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Lori Chaffer in The Pitch

Lori Chaffer's Music is Mannah From Heaven (Crystal Wiebe)

The article contains an embedded mp3 from Lori's 2003 record 1Beginning and discusses her return to song writing.

"The Christian music industry caused me to shut down," she says. "It's a little too much propaganda and not enough art."

She mentions the time that a Christian radio station insisted on removing the word bimbo from a Waterdeep song. (The band obliged, grudgingly.) Also frustrating: her sense that she was stuck in a genre that left no room for complexity, including the things that most inspired her — "hard stuff, sadness, confusion." (read more)

RELATED
Waterdeep Home Page
Lori Chaffer 1Beginning

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Stream the New Sigur Ros Album

(in the strange case you're already tired of the Spoon treats from this morning)

Sigur Ros Website

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Spoon: Peace Like a River (Paul Simon)

Spoon: Daytrotter Session

Pitchfork:

...the Austin indie rockers cover "Peace Like a River", from Simon's self-titled 1972 solo debut, in their live session for Daytrotter, and they successfully come up with a few new ways to leave your lover.

They've actually been playing the song in live shows for a little while now, transforming Simon's laid-back acoustic plucks and hand percussion into the familiar framework of melodic yet sharp-edged recent Spoon albums like last year's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Simon's vision of the forces of history carrying people through periods of misinformation and thuggery remains resonant, and it's a nice change to hear Britt Daniel's gruff voice reaching up for those high notes. Spoon's Daytrotter session also includes a previously unreleased original-- the jerky and string-accented "Back to the Life"-- along with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's "The Ghost of You Lingers" and the Soft Effects EP's "I Can See the Dude".

Spoon: Daytrotter Session

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My Favorite Albums of 2007

After the birth of our son and the most serious computer crash I've ever experienced, I finally compiled my favorite albums of 2007. Hopefully, some of you still have some remaining iTunes gift certificates to experiment with or an emusic subscription that is begging for suggestions.

When I first started looking back at the music I acquired in 2007, I thought that picking a favorite album would be easy because a) there really wasn't that much good music last year, and b) I hadn't really picked up that much music in 2007. I quickly realized that neither of those points were valid.

Blah Blah Blah Disclaimer ... I'm not the experts, and I don't get all the free records that they get. To see the expert's favorites, check the links below. To see my favorites, hit the jump.

BEST 2007 ACCORDING TO THE EXPERTS
metacritic
Rolling Stone Top 50 of 2007
Paste Top 100 of 2007
Zulu Records Staff Picks of 2007 (my favorite record shop in Vancouver)
The Right Reverend Steve McCoy

New Year's Miscellany .:. Music

I've spent the last few days looking through my iTunes library and trying to apply some sort of Larry & Sergey algorithm to come up with my favorite album of 2007. This year will be a little bit harder than past years — for the simple reason that I no longer have my entire music library on one computer. It's primarily on one, but I no longer have my own version of "the jazz matrix" that I once had.

I will say that I'm surprised that I've picked up as much music this year as I have — so choosing a favorite album, or a list of 30 of them, will still take me another few days.

As you wait with bated breath, here are a few lists the experts have made:

Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2007
Metacritic Best of 2007
NPR Best of 2007
Paste Magazine Best of 2007
The Current Top Ten of 2007
i heart music | Best EPs of 2007
Best of 2007 @ The Drop

Paste Music Top 100 Albums of 2007

and so the lists begin...

Top 100 Albums of 2007 // Paste Magazine

Here are the Top Ten

1. The National - Boxer
2. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
3. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
4. The White Stripes - Icky Thump
5. Feist - The Reminder
6. M.I.A. - Kala
7. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
8. Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
9. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
10. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog

(check the rest...)

And, for those that never saw my My Favorite Albums of 2006 (especially since I didn't just link one album in the sidebar as I had done in previous years), make sure to check them out

Sufjan: Rock & Roll is Dead

"Rock and roll is dead,” he says, voluble again. “Rock and roll is a museum piece. It has no viability anymore. There are great rock bands today—I love the White Stripes, I love the Raconteurs. But it’s a museum piece. You’re watching the History Channel when you go to these clubs. They’re just reenacting an old sentiment. They’re channeling the ghosts of that era—the Who, punk rock, the Sex Pistols, whatever. It’s been done. The rebellion’s over."
(via stereogum)

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Smithsonian Profiles Sufjan

One Man Band (Nic Harcourt // Smithsonian magazine, October 2007)

The next Bob Dylan? Maybe. Sufjan Stevens' honest sound and stark lyrics speak volumes to a new generation. And he plays all the instruments...(read more)

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Relevant Magazine "Reviews" Pinback's New Album

Relevant on Autumn of the Seraphs

I'm glad to see Relevant magazine profiling what I consider to be good artists, though one could hardly call Dylan Peterson's piece on Pinback a "review" by any standard. Perhaps others who, like Peterson, depend on Grey's Anatomy and The OC to find new music, will agree with his assessment that Pinback is an indie rock "hit" band (whatever that may mean).

However, I believe that Peterson's inability to appreciate the full scope of Pinback albums might say less about the band and more about a generation of ipod 'playlist' and television soundtrack music listeners that are increasingly incapable of actually engaging an album for what it is-- namely, an album. I think it is a sad commentary on how we engage music as art that so few people I know actually consider that artists compose albums and therefore few sit down and listen to an album in its entirety.

Don't get me wrong: those that are content to pluck "hits" at $0.99 a pop would still benefit from Peterson's advice to check out Pinback. But, for those that want to encounter a band that exists as a creative force outside The OC and 30 second iTunes previews-- I would highly recommend the new Pinback album, Autumn of the Seraphs. The album has a great flow from beginning to end. In fact, I heartily recommend all of Pinback's albums (even Nautical Antiques, which is not technically an album but the compilation of several out of print EP's from earlier in the band's career).

RELATED
Pitchfork Reviews Autumn of the Seraphs (great review!)
Pinback @ Myspace
Pinback @ Wikipedia
Pinback, Blue Screen Life
Pinback, Summer in Abaddon
Systems Officer, Systems Officer
Rob Crow, Living Well
Heavy Vegetable, Frisbie
Thingy, To the Innocent

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New Music in My World

I realize I haven't updated any of my BOOKS or MUSIC lists since before my blog hiatus in April. For that I can only apologize and say that there are two reasons behind this: 1) laziness/indifference 2) I have been working on an alternative to those side bars that will actually have an RSS feed. This is almost ready to roll. In the meantime, I thought I would give a run down of some of the music that has gotten me through the summer.