I pulled a recent post because it caused a bit of an uproar with a band's label. I have no interest in seeing bands, however misguided they may be in how they promote themselves or respond to criticism, lose opportunities to publish their music. Since a good amount of time was put into the response, I'll try to edit the post and so that it raises my issues outside of the context of the band (who, to their credit, were far more gracious in an e-mail).

Is this caving to the whims of my subject matter? Perhaps. But I've never made an attempt to damage the livelihood of musicians and now doesn't seem like a good time to start.

I approached Marnie Stern's In Advance of the Broken Arm cautiously. It's not the talk of her Steve Vai-meets-Don Caballero shredding that demands such trepidation, but rather the other side of her influences: Sleater Kinney, Deerhoof, and Hella are bands I can listen to in small doses, if at all. "Vibrational Match," the first track on her debut CD, didn't help this wary approach. Stern couples her frenzied fretboard calisthenics with similar high-octave vocal line, swarming like a Van Halen-informed riot grrl. Interesting, but a whole album of it? Pass me the Tylenol.

Just when I thought I'd put Stern on the needlessly over-hyped list, "Every Single Line Means Something" came on. Perhaps its status as the record's lead single should have informed me of its crossover potential, but "Every Single Line" addresses all of my qualms over "Vibrational Match." Stern's voice is less shrill, relaxing into a multi-tracked coo during the breakdown, and doesn't have to fight for high-octave space with the guitars, which follow less frantic lower-octave figures. The chorus trades the cheerleader chant of "Vibrational" for genuine hooks. The complexity of the instrumentation doesn't overwhelm, but instead allows you to pick up on the tricky stuff going on underneath the more rhythmic guitar line. Zach Hill's drumming doesn't fight the momentum of the song, either. "Every Single Line" pulls a great song out of an intriguing, sometimes infuriating aesthetic.

Elsewhere, the titular shenanigans of "Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and Then Watch That Basket!" proves that the Don Caballero influence isn't limited to finger-tapped leads, but the song certainly has those in spades, as well. What that song and a scant few others ("Patterns of a Diamond Ceiling") benefit from is a tempting calm, however fleeting, amid Stern's signature flurry of activity.

My initial hesitation about Marnie Stern was largely accurate, since In Advance of the Broken Arm spazzes out a bit too much for my liking, but finding a solid EP's worth of material that either pulls off the hyperactive shredding with style or calms down enough to provide space and tension is a pleasant surprise. I doubt she'll calm down too much, since she has to justify playing this guitar, but I'm optimistic about her live performances and her next album.

I’m taking a much deserved and needed break from secondary readings on torture to recap the highlights of tracks 104 through 294. Yes, it didn’t take me long to break my aim of reporting after every hundred tracks, but I ended up making a mix CD of the highlights from the first 200 tracks (I’ll try to compile the MP3s at a later date) instead of recapping them as I probably should have. Still remarkably light on long songs, so I’m moving along at a quick clip. I don’t anticipate this pace lasting.

Blast from the Past: It’s been some time since the last vestiges of my Hum ultra-fandom wore away; I’m now down to the occasional run-through of the finest moments of You’d Prefer an Astronaut (“Little Dipper,” “Why I Prefer the Robins,” “I Hate It Too”) on muggy summer nights. Dropping Electra 2000 in the playlist revived some of those old feelings, however, and it’s particularly appropriate that “Winder,” a song from which I derived my first e-mail address and AIM screenname, clicked the hardest. For all of the slightly wince-inducing vocal performances strewn about E2K, it’s easy to forget the genuinely heavy, shifting guitar riffs and Matt Talbot’s great moments of detached insight. In giving such structural priority to its charging riffs, “Winder” stands out as an energized album-closing jam, at least until the excellent bonus track “Diffuse” made it on album’s the third pressing.

Overdue Notice: The ex-Pitchblende made a notable opening appearance at the Dismemberment Plan’s semi-infamous dance party at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago—Justin Chearno’s head was clipped by the head stock of the bass, but the math-rock continued, dripping blood and all. Despite tracking down those Pitchblende CDs, I never got around to picking up Turing Machine’s debut (A New Machine for Living) or the follow-up, Zwei, but hearing “Rock. Paper. Rock.” during a commute convinced me of my errors. I might’ve been happy if the insistent guitar line chimed along for the full seven minutes, but instead Turing Machine keeps shifting the elements, letting each of the instruments have the spotlight.

Most Bizarre Transition: The first two songs of this round were Ween’s “I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight” and Ghostface Killah’s “Clyde Smith” skit. The former sounds like a slightly demented children’s song, complete with pitch-shifted vocals and recital-oriented piano backing, while the latter is also pitchshifted, dropping Ghostface’s voice down to comically deep levels for two and a half rambling minutes. The break between the piano and the unadorned announcement that “My name is Knuckles, nigga” nearly knocked me out of the driver’s seat.

Best Transition: GZA’s Liquid Swords has met any expectations I had for the album, particularly because of the extended samples of dialogue. The gasping death that concludes “I Gotcha Back” segued almost perfectly into the quiet drops of rain beginning Juno’s “The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow.” While the tone is a bit softer in the Juno song, it doesn’t belie the oncoming shudders of guitar at the end of the track or the overall content of the song, which looks at death from an entirely different perspective. This conversation between the songs even surpassed my initial awe of the smooth transition.

Best Laugh: I tend to underestimate Steve Albini’s cruel sense of humor in favor of the sonic incision of his bands, but Big Black’s “Bad Penny” combining the industrial grind of that band’s finest moments with an overwhelmingly memorable break. “I think I fucked your girlfriend once... maybe twice, I don't remember / Then I fucked all your friends’ girlfriends—now they hate you” is delivered with blend of malice and wit particular to Albini, lacking only a fuller entry in the band’s tour diary.

Biggest Breakthrough: I’d heard a few Cocteau Twins songs before this round and a few more during the course of it, but it wasn’t until “Lorelei” came on that the band’s proto-shoegaze dream pop finally hit me. The processed guitar line floats along, propelled by an unmistakably ’80s drum machine, but Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals give the song its vague approximation of shape, whether it’s her indiscernible lilt, her breathy pulse, or her multi-tracked peaks. It’s hard to think of this song without thinking of it as a prototype for the pop songs on Loveless, but I hardly mean to demote it to a footnote in My Bloody Valentine’s history.

Pleasant Surprise: When Stars of the Lid’s “Tippy’s Demise” came on during the tail end of my commute to BC today, I was a little concerned about the typically minimal nature of their work being difficult to hear over the din of traffic. But “Tippy’s Demise” seems far less ambient than the other tracks I’ve heard from And Their Refinement of the Decline, swelling with instrumentation halfway through the song before receding away. Unlike a few songs from the new Eluvium record featuring fuller, more classically oriented arrangements, “Tippy’s Demise” doesn’t edge toward awkward sentimentality, only emotional directness. I’m beginning to worry about the purchasing pile I’ll have to deal with in the coming months.

I almost managed to write a summary before the first 100 tracks elapsed, but sitting down for forty minutes is a far more difficult task than I initially imagined. I, gulp, made it to 103 before I found some free time.

General Sentiment: I was rather astonished by how downright friendly the first ninety tracks were. Late in the loading process I found myself dropping a few tracks from semi-forbidden records, i.e. indie rock standbys and last round favorites, and it's astonishing just how many of these particular songs came up. The only Lefty's Deceiver song, one of three Stella Link songs, one of two Sixto songs, the only Clark song, one of two Castor songs, one of a scant few Faith No More songs, one of two Faraquet songs ("Call It Sane," of course)... I'm sure there are more than I'm forgetting. I had anticipated a much more challenging barrage to start the second round, but this array of familiar tracks was actually a bit disappointing.

Worst Transitions: This nomination is remarkably easy: anytime a section from Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians came up. First, the decision to opt for the many-tracked approach as opposed to the unwieldy 56-minute-long version ignored the fact that virtually none of these sections employ fade-ins or fade-outs. Second, sandwiching minimalist classical between Ghostface Killah and Killing Joke, between the Dirty Three and the Stella Link, or between Dinosaur Jr and Ween may seem interesting, but one one of those transitions (the lead-in to the Stella Link) wasn't jarring. It's absolutely nothing against the Reich piece itself, which I've enjoyed on every occasion, but I just don't see this problem getting any better.

Worst Timing: I rarely take the T, but Brian Eno's "Zawinul" managed to come on during one of those rare trips on the red line. No matter how much I turned up the volume, I could only hear a faint echo of what I imagined is very well crafted ambient music. Straining to hear ambient music seems antithetical to me.

Best Timing: Though Cat Power's cover of Smog's "Red Apples" may have been more fitting for a particularly gray Boston afternoon, my walk around downtown was significantly more fun when the Stooges' "Search and Destroy" came on. I wished that I had rollerblades with me at the time (yes, skateboarding would hold more cachet, but rollerblading is what I'm good at) so I could skate around City Hall plaza.

Song Someone Else Enjoyed: I'm somewhat surprised that anyone could hear the music with six people crammed into the Corolla for a drive from Fenway to Inman Square, but my wife managed to pick out Shannon Wright's "You Baffle Me" from the forthcoming Let in the Light LP from the din of complaint. It's not too surprising that this Shannon Wright record has more crossover appeal than her last official album, Over the Sun from 2004, since that record's dark and violent swings from June of 44-esque guitar rock to claustrophobic piano ballads are understandably difficult to digest. If Let in the Light is Wright's attempt to move away from the dramatic scope of her last few records (a process started with her collaboration with Yann Tiersen), it appears to be a success.

Most Trying Moment: Dinosaur Jr's "Poledo" came on during a drive home, which I didn't mind at first, but when I had to start my next trip in the midst of lo-fi radio buzz, I really wanted Mascis to come in and start shredding the hell out of Barlow's seemingly aimless noise. Definitely a track that makes somewhat more sense in the context of the record, but not one that I'm likely to pick out.

Most Rewarding Stretch: As I mentioned, most of the first run was unexpectedly familiar (barring a few notable exceptions, particularly GZA's "Liquid Swords"), but in the last ten to fifteen tracks I've gotten some definite standouts. Dr. Dooom's "Leave Me Alone" bodes well for the rest of First Come First Served with traditionally strong verses, some excellent non-sequiturs (motorcycle helmet?), and a curiously insistent chorus. David Bowie's excellent "Be Me Wife" justified the inclusion of two of his late '70s albums. Bobby Hutcherson's "West 22nd Street Theme" utilizes an interesting rotation of the instruments' importance to the mix and a strong melodic thread. Finally, Edsel's "Fortune of Space" had a surprising horn part, a great chorus, and a well-crafted outro, all of which helped temper hearing a few of Edsel's stock transitional tracks earlier in the round. A solid run both in terms of individual songs and aesthetic variety.

I caught this show courtesy of Bradley’s Almanac, a far more user-friendly website than this one (lists upcoming Boston shows, posts audio bootlegs of shows, and gives away tickets and CDs). Aereogramme was initially the headliner for the show, which piqued my interest, so I checked out the other two bands to see how early I’d like to go. But by the time the ticket giveaway started, Aereogramme’s visa problem had forced them to delay their visit to Boston until the end of April. I liked what I had heard of A Northern Chorus and The Twilight Sad, so I was glad to move the show from game-time decision to no-risk night out with my random drawing.

I find it hard to think of adjectives that aren’t variations of “nice” or “pleasant” for A Northern Chorus’s opening set, which is unfortunate because I remembered enjoying every song they played. The Canadian six piece coupled violin and cello with frequently effects-laden guitars, but most of the set limited the crescendos in favor of tasteful introspective indie rock, reminding me of a more up-tempo incarnation of early Very Secretary. I hesitate on using “nice” or “pleasant” since those are effectively synonyms for “bland” or “inoffensive,” but ANC’s songs are well crafted enough to hold my attention. Can’t say I’ll go out of my way to see them headline a show, but I’ll gladly watch them open for a band I like, perhaps even when they open for Aereogramme’s make-up performance at the end of April.

Immediately after their set I chatted with Brad of Bradley’s Almanac, who was successful in determining my identity through a lone tidbit; “Guy with Pentax SLR” is apparently specific enough. I somehow managed to get on the topic of Juno—it doesn’t take much—and learned that he’s a fan, so any affections I have for his site should be doubled now. Ironically, talking to Brad distracted me from my lone between-set task of picking up a free Northern Chorus CD from the merch table. Oops.

The Twilight Sad had an air of future stardom, a claim I rarely make and a status I have almost no interest in predicting. (This show was a week before Pitchfork ranked them in the Best New Music category.) I credit the stage presence and vocals of James Graham for much of this air, since his vague disinterest and occasional menace were surprisingly captivating and his vocals ring out clear, even when yelled a bit. The band has a few great songs already—“And She Would Darken the Memory” and “Walking for Two Hours”—and those came across quite well in the live setting, giving Graham a chance for minor histrionics and secondary percussion duties. It’s hard for me not to think of them as the shoegazer version of Idlewild, which is an admittedly lazy comparison based primarily on the shared Scottish accent, but the Twilight Sad have a similarly anthemic quality. The band needs a second guitarist/keyboard player/accordion player, however, in order to fully replicate the depth of sound on their recordings. They certainly were loud enough, but the bass player’s tone was horrible for most the set and the guitarist wandered through lazy arpeggios during a few songs’ verses. Hell, they may not even need to worry about that, since I have the sense that, in true Idlewild fashion, the aesthetic will soon take a backseat to the songwriting and vocal charisma. I’ll pick up Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters when it’s available on vinyl, but their second record should be pivotal in terms of the band’s development. Keep an eye on them in any case.

I did take some pictures of both bands, although the set for A Northern Chorus turned out considerably better than the set for The Twilight Sad. I tried setting the white balance to the Middle East Upstairs’ lighting conditions, which worked out far better than I expected, but I personally prefer the cast of a certain color from the house lights.

I finally finished loading up my iPod for the second round of iPod Chicanery. This time there are 1251 songs lasting for 3.4 days. I’ve used the forethought this time of creating a “Continuing Random” playlist at the start that I’ll keep paring down as I update the project (which should be around every 100 songs).

So what ended up on the playlist this time? Part of me thinks it’ll be better to reveal the contents as they come up, but I’ll divulge a few of the picks now. I did a fair amount of research into which records I’ve inexplicably missed, which records fulfill genre holes in my listening habits, and which records will mix up the flow nicely, so those choices will probably be the ones that immediately come to mind.

Most Likely to Cause Car Accident: I decided to include Stars of the Lid’s And Their Refinement of the Decline—all two hours of it—since it nicely bridges the gap between ambient and minimalist classical. The examples of those genres that I included for the last round, Eluvium and Philip Glass respectively, often made me relax during morning commutes, so hopefully that will be the result again, not fiery death.

Lungfish Selections: I’ve slowly been making my way through Lungfish’s impressive catalog and opted to include three releases that I’m only vaguely familiar with for this round: Artificial Horizon, Pass and Stow, and Necrophones. I can’t think of any other artist who eked three albums onto the iPod, but Lungfish displayed remarkable consistency with the picks of Rainbows from Atoms, Indivisible, and The Unanimous Hour for the last round.

Taking Cues: I ended up stealing ideas for jazz records to include from Floodwatchmusic, namely Miles Davis’s live album Agharta, Bobby Hutcherson’s Components (since Montara was not easy to track down), and John Coltrane’s Meditations. These are joined by Herbie Hancock’s Thrust, which I had picked up on vinyl a few weeks ago, and Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come.

New Releases: I didn’t want this round to be all 2007 releases, but the new Battles, Narrator, Shannon Wright, 65daysofstatic, Twilight Sad, Pelican, Mary Timony Band, Caspian, Berg Sans Nipple, Errors, and Stars of the Lid albums all made it onto the playlist. My apologies to Wilco, Nina Nastasia, the Arcade Fire, Jesu, and Trans Am records and any other amazing records that manage to leak in the next three months. I’ll have to listen to you on my laptop.

Album I’m Most Excited to Hear: Since getting into Philip Glass’s minimal work, I’ve been trying to track down other solid releases in this vein, and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians came up as the dominant example. I initially downloaded the 1978 ECM version, which was only one track and 56 minutes long. Well, as much as I like a challenge, I gladly opted for the more recent Nonesuch recording, which is longer, but is also broken up into more manageable sections. I’ve been absorbed by this album since downloading it, so I’m quite eager to hear how it mixes with the other material on the playlist.

Those are all the spoilers you’re getting for now. I haven’t even divulged which eight rap albums made it on—only five are Wu-Tang Clan related!

Here are my pictures of Battles. This may be a spoiler.

I haven’t given Battles’ Mirrored an official mention, but the album has quickly made it into the small handful of 2007 records already penciled into my year-end list. If you haven’t seen the video for the single, “Atlas,” do so right away. The song may take a few listens to click—I’ve learned through extensive market research that chipmunk-pitched vocals are, at best, an acquired taste—but I can’t think of any songs from this year that top it. When I saw that Battles were headed to Great Scott in Allston, I almost frothed at the mouth. Given the band’s enthusiastic performance in the video and their reputation as a stellar live act, I gladly pre-ordered my ticket.

It turns out that I’m not alone in my enthusiasm for the band or their new material, as one of my friends sent me a disappointed e-mail the day of informing me that the show had sold out. Great Scott isn’t an enormous venue, so I wasn’t too surprised, but I’ve always been baffled by which Boston shows sell out. Hopefully Battles will come through again when Mirrored is officially out and play a larger venue.

Part of the reason for my pre-order was a prior commitment to playing poker at MIT, a commitment that ended up going longer than I expected. I can’t scoff at winning a poker tournament, but it did prevent me from any of Amoroso’s set and most of Major Stars’ set. What I saw of Major Stars’ performance was excellent, though—incendiary psych-rock jams that did not want to quit. They seem to fit in far more with the aesthetic and audience of P.A.’s Lounge, so hopefully I’ll be able to catch them there over the summer.

Battles’ move to the stage compelled the audience to crush forward, and unfortunately I was just off of the Ian Williams’ corner of the stage, preventing me from taking easy pictures or hearing much of Tyondai Braxton’s vocals. Neither of those aspects limited my enjoyment of their set, however, as they started with the glitching drone into galloping grooves of “TIJ” and never let up. When “Atlas” became recognizable from its loop-heavy opening, the crowd went nuts. Song’s a hit, folks.

Having seen Ian Williams perform with the three-piece incarnation of Don Caballero, I knew of his guitar-playing trickery, but watching him do finger-tapped leads on guitar (then loop them on his EchoPlex) and high-speed keyboard parts at the same time dropped my jaw far more than even that performance. Whereas Don Caballero sounds endlessly complex on record and revels in that aspect live (particularly in the nameless new band Damon Che recruited to replace Williams and Eric Emm), Battles manage to bundle all of their tricky parts into a cohesive whole. John Stanier’s combination of brute force and technical precision is the lynchpin for the band’s success, but there’s no weak link in the band.

Battles avoided almost all crowd banter and only played a one song encore before ending for the night. Some may view this stance as a kind of standoffish rock star pose, but I’d argue against it on the strength of this performance. They did almost everything I’d want out of a performance; played (most of) their best songs, performed with a visible enthusiasm, avoided lulls between songs, took strong studio recordings and reshaped them in the live setting with a new energy, and didn’t play too long. After bumming around so I could purchase the “Atlas” 12″, I drove home completely pleased with their performance.

Slight Tangent Number One: I’m amazed by how many people in Boston have digital SLRs at shows. Between the Isis show, the Do Make Say Think show, and the Battles show, there has been a consistent number of SLRs in the audience, almost all loaded with flash guns and battery packs. It’s been a while since I’ve taken concert photography regularly, but I have to assume that it’s the drop in price for entry-level digital SLRs (I mean, even I have one) which is causing this increase. I’d gotten used to coming to shows late and hanging out in the acoustic sweet spot of the venue, but I guess that trend will be coming to an end if I’d like to put any emphasis on my photography. Crap.

Slight Tangent Number Two: I ran into Mike Fournier after the show and chatted with him a bit. In case I haven’t mentioned this, I’m fairly sure he’s my doppelganger. I had coffee with him a few months ago to talk about the Juno documentary, and at the time he was sending the final proofs for his book on the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime into Continuum. Now the book has been released and is available from Amazon, awaiting both my and your purchase. I genuinely like the concept of the 33 1/3 series, even if some of the choices of albums may not cater to my particular tastes, but this book should be a worthy pick-up for anyone even slightly interested in the band or album. Now all Continuum needs to do is green-light my theoretical tome on Juno’s A Future Lived in Past Tense and we’ll be all set.

The first round of iPod Chicanery is done after nearly three months. In retrospect, I wish I had posted more frequent updates about the project, but that aspect was lacking my typical level of obsessive specification. This round counted for the final 261 of the 1164 total songs and seemingly went much faster than the previous rounds, but I can’t validate that with any sort of information.

Overlooked Facet: I really have to thank any of the people who sat in on this project as I drove around Boston. My wife took the brunt of it, but I’m guessing that at least ten other people suffered through the curious will of my iPod. Next time I’ll try to keep track of who has to listen to what.

Double Take: When I heard Slint’s “Glenn” on a gray morning, I thought that it fit perfectly with the uneasy cast of the Cambridge streets. That completely alien guitar line floors me every time I hear it, so when the song came up in the final hour of the project, I was worried that I might have comprised the integrity of the project. No, the issue was that the Slint EP had somehow made it onto my Nano twice, once as indie and once as post-rock. I’m somewhat surprised that I didn’t notice when “Rhoda” came up a second time, but the first time probably wasn’t within the prior few days.

Best Transition: I’m usually disappointed when two songs come in a row, but hearing Tungsten74’s “Guitar Solo and “Come Sweet Death” (two rare short songs in their catalog) back to back worked surprisingly well. Both songs may seem like transitional pieces on Aleatory Element and Binaurally Yours, respectively, but the precise layering in each track condenses their typical sprawl quite well.

Stealthy Long Song: I initially thought Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush” was another fine entry from Solo Piano that would pass by in about six minutes, but it kept going for almost fourteen. I was more surprised than dismayed, however, as I’ve become a fan of Glass’s piano-oriented work since picking up Glassworks on LP last year. I remember that particular commute taking much longer than usual, so “Mad Rush” may not have been accurate in terms of the title, but the song made the wait a bit easier.

New Favorite Song: I feel like I’ve switched favorite Lungfish songs every other day since finally getting into them this year, but “Fill the Days” from Indivisible has a great combination of a memorable riff and prototypically great lyrics. “Fill the days with significant waste / Fill the days with meaningful refuse / Fill the days with interesting things to say / Fill the days with gradual decay” has been running through my head since it came up on random (grabbing the LP in February hasn’t hurt, either), and though it doesn’t quite take the lyrical expanse of “Space Orgy,” “Hallucinatorium” or “Creation Story” into account, that perspective on day-to-day living is a bit more accessible (read: less shamanistic) to my existence. I don’t know why I never picked up this record after hearing a minute sample of this song on the Southern web site, but it’s better late than never.

New Favorite Album: I’ve come to realization that while the peaks on Speaking in Tongues make for most of my favorite Talking Heads songs, Fear of Music is a more consistent record in terms of songwriting and aesthetics. The afro-beat influence never overwhelms the post-punk nerviness. “Animals” and “Heaven” stuck out particularly during this round, but every song made me turn my head.

Join the Club: The lyrics on Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights are almost uniformly laughable. If not for the instrumental precision and Paul Banks’s delivery, I don’t know if I could stomach this record. I don’t know if I could make the same case for Antics, a record that lacks some of the solid album tracks like “The New.”

Worst Pause: Hearing Swirlies’ “San Cristobal de las Casas,” one of my work-out jams, on the drive to the Middle East for the Twilight Sad / A Northern Chorus show, got me drumming on the steering wheel, but pausing it halfway through to run out into the cold rain seemed unfair to the song. I had the final minute and a half waiting for me on the ride home, which meant that I started it up again in the midst of one of those galloping riffs.

Best No Pause: I got to hear Juno’s “Leave a Clean Camp and a Dead Fire” in its entirety on a run up to Reading last Friday. Thankfully I didn’t have to accelerate at the same measured pace as the song; I hit its high point immediately after merging onto 93 and kept it there (namely 77 on cruise control) until I reached my destination.

Unkind Perspective: None of the subsequent June of 44 records topped Engine Takes to Water in my view (although Four Great Points came close), but the bizarre beat poetry of “Pale Horse Sailor” has never sat well with me. Hearing it again and not being able to skip it made me remember how frequently June of 44 veered toward unjustifiable self-indulgence. “Sharks and Sailors” turned this sort of nautical fetishism into an actual song, so its aimless precursors should be retroactively erased.

Final Run: If not for Talking Heads’ “Electric Guitar”—an excellent song that transitioned poorly—the final two songs of the project would have been Mock Orange’s introspective “Old Man” and Eluvium’s “Perfect Neglect in a Field of Statues,” an amazing combination of statement and reflection, but the final three was still manageable.

I’m actually somewhat surprised that Tuesday’s show was the first time I’d seen Do Make Say Think, considering how loaded the upper echelon of my top 40 of the 2000s is with their recent work. I can only remember missing one particular show at the Empty Bottle in Chicago because of the timing, so maybe their touring schedule just isn’t up to snuff. I blame them, really.

I’d heard good things about the Berg Sans Nipple, the lone opener for the tour, so getting to the Middle East almost two hours after doors opened only to find that they hadn’t even started yet was a bit of a relief. Two guys with a ton of equipment played a hodge-podge of dream pop, post-rock, and IDM. Certain aspects of their sound reminded me of the headliners, but for the most part the layered keyboards, looped vocals, and primarily live drums struck an interesting path outside of strict genre boundary lines. I picked up the 2LP of their 2007 release Along the Quai (which contains two bonus songs not included on the CD), which seems more appropriate for background listening given the band’s overall emphasis on aesthetics over songwriting (barring “Mystic Song”), but hey, that’s why I bought it.

Do Make Say Think took the stage, starting with “Outer, Inner & Secret” from Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn, and the band’s numerous members slowly filtered into the mix. It’s hard to nail most members down to a particular instrument, but for most songs they had two drummers, a bassist, two guitarist, a violinist, and two horn players, the violinist being the only major surprise. Picking out the specific parts became more difficult as the first song swirled into a nearly cacophonous crescendo. I’ve never really considered DMST as a crescendo-oriented post-rock band, but live the swells of sound became more apparent.

The Middle East downstairs was packed for the show, which unfortunately involved people going absolutely bananas and screaming during every false ending or quiet part. It’s baffling to me that the Isis crowd suffered from far less of this over-exuberance, but the DMST crowd never let up. Quiet break in “Reitschule”? Let’s scream! The show upstairs is enough of a distraction, don’t add to it.

They played material from the last four records, including the vocal track “A With Living” from You, You’re a History in Rust. I’ve been on the fence about the new record, enjoying this song and a few others but never really getting into the record as a whole, and I don’t know if this concert changed anything. Part of me hopes that “A With Living” is the band’s only song with full vocals, since it’s effective enough without being overbearing, but I have a feeling that it may mark a sea change in their approach. The main fear I have about the vocals is that they’ll end up being a progressive version of Broken Social Scene. The highlights, if memory serves, were “Reitschule,” “Fredericia,” “When the Day Chokes the Night,” “The Landlord Is Dead,” and “Horns of a Rabbit.” One of the nice things about seeing such a remarkably consistent band is that I wasn’t worried about the specifics of the set list outside of a few personal favorites. Closing the show with “Horns of a Rabbit” and “The Universe,” their two most direct rockers, was a nice move.

It may be appropriate that I was pleased, rather than blown away with Do Make Say Think’s performance. There was some time between hearing “If I Only…” from their self-titled debut and finally getting their second album, Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead, and even more time before that record hit me fully.

I really hadn't taken many photographs since moving to Boston, but the death of my Nikon Coolpix 995 on my flight to Seattle in December punctuated that death. After weighing my options in the digital SLR field, I settled on a Pentax K100D, since it felt better in my hands than the competing models from Nikon and Canon and I could get $150 back from Pentax for buying the camera along with a 50-200mm telephoto lens. After some extensive backorder issues* (which have unfortunately not yet been resolved for the telephoto lens), I received my camera on Friday, a day late for the Life and Times show but in time for the Isis show.

Here's a small sampling of Isis pictures, which I had to take from a limited vantage point. I don't own a speedlight for the camera yet, so I ended up piggybacking off of other photographers' flashes for most of these pictures. I would have taken more, but a female photographer decided to stand directly in my line of sight for the second half of the show, and since I didn't have a photo pass and she appeared to be dating one of the security guards at the Middle East, I accepted my fate. I'm hoping to get closer for next week's Do Make Say Think show at the Middle East and the upcoming Battles show at Great Scott. Outside photos will have to wait for somewhat nicer weather.

* I ended up ordering the camera from Adorama, since they had my items listed in stock, good prices, and a nice selection of accessories. After immediately telling me that the camera body was out of stock and on back order, I decided to check the page on Adorama's site and found that it now listed the camera as backordered. Once it came back into stock about four days later, I figured the camera would ship, but nothing happened. I called customer service and they said that everything was in stock and would ship that day or the next. A few more days pass with no notification of a shipment, so I call them up again and find that the lens is now backordered. Oh. If not for the rebate situation ($50 for the camera alone, $50 for the lens alone, $150 for the camera and the lens on the same receipt), I would be less concerned, but a big part of the decision to purchase the lens was this rebate. I'm not sure if Pentax will honor the full rebate, since Adorama didn't charge the lens with the other items, but if the lens doesn't ship by March 27 it won't matter since that's the cut-off date for the rebate. Needless to say I will not order anything from them in the future.