Fat Tuesday In The A: …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Black Lips

Tuesday, February 24, Trail Of Dead hits Criminal Records and The Earl.

My first couple of listens to the new Trail Of Dead record I think were spoiled by the fact that almost everything on the Festival Thyme EP has been recycled here. I really do not like a new album with songs I’ve already played to death. But after getting over that, the rest of the material here fits nicely around the Festival stuff, and I am starting to really enjoy it. I think I might go on a little TOD kick for a while and revisit some older stuff. They are playing for free at Criminal Records around 7pm, and then they are headlining The Earl later on tonight. There still seems to be a few tickets available.

Trail Of Dead : Isis Unveiled

Trail Of Dead : Halcyon Days

Buy Century Of Self

Trail Of Dead myspace




The Black Lips release their latest album, 200 Million Thousand, and play Criminal Records tonight and Variety Playhouse Friday to support it.

Atlanta’s flower-punksters drop their latest album today, and it is pretty much everything one would expect from these guys. If you are a big fan, you will love it. For me, there are some songs I like, and a whole lot more that just don’t do anything for me. They are still clearly the best at doing the psych-garage-rock-punk/charming-mediocrity that is so in fashion these days both in Atlanta and around the world, but it is just not my cup of tea. As reckless and adventurous as they appear on stage, their music is safe and predictable, and just doesn’t hold my interest in the context of all the brilliant stuff I hear on a regular basis. But for you Black Lips believers, don’t let me rain on your party. They are playing a free in-store at Criminal Records at 5pm tonight before Trail Of Dead, and then playing Friday night at Variety Playhouse.

Buy 200 Million Thousand

Black Lips myspace

Video for “Short Fuse”:

Ohmpark’s Top 20 Best EPs/Short-Length Albums Of 2008

I decided to do something a little experimental this year with my best EP list. When I was comparing very short “full-length” albums to longer albums on my best LP list, I kept wanting to hold the time duration against the shorter album. Also, it seems the difference between EPs and LPs can be a bit arbitrary sometimes, so I decided to just draw a line completely based on album length to split up my best album lists. This list, then, is the best of all albums less than 35 minutes, regardless of what the record is labeled. I’m happy with the end result, as I’m able to really highlight some extremely worthwhile briefer albums and it made the competition on this list a lot tighter. When you really think about it, any classic album this short feels like it is in a different weight class. I want to give an honorable mention to Cynic‘s Traced In Air, Parade‘s Ghosts, and Mount Eerie with Julie Dorion and Fred Squire‘s Lost Wisdom because all three were awesome, but here are the 20 best albums under 35 minutes:

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My Favourite Songs of 2008: Ohmpark Mixtape #6

So here is a playlist comprised of many of my favourite songs from the year. Not all of my favs are here, but I think all of the essentials are in it. I tried my best to build this as a flowing playlist more than just a collection of songs, so the order and even some of the selections reflect that. I really need to do more mixtapes. Based on Hypemachine/elbow popularity, I know everyone loves that Fleet Foxes song, but I decided instead to treat you to a better song from one of the bands that FF is ripping off. Anyways, here is an hour and half of the best songs of 2008. Jam them hard while you can, because in about 3 days they aren’t hip anymore:

Islands : The Arm
Sigur Ros : Gobbledigook
Atlas Sound : Recent Bedroom
Kaki King : Life Being What it Is
MGMT : Weekend Wars
Department of Eagles : No One Does It Like You
Animal Collective : Water Curses
Antony And The Johnsons : Another World
Mount Eerie w/ Julie Doiron & Fred Squire : Voice In Headphones
My Morning Jacket : Touch Me I’m Going To Scream pt. 1
Beach House : Used To Be
Portishead : The Rip
Summerbirds In The Cellar : Now We Are Ugly Inside
Hot Chip : One Pure Thought
M83 : Kim & Jesse
Bon Iver : For Emma
Plants And Animals : Guru
Destroyer : Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night’s Ape)
Deerhunter : Nothing Ever Happened
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead : The Betrayal Of Roger Casement And The Irish Brigade

All Tomorrow’s Parties NY Day 3 (Sunday & Wrap-Up): I Think I’m Gonna Need A Bigger Set Of Earplugs

All Photos by Abbey Braden courtesy of ATP.

Saturday night we got back very late to our hotel so I proceeded to order vodka and cranberries by the handful and shoot as many as possible before the looming last call at the bar. I clearly overshot my target and ended up waking up Sunday with a ludicrously painful hangover to start off the day. Most of the afternoon consisted of me trying recover. It finally subsided and I was able to make it to the very end of the Mercury Rev show. As soon a I walked in the backdoor of the venue, there was like a sonic boom blast of sound from a particularly epic part of their set, and you could tell they had this soundsystem at full blast in anticipation of My Bloody Valentine. I wish I could have seen more of Mercury Rev, because the last few minutes I caught were amazing. I’m about to dig deep into their new CD and their old stuff because i wasn’t familiar with them until now.

We stuck around up front to wait for Yo La Tengo, a favourite for all of our ATP crew. The guards or somebody decided starting on Sunday that they would make everyone leave the venue between each performance and have everyone wait outside, which really seemed rather purposeless. At one point a security guard unsuccessfully tried to get the massive crowd filling an entire room to form two lines to go in and it was hilarious. The guards never cleared out the venue area again after that.

We still managed to get front row, and enjoy their top notch set. I was hoping for a full on noise jam set from Ira Kaplan, and while it ended up being a rather balanced sort of set, full of soft, pretty parts and loud, psychedelic stuff, Ira still shredded plenty enough for me. Yo La Tengo is just one of the best bands of alltime in my opinion, to still be writing relevant, amazing music and playing such impressive live shows after 24 years. Here’s video from their set:

After that, we literally ran across Kutcher’s to the second stage to catch …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. We missed only a little bit of their great set, and I’m glad I finally caught these guys. In comparison to the rest of the mindblowing shows of Sunday, Trail Of Dead might have seemed a bit less enjoyable, but still could have been the highlight of lesser festival.


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Sugarkane’s Top 50 Albums of 2006

2006 was a great year for me, and the main reasons are mostly related to music. I decided to do this list in December because i wanted to learn about as much music as possible, and what I thought would take a few days ended up taking almost 2 months, but it was extremely educational for me and i feel very good about this list. There were so many albums that I would like to give props to and cutting it down to 50 was hard. On a technical note, I went by U.S. release date with the exception of Laura’s Radio Swan Is Down (It was released in Australia over a year ago and has no U.S. release date). Feel free to blast it:

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