You know, like an All Music Is Local kind of thing. An expertise of the Common Man-Musician, anthropologizing his home territory. I mean, that’s why we invented the Internet, right? So we could share weird and new and perhaps ultimately inconsequential (and always potentially important…O, the potential!) and hopefully deviant (like, from the Norm) forms of culture with each other. Now that indie is the new mainstream, I can’t pick up a rag without reading about the radical new prog-tendencies of the Decemberists or Joanna N’s teaming up with Van Dyke Parks. That shit impresses me, it really does (no sarcasm – let’s get past that this year, huh?). And (ask friends and enemies)
I’ll argue the brilliance of the Bobby D. ten-ton two-liner that is Thunder on the Mountain til the Alicia Keyses come home. But for me, anyway, this year had less to do with TV On the Radio and Tom Waits, and more to do with the sweet and sorrowful souls I found myself constantly surrounded by. That’s the first time I’ve found myself in a place where I can honestly say that.

Yes, make no mistake, fair reader! DC tunes is boomin’. As my dear friend George Hunter is prone to wail: “Ain’t no thing gonn slow this Freight Train down.” Aw, hurt me, George. At the risk of sentimentalitating all over this here piece, that just about sums up what I’m feeling about the goings-on round the District these days. I say this as a neutral observer, someone who, for many a long month, and just like far too many, hatched secret plans to move a little
further up the Coast. I can’t do that now, and music is a huge part of the reason. For that reason, and not much other (witness, the proud provincial!), I’d like to share just a humble little bit of that with you.

Would that there were time in the day to rattle off all the Mikal Evans’s and Middle Distance Runner’s, Benjy Ferree’s and Beauty Pill’s, of our fair city. There ain’t, and it’s a shame, but I do hope I can give you a decent lil sum-up of my tiny tiny corner of a tiny, tiny city in a tiny,tiny country of the big mean beautiful world. That’s all it is, to be sure: a corner. An intoxicated, half-soaked, getting blurry now bar napkin sketch, signifying something small, all
sound, no fury. No politics. No Paste. No Power (see: Marshall, Chan). Next year, I’ll venture out further, and report back on jazz and hip-hop, I promise. For the moment, my personal picks for 10 (somewhat randomly selected) of the 1,000 greatest local music tracks of the year, from the District of Columbia straight to your ears…

*1 of a thousand: Lady Faire, by The Cassettes*
The Cassettes may be the only band I know that can describe their own sound better than anyone else can. If Lady Faire doesn’t sound like “setting your trunk on the deck of a flying spanish galleon heading for the outer reaches of space and time. You look back at the fading Oreth and shed a tear that drifts
into the void of space and becomes a star”...then I don’t know what does.

*1 of a thousand: Lose Control, by Let’s French*
When Randy Chugh croons “You bring the prom dress and I’ll bring the booze / I’ll be the progress and you be the news,” it makes me want to be in high school again – and gay, for the first time. I mean, you know what I mean. What all the Let’s French comparisons to Interpolblahblahblah miss lies therein: the most wicked one-to-two-liners this side of aforementioned _Thunder on the
Mountain_. Damn, but that Randy man’s dancing on the razor’s edge.

*1 of a thousand: I Fill Up the Time, by Rose*
I think I might have secretly cried the first time I ever heard Rose play this track live. I know that I cried very openly the second, third, fourth, and fifth times I did. Some lyrics come across in print; hers are so intertwined with the character of her booming, breaking, crawling, begging, beautifully aching voice that I wouldn’t dare to pin them down all butterfly-like here. Just find it. Fill it. Sip it. Swallow it. Breathe.

*1 of a thousand: Naturally, by Middle Distance Runner*
Insanely infectious, and anything but natural, this is the kind of tale that makes you believe that hook-pop can still be sufficiently dark and dangerous to suit our modern times. Along with Georgie James, MDR is currently in the running for the most commercially viable band to come out of DC in the year 2009. But we haven’t got there yet? Yes. I know. Pop music is about the future tense; these men will ride rocket ships.

*1 of a thousand: Try to Shave, by Revival* Josh Read drives slow, with one headlight, down a back alley, out of his way, middle of deep black night, to say hello to a friend. That’s not a metaphor. He does that. That’s just the real deal, whatever it means. Something about the scene nails Revival’s music, though. Maybe not this song, though. Wait til you see what he completes this tale with. The man is heavy.

*1 of a thousand: The Idiot Heart, by Beauty Pill*
A trip through the wilderness of the human mind, these kids are. Chad Clark is a local music hero to many, myself included, and one of the (secretly!) most humorist people I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending a 16-hour day trapped in a dark, dark room with. That is both figurative and literal. Listen to a couple
of their tracks here and feel the figurative; make a pilgrimage to Our Nation’s Capital, and get your literal on with us all. Yikes. Smart goes way crazy here.

*1 of a thousand: The Jealous Type, by Olivia & the Housemates*
Like most people, I’ve only seen this band once, and yet am still totally and completely enamored of them. These kids will push your buttons all night…if you can ever track ‘em down. Olivia also plays bass in Washington Social
Club, one of the town’s most well-known local acts, and the first band I ever saw when I came to D.C. Her energy is early Rolling Stones, but her voice is downright operatic.

*1 of a thousand: Credits, by The Aquarium*
If the credits of my life must roll one day, and surely they must, I would like for this to be one of the songs that ushers me into the Greater Beyond. The Dischord legacy is alive and well in the District, and crops up in the strangest, most experimental poppiest corners. Warehouses. Synths. Attitude. I’m
watching an old video of The Clash while I write this, and somehow it all makes sense.

*1 of a thousand: House on Fire, by Shortstack*
It sounds like Shortstack is going to kill you, but in a good way. A pleasant death, but a really horrible one. But pleasant in the way that it teaches you something really profound about the universe, like how horrible the universe
really is. That’s why I think Shortstack is secretly made up of Ghost-Men, men who know something about the another side of this universe that you and I have never see. Is that not horribly awesome, in the truer sense of the word “awesome”?

*1 of a thousand: Monsoon Season, by Kitty Hawk*
Chris Walker doesn’t write songs, he oozes mood. He and his band embody a sort of pure sad bliss the likes of which ain’t been seen since the loneliest most brilliant Velvet Underground B-sides. Like some monsoon season, I imagine. I don’t know it. But I imagine it. That’s what Kitty Hawk makes me do. Imagine things I’ve never seen. Spooky, like Shortstack’s younger and more sensitive brother who pulls the legs off grasshoppers, but instantly feels bad about it and writes a song to atone.

That’s it, I s’pose. What was I saying again? I love you. I can’t believe you read this far. Reading this far in this day and age is a feat. You should probably be a literary critic instead of a music snob. Either way, I’d love to hear from you. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Theseunitedstates(at)gmail(dot)loveyou(gotta)later(dash)com, kid.

These United States