Starving Weirdos and Other 2009 Musical Edge Conditions

Starving Weirdos LIVE in Tilburg at ZXZW


So far this year, Starving Weirdos have released the astonishing "Blue Heron" hand-crafted LP, and the even-more-amazing "Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate" live in Brussels cassette. Above is a 13-minute excerpt from GGPP.

We know that the year in mainstream music already has started out strong, with Bruce, Neko, U2, Antony, A.C., Morrissey, etc. At the same time, the year in improv is starting out riotous, with remarkable new stuff from Pelt, Ashtray Navigations, Astral Social Club, at least nine releases in two months from Sunburned Hand of the Man, and of course, Starving Weirdos. Even if the mainstream music industry melts down with the rest of the global economy in midsummer, handmade recordings will get us through a very healthy (in ideas, if nothing else) 2009.

Dazzling January

Conventional wisdom says that decent music is rarely, if ever, released in January. We already knew The Boss was going to disrupt that assumption by dedicating his Jan. 27 release, Working on a Dream, to the incoming Obama administration. But was all the Obama fuss responsible for the sudden flurry of astonishing music releases in a bleak and broke January? Or was it music producers trying to get anything in the stores while consumers still had a few pennies left? In any event, the following releases are worth your time and attention:

Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream
Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light (Kazuo Ohno pictured above)
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
Bon Iver - Blood Bank EP
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast/Useless Creatures
Matt and Kim - Grand
Robert Pollard - The Crawling Distance
A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
Jackie-O Motherfucker - The Blood of Life
The Shadow Ring - Life Review, 1993-2003
Astral Social Club - Plug Music Ramoon
Six Organs of Admittance - RTZ

I'm certainly not complaining, though my wallet is. Could indicate a bumper year for creative music.