how about this

I'm having a tough time trying to quantify what I've been listening to lately. As per usual, I've been scheming on some downloaded material and came up with some good-review-only basis finds. Well, of course there've been others that didn't end up on my computer solely based on one simile-laden record review. For one, I'm feeling that new ghostfact record. Every song is either cut throat raw or a gritty soul loop like only ghost can rock well. I also dl-ed the strangest version of the new Built to Spill album. Instead of embedding the usual "This is a promo" messasge in the tracks, some clever A&R guy slipped in Mike Jones samples at dead-on perfect crescendo to spill moments. At first I thought I had accidentally opened up a different player and had that doubled-up moment like when you land on some jakey's myspace page and "boys don't cry" starts playing over your itunes so that the already distressed computer speakers sputter in pain. But no, that wasn't it and I hadn't opened up a web page. Well then shit, I thought. I was about to go find it again on soulseek before I talked to dustin and he insisted and I leave it on til he could pilfer it. It does kind of sound like those rock/rap mashups his mid-western pals are always sending out this way.
But as far as I can tell, the new Built to Spill album is butt-kicking raw. It really kind of sounds like the Strokes. Thats right, I said it. The freaking bowery boys themselves. The record starts off with a very fab-ian hollow ticking bass/bass/snare, bass/bass/snare, bass/bass/snare before an old-timey sci-fi sample says "welcome to violence" and the guitarist reinterprets the dun dun dun dun intro to "last night." Before long, the other guitar drops and they start duking it out classic BTS style. But this time, its just so much faster and more direct sounding. There is no more of that wayward meandering type junk they used to come with in the superchunk and pavement indie rock heyday of the late nineties. When emo was just an adjective and cats laid off the make-up and the hair products. Even when ahh shit, what's his name? Huh, Doug Martsch? Turns out, I didn't even know that guys name in the first place. Oh well. But even when homeboy starts singing, it is much more in-your-face and not quite as winey as usual. While not every song on here is as blatantly up-to-date as the opener, you can definitely tell these guys have been listening to records lately. Which is a good thing. I mean, artists should be changing gradually and subtly with the times so they don't end up having mid-life crisises and joining Nine Inch Nails like some knife-heir rock stars out there.