I can never tell when the last year was - my sense of the calendar is kind of abstract - so I'm just going to pick a few records that I like and listen to all the time:
1. Scritti Politti "Early" - this is a reissue that just came out on Rough Trade which compiles the first 4 Scritti singles. I think these songs are
mind boggling and fresh. I am not one of those purists who rank on the crystalline pop the band ended up making later in their career - I think
they were always flawless but still these early songs are so angular, odd and smart that they deserve to be remembered. Its music where you can never guess what's coming next - like luggage tossed down the stairs. Bands when they first form often don't know enough to follow a rule book and the freakish discoveries they make on their own have a special beauty.
2. The Casual Dots - I actually worked on this record as a producer so maybe its kind of a breach of ethics to list it but still I love the songs, the band and the performances so much that I have to list it. Its on Kill Rock Stars and it has a lovely cover with colored gumdrops in a bowl against a blue background. The songs will live in your mind for the rest of your life and you will have to provide housing for them.
3. Tim Hardin 2 - this album came out in the 60's and its kind of hard to find I think. It took me forever to track down a vinyl copy but maybe its easier in your neck of the woods. The cover features Tim and his pregnant wife, while the back cover has a long poem testifying to Tim's ambivalence about the upcoming birth. I got into these songs via all the covers of them that I had heard done by others - Colin Blunstone doing "Misty Roses", the Small Faces doing "Red Balloon", and Scott Walker doing "Black Sheep Boy" and "Lady Came from Baltimore" -- Bobby Darin and Rod Stewart also did some of the songs so I felt I needed to go to the source. Besides Colin Blunstone, none of the covers, most of which are excellent, are as good as the original versions on this which utterly slay. Tim Hardin could do more in 2 minutes than almost anyone else and he's fucking sad as hell too.
The best bands I saw last year that I had never seen before live were the No Neck Blues Band and Deerhoof. Both played shows which were so unpredictable and over the edge that you felt like you were experiencing something new and alive. Alot of shows have so many recycled elements that you kind of just end up doing a mental jigsaw puzzle of where all the pieces came from. These shows were just fresh from top to bottom - Deerhoof for their precision and power and No Neck for their devotion to the moment.
The last Fugazi album was awesome. What are you all up to at the moment, is there a work in progress?
For all intents and purposes, Fugazi is a non working entity for now. Everyone in the band is pursuing other projects: Ian is in the Evens, Brendan is producing a live DVD series called "Burn To Shine" and recording artists like the Medications and Mary Timony, Joe is in Portland Oregon working on music there and I am here in DC playing with some people and trying to formulate some songs of my own when I'm not producing records. Whether Fugazi will ever work together again is up in the air - it certainly could happen but it also might not. Time will tell.