Playlist for 4-26-12

Hey folks!

I hope you were able to tune in last night and participate in our fund drive, which helps keep KUCI commercial-free, uncorrupted by business interests, and community-minded. If you would like to support independent radio, you can go to KUCI.ORG and donate with your credit card (securely) on-line, or call 949-824-5824 sometime before May 4th to donate. Any amount helps. Really. We have modest fund-raising targets. We are a simple people with simple goals.

You'd be supporting music that sounds like this:

Things that Are Square 4-26-12

(*) = New release

(*) Allo Darlin' - Capricornia - Europe

Woods - Rain On - Songs of Shame
Pavement - Spit on a Stranger - Terror Twilight
Bill Callahan - Drover - Apocalypse

(*) Spiritualized - I Am What I Am - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
(*) La Sera - Please Be My Third Eye - Sees the Light
(*) Grimes - Oblivion - Visions

(*) Zammuto - Idiom Wind - Zammuto
Manitoba - I've Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life - Up in Flames
(*) Moonface with Siinai - Yesterday's Fire - Heartbreaking Bravery

Thee Oh Sees - The Dream - Carrion Crawler/The Dream EP

Black Eyes - Someone Has His Fingers Broken - Black Eyes

The Blood Brothers - Crimes - Crimes

(*) Perfume Genius - Normal Song - Put Your Back N 2 It
(*) Xiu Xiu - Always - Xiu Xiu/Dirty Beaches 7"
Evangelicals - You've Been Flirting Again - Enjoy: A Tribute to Björk's "Post"

(*) AU - Solid Gold - Both Lights
Liars - We Fenced Other Gardens with the Bones of Our Own - They Were Wrong So We Drowned
The Microphones - The Glow, Pt 2 - The Glow, Pt 2

Big Black - Kerosene - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape

The dream, it seems, is peeking

This song is my single favorite piece of music to be released in 2011. On their most recent album, "Carrion Crawler/The Dream EP," Thee Oh Sees finally managed to find a way to encapsulate their sweat-drenched live show onto tape, and this song is the ultimate documentation of that success. "The Dream" is the perfect melding of garage rock intensity and krautrock drive, creating a perfect trancelike space where all that exists is full energy rocking out, and for seven minutes there is only jostling with your fellow concert-goers, lost in a euphoric, perspiring abandon. This song will be on repeat in my apartment for years to come.

Playlist for 4-19-12

Happy Friday, folks,

It's 10:45, and I've already done all the work I needed to do today. Now I'm just going to kick back and read in my office until 5. Truly we live in the best of all possible worlds. And here is the soundtrack to this bold new utopia. The music I played on my show last night:

Things that Are Square 4-19-12

(*) = New release

Dirty Projectors - Two Doves - Bitte Orca

Dear Nora - Second Hand - Three States
Camera Obscura - I Need all the Friends I Can Get - Let's Get Out of This Country
Television Personalities - Geoffrey Ingram - ...And Don't the Kids Just Love It
Los Campesinos! - By Your Hand - Hello Sadness

(*) Spiritualized - Hey Jane - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
Essential Logic - Collecting Dust - Beat Rhythm News (For Ivy in Westminster, CA)
Stereolab - Pack Yr Romantic Mind - Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements

(*) Zammuto - F U C-3PO - Zammuto
Holy Fuck - Echo Sam - LP
Mi Ami - Latin Lover - Steal Your Face
Oneida - People of the North - Anthem of the Moon

Religious Girls - OG - Midnight Realms
(*) Ed Schrader's Music Beat - Rats - Jazz Mind
mclusky - To Hell with Good Intentions - mclusky Do Dallas
(*) Xiu Xiu - Smear the Queen - Always

(*) Ufomammut - Empireum - Oro: Opus Primum
(*) Willis Earl Beal - Away My Silent Lover - Acousmatic Sorcery

(*) Perfume Genius - Sister Song - Put Your Back N 2 It
Girls - Forgiveness - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt - Heartland

Ask yourself if you could do better

After I saw Shellac live in LA a couple months ago, my mind had been so thoroughly blown by the live show that I needed some type of documentation of the evening. I figured a Peel Session, gold standard of the recorded live experience, would fill that need handedly.

But while this Peel Session had a much different setlist than what I had experienced, tracks like "Billiard Player Song" are no less....harrowing. The intensity that Albini delivers near the end of this song is enough to make you physically uncomfortable. Thankfully, live, they have Q+A breaks between songs, and the band's wit and levity help to break what could be a very tense evening. Also, you can ask Steve Albini how to cook things and he is very helpful about it.

Playlist for 4-12-12

Hey folks!

I missed you guys so much last week. The infernal forces of COLLEGIATE SPORTS conspired to keep us apart with their devious pre-emption powers. But I was back last night, and we embraced like lovers after the war. And what says "lovers embrace" like playing Faust? Here's the other stuff I played:

Things that Are Square 4-12-12

(*) = New release

Best Friends Forever - Eisenhower Is the Father - Romance Conflict Adventure

Nose Bleed Island - When We Won the War - More Tales from Blood Island
The Mae Shi - Run to Your Grave - Hlllyh
The Clean - Anything Could Happen - Anthology
The Field Mice - Coach Station Reunion - For Keeps

(*) La Sera - Please Be My Third Eye - Sees the Light
The Pastels - Nothing to Be Done - Truckload of Trouble
The Modern Lovers - Someone I Care About - The Modern Lovers
The Jesus and Mary Chain - My Little Underground - Psychocandy

(*) Part Time - She's Playing with Your Mind - What Would You Say
Wild Beasts - The Fun Powder Plot - Two Dancers
Kazino - Binary - Disco Not Disco (For Ivy in Westminster, CA)
(*) Zammuto - Zebra Butt - Zammuto

(*) Xiu Xiu - Born to Suffer - Always
Deerhoof - Panda Panda Panda - Apple O'
Chain and the Gang - (I've Got) Privilege - Music's Not for Everyone
Emperor X - Allahu Akbar - Western Teleport

(*) Willis Earl Beal - Monotony - Acousmatic Sorcery
(*) Perfume Genius - Take Me Home - Put Your Back N 2 It
Jeffrey Lewis - So What If I Couldn't Take It - A Turn in the Dream-Songs
Rocketship - Kisses Are Always Promises - A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness

Les Savy Fav - Raging in the Plague Age - Let's Stay Friends
The King Khan & BBQ Show - I'll Be Loving You - Invisible Girl
The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck - Psychedelic Jungle
Blood On The Wall - Dead Edge of Town - Awesomer

Can - Paperhouse - Tago Mago
Spacemen 3 - Take Me to the Other Side - The Perfect Prescription

Faust - Jennifer - Faust IV

There's a 3.6 - of course it must be from Pitchfork

On his most recent album, "A Turn in the Dream-Songs," Jeffrey Lewis continues his pattern of putting out fair-to-middling albums with one of two solid, solid songs on them. Mr. Lewis is capable of writing some fantastic songs, but his albums tend to be so-so affairs (I'm sorry Jeffrey. I love your music but I have to be honest with you). After he passes away (God forbid), they're going to put out one of the greatest best-of albums ever, culling all the amazing songs strewn across all of his releases.

Unfortunately, the new album is weaker than most, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a couple really decent tunes on it. The above song, a five-minute anti-folk list of failed suicide attempts delivered in wry, black humor, is a clear stand-out. Let it never be said that Jeffrey Lewis cannot write lyrics. His ability to spin ryhming narrative is almost peerless in current independent music. And even if his songs are occasionally less-than, his albums are always going to speak to me in a very real way. The sentiments and wit will always have a space in my album library.

You can pick up the new album (or any of his other albums) at his web page or at Amazon.

Don't think of her porous membrane

I'm so happy that Emperor X got signed to Bar None Records. He (Chad Matheny) is a guy I have gotten several chances to hang out/talk/play with, and he's an incredibly intelligent, hardworking, sweetheart of a man. I am thrilled for every success that comes his way.

His debut album on a big ol' real-time label, "Western Teleport," is more of his signature witty and heartfelt singer-songwriter jams, packed solid with tiny DIY electronic embellishments and little nuggets of hooks buried everywhere like treasures dotting the landscape. Lyrically, apolocalypse imagery cozies up next to the mundalities of compressor repair. And while writing on things like IEDs and floods sounds like it could get heavy, the tone is less one of doom and gloom and rather one of a great, Lost Boys-like adventure where we'll all be stripped of the confines of society and find out what we're really made of as we fashion our own utopia together.