Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #136:

Foxygen: “Make It Known”

My favorite thing about working on Company Pants would have to be those moments where I see that I have close to thirty tabs open in Chrome that are all focused on some aspect of an artist that I’m thinking about posting on here. I love being trapped within the wormhole of learning about an artist that I’m just discovering or sucked into the wealth of information that accumulates when a more established artist makes some sort of move.

Foxygen are the most recent signees to Jagjaguwar that have also received Richard Swift’s undeniable seal of approval, but from the sound of the first single released from their new EP, it’s clear that this is a duo that has spent more than a short while developing and shaping their unique sound together. “Make It Known” sources a rather large amount of musical touchstones without ever coming across as unwieldy or feeling like traversing the wealth of influences isn’t worth the ultimate journey. Instead, the Olympia/NYC duo practice an exciting, but carefully measured reverence to the past rather than creating a schlocky parody. 

“Lord, I talk, talk, talk, talk to the voices, but there’s no voices, I just talk to myself alone.”

[The Take The Kids Off Broadway EP drops July 24, 2012 on Jagjaguwar]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #135:

John Maus: “Mental Breakdown”

I will follow the music of John Maus to the ends of the earth. Few musicians have inspired me as much as this man has in the past three or four years with the onslaught of impressive music that he’s introduced to the world. I’m refuse to be one of the sad folks that take his “questionable” feelings to heart and ignores his work. “Mental Breakdown” is a track from 2004 that is finally seeing a proper release along with a heaping collection of Mr. Maus’ unreleased tracks.

[A Collection Of Rarities And Previously Unreleased Material drops July 17, 2012 on Ribbon Music]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #134:

Serengeti: “Amnesia”

The past year has seen a flurry of activity from Chicago’s Serengeti. A full-length (Friends And Family), an EP collaboration with s / s / s (a side project featuring Serengeti, Sufjan Stevens and Son Lux) and an EP revolving around an alter ego of his own design (Kenny Dennis EP). As if that wasn’t enough, come July he will release yet another full length of material recorded with his friends Jel and Odd Nosdam. “Amnesia” is a little more filled out production wise than Serengeti’s last few efforts, but retains every bit of his sinister wit and smooth sense of rhyme.

“If I could get amnesia, I wouldn’t have to fake my death.”

[C.A.R. drops July 31, 2012 on Anticon]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #133:

The Tallest Man On Earth: “1904”

It feels like just yesterday that a small contingent of dear friends and I were heading home from a particularly successful day trip to the Oregon coast. Our bellies were full of roadside diner fare and beach wine as we silently took in Kristian Matsson’s first release under The Tallest Man On Earth moniker, Shallow Grave. Hardly a word was uttered on the journey home that night; partly from exhaustion, partly from the unreal amount of tourist trap smoked meats and cheeses we had all inhaled, but mostly from not wanting to interrupt the campfire spirituals that were being released from the speakers of the car.

Now, just a few short years later, Matsson is about to release his third full-length collection of lo-fi gems. If anything, his songwriting output has been remarkably consistent as it’s evolved and matured over such a seemingly short amount of time. Even on first listen, “1904” sounds like a song that you’ve been humming along with for most of your life and one that you will continue to be reminded of for many years to follow.

[There’s No Leaving Now drops June 12, 2012 on Dead Oceans]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #132:

Jessie Ware: 110%

Last month, I unceremoniously shoved this song into a backup folder thinking that I would eventually I would get over how much I found myself queuing it up and mouthing the words to myself as I attempted to work. Well, forced separation never seems to bear any worthwhile fruit and now, here were are in May and I’m sharing this luscious and smoldering little number with all of you and fully allowing myself to adore it. I have a feeling that before the end of the year, most of America is going to figure out what the folks in Brixton seem to have known for a good long while about Ms. Ware.

“I know you hear me, but can you reach me?”

[Devotion drops August 20, 2012 on PMR]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #131:

Sin Fang: “Strange House”

Fifty two seconds into Sin Fang’s “Strange House”, composer Sindri Már Sigfússon drops his familiar and always lovable Sin Fang/Seabear signature sound and throws us into a cascading, swinging journey into the Icelandic wonder’s vision of pure soul. It’s pretty breathtaking.

“I could have been your bones.”

[The Half Dreams EP drops May 25, 2012 on Morr Music]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #130:

Tu Fawning: “Blood Stains”

In a city that’s saturated with as much quality music as Portland is, it’s impressive when a group of musicians can actually find a way to stand out amidst the ever-expanding sea of talent and intrigue. Tu Fawning has spent the last four or five years creating batches of songs that inspire a deep sense of adventure. While each of their compositions can fully exist on their own outside the context of an album, they achieve an even more weighty and fulfilling listening experience when combined with their recorded companions into one giant, ornate storyline. The tracks that make up their newest release, A Monument, have a sense of hugeness to them, but at the same time, never sound cluttered and never shrink back from utilizing the quartet’s staggering ability to produce truly delicate and graceful moments.

“It’s the pieces left in the street. It’s the wreck I can’t leave.”

[A Monument drops May 15, 2012 on City Slang]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #129:

Coma Cinema: “White Trash VHS (Drunk Version)”

Mat Cothran has already released three full-lengths of bedroom brilliance in the past three years and this drunken demo version of the possible lead track from his upcoming fourth record, School Shootings, just goes to show that we’ve got something absolutely lovely to look forward to later this year.

“Closer than before; on the edge of being the same fuck up as as before.”

[School Shootings drops sometime in 2012 on Fork & Spoon]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #128:

Beastie Boys & Q-Tip: “Get It Together”

With each trip that I make back home to visit my parents, it seems like my Dad and I often instantly launch into a conversation about an actor, musician or political figure from his generation that’s passed away since we last talked. As he’s gotten older, it’s become increasingly difficult to watch his reaction to the news of the familiar faces that he grew up with and loved passing away.

With Frank Sinatra, he and I watched Guys & Dolls for the fiftieth time and talked about the time he and my mother had taken me to see Sinatra perform right before he died. With Paul Newman, we quoted our favorite lines from Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. When Dave Niehuas (former radio and television announcer for the Seattle Mariners) passed, we wept in silence together on our drive to dinner as we listened to Ken Griffey, Jr. call in to the local radio station to talk about his very favorite memories of the legendary baseball announcer that we had both adopted as our own.

But today’s passing of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch is different for me. I can’t share this one with my father. There’s no way to adequately express to him why this one hurts as much to me as Sinatra did to him. Because while he’s shared so much of the entertainment of his youth with me and turned me into such an avid admirer of so many of the artists of his generation, it’s never really worked the other way around.

The Beastie Boys were of my generation (or at least the one right before mine) and were part of a larger world of music that I’ve never been able to convince my father is worth much more than a raised eyebrow and a change of subject. Instead, my best friend and I have been taking turns all morning and afternoon texting our favorite rhymes back and forth to each other from Ill Communication, Check Your Head, Paul’s Boutique and Hello Nasty. 

Around the time I was in junior high school, I still had to make sure that all of the records I purchased were checked out and given the OK by one of my parents. At thirteen, I found myself standing in one of the aisles of the old Tower Records in Tacoma, Washington surreptitiously scratching off the Parental Advisory sticker that was plastered to the front of the case of Ill Communication. An effort that was wildly successful, but was ultimately undone by the fact that the sticker on the outside of the CD’s wrapping covered the hidden Parental Advisory logo that had been designed into the artwork of the record’s cover. I knew there was no way that I was going to get this past my mom. I waited until she was distracted by something else in the store and pounced on that moment to show her the record with my thumb just barely covering the black border of the ominous warning. In that moment, she was just oblivious enough that she glanced at the record, gave it a quick nod of approval and watched as I raced to the checkout counter before she could change her mind. Placing that disc into my Discman (Hah!) later that day and pressing play for the first time was one of the most satisfying moments of my young life.

Now, I’m in no way ever going to claim that I’m the world’s biggest fan of the Beastie Boys, but I can say that I’ve truly loved their music and their entire career. The importance their music and their persona played in exposing the world of hip-hop to a larger audience can never be downplayed. The impact that Adam Yauch, Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond have had on shaping the direction and influence of modern music and popular culture is matched by very few artists. For over three decades, the Beasties haven’t just remained relevant, but have continued to be groundbreaking, not just as musicians, but as filmmakers, producers, independent label owners and activists. As their age advanced, they arguably became even more creative and definitely became more inspiring.

“Get It Together” might not be the best representation of the rhymes of MCA, but it’s long been my favorite track that the trio ever released. The interplay between Adrock, Mike D and MCA balances perfectly with guest verses from A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip. The song is a supreme blend of the original, playful, boyishness of the old school Beastie Boys aesthetic with the newer, more self-aware and enlightened group of men that we came to know and respect. If anything, it gave us MCA screeching, “So, yo Tip, what’s up with the boots on your feet?!”

Adam Yauch passing away hurts and not because I’m some dramatic victim that turns every celebrity death into a major personal tragedy, but because this was a guy that I grew up listening to all of the time and admiring on my own terms. I didn’t have some parental figure or an older brother type that guided me to the music of the Beastie Boys. They were a discovery that I made for myself and that my friends and I shared with each other. Even at 47, performing and writing in a genre that almost completely subsists on youth and youth culture, the man the world lovingly called MCA clearly had no intentions of slowing down with any of his creative pursuits or losing any of his influence on the game itself.

So, thank you, Adam Yauch, for never giving up, even in the very beginning when I’m sure there were untold amounts of pressure on you to stop what you and your best friends were attempting. Thank you for Hello Nasty, which I ended up purchasing twice after it was stolen by an ex-girlfriend before she moved away for school. Thank you for all of your efforts to raise awareness about Tibet and the atrocities that have been taking place there for far too long. Thank you for that one awful and ridiculous year back in high school where you convinced my friends and I that we too could write rhymes and lay them down over the music we’d been writing together. Thank you for helping as many independent musicians and filmmakers as you did over the years.

But most of all, thank you for all of the great music and for sharing your life with all of us.

[Ill Communication is available on Capitol]

Song To Get You Through The Goddamn Day #127:

Chains Of Love: “He’s Leaving (With Me)”

Come for the big, booming Wall Of Sound drums, but make sure that you stick around for the delightfully wandering harmonies, the dirty organ lines and the jangly guitars. These two ladies and their supporting cast make one fucking hell of a sweet-sounding racket.

[Strange Grey Days is out now on Manimal Vinyl]