Autumn Sweaters

A playlist of sorts by FJP:

Iron & Wine : Boy With a Coin
The Shins  : Phantom Limb
Grizzly Bear : On a Neck On a Spit 
Chapterhouse : Summer Chill 
Yo La Tengo : Autumn Sweater (acoustic solo)
The Magnetic Fields : It’s Only Time
Nick Drake : Blues Runs the Game 
Voxtrot  : Mothers Sisters Daughters and Wives
Dan Rosen (Grizzly Bear)  : Deep Blue Sea 
My Bloody Valentine : Only Shallow
Blonde Redhead : In Particular 
Thurston Moore : The Shape is in a Trance  
Fu Manchu : We Must Obey
Beirut : Postcards from Italy
Grizzly Bear  : Don’t Ask (remix) 
Grizzly Bear : Don’t Ask (album)

Pure Horsehair : Aubade

I’ve been listening to the album Aubade by Pure Horsehair.

It’s good. Real good. I want to sit by the Mississippi River and drink a lemonade with this album. Not that you have to but that’s the rolling grace I get when this album is on.

Pure Horsehair is a band that hails from Brooklyn, New York, consisting of Garrett Devoe and Shahzad Ismaily. Garrett got some analog recording equipment from the bassist of TV on the Radio and turned his apartment into a analog recording studio. Mixed by Joe Blaney the album was produced, written and recorded by Garrett. And again, it sounds real good. I mean to stress this point because as I listen to Aubade, I’m reminded of how in today’s digital world, musicians, like Pure Horsehair, who are willing to put a bit of extra love into their music, go with analog recording.

The warmth in the recording is reciprocated by their songwriting and Garrett’s vocals. Both songwriter and voice carry sincerity and a sense of urgency that is missing  from most of what I hear today.  

So I urgently suggest you check out Aubade before another day breaks without it.

Pure Horsehair : H.D. Told Me

Word by FJP

Gogol Bordello : SUPER TARANTA!

♣♣♣Ω (3.5/5)

The first song on Gogol Bordello’s Supter Taranta, “Ultimate” sort of grabs you by the neck, shakes you for a couple minutes, spits in your face, kicks you in the balls, then maims you, all the while telling you about all the things in the world that you once thought were wrong, and then it walks away, and you’re perfectly fine with all this.

Robert Christgau reviewed this album for Rolling Stone last issue and loaded it with a bunch of over analytical garbage about immigration and all that. He also reviewed the White Stripe’s Icky Thump, piling anti-Stripes bias into his words, and Against Me!’s New Wave, insulting it, then giving it four stars. He’s really a bad writer. I had to get that out of my system.

Anyhow, the rest of the album does more or less the same thing, just with less force. “Wonderlust King” Is an example of a song that just isn’t as awesome as Ultimate.
“Zina Marina” is a strung out, distortion-riffed, psychadellic track, “Supertheory of Supereverything” is an anti-religion anthem, “Tribal Connection” is a quiet but epic song about being at home and comfortable with it, “Force of Victory” is hard rocking and loving it, and “Harem in Tuscany (Taranta)” Is an awesome singalong. But Super Taranta is not all that Christgau makes it up to be. Itís a very good album, but it’s by no means four-star worthy. Some of the songs sound the same, and some are just too weird to stand (“SuddenlyÖ (I Miss Carpaty)”, “Strange Uncles from Abroad”).
Suck it, Christgau.

Key Tracks: Ultimate, Your Country, and American Wedding

Gogol Bordello : Troubled Friends
Gogol Bordello : The Last Wish of the Bride
Gogol Bordello : God of Sameness 1

Reviewed by Evan Greenwald