The thing about the Internets is that you can’t always find what you want right away. Sometimes wayward visitors make their way to PCR, and I want to make sure they feel welcome.

So inspired by an earlier post by my man Tony, I dug through my stats log (as if I don’t pore over my stats daily) (actually, I don’t) and found a bunch of wayard searches for information that this site doesn’t necessarily provide. Today, I rectify that:

//rapping weed without wrapping paper

I recently and randomly ran into Quazar, who does the music for Weeds, but there’s no rapping as far as I know. By the same token, there’s no wrapping paper on the show either, so we’re halfway there.

For what it’s worth, I am a big fan of Martin Donovan, think Mary-Louise Parker is ace and find Kevin Nealon’s stoned yuppie schtick pretty hilarious, so have enjoyed that show, but also find it kind of uneven and think it’s done a little that thing like Fonzie with the water skis.

Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.

//i wish i was a punk rocker to read on paper

Well, you can find some instructions on how to be a punk rocker here. It’s easier than I thought… Anyway, just print ‘em out and yr home free.

Yr welcome.

//characters names in the outsiders on cover

Hmm. I’m not sure what yr getting at here, but w/r/t the Coppola film, I’m told Johnny dies in the end.

Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.

//scary clips of goats

Yr welcome.

//cialis

Really? Is it so difficult to find C1A! L15! on the Web that somehow you thought this would be the place to look? People send me like a hundred e-mails a day trying to sell me the stuff.

Bottom line: yr just not trying hard enough.

//jakarta after dark bars for sex

Actually, I kind of take back the thing about all my wayward visitors being welcome.

//anna nicole smith new york magazine

I’m really not familar with what yr talking about here. Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.

Sorry I can’t be more help on this front.

My favorite songs of 2006, part the last, plus invisible apologia after the jump.

“A Pillar Of Salt” | The Thermals | The Body, The Blood, The Machine | Sub Pop | 8/22/06 | 2:57 | buy disc/mp3s
It was hard to choose one top track off the Thermals’ monster concept record. I’ve gone with “Pillar,” which embellishes blitzkrieg boppin’ guitar and drums with some furiously fun New Wave synth.

There’s a little doominess in here, but it’s more of a tweaked, toe-tapping spin on Lot’s flight amidst the divine firebombing of Sodom & Gomorrah. It’s a safe bet that body-shame, a panicked getaway and the wrath of a vengeful G-d never sounded so danceable.

“Woke Up New” | The Mountain Goats | Get Lonely | 4AD | 8/22/06 | 2:56 | buy disc/mp3s
When tracks from Get Lonely started leaking to the Interweb over the summer, either Mountain Goats mainman John Darnielle or bassist Peter Hughes warned that folks too eager to hear the new record were actually inviting a bummer into their summer.

What we got come August: a concept album, subdued and softly-sung, about someone so messed up by the dissolution of a relationship that he can no longer function. The minutiae of daily life is amplified, almost unbearable; he can’t relate to people; he’s seeing things.

Yeah, a bit dark. I’ve loved each song on this record in party shuffle mode. But I’ve only listened to it top to bottom as an album a handful of times. All together as intended, it accumulated a kind, or intensity, of sadness that I just couldn’t let into my life this year.

“Woke Up New” is the moment in this cycle where a little optimism creeps in, although not quite as much as the title would suggest. The catchy chorus, “oh, what do I do/without you?” stuck with me, but what’s bounced around my head even more is the strange, sorry image of a man making coffee for two, then drinking it all to abide by a rule set by someone who’s no longer there. Its pathos is almost eerie.

There’s no happy ending in “Woke Up New,” but the last couple lines in the verse–the world beginning to bud, the hint of a future worth looking forward to–let in a little light.

(more…)

The Mountain Goats “The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton” (Live)

OK, sorry that this week, maybe this month, has turned into PCR Featuring The Usual Suspects of Indie Rock. Maybe I lack imagination or maybe the holidays are making me return to my musical equivalent of comfort food. (A Sebadoh post can only be fast upon the heels…)

Anyway, archive.org says that back in 2002 my About page read, in part:

Please don’t blame the man, but PCR is more than partially inspired by John Darnielle’s zine, Last Plane to Jakarta, which really every one should read. I’m sure I’ll be talking soon about his most recent album under the Mountain Goats moniker, All Hail West Texas, probably the album that’s meant the most to me this year.

It occurred to me to follow up on this, since we’re almost at 2007. That’s about my typical turaround time on plans. So over the course of the next _____, from time to time I’ll come back to All Hail, a concept album made by one man, his acoustic guitar and an obsolete boombox, which nonetheless got me through and over my first real, major break-up. I’ll try to minimize the use of the phrases “tape hiss,” “yelp,” “frenetic strumming,” “genius,” but please don’t hold me to that.

The lead-off track, “The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton,” is a heartbreaking wolf disguised in novelty-song sheepskin. I mean, death metal is no laughing matter for Darnielle, right, but there’s a jokiness here… if I have to explain it, it’s not funny, right?

The story of Jeff and Cyrus, the duo who make up the eponymous and ultimately untitled band, is about how the world can beat you down. Or at least about how the powers that be in West Texas doesn’t see the greater good of teens indulging naive ambition–really, are there any death metal bands who can afford to travel via Lear jet?–and a little good old fashioned Devil’s Music–ah, those damning pentagram stencils.

But it’s mostly setup for the bitter prospect of revenge, the Moment that so often gives me goosebumps, Darnielle crying, “When you punish a person for dreaming his dream/don’t expect him to thank or forgive you.” What’s better is that it’s followed by instant catharsis, albeit a promise that I often doubt: “The best ever death metal band out of Denton/will in time both outpace and outlive you.” I can’t be so sure that Jeff and Cyrus will triumph. But I’m a cynic.

The closing refrain is, then, no joke, but as anthemic as the Goats get, an invitation to pump fists along with these young men cast aside by society. “Hail Satan, tonight,” indeed.

And you have the birth of a little masterpiece and fan fave. A note on the attached mp3, a recording made by someone else of the recent secret Mountain Goats show in Claremont, Cali: I’m generally very anti singing along with performers at acoustic shows, at least until they invite that audience participation (which, OK, Darnielle does around 1:40), but for the reasons enumerated above, the singalong–and the devil’s horn salute–are very very necessary.

Can I get a “fuck yeah”? I think I can.

All Hail West Texas at Target.

Sugar “Your Favorite Thing” (fu:el)
My Blood Valentine homage as desperate plea from Bob Mould and his post Hüsker Dü buzzsaw pop outfit. That riff is gigantic, ironically happy sounding.

Sloan “Sugartune” (peppermint)
A veneer of shoegaze on this one too, but even on their first EP, Sloan’s a pop band at heart. In the inspirational vein, this song is ostensibly about itself (”I wrote for you a sugartune”).

The Jesus & Mary Chain “Some Candy Talking” (psychocandy)
The candy here is something a little more dangerous, as danger’s always been JAMC’s stock in trade. Hell, there’s even a “Waiting For The Man” nod (or dozen) in the song, if that’s not too on-the-nose. Genius use of a few minimal elements to give us that hollow, hungry feeling.

The Strangeloves “I Want Candy” (nuggets)
More of a bubblegum bamboozle than a red-blooded ‘Murican garage rock group, the Strangeloves still knew their way around a swingin’ tom groove accented by sax bleats. It’s a jingle, it’s a New Wave hit, it’s the wellspring of many things…

The Push Kings “The Girl Who Only Loves Candy” (far places)
Speaking of bubblegum, the Push Kings first struck me as indie rock’s answer to Wham!–and you know, for me, that’s a good thing. This warning against vice feels more like an ode to the things we gorge ourselves on. I’d pick out a favorite part–the big-riffed chorus, the disco bridge, the overdramatic breakdown, that thing about “beads of sweat on yr turquoise underwear”–but let’s just say the whole thing’s my favorite. Toothache sweet.

Wilco “Candy Floss” (summerteeth)
Wilco in pop production full-throttle, slathering on keyboards and harmonies. It takes Jeff Tweedy to write an homage to early-day Beach Boys that’s about doubt and reservation.

Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers “All I Have” (falling into place)
Straightahead power pop from the Bostonian who, it turns out, is partially responsible for the song from That Thing You Do. Don’t hold it against him though.

Sweet “Teenage Rampage” (best of)
Bubblegum don’t get much tastier than Sweet, and with a surprisingly long chewing life. They’re starting to bridge from their T. Rex-ier times to latterday Queen-iness here. I don’t know why, but the feeling that their revolutionary call to arms is pure hokum–this isn’t actually a live recording, is it?–is a big part of the charm. Too good to be kitsch, but in the neighborhood.

Echo & The Bunnymen “Lips Like Sugar” (s/t)
Somewhere I heard that, as a UVa undergrad, from outside his dorm Pavement prankster Steve Malkmus could regularly be seen in his room lip-synching to Echo & The Bunnymen and prancing around in front of the mirror. I don’t know about sidewalk voyeurs, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done the same to this song.

The Mountain Goats “The Recognition Scene” (sweden)
Lovers on the run! A daring candy heist goes awry! News at 11! (I want to say that the candy is just candy and that the problems–and there are almost always problems between lovers in Mountain Goats songs, especially if they’re on a road trip of any sort–are for an altogether different reason. But that “hot caramel/sticking to our teeth” bit makes me doubt my reading, and I’m not sure why.)

The Spinanes “Halloween Candy” (imp years)
Unsettling and softly seething, this song reminds that “sometimes sweetness is not what it seems.”

The Mountain Goats “You’re So Vain”
Cat Power “Satisfaction”

John Darnielle. Chan Marshall. Both indie singer-songwriter types. Both single individuals who record under a band name. Both have band names with animals in them. Both recorded gender-flipped covers of hits from a bygone era. Both skipped singing the choruses on said covers.

Coincidence? I think n–well, OK, it was probably a coincidence.

Gender-switching on covers is subversive by nature, even if the extent of that subversion’s sorta been dulled at this late date by repetition.

At any rate, “You’re So Vain,” a Carly Simon tune recorded by the Mountain Goats for the ultimately unreleased but recently leaked 2000 effort Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg, is an unmistakable kiss-off. But it betrays a distinctly “feminine” vulnerability, at least according to the constructs of the time. The object of scorn is masterful, self-possessed, jet-setting, using and disposing at will… basically the kind of shit dudes got away with from time immemorial, but that would mark a chica with scandal, etc.

I take it that part of the point here, other than the joy of playing a great song, is the way a lover can become a star in your eyes, no matter who you are, and the sting of betrayal sometimes blowing things up beyond their reasonable bounds.

So the flip-side of the coin, Cat Power’s narcoticized take on the Stones’ classic, from her appropriately titled Covers Record of 2000, shoots for ultra-minimal, excising all but the entitlement and bravado that was the cornerstone of Mick’s persona. (He was, after all, a lover of Carly’s, did sang backup on the original “You’re So Vain” and was a suspect for being the song’s subject, although she’s said it ain’t him.)

Slowed-down, and with “can’t you see/I’m on a losing streak” given extra weight, “Satisfaction” becomes both an exposé of the hollowness behind that pose of “masculine” cool and an expression of the human need and yearning it seeks to hide.

Interrogating a motive behind Marshall’s chorusectomy seems a little easier–it went out the window with the song’s titanic riff, part of cooling down the tune’s macho. “You’re So Vain” without the chorus removes the sort of brainfucking irony (or illogic) that was, at least to me as a child, part of the song’s hook. “You’re so vain/you probably think this song is about you,” OK, right, but if it is then… but… if he thinks… uh, OK.

Or maybe they’re both a way of saying, “Y’all know this part.”

Sweden (another 2000 MG record) at ArtistDirect.
CP’s Covers Record at Target.