a-me-with-a-you

Hmm hard but let me think, mostly:

Heavy Metal Drummer

I guess I'm a little spiteful towards it, they closed with it last year's London gig instead of Misunderstood due to time restrictions...

Songs I like live any day of the week like but would like to trade in for some other Wilco classics:

ALTWYS

IATTBYH

IG

Ooh, right at the very top of my list would be:

Far, Far Away

Hell is Chrome

Country Disappeared

Rising Red Lung

I did finally get to hear Theologians and Black Moon last night so no complaints from me.

Found this one recently

This is how I first got into live Wilco recordings -- and a ton of other stuff: http://captainsdead.com/.

Found some great covers on that recently, I browse a great deal of blogs here and there but this one's my oldest followee;

http://www.fuelfriendsblog.com/ (aka until recently I Am Fuel, You Are Friends)

Friday 2 March 2012 Wilco @Ancienne Belgique, Brusssels

Saturday 3 March 2012 Wilco @Ancienne Belgique, Brusssels

Sunday 11 March 2012 Emmy The Great @ Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Monday 19 March 2012 Laura Marling @Ancienne Belgique, Brusssels

TSAITA (mouthful) stands up as something of a comeback album, They've gone back to the bass-lines of past albums Let Go and The Weight is a Gift with some success.

I have some old favorites but of my recent favorites, this Girls song top the list

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIrjFnnit5A

Just finished this 79-page whopper. Just as enigmatic as you'd expect.

Got this for Christmas/New Year's.

I liked Mos Def in Dexter and Henry Rollins in Sons of Anarchy, the first two examples that come to mind. Justin Timberlake was okay in The Social Network I guess.

1. Bill Callahan - Apocalypse

2. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

3. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Mirror Traffic

4. Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde

5. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

6. Wilco - The Whole Love

7. Panda Bear - Tomboy

8. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

9. Feist - Metals

10. Toro Y Moi - Underneath the Pine

 

This! (more or less)

Here's a list by the well-respected ME-magazine to add a little change-of-pace from the top album lists to Someone Else's Song.

Does anyone feel up to sharing what specific songs colored their past year?

Little top ten I whipped up just now, first half critical darlings, second half playful:

01 Wilco - The Whole Love

02 The Decemberists - The King is Dead

03 Girls - Record 3: Father, Son, Holy Ghost

04 Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

05 Bill Callahan - Apocalypse

06 The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

07 Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

08 Slow Club - Paradise

09 Emmy The Great - Virtue

10 Seapony - Go With Me

no shooting here. just curious about your thoughts on gillian welch album. i'm a big fan, but haven't picked it up yet.

Well, just so happens I'm listening to it now, it's really good but the songs are more (too?) straightforward than she's ever been, the lyrical genius picks up her pen only every other song (ordinary lyrics in keeping with the straightforward theme) and Rawling's background coloring seems a little uninspired at times. If it's any comfort, most critics disagree with me and I find the songs that I like to be quite close to brilliant. This almost goes without saying, but her vocals are once again out of this world, so nothing to worry about there. My favorites are the slow burners The Way It Will Be (a throwback to "revelator") and Tennessee (I like it's mantra: beef steak when I'm working, whiskey when I'm dry, sweet heaven when I die).

Argh, I guess she's just one of those artists that's left to fight her back catalogue, maybe that's why she hasn't released squat in six years...douchebags with a keyboard like me .

This might be a remainder of adolescent taste talking, but I really liked the new The Rural Alberta Advantage album (the piano additions were especially likeable), the ambitious new Slow Club and I'm very surprised not to see more mentions of Okkervil River's daring 2011 release. I was also charmed by the swampy new Timber Timbre and the return to form for Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks.

I felt like 2011 was mainly the year of disappointing follow-ups for me including the new Blind Pilot, Emmy The Great and Woods (in terms of smaller indie artists) and the half-succesfull efforts by Wye Oak, Yuck, Iron & Wine, Laura Marling, Gillian Welch (shoot me!), Bon Iver (shoot me, if you've got rounds left), and the terrible releases by Blitzen Trapper, My Morning Jacket and Bright Eyes.

Bands that did finally win me over include The Drive-By Truckers (The Fireplace Poker is one hell of a darkly humorous parable), Thurston Moore (as a solo artist, including Beck as a secret weapon), A.A. Bondy and St. Vincent.

Without much doubt in my mind, Wilco and The Decemberists produced the best two albums this year, but the other spots in my top 10 are highly contestable.

01. Sunken Treasure

02. She's a Jar

03. Radio Cure

04. Muzzle of Bees

05. Black Moon

06. Ashes of American Flags

07. Pieholden Suite

08. Capitol City

09. I'm a Wheel

10. Theologians

11. Reservations

12. One Sunday Morning

The Fireplace Poker is -despite it's length- remarkably replayable and still one of the songs that defines new discoveries in 2011 for me...

Despite the steady quality decline since Let Go, they're still one of the top power pop bands out there and I'll be spinning this as soon as I get my paws on it...

Are there really ones like these / the ones I dream / float like leaves

and freeze to spread skeleton wings / I passed through before I knew you

Great choice. I also really like this part:

A sleepy kisser

A pretty war

A lot of great choices here, the first ones that popped to mind have been named already so I'll go with my fifth choice.

This doesn't really count because it's a Guthrie lyric:

Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine

This does:

In the beginning we closed our eyes

Whenever we kissed

We were surprised to

Find so much inside

The master mixes of WTA must've been really horrid then, if if was mixed by the same guy who did the great sounding Summerteeth and SBS. I guess he still loses out to the two best mastered records, YHF (2) and AGIB (1), but now I'm being hard on the geezer. Even the vinyl quality WTA hurts my ears.

And so the uni-whale was born...

The song makes me picture an old-timey baseball game. Hot dog vendors with waxed moustaches are involved...

Me too and I've never been to a baseball game, how weird is that?!

Sunloathe and Born Alone remain the only two songs that don't rock my socks off, what gives? Come to think of it, there've been two songs on every album since SBS that I didn't care for. (Everlasting Everything, Sonny Feeling, Walken, Shake It Off)