Jacob Heric

A relatively rare treat in Portland, young, earnest Scottish rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks put on a blistering, gorgeous, workmanlike performance last night.

This is not a list of my top three songs of last year (they weren’t even released last year). They are not my favorite three songs of the year. They aren’t even the songs I listened to the most. They are the songs I remember the most.

Karl Blau’s Slow Down Joe droned on endlessly throughout the summer. For me it was like the cool salt air coming off Casco Bay, pleasant and comforting.

(all three songs are embedded below the fold)

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Kazuki Tomokawa – A Take Away Show #98 – Part 3 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

It’s hard to think of a better accompaniment to Kazuki Tomokawa than that boxer barking in the background. I ran into The Take-Away Shows today on Vimeo while posting my christmas present home videos. Vimeo posted their 25 favorite videos of the year. One of them was a Sigur Ros video from the Take-Away Shows which lead me to the excellent Take-Away Shows Vimeo channel. I then moved onto the huge archive of The Take-Away Shows at La Blogothèque.

I’ve only just begun to delve into them, but that archive and the vimeo channel are full of fine things.

Update, favorites so far:

• Beirut doing Nantes amongst the garbage cans.
• Department of Eagles in NYC.
• Elvis Perkins in Paris.
• John Vanderslice doing White Dove (third video) on a serene soccer field in Seattle, a strange place to hear that song.