I mean lists. For the love of lists.
I've been thinking about how awkward it is when your friends make art you don't like but you want to be supportive because they're your friends, but you just for the love of all things holy never want to get asked to go to another goddamn harvey d--I mean another show by your unnamed friends.
But then, I've also been thinking about how exciting it is to be connected to a large group of creative friends whose talents extend into all forms of thing-making. The more I travel, the more I remember how proud I am to know so many gifted, generous people who have devoted themselves, with varying degrees of commercial and critical success, to making music, books, film, theater, photography, and other forms of art (if, indeed, there are any).
This all occurred to me a propos of the new "Awesome" record that accompanies their just-closed show "Delaware." The show itself was excellent, but because I'm partial to records, I'm more impressed by the record, which captures their musical and personal personalities so well. It's an excellent debut, and you should all go buy it (if, in fact, anyone who isn't already in "Awesome" ever reads this bullshit...).
Then, because I felt like it, I compiled a brief list of other records and songs I am proud to know the creators/writers/singers of. And while I know this may basically come off as a massive exercise in name-dropping, I liken it more to thinking out loud, and a public proppage to my small circle of brilliant friends.
10 LPs (which reminds me of the time I was hosting KEXP and some kid called to say he was confused because I kept saying that whatever song I had just played had been issued on such-and-such an LP. "Is that supposed to stand for something?" he asked. Indeed.)
•Awesome-Delaware
•This Busy Monster-Like Icicles (though, frankly, I wish they had used my suggested title, "Breaking Up is Hard to Do.")
•Death Cab for Cutie-Something About Airplanes (still the best one.)
•Nada Surf-Let Go (beautiful both as an album proper, and as a statement of purpose.)
•Gherkin-10 Esperanto Love Songs (a huge source of inspiration to me at a time when I really needed to believe that people i knew were capable of making something real; also a real "there but for the grace of god" kind of story...)
•Centro-Matic-Love You Just the Same (every time I hear this incredible gem I am transported to the couch in Belgium where I first listened to it, aching with jet-lag, and blown away by the degree to which these magnificent Texans had finally lived up to their own musical prowess. i confess, however, that the absence of the title song on the record itself still nags at me, and I at them.)
•John Vanderslice-Time Travel Is Lonely (my favorite one because it's both concise and sprawling, and the letters inside break my heart even now. this was the first record that convinced me barsuk could be world class with or without dcfc.)
•Sarah Dougher-The Walls Ablaze (I can't claim to know her well, but the intimacy of this record is astonishing. it also always reminds me of the night her old band, the lookers, played with HD at some crappy pioneer square bar before everything went crazy, and she stayed at my old apartment, and i later got mugged. good times.)
•Pete Krebs-Sweet Ona Rose (speaking of couch surfers of the past... this is the only full-length aside from the first hazel record that really ties together everything PK is great at: tenderness, twang, toughness, and just a touch of old school rhetorical righteousness.)
•Rat Cat Hogan-Don't Call Me Twaddy/Eet Ees Too Koldt To Go Swimmink (the definitive collection by one of my favorite bands of all time. more great lines than a book of berman poems. the american way of life has got to be protected.)
10 songs
•Carissa's Wierd-"So You Wanna Be a Superhero" (i assumed i wouldn't like this band on principle because of the spelling thing and because of some other associations. i was an idiot. every night the long winters toured with them, i watched in amazement that such a big group could make such delicate, achingly sad, utterly beautiful music. this song is them at their best, and jenn ghetto at her bleakest.)
•Nevada Bachelors-"Marla" (robb writes a lot of songs, maybe more than anyone i know. i would have stopped with this one, if only because once you've beaten mccartney at his own game, you might as well hang it up.)
•The Capillaries-"Sleeping You Off" (again, an epic by a good friend, and one of those moments where you hear someone make their ultimate statement, summing up an entire body of work. he's gone on to write better, but this one feels to me like the summation of the first chapter of this band's existence, from when it was just a twinkle in a jaundiced eye.)
•Smoosh-"Rad" (umm, obviously. the only song i know that both affirms positivity and openly encourages the joining of a soccer team.)
•Jenny Lewis-"Rabbit Fur Coat" (whatever for Rilo Kiley. when this song, which i saw her perform in a little clothing store in west hollywood in front of like 8 people, comes out, minds are going to be all-the-way blown.)
•Rachel Haden-"Let's Get Lost" (I've heard a few different versions of this, and I'm not even sure if it's finished, owing to that peculiar strain in some people that never lets them believe that anything they do is of any worth, but i can say without any hesitation that it made me tear up the first time I heard it, and subsequently, every time I've even thought of it.)
•Hazel-"The Title Track" (the best use of the bop-ba-ba construction since The Turtles, the best Hazel song since "truly," and the best feeling I ever felt at a rock show the first time i heard them do it.)
•Gavin Guss-"Mercury Mine" (actually, this might be a tie with "Union Station" for the most impressive construction by tacoma's bravest son. again, in mccartney territory, and again, not just because it sounds vaguely similar. it's the real shit. i thought for years that gg and i hated each other. then i head this and new we were obviously lifelong friends. then we met and i was right.)
•South San Gabriel-"Smelling Medicinal" (the pun "tired and feathered" is only one small reason this song somehow stands as my favorite will johnson composition, a collection that consists of more pure tonnage than one man should reasonably be expected to generate in a lifetime. and he's basically just getting warmed up.)
•The Long Winters-"Scent of Lime" (obviously.)