This was not intended to be a “late” summer playlist in the tardy, sense, but that is what it has become. And as is best practice with all late-comers, I will keep my arguments short. This complements Summer 2009 (Early).
This playlist is 41 minutes, but it certainly feels longer. The end of summer: college-bound friends getting in their last lazy nights together before heading into the unknown; for graduates, years later, it’s a time to reflect on how everyone used to be — ambitious, big-hearted, and independent — and how everyone has become, four later — tired and making due, getting to bed by eleven.
Some of my favorite songs are on this mix: “Never Meant,” “All My Friends,” “Anything You Want.” But don’t cheat and skip around. I listened to this thing for hours, trying to get the sequencing right.
This playlist commences with the opening track of American Football’s 1999 self-titled, full-length. If you’ve never heard this band or this album, my hope is that this song inspires you to pick-up the album. It alone could serve as the ultimate end of summer soundtrack (see the song “The Summer Ends”), but then what would I spend my free time on? The next four songs are just solid rock songs. Stone Temple Pilots is the black sheep on this playlist (Pearl Jam served that role on the last one), but the funky, palm-muted guitars on “Trippin’ On a Hole In a Paper Heart” were just too fitting for a late summer drive with the windows down. The first part of the playlist careens to a halt with Rainer Maria’s “Hell and High Water,” which opens with energy bounding off the walls and closes with a series of long, controlled exhales.
“Bled White” might be Elliott Smith’s most energetic song. The drums pound along at a pace that is foreign to the rest of Smith’s catalog, but his whispery vocals and acoustic strumming only allow the song to gain so much momentum. Pavement’s “Zurich is Stained” may have been the only song that had to be on this playlist. The warm guitar strumming and lazy soloing in the background embody the late summer song. Archers of Loaf close out the middle portion of the playlist — a solid mid-90s block — with plenty of fuzzed out guitars and nasily vocals.
Japandroids introduce the closing block of the album. If “Sovereignty” isn’t the soundtrack to kids driving through the summer night, with nowhere to go and no rush to get there, then I don’t know what is. And unless Converge’s Axe to Fall (October 20th) changes the way hardcore is made for the next five years, Post-Nothing is going to be my pick for album of the year. As was the case with Summer 2009 (Early), the only song from 2009 on this playlist comes from the ‘droids.
“All My Friends” is at once minimal and grandiose, overly sentimental but also cool, an emotive seven-plus minutes that might send every teenage memory in the back of your head spinning by. Pitchfork music named it the second best song of the last ten years.
For a while, I’ve wondered if Owen’s “Gazebo” defines the last ten years of my life (”It’s true what they say about fools who leave too soon / they don’t ever really move on. / [...] It’s true what they say about fools who speak too soon, / they don’t ever really know what they’re getting into or out of.”), or if it doesn’t apply at all (”So what’s left of your soul like the best friend you just sold to sleep? / Easy at night.”). Either way, it’s a great song for the end of summer, comings and goings. And I was very close to ending the playlist with it, until I read the lyrics to “Anything You Want”:
“We go through all the same lines or sell out to appease, But go to sleep in a bed of lies. I made my own more than once or twice. And now time is my time. Time is my own. And I feel so alive, yet feel so alone. Cause you know you’re the one and that that hasn’t changed Since you were nineteen and still in school waiting On a light on the corner by Sound Exchange.”
Atul Gawande’s article in The New Yorker – “Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum” – has received a good amount of national press coverage recently, and from what I’ve heard, aligns with much of the Obama-administration’s thinking regarding health care reform. That is to say, the piece sees the soaring cost of health care in America not as a single, coherent problem on the national level (e.g., which insurance companies will write the checks), but rather, a problem rooted in how local communities practice medicine (i.e., the respective processes by which the “Pay to the order of” is determined). Gawande looks at differences in how medicine is practiced on local levels, foregrounds his observations with what appear to be nice empirical data (to this layperson, at least), and concludes:
Congress has provided vital funding for research that compares the effectiveness of different treatments, and this should help reduce uncertainty about which treatments are best. But we also need to fund research that compares the effectiveness of different systems of care—to reduce our uncertainty about which systems work best for communities.
Though I recognize health care’s economic and political importance in America, I generally find this subject to be an absolute bore. Gawande’s approach to the subject is jargon-less and concise. Highly recommended for your Sunday read.
One of my favorite local acts, Horsehands (formerly Pukka Argot, Espontaneo), has a new E.P. available for download on their website: holdyourhorsehands.com.
Amble features five songs. “Knots of Windsor” appears to be a revival of one of the band’s old songs, “Listen to Glass and Steel.” You can check out “Mondello Squares” from the E.P. below:
Drinking coffee every morning and buying the good stuff from places like Coffee Exchange, Intelligentsia, and Jim’s Organic Coffee, I would love to think of myself as coffee aficionado. Just an inward label, of course. But alas, I can’t man-up and take the dark stuff straight. I’m a cream and sugar man. I still brew on a harmless Mr. Coffee that I purchased for my dorm room. And my most glaring sin? I don’t grind the beans myself. Coffee is a fresh food product, so this latter offense is especially problematic.
But I do get out to a lot of coffee shops. I virtually lived at Espresso Royale Cafe while at Boston University, and then at Brown, the Coffee Exchange became my haven for many a term paper.
Hey, do you guys have any more half and half? Yes, I’ll take whipped cream on that mocha.
Who is this guy? Here every Sunday and ordering chocolate coffee drinks with whipped cream on top. You’d think by now he’d just suck it up and learn to drink this stuff straight. Pathetic. Here you go. That’ll be $3.10.
Providence may have the crown jewel of coffee shops in the northeast. At 711 Westminster Street, White Electric Coffee does everything right. The interior of the place is stunning, balancing clean, simple aesthetics with comfort. Local art is on display and on display correctly, feeling more like a fine art gallery than a flea market. Plenty of natural sunlight, gnarly purple plants, and bright, white walls means you won’t be leaving a caffeinated den of hiding (the beloved Espresso Royale backroom). And the seating isn’t a bunch of wobbly wooden tables and chairs with mis-sized legs; large slabs of dull granite (I think) rest sturdily upon solid metal legs, forming chairs and tables that look like a small army of cherry-red robots. Good coffee-drinking company. The floors are hardwood and shiny. The ceiling and main wall are of pressed tin tile; painted white, they are the cafe’s most distinguishing features. Behind the counter, I’ve only found friendly, attentive staff. And by the bathroom in the back, an old-fashioned pinball machine awaits foolhardy challengers.
If you can’t make it down to Providence’s west side anytime soon, check out White Electric’s website: whiteelectriccoffee.com. It has a stunning background image and serves as a great example of how a simple website can still engage the visitor.
There’s a good deal of anticipation surrounding what digital publishing technologies will change journalism in the coming years. Two weeks ago, Twitter’s role in bringing the protests in Iran to a worldwide audience led to coverage of not only the political events transpiring, but also of the platform itself. I’m dubious of Twitter’s contributions to the field of journalism, especially in the website’s current incarnation. I see the website affecting how we consume content, but not the production of content itself.
140 characters often suffice when you have a single thought. “Hey, check this out.” Or, “I don’t like this.” In the coming years, Twitter will generate the type of “viral” buzz that marketers salivate over: either a blessing or a curse for the company, we will see. And we are finding content that we wouldn’t have found before, both commercial and personal; I can follow The Morning News (@TheMorningNews) and Twitter disciple, Jess Scola (@jesscola) in one, streamlined feed. Linking friends, colleagues, and complete strangers (who have a desire to follow you) to articles, images, and video has its merits; however, it hardly constitutes a revolution in reporting. None of the tweets from The Morning News or Ms. Scola contribute to the public discourse in such limited characters. This is because the platform does not change how content is produced, it changes how content is filtered or promoted. The charm with Twitter’s real-time search is warranted and is certainly a foreshadowing of things to coming in online search.
Twitter may also change the frequency with which we produce content. From newspaper articles, to blog posts, to 140 character tweets, we are saying less and doing so more often. I don’t know that there is anything wrong with this, but I am wary of labeling such a development a “revolution” in journalism. On Twitter, newsworthy ideas cannot be developed to any degree; everything written is sensationalized and in a way that urges the reader to click on some link for a full scoop. It is a new headline format, rather than a new approach to reporting.
In short, Twitter may be changing the means by which and the speed at which we find content, but it is not changing the content itself.
Peace
