Brockett Blog

If pressed for an album of the year for 2012, I couldn’t give you one. Singles dominated the day, and a change in career and daily schedule meant I couldn’t find the right way to dig into entire albums. That meant finding few outstanding songs on my own, and relying on reviews, podcasts and friends to cull the best of what was presented in 2012. Still, there’s enough for everyone to share:

“Parted Ways” by Heartless Bastards

So straight-ahead rock as to invoke the tired truism of a band on the road, “Parted Ways” re-finds the reasons that such inspiration could be so fruitful. Great guitar work and handclap undercurrents infuse the plaintive vocals with such energy that the whole thing bursts beautifully at the 3:30 mark. It should be noted that the official video is terrible, which is especially disappointed given the evocative video treatment for “Only For You,” another great cut from Arrow.

“Silence” by The Ting Tings

If you wanted to write off The Ting Tings, you would say that the band combined some catchy electropop backings with enough bratty vocals to work on something as great as “That’s Not My Name,” and little else. But “Silence” makes such a reduction seem so very stupid. They put a wall of sound together piece by piece, and the patience pays off with a moment of pure ecstasy. It’s as if the Ting Tings are an animated band, reminiscent of Josie and the Pussycats. And at the 1:45 minute mark, the camera pans to the skies and the Buddy Christ of Dogma fame joins in on heavenly synthesizers.

“Grew Up At Midnight” by The Maccabees

Maybe it was exposure to Donovan’s “Catch the Wind” at an early age, but I’m a sucker for delicate songs building to crescendos that belie such soft beginnings. This song is relentlessly nostalgic, unrepentantly precious, and it works for every moment. The same cannot be said for the rest of the album, but we’ll always have “Grew Up At Midnight.”

“Simple Song” by The Shins

A cursory glance at end-of-year lists didn’t include many mentions of The Shins’ latest album. It could be legitimate opinion of quality, the lack of recency for a February release or that Shins fans have outgrown their initial fans while the new generation gags on any tangential reference to Garden State. But they’re missing out on an expertly crafted single, at the least. The squiggly guitar(?) line hidden behind James Mercer’s vocals really makes the song, as it adds a bit of dissonance to such polished surroundings.

“White to Red” by Fenster

“Restraint” would be the key word for this song, with “evocative” close behind. The simple melody burrows into your head, where the haunting vocals and tambourine-laden can really do their damage. I especially appreciate the unique ways the backing vocals complement the song when any rogue element could threaten the established fragility. An astute music supervisor in television or film could really crank up the creep with this as a soundtrack.

“The World is Watching” by Two Door Cinema Club

The version of myself from the year 2003 would have worn out this song. Then again, that version also paid good money for Travis’ 12 Memories, so he wasn’t always so trustworthy. It’s got everything a sadsack romantic could want, with nice-guy vocals hoping you won’t notice how egocentric (“You could be the one to set me free …”) the lyrics can be. And despite all that, these guys know enough to pump up the tempo just enough to make it absolutely irresistible. We can change, but only so much.

“Plumage” by Menomena

This band would have made my best of 2007 list with “Wet and Rusting,” a great song if for no other reason than the refrain, “It’s hard to take risks … with a pessimist.” “Plumage” is similar in how it bounces between the soft and the loud, and zigs when the odds clearly favor zags. Ultimately, what you think of this song depends on how you view the horn interlude halfway through the song. The rest of the song is such that it turns this potential mole into a beauty mark, capped by this lyrical gem: “I once was tragically hip and beautifully fine / Now my beautiful hips are tragically wide.”

“I Love It” by Icona Pop

That this song played on MTV’s “120 Minutes” isn’t an upset. (That someone still DVRs the show in its prime 5 a.m. Friday timeslot would be the bigger upset.) No, the surprise about this song is that I first heard it on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast. Here I download thinking I’ll be getting the latest breathless updates on Jason Lytle’s solo career, and this song steps right up, exclaims, “You’re cute!” and proceeds to punch me in the face. It’s the cocktail Sleigh Bells continually attempts to brew, using overpowered synths to wear down your senses and reach some instinctual place that isn’t so self-conscious about such exclamations of youth and life.

“Great Love” by Vacationer

In some ways, the beat behind “Great Love” is almost as wonderfully dumb as the one in “I Love It.” It thuds along with a grandfather clock’s consistency, which allows the insistent main vocals and ethereal backing vocals to really shine. This song just edges out the Vampire Weekend-esque “Be With You” that closes the Gone album to earn the Vacationer spot on the list.

“Swaggs” by Mount Carmel

This stuff is so retro the album cover is a knockoff of the 19-freakin’-72 Topps baseball card design. This can’t be new music recorded on old equipment. Someone found these reels when digging through old shoeboxes searching for Carlton Fisk rookie cards.

“Fate” by Young Man

A quick look at the YouTube comments for this video (“Quick, don’t look directly at them lest ye lose all hope for man!”) claims this song was used on Emily Owens M.D., which sounds about right. Individual sections of the song provide the proper amount of windswept winsomeness for a CW show. But as a whole, it’s a great journey befitting the song title, with gradual changes making even the slightest shifts seem like peaks and valleys.

Monday morning laughs are hard to come by, so the success of Drew Magary’s version of Fun With Peter King at Kissing Suzy Kolber is even more impressive. He parodies the Sports Illustrated writer’s columns in the way The Sugar Hill Gang nicked Chic’s instrumental track for “Rapper’s Delight”: by finding a hook for a different kind of entertainment. He announced today that he will hand the idea over to a KSK cohort, so I thought I would take to Photoshop to visualize one of Magary’s frequent flights of fancy. Here’s the column, here’s the inspiration, and here’s Eli Manning starring in Sliding Doors 2!

My iTunes playlist for this year, titled simply “2011,” represents my favorite songs of the year. And it’s exactly double the size of “2010″ and “2009.” That’s a function both of great music and great access to music. I was guided to these songs by many sources, and am forever grateful for the recommendations. It took more consternation than is socially acceptable, but here are my favorite 10 songs of the year.

“Just a Figment” by Morning Teleportation

After listening to this song, I went ahead and previewed Morning Teleportation’s entire album. And it was exhausting. Just about every track shifts directions multiple times before calling it a day. But on this track, puzzle pieces fly through the air, falling to the ground in a perfect fit. There’s so much here that you can love multiple parts of the song. Like, say, the Castlevania-esque synthesizer at the 3:40 mark. But be sure to notice when things get especially crazy at the end. Amid a whirlwind of guitars, the plaintive horn keeps playing, giving method to the madness.

“Under the Gun” by Apex Manor

No song better exemplified the difference between “cost” and “value” than this one in 2011. For most of the year, Amazon dangled this perfect slice of guitar pop for free, hoping to entice listeners into checking out The Year of Magical Drinking. That album features some similarly stellar songs, including the languid “Coming To.” But I kept coming back to this uptempo rocker with the simple, insistent beat. It’s the type of song that makes you say, “They used to play songs like this on the radio!” then proceed to slap yourself for ever sounding so old.

“Goshen” by Beirut

This song represents one of my favorite albums on the year, Beirut’s The Rip Tide, and it features all the trappings: simple piano playing, sad-sack lyrics and almost a martial beat near the end to give the song enough life to allow denial of any accusations of depression should a friend or family member bust in when this is playing. “East Harlem” is the most quintessential Beirut track on the album, but “Goshen” is the highlight for me. (Odd fact: according to Wikipedia, more than half the states in America feature a municipality named Goshen).

“That’s Where You’re Wrong” by Arctic Monkeys

After careful consideration, this song wins the title of “Best Song in 2011 That Features ‘Blunderbuss’ in the Lyrics.” (Better luck next year, LMFAO!) Alex Turner, through his myriad musical projects, consistently showcases a talent for lyrics. On this song, the bassline serves as the steadying base for a mix of echoing guitar and tight drumming. I almost wanted to put Turner’s solo version of  “Piledriver Waltz” off the Submarine soundtrack in this spot for making a singalong of such odd non sequiters, but this song is built to withstand time much better.

“Gratisfaction” by The Strokes

Ten years in, The Strokes made a divisive album. And while I haven’t had a chance to examine all the Angles, “Gratisfaction” can stand on its own as a pop gem. As the commenters on this YouTube clip highlight, the song sounds so reminiscent of some FM rock staple of the past. The initial stutter calls to mind the great vocal trick in “Give Me Just a Little More Time.” It’s The Strokes with at least one pass of the comb through the hair, and it cleans up quite well. Plus, this made Edgar Wright’s Top 30, a guy who makes great movies and dates Anna Kendrick. His word should almost be considered gospel at this point.

“Go to Hell” by Raphael Saadiq

This is the album I listened to the most in 2011, a great collection of songs that arrived just in time to blare out the car window this summer. “Heart Attack” immediately demands your attention, but I came to look forward to this song the most. It’s a throwback in the best sense, with Saadiq’s most plaintive vocals, a classic incorporation of strings and some great backing vocals.

“Lucky Now” by Ryan Adams

This is Ryan Adams’ singer/songwriter side distilled down to its essence. I wasn’t blown away on first listen by the rest of the album, but this song stands with his best work over the past decade-plus.

“You Been Lyin’” by Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears

You Been Lyin’ (Album Version)
My most quoted lyric from 2011? “They’re dropping bombs just to test the science!” The only thing more straight-ahead than the rock contained in this song is my line of sight when using the troughs at Wrigley Field.

“All Night, All Right” by Clive Tanaka y su orquesta

I’m not the biggest fan of processing vocals through electronic means, especially when it means just bumping up the tone-deaf to the level of barely competent. But I love how the vocals abandon any pretense of naturalism on this song, allowing it to become an electro-pop classic. The video in my head features a floor full of robots dancing their little batteries out at Studio 54.

“Codex” by Radiohead

Two of my favorite bands, Radiohead and Coldplay, both came out with albums in 2011. And while Coldplay disappointed in the way they decided to write big songs built for generic stadium venues, Radiohead’s King of Limbs disappointed in how the songs seem out of place when played almost anywhere. For want of a handhold, this album seems lost. Then “Codex” kicks in and tricks the mind into thinking that all that came before makes more sense. I choose to take the song out of its element and enjoy it on its own, and maybe the album will kick in for me sometime after 2011.

Other songs/groups receiving serious consideration: the return to form from The Dodo’s, the joyful ridiculousness of The Wombats, a damn fine debut by GIVERS, a heartfelt jam from The Rapture of all bands and two great songs from Noah and the Whale: Just Before We Met and L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. And … and … and …

They serve as workout partners, walk companions, backseat passengers and workplace buddies. Podcasts – as a medium – bring conversations to where we are, everywhere within ear(bud)shot. The best ones, the ones we manually check on iTunes subscriptions before a sync-and-go, create downloadable environments in which we feel like an important part of a conversation. Subscriptions come and go, but these podcasts proved to be my favorites in 2011.

The Basketball Jones – In both good times for the sport and bad, TBJ proved to be an indispensable part of being a fan of the NBA. The daily video show emanating from The Score’s Toronto studios spurred the excitement of an already stellar 2010 playoffs, breaking down each night’s action with passion and proper context. When the Dirkus Circus ended its run, though, labor issues clouded the future of the league and the podcast. The summer saw the full implementation of “The BLANK Jones,” bringing the goofiness at the periphery of the daily show to the forefront by talking in half-hour increments about everything from karaoke to the movie Real Steel. But the most impressive part of the podcast’s year began just as the league announced its first cancelled games. The show took its act on the road for the No Season Required tour, including a Chicago stop I was lucky enough to attend. And it helped lead to little videos like this, which provided proper distraction from the realization we wouldn’t get to see Derrick Rose glide to the hoop for a full 82 games in 2011-12:

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After months of being scared to fully jump aboard the Cardinals bandwagon (“What’s that behind the corner there … Corey P-p-p-patterson?!?! Zoinks!”), I have given myself fully to the cause in ways that seem just as rational as relying on Jeff Suppan and Jeff Weaver to pitch your favorite team to a title.

To get in the mood for Game 162 tonight, I watched/listened to one the finest montages set to screen: Mark Safan’s “Win in the End” rallying the Beavers to a comeback in Teen Wolf. Squint your eyes, and the faces start to resemble the last few weeks for the Cardinals …

The soundtrack to any of life’s events is one born of fortune: songs written and performed in the past relating in some fortuitous way to the events of the present. Moods captured in recordings reflect a reality that exists for the listener but not the artist.

Remembrances of Sept. 11, 2001 inevitably will touch upon the world of pop culture and how that world changed, and music certainly played a part in finding ways to represent feelings that those of us outside the immediately affected struggled to express. Two songs immediately come to mind, and they show how our memories can compress and extend time to fit our needs. The first – Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” – became associated with the tragedy for both being played and not being played. The song showed up on an advisory list created by Clear Channel as a song to avoid broadcasting on the radio. The decision made as much sense in the moment as it does now, especially when compared to some of the obvious plane crash and apocalyptic songs also on the list. This became abundantly clear on television Sept. 21, when a fundraising telethon called “America: A Tribute to Heroes” featured Paul Simon performing the 30-year-old song and giving it a new context.

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To paraphrase the Magnetic Fields, a podcast is like a violent crime: if you do it wrong you could do time, but if you do it right it is sublime. Poor audio quality or a bad phone/Internet connection can torpedo even the most illuminating conversations, turning a podcast into a herky-jerky affair with all the grace of a junior high dance.

Conversely, the art of audio production can create complete works from the relatively static content of a conversation. A lowering of technological limitations opened the yakking-for-public-consumption field to anyone with a voice and a prayer, and the most successful shows have learned some of the tricks used by radio to spruce up content. Oftentimes, podcasts make the stuff found on the airwaves seem like the nascent artform.

But picking the best podcast, or an ideal? It’s that type of foolish thinking that led Stephin Merritt to conclude, “A pretty girl is like … a pretty girllllll.” Personal standards will dictate what I call the pod-tonic ideal (see graphic above, and your infographic may vary). I define content as the combination of perspective and personality that makes me care about a conversation. This can vary quite a bit within a show, especially one that relies on long-form interviews. And production simply means the planning done before a show and/or the production work done after a show to make a podcast more than just a random conversation held within range of a recording device. Proper mics and audio levels set a strong baseline in this regard.

These aren’t all the shows I listen to, but their end results offer up enough examples to represent a nice cross-section of podcast approaches. Read the rest of this entry →

For one of my final classes toward Web design/development certification, I needed to take a basic art/design class. I signed up for the class a couple of times in previous semesters before thinking better of sitting in a classroom for three-hour increments and trying to find my muse next to a motley assortment of fellow students. Solution? Online class!

The course served as a practical instruction to Adobe Illustrator, using projects to highlight different aspects of graphic design. My functional mind (with just a hint of flair or attempted artistry) feared assignments based on abstract concepts. But other than coming up with little graphics that represented concepts like “balance,” the class steered toward real-world applications.

For our final project, we were tasked with coming up with an 8-by-10-inch poster of our choosing. I considered multiple musical interests. (My homage to the “Judy in Disguise” album cover must wait for another day.) But then I considered what could generally be described as podcast album artwork. The real estate on an iPod touch screen begs for a visual accompaniment to all that audio, and I shudder to think how long I spent making sure my thousands of songs in iTunes carried the proper album artwork. The podcast can be considered in much the same way, and even the most basic of designs is preferrable to the emptiness of a screen adorned only by the generic, circular podcast symbol.

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You could ring Pavlov’s bells and it wouldn’t cause as strong a reaction as I feel when the first percussive beats of “The Pills” by The Eskimos introduce a new episode of Gamespot’s Hotspot podcast. The catchy song and enjoyable podcast become entwined in ways that movies and television shows have used to superinject moments with added emotional importance (yes, conversations about Duke Nukem can involve an emotion).

This bit of production work provides a nice middle ground between the excesses of morning zoo radio and the let-us-rec0rd-a-conversation aesthetics of other podcasts. It makes me seek out the band, the song, and if there’s anything else out there like this great song. And the reason it’s possible, as discussed by the show, is that one of the hosts is related to a member of the band.*

* A similar situation also applies to the always-enjoyable NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour, which welcomes listeners each week with a sugar-sweet instrumental from the podcast producer’s band.

Royalty fees and music rights have made any attempt at using recorded songs a fool’s errand. Many shows have worked around this limitation by soliciting original works, including the likes of The Jonah Keri Podcast and Doug Loves Movies. Others embrace the limitations of the form, using royalty-free music. The Basketball Jones weekly audio show took a potential negative and turned using “Steppin’ On The Beach” (aka “Dirty Talk” by James Wallace) into a weekly highlight. Still, while I understand the fear of allowing shows to distribute licensed music for free on one section of iTunes while the other section asks for $1.29 a song, podcasts have matured enough as an artform that record companies should realize the potential benefits of allowing popular shows with loyal fanbases to use their artists’ songs.

At least one record company took a step in that direction this past week, when Up and In: The Baseball Prospectus Podcast announced a deal with Bloodshot Records. The podcast – hosted by the excellent Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks – incorporates music as bumpers between segments of the show. In the past, the show has used music beyond the line of sight of litigous record companies, all the while exposing some relatively little-known bands to a whole new audience. Bloodshot has embraced new ways to reach listeners, including free samplers through Amazon’s MP3 store, and this agreement falls in line with those efforts.

Podcasts and revenue are still mutually exclusive, even for the most popular of shows. The costs of server space quickly turn popularity into a financial burden. But the audience – well, there’s gold in them hills. Advertisers s…l…o…w…l…y have warmed to the concept, as any listener of the Adam Carolla Podcast can attest. And by wont of RSS feeds and iTunes, the audience welcomes new content in a delivery system that direct mail marketers would envy. I’m not saying a band like Muse – with U.S. popularity propelled by the Twilight films – can be replicated through the smaller audiences of niche podcasts. But when you’re gambling on viral YouTube videos, early morning MTV airings and maybe a spot on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to put some faith in an intriguing new bet.

In other podcast thoughts:

* Dan Levy at On the DL Podcast recently announced that his weekday show will end with show #555, giving fans about seven more episodes after today to settle in with a sports podcast staple. The show prided itself on long-form interviews with sports media personalities, but I always appreciated the days when media criticism and ruminations on the sports blog world dominated the conversation between Levy and his co-host, Nick Tarnowski. It became a staple of my early morning routine, with a hot shower and some interesting and/or provocative point jump-starting my brain. The show was thoughtful and entertaining, two attributes I wish sports talk radio could possess. And it will be missed.

* The AV Club has begun a regular feature called Podmass highlighting the best in a week’s worth of podcasts. Time commitments and the ocean of podcast content makes it difficult for most of popular culture to regularly focus on the medium. But the rise in quality, guest-laden comedy podcasts in the Los Angeles area makes for an easy hook, and this feature supplements a roundup of those podcasts with recaps of other shows you might have heard of. It’s a great resource, and it exemplifies some of the notable work done by the likes of Slate and NPR (with the aforementioned Pop Culture Happy Hour and Hang Up and Listen) in advancing the form and providing something eminently enjoyable week after week.