I’m not a huge fan of absurdist lyrics but I’m sometimes inclined to make exceptions. Of ’90s alt-whatever songwriters, I think Jeff Mangum did them a bit better than Robert Pollard, but hey, Bee Thousand, which is generally hailed as GBV’s seminal work, is an exceptional album with a few particularly great cuts. It is sometimes challenging, sometimes accessible, and always riddled with tape hiss that I in turn both abhor and adore.

My path to finding this album was a bit convoluted. Ryan Walsh of Hallelujah the Hills, a local band that I’ve really gotten into over the past several months, posted a link to a 1995 NPR segment about Guided by Voices from HTH’s Twitter account. I proceeded to listen to it a few times over the next week, entranced by the snippet of “I Am a Scientist” included in the piece. (As an aside, it is somewhat hilarious listening to a digitized cassette recording of a radio broadcast of a song that was of poor recording quality to begin with.) “Queen of Cans and Jars,” which was also in the public radio segment, is another catchy standout. “Echos Myron,” as it turns out, was my girlfriend’s ringtone for better than a year (I think she said that it was on a film soundtrack) and I never really knew who sang it until now, always assuming that it was the work of some obscure British Invasion group whose name had been forgotten by history.

Mystery solved.

This is a catchy little number I stumbled upon the other day in my internet travels, from an obscure local band, no less. However, if they keep churning out tunes like this, they’re probably not going to be obscure for that much longer…

After several spins, the best description I can manage of this song is that it’s built on a busy, fuzzed-out sound canvas that’s drowning in reverb and centered on an infectious hook straight out of  The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait.” I am definitely looking forward to listening to the follow-up.

For the Cliff’s Notes version of how good Clemons was, listen to 1:46 – 2:05. You’ll be glad you did.

Unpicked.

Decked out in my finest jersey and ballcap I ascend up one flight of stairs to engage in what a co-habitant refers to as the “nerdy” annual ritual of fantasy drafting. Five men in one room (and a few others abroad), each (excepting one) with a laptop precariously perched on slow-roasting legs. The righteous indignation of the league manager at the no-shows who keep auto-picking Yankees (a most forbidden course of action). Punishment meted out accordingly. Misleading sunlight and chilly air seeping in through a cracked window. Eyes frantically scanning statistics postulated and actual. Bad pop culture references and worse puns. The recitation of mundane factoids regarding players both significant and obscure. The small sense of victory as the player I believe a “savvy” pick falls to my draft slot. The silent scrambling for a new player as my next planned pick is taken by another owner. The frequent and increasingly familiar sound effects emanating out-of-sync from our respective machines, indicating any number of happenings. Bored yawns making the rounds as the pack mentality refuses to give ground even in the face of the 21st century.

I feel pretty good about how this one turned out. Guess we’ll see in October.

This song was on a mixtape I digitized last year that my late uncle recorded in 1979. Even through all the age and ugly tape hiss, that sax solo broke through like the Sun after an April shower.

13) Freelance Whales – Weathervanes

According to last.fm, the least masculine thing I listened to all year. The moral is that I’m a sucker for banjo and songs about ghosts.

12) The New Pornographers – Together

After excellent solo efforts from A.C. Newman and Neko Case in 2009, the greying power-pop powerhouse proves that they can still bring it collectively.

11) Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away

You just can’t shut the finely-crafted folk up. You just can’t.

10) The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever

Franz made like Charlemagne and “got caught up in some complicated things.” Craig tries out his not-so-golden pipes. Nevertheless, it’s still good, if no longer great, in Ybor City.

9) Paul Baribeau - Unbearable

Spare solo acoustic honesty. Sweet beard. Winning combination.

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

Long-absent indie legends return with quality dad rock. Nothing wrong with that. Sweet video for lead single.

7) The National - High Violet

Matt Berninger’s voice is still so much cooler than yours. And a few of the songs are just impossible to get out of your head.

6) Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks

He’s been upping the vegan punx for 20 years. Sweet video for second single.

5) Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do

According to last.fm, the most masculine thing I listened to all year. Country-tinged tales of working-class America.

4) Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

The War of Northern Aggression just got so much cooler. Incidentally, this LP is so long, it spans across approximately five Aprils.

3) Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Sad Scottish man rues own youth, denies obvious unhappiness, accompanied by very dense production.

2) Frontier Ruckus – Deadmalls and Nightfalls

The folksy, wordy decline of Greater Detroit put to tape. And their best song (“Mona and Emmy”) isn’t even on this album. If it was, there may have been co-number ones.

1) The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt

The compact one-man tribute to open guitar tunings himself. Nobody really knows what he’s singing about but him, but does it matter? I say no. Keep confounding me, Kristian.

In my usual weekend malaise I stumbled across a video from the show that prominently features (some would even say co-stars) the back of my head. I feel somewhat badly about this surely unwanted cranial intrusion. Back in grade school I towered over many of the other kids, so much so that whenever there was a film shown in class I would inevitably be pestered to slink down in my chair (Hello back problems!) or move to the very back of the room, which was not a great option given my even-then rather poor eyesight. Given the more contemporary visual evidence below, I suppose that the more things change, the more they stay the same, though I am not inordinately tall by any stretch of the imagination.

So to the person who shot this video: I apologize. I also thank you for not making me relive grade school mid-show via a tap on the shoulder and/or quiet vocal reprimand. You were a very good sport.

If you look closely you can watch my seat-dancing via head shake/nod/bob, which closely resembles convulsions, but please do not be alarmed; I am simply bad at any sort of dancing, and something of a buffoon.

J.D. Drew

John K. Samson

In related news, Provinicial Route 222, Samson’s follow-up to 2009′s City Route 85, drops September 21st.

My season in a nutshell.

This spring was the very first that I seriously engaged in the hallowed ritual of fantasy baseball. It all began with a lengthy drafting process, complete with an internet connection failure scare that forced me to make my last few rounds of picks via a neighbor’s unsecured wireless network.

In the time since that fateful night, fantasy baseball has become an all-consuming pastime for me. Checking stats, matchups, tinkering with the roster. Give me a computer and a few minutes of free time and inevitably I will end up on the ESPN Fantasy site. Yet for all of the effort I have put into my team, it is not very good, 11th out of 12 in my league. Part of that is a function of my passe approach to the team for the first few weeks of the season that dug me a deep hole, and the rest is primarily an unfortunate tendency to pick up a Cinderella off the waiver wire just in time for it to turn into a pumpkin. Yet for all the disappointments, there is simply no feeling quite like claiming a newly called-up prospect before anyone else notices and then watching them succeed (I’m looking at you, Carlos Santana).

This joke is getting old, fantasy writers.

I should probably be reasonable and accept my rightful place as an inadequate fantasy owner, and yet even now I still harbour grand delusions of being able to make a run after the All-Star break and finish the year in a respectable, if not necessarily medal-worthy, place in the standings. I could say that in the end all the work put into my team is the real reward, but that would be a cheesy cop-out, because all I really want to do is to make like DJ Khaled and win.

Win-win-win.