Express‘ Christopher Porter talks with Misery Index, a Baltimore/Silver Spring metal band, about their love of the Caps. My favorite parts–1) a street heckler yells “Capitals suck” and guitarist Sparky Voyles fires back, “Just because the Blues made the playoffs, jackass, doesn’t mean anything”; 2) how many metal dudes speak fondly about focus groups?

The American babysitting industry won’t soon see another year like 2008, when a wave of iconic Gen-X bands—Built to Spill, My Bloody Valentine, Gray Matter–reformed and lured their increasingly creaky fans back into nightclubs. The intent wasn’t to show that artistic vitality knows no age. These bands performed cherished albums, in their entirety, live. This goes against all the rules of rock, of course: LPs and set lists are invariably sequenced differently; experiencing an album like it was a movie throws the ratio of deep cuts to hits way out of whack. But it’s less problematic with an album like Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. Released in 1999, two years before the Arizona band brought emo-rock to a wide audience with hit singles like “The Middle” and “A Praise Chorus,” Clarity is best heard start to finish, and it sparked a generation of Nirvana fans’ little brothers and sisters to harness their disappointment and ride forth into the mainstream. As Chris Carrabba’s accountant can attest, that boom eventually went bust, but maybe emo makes more sense as a footnote anyway—measured pessimism gets less charming with age, and now that Jimmy Eat World is performing Clarity live in its entirety, lyrics like “And with pride keep every failure in/And with pride hold on to your thinking” have an unexpected plangency for emo kids navigating the rocky shoals of their 30s. And if that doesn’t make you feel better about the fact that one of your favorite albums came out 10 years ago, just remember that at least you’re not paying to see Hey Mercedes perform a rock opera. Yet. JIMMY EAT WORLD PERFORMS CLARITY TONIGHT AT 9:30 AT THE 9:30 CLUB, 815 V ST. NW. SOLD OUT. 

What it is: The casts of Broadway shows from this year and years past doing Christmas songs, va-va-voom-style, with proceeds to benefit Broadway Cares, an organization that raises money and makes grants for AIDS-related causes.

The bike under the tree: The Sleigher is honor-bound to admit that something deep within his cellular structure rejected this CD somewhere during “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” the two-disc set’s second number from the cast of Hairspray, during which Shoshana Bean’s brassy “Hey, Mistah Producah!” voice cut through the metaphorical ropes tethering his will to live to his mortal vessel. That said, despite its slightly terrifying note that it was “inspired by the Gipsy Kings,” “Los Peces en el Rio” by the cast of In the Heights was enjoyable, possibly because the Sleigher’s Spanish is limited, and he was intrigued by the cast of South Pacific’s take on “I Saw Three Ships,” which introduces math-rock to showtunes, likely an unprecedented feat, if not one he is interested in researching further.

The lump of coal: The Sleigher considered shooting himself every time the next song on this CD came up on his iTunes, so his dislikes are not definitive here. That said, he’ll go for the 2006 recording of “The Hanukkah Song” by the cast of The Wedding Singer, in which soloist and American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis attempts to wring soul out of a song in which no soul is available. Maroulis is not necessarily mistaken in this approach: One of the Sleigher’s favorite Christmas records is A Partridge Family Christmas Card, in which David Cassidy tries to infuse “Jingle Bells” with the spirit of Otis Redding. Somehow that’s charming, though. This is not.

Cheer factor: 10 out of 10 (if you’re simply mad about Sondheim); -400 out of 10 otherwise.

LISTEN: “The Hanukkah Song”

What it is: In an e-mail suggesting the Sleigher consider this song from the Brooklyn/D.C. band’s upcoming album Birdseed Shirt, Deleted Scenes’ Dan Scheuerman describes it as “sort of a quarter-life Christmas carol about being strung out and trying to get it together enough to spend some time with your family.” Sure, but even if the specifics ring a bit exotic (”Cheer up, take some medication” he advises), anyone who’s ever returned to their family’s warm house from a life where things aren’t exactly just so will find something plangent here.

The bike under the tree: Scheuerman’s wobbly voice, singing lyrics that remind the Sleigher of getting on the Peter Pan from New York back home to Alexandria all dogeared with a box of clementines and $12 in the bank: “Dust off a box of old forgotten clothes/If you clean up nice, no one will ever know/’Cause what’s the point of one more disguise /When you’re not even yourself in your daily life?”

The lump of coal: The vintage Noise New York production is an additional postcard to those of us approaching decrepitude, but like the Galaxie 500 records it references (complete with weird reverb screams that could be strings, someone singing, or phantom piano) things get so soupy it’s easy to miss the great, self-hating lyrics.

Cheer factor: -4 out of 10, though it’s a good kind of hurt. “Keep your shit together for a couple days,” Scheuerman sings, reminding himself and the listeners that the holidays aren’t the only thing that can’t last forever.

LISTEN: “Get Your Shit Together for the Holidays”

What it is: Ireland’s second-biggest musical export (and 12th overall, between Irish Drinking Team T-shirts [€2.3 billion] and genuine peat moss sold to Americans who like pennywhistle solos [€2.15 billion]) gently tickles the holiday season with ghostly vocals, pulsing synthesizer arrangements, and carols sung in Gaelic.

The bike under the tree: “My! My! Time Flies!,” an uncharacteristically jaunty 2/4 romp where Enya dials back the reverb (relatively) and sings about “Four guys across Abbey Road” and “a king to sing you the blues” over a beat faster than a walking person’s heart rate. Until T’Pau’s original lineup re-forms, this will have to do.

The lump of coal: Hard to quantify, since no part of this album is arguably better or worse than another—and this is coming from someone who’s taken a lot of crap from women in his life for insisting that Orinoco Flow be played to christen any new dwelling. In recent years, Enya has mastered making the quality of her albums uniformly excellent, perhaps at the expense of one being aware that the stereo’s on. (Confidential to Enya: No cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River”? Didn’t you get the memo?)

Cheer factor: 2 out of 10. Some might see the propensity of Enya’s music to atomize like a shot of Febreze as a problem, but I submit that this is in fact a strength of And Winter Came—while you may not remember you are listening to it, your house will feel Christmas-y, and you’ll probably get a lot of other stuff done. It’s like that pine needle smell that real-tree advocates always tout.

LISTEN: “My! My! Time Flies!”

What it is: Rocking around the Christmas Tween. Seven holiday-appropriate songs from Hollywood Records’ junior-high-pop juggernaut at a very reasonable price (available only at Target).

The bike under the tree: Automatic DQ for Aly and AJ’s “Greatest Time of Year,” which is in fact the greatest song on this compilation. But it’s recycled (as is Miley Cyrus’ “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”). So I’m gonna go for the Jonas Brothers’ “Joyful Kings,” which intros with enough power to hammer all Christendom, a choice that only highlights the Brothers’ puny voices.

The lump of coal: Demi Lovato’s “Wonderful Christmas Time.” The Paul McCartney chestnut is almost bulletproof, but Lovato sings it as if she were strapped to the bow of a war schooner, trying to overpower the sounds of cannons and crashing waves.

Cheer factor: 25 out of 10—blaring but polite electric guitars, pealing bells of joy on what feels like every freaking song, no suggestion that anyone besides the Plain White T’s (and maybe Marié Digby) has developed secondary sexual characteristics. It’s basically perfect.

LISTEN: Jonas Brothers’ “Joyful Kings”

Asthmatic Kitty, the indie label home to Sufjan Stevens, Half-handed Cloud, and the Curtains, announced today that it would begin pricing records based on the scores given to them by critics at the music Web site Pitchfork. Ropechain, an album by the band Grampall Jookabox, for example, received a 5.4 (out of a possible 10) from Pitchfork, so for the next 54 hours, says the Asthmatic Kitty Web site, it will be available for $5.40 plus shipping and handling.

The idea, says Asthmatic Kitty Assistant Director Michael Kaufmann, belongs to John Beeler, who manages the label’s Web site. “[W]e anticipated a negative review of the album,” writes Beeler via instant message. “We figured it’d score in somewhere between 5-7.”

“And it dawned on me,” he writes, “that that is also a great sale price point.”

Read More “Asthmatic Kitty to Price Records Based on Pitchfork Scores” »

A Very Rosie Christmas!
Rosie Thomas
Sing-a-long

What it is: Seattle singer puts Sufjan Stevens–esque spin on Sarah McLachlan’s stellar Wintersong, with lots of horns and breathy, sometimes cloying, sometimes very nice vocals.

The bike under the tree: “Christmas Don’t Be Late,” the Alvin and the Chipmunks classic reimagined as a 6:40 ballad. Thomas imbues the previously chirpy song with longing for more innocent days. For someone who appears to live her life within quotation marks, Thomas’ take on Noel is beautifully, sincerely wistful.

The lump of coal: “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” which wouldn’t be out of place on a worship-music album.

Cheer factor: 7 out of 10—knowing yet childlike joy is tempered with sadness that the ironic Christmas sweater won’t draw knowing “hee-yuks” from guest stars like Damien Jurado in a week or two.

LISTEN: “Christmas Don’t Be Late”

The worst thing that’s happened to me in months is the Amazon MP3 store, which every day has a “daily deal” that leads to internal dialogs like this:

Hey! Supertramp’s Breakfast in America for only $2.99! I should totally get that!

Wait–you sing along with Supertramp on the radio, but there’s probably a reason you don’t own any of their records.

But it’s only $2.99…

…well, OK. [/INTERNAL DIALOG]

Today you can buy Rush’s Permanent Waves for $.99. It’s almost harder to argue against buying it at that price. And if this weekend you can find a used copy of Atlas Shrugged for a quarter, you can become a libertarian for less than the price of a cup of coffee!

Also, if you get really obsessed, here’s an RSS feed that some clever person built for the daily deal.

Jason La Canfora is now referring to Skins backup quarterback Colt Brennan as “Cult of Colt,” or, as he says in a recent Redskins Insider post, “CoC from here on out, if nothing else a nod to Corrosion of Conformity.”

Is the Post’s Skins beat reporter a secret hesher?

The funny thing is, for all La Canfora’s reported friction with Dan Snyder’s organization, doesn’t Jason La Canfora and (Skins GM) Vinny Cerrato sound like the names of two guys who’d have gone to see Nuclear Assault and Savatage together in 1989?

Finally, I would like to thank him for reminding me to take out Animosity this morning. It still rules.