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Lorde

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Lorde

So fantasy football is back.

Yay.

Oh, how I’ve missed the delightful mix of illusory agency and total helplessness that comes with trying to guess which NFL players are going to perform well each week. Oh, how I longed for the ineffectual rage that builds up when an offensive coordinator pretends one of your running backs doesn’t exist, or when one of your receivers is used as a decoy for, like, an entire season. And who can resist those paralyzing conflicts of interest that arise when your fantasy team would benefit if certain members of your actual team did poorly?

Be still my beating heart.

Yes, fantasy football is back in all its frustrating, time-sucking glory (I swear a Fall Line Fest post is coming at some point), and I just had the pleasure of watching both my teams go down in flames in week two. But I’m trying to take a more detached, zen-like approach this year, and I have the perfect theme song for my long-overdue attitudinal shift.

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Austin Lucas

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Austin Lucas

Are you as excited as I am about Arcade Fire’s reemergence?

Have you listened to the David Bowie-laced “Reflektor” yet? Have you tried out the song’s crazy webcam-enabled video? Did you hear that James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem produced AF’s upcoming album, a two-disc affair frontman Win Butler is billing as “a mash up of Studio 54 and Haitian voodoo”? I mean… there’s a lot to be excited about in there.

All that excitement bubbled over for me on Tuesday, when a limited-edition “Reflektor” 12-inch single went on sale at BK Music. So shiny. So limited in quantity. I just couldn’t help myself. I made the trip to Midlothian Turnpike and was successful (I still haven’t opened the thing, though — it’s too pretty), but oddly enough, I walked out of BK all amped up about something else entirely.

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Townes Van Zandt

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The Jungle

A coworker recently lent me a copy of The Jungle, a book I’ve managed to avoid for 30 years either by chance or, more likely, by ignoring a series of well-intentioned high school and/or college reading assignments.

Bad English major. BAD.

But I’m getting better! I read Hard Times on the way to Greece earlier this year, and I started making my way through The Jungle early last week. Almost right away, I encountered a paragraph that was totally unrelated to meat packing or the plight of the downtrodden factory worker but was instead a totally insightful take on the magic of live music.

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B.I.M.A.

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BIMA

One of the things that made me fall for Girl Talk was how doted-upon Gillis’ mushups seemed. For a while he was averaging an album every two years (if you’re reading this, Greg, my friends and I are spending the last week of August at the beach, and let’s just say we wouldn’t be sad if a new Girl Talk album was released in between now and then…), and I imagined him spending long hours in front of a laptop, working late into the night to perfect transitions and find ways to squeeze more and more music into each minute. That density — the feeling of being surrounded by hundreds of musical quotations and juxtapositions — is key to my perception of Night Ripper, Feed the Animals and All Day as labors of love. They’re like candy-coated musical rainforests that fans of pop music can relish hacking through.

As much as I love this approach, I’m enjoying the Bon Iver Mashup Album for the opposite reason. Or perhaps just a seemingly opposing reason…

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St. Vincent

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St. Vincent

An optimistic Friday post for y’all:

Certain people, places and things just bring out the best in you. Have you noticed that? Certain friends make you want to be better friends to your other friends. Certain activities inspire you to draw from wells of courage and generosity that you aren’t normally able to draw from. President Obama likes to quote a related turn of phrase from Lincoln’s first inaugural address — the “better angels of our nature” line — and while the original context may have been Civil War-level heavy, I encounter simple, everyday applications of the sentiment all the time. Music’s a great place to look.

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Bright Eyes

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Bright Eyes

Every so often I’ll feel pangs of regret for having waited so long to start writing about music. It usually happens when I hear a song or album that reminds me of a specific time in my life, either because of its release date or because I went through a period of concentrated listening.

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John Vanderslice

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Putting a face to a name is always nice, and I’m thrilled to finally have a set of images to associate with the words “Tiny Telephone.”

I can’t remember how I first heard about John Vanderslice’s Mission District-situated studio, nor have I ever been there, but in the last few years, it’s been built up in my mind to the point where it’s become a place of real significance to me — a pulsing, glowing thing on the other side of the country, where special stuff is made with analog equipment and integrity.

Much of that building-up came from a pair of conversations I had with the gents from Pretty & Nice. All the way back in April of 2011, I was talking to the Boston-based group about this awesome place in San Francisco where they were going to mix their next album, and they sang the studio’s praises again when I interviewed them last month, a short time after that (spectacular) album finally saw the light of day. On both occasions, when they spoke about Tiny Telephone, there was something elevated about their speech, like they enjoyed the taste its name made each time they said it. If I were to extrapolate a bit, I’d guess that enjoyment came not from delight in name-dropping but from a genuine sense of pride at being associated with a place that shares their values. Attention to detail. Respect for good equipment. Love of analog.

As for me, I’d guess that the enjoyment I get from saying/typing “Tiny Telephone” comes from a different place, though I think it reflects just as well on the studio.

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Laura Mvula

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Laura Mvula

On Sunday afternoon, I decided to close out the long holiday weekend in patriotic fashion by going for a run with The Most Americans’ self-titled debut full-length, which is a collection of songs that get stuck in my head with abnormal frequency. I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about why they stick to my brain so effectively (I even asked the band about it when I interviewed them a few weeks ago), and here’s what I’ve settled on: The Most Americans excel at creating capital-M Moments.

Certain lyrics, harmonies and transitions stick out/shine/demand your attention, making them exceedingly easy to remember and — more to the point — hard to forget, like I had a highlighter in hand the first time I listened and involuntarily singled out certain snippets. The perfect blend of vocal textures when “So sad to not be in love” is sung in “Two Dreams.” The utterance of the title lyric in “Cassius.” I look forward to these spots when I start listening, and they bubble up well after the album’s done. That’s because real, dyed-in-the-wool Moments never really go away — they float at the periphery of your consciousness, ready to zoom back into focus whenever they’re given an opening.

You know who else knows how to make a Moment? Laura Mvula. Her debut full-length Sing to the Moon is chock full of ’em.

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