#bummertime

Tobey wears, or at least has worn, a retainer.

This is my 2014 end-o-summer playlist, Bummertime.

featuring Lykke Li, alt-J, Beyoncé, Rae Morris, Bleachers, The Weeknd, Charli XCX, astronomyy and more!

The wise Devin Taylor of Knuckleberry Finn wrote this incredible review of Bummertime II <3

After a listen, all the best albums leave you only partially satisfied. Partially satisfied because you want more music -they are often brief in duration- but even when they are long, that long is never enough. Reign in Blood by Slaver and The White Album by the Beatles are both perfect examples of this near-perfection. Bummertime II by Agnostic (Asher Meerovich) has both the brevity of the former and the eclecticism of the latter, yet it sounds like neither. It is a seamless mish-mash of alternative, folk, and pop goodness with a hearty sprinkling of experimentalism. Wholly unique, this collection has a candid sort of feel, like skimming through a musician’s doodlings. In this case, the byproducts of summer boredom ‘s creativity. Many of the songs have a sort of maximalist-minimalist feel. The instrumentation itself is fairly simplistic and sparse, with instrumental overdubs used conservatively and with restraint -only to enhance the song. The guitar is used as the main percussive instrument in many of these songs, though a notable exception is the third track “Woman in Black” in which he uses vocalization and the melodic clinking of glasses of water as the backbeat.

The driving force behind the album's songs are the vocal tracks, often with meticulously overdubbed vocal harmonies. The title track alone has a ridiculous (in a good way) amount of these which provide almost a choral effect. It also has a tasteful bit of electric guitar in the background and some of the more interesting lyrics, beginning mysteriously and evocatively with: “A summer storm washed through my hometown.” The name “Bummertime” is certainly fitting. The album as a whole is a rather morose affair. Agnostic sings with a raw emotion reminiscent of Bright Eyes, but thankfully he is not as unbearably whiny. Hell, he is hardly whiny at all. In fact, lines like “I keep trying to write songs about heroin, but every line comes out about you” are self-conscious and tongue and cheek, almost like something out of a Ween song.

Not to say that Agnostic is novelty act, as I said earlier many of these songs are rather somber, dealing with the age old themes of love and loss. My favorite song of the album is a wonderful rollicking number and bit of comic relief called “Elvis Impersonator”, which features some of the most interesting guitar work on the album. It also has some delightfully strange lyrics about a rather creepy looking Elvis impersonating neighbor with “big scary eyes”. This number sounds like it would lend itself to being performed by Meerovich’s full band Tomato Dodgers. Other highlights of the record include “You”, with its beautiful ambient instrumentation and the screaming bluesy dirge of “Shave Your Head When You Get This”, which admittedly is likely an acquired taste.

A problem that people may have with Bummertime II is it is a bit noisy in places. I am personally not a huge fan of “I Feel the Devil’s Breath on the Back of My Neck”, a loud interlude featuring unintelligible murmured lyrics in the background. It does make a nice segue into “WISBIG” (which stands for “Why I Stopped Believing In God”, an easy listening minute long instrumental). Though I like “Throw Your Life Away” with its broken sounding muddy guitar and distorted back up vocals. However, it would be nice to hear a poppy, more accessible version because it has such a strong vocal melody and one of the best sets of lyrics on the album. My biggest problem is the one minute twelve second closer “I Want to Love Myself, But I Also Want to Set Myself on Fire”. Despite its grandiose sounding title, it’s a rather anticlimactic number to end the album on. After the gorgeous “Your Troubles in Dust”, it seems an afterthought. These are all small complaints though. Bummertime II is as fine as free music comes.

NEW SONG: the noises we make when no one is around - "playing ghost"

“Playing ghost” sounds just like what it is – a British songwriter with a beautiful voice, playing acoustic guitar in a dark room while listening to Xiu Xiu.  “I can see that I am not safe,” Taylor-Broad sings quietly, as an atmosphere of spindly acoustic guitars and ominous synths slowly build up around him. The haunting, repetitive melody makes this less a conventional song and more like an ambient drone composed of traditional instruments. It’s unusual and uncomfortable, and it’ll have you coming back for repeated listens as you’re doing something else, until you realize it’s latched onto your brain. For maximum effect, listen in the dark.