Rediscovery Of The Year: Cry – The Rock*A*Teens (1997)

So, you’ve never heard the Rock*A*Teens? Now, why is that? Surely, it’s not because they shamelessly pilfered their name from the 50’s beat combo whose “Woo Hoo” has soundtracked a million commericals? Or because they were the only male-fronted reverb-overdosed rockers on Indigo Girl Amy Ray’s Daemon Records? Or the messed-up punctuation that probably made it hard for your local record store to even order it in the first place? Well, rectify that and dig into this Southern-gothic-noir gem.

Led by Chris Lopez, who went on to form the equally obscure Tenement Halls, the R*A*Ts are intense. The music alternates between driving and langorous – and the hard-luck subjects of the songs are so richly realized that you find yourself hoping that these are fiction and not auto-biography.

I’d always been fond of “Cherry Red Compilation” – a grimly nostalgic ode to mixtapes and lost loves – and this piledriver still holds up. But for some reason, I’d written off the album as a whole and let Cherry Red live on as a fragment of a mix (how novel!) So 14 years later, I discovered a raft of great songs that simultaneously celebrate and curse the life of a loser. “I Am Forgetting” is a brilliant rave-up. “Losers, Weepers” is a smoldering hanger-on. But “Black Ice” is the true epic. A tale of a crazed drive home – or maybe a Dixie death trip – dripping with gritty Carver/Bukowski-ish lyrics and sung with such a passion that if you aren’t feeling it by the first chorus, you may already be dead.

"Black Ice" is featured with a bunch of resurrected oddballs on my 2011 Rediscoveries Spotify playlist.

Fun facts: This album, along with the first R*A*Ts record, features an almost-inaudible Kelly Hogan. (I’m pretty sure that’s why I bought this is the first place – and probably why I shelved it, since I couldn’t hear one of my favorite singers.) And they ended up on the Rudy and Go-Go cartoon show’s compilation album. Vote Goat!.

2010 Lives On

...mainly because I've been too lazy to listen to them until now. I'm adding Grinderman 2 and Innerspeaker by Tame Impala to the Best of 2010 albums list!

Poddish Redux: My Top 25 Of All Time

OK, in the old Poddish tradition, here are my top 25 most listened songs of all time (or at least from the onset of iTunes) as captured on 12/31/10. My advice to Archie Bell is to tighten up, you have been slipping in the ranks, my man.

Name - Artist (Play Count)

1. Lilting - Oh-OK (64)
   
2. Derailing - The Casual Dots (62)
   
3. Her Jazz - Huggy Bear (62)
   
4. leotard - tacocat (62)
   
5. Those Dancing Days - Those Dancing Days (62)
   
6. Audrey - Walking Concert (61)
   
7. Vegetarian Restaurant - Aberfeldy (59)
   
8. Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells (59)
   
9. Clap (See the Stars) - The Myrmidons (59)
   
10. Come On Let's Go - Broadcast (58)
    
11. What's Your New Thing? - Walking Concert (58)
    
12. One Glass of Water - The Bees (57)
    
13. Go Karts - The Bees (56)
    
14. Richard Dawson - B.C. Camplight (55)
    
15. I Believe In Miracles - The Jackson Sisters (53)
    
16. Badger - Let's Active (53)
    
17. Everything Thermals - The Thermals (53)
    
18. I Had An Excellent Dream - The Dentists (52)
    
19. The Youth - MGMT (52)
    
20. Safety Net - Shop Assistants (52)
    
21. Sugarcube - Yo La Tengo (52)
    
22. Bang Bang Rock & Roll - Art Brut (51)
    
23. Sink Venice - Ikara Colt (51)
    
24. Smile - Lily Allen (51)
    
25. Debbie Harry - Family Fodder (50)

My Favorite New Tracks Of 2010

As seen on Facebook...

Here are my most listened to songs that came out last year.

Name	Artist	Album	Play Count
When The Sun Don't Shine	Best Coast	Crazy For You	44
Your Name Is Wild	I Was A King	Too Pure Singles Club - January 2010	33
I Just Want To See Your Face	Serena Maneesh	S-M 2: Abyss In B Minor	31
Albatross	The Besnard Lakes	The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night	29
Super Soaker	Wavves	King Of The Beach	29
Post Acid	Wavves	King Of The Beach	26
Mmmhmm (featuring Thundercat)	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	25
Rill Rill	Sleigh Bells	Treats	24
Don't Tred	Frankie Rose And The Outs	Frankie Rose And The Outs	23
Heaven and Hell	Quasi	Repulsion - EP	23
I Will Be	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	22
Do The Astral Plane	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	22
King Of The Beach	Wavves	King Of The Beach	22
Hoola (Moscow Remix)	Archie Bronson Outfit	Hoola (Remixes)	21
Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph	Flying Lotus	Cosmogramma	21
Song For Dan Treacy	MGMT	Congratulations	21
Girlfriend Island	Frankie Rose And The Outs	Frankie Rose And The Outs	20
Bang Bang Bang	Mark Ronson & The Business Intl	Record Collection	20
So I'll Say Goodbye	The Pipettes	Stop the Music - EP	19
Run the Heart	Sleigh Bells	Treats	19
Summer Mood	Best Coast	Crazy For You	18
It Only Takes One Night	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	18
Kids	Sleigh Bells	Treats	18
Rachel	Sleigh Bells	Treats	17
Jail La La	Dum Dum Girls	I Will Be	15

The Albums Of The Year: The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night

First off, I have to say I really don't like The Arcade Fire. They are so big and pompous and so militant in their hurdy-gurdy playing and anthemic in their choruses and it's just all a bit wearying to me.

So, why am I leading off a love note to The Besnard Lakes with a hissy-fit about the Arcadians? There's a lot of similarities... a husband-wife led band from Montreal writing and performing "Big Music" on an American indie label. But there's a greater warmth to me in The Besnard Lakes, even a playful sexiness that illuminates the epic nature of the music.

I was a fan of the previous album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse (ah, yes, it's not like I promised no pomposity,) but the band fell off my radar over the last couple years. When I heard Albatross, the standout track from the new album, I immediately re-upped, though. Albatross sounds like Kim Deal fronting a My Bloody Valentine/High Llamas team-up (or maybe my pals Sixteen Deluxe working through a Beach Boys phase.) It's a definite lock in my Top Ten Songs Of 2010 list.

The rest of the album doesn't quite hit those heights, but there's a great sense of drama and tension throughout. Fortunately, the band understands how to throttle back and keep it small and appealing. Alternating male/female vocals and lush harmonies make a big difference here. Glass Printer is a great example of a wiggy guitar workout augmented by an indie chorale.

Oh, and just to be fair to The Arcade Fire... your name is significantly better than The Besnard Lakes!

The Albums Of The Year: Janelle Monae - The Archandroid

Don't make your end of year lists too early... I'm looking at you, well, almost everyone. I literally hadn't heard one note of Janelle Monae's The Archandroid until after Christmas, but I've listened to it twice a day every day since. Why? Because this record is so mindnumbingly immense, I've got to keep playing it to figure it out!

What is it, exactly? It's got more styles of music than you can shake a stick at. There's choral folk, party jammz, glossy Euro-electro, psychedelic soul, revved up rave-ups, and more - but it all hangs together somehow. Perhaps the best album to compare it to is The Avalanches' magnum opus, Since I Left You. That record was essentially a mix of hundreds upon hundreds of samples into a crazy mash-up. The Archandroid , on the other hand, plays with actual songs - building arrangements with real strings and brass and modern beats and grooves, but it's still a crazy mash-up too.

It is not the sort of record you expect anyone to make anymore. A big-budget, ambitious work that only gives a few cursory nods to modern commercial radio. Sure, Tightrope (which features Outkast's Big Boi, one of the benefactors of Monae) works as a boom-car jam, but you are going to find more orchestral fantasias and Joni Mitchell-eqsue chord changes elsewhere than you would follow-up singles.

At its heart, The Archandroid is a pop record, but it's one of those unique collections of indulgent creativity like you might expect from a Kate Bush or Os Mutantes or Van Dyke Parks. It's too early to say that Janelle Monae ranks anywhere near those folks, but she's sure making a big splash into the pool.

(It's impossible to pick a representative track from this album but I'm digging the weird cousin of Crystal Blue Persuasion called Mushrooms & Roses and the sorta-drum&bass sorta-Time Faster.)

Reissue Of The Year!: Dolly Mixture - Everything And More...

In this age of everything ever created being available at one's fingertips, it's still a treat when a beloved record gets a deluxe reissue, even more so when the band's collected works are almost impossible to find and/or afford.

So, hurray for Dolly Mixture and Everything And More. (OK, it is neither "everything" or "more" but it's more than has ever been available apart from crappy multi-generation tape dubs or internetted vinyl MP3 captures.)

In 1979, it wasn't terribly unusual for three girls to form a band, but it was uncommon to channel punk energy through a 60's pop style. Imagine a DIY Shangri-Las with more sass and (only slightly) less polish. And so, Dolly Mixture almost immediately floated between the tones of the time and pop classicism. That probably contributed to enthusiastic but small crowds at gigs - and to the absolutely miserable efforts of getting records out.

The band never put out a proper album and only managed four 45s (on three labels!) over five years. Perversely, they can boast a UK #1 single as the more-than-just-backing singers on Captain Sensible's wacko cover of "Happy Talk" (from South Pacific! - and try telling me they don't look absolutely adorable with him on Top Of The Pops) - as well as another big hit on the Captain's follow-up, "Wot." (As big aficionados of weird 80's pop, that meant I was a big fan of the Dollies long before I honestly knew anything about their own great work.)

Maybe those up-and-mostly-downs took the pure pop rush of How Come You're Such A Hit With The Boys, Jane? into increasing wistfulness as heard on Shonay Shonay but it might have simply been the maturation of the band from crushes to heartache too. Treasures like Everything And More simply reinforce Dolly Mixture's place in the pop echelon.

As the band began to wind down, they took matters into their own hands and released Demonstration Tapes, a compilation of almost everything they'd recorded to date. This long MIA record makes up the first disc of the reissue and packs in 27 fantastic pop songs. The rest of the package includes the major label singles, a handful of pre-break-up songs, and live tracks. Disc One alone makes for essential listening but the icing on the cake is the amazing Been Teen, a much bootlegged gem that finally saw the digital light of day. And if you take a gander at this crummy video footage, you'll realize just what a holy grail that a clean copy of Been Teen is! The hefty booklet relates the bittersweet tale of this unjustly overlooked band. Go and get this, pop kids!