The Congregation - The Old Book Of Hymns

The Old Book of Hymns by The Congregation (US)

Ok, so here it is. A bit anticlimactic, but what can you do? The Old Book Of Hymns is the closest thing to a proper album that we (The Congregation) have ever done. Last summer I got it into my head that demos and scraps were not going to cut it so I had Ginny and Shelly and Sarah over to record definitive versions of a few of the songs we'd been playing for close to five years on and off. I mean we haven't played a show since...what 2008? I guess. But anyway, these songs have largely always been with us. The exceptions are "I'm Your Boyfriend" and "Whisper" which we wrote and recorded just because we were 'feeling it', as they say. I'd had the bass riff of "Boyfriend" for awhile and was madly in love with it and the rest was just croaking out words to go over top of it. It was all about texture anyway, so I don't care how bad I sound. I think it works in context. I could be wrong. "Getting Acclimated," "Step in here again...." and "Blood Clicks" came out playing for something like twenty minutes with Shelley one day. He was behind the kit and I was playing bass and there was too much that worked not to use some of it. So I grabbed some excellent parts and messed around, trying to compensate for us going out of time and the bass being completely inaudible. I thought they made nice transitions. "Un Lac" and "The Face of Another" were two songs I had written the main riffs to years ago and we'd tested them out, even played one of them live a few times, but couldn't settle on definitive takes or lyrics. And it was nice to hear Ginny take on both of them for the first time. I'd had the chorus of "Face of Another" in my head for...damnit, four, five years, and I'd only ever played it to myself. I could hear it, the big guitar, the wandering bass, the crashing drums, but never made it happen. And then one day it was there and it was exactly like I pictured it.

"Two Sisters," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and "Le Grande Illusion" were mostly pet projects I'd been fucking around with since the day I wrote them. "Jesse James" was the song that told me maybe I was ok at writing songs; until then they'd been born out of riffs and/or neccesity. We needed to play songs, so we wrote them. "Jesse James" I took hours trying to make sure I had it right. Tuned and de-tuned and messed around with the ups and downs of the vocal bit, convinced I had a decent song. Then Geoff Halliday from Hands remixed and made it sound a trillion times better and realized that maybe I was ok, but just ok. Anyway, Ginny absolutely kill the vocals in a way I just couldn't. "Two Sisters" is one of the first rock songs I ever got right in the recording. I remember showing it to Shelley in my car one day after he'd finished school and when I showed him the instrumental conclusion, he said "it's almost like it's a real song." I took that to heart and made sure that no matter what I had to keep that ending. The rest was fixing the voice until I didn't hate how I sounded. I have a version of Sarah singing this acoustically that kills me, and I'd still like to record a rockier version like this one with her singing. I think that'd be just about perfect. "Le Grande Illusion" was the first song I ever wrote (ever written) for this band. We played it with twelve people at our high school and it was a goddamned disaster, but I got totally high off watching a dozen of my closest friends just hammering away at their instruments in service of something I wrote that they believed in. I was nervous and knew it was failing, but goddamn it nothing made me happier. If Nick hadn't told me that he liked the verse riff and that he thought we could play it live, we wouldn't have written any of these songs, we would never have played any shows, we likely would never had the awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping experience of recording with Ginny, so Nick thank you! You've given me some of the greatest feelings of pride and accomplishment I've felt in my young life. I never would have been able to play my guitar in front as many people as I have (I don't know...fifty people? Whatever it was amazing) if you hadn't encouraged me. You're one of the best friends I've ever had. We recorded a terrible version of it for the fated/dreaded/unfortunate/awesome SOS CD, a collection of songs recorded for my senior project by/of people who had some connection to our high school. Nick's guitar playing and Shelly's drumming is the one thing I'm pleased with. I play this totally horrid cockrock guitar all the way through that would ruin it if my voice weren't already ruining it. I left it to other people to sing from them on. So after years of leaving it for dead, I told myself I was going to get over my terrible memories of the song and record a decent version of it. Shelley provided his inimitable drumming once again and I played guitar and bass again, tweaking the production so that I wouldn't be embarrassed later and then one night rewrote those pretentious lyrics and screamed my way through it. And now I can listen to it. I just hope everyone else can too.

"Fire Away" and "Jack's Guitar" the songs that bookend this collection are two of our oldest, most loved (by us, I should say) and most played songs we have. They were collaborative efforts that emerged out of a number of different sessions and sitdowns and no two performances or recordings sounded quite the same. They're, to quote Lina Pearson, "in [our] core." They represent a lot of time and history for all of us who know them and I just wanted to have a version that I could listen to without cringing about this or that. I wanted versions that did justice to how great I remember them sounding when we played them live. So I tried my best to build those huge sounds and mammoth experiences in my basement. The guitar at the end of "Fire Away" was so important to me because it was one of the last things I ever played on a stage with The Congregation and it was born out of the need to make the song sound huger and huger and finally perfected that riff for the last time we played it in many a year. "Jack's Guitar," in patented "Jack" tuning, was the second or third song I wrote for us specifically to record. It took time to get it right and only happened thanks to Jack Farrell bringing over his blue acoustic guitar that day. It reminds me of a song that I also wrote in Jack Tuning that we tried to play at coffee house after I graduated. I felt awkward being not only the oldest person on stage, but probably the oldest non-working person in attendance. And then the song sort of fell apart and I threw my guitar on the floor afterwards. But it was still an experience I wouldn't trade because it reminds me of how Sebastian always gave up his slot for us at coffee houses. He's one of the greatest people because he believes in his friends (even if he never answers text messages. hehe).

Being the person who coordinated every show for this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime group of talent was too big a responsibility for me and I totally dropped the ball because frankly everyone we played with deserved their own albums because holy sweet fucking jesus are these people amazing. Sam, Alex, Cooper, Ginny, Shelley, Basho, Nick, Sarah, everyone, you guys were/are too good to not be given platforms so that everyone can all hear your voices. If you guys wanna play these songs sometime again, just let me know, because they're a part of me, just like you. Also, if you guys wanna pick out a less dorky band name, that'd be ok too. I can't stop listening to these songs. I'm just glad I have them to get lost in. Someday soon, everyone has to come over so we can watch the movie that inspired "Ginny's Song" one of a few that didn't get re-recorded here. Some things are best consigned to history, demos and memories. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll get it right. Maybe we're not supposed to. I think that's kind of our story. We don't do things right, but I don't think we're supposed to. There is beauty in failure and no one knows that better than me. But to me, we never failed because I got to get on stage with the most amazing people on the planet and share twenty minutes that felt like hours between songs and seconds while we were playing. You made my rock and roll dreams come true on stage for those beautiful fleeting moments and I'll never be able to properly thank you for that. All I can do is keep recording you when I get the chance.

The Hazards of Love by The Congregation (your Film Punk staff)

Thank you Dizzy, for suggesting we do this album. And thank you folks featured below, thanks Cooper, Shelley, Ginny, Lina, Alex, Nick, Maggie & Basho. You guys make my day, you do.

The Congregation Presents: The Hazards of Love by The Congregation (US)

Best Songs of 2010

Note: these are all songs that were not from my favourite albums of the year. Only fair, I think.

"Cold Storage" - Aloha

One of those rare moments that a song title kinda perfectly captures the feel of a song. An icy chill wind off of snow blows throughout the cool post-punk arrangement and the lyrics. "Pay no mind I'm more dead than I'm alive," could have been written by Ian Curtis before Joy Division was signed to Factory and the music sounds like Matt Pond PA covering the boys from Manchester with all the zeal they have. It's a great, sad but ultimately uplifting song and it just sounds so cool and detached, like a drive through Bar Harbour in the dead of winter. "Blackout" is also a delight.

"What Tomorrow Brings" - Badly Drawn Boy

Damon Gough's latest album is so reverb-heavy it sounds like it was recorded in a YMCA. The songs by and large are great but they're definitely mood pieces, which is why I couldn't put it on my best of. I rarely found myself sad enough to connect with them. But the clearest sounding and, strangely, the most devastating is "What Tomorrow Brings" which is one of those great big-picture songs that only Gough can write. Like the Berlin Philharmonic playing along with the sadness of a dejected film character, it sneaks up on you and breaks your heart.

"Mama Taught Me Better" - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

It's hard to quantify just how amazingly Leah Shapiro fits in to and makes Black Rebel Motorcycle Club better. Really it can be summed up in the drum fills in "Mama Taught Me Better," which is in the top two or three songs the band has ever rocked. Before each chorus she punishes her snare and it sounds like nothing less than a machine gun. The chorus and verse are all Robert Been and Peter Hayes of course, between the guitar-in-its-death-throes and that fucking sound that they get out of the scraped bass and guitars, this is one for the books. How they manage to get that sound in the last verse has been killing me because not since "Creep" have I heard anything that fucking cool come from a guitar being played like a guitar. The whole thing has that indefinable sense of cool that these guys have been selling since the start.

"Detroit Has A Skyline" - Cymbals Eat Guitars

AV Undercover was a mixed bag. 25 Songs sung by 25 bands who didn't write them in a tiny room capture for posterity and not much else - they can't sell them or even make them downloadable thanks to the cost of a song. The best of them were really something to behold and I can think of none better than the initially ramshackle and loudest of the bunch, New York's buzz band Cymbals Eat Guitars doing Superchunk. Joseph D'Agostino does a great job shredding his way through the minor classic, and the rest of the band makes a suitably powerful rhythm section, but I think the song wouldn't quite work if D'Agostino didn't murder the vocals with his impassioned warcry-like performance. The chorus is the real game changer, though. He just kills it and it makes this something I've listened to a hundred times since stealing it off a pirated youtube video. What? Just because they won't give it to me doesn't mean I have to like it.

"Get Frostied" - Deastro

Techno music and the technology behind it has totally left me in the dust, which is both good and bad because while I'm out of the loop I can also occasionally be totally wowed by some thing I can't explain. Take for instance this song by Deastro off their Mind Altar EP (essential listening, Dan Deacon and Animal Collective fans. Get off your wallet's ass and buy it). It's this pulsing, whirring environment; a whole club to get lost in. It reminds me of what it's like to listen to a song that perfectly captures the feeling of the movie Enter The Void, without the homophobia or creepy incestuous undertones. This all just the flashing lights and colours and for four minutes you too can vanish into an idealized electric womb space where you simply connect with other bodies and your next life is just a short trip away.

"Midnight Directives"/"Keep The Dog Quiet" - Final Fantasy

If pressed I don't think I could pick which of these songs I like better. And seeing as how they follow each other on the album Heartland and I tend to listen to 'em together anyway, I thought I'd split the difference. Heartland was the album that would have gone on my list if it'd been 21 albums, but tradition is tradition. Plus I wanted to highlight just how spectacular these songs are, worth the price of the album alone. Jittery, hyper-active and just about the catchiest things on earth, the songs make perfect use of the sonic spac Owen Pallett has made for himself as well showcasing his gift for orchestration. He is more a conductor than a mere songwriter and he turns indie songwriting into something closer to preparing Brahms for The Hidden Cameras. He's got such an ear for little things that all combine into a beautiful whole. Both songs also benefit from the fact that they rising, undeniable choruses that have stayed with me since I first heard them. Urgent and wonderful and the highlights of a great album.

"Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man" - Grinderman

I think I was so psyched about this album because the memory of how awesome it's opening track is stayed with me even as the record lost momentum. But there really is no beating how awesome this song is. Seriously. There's nothing Nick Cave can't make amazing.

"Lights" - Interpol

Yeah, this record should have been better, but I'm still such a sucker for Interpol. They're first album probably changed my life (initially for the worse, but that wasn't they're fault) and I've still found things to return to in every subsequent release and their self-titled fourth album is no exception. Case in point, ostensible single "Lights" which is the kind of echo-filled dark side of the parking garage dweller they do perfectly. Also the chorus, the build-up in Paul Banks vocal performance has me singing along too soon everytime, so excited am I to hear him reach the apex of the song, which is just as galvanizing as anything they've yet done.

"England" - The National

The National have been trying to out-sombre Leonard Cohen for some reason. I don't get it. They're best songs are the one with the lightning fast drumming, the distorted guitars and maybe a hint of piano. The best of the best have Matt Berninger out-and-out screaming. "Mr. November" and "Abel" prove my point. Everyone who likes how sad their output has become probably has a reason but I'm kinda glad I haven't been able to identify with it for awhile. The end of their incredibly austere High Violet does have one of their most catchy (if also perversely most dire) songs to date. Changes in intensity set in motion by a blast of horns, the song turns from a sadsack drinking alone into a drunk screaming at passing cars and the whole world in turn, which is what these guys do so well. The less I can tell what Berninger's saying, the happier I am singing along and this one just about takes the cake on that score. I could have used more guitar a la Alligator, but coming at the end of an album as grey and rainy as High Violet, it may as well have been "Voodoo Chile". And this song is just as awesome as far as I'm concerned.

"Mermaid Parade" - Phosphorescent

Ok, this is mostly here to make my girlfriend mad, but I do really love this song. Beautiful americana via a tired New Yorkers state-of-mind.

"Who Are You New York?" - Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright is just one of the best songwriters in the world. And one of the best singers on that same planet. It'd be ok if he were one or the other, but he's both and that's fiercely unfair. This song, the standout from his arresting and devastating All Days Are Nights, is perfect because it's both the misery of realizing your coffee is cold and almost gone, but also the feeling that down the block is another one and it'll be served by the cutest server in the city. It's sad and ecstatic and Wainwright's playing has the ferocity of Philip Glass' "Mad Rush" and he does it all while impeccably and tear-jerkingly singing one of the best songs I heard in a period of 365 days. It's just not fair. Luckily I can listen to this song to commiserate.

"1999" - Shout Out Louds

Another slick and cool post-punk from the masters of spitting the hits of the early 80s back at a grateful public. This one, indeed the whole album, is a bit more inspired and original than their last, and "1999" is great in that it could conceivably have been written by Paul Weller 30 years ago. But it's also pretty perfectly suitably suited to today and the malaise of existing now.

"Threshold" - Sex Bob-Omb

How I wish there was a proper album coming from this band because these guys rock as hard as BRMC and Grinderman and they were just the fevered imagination of Bryan Lee O'Malley, Edgar Wright and Beck. The best and catchiest of the crop of songs composed for the movie's house band, it works out of context, but in the film it's like the manifesto for rock music that movies have attempted to give us since Elvis' film debut. Scott Pilgrim is the worthy heir/successor of Rock And Roll High School, Phantom of the Paradise, Rock and Roll Nightmare and every other creaky "You just don't get it!" music movie of the last half century. And Sex Bob-Omb are the first band I bought outside of the context of a fictional story. These guys could and should be real because they're fucking awesome.

"Got Nuffin" - Spoon

Not much to this but it was the best song on their last album and it's quite good to blast in a car.

"A More Perfect Union" - Titus Andronicus

Like Dinosaur Jr. meets Against Me! Titus Andronicus is a no-win proposition. Pretentious, simple rock music with a raspy barking lead singer. I wouldn't ever have bothered if I'd had it described it to me like this. So why do I love them? The post-hardcore, shoegazing Iced Earth, Titus Andronicus make the most of exciting riffs and even though I'll never quite get used to the lead vocals or lyrics, there is no denying how fucking awesome these guys are during the instrumental parts. Their guitarist sounds like J. Mascis playing for the Strokes.

"Teen Age Riot" - A Truncated Congregation

Oh, you guys didn't hear Ginny sing "Teen Age Riot?" Well ask me for it, I'll email it to you and it'll go right on your list too. I had fun playing it, but Theo Blasko makes it. She was born to turn Thurston Moore's anomic poetry into something akin to Martha Reeves.

"With You In My Head" - UNKLE

Wouldn't be a complete list without a begrudging acknowledgement of how good the songs on the Twilight soundtracks are. It sends shivers down my spine, mostly of shame, but goddamn it there are great songs on these fucking soundtracks. And this is by far my favourite. With a perfect vocal and instrumental accompaniment by The Black Angels, UNKLE show how effortlessly they can turn something good into something unforgettable. Also, dig that this song has two choruses. Both of them amazing.


Bonus: Discussion about relative merits of The National's High Violet, sadness as a record's sole emotion. Beccah Ulm's first comment is in response to the above mention of The National's song "England"

Beccah Ulm - OK, fair enough. But I like the gray and rainy Leonard-Cohen-ness. Matt Beringer, Bill Callahan, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen...Don't get me wrong, happy music is splendid and necessary...there's just something about a really devastating baritone that totally obliterates everything else

Scout - True but with Tom Waits at least there are options. He didn't only write sad songs. In fact he's better known for his not-sad ones.

I just wish they'd have the variety they used to. Alligator was sad in parts, but it rebounded splendidly.

BU - Yeah, and I love that. But even at his growliest the sad still creeps in ("All the World Is Green" on Blood Money; like half of Mule Variations; Heartattack and Vine, etc. etc. etc.)

Scout - True. I guess I fell in love with his oddball side and his love songs were silver lining. "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" for instance, is as good a song as was ever written by people ever. But it's a love song and those are a dime-a-dozen, pulverizing voice or no. "Underground" "Hoist That Rag" "Pasties and A G-String" "Shore leave" "Kommienezuspadt" "Murder In The Red Barn" "Jesus Gonna Be Here" "In The Colosseum" "What's He Building In There" "Shake It" "In The Neighborhood" and the others make him him. Love songs pay the rent, but I always got the feeling that these things just tore their way out of his subconscious. The balance is crucial, to be sure and I can't imagine a world without "Downtown Train" or "Bad Liver" or "Tom Traubert's Blues", I still think he's Tom Waits because of his more aggressively weird songs.

BU - I'll give you that. I think "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" or "The Piano Has Been Drinking" (Small Change as a whole is an album of just outstandingly-executed whiskey-drenched love songs) are the meeting point of both of his strengths--the sadness and the gravelly howling weirdness. You definitely need both though. I danced around my room like a hysterical fool to The Suburbs and I also stared at my ceiling in wistful sorrow to High Violet. I regard both experiences as highly fulfilling.

Scout - I can see the need for both sensations, and I'll concede that I've been in a pretty good mood lately. But I think that there's both crushing lows and ecstatic highs on The Suburbs? The lows aren't as articulate as the highs but the whole thing has "Malaise with a capital 'M'" spraypainted all over it. Like "Month of May" and "Ready to Start" are the rockers and they've got dark undertones. "We Used To Wait" got that minor chord staccato thing going on. And then there's "The Sprawl 1", which is a little too sad for me during a casual listen. But yes, the screaming highs are the highlight (Puns all around!) like "Sprawl 2" and "Empty Room" and "City With No Children".

Also, I'm glad you were fulfilled by the record even if I didn't care for it.

BU - Oh yeah, definitely. The Suburbs is the whole package (I listened to is while reading Johnathan Franzen's Freedom, and I almost kept waiting for them to just synch up or something. Malaise all around)

And I totally respect that you didn't care for it--I'm glad you're in happy moods, accompanied by happy music