Stone Roses, I Was Crazy To Have Ever Let You Go.

But now, you're back together. Maybe I'll come see ya sometime, if either of us is around. (Today, I just woke up and realized how great the Stone Roses were and wondered why I deleted them from my computer back in high school. What a fool I was!)

Matt and Kim, Andrew W.K. and Soulja Boy - "I'm A Goner"

I meant to write about this latest instalment in Converse's annual Three Artists One Song series as soon as I heard it, but it got backlogged by every post I made since summer.

I don't like Soulja Boy or Matt and Kim, but I thought Andrew W.K. alone would have made "I'm A Goner" worth listening to. Plus, I'm always pretty optimistic about collaborations between drastically different artists, even if I don't like everyone involved. Such was my mindset going into last year's kick-ass Three Artists One Song track "All Summer" by Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino, Kid Cudi and Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij.

YouTube user WK For President pretty much sums up my thoughts on "I'm A Goner" and Matt's explanation that they were trying to create the ultimate summer party-song:

"Not nearly enough Andrew WK. This is too chill to be a party song, I'm not too sure what your parties look like... I can't shotgun to this."

Indeed. I'm not a big partier, but even I wouldn't put on this song at a party. And I don't know what's up with Andrew W.K.'s voice here (he sings higher than usual), but I know I don't like it.

Oh, well. Here's to next year.

Hi ho.

Frank Alpine: Minimalist Synth-Driven Dark Wave Done Right

I usually sigh internally when I come across music tagged as "synth," especially when it follows the term "minimalist." Surprisingly, L.A. Dark Waver Frank Alpine's 2011 self-titled album is one of the most engaging albums I've heard in a long time.

Post-punk drum(-machine)-fills hem in dense, brooding, swirling synth lines just enough to create a very focused, immediate listening experience. It is precisely this focus - this hemming in - that prevents the album's eight songs, which average five minutes in length, from spilling into amorphousness and instead feel shorter than they actually are; the forty-three-minute album is over before I know it, and I'm always left craving more.

Like Dark Wave's close cousins Post-Punk and New Wave, Frank Alpine is also a danceable enough album: the final track "My Feelings" could easily pass as a streamlined LCD Soundsystem B-Side (an artist who's never hidden his Post-Punk and New Wave proclivities), complete with marginally distanced vocals and James Murphy-like vocal delivery.

In addition to the hyperlinked "My Feelings," I've included my three favourite tracks from Frank Alpine:

"I Really Think That It Takes Crisis To Grow.

It takes failure and pain. I have this life where everything is always unknown, I never have any money, I have no partner, no security, it's all unknown, career unknown, question mark. Question mark. Question mark. And while that's exciting because I never have to question whether I took the safe route at the same time it's exhausting. Sitting there writing, coming up with the song is the security, trying to nail down something good, when I do it, I've done something."

- Marnie Stern

"Lo-Fi Life"

58 min,18 sec

1. The Rats - "World War III"
2. Daniel Johnston - "Speeding Motorcycle"
3. The Scrotum Poles - "It Just Ain't Fucking Funny"
4. The Chameleons - "Seriocity"
5. No Age - "Everybody's Down"
6. Kurt Vile - "Breathin' Out"
7. Mattress - "Eldorado"
8. Guided by Voices - "Tractor Rape Chain"
9. Condo Fucks - "Accident"
10. Nodzzz - "Highway Memorial Shrine"
11. Beat Happening - "Look Around"
12. Grown Ups - "Quit My Job"
13. John Maus - "I Want To Live"
14. tUnE-yArDs - "Sunlight"
15. A Faulty Chromosome - "Them Pleasures of the Flesh"
16. Bratmobile - "Love Thing"
17. John Bender - "27B4 'Rainy Day Sunshine'"
18. Best Coast - "Sun Was High (So Was I)"
19. Japanther - "Bumpin' Rap Tapes"
20. The Intelligence - "The World Is A Drag"

Do You Remember Where You Were the First Time You Heard Guided by Voices?

I was sixteen-years-old, sitting in my living room watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I'd heard of the alternative lo-fi legends long before I saw what became their final television appearance. With that one performance, a fan was born. Their album Alien Lanes (Matador, 1995) remains one of my top twenty-five albums of all time:

The Dandy Warhols - "Genius"

My favourite Dandy Warhols song. "Genius," from their first album Dandys Rule OK? (Tim/Kerr Records, 1995), showcases the band at its song-writing best: perfect pace, depressingly self-effacing lyrics which Courtney Taylor-Taylor sings with just the right amount of emotion, all topped with a heart-wrenching climax. Every note is where it should be. "Genius" is definitely the most underrated Dandys song, at least amongst my friends.

I sometimes get frustrated that the Dandy Warhols haven't written a song nearly as good as "Genius" since "Big Indian" (my second favourite Dandy Warhols song) which came out eleven years ago. But "Genius" alone pretty much makes up for all of the Dandy's missteps.

I know to say
Things I never meant to
To seem a little more sane
'Cause that's what it takes

I can jive with that.