Mixtape 22: Late November 2005

1. The National – Lit Up
2. The Max Levine Ensemble – Curly Brown Hair Love Affair
3. Oneida – Privilege
4. The Happy Bullets – The Vice and Virtue Ministry
5. Liars – It Fit When I Was a Kid
6. Death from Above 1979 – Better Off Dead (Le Peste Cover)
7. Okkervil River – The Latest Toughs
8. Animal Collective – Banshee Beat
9. Telephone Jim Jesus – The Ouroboros Tongue
10. Akron/Family – Running, Returning

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I didn't realize until recently that I had compiled two consecutive playlists containing a song titled "Better Off Dead". I swear. I probably wouldn't have done it if I'd realized.
I enjoyed Liars' 2002 debut record They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. But not at first. I actually flip-flopped on it quite a bit. The album came just as I was growing disillusioned with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the so-called Brooklyn scene in general, and as such I was reluctant to accept a new inductee into what I felt was a trend at its tail end. But it was fun. I couldn't help myself. "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That" and "Mr. Your on Fire Mr." were not only tremendously bitchin', but unique. Still, I somehow managed to put it behind me. The album was shelved, unconsciously but nonetheless indefinitely. The last day I remember listening was the day George Bush announced that Saddam Hussein and his sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq, which would have made it March 17, 2003. I didn't revisit it for a good two years. When the follow-up, They Were Wrong So We Drowned, came out on my birthday in 2004, I couldn't really be bothered. But when I did return to the first Liars record (and selected excerpts from the second, such as the tremendous "There's Always Room on the Broom", which made the late January list), I didn't really miss a beat. I suddenly adored it. Maybe out of the context of the early-aughts hype it inspired, it could finally really shine for me. I don't know.
Needless to say, when "It Fit When I Was a Kid" leaked, I was excited. Not only because I counted myself this time among Liars fans, but because I genuinely didn't know what to expect. Liars had confounded expectations before, and here they would yet again. I won't mention the gay porn cover-art, cause it only distracts from the terrific song. The drums are devastating on this track, not too loud or processed but just relentless. There's a terrifying tribal quality at work here; if the last album was about witches, how did this track not make it? Lyrics like "We will leave you in the woods / tell your friends you slipped down the lumen tree" seal the scary-ass deal.
A couple of other notes on this playlist:

• It includes the only appearance of The National for the year. Sorry guys, I have no excuse. You fell through the cracks. Alligator's a great album but 2005 brought with it a great music overload.
• I've written enough about Animal Collective, but man alive, "Banshee Beat" is spectacular. A slow-burner, yeah, but it burns like a mofo.
• Akron/Family is unbelievable. More on them soon.