The Dead Part of You

Shows of the year? Sure - I can count that down:

• JANUARY: Mark Eitzel played a one-off show in Boston with nothing to promote that was pretty discardable. However Drew O'DOHERTY opened up and I became a pretty big fan of his record this year.
• FEBRUARY: Grizzly Bear played at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Seeing them live turned me into a huge fan, seeing Dirty Projectors open turned me off to them for good.
• MARCH: Under Byen headlined an unofficial Swedish invasion tour at the Boston MFA. El Perro Del Mar killed the opening slot, Frida Hyvonen not so much and Under Byen brought it home by flashing a strobe light at the audience for close to an hour.
• APRIL: Low played the Somerville Theater, again. Loney, Dear did a good opening set and Low schooled me that there really were songs behind Drums and Guns's electronic blipping and bleeping, and they were bleeping good songs.
• MAY: LCD Soundsystem at Avalon. This was the best show I saw this year. For the first time in a long time I danced and bounced around in a pit of people getting all kinds of sweaty.
• JUNE: Psychic TV played to a nearly empty house at the Paradise, so it was across a fairly empty room was where I first laid eyes on my boyfriend Rob. Oh, Psychic TV weren't very good, so I'm glad I at least got a great guy out of the show.
• JULY: Eric told me I would regret it if I didn't see The Polyphonic Spree at Avalon, and he was right. How amazing are they!
• AUGUST: Lollapalooza in Chicago. What a great festival - it lacks the beauty and pilgrimage vibe of Coachella, but makes up for it in convenience.
• SEPTEMBER: Animal Collective played what would be the last show I would see at Avalon, RIP. And they were fucking brilliant.
• OCTOBER: The reunion of Scarce at TT the Bear's Place.
• NOVEMBER: Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines, on my birthday at the Boston MFA. In hindsight, I definitely prefer the electric lineup. In hindsight, wild horses would not have kept me from seeing them in an acoustic lineup, so cross that off of life's To Do list.
• DECEMBER: All I saw in December that was good was Cold War Kids opening for Spoon. It's also all I saw in December, but that doesn't diminish from their being the best thing I saw all month.

Our bodies break
And the blood just spills and spills
But here we sit debating math
It's just a shame
My hand just kills and kills
There's gotta be an end to that
There's gotta be an end to that

Breaker (Dub Plate).

This was definitely a Last.fm tracking error - I remember the week when it like quadrupled the plays on this record. It's thrown off my charts all year.

Don't get me wrong, it's good and all - just not all that. Bjorkish singer fronting industrial post-rock drones.

Slå Sorte Hjerte was what I seemed to listen to the most from it.

What an amazing sleepytime record. I listen to this and dream of Alaska.

Ebb's Folly features Palace boy Will Oldham on vocals. The rest of the record is instrumental or dialogue samples.

There's so much I could write about this record.

Julie put it on one morning when I was working at Newbury Comics, and by track two I could have just died. Another amazing addition to the California Sadcore scene in the 90's [American Music Club, Idaho, Red House Painters], I've just worn this CD out over the years.

After a pretty long hiatus, Swell are planning a return in 2008. Well, now actually, with some self released records available. The website also tells their story through 2003 pretty well.

"Forget About Dean" is a remix of "Forget About Jesus" that wound up on the Bastards and Rarities compilation.

The last few times Boards of Canada released records, the internet [a series of tubes] went insane with praise. I jumped on board probably about a year ago when I picked up Music Has the Right to Children. It falls into the above-average techno jandra, along with IDM [intelligent dance music].

You know what's really sweet about my relationship with Boards of Canada? I've only heard this record. If and when I ever get tired of it, there are many others I can immediately pick up for a new fix. Usually, if I'm all obsessed with an artist I have their entire discography so when I want something new by them, I'm out of luck. I think there's enough BoC backlog to carry me for years.

As with most instrumental records, my brain's not so good with linking songs with titles, so I link Roygbiv just because it's got the highest playcount.