VAGUE SPACE

In Cole We Trust

I don't want to jinx the Phillies with any kind of post about making the playoffs for the first time since 1993 or a discussion of the Mets historic collapse, but last night's matchups put the Phillies alone in first place with two games to play.  I'm certain this is the latest in a season that we've been in first place since 1993, but it's also probably the first time we've been in first place after, say, September 1st, since 1993.  The team has been on the periphery of the pennant/wild card chases for several years since 2000, but they haven't really ever been very close -- and never in the lead.  So this is different.  And with the way Cole Hamels responded last night... wow.  He hadn't thrown more than 80 pitches in his two outings since coming off the DL, but Charlie left him out there for 116 last night (even though they had a six run lead -- strange, since he didn't do that Sunday in a much closer game, and Alfonseca came in and got shelled, proving yet again that Charlie Manuel knows less about baseball strategy than my 5-year-old nephew, but I digress).  Cole responded with 8 IP, 6 H, 1 BB, 0 R, and 13 Ks against a Nationals lineup that just swept the Mets.  The 24-year-old lefthander is now 15-5 on the season with a 3.39 ERA pitching half his games in a bandbox.  If he hadn't missed several starts with his strained elbow, the young man would be in the Cy Young discussion.  Of course, with Jimmy Rollins poised to win MVP and the Phillies possibly making the playoffs, I'm sure he could care less. 

Rollins put the Phillies on the board with a huge 2-run single in the 5th off Tim Redding, breaking the scoreless tie.  He would come around to score to give the Phils a 3-0 lead.  Ryan Howard followed with a 2-run homer to left field two innings later - a monster smash with the wind blowing in - and the rest was history.  The Mets in the meantime were struggling up in Queens, and the Marlins held on to a 7-4 win, putting the standings as of this morning as follows.  Today, I think we've still got Eaton scheduled to start -- which isn't good for anybody (6.33 ERA), but hey it's a miracle we're even alive in the NL East race, so we can hope for another one this afternoon.  In Adam We Trust?  Ehh....

East	W	L	PCT	GB	E#	L10	STRK
Philadelphia	88	72	.550	-	-	7-3	W3
New York	87	73	.544	1.0	2	4-6	L5

35. Samskeyti

Song:  "Untitled 3 (Samskeyti)"
Artist:  Sigur Ros
Album:  ( )
Year:  2002
Length:  6:33
Label:  FatCat Records
Rating:  7.6 (out of 10) on Pitchfork

• Download Sigur Ros - "Samskeyti".mp3

The Pitchfork reviewer back in 2002 (Chris Ott) spends exactly half of his review criticizing the packaging and titling of the album, and most of the rest of the review criticizing the band's fans, which is an odd way to go about giving an album a good rating, so I'll dismiss his dismissal of the third track, the lustrous "Samskeyti" as "a lesser facsimile of 'Vaka', the opening track".   Sadly, the other (all positive) reviews I've found for the album from Rolling Stone, NME, and All Music Guide, also spend much of the review criticizing the pretentiousness of the album's lack of title and the made-up "Hopelandish" lyrics, rather than the amazing beauty and quality of the music.  Well, they all mention the music but almost in passing.  And the more I think about it, it's certainly easier to talk about the fact that Sigur Ros's third full-length (and follow up to the highly acclaimed Agaetis Byrjun) came out without a title, with 8 untitled songs sung in a made up variation on Icelandic, and runs over 71 minutes long.  But I just love the album, the band, and the song - which edges out "Vaka" and the fourth track, "Njosnavelin", but just barely, as my favorite - and the one worthy enough to make my all-time top 40.  (Side note: If anyone's seen the trailer for the Nicole Kidman film Invasion, track 8 "Popplagio" is used throughout -- and almost made me want to go see the latest of a countless string of Invasion of the Body Snatchers remakes).

So "Samskeyti" means "Attachment" according to Wikipedia, although I don't know if that's in Icelandic or Hopelandish or what.  I do know that the song (the third untitled track on the album, but given a title by the band on its website) has no lyrics, is very slow-building and repetitive, and lasts for nearly 7 minutes.  I'm not actually selling it too well, I guess, but the track is just a beautiful, majestic, glowing portrait of Sigur Ros music at its absolute zenith, slowly winding up to an incredibly powerful finish, an almost spiritual culmination.  It's heavy on a repetitive piano key combination that plays throughout, backed by somewhat ethereal, swirling sounds made by other (unknown) instruments as it takes its time to reach a fantastic climax highlighted by new higher-pitched piano keys that "explode" into sonic delight.  I'm not sure what else I can say. No words can do it justice.  And no words appear on the song.   

Top 40 Vague Space Favorite Songs Ever (So Far)...

36. "Gold Soundz" Pavement

37. "The Shy Retirer" Arab Strap

38. "Ceremony" New Order

39. "Cody" Mogwai

40. "Carry the Zero" Built to Spill

Our Ill Wills

Shout Out Louds:  Our Ill Wills
Rating:  7.4 (out of 10)

The new album from Swedish songsters Shout Out Louds took me by surprise.  Of all the amazing new music anticipated for this fall - and being blogged to death by various outlets - I don't remember hearing much of anything about Our Ill Wills.  First track "Tonight I Have to Leave It" - a blast of Cure-inspired pop goodness that was both disconcerting and entertaining - was released months ago as part of a small EP and then I kind of forgot about the band again.  First album Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, which was originally released in Sweden back in 2003, but didn't come to the States until 2005, was well received, but beyond amazingly catchy single "Very Loud" (#29 on my year-end list), the album and band didn't make much of an impression on me.  Their lurch into the strange channeling of Robert Smith on their first single didn't not provide any additional inspiration, so when I downloaded Our Ill Wills from Emusic, I wasn't expecting a whole lot.  But this album is very, very good.

Much of the release does harken back to the textured pop of Howl How Gaff Gaff, but there are a number of great new flourishes that shows a band growing in quality and confidence, making a well-rounded listening experience.  After the opening blast of "Tonight I Have to Leave It", second track "Parents Livingroom" is a sunny, catchy burst of a pop song, and "You are Dreaming" follows with close to as high a quality.  The lyrics are nothing special as far as I can initially discern, but the music is just filled with hooks upon hooks of pure indie goodness.  There is definitely a mid-80s New Wave vibe to many of the tracks, beyond the Cure-inspired first track.  "You are Dreaming" seems culled from mid-era New Order or Echo & the Bunnymen, which might be why I seem to like this album so much.  Other highlights on the collections include "Blue Headlights", 7-minute closing track "Hard Rain", and the two slowed-down tracks on the album, "Ill Wills" and "Meat is Murder" (did I mention the 80s influences? is Sweden just learning about The Smiths?).  Both songs seem to diverge from anything else in the band's catalogue and are actually quite brilliant -- "Ill Wills" is a short, truly beautiful instrumental track that could fit into Do Make Say Think album, while "Meat is Murder" is a dirge-like ballad that is both touching and harsh.  More of that guys, and you you could have had one of the great albums of the year.  But I'll settle for this, a high-quality album that you should all go sample.

• You can stream the whole album at Merge Records or buy it here

• Download Shout Out Louds - "Tonight I Have to Leave It".mp3
• Download Shout Out Louds - "Parents Livingroom".mp3
• Download Shout Out Louds - "Our Ill Wills".mp3

Little Orphan Funkhouser

This season of Curb has featured quite a bit of Marty Funkhouser (aka the former Super Dave Osborne), and it's been a typically hilarious year so far, highlighted by another stellar episode this week.  If the presence of so much Funkhouser alongside so much comedy is off-putting to you, well just remember, Larry David can make anything and everything funny.  Even a wet-with-sweat 50-dollar bill. 

Funkhouser's mother Ida died in a wheelchair accident while trying to cross a road, and as a result, a Roadside Memorial has been setup on her behalf, full of flowers that somehow end up in Larry's grasp.  But before all that, LD finds himself on line at an ice cream shop with a woman who makes the practice of sampling an art form.  LD has some words with her - but unfortunately she is the dean of the school that Cheryl is trying to get the Black kids enrolled in (along with Jeff and Susie's daughter).  Cheryl is not pleased at Larry screwing up the enrollment process.

Larry: (on confronting a sample abuser) Don't abuse your sampling privileges. She abused the sampling privilege. And you know what else?
Cheryl: What?
Larry: I was also looking out for the counterperson, as well.
Cheryl: If she had a problem with that woman, don't you think she would have said, "Excuse me, ma'am"?
Larry: No, no, 'cause she's always told 'the customer is right,' and in fact, the customer is usually a moron and an asshole.

He's not wrong there.

New Music Tuesday

Another week, another big day of album releases.  You have to love the fall for that.  Let's get right into it.

• Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War

• The band actually leaked the album themselves months ago - to legitimate download services and I think Insound has had it available for a while as well, but the official release date is today.  It's a wonderful album, filled with the kind of orchestral theatrics we have grown accustomed to from the band - a little over the top at times, but overall a pleasant joy, including this blast of inspired pop goodness...

• Download Stars - "Take me to the Riot".mp3

• Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy

• Sonic Youth's legendary frontman has released his first solo effort in a decade, this inspired blast from the past, heavy on guitars, light on the hooks, but just a great album throughout.  Words cannot do it justice.  Take a listen to this incredible track as  a sample and then go buy the album.

• Download Thurston Moore - "Honest James".mp3

• Beirut - The Flying Club Cup

• Speaking of leaks, this album popped up on Emusic last week, allowing for legitimate downloading a few weeks before the October 9th release date.  It sounds like a typical Beirut album, but with a fuller and more mature sound that is certainly different than anything else you'll find in indie rock today.  In a good way.  Pre-order by clicking on the link above.

• Download Beirut - "Cliquot".mp3

Colorado 6, San Diego 2

A shaky performance by a Padres starter I never heard of gave the Rockies an early lead that they did not relinquish, and all of the sudden, the Phillies are a 1/2 game out of the playoffs with one week to play.  The Phillies - a team looking deader than Switsky trying to leg out a double just over a week ago - have surged to 10 wins in 11 games to close within sniffing distance of their first postseason berth since 1993.  Yes, 1993.  I was still in college then.  Well technically, I'm still in college now, but I mean I was still at Rutgers.  And it was a long time ago. 

Last night's game saw the Phillies hold onto a 1-0 lead for much of the contest, behind brilliant pitching by rookie superstar Kyle Kendrick.  But a costly error by Chase Utley, trying to turn a double play in the bottom of the 6th, allowed the Nationals to tie the game at 1.  In the 7th, JC Romero - who has gone like 11 straight innings without giving up a run - gave up a leadoff triple on a badly misplayed ball by normally stellar CF Aaron Rowand, but somehow - some way (mostly because the Nationals have Nook Logan and Felipe Lopez at the top of their order), he and Geoff Geary got out of the inning without giving up a run.  Tom Gordon and Brett Myers pitched scoreless frames in the 8th and 9th, allowing for the 10th inning heroics as follows...

On the cusp of his 195th strikeout -- which would tie a Major League record -- Howard fouled off two 1-2 pitches and laced a tiebreaking RBI single that sparked a 4-1, 10-inning win over the Nationals on Saturday at RFK Stadium.

Chase Utley singled and Pat Burrell walked to set up Howard's sharp single, and the Phillies added two more runs to pad the lead. Utley had given the Phils a 1-0 lead with a first-inning homer off Tim Redding.

"It was a fastball," said Howard, who is hitting .234 in September, with 34 strikeouts. "I was trying to battle, basically swing at anything close. I had trouble trying to pull the trigger earlier in the game. In that situation, I told myself it wasn't going to happen again."

36. Gold Soundz

Note: This is the latest in a continuing series of the Vague Space top 40 favorite songs of all time.

Song:  "Gold Soundz"
Artist:  Pavement
Album:  Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Year:  1994
Length:  2:41
Label:  Matador Records
Rating:  10 (out of 10) on Pitchfork

• Download Pavement - "Gold Soundz".mp3

This album reached my top 5 of all-time on my list a couple years ago, while Pitchfork put it at #8 of the 1990s.  Rolling Stone ranked it at #210 of all-time in a 2003 ranking of their top 500, but Rolling Stone sucks. 

From Pitchfork's review of the 2004 re-release of the album,
Pavement's sophomore outing does not contain 12 perfect songs but it is close to a perfect album. Each of the best half-dozen-- "Silence Kit", "Elevate Me Later", "Cut Your Hair", "Unfair", "Gold Soundz", and "Range Life"-- contain Malkmus' catchy and highly unusual melodies ("Silence Kit" cribs from Buddy Holly, but even that's an odd gesture) and would be career highlights for most rock bands.

"Gold Soundz" is my favorite of those amazing six tracks (I'd add "Fillmore Jive" as another amazing one) and can currently be heard anytime anyone calls my cell phone.  woo hoo!

Go back to those gold soundz
And keep my advent to your self
Because it's nothing I don't like
Is it a crisis or a boring change?
When its central, so essential,
It has a nice ring when you laugh
At the low life opinions
And they're coming to the chorus now...
Keep my address to yourself 'cause we need secrets
We need secrets crets crets crets crets crets back right now

Because I never wanna make you feel
That you're social
Never ignorant soul
Believe in what you wanna do
And do you think that is a major flaw
When they rise up in the falling rain
And if you stay around with your knuckles ground down
The trial's over, weapons found
Keep my address to myself because it's secret
Cuz its secret cret cret cret [etc.]... back right now

So drunk in the August sun
And you're the kind of girl I like
Because you're empty and I'm empty
And you can never quarantine the past
Did you remember in December
That I won't eat you when I'm gone
And if I go there, I won't stay there
Because I'm sitting here too long
I've been sitting here too long
And I've been wasted
Advocating that word for the last word
Last words come up all you've got to waste

Greetings from Vermont

I promised a second post about the Brew Fest, reviewing the rest of the weekend's misadventures, but I never got around to it and now I'm not really sure I remember what happened.  I do know we lost in the first round in horseshoes and that Aaron's no longer speaking to me as a result, and that we missed the Garlic Fest (so no one got to buy Richard's BBQ sauce), but other that that, it's all kind of a blur until we got back to New Jersey.  But one of my companions took 240 pictures of the Fest and here are a few that were not simply pictures of the baby, including one where I'm giving young Jacob advice, apparently with a half-full beer in my hand.  Nice.

 

Children of Men

I recently completed reading the P.D. James novel Children of Men, a few months after viewing the Alfonso Cuaron film of the same name, and both were very good accounts of the same fictional story, but both were completely different from each other to a shocking degree, and neither was fully effective in telling the story of this very interesting idea to a level I had hoped... which is why I read the book after seeing the movie - I loved the idea of it and really loved a lot of things in the movie, but ultimately left a little disappointed.  Sadly the book, despite being completely different than the movie in almost every aspect, being very well-written and equally as good as the movie, left me with the same disappointment level.  So I will be spending the rest of this post trying to explore why I was disappointed and maybe what I would have liked to see and read.  If you haven't read or seen this story, be warned, there's going to be a lot of spoilers ahead.

The basic story is set around 25 years in the future in England in a world in which women are no longer able to produce children and both the novel and the movie begin with the death of the "youngest living human being," a South American in his twenties who is killed in a pub fight.  That's basically where the similarities between the film and the book end.  Theo Faron, a history professor portrayed by Clive Owen in the movie, is the main character in both, and a few minor characters overlap, but their stories are not really the same at all and the events are almost entirely different.  But basically, Theo becomes involved with trying to assist a pregnant young woman - the first in a quarter century - to give birth in a futuristic England that is part totalitarian state or apocalyptic nightmare (depending on which version you are seeing).  Just a really, really cool idea.  But neither ending is fully satisfying.

New Music Tuesday

Band of Horses has a pretty great new album coming out October 9th. Pre-order it here.  I really liked their debut album Everything All the Time, particularly "Weed Party", "The Great Salt Lake", "St. Augustine" and indie hit "The Funeral."  I'm not sure which new tracks have been authorized by the band for pre-release, so I'll only post their first track off of Cease to Begin, which appears to be all over the blogosphere anyway.  Enjoy.

• Download Band of Horses - "Is There a Ghost".mp3

Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene has released the first in what is supposed to be a series of "solo" releases from members of the Toronto indie rock collective.  The album features contributions from other members of BSS and was recorded in 2005 and 2006.  You can buy it here.  Among all the great tracks on the album is my personal favorite, the song that ended the 6 week reign of Sunset Rubdown at the top of my Top 10 records of the week list, this week's #1 "Fucked Up Kid."

• Download Kevin Drew - "Fucked Up Kid".mp3

mum is coming out with their latest release on September 25, their fourth full-length and first since 2005's reissue of the incredible Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today is OK.  The Icelandic rockers combine their signature soft vocals, electronic glitches, and unconventional sounds to great effect on the new album.  Pre-order Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy today.  This track was available as an exclusive to fan club members last month.  I think it's one of their best on the album.  Take a listen.

• Download mum - "Dancing Behind My Eyelids".mp3