it a blog: http://ndjtk.blogspot.com

Reasons my record is not done

I fucking love the Mountain Goats.

CARBON FUCK IT

This is the climax of the recording process. I've come to loathe these songs so much that by the time I get into the booth to do vocals it's pure catharsis. (I get knocked down, but I get up again)

So why have I come crawling back to blogger.com? Especially considering that I recently reread the old blog entries and got that awful feeling in my STOMACH that I got freshman year of college reading my since quite deleted middle school livejournal (fragment). Dunno. I like the venue for some reason; it will give my future biographers/stalkers/children something to chew on/chew on/be embarrassed of their father about.

L8r

Our continued attempts at selling out

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?izntvyoikzj

Sister City industry demos. Bomb it.

If I make this post mysterious enough, it will seem like there is something bigger than all of us.

Ellis Island Blues

We're going to be featured tomorrow on Cavalry Records' website, cavalryrecords.com. Along with an interview, we'll be premiering the demo of the first single from our upcoming album. It is this: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wymazujvymy

How it ended up so punx is anyone's guess.

Epiphany for June

"Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo" is a recording.

SCENE: Wendy's on Nicholson Ave, lights out. Monday, June 15 at 1:53AM

*ADAM pulls into Wendy's, TONY and ERIC in car*

ERIC: It's closed
ADAM: Should I turn around?
TONY: Go through the drive thru anyway. You have to get out somehow
*ADAM drives slowly through the drive thru, past the dark ordering window*
WOMAN (Recording): Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo
ADAM: Oh, shit! They're open!
*ADAM puts the car in reverse, ready to place order*
WOMAN (Recording): Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo
ADAM: Hi, do you guys still have Frostees?
MAN: WE'RE CLOSED OGERIOGLGIKGSDFGKLNDFA
*The car erupts into disbelief, followed by silent contemplation on the drive home*
ERIC: (several minutes later) The woman is a recording
ADAM: (his world both falling apart and concurrently coming into clearer focus than he can ever remember) ...