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This one was Bad Luck Girl by His Name Is Alive, from Stars on E.S.P.. I'm not familiar with this album, only listening for the first time, but I rooted an old box of CDs out because I remembered another song by the band, the haunting Can't Go Wrong Without You (check out the video for that if you can, it's basically the sound of 90s 4AD bought to life visually). Anyhoos, this album's good so far, think I'll be back for more.

CocoRosie
His Name Is Alive

This blog likely won't mean a lot to anyone living outside Wisconsin or the Upper Midwest. But to today's music fan, there's a lot here that they can relate to...sadly. This weekend (March 13-15) will mark the final weekend of operation for Atomic Records, a local indie record store in Milwaukee, WI. Although I never attended school in Milwaukee, and although there were (and still are) quite a few awesome record stores in my old stomping grounds of Madison, Atomic was special in a way all stores (record or otherwise) should aspire to.

I had first heard of Atomic when reading a '90s zine out of Milwaukee called Milk magazine (I saw the cover of the second issue with pics of Mercury Rev and The Boo Radleys on the cover and knew I'd find stuff to agree with.) While I was 90 or so miles to the west, there was still a feeling that there was a lot of cool stuff happening in Milwaukee, and the frequent mentions of Atomic within the ads and print gave the place a sort of mystique and aura. So when other business in Brew Town beckoned (a Superdrag/The Apples in Stereo/Tuscadero triple bill at the Rave) I decided to go early to visit Atomic. At the time, I lacked both a car and friends who were into that type of music, so I took a Badger Bus to downtown Milwaukee and then relied on local bus maps, very patient bus drivers and a daily city bus pass to finally find my way there. (My first attempt, I ended up walking some 8 blocks, finally finding it and then seeing a bus whizzing by just beyond.)

Sometimes, anticipation and excitement can make molehills appear as looming as mountains, and the resultant reality and disappointment is as painful as Peppermint Patty yanking away that elusive football from Charlie Brown. This was *NOT* the case with Atomic. It was by no means big, but every single square inch had a cool surprise, it seemed. (Plus, being a Badger alumni who was a loyal B-Side records patron, size can sometimes be deceiving in determining how cool a store was.) The racks were teeming full of import CDs, obscure 7 inch singles, old music magazines, kitsch lunchboxes, and press publicity 8x10s here and there. There were glass counters towards the front that held more rare and tantalyzing goodies (old punk singles, a few Pearl Jam fan club singles, a couple collector box sets.) But the coup de grace was directly above the register, where gold and platinum awards for New Order and R.E.M. hung proudly. Going through the racks was more time consuming than most stores like it, as they wouldn rarely put the CDs themselves on the rack. Instead, they would put the cover book in a longbox-sized plastic slip, which enabled the buyer to flip through, card by card, grab the whole slip, and present it to the cashier, who would retrieve the actual disc from a large set of cabinets. Plus, with a lot of the artist cards would have strips beneath the name that would cross-reference side projects, solo releases, or other stuff that would fall between the cracks. Some would even have the artists' Trouser Press entries xeroxed and taped beneath. Such little touches really made me feel like the people were as obsessive about the music as I was.

But of course, you won't find stuff like that at the Big Box retail stores like Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart where music is merely an impulse buy between shopping for big screen TVs or budget jeans. Meanwhile, the local indie shops are falling left and right like dodos. There's been quite a bit of head-scratching and hand-wringing about the hows and whys, and I'm sure you've heard it all. So instead of that, I'll say this: celebrate your local record shop (especially since Record Store day is coming soon - April 18th) if you still have one. Browse the racks, check out what they're playing on the store stereo, buy something even though you know you could download it for free. Because it will be a sad day for music --and music fans -- when the only store you can find good CDs is the iTunes store.

I made my final trip to Atomic Sunday, March 1st. Besides snagging a commerative "Viva La Vinyl" t-shirt -- and being tempted to buy the Platinum plaque for Green for two grand -- I scored the following things....

**American Music Club -- A Toast to You
**Black Box Recorder -- The Facts of Life
**The Flaming Lips -- The Fearless Freaks
**Gene -- We Could Be Kings import single
**Hey Mercedes -- Loses Control
**Nick Heyward -- The Apple Bed
**His Name Is Alive -- Always Stay Sweet
**His Name Is Alive -- Fort Lake
**Josh Joplin -- Jaywalker
**The Kooks -- Konk + Always Where I Need To Be import single
**The Lilac Time -- Lilac6
**Lilys -- Better Can't Make Your Life Better
**Gary Louris -- Acoustic Vagabonds EP
**The Long Blondes -- Couples
**Michael Penn -- Palms & Runes, Tarot & Tea: A Michael Penn Collection
**Phoenix -- Live! Thirty Days Ago
**PMD -- The Awakening
**Radar Bros. -- Auditorium
**The Red Thread -- After the Last
**The Standard -- Albatross
**The Standard -- Post Wire to Wire
**TI -- Paper Trail
** various artists -- The Wrong way Home: A Tribute to Supertramp
**various artists -- If You Can’t Laugh at Yourself...We’ll Do It For You
**The Very Hush Hush -- Mourir C’Est Facile
**Your 33 Black Angels -- Lonely Street
**Edith Frost publicity packet
**Sarah McLachlan publicity packet

Aereogramme
Bel Canto
Björk
Cranes
Greydon Square
His Name Is Alive
Water & Bodies (Kaddisfly side project)

1. Melodies and Desires / Lykke Li
2. She's Having A Baby / The Knife
3. Plastis Wafer / of Montreal
4. Shoot Your Shot / Divine
5. Girls of War / Die Monitr Batss
6. Charge Of The Vivian Girls / Snagglepuss
7. Shake it to the Ground / DJ Blaqstar (feat. Rye Rye)
8. Hundredaire (Let U Go) / Hey Willpower
9. Tigers in the Fire / love grenades
10. Smile Upon Me / Passion Pit
11. I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar / Jonathan Richman
12. I Got A Thing / Silver, Platinum & Gold (Disco Re-Edit By Dimitri from Paris richard Jones, Andrae Moore)
13. The Lucky One (James Yulli Remix) / Au Revoir Simone
14. How Dark Is Your Dark Side / His Name Is Alive
15. Rolling Down The Hills / Glass Candy
16. Dans la merco benz / Benjamin Biolay
17. silver horse / Yoko Ono

http://www.[spam]/download/53216057cc026a12/

Seefeel - Plainsong
His Name Is Alive - One Year (Four Tet Remix)
Aphex Twin - Xtal
Boxcutter - Chlorophyll
Pantha du Prince - Asha
Flying Lotus - Tea Leaf Dancers
Crisopa - Another flying cathedral
DeepChord - Grandbend (Echospace dub)
Susumu Yokota - A Heart-warming and Beautiful Flower Will Eventually Wither Away and Become Dirt
Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint: Fast
Marsen Jules - Chanson Du Soir
Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Against The Sky

Panda Bear - Person Pitch (2007)



Animal Collective's Panda Bear completely surprised me with this psychedelic pop masterpiece of an album. It's an album I picked up largely on the strength of all the reviews I had been reading, and I really wasn't certain what was going to come out of the headphones on that first listen. Is it wrong to say that it's the best riff on Pet Sounds since His Name Is Alive gave us Stars on E.S.P.? No, but it just feels like so much more than that. The songs themselves are shifting soundscapes built out of multi-layered loops topped with Panda Bear's sweet, summery vocals. At their core, they're abstract works but somehow feel like catchy 3-minute pop tunes. You know, the kind you wish would just go on forever; well, these do. Many of the tracks extend past the 10-minute mark to a positively hypnotic effect. A truly gorgeous album, and one that accompanied me on many a late-summer afternoon walk in 2007.

Picks:
Take Pills
Bros
Good Girl / Carrots

See Also:
2007 Recap

I know that only two people may read this, but here it goes anyway...

I spend most of my days listening to music all day. I take my ipod with me to job sites and I leave it on shuffle most of the time. I may go through 50 or 100 songs in a day. Those songs never get scrobbled, because I have been reluctant to sync my ipod with itunes. I just did it tonight and I now understand the hesitation.

My wife stopped her music education somewhere in the 90's with the Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, and Bjork. Granted, she also has PJ Harvey, Radiohead, and Beth Orton, but I now have Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, and Gwen Stefani on my ipod. There is plenty of room, but I simply don't want to see those names on my ipod just so I can keep an online record of what I listen to during the day. Fortunately, it is easy to make sure certain songs do not get put into a shuffle.

However, I also listen to a lot of music that I don't like. I don't know why Devendra Banhart, His Name Is Alive, and The Ladybug Transistor are in my collection. For some reason, I can't remove them or Ladytron from itunes regardless of how many times I skip those artists in a shuffle at home. It is now difficult to justify getting down from a ladder, taking off my gloves, or stopping work to walk across a room just to skip a song. So you may see Bob Marley, The Beastie Boys, or other aforementioned artists in my list of recent tracks. We'll see if I soon have a change of heart.