Mark Lager’s Songs of the Decade pt. 1 (2010 – 2014)

Listen to this playlist and other gems today on Mark Lager’s radio show ‘Thursday Trips’- streaming online Thursdays 7-8 P.M. (Mountain Time) at: http://www.primcast.com/radio/610946

“Place at the End of the Street” (Cotton Jones)
Perhaps the standout song on the band’s 2010 record Tall Hours in the Glowstream, “Place At The End of the Street” best epitomizes their special evocative quality. Both personal and universal, the place is anyplace, another bored and restless night “waiting for something to do.” Everything changes, of course, when love enters the scene. The poetic lyrics of the “wild exploding moon” and Michael Nau meeting his lover Whitney McGraw in the morning on the banks of the glowstream are elevated to ecstatic heights by the perfect balance of folky jangling reverbed guitars, celestial vocal harmonies, and that classic rock’n’roll dreamscape. It is truly cosmic American music.

“Entrance Song” (The Black Angels)
This Austin band’s’ pedal-to-the-metal hymn to the highways of Texas has simple lyrics yet its chugging guitars and revving rhythms make it a desert psych soundtrack for cruising at high speeds down the dusty open road. (It’s surprising that this was not the first track on their 2010 record Phosphene Dream since its sound and title makes it an obvious opener.)

“Sadie” (Black Mountain)
The closing track from the Canadian band’s 2010 record Wilderness Heart–this is the dark side of psychedelia. The stark and sinister Death Valley gathering ‘round the campfire chanting in this song and its name appear to be allusions to the Manson Family’s Susan Atkins.

“Your Own Kind” (Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter)
Jesse Sykes’ ghostly lyrics/vocals explored the mysterious terrains of the “dreaming dead” and “spectral beings” in her 2004 record Oh My Girl and her 2007 record Like Love Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul while her band performed sepia-toned in the background (what critics referred to as a “country gothic noir” style.) Her guitarist Phil Wandscher lets loose on their 2011 record Marble Son. His fierce and fiery psychedelic playing is at its most powerful on this track.

“Ice Age” (Dr. John)
The album cover of Dr. John’s 2012 Grammy Award winning Locked Down displayed Mac Rebennack in his trademark headdress. Locked Down was not a return to the late night swamp voodoo rituals of his debut Gris-Gris but it was his certainly his most politically charged and strongest record since 1969’s Babylon–especially this track as he calls out the CIA and KKK.

“I Am What I Am” (Spiritualized)
The standout song from Jason Pierce’s 2012 Sweet Heart Sweet Light– he is reunited here with his Scorpio soul brother Dr. John the Night Tripper playing piano (who performed with him previously on 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space) while free jazz sax squeals and soulful female background vocalists transform this track into a juggernaut.

“Run to Your Mama” (Goat)
The title of this Swedish collective’s 2012 debut (World Music) is befitting for the diversity of styles contained within: all of the tracks flow together into an orgiastic melting pot of experimental psychedelia, two soulful female singers, gritty guitar licks, African percussion, and droning, Far Eastern mysticism, which creates an apocalyptic atmosphere. Pagan soundtrack for the 21st century!

“Endors Toi” (Tame Impala)
The band’s 2010 debut Innerspeaker is ‘60s style neo-psychedelia while Kevin Parker’s Currents is ‘80s synthpop (I dislike Currents and personally think it was overproduced and overrated.) Kevin Parker struck a balance between his two musical sides on 2012’s Lonerism and in the process created a hypnotic headphone record and what is still his best album. “Endors Toi” is a 3-minute gem that contains everything that makes Lonerism ear candy: Parker’s Lennonesque lyrics/vocals (circa Revolver) musing about dreams and sleep while the Technicolor widescreen guitars and synthesizers swirl around like spinning circus rides (similar to the scenes that I synched up with the song in this December 2012 video when I was stoned.)

“Bisou Magique” (Melody’s Echo Chamber)
This song is the crown jewel of French musician Melody Prochet’s 2012 debut. Another ear candy headphone record. Melody Prochet’s enchanting and ethereal vocals are coated with hallucinogenic and trippy sound effects by Kevin Parker.

“Beautiful Son” (Peaking Lights)
The beatific female vocals and magical/maternal lyrics combine with childlike piano/hypnotic keyboards and spacey slide guitar to give birth to the standout track on 2012’s Lucifer (the band’s best album.) This song is both soothing and spellbinding.

“On the Sea” (Beach House)
The cinematic centerpiece of the band’s 2012 record Bloom. A melancholy piano ballad which slowly surges into a swooning and haunting bliss-out with Alex Scally’s otherworldly guitar textures, Victoria Legrand’s carnival organ, and the guest viola of Joe Cueto sounding like a miniature orchestra conducting a waltz for the end of the world.

“2013” (Primal Scream)
This 9-minute salvo, the opening track from Primal Scream’s More Light, is, by far, the strongest song they released during this decade. Caterwauling saxophone, cutting electronics, and guitars rampaging red as Bobby Gillespie protests against corporate culture and the war machine:

“21st century slaves
A peasant underclass
Television, propaganda, fear
How long will this shit last?
Punk rock came and went and nothing changed
Was it just a pose?
Every generation buys the lie just like the one before
Bought and sold
What happened to the voices of dissent?
Getting rich I guess
Become part of the establishment
Power corrupts the best
They killed the counterculture underground
It offers no critique
No revolutionary spirit left
They’ve sanitised the freaks
It’s the final solution to teenage revolution
The total subjugation of the rock and roll nation
Inducted, corrupted, seduced and reduced
Deluded, excluded, shackled and hooded
Soldier boys dying in the war
Hear their mothers cry
The chairman of the board of B.P./Shell
Are guilty of war crimes”

“The Contract” (Purson)
The second single from British band Purson’s debut The Circle and the Blue Door, this track is a wild, woolly wonderland of fuzzed-out guitars and organs played in the prog rock style. Theatrical vocalist Rosalie Cunningham (born April 25, 1990) described Purson’s sound as “vaudeville carny psych” and her mysterious presence is magnified in this music video:

“Pyrrhic” (Julianna Barwick)
Julianna Barwick layered and looped her delicate, ethereal, wordless vocals to create ambient mood pieces such as 2011’s The Magic Place. On Nepenthe, she expanded her sound to include an Icelandic girl’s choir and a stark string section. This track is the cinematic centerpiece of this reflective record.

“Lay Myself Down” (Mazzy Star)
Mazzy Star released Seasons of Your Day (their first record in 17 years, since 1996’s Among My Swan) in 2013 and, although it does not contain a hit love song such as “Fade Into You”, it could be considered in many ways their most mature and satisfying album. David Roback’s guitar work became even bluesier than before (with an emphasis on Delta style slide, plus he was even accompanied by British folk guitar genius Bert Jansch) and Hope Sandoval’s (born June 24, 1966) honeyed vocals aged like a fine wine. Alongside autumnal folk and late night blues, the band also crafted this country classic, a drunken dusk graveyard stroll, accented with Stephen McCarthy’s pedal steel.

“Temples of the Moon” (Pure Bathing Culture)
The closing track from Portland, Oregon band Pure Bathing Culture’s debut Moon Tides, this is a crystalline dream pop gem adorned with glistening, glittering guitar, misty synthesizers, and the enchanting, magical vocals of Sarah Versprille.

“This Shroud” (Rose Windows)
The penultimate song from the Seattle psychedelic band’s self-titled debut, this 9+ minute desert psych trance is epic in every sense of the word: Middle Eastern/Persian chanting and mysticism meets fluttering flute, heavy metal/stoner rock guitars, and pummeling percussion in a towering track that summons the widescreen vistas from Lawrence of Arabia. The scene-stealer and show-stopper is Rabia Shaheen Qazi’s (born January 12, 1991) mesmerizing, powerful vocals.

“Goldtone” (Kurt Vile)
Kurt Vile (born January 3, 1980) could not have chosen a more fitting name for the closing track from his record Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze. This is a cure for every hangover: a mellow, sparkling song that feels like soaking up the sun on a breezy, bright, warm spring day after a cold, gray, long winter. Your ears are blessed by beatific female background vocals, gleaming guitars, and subtle vibraphones. At the 8:30 mark of this 10-minute track, you ascend into a gorgeous guitar bliss-out.

“Mary Mountain” (Quilt)
Held in Splendor is the most dazzling record from northeast U.S. band Quilt. Merging Anna Fox Rochinski’s dulcet vocals with she and bandmate Shane Butler’s bright, crisp, ringing twin guitars and a hypnotic motorik rhythm section, this track is the album’s psychedelic peak.

“Thielbar” (Sleepy Sun)
Maui Tears is San Francisco band Sleepy Sun’s greatest record, especially this highlight, the album’s trippiest track. Between the 4:39 – 6:09 mark, the song ignites like a rocket launch and blasts off into the stratosphere with fuzzed-out, heavy, spacey stoner rock guitars set for interstellar overdrive.

“Sand Dance” (Temples)
The penultimate track from British band Temples’ debut Sun Structures, this track grooves along like a caravan of acid rock gypsies on camels traveling through distant Saharan dunes or faraway Egyptian ruins. The guitars, keyboards, and percussion transition to a purely instrumental arabesque during the final section of the track, a magnificent and majestic mirage.

“Here So Rain” (Black Submarine)
Gradually fading in with the spinning sounds of distant decayed feedback before a delicate keyboard arpeggio, raindrops falling, ushers in Simon Jones’ deep bass beat. Amelia Tucker’s warning “The storm is going to break” is conveyed in stark, intense sonic blueprints as Davide Rossi’s insistent violin and Nick McCabe’s guitar duel with each other over a marching beat which then drops out to the violin’s solo psalm, a graceful series of notes which uncurl like clouds of smoke, and then it’s full speed ahead back into the chaotic turbulence. This 8-minute epic is Nick McCabe’s most powerful track since A Storm in Heaven.

“Eyes to the Wind” (The War On Drugs)
Adam Granduciel’s breakthrough Lost in the Dream was acclaimed by many critics and music magazines as the best album of 2014. Although this is the sixth track of the record, it is the cinematic climax. Adam Granduciel’s wistful lyrics, guitars, keyboards, piano, saxophone, and aching pedal steel make this song a masterpiece. Soundtrack to leaving your hometown far behind down the open road.

“Last Call” (The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger)
The cinematic centerpiece of Sean Lennon’s and his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl’s Midnight Sun record. Dreamy vocal duet and Beatles-ish 1960s production values meets lyrics combining urban squalor and the Wizard of Oz. The song climaxes with Floydian guitar psychedelics.

by Mark Lager

*Listen to this playlist today on Mark Lager’s radio show ‘Thursday Trips’- streaming online Thursdays 7-8 P.M. (Mountain Time) at: http://www.primcast.com/radio/610946