MP3 Djerdan vol.9

[Zadig]

Balada o rakiji

[victory]

nista bez rakije i diska

rakija + disko = udarna mashup kombinacija koja se obicno zavrsi dramaticno, posebno u socijalnom i ekonomskom smislu

sve sam pare spisko kod Djoku u disko

------------------------



Sparks - Terminal Jive (1979)

A long string of albums consolidated Spark's excellent repiltation, expecially in Britain and on the European continent. 'Terminal Jive', produced by disco wizard Giorgio (zvani Djoko) Moroder and Harold Faltemeyer was recorded in 1980. This, their ninth long player included tracks such as 'When I'm With You', 'Rock 'N' Roll People In A Disco World', 'Noisy Boys' and 'Stereo', all of which reflected the stylistic changes in the music scene in general at the time.

1. When I'm With You
2. Just Because You Love Me
3. Rock 'N Roll People in a Disco World
4. When I'm With You [Instrumental]
5. Young klix
6. Noisy Boys
7. Stereo
8. Greatest Show on Earth

[victory]

Pink Floyd i njihov sjajni nastup na Live 8 koji je okoncan prije nekoliko sati *



link 1 *
http://s50.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2T9C ... 4GKTOI21UI

* Good quality MP4 file, sound & video excellent, the whole performance-170mb-24-mins

link (1a)
video (wmv)
http://web.mit.edu/amna/www/pink.wmv

link 1 (b)
video Torrent (avi)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/66510

link2
http://rapidshare.de/files/2766938/Pink ... n.mp3.html


link3
* ploca preskace na nekoliko mjesta

http://rapidshare.de/files/2762214/Pink ... tml.webloc

[victory]

Pink Floyd

[magnusss]

Bob Marley

[victory]

The Flaming Lips - Fearless Freaks (06/2005)

promotivni bootleg cd koji se pojavio uz tek izasli dvd, The Flaming Lips documentarac pod istim nazivom , Fearless Freaks

The Flaming Lips’ incredible story of unlikely success and longevity is lovingly told by friend and director, Bradley Beesley. Recounting the stunning artistic triumphs and personal setbacks, Fearless Freaks demonstrates the Lips certainly live up to the title. The documentary could very well be one of the most important films of the year.

[victory]

Maria Taylor - 11:11 (05/2005) *

Though often referred to as half of the duo Azure Ray and 1/4 of Saddle Creek's Now It's Overhead, Taylor's soulful melodies and honeyed vocal talents have cropped up on the releases of Crooked Fingers, Bright Eyes, Moby, The Bruces, and The Faint. She writes the sort of classic, sad songs once favored by the first ladies of American songwriting. On this, her first solo full-length, she evokes the artistry of greats like Carole King, Laura Nyro, and Rickie Lee Jones, while spanning the spectrum from acoustic folk to electronic dream pop. The all-star cast includes Cursive's Gretta Cohn, Now It's Overhead's Andy LeMaster, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis.

1. Leap Year
2. Song Beneath the Song Lis
3. Two of Those Too
4. Nature Song
5. Light House
6. One for the Shareholder
7. Xanax
8. Birmingham 1982
9. Speak Easy
10. Hitched!

* ponekad se ucini da je link pregorio, ali je rijec samo o ispucanoj 'daily bandwidth quoti'.
znaci, pokucati na ista vrata sutradan

[victory]

Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Matthew Sweeney - Superwolf (2005)

http://rapidshare.de/files/2785705/Superwolf.zip.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2785310/Wolf.zip.html

In "My Home Is the Sea", Bonnie "Prince" Billy, voice thin and impossibly brittle, conveys proud love for his bulbous tummy, gleefully declaring it "round and firm and funny"-- just like him! Sardonic or not, this kind of belly-speak marks a rare moment of self-revelation for Will Oldham, who skewers accepted notions of static identity nearly every time he lowers his big, bearded jaw. Still, Oldham (appearing here as contemporary alter-ego Bonnie "Prince" Billy) is, ultimately, exactly what he says he is-- smart and tough and weird, an awkward, oddly charismatic songwriter just as well-suited to coughing up death-ballads as he is to giggling out ditties about his penis. Witness, again, the bitter joy of loyal Oldham-hood: He is simultaneously quiet and loud, both crushing and absurd, and filed in seven different places at the record store.

Superwolf, a new collaboration with guitar freelancer Matt Sweeney, sees Oldham at his squirrely best, squeaking out his finest songs since 1999's I See a Darkness. Superwolf marks Oldham's first official partnership with Sweeney, whose credits include a predictably brief stint axe-grinding in Billy Corgan's Zwan (alongside longtime Oldham buddy and Slint-forefather Dave Pajo), occasionally playing guitar in Guided by Voices, and fronting the long-departed Chavez (who released two revered full-lengths on Matador in the mid-90s).

Sweeney's participation in Superwolf was supposedly a response to a songwriting "challenge" from Oldham, and in addition to songwriting, Sweeney contributes backing vocals and guitar figures that echo Oldham's own blows, sometimes with eerie accuracy. But despite all that buddying up, Superwolf is still at times unnervingly spare-- Oldham and Sweeney's pauses can be devastating, and some of Superwolf's most powerfully convincing bits pop up between notes.

Opener "My Home Is the Sea" may sound an awful lot like late Grateful Dead (or, perhaps more specifically, like a slightly less raucous version of brother Ned Oldham's Anomoanon, who regularly employ Garcia-brand noodling and wild, space-rock somersaults), but most of Superwolf is quiet and intensely meditative, despite Sweeney's significant rock-inflections. Still, Oldham has always had a funny habit of inserting perverse, quasi-sexual shouts into otherwise-staid songs (see brutally confessional couplets rubbing up against phrases like "my horny horn"), and at least thematically, Superwolf's eleven tracks are predictably shifty-- "My Home Is the Sea" is rife with snarky lyric tricks (watch Oldham follow the momentarily devastating "I have often said/ That I would like to be dead" with a klix pause and silent giggle, finally finishing with: "In a shark's mouth").

No matter who or what he calls himself, Will Oldham has always been uniquely capable of making colossal leaps in tone between breaths, and from track to track Superwolf nobly maintains that practice, drifting gracefully from classic-rock stomps to whispery dirges. Consequently, Oldham followers may recognize Superwolf as a welcome midway point between Oldham's past aliases, as it hops from shambling, Viva Last Blues-ish, Palace Music-era shakes to dark, Master and Everyone haunts. "Beast for Thee" matches a gorgeous, barely-there melody with self-deflating lyrics ("Why are you kind to me?/ You could so easily take me in your arms and see/ A donkey"), Oldham's quivering pipes and Sweeney's fragile guitar coalescing into a soft, droning, and tremendously pretty whole. The equally excellent "Blood Embrace" features some of Oldham's heartiest vocals, each word strong and full, floating above dark electric guitar swirls, dodging film samples of a faithless woman whispering to an unnamed lover, crafting an atmosphere so tense and ominous that you almost can't help twisting your face around to peep over your shoulder.

Soft and subtle, Superwolf is the kind of record that unwinds slowly, and is best enjoyed over multiple listens and, unsurprisingly, many glasses of wine. Oldham and Sweeney mew coquettishly, stroking their guitars, cawing bizarre stories about love, death, and body parts: theirs is a rancid and beautiful landscape.

1. My Home is the Sea
2. Beast for Thee
3. What Are You?
4. Goat and Ram Liste
5. Lift Us Up Liste
6. Rudy Foolish
7. Bed Is For Sleeping Liste
8. Only Someone Running
9. Death In the Sea
10. Blood Embrace
11. I Gave You

[Altsa]

MEN AT WORK - Business as Usual(1982)


http://www.qfile.de/dl/62867/maw_bau.zip.html.

[victory]

Pearl Jam - Riot Act (2002)

It's strange to think Pearl Jam was once herded under the grunge umbrella alongside pathos-spewing acts like Nirvana and Alice in Chains. The Seattle group's eighth album (give or take the 72 bootleg-style double CDs they released in 2001) has more in common with classic rock institutions like Crazy Horse and the Band than the snarling forces that were trying to tear away at their legacies. Appropriately, Riot Act is built on thematic pillars--love, death, politics--and fueled by dense, uncompromising power chords. It takes yet another step away from the courteous tones of the band's cornerstone LPs, Ten and Vs, and proudly flaunts egotism ("I know I was born and I know that I'll die/ The in-between is mine," Eddie Vedder sings on "I Am Mine") and a dark underbelly ("Green Disease"). But it's far from insufferable: If any band can make self-obsession sound hospitable, it's Pearl Jam. And when Vedder sneaks in the line "All you need is love" on the rollicking "Love Boat Captain," he proves that despite his furrowed-brow demeanor, he's a born entertainer.

1. Can't Keep
2. Save You Liste
3. Love Boat Captain
4. Cropduster
5. Ghost Listen
6. I Am Mine
7. Thumbing My Way
8. You Are Li
9. Get Right
10. Green Disease
11. Help Help
12. Bushleaguer
13. 1/2 Full
14. Arc
15. All Or None

[victory]

Built To Spill - Keep It Like a Secret (1999)

Doug Martsch is enough of a guitar god to fill Keep It Like a Secret, one of indie rock's strongest 1999 major-label releases, with blazing solos. He's also ambivalent about the whole thing, which allows him to highlight the album with "You Were Right," a despairing litany of classic-rock lyrical hooks.
-------------
Most guitar heroes make their mark by doing something extravagant, like playing with their teeth or with their instrument in flames. Doug Martsch of Boise, Idaho's Built to Spill has acquired his guru status by simpler means--he combines his trippy, meandering guitar style with classic pop structures. Martsch also wins points for singing about small-scale moments as well as huge moral abstractions, from watching TV to contemplating the center of the universe. By subtly balancing the forest of dense guitars with Martsch's oddly prosaic yet uncannily beautiful singing, Built to Spill hold the rare achievement of making music that's rooted yet allows you to fly. "Time Trap" begins with a harplike guitar line floating above a heavy wave of distortion, drifts into a reggae pattern, and eventually rises to the high step of musical theater. The charming and funny "You Were Right" decides once and for all which of the classic-rock clichés ring true. "You were wrong when you said, 'Everything's going to be all right' / You were right when you said, 'We're all just bricks in the wall.'" It is a richly deserved analysis from alt rock's heroic Everyman.
------------------
Spin
Bless his bleeding old-school heart, Spill CEO Doug Martsch is still wanking merrily away, making the most beautiful baroque electric guitar murals in modern rock.

1. Plan
2. Center of the Universe
3. Carry the Zero
4. Sidewalk
5. Bad Light
6. Time Trap
7. Else
8. You Were Right
9. Temporarily Blind
10. Broken Chairs
-----------



Built To Spill – Live (2000)

While additional guitarists Brett Nelson of Caustic Resin and Jim Roth of the Delusions pop up in a couple of tracks on Built to Spill's Live, the person most responsible for the extra-crispy sound is Phil Eck. He produced the Idaho-based trio's last two albums, the critically acclaimed Keep It Like a Secret and Perfect from Now On, and here he mans the soundboard to make sure the band's dynamic combination of the intimate and the explosive comes through just right. Live is one of the shinier sounding in-concert documents in recent memory, sounding (at times) more like a polished studio project rather than a collection of live cuts. This works in the group's favor, especially during psychedelic moments such as "I Would Hurt a Fly." Live won't stem the fanatical bootlegging and tape trading among devout fans, but it's a fine sonic souvenir of alt-rock's quirkiest power-pop-'n'-jam band.

1. Plan
2. Randy Described Eternity
3. Stop the Show
4. Virginia Reel Around the Fountain
5. Cortez the Killer
6. Car
7. Singing Sores Make Perfect Swords
8. I Would Hurt a Fly
9. Broken Chairs
---------------------------------



Built To Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997)

Built to Spill's three previous indie releases (on C/Z, Up, and K) established a new pop standard, born from lo-fi experimentation, carefully crafted hooks, plaintive vocals, and brilliant, snaky guitar lines. For their major label debut, Perfect from Now On, frontman Doug Martsch, who leads a revolving cast of musicians, has created his most ambitious album to date. Gone are the compact, simple ditties that characterized the band's recent recordings, replaced by the kind of longer epics that typified its C/Z debut, Ultimate Alternative Wavers. The songs--some clocking in at eight or nine minutes in length--combine the laidback intensity of Pink Floyd and Neil Young with a Beatles-meet-Pavement modern, pop aesthetic. It's at once dreamy, spooky, and spine-tingling and if there's any truly unexplored territory in rock music, you can be sure Built to Spill are in the vanguard.

1. Randy Described Eternity
2. I Would Hurt a Fly
3. Stop the Show
4. Made up Dreams
5. Velvet Waltz
6. Out of Site
7. Kicked It in the Sun
8. Untrustable/Part 2 (About Someone Else)

[victory]

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Greatest Palace Music (2004)

http://rapidshare.de/files/2785894/Sing ... c.zip.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2785473/greatest.zip.html

Greatest Palace Music appears to be a strangely-packaged greatest-hits collection, stuffed nicely some of the most affecting songs Will Oldham's penned, "Ohio River Boat Song" and "Horses" among them. But while his own fan club picked these songs, here they've been wholly re-recorded by Oldham under his currently-preferred moniker Bonnie Prince Billy (though he continues to record under his own name when he feels like it) since retiring the Palace name and its permutations in the late 1990s. Sings was cut in a fancy Nashville studio, with a host of wizened session pros including pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins and bluegrass fiddler Stuart Duncan. Each song has layers of fiddle, pedal steel, vibes, vocals, even saxophone. You'd sooner have expected an electronic album from Oldham than this--none of it appears to have been played by a drunk indie-rocker. A few of the arrangements are almost Branson/ Mandrell-ish and seem like a put-on at first (witness the off-Broadway gospel backup vocals on "Pushkin.") But with a few listens, the album's adult genius is clear. Here are intriguing, laidback versions of a master songwriter's best songs, sung in his most assured voice yet. Is it some bizarre, ironic in-joke? Who cares, when the result sounds this great?

1. New Partner
2. Ohio River Boat Song
3. Gulf Shores
4. You Will Miss Me When I Burn
5. The Brute Choir
6. I Send My Love To You
7. More Brother Rides
8. Agnes, Queen of Sorrow
9. Viva Ultra
10. Pushkin
11. Horses
12. Riding
13. West Palm Beach
14. No More Workhorse Blues Listen
15. I Am A Cinematographer

[victory]

Will Oldham - Viva Last Blues (1995)

http://rapidshare.de/files/2774352/Viva ... s.zip.html

After the dead-Okie solo ballads of the previous full length release, Will Oldham (Mr. Palace himself) got an under-rehearsed band together and set them loose in the studio. Steve Albini's bare bones production is in plain view as drums scrape into the guitars with all the finesse of a basement tape. "More Brother Rides, " "Viva Ultra," "The Brute Choir," and "Work Hard/Play Hard" are the most rhythmic tracks Oldham's ever attempted and the improvisatory nature of the songs allow for some unexpected surprises (Liam Hayes' piano is a loose canon likely to veer off into another song while Bryan Rich's lead work is curiously incompetent at best).

1. More Brother Rides
2. Viva Ultra
3. The Brute Choir List
4. The Mountain Low Listen
5. Tonight's Decision (And Hereafter)
6. Work Hard/Play Hard
7. New Partner
8. Cat's Blues Liste
9. We All, Us Three, Will Ride
10. Old Jerusalem

[victory]

Will Oldham - Seafarers Music (2004)

http://rapidshare.de/files/1144499/Seaf ... c.zip.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1144624/Oldham_2.zip.html

One of many non-full-length releases Oldham churned out during his solo career, the four-song, 27-minute EP Seafarers Music is wholly instrumental soundtrack music to a documentary about seafarers in Rotterdam. Each of the four meditative acoustic pieces served as a theme for one of the four sailors profiled in the film.

I agree that with Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Palace and all its incarnations, Will Oldham's beautiful wavering voice is the driving emotional force behind the music. So when I read that Seafarer's Music was to be all instrumental, I had my doubts it would deliver.

Oldham's music has always been about exposing the frailties of the male alter-ego by pealing away the very fabric of man's desire (well, thats my interpretation), and Seafarer's Music is no different. Yeah, it has no lyrics, but the humanity comes across effortlessly. Each song is a subtle buildup of a single repeated melody. Oldham plucks the strings of his slightly out of tune guitar with such gentle grace. Each note hits me.
The songs run on in the 6-8 minute range. They are all slow and prodding and atmospheric. A few of them even share variations on the same guitar riff. In terms of variety, this ep has none. It's an album I think I lot of people can appretiate, but it is ABSOLUTELY NOT A STARTING POINT IF YOU'RE JUST GETTING INTO OLDHAM.

If you have the patience for minimalistic instrumental folk, you will not be dissapointed. If you're a Palace fan, I encourage you to try it out. It's much different than the usual Oldham, but at the rate he's squirting out great Bonnie albums, it's a welcome departure.

1. Sapele
2. Lars Listen
3. Bogo
4. Emmanuel

[The_Fluid]

Tom Petty -Wildflowers
--
Radiohead - Com Lag: 2plus2isfive
--

Sve ovdje

[The_Fluid]

John Coltrane - The Ultimate Blue Train

[Altsa]

WEDDING PRESENT - Singles 1989-1991 (1999)


Dupli album sa 33 numere na kojem se nalazi b strane, zive izvedbe i sl.

disc 1
http://s1.pushfile.net/get.php?id=54346 ... ec4d632894
disc 2
http://s3.pushfile.net/get.php?id=54ef0 ... 7fad14a45f

pw: UppedForStairwayToHeaven

[Altsa]

HELMET - Meantime (1992)

http://rapidshare.de/files/2774282/MEAN ... 1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2774890/MEAN ... 2.rar.html

pass:zades

[Altsa]

PEARL JAM - MTV Unplugged (1992)


http://rapidshare.de/files/2747690/jelly.rar.html

PASS:jam

[magnusss]

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Freaky Styley (1985)

The polished funk-punk-metal-rap hybrid of later albums was still in its seedling stage here, with the group yet to successfully merge those elements. With their second album, Freaky Styley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were still growing into their oversize funkdafied britches. Still, there's a consistent old-school garage feel. Flea's bass lines, normally in hyperdrive, are clipped and springy, like bare feet hopping on a hot Los Angeles blacktop. Lead singer Anthony Kiedis risks sounding like a parody of the vocal styles he's trying to emulate but commands the songs with every variation of bravado his voice can muster. And finally, the merit of this album could stand solely on the talents of the late guitarist Hillel Slovak, who infuses the tracks with resonating harmonics, psychedelic screeches, and righteous riffs. As disjointed and occasionally amateurish as this album was, it was also groundbreaking and captured the undivided attention of the rock world.

1. Jungle Man
2. Hollywood (Africa)
3. American Ghost Dance
4. If You Want Me To Stay
5. Nevermind
6. Freakey Styley
7. Blackeyed Blonde
8. Brothers Cup
9. Battleship
10. Lovin' And Touchin'
11. Catholic School klix Rule
12. Sex Rap
13. Thirty Dirty Birds
14. Yertle The Turtle

[victory]

The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas (2002)

Remember 'audio cassettes'? Remember the days when the pre-digital Walkman was criticized as the most isolating and therefore masturbatory form of self-entertainment since the novel? Remember snickering about needing to buy 'head cleaner'? Remembering sacramentally disemboweling the "I Love You Forever: The Supermix" tape of a partner whose behavior later revealed that they were obviously disingenuous about the loving-you-forever thing? If only I had a turtleneck for every date that ended when, after showing me her new tattoo of the Chinese symbol for 'woman' that she still hid from Dad, the girl coyly asked what was in that big black trunk at the foot of my bed-- only to learn that it was full of releases from cassette-only labels. One even sneered, "I don't even know how to use a cassette," as if they were a worse misappropriation of plastic and the means of mass production than oversized "We're #1" hands for winless football teams.

As big an oddball on the underground landscape as Stephin Merritt, Mountain Goat John Darnielle understands how to harness the majesty of the practically aborted cassette format. He appeared on nearly every cassette-only label's compilation during their golden era of Xerox-ed and Crayola-ed cover art, and released his band's first three proper albums of passionate nasal-fi straight to tape. A zillion vinyl releases and ten CDs later, and the Goats have offered the world what 'they' would have us believe is the highest-profile concept album ever recorded on a jambox, complete with grinding gears that sound like Darnielle rigged a stethoscope to the saliva glands of a retired android. And despite consistently featuring more hey's, la's and whoa's than Ringo Starr's spiral lyric notebook (hanging on the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe in Bent Musket, Georgia, if you want to check it out), Darnielle's yelled lyrics continue to pierce layers of the listener's inner ice. Foes of profane merriment beware: the chorus of "Jenny" employs a "hi-diddle-dee-dee-goddamn." Who else could, with only an abused acoustic guitar accompanying him, pull off a line as prosaic as, "We tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things"?

The songs here that aren't sagas of wayward youths chronicle the trajectories of various loves, from courtship, to feeding fruit to each other, to divorce and/or death, and sometimes even to hell. Which brings up "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," and its bold invocation of the Prince of Darkness: the marginalization of God cost rock one of its central components, which Darnielle resurrects with his emphatic envoy, "Hail Satan!" Though Darnielle palpably dissed Glenn Danzig in a recent issue of his zine Last Plane to Jakarta, moments like the chanting of "Hail Satan," that blend earnestness with clever condescension, provide clues to how Darnielle does his thing. He plays with tone, dipping sophistication in the muck of primitivity, sampling bits of Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and Philip Larkin in his home-taped, sentimental wimp-rock, involving just enough brain food to prevent that Scorsese-bred part of me from suggesting, "Ayy! I got some Clorox that'll get that heart off your sleeve."

Add "The Mess Inside," with its urgent account of a love that even a September jaunt to New York can't save, to the exponentially multiplying list of songs accidentally weighted with post-boxcutter connotations of homeland insecurity (as well as the lines in "Pink and Blue" about Oklahoman wind smelling like blood and smoke). After producing dozens of songs obsessed with mobility (the "Going To ________" songs), Darnielle's last three albums have been settled in one geographic region, hinting at a fusty patience or new maturity. Would you believe that "Blues In Dallas," a Hamlet-assed song with a tinny keyboard backup and JFK underpinnings, is about something as unsexy as deciding to wait, and is also really, really good?

Darnielle's craft can convince you to follow his classist/nostalgic aesthetic logic: this album would sound perfect on the one-speaker radio atop a custodian's pushcart. You'll start asking, how can there be a sport so colonial that it requires as much cultivated land as golf does? Since so little gets reported anyway, what justifies the competing 24-hour news channels? Didn't 'analog' movie monsters at least take up three-dimensional space on the film, unlike the computer phantoms of Jurassic Park that leave actors running from thin air? Does every disc in my collection really have to be a performance test that justifies my investment in all of that stereo componentry?

At least two songs on All Hail West Texas flagrantly bemoan the state-of-the-art burden of uncurbed, soul-charring consumption. But whether you embrace the hiss and crackle or not, Darnielle seems to be, like the poets he cites, settled in his spot on the fringe.

1. Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton
2. Fall of the Star High School Running Back
3. Color in Your Cheeks
4. Jenny
5. Fault Lines
6. Balance
7. Pink and Blue
8. Riches and Wonders
9. Mess Inside
10. Jeff Davis County Blues
11. Distant Stations
12. Blues in Dallas
13. Source Decay
14. Absolute Lithops Effect

[victory]

Mountain Goats - Tallahassee (2002)

John Darnielle's songs have always dwelled on one or a combination of five subjects, relationship conflicts, flood, water, pre-Colombian Mexico mythology and talking animals. This record conjures paranoid visions of a couple permanently on the cusp of divorce who have remained drunk for so long, they're not sure of much else beyond the mutually destructive urge that holds their house together.
-------
As I'm sure you are all aware, 2002 has been a fantastic year for the concept album, quite possibly one of the best since our heyday at the turn of the 1970s. While major-label artists resisted the rock opera urge (which is perhaps for the best; let us not forget MACHINA and Chris Gaines), acts below the mainstream radar took up the slack nicely. John Vanderslice, Black Heart Procession, Pedro the Lion... hip-hop even gave us a concept record that, shockingly, was not a science fiction gimmick: Mr. Lif's I Phantom.

Soon, we'll be voting on final nominees for our honorary Pete Townshend Concept Album of the Year award. But before you cast your ballot, some members have requested that we address a late entry to this year's competition: The Mountain Goats' Tallahassee. Since his full-length cassette debut in 1991, John Darnielle has threaded the sagas of flawed relationships through his albums, generally told in one-song installments. Now, for the first time in 81 albums (okay, 16... or something, it's confusing), Darnielle has expanded these tragic stories into an entire LP, set in the diamond city of Florida's panhandle.

The idea is enticing: Darnielle, known for crafting two-minute biographies like "Fall of the Star High School Running Back" richer in detail than a 700-page novel, is given greater room to flesh out his stories. His talent for depicting the rises and falls of a relationship in singular, klix details (fighting over the car radio, for example) makes him ideal for the task of an indie-folk Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

The result is the pleasant musical equivalent of a slow, deliberate character study, rich with symbols like circling crows and a house in disrepair, more concerned with in-depth observation of the protagonists than with narrative movement. Unfortunately, this pace makes for a less than successful concept album, with song topics tracing an endless I Love You/I Love You Not oscillation, from the cautious happiness of the title track and "Game Shows Touch Our Lives" to the for-the-throat attacks of "No Children" or "Have to Explode".

The music is distracted by another concept, as well-- a meta-concept, if you will, with Tallahassee touted as the first Mountain Goats release to be recorded with a full, traditionally-instrumented rock band. Darnielle spends most of the album teasing the listener with this promise, adding a bass here, some minimal drums there, perhaps a harmonica, before (gotcha!) we arrive back at a Darnielle solo arrangement. When we finally come to a song with an klix, honest-to-God rhythm section ("See America Right") it sounds disappointingly like... Cake?!

The majority of Tallahassee, recorded with Darnielle's Extra Glenns cohort Franklin Bruno, is, like the Extra Glenns' Martial Arts Weekend, typically stripped-down Goats fare with an occasional minimal embellishment. And as has been the case whenever Darnielle has chosen a studio over his trusty Panasonic boombox, the end result sounds somewhat thin-- especially considering the more delicate strum-style he's been developing of late. A few exceptions are pleasant, like the Casio-fed "Southwood Plantation Road" or the bright piano line that runs through "No Children" before the delightfully/horrifically bitter singalong chorus, but songs like "Peacock" and "Idylls of the King" are over-wispy. Johnny Goat's usual lyrical acuity also comes slightly short of his usual track record, as he unveils one of the best entries from his notebook of "Love is like..." similes (in this case, it's like "the border between Greece and Albania") only to later drop the dud, "People say friends don't destroy one another/ What do they know about friends?"

These transgressions are somewhat forgiven, however, by "Oceanographer's Choice", Tallahassee's only song to truly come through with the full-band promise, and a breathtaking portrait of the usual relationship violence becoming physical. With drums and ominous organ that finally add some urgency to the story, and sad, sliding electric guitar swooping in and out like symbolic crows, the music finally measures up to the emotional intensity of Darnielle's imagery. When the band drops out, the scene freezes, and the characters fully realize the consequences of their meltdown: "What will I do when I don't have you?"

Suffice to say, if the rest of Tallahassee lived up to the standard set by "Oceanographer's Choice", we'd have a surefire candidate here for Concept Album of the Year. However, Tallahassee is not even 2002's second best song cycle about disintegrating love (it's succeeded by Pedro the Lion's Control and Black Heart Procession's Amore del Tropico). While Tallahassee, as literature, is richly detailed, even stunning on occasion, Darnielle's apparent phobia for full-band arrangements prevents the music from keeping pace with the storylines. It's an admirable experiment, but not one that will likely find its way to the podium come election time.

1. Tallahassee
2. First Few Desperate Hours
3. Southwood Plantation Road
4. Game Shows Touch Our Lives
5. The House That Dripped Blood
6. Idylls Of The King
7. No Children
8. See America Right
9. Peacocks
10. International Small Arm14. Alpha Rats Traffic Blues
11. Have To Explode
12. Old College Try
13. Oceanographer

[victory]

Mountain Goats - We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

Another beautiful, deeply moving album from longtime faves Mountain Goats! Sounds like it was a pretty intense recording session -- Mr. John Darnielle along with Franklin Bruno (piano and organ), Peter Hughes (bass), Nora Danielson (violins), Christopher McGuire (drums) holed up in the studio for just ten days! -- resulting in sixteen completed songs, thirteen of which make up We Shall All Be Healed. Whew! By the way, has anyone else noticed that Mr. Darnielle's singing voice is sounding more and more like that of Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers)? It used to seem the other way around, but perhaps it's simply the works of two kindred spirits drawing closer (although I've heard that Mr. Bejar has taken Destroyer in a radically different direction with his forthcoming album). There's certainly an affinity between the two fellows' songwriting -- poetic, earnest, and at once both starkly observative and richly imaginative.

There are so many fine moments on this album, many of which glow even brighter with the pianowork of his Extra Glenns' partner in crime Mr. Bruno. Check out "Home Again Garden Grove" and "The Young Thousands". Seems like Mountain Goats have found a well-suited middle ground between his beloved bare bones early recordings and those that make up their more recent higher-fi 4AD releases. Wonderful! Produced by John Vanderslice. Very recommended!

1. Slow West Vultures
2. Palmcorder Yajna
3. Linda Blair Was Born Innocent
4. Letter from Belgium
5. Young Thousands
6. Your Belgian Things
7. Mole
8. Home Again Garden Grove
9. All Up the Seething Coast
10. Quito
11. Cotton
12. Against Pollution
13. Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of

[Altsa]

TRAVIS - Good Feeling (1997)





TRAVIS - The invisible band(2001)





TRAVIS - The man who (1999)

[victory]

Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts (1992)

Though they are generally associated with the Euro-Prog camp, Van Der Graaf Generator were definitely (and definedly) their own sort of group. Unlike Yes, Genesis, ELP, etc, the emphasis was more on expression than instrumental virtuosity. Musically they did employ a unique approach to song structure, but the execution was more loose, more raw, maybe not so pleasing much of the time. Given the nature of Peter Hammill's agonized lyrical visions, as well as the conflict-ravaged history of the group itself, these dark, chaotic elements somehow work in this release's favor, producing a most extraordinary and unforgettable listen ..... if you can take it.

Closer to the aesthetic viscera of King Crimson (but not as blatantly experimental), the album even features a brief appearance by Robert Fripp (on "Man-Erg"), lending sonic divergence to a lineup that otherwise features no lead guitar to speak of. The themes of the songs mostly concern death, societal ruination, personal duality, self-doubt and neurosis, with maybe a dim shimmer of hope breaking through. Songwriter/vocalist Hammill sounds almost like a tortured David Bowie (not a criticism), fluctuating between tender melodic mastery and shamelessly baring his inflamed tonsils to the world in performance. The words themselves are introspective, emotional, mostly dark and cut very deep, betraying a vulnerability few singers would want to reveal. As stated earlier, not the easiest listen at times, but a damn good exorcism in its own way.

This band nearly broke up before their very first studio release, "The Aerosol Gray Machine", and by all reports was in constant danger of dissolvement all through their career. The fact that they managed to release what they did (some 7-8 albums) is a testament to their determination to overcome adversity as well as to the support of just enough hard-core enthusiasts. Though later releases exhibited a tad more polish, I would have to call Pawn Hearts the defining VDGG work, in terms of both vision and execution ..... one of the most musical primal screams you could squeeze from your speakers. Brace yourself and enjoy.

1. Lemmings (Including Cog)
2. Man-Erg
3. Plague of Lighthouse Keepers/Eyewitness/Pictures/Lighthouse/Eyewitnes