“Blood Hot” – Summer 2012
1. Japandroids – The House that Heaven Built
2. Dan Deacon – True Thrush
3. Hot Chip – Don’t Deny Your Heart
4. Animal Collective – Today’s Supernatural
5. Here We Go Magic – Made to Be Old
6. The Walkmen – Heartbreaker
7. !!! – Wannagain Wannagain
8. M83 – Raconte-moi Une Histoire
9. Broken Bells – The Mall and Misery
10. Grouplove – Tongue Tied
11. Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
12. Yeasayer – Longevity
13. Passion Pit – I’ll Be Alright
14. Kanye West (ft. everyone) – Monster
15. Peaking Lights – LO HI
16. Delicate Steve – Afria Talks to You
17. Twin Shadow – Five Seconds
18. Dirty Projectors – Unto Caesar
Annotations:
-I don’t usually watch music videos anymore, but Dan Deacon’s True Thrush video is a ton of fun, it’s the kind of thing my friends and I would do in real life. In case you didn’t click on it above, here’s the link again.
-Grouplove is such a strange band to me because I have no idea what kind of music they want to make. Listening to their full-length, it’s nothing at all like what I expected from their EP. And surprise is good, I guess, except that there are so many styles of songwriting that it never gels into anything cohesive. Some of it’s great, and hoo boy, some of it ain’t, but when you write songs as good as “Tongue Tied”, I think you’ve probably earned at least one more album to figure out where you’re going, eh?
-Passion Pit’s album is another strange beast for an entirely different reason. The lyrics are darker, which the critics love (sad lyrics against happy beats, oooh!), but, man, a lot of this is maybe too depressing even for me. And this is coming from the guy who prefers his artists when they’re sad. Maybe it’s because Michael Angelakos really is a hair’s breadth away from suicide on a bad day? Maybe it’s because I selfishly just want jams from this band and jams only? Or maybe because I’m getting older and… dare I say it… happier?
-Runners up for this mix: …not much, actually. I’ve had this one locked down for a while, just took forever to name. Man, I dunno. It’s getting way harder these days to write about music and I’d rather just spend more time listening to it. If you’ll excuse me, then.
The Daily Friction 