This week's selection suggests a definite shift in mood from the bright and sunny music I was posting during the summer. This brings me to the connection between our musical choices and something as banal as the weather. I often come back to how the weather can shape my desire to listen to certain songs and seek out certain styles and sounds. This tendency, which I imagine is a common on, points to something unique about music in comparison to other forms of expression and something especially unique about music in the 21st Century. When technology has made it so accessible and pervasive, we really can take music anywhere and that definitely changes how we listen to music and what we listen to. Having, in a relative sense, the ability to completely dictate when and how we listen to music as we go about our daily lives, we use it to color our experiences, adding this element that becomes integral to how we  remember certain times and places. As such, our tastes can be equally shaped by what is going on around us, the weather being an obvious example. With the relative ability to choose what we listen to, we are often more conscious of matching our mood and the outside world to our choices. This is a rather long winded way to justify myself for picking slightly more gloomy tracks this week. Enjoy!

Myths - "The Horizon (Grimes and Majical Cloudz Remix):" Currently touring together, Grimes contributed vocals to this remix of Myths' "The Horizon." The result is stripped down and smooth with Grimes' vocals drifting through and winding around the dreamy melody.


Black Moth Super Rainbow- "Gangs in the Garden:" A complete 180 from the Grimes/Myths track, Black Moth Super Rainbow have released another single in preparation for their forthcoming album. "Gangs in the Garden" is a short burst with a driving groove. While sounding decidedly less ethereal than older Black Moth Super Rainbow, this song still features the familiar heavily treated vocals from previous albums, now in response to a more abrasive computer voice.


Girls Names - "The New Life:" A gloomy track featuring downtrodden vocals over jangling guitar and ominous synth tones that swirl in and out intermittently,  Girls Names have provided a perfect track for gloomy autumn afternoons. The song takes a surprising turn at the end, switching to a long instrumental and atmospheric coda where dissonant guitar feedback replaces the earlier vocals.


Foxygen - "Shuggie:" The constantly changing song alternates between melancholy and swaggering, finally ending with a coda that seems to drunkenly march off into the end. Jagjaguwar will put out Foxygen's newest album in early 2013.


Mac DeMarco- "Ode to Viceroy:" Mac DeMarco once again heavily channels the bands of Postcard Records (Scottish post-punk from the early 80's) on his latest release. "Ode to Viceroy" is a down-tempo song driven by jangly guitar. As I noted, this track is heavily indebted to acts like Orange Juice, Josef K, and Aztec Camera; however, DeMarco uses his influences well and the song manages to not sound derivative.

The difficulty in writing about music is excellently articulated in an article, originally printed by The Believer  in 2009. "Dancing About Architecture" (full text can be found here, luckily), points out that music can be such a subjective experience, that the act of writing can, when it seeks to communicate an experience in words, often fall short. I was struck by this thought when writing about some of this week's songs, especially the track by Tops. "Easy Friends" is a fairly straight forward track and one that I liked a lot, but, again, how to explain it to you accurately and without falling into a series of cliches. Then again, cliches can, despite what your writing instructor often tells you, be very useful. If your goal is to communicate to as many people as possible, the meaning is often not most universally discussed by using conventions in which everyone is intimately familiar with, which, in this case, is a cliche. That said, it is a somewhat thorny issue that cannot be thoroughly approached in a short column meant to tell you about some new music released this week.  I include it here merely to point out how interesting the continued discussion about music can be even from the standpoint of something as basic as writing about music on a regular basis. Here, without further pseudo intellectual rambling, is this week's edition of Listener's Digest.

Tops - "Easy Friends:" Montreal band, Tops, will be releasing this as a 7" next week. Easy going and poppy, the song features jangling guitars and unique female vocals.

FIDLAR - "Cheap Beer:" You have to admire the brazen youthfulness of this track. The band name is an acronym for "fuck it, dog - life's a risk," which seems to sum up the ethos of this whole song. A sloppy ode to cheap beer, which I can definitely get behind (because PBR isn't so bad when it is cold, no seriously), "Cheap Beer" is a great example of raucous garage rock with a great opening.

Teen Daze - "New Life:" It has hit home that I have been writing about synth driven electronic songs all summer and that every song alternates between this and garage rock. I apologize if that has gotten boring but there have been some really enjoyable things put out within these genres. "New Life" is an atmospheric track driven by synths and smooth vocals and the first single of the act's second album this year, which is set to be released this November.

The Album Leaf - "Descent:" A gorgeous instrumental track off of the quartet's upcoming EP. "Descent" masterfully employs guitar and synths to creating a sweeping track that grows in magnitude over time. This is a great change of pace from the alternating synth pop/garage rock cycle I just discussed. A pensive and satisfying song.

The Black Keys - "I Got Mine" (Tobacco Remix): OK, so this track came out a day before my normal cut off but it was just such a great remix, I had to include it. This remix, done by Black Moth Super Rainbow's frontman Tobacco, mixes sensibilities to create a much stronger version of this song, in my opinion.