Author Archive for Burton Parker

Burton’s Top 8 Songs of the Year (conflict of interest edition)

Burton Parker, December 30, 2009 in Lists. 0 Comments Tags: .

Inspired by Jeff’s post, I thought I’d have a go at doing an end of year list as well. Mind you, I’m barely qualified to even write here. I’ve got all of one review under my belt so far, and an EP at that. I must disclose, many of these artists are also friends and/or clients through my work. That being said, these are honestly, truly my favorite songs this year and I wanted to share. Let’s do this!:

  • Kid Sister – “Get Fresh”
    Easily one of my favorite albums of this year. It’s a fun record, which of course means the retards at Pitchfork hate it.
  • Manchester Orchestra – “I’ve Got Friends”
    It’s not a cover of the Garth Brooks song, although if Chris Gaines had won out this might have been a remotely possible b-side in his alternate universe career.
  • Radio City – “Coming Down Easy”
    These guys come from my neck of the woods and are pretty new. A really great rock song, great bridge, great voice – it’s all there.
  • Medusa – “Mediatrix”
    Perhaps oddly, right along with Kid Sister this was another one of my favorite full lengths. The breakdown makes you want to pull out your nervous system, which the surgeon general still strongly advises against doing.
  • Wilco – “You Never Know”
    Georff Twearrisoneedy
  • Major Lazer – “Pon De Floor”
    This is a case where an already peculiar and engaging piece of music was made all the better by the second weirdest video I’ve ever seen. First weirdest was, well, also Major Lazer.
  • M. Ward – “Epistemology”
    M. Ward makes the best Bible song since “Cum on Feel the Noize”.
  • Coalesce – “Wild Ox Moan”
    Simply a brilliant piece of music. I love everything about this song. It’s a complex song, with complex subject matter, based around a simple, traditional field holler. Well played, sirs. Bonus tip: track down the BBC sessions version for extra rawness.

Video Daughters: Birds, Sing the Car Alarm EP

Burton Parker, October 15, 2009 in Music Reviews. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

vdaughterscover

If you’re short on time I’ll tell you right now, Birds, Sing the Car Alarm has two great songs, two good songs, and two neither-great-nor-good songs. Put another way: this is an EP that should have been a 7″. There’s far more to say, but in short this effort represents an imperfect sampling from a group with a lot of potential.

Let me just get the negative bits out of the way now. For starters, “Resume” should not be on here. As the second track it absolutely kills the momentum of a truly great opening track. Having an equally strong third track only makes it seem more out of place. I’m not trying to pick on this one song, but from the very first listen all I could hear was Andy Samberg. If this isn’t Andy Samberg yelling into a microphone then I might have recently suffered a stroke. The second half is mostly above average, but it ends poorly and I’ll get into that later.

As for the highlights, I don’t know if it was the side effects of the Beatles remasters I was also listening to, but “Tri-State Area Blues” totally reminds me of old rock music. So much modern music is about fitting into a sub-genre, “sounds like”, “for fans of”, and so on. “Tri-State Area Blues” is just a rock song, simply, and it’s a great one. Of the 6 songs on this EP, this is the one that seems most able to grab your attention immediately, and I even found myself singing along several times. One irony of the 10 Listens methodology is that I did become quite aware of how overly bass-heavy this song is, especially when cranked. And through headphones it’s quite clear someone in the right channel sucks at singing in tune. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t detract from the song.

I was even more impressed with “Pink Screaming”, and this is where my 7″ argument comes in. This plus “Tri-State Area Blues” on a 45 would be a great find at a record store. I love the vocal in particular, it’s isolated in a way that consistently reminded me of Superchunk, and that’s rarely a bad thing. Where “Tri-State Area Blues” is raucous and lively, “Pink Screaming” comes off almost introspective and small. It wound up being my favorite track to hear through headphones, as well.

As noted earlier, the final three songs represent a mixed bag. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a lot of atmosphere going on throughout these songs. There are samples, loops, diversions into chaotic noise – the sort of stuff that happens during band practice. In fact, if you drop the treble during some of these songs you’d swear your neighbors are running through their set again. “Blood Pressure”, with it’s distinctive opening guitar and spasmic ending, is the song you’ll remember from this half, but “Another Season for the Priests of Reason” is more interesting. With it’s tribal background arrangement and awkward harmonies it wouldn’t be out of place on an older Animal Collective album. It’s certainly better than the closing track “Wild People”. Like “Resume” before it, it’s rather obnoxious and, for me, it’s a rather poor way to end the EP. The temptation to skip the track and move on to Warren G in the iPod was always there.

All told, I think the interesting bits here overpower the dead weight. Not every piece or collection of music is perfect, or genius, but Video Daughters deserve your ears. Birds, Sing the Car Alarm is still on my iPod, it’s been played more than 10 times, and if Video Daughters ever put out a full length I’ll gladly give them another 10 listens.