Suburban dogs are in love with their chains.

It may have made Pitchfork's #20 on Top Albums of 2009, but also I've got a friend who absolutely hates this album.
That said, I personally have to say I dig it.

They'll be playing a free show at the Brooklyn Bowl tonight.
Have a listen and decide for yourself.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fnfpxzualdfe
http://www.brooklynbowl.com/event-detail/?id=3595
http://www.woodsist.com/

We were sleeping until you came along.

Still figuring out my Top 100 Albums of last year
and will have that posted shortly.

In the meantime, I wanted to get the new year started out right.
Here's a track from the upcoming Beach House album.
Perfect for fighting the wintry New York.
Happy 2010.
Here's to all good things.
Peace, joy, laughter, music, love.

http://www.subpop.com/catalog/artists/beach_house/full_lengths/teen_dream

And no one heard at all, not even the chair.

Going through the best albums of the year and making my top list and I randomly came across this classic Neil Diamond song that I have loved since I was a little kid and still love.
So here's a shout out to Mr. Diamond, for nothing more than that you can still hang with the rest of the best sir, even in the year 2009.
Thanks for all the nostalgia over the years.

It was so clear to me that it was almost invisible.

This decade is beginning to wind down and so I am starting to go through all the music of this last year. Revisit, recollect, reminisce.
2009 was a tough one for me, but more importantly, it was a rewarding year,
that included best of all - falling madly in love with someone who I'll soon be marrying.

Early in the year, I was living in Los Angeles for a brief moment and one lunchtime I was lucky enough to catch an acoustic and intimate performance of Neko Case at Hotel Cafe.
Dyrayll was visiting me then and it was the near-end of my time there in that sunny, lonely city and on the verge of moving out to New York.
Later in April, a few months settled in to living with one another and still wildly in love, Bailey and I caught her again at the Nokia Theater.

Middle Cyclone is one of my favorite albums of the year and Neko Case's beautiful voice has followed me around and feels so much a part of the soundtrack of my life in 2009 - a year full of change, fear, loss, courage, redemption, and love.
True, true love.

Congratulations to Neko on her Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
She's got my vote.

http://www.nekocase.com/

All grown-ups were children first. (But few remember it).

I heard this the other day over the WESC soundsystem.
It stopped me dead in my tracks as it features a sample from an Alan Lomax recording that I once knew but have forgotten.
A melody that every so often comes into my head like a wild wind and gets stuck in my drafty house of a brain.
Though I spent all day trying to figure out and research the original version, I've had no luck.
If anyone can tell me it, a few rounds of your favorite beer or whiskey will be on me.
In the meantime, enjoy the Durutti Column's beautiful take on this lullaby from their album Tempus Fugit.
I find it absolutely transfixing.

http://www.thedurutticolumn.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lomax

I never knew a dime could bring such sorrow.

Seeing the Pixies play Doolittle tonight at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

For the 20th anniversary of their album.
Never seen them live as I missed them back in the day.
Very excited for this.

Was also going through the album Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs Of Mark Mulcahy Vol. 2 and came across this track:

 

It was originally on their album "Me And Mr. Ray".
I was never a huge Miracle Legion fan, as they were somehow always on my periphery but never in the center.
If I would've heard this song back then, I'm sure that would've changed my mind immediately.
Even when I used to work at W+K, Jessica Vacek always talked about the band too and said I'd probably dig them.
I should've listened to her.
A.C. Newman's version on this compilation is quite amazing as well.

Here's to new nostalgia.