Evan Greenwald’s look at ‘07 and more free tunes by FJP

I’ve been quite lucky to have so much help from great writers like Farhad J. Parsa, Evan Greenwald, Jory John, and John Hell. No longer is 4F a space for one person’s look at the current world of music, but instead, it’s a true collaboration.

I’ve set up a separate page for Mr. Greenwald’s epic list of his favorite music, musicians, and songs from 2007. Here’s just an excerpt:

Album of the Year:

Neon Bible
By The Arcade Fire

I
don’t know why I’ve been denying it all year–maybe because I didn’t
want to give all the awards to the same band–but the truth is: I love
this album. Especially after giving it a year to grow on me. Even songs
that feel boring at first (“Neon Bible,” “Ocean of Noise,” “Windowsill”)
have eventually grown on me, and on some occasions have even become my
favorites on the album, of only for a day or two. The real power in
Neon Bible is the way that Arcade Fire have mastered their sonic
oxymoron. For example, on their first and classic album, Funeral,
inspired by nine deaths in the families of the seven members of the
group, you’ll feel joyous. Listen to the Springsteen-meets-Bjork anthem “Haiti,” about escaping from the country of the same name, complete
with angry soldiers and dieing cousins, and keep yourself from dancing.
At that point in the career, they might as well have capitalized the
FUN in FUNeral. Now, listen to “Intervention,” the moody church organ
centerpiece of the album about salvation of the religious variety, and
keep the Kleenex nearby.

The sonic changes in Neon Bible from
Funeral are significant, but the power each song has not lessened in
any way. And where some songs are sad and beautiful, the best songs
you’ll hear are the dancier ones like the American Spirit of “(Antichrist Television Blues)” or the contagiously catchy “Keep the
Car Running” (which even the Foo Fighters have been known to cover
recently).

First came the Funeral, then came the Bible. Now we’ve got to believe. Itís easier than you might think.

AND . . .

More tunes fished out of the web by FJP:

• Sebadoh : On Fire
• The Microphones : Ice
• LCD Soundsystem : Daft Punk is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Re-Remix)
• The Futureheads : Let’s Dance (Bowie Cover)
• The Organ : Brother
• The Occasion : All Over Idaho
• Heatmiser (Elliott Smith) : Plainclothes Man (acoustic)
• The Polyphonic Spree : Lithium (Nirvana Cover)
• Sunset Rubdown : The Mending of the Gown

The ultimate guide to music for people in need of a root canal, by FJP

• 764-Hero : Terrified of Flight
• Bad Brains : Big Takeover
• sadsadfun : Ever Loving Light (the old version…it’s downloadable now)
• Spoon : Revenge!
• Spoon : Underdog
• CSS : Art Bitch
• CSS : Knife (Grizzly Bear Cover)
• Fiery Trees: Scorpio
• The Organ: Brother
• Pavement: Silence Kit
• Soft Machine : Instant Pussy
• Portishead : Strangers
• Portishead : Sour Times
• Portishead : Wandering Star
• Polar Bear Club
• Lastly check out the music of SQE

By FJP

Kingsbury: THE GREAT COMPROMISE by Evan Greenwald

There is little room for Kingsbury to be happy, apparently.  They’re melancholy of sometimes the best quality, like the Smashing-Pumpkins-meets-a-sad-version-of-the-Violent-Femmes of their album’s opener, “Corpse,” with the heavy church bells and the distorted humming guitar, the climactic gloom of “Buried Beneath the Trees,” or the heavy, sped-up march of “Blood In the Kitchen.” And sometimes it’s just really, really bizarre, like in “Desert Inn”.

But you have to give Kingsbury credit. Most bands who try out the dreary vocal style drown faster than their lyrics say they want to be.  But here the dreariness is all apart of a bigger picture. It’s not whiny enough to be emo and it’s not hardcore enough to be goth, it’s just generally dark, and it sounds pretty good that way.

Now, Dreary doesn’t mean quiet, like it is usually assumed to mean, and “Peninsula” helps back me up. It’s loud and dark at the same time.

See, the fun of Kingsbury is that it’s seriously dark. Not dark to be funny or dark because the band thinks it’ll make them more popular, but because it’s how they are.  And sometimes being yourself means being depressing. Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to enjoy the sound of suffering, does it?

Key Tracks: Corpse, Blood In the Kitchen, Peninsula

Kingsbury on Myspace

Animal Collective: STRAWBERRY JAM by Evan Greenwald

Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but really, this is a musical achievement. A band has actually combined the weird-noise beep-boop-bopping of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the jolly dance of the circus, and, but only sometimes, the brainless insane screech of the screemo genre into one compact nine-song album.
 
Imagine you’ve got yourself a fifty-five-minute, twenty-eight-second long caffeine rush that just happens to sound great too, and there you go. Animal Collective.
 
Some of it actually doesn’t sound good at all (the mumbling drone of “1″), but when it works, it’s a miracle. Easily the best song, “Peacebone,” though lacking in the insanity, is one of the most brilliant songs I’ve heard all year. From the jumpy bass line, the sugar rush synthesizers, and the ridiculously good lyrics (“I was a jugular vein in a juggler’s girl/I was supposedly leaking the most interesting colors”), that still retain poetic brilliance even after your realize that none of them make any sense at all.
 
“For Reverend Green” is the song where the Collective start, and stop, screaming. If begins and a jolly pop tune with distorted loops playing underneath Avey Tare’s singsong microphonage. But, almost at random times it switches to the full-throttle screech, the alt-metal wail that not only is unexpected, but is also very good sounding.
 
Sometimes the revolution comes from places we didn’t expect it to come from. What Animal Collective have done doesn’t exactly sound consistently good, but it is unfailingly original, and occasionally it’s brilliant.
 
Key Tracks: Peacebone, For Reverend Green, Winter Wonder Land

Animal Collective : Fireworks