This past week I was on spring break. Due to money and an ill-fated promise to go on a trip with friends from school, I went to Daytona Beach, Florida instead of snowboarding in Colorado. It definitely wasn’t the snowboarding trip that I would have otherwise gone on, but it was a good time to just relax and chill at the beach.
Unfortunately, being Daytona Beach during spring break, you can’t just go to the beach and just relax. Everything is loud and in-your-face from the pushy shop owners to belligerent drunk college kids. Far too often this loudness is paired with music.
And this is, of course, from the selection of music that I like the least. These are the pop-hits, the club mixes, and …well that describes all of them. Though there are a few gems out there that are genuinely good at what they’re doing, the genre has got the monotony thing down to a science. Once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard nearly all of them.
Naturally, I felt out of place. Rather than raise my glass and lower my musical standards, I decided to put together my own spring break playlist. I’m an album kinda guy, so these are full albums – stuff I listened to while laying out at the beach or back in the room when the other music gets to be too much.
By no means are these full album reviews. They’re basically just my rationale behind listening to them and a few comments on the band and/or the album. If you're in search of new tunes, you can make it your goal to follow my playlist through this coming week.
Monday:
This Time It’s War: Terror Plots
- I’ve been following these guys for years now. The first time I saw them was with August Burns Red in high school, before ABR got big. This past year, TTIW finally released a full length album, Terror Plots. This album is heavy, technical, and a great way to get pumped about getting some sun.
Tuesday:
MGMT: Oracular Spectacular
- This is me meeting mainstream. It’s a weird feeling to realize that other people have heard of what I’m listening to. However, I’ll stand firmly behind a handful of such bands that I deem worthy. These guys are one such band. They’ve got a nice relaxing vibe that’s perfect for lying by the ocean, yet have enough variety to hold my attention. They’ve got a lighter sounding orchestral pop/rock going on and I like it …even if other people do too.
Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s: Buzzard
- My first encounter with Margot was in the radio station with Ryan Faus. Freshman through fall of junior year, we had what was probably one of the best radio shows at WVMM. Despite having an extremely eclectic playlist, everything flowed as a continuous and coherent stream of consciousness. Anyway, so we found these guys and were blown away. The only other band that’s come close to that sort of impact has been Phantods, who I might just have on the list later this week. So after we discovered them, we found that they were coming to B-Sides. It was glorious. They’re a 7 or 8 piece collection of extremely talented musicians whose genius is realized first in their song writing, but then further realized through their attention to minuscule details. I think Animal/Not Animal is still my favorite album from them, but Buzzard was just released and I’m seeing it slowly grow on me.
Between The Buried And Me: Colors
- The choice here was in direct response to too much rap music in the room. I couldn’t take it. Between The Buried And Me is math metal, progressive metal, and genre-mash slurry of awesomeness. I’m not big into their self-titled, but everything else I could listen to 24/7. They’re one of those bands that will have a full length with 5 songs on it… I’m real into the idea that songs can have more development than a single verse chorus deal. These guys build vocal compositions around musical compositions with a technical palate that textures each song to be its own, freestanding entity, yet flow through the album seamlessly and beautifully.
Wednesday:
Phantogram: Eyelid Movies
- Phantogram is an electronica duo. They played a B-Sides a while back and were quite excellent excellent. On one hand, they were something completely different for me. On the other, it’s just really interesting. Spacey female vocals compliment the fuzzy bass lines and gritty guitar rather harmoniously. In addition to being awesome, I also just heard them at American Eagle the other day at the mall. It was a neat experience.
Thursday:
Nosaj Thing: Drift
- Ryan introduced me to this guy last year. Again, it’s electronica. Completely different, though. Phantogram is more rock sampling and Nosaj Thing is predominately electronic. The real experience, however, is in his live show. I’ve only gotten to see videos, but his whole music show is coupled with a light show synced to the music. It’s done really artfully. Anyway, this was a nice album to relax and read to, soaking up some sun.
- So back in my video game days, there was this game, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. I was pretty great at it and played it frequently. Consequently, I ended up liking the soundtrack a lot. It included stuff like Ozzy, A Tribe Called Quest, and Sublime. Though those days are long behind me, I had an urge to listen to the soundtrack a while back, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and downloaded a few of the albums that the songs came from. Sublime was one such album, with the track, Doin Time. Sublime is a 90s surf punk/rock/ska band …or something like that. Basically, all that to say that they’ve got some great beachy tunes that, though normally crass, go down smooth here in Daytona.
65daysofstatic: Unreleased/Unreleasable, Volume 2: How I F*ed Off All My Friends
- Here’s yet another electronica band. However, these guys normally infuse math rock and monologue samples. And I say “normally” for a reason. Their two Unreleased/Unreleasable albums are not the norm. They’re what would better be known as glitch electronica. It’s a lot of pop hit samples mixed with 65days flair – distorted guitars, drum machine beats, etc. Then all of this combined with the glitch aspect. If you’re unfamiliar with glitch music, just think of everything that could go wrong with a cd/record/etc. Skips, pitch shifting, tempo altering, and a host of other glitches are intentionally introduced into the spliced together samples. It’s intense stuff and most people will hate it. Perhaps that has something to do with the album title? Anyway, I’m into obscure music and this pretty well epitomizes that. And yes, this was to read, relax, and sleep. Check them out.
Friday:
mewithoutyou: Brother, Sister
- This may be one of the greatest albums of all time. Lots of people can’t get into the more spoken word/poetry vocals, but if you can, this album is brilliant. You could say they’re just an indie rock band, but they go way beyond that with how they arrange their ideas and structure their songs. Brother, Sister is, in my opinion, their best album. It’s edgy, dynamic, and has some of the most vivid imagery that you’ll ever hear in a comprehensive album.
Saturday:
The Mars Volta: Scabdates
- Experimental psychedelic rock. It’s loosely constructed, jazzy, and free-flowing. There are also some glitch type elements. Of the albums of theirs that I have, Scabdates seems to embody all of these things the best. I could see where lots of people would freak out and not know how to interpret what’s going on through the album, but if you can absorb the textures and set aside everything you think you know about music, this album will blow your mind.
Kaki King: Junior
- The first time I heard this album I didn’t like it. My first taste of King’s music was her music video for Playing With Pink Noise. It’s percussive fingerstyle – the stuff I do. This album, however, isn’t much percussive fingerstyle at all. After listening to it without that expectation, however, it’s another brilliant album by Kaki. In this album, she’s exploring more of her singer/songwriter side, developing herself as somewhat of an indie genius. Of what I’ve heard of Kaki, she’s not the most pleasant person and really hasn’t enjoyed most of her touring bands. This album embraces that attitude, being rather rough around the edges at times. Though following her on twitter, it appears as though this tour is actually working out for her and she is actually having a great time.
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