the ataris

The Dunce Cap: Week of July 16, 2012

in: heavy rotation

The Dunce Cap, Vol. 48: I can’t wait to say all the things you can’t see, all the things that make you better. (click on link to listen to mix via 8tracks or play above)

1. “Sunlight” – matt pond PA
2. “Like U Crazy” – Mates of State
3. “I Saw You Blink” – Stornoway
4. “Chloe” – GROUPLOVE
5. “You Wouldn’t Like Me” – Tegan & Sara
6. “Ten-Twenty-Ten” – Generationals
7. “I Won’t Spend Another Night Alone” – The Ataris
8. “Laura” – Girls
9. “Jack-Ass” – Beck
10. “Wicked Game” – James Vincent McMorrow

YES!, middle of July, summer swelter. I’m at a loss for words, mostly, about these ten. I think I’ll let them speak for themselves, though I’ll point out a few key things:

– Aw, yeah, matt pond PA. “I wish you would say/when I fuck up that it’s okay.” 
– Same with Mates of State. I really wanted to include, “Help Help,” but I thought “Like U Crazy” was more appropriate.
– I’m on a Tegan & Sara kick currently, and I refuse to apologize.
– I saw Generationals (and Pet Lions!) open last year for Magic Kids at Tomorrow Never Knows. They were incredible live, and I picked up a cool 3D poster (with glasses!) from the show. Got into the music a little later.
– I’m also rediscovering my love for the pop punk of my adolescence. My current gym playlist is a mix of The Ataris, Fall Out Boy and Something Corporate. I still adore The Ataris album, Blue Skies, Broken Hearts…Next 12 Exits. It’s replete with pitch-perfect pop culture references (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in “San Dimas High School Football Rules!” and “I’d rob a Kwik-E-Mart for you!” from this one) and soaring, rough sing-alongs.
– And, hell, I saw James Vincent McMorrow last week at SPACE here in Evanston. The venue – my home away from home – is an intimate one, which lent itself perfectly to McMorrow’s haunting, booming, Bon Iver-esque vocals (sorry for the oh-so-obvious comparison). McMorrow’s been performing and recording awesomely unexpected covers, like John Hiatt’s “Higher Love” and this, Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” I remember the video for Isaak’s original from when I was a kid; it was, and remains, one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And it was, if possible, sexier with McMorrow’s timbre.
– Finally, count the handclaps. I dare ya.

As always, happy listening.

The Dunce Cap: August 2, 2010

in: heavy rotation

Yarmulke Poodle!

The Dunce Cap, Vol. 19: It sounds impossible but, man, it’s true. You are the bad, the bad seed of this town. (listen to mix via 8tracks)

1. “All the Pretty Girls Go to the City” – Spoon
2. “The Village Green Preservation Society” – The Kinks
3. “Trouble” – Voxtrot
4. “King of Anything” – Sara Bareilles
5. “Meet Virginia” – Train
6. “Your Boyfriend Sucks” – The Ataris
7. “Amy” – Ryan Adams
8. “Sway” – The Perishers
9. “Wedding Song” – Anais Mitchell ft. Justin Vernon
10. “Tightrope (Wondamix)” – Janelle Monae ft. B.O.B. & Lupe Fiasco

My apologies for this mix coming around so late. It’s been a hectic week of work, car rides, stadium food and ultimate Braves domination. But the Dunce Cap is back with a brand new mix! Let the gasps ensue.

This is a delightfully bouncy soundtrack to the last month of summer. Or last week of summer, for you poor souls not on the magnificent quarter system! It’s full of wondrous songs by artists I adore (yes, even The Ataris!), including Spoon, Voxtrot (who very sadly parted ways in June after a small tour) and Ryan Adams (who released Orion, his first “fully-realized sci-fi metal concept album,” in May). There’s a track from Anais Mitchell‘s Hadestown, a folk-rock opera telling the tale of  poet Orpheus, featuring Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. There’s the Lupe Fiasco/B.O.B. remix of Janelle Monae‘s sing-a-long “Tightrope” (so so excited to see Monae with Of Montreal Sept. 25 in Chicago!). And then there’s Train… Not really much of a fit for this mix, but a fun song that I’ve long adored worthy of a place in a mix of songs to play at maximum volume on car speakers.

Happy listening!

The Dunce Cap: July 19, 2010

in: heavy rotation

get yer eyes checked!

The Dunce Cap, Vol. 17: The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair. (listen to mix via 8tracks)

1. “If You Find Yourself Caught In Love” – Belle & Sebastian
2. “Congratulations Smack and Katy” – Reggie and the Full Effect
3. “I Met a Girl” – Wheat
4. “Spitting Games” – Snow Patrol
5. “Down” – Blink-182
6. “Reptilia” – The Strokes
7. “Naive” – The Jealous Sound
8. “So Says I” – The Shins
9. “Amsterdam” – Guster
10. “Chicago is so Two Years Ago” – Fall Out Boy
11. “California Waiting” – Kings of Leon
12. “Mexican Wine” – Fountains of Wayne
13. “The Sound of Settling” – Death Cab for Cutie
14. “Shiny” – The Decemberists
15. “Toxic” – Britney Spears
16. “My Favorite Accident” – Motion City Soundtrack
17. “Shakin’” – Rooney
18. “Such Great Heights” – The Postal Service
19. “So Long, Astoria” – The Ataris
20. “My Coco” – stellastarr*

Four score & seven years ago…

The year is 2003. Ariel Sharon is the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel. I am only nominally Jewish. The war in Iraq has just begun. 100 people have lost their lives in The Station night club fire, as pyrotechnics from Great White’s stage show set the insulation foam ceiling alight. The O.C. premieres on Fox.

I am in seventh grade. I no longer have braces, and my hair is just growing out of its yield sign phase. I carry a tin Weezer lunchbox to school, and I still listen to Good Charlotte mostly unabashedly. This is the summer of my musical discontent, and it is, in response, the spring of my musical awakening.

Seven years ago, I was in seventh grade. I had just recently discovered that all music did not come from boy bands and teen queens, and I had also become incredibly engrossed in Josh Schwartz‘s The O.C. I was obsessed with Weezer. My taste in music was rapidly expanding, and 2003 was certainly the year my music repertoire really took shape. It was the heyday of pop-punk and my real transition into indie. In the hopes of avoiding sounding even sappier than I do now, this should suffice: 2003 was the first year I really, truly started to love music. Music by musicians with musical talent. And, man, the new material that came out of 2003 continues to astound me and occupy my iPod with some regularity. It may be a bit melodramatic to say that 2003 was the year I came into myself, as that’s an exaggeration, but it was certainly the year I began a great passion for music.

I started to make mixtapes for friends and boys, and these artists really became staples of my playlists. There was The Postal Service’s Give Up, Belle and Sebastian’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Death Cab’s gorgeously lush Transatlanticism, The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow. There was the catchier-than-the-common-cold Yellowcard, a maturing Fall Out Boy, an aging Chris Carrabba in Dashboard and an Alkaline Trio album that was just melodious enough to shout out loud. There were two hilarious videos for Motion City Soundtrack’s “The Future Freaks Me Out” and Reggie and the Full Effect’s “Congratulations, Smack and Katy.”

There was a White Stripes album that nearly overshadowed the brilliance their fans had come to expect with De Stijl and White Blood Cells. There was a disappointing Saves the Day follow-up to an album (Stay What You Are) as they drifted away from a record label, Vagrant, that would come to define my early interactions with music. That’s not to mention The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Stills, The Long Winters’ brilliant photograph of adolescence, When I Pretend to Fall, or even The All-American Rejects eponymous first album, a CD I bought the day it was released.


The Long Winters, “The Sound of Coming Down”

So much of who I was in school was defined by my ownership of these and other albums. I had a fervent passion for music, and 2003 was really the year that fueled my musical ravenousness. So this is an epic tribute to the year 2003, to seven years ago, to the music of the year and the efforts that would come subsequently.

Not as interactive as the last Dunce Cap, certainly, but a fair tribute to a year that changed music – for me, at least.

And I’ve still got that Weezer lunchbox.

Happy listening.

The Stills

Alkaline Trio

Dashboard Confessional – A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar

Pete Yorn – Day I Forgot

Vendetta Red

Adam Green

The Darkness

Yellowcard

AFI

Relient K

Saves the Day

A Perfect Circle – Thirteenth Step

Story of the Year

Outkast

Kill Hannah

Jamison Parker EP

Something Corporate – North

White Stripes – Elephant

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell

The All American Rejects – Self-titled