OSTROV’S BEST OF 2012

Jan 072013
 

There were so many good albums this year that I couldn’t make the decision to rank them, and I know that’s not the most important decision anyway, so this year’s best-of list is in groups with no internal order. This is the art I spent my cherished/wasted time consuming this year. Hope everybody’s upcoming year is full of growth.

Albums, Best of the Best:

Albums, Rest of the Best:

EPs, 7″s, Demos:

Reissues, Lost Albums

  • Tony Flaminio – The Grim Repair - from the head of the Failures’ Union, reissue of 2003 cd-R
  • Karen Dalton – 1966 - haunting voice and banjo recorded over porches and kitchen tables at her cabin in Boulder CO
  • Michael Hurley – Back Home with Drifting Woods - unreleased 1964 sessions from the freak folker and gorgeous yodeler
  • Jawbreaker – Bivouac - the glory
Books

  • Padgett Powell – You & Me - nothing has to be as shitty as everything is; read this for energy
Reasons to Stay Alive Next Year
  • Drag the River, Lenny Lashley, Billy Bragg, Sebadoh,Tin Armor, and Failures’ Union full-lengths. Freakwater playing shows again.
Stay free,
Mike

 

CHEAP GIRLS — GIANT ORANGE

Mar 292012
 

Cheap Girls dig in igneous garage rock. They get profiled in High Times. They have been Replacements-gade wrecks on stage. They have brought 90′s slackerdom into the Aught’s with hazy songs about thinking about doubt and doubting your thinking. And yet on Giant Orange, their third full-length, the seemingly nostalgic Cheap Girls have the wits to write the line, “Repeating never got you where you needed to go.”

Bands with nothing more to offer than nostalgia don’t write lines like that. Modern, terrified, uncomfortable bands write lines like that…and follow it up with the line, “I’d do anything to just move backwards when it all feels bad to stay and worse to leave.”

There’s no pretense in Cheap Girls music, no posturing, no certainty (so far); it’s all up-front fear and disorientation—great places for generationally relevant music to come from. Giant Orange is a neurotic negotiation between stagnation and self-propultion; the way that their second album My Roaring 20′s  is a negotiation between maturation and cluelessness; the way their first album Find Me a Drink Home is a negotiation between being drunk and more drunk.

Cheap Girls are in command of their sound, now is a great time to get into them if you haven’t already. They’re on a huge tour. Giant Orange: Essential Listening.

Cheap Girls – Ruby
Cheap Girls – On-Off
Cheap Girls – Cored To The Empty

Buy Giant Orange on CD or vinyl from the band, buy it on iTunes, buy it on Amazon. Note the Cheap Girls website, their tour dates, and their Facebook. Stream their first two albums in-full on their bandcamp. Stream Giant Orange on their punknews.org profile (it’s the first 10 songs in the queue.).