A Christmas Gift for You

Probably the greatest collection of Christmas hits ever. Legendary producer Phil Spector and his "wall-of-sound" technique is perfectly suited to the music of the season, as he proves with layer upon layer of piano, sleigh bells, buoyant percussion, and, of course, those legendary Spectorsound harmonies. The Crystals turn their sassy interplay into sheer magic on "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," The Ronettes stroll sweetly through numbers like "Sleigh Ride," while Darlene Love delivers a real knockout punch with her yearning version of "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)." Sure to become the soundtrack for your holidays... fms

Tracks
1 Darlene Love – White Christmas 2:56
2 The Ronettes – Frosty the Snowman 2:20
3 Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans - The Bells of St. Mary 2:58
4 The Crystals – Santa Claus Is Coming to Town 3:28
5 The Ronettes – Sleigh Ride 3:05
6 Darlene Love - Marshmallow World 2:27
7 The Ronettes - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 2:41
8 The Crystals – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 2:34
9 Darlene Love - Winter Wonderland 2:30
10 The Crystals - Parade of the Wooden Soldiers 2:58
11 Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) 2:50
12 Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans - Here Comes Santa Claus 2:07
13 Phil Spector and Artists - Silent Night 2:10

The Velvet Underground & Nico by Castle Face and Friends [2012]

For the 45th anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico, some of the Bay Area's finest are set to cover the seminal classic. 

The Velvet Underground & Nico by Castle Face and Friends:

01 Kelley Stoltz: "Sunday Morning"

02 Warm Soda: "I’m Waiting For The Man"

03 Ty Segall: "Femme Fatale"

04 Blasted Canyons feat. Jeremy Cox (of Royal Baths): "Venus In Furs"

05 White Fence: "Run Run Run"

06 The Fresh & Onlys: "All Tomorrow’s Parties"

07 Burnt Ones: "Heroin"

08 The Mallard: "There She Goes Again"

09 Here Comes The Here Comes: "I’ll Be Your Mirror"

10 K. Dylan + The Black Angel’s Death Songsmen: "The Black Angel’s Death Song"

11 Thee Oh Sees: "European Son"

My 2012: Neil Halstead - Palindrome Hunches

Genre: indie folk, singer-songwriter

HoMe

One night while in the studio with Neil Halstead a friend questioned him as to what kind of music he played. Neil’s extremely thick beard turned into a smile as he said “Nylon Rock” before laughing and turning back to his beer.  I don’t think that description offered any clarity to the asker, but to me it seemed perfect: a self effacing term to help him deal with the fact that he, a former shoegazer, was making a solo record and his main weapon was simply a nylon string guitar and a couple of shakers...

... So if "Wittgenstein's Arm" draws its lyrical inspiration from the story of a wounded pianist from World War I (and therefore includes piano) and if the title track is indeed all about palindromes (you'll never think of Satan quite the same way), then everything still comes back to that point of origin. But as with his earlier bands, it's the choice of arrangements and performance that drives his solo work, a specific aiming for a sound. Halstead's performing reinvents no wheels but never is anything less than well-done regardless, and the full performances can often find their own impact, the violin of Ben Smith-- one of several performers from Band of Hope playing as the backing group throughout-- often providing a softly killer touch on songs like "Love Is a Beast", "Full Moon Rising", and especially in the nervous opening moments of "Tied to You".

By the time of the piano-led "Hey Daydreamer", one of the peppier songs in context, the album's been the type of thing that seems right for the closing in of the year through fall, something best heard in fading light, bundled a bit against the cooler air, a little shared warmth-- cozy sweater folk, indeed. Nope, it ain't shoegaze as it's been codified and re-codified. But why be disappointed in someone following his muse to a logical conclusion when that path was always the one he walked on?

Lower Dens - Nootropics Remixed [2012]

Baltimore's Lower Dens went into new, motorik directions on their second album, Nootropics so it makes sense that tracks from the record might work well in the remix world. Hence, the Nootropics Remixed EP which takes three cuts off the album and puts them into the hands of Trentemøller, Cex, and Steve Moore. 

Meanwhile, Lower Dens shared with us their picks for Best of 2012. All four current members contributed lists and none of them were straight LP lists, mixing media with inclusions for live shows, books, food, film and ephemera.

---

Lower Dens - 2012 Top 10s

Jana:

Michael Rother & Camera - Camber Sands (National ATP)

Jennifer Castle - Red 7 (Austin, TX)

Austra - Voxhall (Pop Revo Festival, Aarhus, DK)

Rob Delaney - Sons of Hermann Hall (Dallas, TX)

Louis C.K. - Jones Hall (Houston, TX)

In the Land of Pain - Alphonse Daudet (book)

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius - Ray Monk (book)

Horse Lords - s/t (album)

Novoline - Golden Hits No. 1 (self-released cassette)

Steve Moore & Majeure - Brainstorm (split LP)

The Comedy (film)

Geoff:

Deep Time - Self-Titled Album (album)

Novoline - Golden Heads vol. 1 tape release (album)

Jennifer Castle - Castlemusic (album)

Beach House - Bloom (album)

Dan Deacon - America (album)

All night concert series at the Soft House in Baltimore

Kronos Quartet's performance of Tusen Tankar (One thousand thoughts) (live performance)

Tetzlaff performing live at the Berlin Philharmonic

The Master (film)

Alantutorial (youtube)

Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World (book)

Nate:

unicorn hard on and container live at the bank, baltimore

drainolith "fighting" lp

nova line "golden hits vol. 1" cassette

moon pool and dead band live at the mug, detroit

addiction to peruvian chicken at chicken rico in the highlandtown neighborhood of baltimore

kick ass bandmates marriages in houston and new hampshire

gay marriage and marijuana legalization 

horse lords lp and live, various locales, baltimore

austra live at pop revo, aarhus, Denmark

lord bird "2012 is real" cassette

Will:

swans - live @ bowery

deep time - s/t (album)

novo line - live in the uk

savages - live @ la route du rock, st-malo, fr

dirty three - live @ prima vera, barcelona, es

damien echols - life after death (book) 

tim hecker -live @ all tomorrow's parties, camber sands, UK

darktown strutters - live, houston, tx 

austra - live in aarhus, dk

ssion - live in monterey, mex

The New Christy Minstrels [1963]

01 Beautiful City

 02 Tell It On The Mountain

 03 One Star

 04 Christmas Wishes

 05 The Shepherd Boy

 06 Sing Hosanna, Hallelujah

 07 Sing Along With Santa

 08 It'll Be A Merry Christmas

 09 Tell Me

 10 A Christmas World

 11 Parson Brown (Our Christmas Dinner)

 12 Christmas Trees

 13 Snow In The Streets/Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine/

Wassail, Wassail

Stealing Sheep - Genevieve [2012]

“…when these three Liverpool lasses let their freak-folk flag fly their abandon is contagious… Their voices are great, which helps, but it’s the unexpected instrumentation that really seals the deal.”
The Independent ****

“Stealing Sheep’s debut album is a delightful bag of pick ‘n’ mix… It’s the small details that stand out on this beguiling debut.”
The Guardian ****

Heavenly Records

My 2012: Imperial Teen - Feel the Sound

Genre: Indie pop

The fifth album by Imperial Teen, Feel the Sound, succeeds completely at its goal, plainly stated in the collection’s title. Like the sharpest pop music, Feel the Sound gets you to keep coming back for more, but unlike so much music today, it rewards you for doing so, giving you the experience of a fulfilled and yet still yearning, lively potential, one that will be further realized when the songs are performed live. From the exhilarating, propulsive “Runaway,” which features the entire band on lead vocals (how many other groups can make that claim?), to the expansive final statement of “Overtaken,” Roddy Bottum, Lynn Perko Truell, Will Schwartz, and Jone Stebbins feel the sound themselves and, in turn, make the listener feel it in ways immediate and pleasurable but also lasting and haunting.

ELO-like symphonic pop has become a touchstone for everyone from Justice to Cut Copy in recent years, but Feel the Sound makes it manifest through live instrumentation that possesses a Krautrock level of intuitive synchronicity and a desert island jukebox’s sense of fun. So many bands lose momentum and focus over time, but a little past its sweet sixteenth year of existence, Imperial Teen somehow grows both younger and wiser, connecting four characterful lives through creative friendship and deep trust, and forging a communal power that continues to grow stronger. Feel the sound of a one-of-a-kind group that’s never sounded more like itself.

Homebase

Uncut Top 15 [2012]

1. Grizzly Bear – Sleeping Ute [04:37]

2. Sharon Van Etten – Give Out [04:18]

3. Ty Segall & White Fence – Scissor People [03:31]

4. Allah-Las – Don’t You Forget It [03:05]

5. Dexys – Nowhere Is Home [04:58]

6. The Liminanas – Salvation [03:20]

7. Dr. John – Revolution [03:27]

8. Bill Fay – The Never Ending Happening [03:42]

9. Goat – Let It Bleed [03:55]

10. Lightships – Two Lines [03:52]

11. Anais Mitchell – Young Man in America [05:29]

12. Pond – When It Explodes [05:24]

13. Field Music – From Hide and Seek to Heartache

14. Go-Kart Mozart – As Long As You Come Home Tonight [03:15]

15. Six Organs of Admittance – Even If You Knew

My 2012: Angus Stone - Broken Brights

Genre: Indie folk pop

Home

Broken Brights generally feels laid-back even in its rockier electric moments. Its easy-on-the-ear rhythms call up Dire Straits, while Stone’s sporadic distorted guitar solos evoke Neil Young in his Crazy Horse era, especially on songs like “Bird On A Buffalo” and “Only A Woman”. It’s hard not to admire his skill as Stone adds brightness and color to even his downbeat tales. On “The Blue Door”, tremolo guitar and flute mirror the cautionary lyrics with Western ambience, and he sprinkles tiny sound effects over the guitar-woven space oddity “Apprentice Of The Rocket Man”.

Touches like these lift Broken Brights above the mundane, as Stone demonstrates production skills worthy of an addition to his resume. Superficially, this album could be filed as “easy listening”; and to some extent, it is. But it redeems itself by demanding careful listening: There’s always something unexpected around the corner.

My 2012: Advanced Base - A Shut-In's Prayer

"There's no comfort in sympathy

She's up state with her family

I'm still at the same address

Still believe I can love the best

The sound of music from the kitchen boom-box."

Home / BuY

A Shut-In's Prayer is the proper debut from his new project, Advance Base, and it's easily the most wistful work he's committed to tape. Couched in the most immediate and affecting melodies of his career, many of the stories told on A Shut-In's Prayer look back at the past mainly to remember its contents. Ashworth's flair for narrative detail is in top form, achieving a level so microscopic that, at one point, he zooms in while ruminating on familial ennui to describe a scene in a horror movie that several characters are watching together. Sometimes, as on the album highlight "Riot Grrrls", these trips down memory lane end with resolution-- or, at least, as much resolution that you could get from two college-age outcasts "Wondering if we ran/ Who'd miss us." Elsewhere, memories take on the form of child runaways and faded filial relationships, as Ashworth is left with disconnected threads between the past and present and not much more.

JEFF the Brotherhood - Sixpack

Just like home...

JEFF the Brotherhood

Christmas Vol. 2

Silent Night Low

White Christmas ROBERT BURNHAM

Song for the Angels  Great Lake Swimmers

CHRISTMAS TREE Bewitched Hands

Christmas  Slow Club

In This Home On Ice Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Get Down for the Holidays Jenny O.

California Christmas Sleepy Rebels

It's Christmas Coconut Records

Jesus Claus mix 2 Crystal Stilts

I Heard the Bells Pedro the Lion

CVT

My 2012: M.Ward - A Wasteland Companion

Genre: indie folk pop

mwardmusic

M. Ward opens his new studio album, "A Wasteland Companion," with a lovely acoustic ditty called "Clean Slate." But a clean slate is hardly what this indie-folk heavyweight is working with here, given the boost his profile has received lately thanks to acclaimed collaborations with Zooey Deschanel (as She & Him) and members of Bright Eyes and My Morning Jacket (as Monsters of Folk)...BB

Goodnight to all you late night tv watchers,

And let me say good morning to you all,

At the sound of my voice through this microphone line,

Consider that your wake up call.

My name is Billy (????) ,

I'm not the man you think I am,

Some mistake me for a writer,

Some mistake me for another network man.

I am the guy who has just hijacked this channel,

This telecast is now under my control,

And now that I have the chance to say what's on my mind,

Let me tell you tales untold.

For 30 years I've worked here at this tv station,

In an editing room no one has ever seen,

Inserting laughter after every punchline,

And gasping after every scream.

But now I want you to give me back,

The years that I have wasted,

Staring at these television screens,

And now that I have your attention,

Let me show you what I mean.

Because I remember back when I was in high school, 

I never thought I'd stoop so low,

I thought I'd be the guy on unmasking the clown,

Not the guy out polishing his nose.

So tomorrow on your way into work,

Who will be wearing the emperor's cloths?

Watch the show.

My 2012: Whistle Peaks - Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls

Genre: indie experimental pop

Whistle Peak is pop music in disguise and experimentation at its core. It is music that takes you on a journey of the imagination, inhabiting fantastical lands while drawing from life experience. It is the particular phrased in the universal. It is children’s stories told by grown men. bandcamp

Whistle Peak - "Hurry, Hurry" live @ CD Central, Lexington, KY 6.16.12

They sound like little children discovering toys in their grandparents’ basement, a place where miniature Casio keyboards sit next to antique washboards and pieces of stray china. Throw in a toy piano, a tuba, some clever lyrics and some dogs barking in the distance and you have New Folk with a sense of humor.

Infinitely more interesting than a lot of mandolin-driven crap being hyped these days. Thank God is all I can say about that. MV

Taken By Trees: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

The power of Taken by Trees lies in understatement. Victoria Bergsman sings almost as if she doesn't care — but that contrast to almost every other singer I know is what makes me hear her words, and grants me space to think about her emotions. It's almost as if she etches the lines of a song and leaves listeners to fill in the rest.

In 2009, Taken by Trees put out one of my favorite records of that decade, East of Eden. The album explored and was inspired by a visit to Pakistan, while her new Other Worlds was inspired by a journey to Hawaii. These songs seem to come from a place somewhere between a dream state and waking life: There's restraint to the way the players approach this music, almost as if they're trying not to wake the baby in the other room. There's charm to that. And, though Bergsman was under the weather when Taken by Trees performed at the Tiny Desk, it all works wonderfully. --BOB BOILEN

Set List
"I Want You"
"Only You"

Christmas Vol. 1 [2012]

A collection of holiday music to inspire and coat with the season's joy!

Winter Wonderland  -The Rainbow Collections

Just Like Christmas - Low

Let it Snow - Her Space Holiday

White Christmas - Mark Kozelek

It's Christmas Time - Yo La Tengo

Little Drummer Boy - Laurie Berkner

Amazing Grace - Sufjan Stevens

Christmas - Death Cab for Cutie

2000 Miles - Coldplay

Jinglebell Rock - Arcade Fire

Happy Christmas - The Polyphonic Spree

You Are My Joy - The Reindeer Section

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley

Silver Bells - The Pines

It's Christmas  - Frightened Rabbit

Jeff Buckley - Amazing Grace

Merry Christmas - Renee & Jeremy

My 2012: Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas

Folk Pop, Pop, Singer-Songwriter

You don't want new ideas from Leonard Cohen. You want to sink into that coal-black pit of a voice and contemplate the essentials: lust and loss; failure and redemption; the appalling comedy of existence and its inescapable end. His 12th "manual for living with defeat" answers that longing, while ever so gently ribbing it. "I love to speak with Leonard," he rumbles on opening song Going Home, "he's a sportsman and a shepherd, he's a lazy bastard living in a suit." In other words: don't take everything he says as gospel, even if it's frequently dressed up as such. Perhaps inevitably, it's the debonair sportsman, not the earnest shepherd of lost souls, who has the best tunes on Old Ideas. The Guardian

Final Tour Dates

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn’t have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube...

My 2012: Smile Smile - Marry a Stranger

Indie Pop, Pillow Pop, Lovely

I saw Smile Smile preform in a small club in Austin Texas a couple years ago, and have had the biggest crush on them ever since. They are not really touring or loving anymore, but whatever, the tunes on this album are real delicate dandies, and downright soothing to my soul. Ryan Hamilton will be touring again soon - in a living room near you... This album is catchy acoustic driven sweetness that tends to pluck at your musical instincts.

Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Christmas Eve Can Kill You [2012]

The Holiday Season begins...

Like Sufjan Stevens, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and frequent collaborator Dawn McCarthy (of Faun Fables) are getting in the spirit with a holiday-themed record, in the form of a 7″ featuring a pair of Everly Brothers covers. But unlike Santa Stevens, who is turning Xmas into a blood-soaked stain on our psyches, Billy and McCarthy use the video for “Christmas Eve Can Kill You” to prove festiveness isn’t about lights or presents, but rather a feeling in the old ticker.

The video utilizes footage from the recording sessions at the Butcher Shop Studio in Nashville and the lush hills of McCreary County, Kentucky, creating a summery vibe of down-home family life that couldn’t be further from a White Christmas. Still, the music itself makes up for the holly jolly deficit, with lyrics about hitchhiking to see family in the middle of a snowy downfall set to gentle, mournful strings as crisp as the air on Christmas Eve.

Foxygen [2012]

Foxygen is the Los Angeles-bred songwriting duo of Sam France and Jonathan Rado. They are the raw, de-Wes Andersonization of The Rolling Stones, Kinks, Velvets, Bowie, etc. that a whole mess of young people desperately need. They create a sometimes-impressionistic, sometimes-hyper-real portrait of sounds from specific places and times. Yet, it never comes across as anything but absolutely modern music. They bring the manic, freewheeling qualities of an artist like Ariel Pink to those aforementioned influences to make for one of the most refreshing listens of the year. They are the real deal and total savants.