Preview New Mountain Goats

Listen to the new Mountain Goats album here. Also watch them on the Colbert Report on October 6. You can also buy the album on this date

The Mountain Goats-The Life Of The World To Come @ Colbert Nation

Top Albums of the Decade

What are your favorite 10 albums of the last 10 years? I can't answer it right now, but I plan to answer it within the next couple days. The list will come out tomorrow (this has been inspired by Pitchforks top 200 or so albums of the decade) or the next day or the next. I am trying to get this done by soon so I am not influenced adversely by their efforts to impress. The year 2000 (cue Conan OBrien and Andy Richter with flashlights and space helmets) was a long long time ago and I will have to double check dates on some of my favorite records. I do know that Kid A was released in 2000 and that was one fine piece of music.

Please add your favorite albums as we go along.

1. Radiohead-Kid A
I think this might be one of the best albums ever made. That is a huge statement but I stand by it. To me this record is a new definition of what music is. I read in a Chuck Klosterman book (can't remember which one) that if you listen to the first 5 or 6 tracks of this album and picture all the events that took place on 9-11 that it fits in a very eerie kind of way)
2. Interpol-Turn Off The Bright Lights
This album feels like a great winter record to me. NYC is one of my favorite songs and in it has one of my favorite lines comparing the subway to a porno. Their next two albums have been alright, but haven't been able to live up to how good this one is.
3. Wolf Parade-Apologies to the Queen
Its amazing and they have come out with some great albums after this one, but none of them (Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs) have been better. Great songwriting and great sounds.
4. Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
I thought Summerteeth was a great cd. And then Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out and I was pretty much blown away like everyone else. Mainly, because it sounded so different from what they had done in the past.
5. Mountain Goats-Sunset Tree
John Darnielle is one of the top 5 songwriters ever.
6. Arcade Fire-Funeral
There is something kind of spooky about this band and the stuff they do. I can't quite explain it. Laura says they are militant and we both say they are awesome.
7. Band of Horses-Everything All The Time
This record makes me want to vandalize.
8. The Thermals-The Body, The Blood, The Machine
No matter what this band does, nothing can be better than this cd. If you don't have it you should buy it. I think that this is a record that almost everyone will enjoy.
9. Modest Mouse-The Moon and Antarctica
Modest Mouse is one of my favorite bands and this is one of my favorite albums of theirs. Its not their best (The Lonesome Crowded West) but its their best in the 2000's.
10. Bright Eyes-Lifted
This cd feels like a Wes Anderson movie to me. There really isn't another album, that I have heard, that has the kind of feel this one does. Can't really explain it so I won't. If you listen to it you will understand. Its pretty great

Backspacer

As the posts of top villains have come to a standstill I will take some time to talk about important music. Pearl Jam and their new release Backspacer. Since No Code has been released, maybe Yield, I have been trying to figure out where the greatest rock band of the Post Rolling Stones era fits in to the music world. I know where they arrange themselves in my world and that is firmly at the top. As mentioned previously, a new band can be currently "the greatest music I have ever heard" (a typical overenthusiastic overstatement), but prefaced with the note that Pearl Jam is the greatest band of all time. They are our Rolling Stones, our Led Zepplin.

Critics seem to be tired of their act and that is not surprising because critics, whether they admit it or not, are out to "make a band famous" or at least relevant (go to any music "blog" and see what I mean**). A critic has nothing to gain by praising Pearl Jam. They are giants, they are Mount Olympus, they are outer space. They can't get bigger so there is no motivation to "sing their praise", plus if an artist isn't -reinventing music itself- then it is thought of as pedestrian ...kind of laughable really (this gets into music snobbery and that is a post all to itself). My point here isn't to highlight the ridiculousness of music critics because their absurdity is evident; my purpose is to talk about a great album and a greater band. How can a band be greater than the albums they put out? They put on amazing live performances that take a great studio recording and blow it up in a chemistry set.

Backspacer is the best Pearl Jam album since No Code. It contains all the great things you want from a PJ album. The first three songs rattle your window panes. Gonna See My Friends, Get Some, and Fixer are in the vain of Animal or Go, Hail, Hail, or Alive. They are the "play fucking loud" Pearl Jam songs that can make someone in his 30's act like a high school kid again. Then you have Just Breathe, Amongst the Waves, and easily my favorite Unthought Known (the keys in this song are great, you almost want it to break into a little E-Street but nonetheless it sounds great). Eddie Vedder, slowing it down a bit. His strength is in his ability to write great rock songs and also good "songwriter songs" like the ones he wrote for Into the Wild.

I started to wonder if I liked newly released Pearl Jam albums because they are Pearl Jam and I have great memories tied to their old records. The last few definitely made me wonder if I liked what they put out anymore...at least in the way that I used to. Backspacer is great. It is apolitical. It is a rock album in a musical world where the attempt to reinvent music is at a premium and where good rock music is sometimes lost. Go buy it and listen to it until you can't do it anymore.

**The Sun Sets On Indiana is a machine, not a blog

VILLAIN NUMBER 2---THE WOMEN OF THE NATURAL

THE BLACK WIDOW

Our second villain is a less obvious one, but maybe the most dangerous; for it is the less obvious that sneak in when your guard is down. If you see Darth Vader on the street you are most likely going to run, or at least be very aware of the ominous music that accompanies him. It is the ones that approach in common clothing, or a Trojan Horse that catch you off guard and get you good. In The Natural there is a hero, maybe the greatest hero, and that man is named Roy Hobbs. On the surface this movie has a few villains. Maybe the Whammer early on, the judge for sure, his henchman Gus Sands, and a sort of passive villain in Max Mercy. To the casual viewer of this movie, these are your villains. To someone who has seen the movie so often that in high school he could recite any line in any scene, on command...these are just decoys. Decoys throwing you off the scent of the true villains.
Villain number 2 in TSSOI list of all time villains, with a bullet, is...the women of The Natural.
Lets start at the beginning. A young Roy Hobbs playing catch with his pops, throwing a baseball through a barn...an all american boy playing an all american game in what we can only assume is the heartland of our great country. He finds out that the Cubs want to take a look at him and in his last night in town he heads to the barn and knocks up Glen Closes character (Iris). This seemingly innocent bit of adolescent romping is the beginning of the end for poor Roy. You can't fault Iris (or Roy really)...her intentions are innocent enough...but the gods don't choose heroes and villains based on intentions...there is something more. (side note: Glen Close is not only a villain in this movie, but in the end one of the true heroes. Find another movie when this happens.)
Roy hops on a train, just having his first taste of sex and his mind is now in the proverbial "gutter". No longer is he thinking about his 90+ mph fastball whipping through his barn. Nor is he thinking about making it to the goddamn Big Leagues. He is thinking about where he is going to get his next piece of pussy.
Next...the black widow...Harriet Bird. The woman on the train, the woman at the carnival, the woman smoking a bullet into the stomach of Roy Hobbs, ending his dream of "I want to be the best to have ever played the game." (Roy are you going to be the greatest to ever play this game--Thats right. BOOM!) She jumps out the window and you think it can't get any worse....but it does.
Next...Memo Paris. Roy is back. After a 15 year hiatus Roy is peppering balls off of the upper deck, threatening to take over a league he was destined to redefine years earlier. Then, an elegant, beautiful, early version of Marilyn Monroe arrives on the scene. But this woman, this beautiful woman, cannot right away be seen for the evil that she is. The platinum blonde hair and stunning body and shinny dresses turns her into an obsession, not a villain. She holds in her arsenal of manipulation the one thing that has brought many a good man down to a pedestrian status...and that is showing up in your hotel room wearing only a fur coat. So he slumps...slumps big time. Slumps like a wiffle ball bat swinging 8 year old in a snow storm. She even tries to kill Roy by feeding him a poisonous hordeuvres (Sidenote 1: we had a girl like this when we were in school...not nearly as good looking, but just as damaging...I stayed away). (Sidenote 2:Don't think Bump Bailey's death was a coincidence. It certainly was NOT). Memo Paris is the devil.
Like any good American movie, the hero ends up victorious, but not without taking his lumps on the way. In the end the hero prevails, engulfed in sparks of fireworks, leaving the villainous Memo Paris in the shadows, the kamikaze pilot, black widow gun wielder in her coffin, and Iris, the unintentional villain is back in shining light of the heroes. If Roy would have stayed away from the women altogether he might have been "the greatest to ever play this game", but every hero has a mortal side. Every hero has his "cryptonite". For Roy, that cryptonite was a good piece of ass.

NEXT: BUTTERSCOTCH SUNDAE'S VILLAIN NUMBER 2

VILLAIN NUMBER 1---JOHN DOE (SEVEN)

John Doe-Seven

I think we are more fascinated by villains than we are heroes. In fact, I know we are. Heroes bore us. To the majority of us “good” comes a little easier than “evil”…or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, there is always something much deeper and more interesting about a villain. You don’t question a hero’s motives or wonder what kind of great household he grew up in. You don’t concern yourself with the inner thoughts of Superman as he is flyng around the earth in order to save Lois. What we do think about is how fucked up Jason Voorhees must be to run around in that hockey mask hacking people into chunks.
Evil is just more intriguing than Good.

A good “bad guy” will make a movie. John Doe from the movie Seven is about as bad as it gets. Not in the guns a-blazin’ kind of way, but more subtle. A quiet, outwardly peaceful man who very matter of factly states his disdain for the world and his plan to make it “right”, John Doe is not a villain in his mind, but a hero. “Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention." Wow! He hits them with a fucking hammer all right.
The most amazing thing about this character is that you never see him lay a hand on anyone. He admits to the other brutalities, Greed-Lawyer sliced along his fat gut, Pride, maybe my favorite-“cut off her nose to spite her face” sleeping pills and a telephone, Lust-the fella who bangs the chick with a razorblade strap on, Sloth-I give the makeup crew props on this one, absolutely terrifying, Gluttony-dry heave and no more spaghetti please, Envy-“whats in the box” and then Vengeance-blood splatter in the field, but you never see him perform any of the acts. John Doe’s confidence in Brad Pitts ability to lose it in the end, is frightening.

Late in the movie when Morgan Freeman (if my life was a movie he would narrate) and Brad Pitt are discussing who this serial killer might be Morgan Freeman says something to the effect of, if this guy turns out to be the devil, I mean Satan himself, then it might live up to our expectations. At this point, as you watch, you kind of agree, but as John Doe first appears “Detective!!”…blood all over his hands, you kind of believe he is the devil.

In no specific order John Doe is our first villain. An intelligent villain, a creative villain, and most of all a terrifyingly insane villain.

The Sun Sets On Indiana Loves The Rural Alberta Advantage

Here is a song not on Hometowns. Go to Daytrotter for more songs. This song is as great as all the others...

The Rural Alberta Advantage Barnesyard



Next: Villains #1