"Nightswimming" - R.E.M.

I always feel conflicted towards the end of summer. No matter how hot or long, I'm always loathe to say goodbye to another year's worth of warmth. Even though autumn holds the promise of color and cool, we all know that we're still inevitably a little closer to the dark and cold. R.E.M. captured this feeling perfectly in Automatic For The People's penultimate track, "Nightswimming." Pitchfork recently crowned it the 73rd best song of the 90's (obviously) and it's no wonder, as it shows the band at their money-down best.

Our Concert Could Be Your Life

Elvis Costello never said that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", despite what you may have heard. I'm glad too, because although many of music's joys are ineffable, that's no reason not to try to put them into words. Michael Azerrad knows this better than most people, as the author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, the seminal history of the "post-punk" or "alternative" or "D.I.Y." or "whatever name you care to give it" movement of brash, independent and unfiltered music that bubbled up around the country during the 1980's before jumping the charts in 1992 (to very mixed results).


The subtitle of Azerrad's book is "Scenes From The American Indie Underground" and it's not unfair to say that the bands chronicled in this book functionally started the musical genre that is now ubiquitously and unhelpfully referred to as "indie rock." Of the 13 bands profiled only one, Sonic Youth is still going. A few such as Mission of Burma, Big Black, the Butthole Surfers and even the Replacements have reformed (although the latter was a two song, studio-only affair). But the influence they project onto the scene today is almost incalculable.

Happy National Radio Day, Here's A Mix!

Poles who speak English have an oddly charming way of turning phrases. I think it's the combination of the nation's famed "poetic soul" and the almost-familiarity of a second tongue. One of the things I enjoyed most when I lived in Poland was people's habit of describing things as "something terrible, but also something wonderful".


I couldn't think of a better description of radio than "something terrible, but also something wonderful" for music. The radio has exposed millions to mind-altering music and turned many a group of hopeful teens into prophets with an audience of millions. At the same time, radio has also always been a great homogenizer, sanitizer and censor of music, a trend that grows ever worse with Clear Channel playlists increasingly dominating the commercial dial.

I Love Beach Music

The other night I was speeding down the Dan Ryan, feeling great. The sweetly moist post rain breeze disheveled my hair as I threw my head back, grinned at my girlfriend and yelled joyously "I feel like I'm in South Carolina!"


Perhaps I should explain.

New Music: Souljunky - Here and Now [EP]

One of the problems with being a music-lover in the internet age is that there is bottomless well of fantastic music that's always literally right at your fingertips. Souljunky is a new Chicago band that demonstrates that principle aptly (full disclosure, Your Narrator is a friend of one of the band members). The group is four guys who work regular jobs and have full lives but also decided to get together and record some absolutely unbeatable pop rock in their free time.


The result is their debut EP, Here and Now which is twenty minutes of sweet musical escapism that you can get right now, for free. What a time to be alive! The group is based around songwriters Chris Hess and John Mott who have played alongside midwestern icons such as Jay Bennett and the Bodeans. They're joined by John Vander Weit and Grant Niebergall holding down the rhythm section. It's a classic pop four piece with guitar, bass, drums and keyboards that gives this group of songs a bouncy, airy feel that would fit right in alongside the New Pornographers or the Heavenly States on a mixtape.

Covering Our Bases - The Velvet Underground

You shoulda seen 'em then...

Certain bands are so influential that they become touchstones in the history of popular music. There are few better ways of measuring a band's influence than the amount of nods it gets via covers. Since nothing gets On Warmer Music going like a good cover, we'll take some time to look at those bands.


The Velvet Underground are perhaps the classic cult band. Formed by Andy Warhol in 1966 around Lou Reed, they released four classic albums that combined lyrics about deviant sex, hard drug use and arty pretensions with a mixture of vicious noise freakouts and poppy gems. It's been hoarily said that "they didn't sell many albums, but everyone who bought one went on to form a band" but by the last decade they were such a hip influence that Eddie Argos from Art Brut complained that he didn't "want to hear the sound of the Velvet Underground a second time around". That notwithstanding, the Velvets are founding fathers (/mothers) of the very idea of "indie rock" and today we've got some proof.

The Wayback Machine: Nada Surf 's Let Go

Today we're introducing a new feature here at On Warmer Music called The Wayback Machine where we take a look back at some part of musical history that bears re-examination. Our first entry concerns New York band Nada Surf's 2002 album, Let Go. Little-heralded at the time, the album reivented the Nada Surf brand, spurring their success throughout the 00's. With a classic rock n' roll creation story and some of the most pointed examinations of big-city life and loneliness since the Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I, Let Go quietly became one of the best albums of the last decade, even if it missed most of the decade-end lists.

After releasing their buzz-bin debut High/Low (featuring the novelty-hit-that-shall-not-be-named) at the tail end of the "alternative" movement, Nada Surf's follow-up album, The Proximity Effect was released in 1998 to critical and popular acclaim in Europe. Elektra saw no viable US single and asked the band to tinker with the album, releasing a cover of "Why Are You So Mean To Me?" as the lead single. The band eventually said, "enough" and bought back the rights to the album, releasing it to mixed reviews in the States in 2000.