The Best Thing I Heard This Week: Caveman's Coco Beware

My parents have developed a Thanksgiving tradition that tends to ensure an interesting night every year. When I was growing up, it was always a small gathering at my Grandmother's house. After she passed, we spent a few years in limbo before my parents decided to start hosting a gathering. We get the usual smattering of family (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins), but we also get a few...we'll call them stragglers--all are welcome under my parents' roof that evening. Everyone brings a dish and then can relax while the festivities begin. Bottles of wine are opened, quickly emptied, and then discarded. The din rises slowly over the early evening, coming to a crescendo as the meal is finally ready, and everyone shuts up to eat and maybe sober up, just a little. For my part, I usually take care of the music, but was woefully unprepared this year because of some technical issues with my computer and external hard drive. Regardless, I grabbed a few cd's out of my car when we arrived, including Caveman's new release, Coco Beware. It ended up being the perfect music for a relaxed, informal Thanksgiving dinner.

Staples-The Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Dreamcoat

Sometimes, you get lucky, truly and strangely lucky, and you listen to the right record at the right moment and it'll be with you forever. Granted, some records are so great that they're going to do that anyway, but not every record is Let It Bleed or Abbey Road or Blonde on Blonde, so you gotta appreciate that shit when it happens. I heard the Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Health at the best time possible. The record is hopelessly positive and forward-looking, so much so that it caused critics to wince, yet it was the best thing for me to hear at that moment. I listened to this record on repeat during a six hour drive from the Appalachians to Chapel Hill, and it became a staple of my music collection.

The Best Thing I Heard This Week-Girls

The best thing I heard this week is a record that is old and new, something we've all heard before but that still feels fresh. Girls’ Father, Son, Holy Ghost is unabashedly derivative, but extremely well done. All over the record are 60s and 70s landmarks, from Pink Floyd to Big Star to Otis Redding. Somehow, Girls manages to make the whole thing sound comfortably familiar yet different enough to be worth repeated listens.

The Best Thing I Heard this Week-Chris Bathgate

I am a sucker (or perhaps an enthusiast) for great first tracks. As I say this, it seems so overly obvious that it shouldn’t be stated--rather, who isn’t enthralled by a great first track?** Well, years ago, the answer was probably no one. Now, however, I don’t think the answer is quite as obvious. Seemingly, more of the public listens to one or two tracks from an album that they like, and either dismisses the rest of the record or never bothers to hear it in the first place. This is by now not a new phenomenon, but one that has been going on for more than ten years I would imagine. Which is a long-winded way of saying that having a great first track only matters to people who listen to whole albums, and not the track that randomly gets posted on their Facebook wall or that they hear on the radio. I am one of those people, Chris Bathgate’s Salt Year is one of those albums, and the first track, “Eliza (Hue)” is one of those great openers that only comes around every so often.

First Thoughts: A.C. Newman's Get Guilty

Much like the Shins' 2007 effort, Wincing the Night Away, A.C. Newman has released an album in Get Guilty that is most likely inferior to his previous solo effort, The Slow Wonder, and his work with the New Pornographers, but that is a step above almost everything else in the genre. And while we are doomed to judge artists in comparison to previous efforts, there is nothing on this record to prevent an above average listening experience, even if the album lacks transcendence.

Despite not hitting the highs of The Slow Wonder (most notably Miracle Drug and Drink for Me then, Babe), Get Guilty finds Newman at his most lyrical. To open the album, he quips "There are maybe ten or twelve things/I could teach you/after that, well I think you're on your own/and that wasn't the opening line/it was the tenth or twelfth." This assertion of a lack of new ideas or wisdom may be true at times, and it does show at points in the album. However, there are moments like on Changeling, wherein Newman summons his best Elvis Costello, where it is also apparent that Newman can still teach us a thing or two we though we knew about power pop. Prophets and Submarines of Stockholm sound like they could have come off of any New Pornographers album (and that is a good thing).

In the end, if you're a fan of the New Pornographers and/or A.C. Newman, this album will be a nice treat. However, for those curious about Newman, I would start with The Slow Wonder, or his work with the New Pornographers (namely Mass Romantic and Electric Version).