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You know. I don't agree, but I think there might be a kind of pretension to the videos that might be giving you this vibe. But I don't think it's him, it's the camera work and the high contrast black and white. It pretends what he is saying is bigger than what it really is. Can you imagine if it were just a tripod camera next to him sitting at the piano explaining in warm colors? He would come off as a lot more down to Earth. He could be a guest spot on Mr.Rogers.

This is my thought as well. I think it's a disservice that fans and media rank music. I don't think the artists are out to be ranked. I don't think Radiohead is somewhere out there with a white board trying to figure out a strategy for their next record so they can beat Sufjan in the musical Superbowl played on Pitchfork Field. There is a level of balls out arrogance that I can appreciate in some forms of Rock music or Hip Hop. But Oasis is hardly in any of those categories. Noel comes off sounding like Michael Bolton in a rap battle.

My daughters are 6 and 4. I play them a lot of music and try to not tell them my personal feelings about it so they can form their own opinions. And their favorite band, hands down, is Hot Chip. That says something, in my mind. Played in a vacuum, without any concept of hype, or real understanding of instruments or performance, Hot Chip sells. I know at least two people that will be excited for a Hot Chip reunion tour in 20 years. I played them Oasis before and they asked me to turn it off.

Here is a conversation that I imagine bands have a lot: Guy in Band: So, how should we go about promoting ourselves as a band. Marketing Professional: Okay, you need to claim to make better music than a completely different more popular band that clearly makes better music than you. Guy in Band: I don't know... Do you really think that will work? Marketing Professional: Yes. I guarantee it will.

Of all the scattered debris that continues to fall from the great burning zeppelin called Weezer, there is nothing I have enjoyed more than "Put Me Back Together" off of Raditude. I think I'm probably the only person that has ever heard it though, because it came directly after "Can't Stop Partying" and most of the population was dead by the time Lil Wayne started blowing green smoke up everyone's noses. But "Put Me Back Together" is a good song. Which is maybe sad to admit, since it was written by All American Rejects (who are rejected by all of America for a very honorable reason, in most cases). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-jAhAU1eY

Yes. You could probably call it "going to sleep" stuff. It is definitely night time music (Although I listened to it three times in a row on a recent foggy Saturday afternoon and it was perfect). It is atmospheric and melodic and avoids some of the abrasive or challenging tendencies that Eluvium sometimes explores. Typically it is what I reach for on the ride home from work, on days when I was forced to stay late in the office and I'm wanting to wind down on the drive home. The soundtrack to dark empty streets. And I'm just sailing through them like a small wooden ship maneuvering through great glacier waters. Pillars rising on either side and disappearing overhead. Chunks of ice drifting past and closing the channels behind me. A journey into a realm you can never return from. It is a complicated victory. Here is a random track I just pulled off of Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jr7pcAnZo

This is pretty good. Anyone that enjoys Eluvium should seek out his collaboration album Maze of Woods from earlier this year. It was released under the name Inventions and was made with Mark Smith from Explosions in the Sky. It's more Eluvium than Explosions, but still takes his sound to a different place. It's really a fantastic mood piece.

That certain sounds a lot like "Hair Suit"... Are you sure that is what you would like me to call your body?

I want to believe.

I still remember when I was in middle school and I went to my first concert. It was Weird Al Yankovic. I wore my favorite T Shirt that had a huge picture of Larry from the 3 Stooges on it. The concert blew my mind. I had never seen anything like it before. Songs and props and the crowd just going completely nuts. I was their with a friend of mine in the nosebleed section of the Mezzanine, and my friend's older brother had these awesome seats right up at the front. We could see him from where we were sitting. A great big hairy guy. And in the one break between songs while Al was bantering on stage my friends brother jumps up and starts screaming, "Bear my Children, Al!" and Weird Al was just speechless and stood there shaking his head at the floor for like a full minute while the whole concert hall laughed. It was the most glorious moment of my life. My friend's brother was the coolest person on the planet at that moment and there was nothing anyone could have ever said to convince me otherwise. It changed my life. I'm older now. I've been to a lot more concerts over the years. I have convinced my own "Weird Al" to bear me 3 lovely children of my very own. But nothing has ever lived up to that moment.

Oh, and sorry, you asked how to credit me. I'm Zayin here, but I'm known as Shadrach most everywhere else. I went ahead and copied my comment to a site where I keep track of stories I write online. So, you can just credit that post if you would like. But I'm not picky about credit. I'm happy to know there is a Wolf Parade fan site active out there. What an amazing thing I never knew existed till now. http://shadrach451.tumblr.com/post/129875795920/apologies-to-the-queen-mary

I just suddenly remembered writing this short story that talks about my feelings when I discovered the song "Lousy Pictures" only about a year and a half ago. I thought I would share. "I’ve run across the song “Lousy Pictures” many times over the years, and always just assumed I had heard it. So, I was taken aback when it came up on my playlist today and I realized I had never heard it before. The experience was a bit overwhelming, to be honest. It’s like finding a home movie of your wife hidden at the end of a VHS copy of a movie you taped off of Television. Long after she has died and you have almost forgotten how great her hair smelled and how her laugh used to send shivers up your back and how she could pout and put a lump in your throat. And now here you are on a soiled couch in 2014 watching a VHS copy of Robocop in your underwear on a Friday night, because your life is a joke and you are an alcoholic wreck. Your kids hate you because you enjoy things like Robocop. But you have lost all taste in beauty, or have grown to fear and hide from beauty because one day it will die and you will just be left alone again. And suddenly there it is, in the middle of the credit roll while you are bent over the edge of your chair reaching for a cold slice of pizza, you hear her voice. And you look up and she’s standing on the screen, an angel with a sunlit halo singing about gypsies at a 4th of July barbecue, and you choke. You gasp and try to stand, but your legs have fallen asleep because you haven’t moved in 3 hours. You collapse onto the floor a weeping mess. Because why? Why would a good and gracious God take such beauty from the earth? Why would he leave us with such an empty world of papermache facsimiles that only mock her beauty? Why is it gone? Why did it end? I spend the rest of the night rewinding and rewinding and rewinding, until the tape falls apart. I fall asleep on the floor and pray not to dream, but God does not listen. Wolf Parade.. I whisper quietly in my sleep… Wolf Parade…"

Yes, you may. And thanks for asking. Feel free to correct any of my misspelling too, since Stereogum doesn't allow editing. I also remembered something I wrote a while back about the song "Lousy Pictures", and you might be interested in that as well. I'll attach a link, but here it is for people that don't want to visit the horrors of Tumblr. "I’ve run across the song "Lousy Pictures" many times over the years, and always just assumed I had heard it. So, I was taken aback when it came up on my playlist today and I realized I had never heard it before. The experience was a bit overwhelming, to be honest. It’s like finding a home movie of your wife hidden at the end of a VHS copy of a movie you taped off of Television. Long after she has died and you have almost forgotten how great her hair smelled and how her laugh used to send shivers up your back and how she could pout and put a lump in your throat. And now here you are on a soiled couch in 2014 watching a VHS copy of Robocop in your underwear on a Friday night, because your life is a joke and you are an alcoholic wreck. Your kids hate you because you enjoy things like Robocop. But you have lost all taste in beauty, or have grown to fear and hide from beauty because one day it will die and you will just be left alone again. And suddenly there it is, in the middle of the credit roll while you are bent over the edge of your chair reaching for a cold slice of pizza, you hear her voice. And you look up and she’s standing on the screen, an angel with a sunlit halo singing about gypsies at a 4th of July barbecue, and you choke. You gasp and try to stand, but your legs have fallen asleep because you haven’t moved in 3 hours. You collapse onto the floor a weeping mess. Because why? Why would a good and gracious God take such beauty from the earth? Why would he leave us with such an empty world of papermache facsimiles that only mock her beauty? Why is it gone? Why did it end? I spend the rest of the night rewinding and rewinding and rewinding, until the tape falls apart. I fall asleep on the floor and pray not to dream, but God does not listen. Wolf Parade.. I whisper quietly in my sleep... Wolf Parade..." http://shadrach451.tumblr.com/post/94127646724/ive-run-across-this-song-many-times-and-always

It's true. I always assumed everyone had this same connection with music. But as I get older I've found that it's relatively rare. I mean, everyone LIKES music. But not everyone NEEDS it in the same way. It took having a wife that loves music, but would still rather listen to audiobooks in the evening to convince me that we are not all the same.

I haven't even listened to the song yet, and it's amazing. Those lyrics are pure gold. Josh Tillman is a beautiful and unique snowflake with the impossible talent of showing how stupid the concept of beautiful and unique snowflakes are.

I learned a lesson when I was 25. Never attend a friend's wedding out of state if your friend is the only person you know that is going to be there. Because after the ceremony and the reception, when the bride and groom climb into their shaving creamed car and drive away, you will suddenly realize that the shaving creamed car was the one you were expecting to have drive you to the airport the next day, but now it and the driver are gone. So, you find your friends new brother-in-law who is preparing to leave for college the next day with his girlfriend. "Sure," they say, "We can take you to the airport on our way." But time with family is precious. And even as you, a total stranger frantically help them pile clothes into a duffle bag because they haven't bothered to even pack yet, you realize you may not make it to the airport. Just a quick stop for lunch with family? That is going to be difficult, but who are you to say anything? Maybe we can go to Cracker Barrel? We definitely do not have time for that, but I don't want to break up this family's special time together. Cracker Barrel is full on a Sunday afternoon and the wait will be 30 minutes just to get a table? Nope. Nope nope nope. I'm having to get everyone's attention and remind them quite firmly that my plane leaves in an hour and a half, and the airport is an hour away. Was it revenge that lead them to drive 5 miles under the speed limit the whole way there, singing along to Kelly Clarkson in the front seat? Maybe. I missed my flight that day. And then I was on the last flight to arrive that night into a completely snowed in Chicago. I stood in the dark concourse, surrounded by piles of snoring bodies. A homeless camp of stranded passengers. I looked down at my watch as it passed midnight. It was now my birthday. I was 25 years old. And I was alone. I had two items of significance on me that day, the first an engraved pocket knife that was my groomsman gift from my friend. Somehow it had accidentally been stuffed in my coat pocket and went unseen by airport security in Missouri. I knew the likelihood of it making it through security in Chicago was not likely. So, although my flight out wasn't for another 18 hours, I couldn't leave the terminal. The second item in my possession was a CD player with one CD, Wolf Parade's brand new 'Apologies to the Queen Mary'. I found an abandoned corner of the gate area, built a small nest on the floor and turned it on. "Nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn anyway." I listened to the album more in one day that I have ever listened to any album in a single day, either before or since. It just spoke to me in that moment. Ice against the windows. Ice on the faces of the exhausted people waking up and stretching on the garish carpet patters of the airport cathedral. A surreal live circus performance that still plays out in my head when I listen to the songs today. I was stranded on an island in a sea of people and I watched them from my corner like a ghost. Invisible. Inhuman. None of them could see me, none of them wanted to. And 'Apologies to the Queen Mary' was the soundtrack. I was alone, but I was not alone in feeling alone. It was possibly the best birthday I ever had. A transition from life as a child, to life as a man. It was my test of manhood. My spirit walk into the forest of the world, a lone hunter crawling through the trees, a homemade spear held tightly to my chest. And to the tune of "It's a Curse" I let out a feral scream and lunged headlong into the rest of my life. There isn't a band I miss more than Wolf Parade.

Yes! And dang it, I accidentally downvoted you in my excitement. I'm so sorry! So so sorry! This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. Not like this. Oh... Oh God. So much blood. Someone call an ambulance already! Please! ...I'm so sorry. shh shhhhh.

Man, "Disco Sheets" is a great outtake, but I would hate to see it defend itself in an outtake battle against "Lousy Pictures". "Lousy Pictures" is just classic Wolf Parade in every way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMekIe_9UTk

Okay. I'm probably never going to read this. But there's a lot of stupid unoriginal book concepts out there, and this doesn't seem like one of them. This sounds like it could actually be an interesting story with the opportunity for some unique perspectives if it doesn't get too ham-fisted, or heavy handed, or ...beef gloved... I am as nauseated by Morrissey and his antics as the next guy. But objectively this doesn't sound awful.

It really bothers me that it didn't actually fit in the guitar case.

It's 2015, can we finally arrest Eric Clapton for shooting the sheriff now?

Just so we are all on the same page, Toro Y Moi's song "Lilly" is the song of the summer. Just super chill with a great hook in the chorus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILvMOC4H9EM

Wait wait! I didn't mean to say "I hate America!" I meant to say "I hate Fat Kids!"

Interestingly enough, both version of NIN are euphemisms for big dicks.

I respect and understand your disconnection from the Carrie and Lowell live show, but I had the complete opposite experience. I feel like Sufjan's greatest talent is the ability to use extreme contrast like a spotlight to highlight whatever he is wanting to draw attention to. And his live show for Carrie and Lowell did just that. Turning these delicate intimate songs into a grandiose light show with booming drums and deafening static brought out the sizzling emotional catharsis of the music. We deal with death is such a complex way. Our society says it should be this silent introspective thing. We are supposed to mourn like we are reading a book in a library, and the album does just that. Sits quietly and sips tea telling disjointed stories and memories through light tears in reflection about life and loss. But once everyone is gone from the room and life keeps going and going you want to put on a pair of headphones, turn the volume up and just RUN. Run and run and never stop screaming at the edge of town throwing rocks at the setting sun. Smashing bottles against a tree till your hands bleed and you just collapse. And it's all part of the same dynamic and complex process. One is more quiet and respectful. But interestingly enough, the other is almost far more real and animal, and bloody, and beautiful. I will never forget the feeling of sitting in the theater weeping internally to the deafening static and noise and flashing lights as Sufjan closed out his concert with "Blue Bucket of Gold", and I knew what it meant to lose something to death, and to lose yourself in the inescapable landslide of time that takes you and pulls you into the exploding sun and the lights that come to guide you through in confusion and pain and a heavy sigh as your spirit finally gives way like a calving glacier into the abyss.

This is the most soft and approachable I've ever heard Frog Eyes. Solid track. Well done Carey.

Ten bucks says they wrote a song and wanted to name it "Dancing in the Dark", googled it and found out that there was already a song by that name, and then realized it was actually a really good song and decided to play around with it.

I thought for sure that this was a picture of Sting. Is Sting just Bono with blonde hair? Why did I never notice this before?

My absurd surealist jaunt into a world where blind women drive cars to the mall recieved more down votes than a Glenn Beck sympathizer, and a three paragraph racist rant that was quite obviously trolling. I'm perplexed. Not that I'm surprised that my strange word child was unloved by anyone else, but that it was so violently unloved. It was forcefully driven from its home and burned. He was beaten hourly by people that actively chose to peel open his "Click Here" box before bludgeoning his hunched shoulders. Its horrific really, because I truly felt it was an obvious bit of toothless internet nonsense. Perhaps my mind is going. It's possible I guess, that I'm completely losing touch with reality. I just can not identify the source of the anger. Maybe we are all being driven to our own form of madness, and I am just doomed to remain behind scraping my tongue with shards of bottles being thrown from the passing cars. I hope you find you paradise before your car runs out of gas and you're forced to eat each other by the side of the road.

Uh can I not?

Yeah, I get it. The down votes are warranted and don't really bother me. My comment was random, humorless and sour. And honestly, the flood of down votes just add to the nonsense of it all, so I am okay with it. I should mention though that as a traffic engineer, I stand by my conclusions.

I learned today that they can octadeca downvote.

Some Blind Chick: "I think I got the new Taylor Swift album!" *Puts on CD* As they drive away from the mall: "What the heck is this?!?" *Immediately gets in horrible car accident because blind chicks that still buy CDs at the mall should not be allowed to drive cars*

I'll buy this remix album if there is a 10 minute long track that is just the bridge from "Rainy Taxi" played over and over on repeat.

I'm going out of my mind here. I had nearly given up hope for an LP5. Every album they have put out has been gold (Even their song for Kid Cudi "Pursuit of Happiness" is out of this world). So, this is a glorious day. A day filled with light and love. And everyone is entitled to their own personal tastes, but LP4 was GOLD. How are we getting so many amazing albums this year just coming from out of nowhere? I really feel like maybe the world is about to end and only musicians know about it. But they are just coming out of the woods for a huge grand finale. Everyone up on stage at the same time playing their hearts out, and we just standing in a crowd, tears streaming down our faces as the sun sets and the world burns away in a golden fire.

I actually have some bootlegs of the performance, and have listened to one or two takes from it about 100 repetitions in. And it's really fascinating. Matt actually starts breaking down at one point, overcome with exhaustion and emotion. But the band plays on, and then when it's all over, they immediately pick right up at the beginning again. Like they are playing for their lives through bleeding fingers. It is definitely an "art" moment. Less entertainment, and more to prove a point and make the listener think. Which makes sense, because The National is pretty good about keeping a fair balance between these two elements of music. They are capable of keeping their work hovering between high brow classic British literature and lower brow fist pumping engagement action flick. And it has worked well for them. But it is not surprising to see them open things up and just go full Bjork level "ART" from time to time. Keep in mind of course that most of the band is made up of classically trained musicians that write and perform chamber music when they aren't writing and performing ROCK songs with The National. The Dessners regularly host and attend music festivals that are more black tie than they are mosh pit. So, the band has a split personality that is standing with one foot firmly in a music world that is completely outside the ones that we typically see here on Stereogum. Of course, most of you know that. But I think it's an aspect of The National that is often forgotten. And it helps make sense out of things like this when it happens.

I feel like a lot of people here are missing "the point". It's not just listening to the National play the song "Sorrow" over and over for six hours. It's listening to The NATIONAL play the song "SORROW" over and over for SIX HOURS. It's not a big statement or anything, but it's like witnessing a mild form of torture. The repetition becomes painful, the words begin to change meaning, as they change meaning the band begins to react to them differently. They get tired, they get out of sync, individual performers get a second wind and can pull the others through until someone else can carry the song. Listening to the song "Sorrow" for six hours straight would be stupid. Listening to The National perform the song "Sorrow" for six hours straight is worth something to people that are big fans of the band or who want to experience what "sorrow" feels like from a different perspective. Or people that want to donate to a cause while purchasing a symbol of what the cause is fighting against. There's a lot of people that can find value in a rare experience like this. Not me though, this sounds awful.

Oh. Yep. That's what that song sounds like. So, good job I guess.

I love this sound. This song particular gives me a huge Super Furry Animals vibe.

I feel this. Prior to listen to the album, I mentioned several times that I expected it to come out sounding like The Antlers' album Hospice. And I have these feelings about that album. It's undeniably beautiful and real and potent, but it's like being locked in a room with a dead person. It's life changing and haunting, but it's not really something you want to do for fun on a Saturday afternoon. I think Sufjan's work rises above that moroseness, and he keeps his sense of humor through the whole tragic ordeal, but I can understand why someone wouldn't want to dive into that in the same way that I can understand why someone wouldn't want to date their psychiatrist.