#83: Cover The Walls by Internet Forever (from the The Top 100, 2009-2018)

from the 2012 self-titled album Internet Forever.

10 years ago, the original point of this blog was to list the Top 500 and talk about its contents, with much attention paid to doing song by song reviews. Didn’t really happen! While I reviewed a few tracks, my few and far between blog posts were reduced to Top 20 albums of the year lists and reflections, which I totally enjoyed doing and will continue to do. But now I’d like to get back to songs, of which there are now 600 to choose from (as I added 100 more of my most favorite from the last decade).

I picked randomly and landed on…“Cover The Walls” by Internet Forever. Internet Forever, a British trio of indie fuzz-popsters, emerged in 2009 with this single, but seems to have dropped out of view by 2013. The probability of the band becoming a musical footnote (if that) seems fairly high, with two singles and only one (fantastic) album to their name. I hope they make a return somehow, or are at least not forgotten (and since the internet is probably forever, there’s always hope). Perhaps they’ll be given the comprehensive reissue treatment that has helped me discover a substantial trove of sparkling indie treasures that would have otherwise been consigned to the rarefied vinyl collections of erudite twee-pop fans.


INTERNET FOREVER - 'Cover The Walls' from Extra on Vimeo.

Whatever their destiny, they deserve far more love for this track on its own, never mind a bunch of other great songs.  The band started with some half-joking blog posts about forming a band called – you guessed it – Internet Forever.  Things accelerated pretty quickly, with members trading digital tracks by email and assembling some finished songs on Garageband.  The resulting first single was "Cover the Walls" (b/w "Page of Books"), released in 2009 by the label Twenty Years of Boredom.  After a second single ("Break Bones") and some touring the band entered a proper studio and put together a full LP of slightly more polished tracks (including reworkings of the two singles).  And that appears to be it.  But at the very least (the very, very least), “Cover The Walls” is forever enshrined in the #83 position of my Top 100 most favorite songs from 2009 to 2018.

Why this obscure, fuzzy bedroom guitar pop?  For the same reasons that legions of wallflowers, misfits, and romantics listen to Cherry Red reissues, K records, and the whole C86 musical oeuvre.  I love “Cover the Walls” because it distills the essence of indiepop, the kind Calvin Johnston envisioned, that community-based, DIY music making that was punk as fuck, but never hard or hateful.  That showed that three chords, a beat up amp, and a rudimentary drum kit could yield devastatingly catchy pop songs, if sung from the heart.  “Cover the Walls” is all that.  A simple, almost four on the floor drumbeat, inexpert vocals recorded in the red, fuzzy guitar, cheap analog synths and – most importantly – an impossibly catchy verse and chorus.  I fully recognize this is not for everyone, but for those who like bands like Los Campesinos, The Vaselines, Dear Nora, The Aislers Set, I’m From Barcelona, Twerps, The Pastels, etc., “Cover the Walls” is archetypal. 

I must confess I’m torn between recommending the much more lo-fi version of the song on the 7” (2009) or the slightly cleaned up version on the album.  I’m more familiar with the single but I think it’s clear the album version sounds better.  Check out both!  And check out the 2012 self-titled album.   The blog The Line of Best Fit puts it this way: "this indiepop album is, really, the Platonic ideal of indiepop albumness: a glorious curation of that which makes us lonely, speccy, woolly bastards melt into our own tea." 

And as always, please check out my Spotify channel - you can start with the Top 100 (2009-2018), from whence this song came.

Revisiting 2015: Full “Best of Playlist” on Spotify and Some Updates

Ah, 2015, marking the mighty and flawless return of Swervedriver, the emergence of young Courtney Barnett, and, most fundamentally, fatherhood.

As mentioned in previous ramblings, I am slowly but assuredly building “best of the year” playlists for online sharing and posterity.  As usual, these follow ups help identify gems I missed at the time of my initial yearly review and provide an opportunity to pass them along.

For the 2015 Spotify playlist of my favorite songs, go here!

For the original 2015 best album round up, go here!

 

Great Albums I Missed

Here a few albums that would have wrestled a few others out of my Top 20 and therefore come highly recommended.

Iron and Wine – Archive Series Volume 1

Oh, this is a treasure trove.  Iron & Wine became an instant success with Sub Pop release of the band’s debut The Creek Drank The Cradle.  In 2002, we all revelled in the beautiful authenticity of Sam and Sarah Beam’s hushed folk harmonies.  After instant classic Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) it wasn’t long before Beam changed course to bigger and more complex arrangements, sounding wonderful but quite different from the early folk recordings.  I missed the stripped down intimacy.  As if in answer, we received Archive Series Volume 1, a collection of unreleased recordings culled from late-90’s and early-00’s demos.  Fingers crossed for a Volume 2.  Choice track:  “Judgement”

Eternal Summers – Gold and Stone

Missed this somehow upon release and it is as essential as the rest of their discography – chimy guitar driven dreampop with punkish flourishes, recallingThe Primitives, Lush, and Cocteau Twins, and keeping pace with gold-standard contemporaries Alvvays, Wolf Alice, and Soft Science.  Choice Track: “Together Or Alone”.

Surf City – Jekyll Island

I picked this up (somehow, somewhere) in 2018 and promptly forgot about it.  In my final playlisting run I gave a relisten and, holy shit, this is great.  Taking foundational cues from The Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain, Surf City play that category of mid-fi garage psych-pop promoted by Woods, Quilt, Black Angels, Crystal Stilts, Crocodiles, Warlocks…ahhhh….I could go on, but they just exactly hit that super-catchy, fuzz-loving, reverberating goodness that gets my toes tapping. Choice track: “One Too Many Things”.

Day Ravies – Liminal Zones

Australia’s Day Ravies give us buzzing, off kilter garage punk and experimentation on Liminal Zones. I like Tussle (from 2013), but this is a truly banging record, if a little lo-fi and ramshackle-y at times.  Choice track: “Hickford Whiz”.

Crocodiles – Boys

(“Hi Surf City, we’re Crocodiles, and we’re very similar to you.  Can we use your review?  Why thank you!”).  Okay, so this seems lazy, but the woefully Crocodiles truly are cut from same cloth as Surf City above – buzzed out, fuzzed out,  lo-fi garage goodness.  Choice track: “Hard”.

Drug Cabin – Wiggle Room

I always wondered what happened to Ambulance Ltd., the short-lived brit-pop/shoegaze outfit (from the States) that could have been BIG (in my estimation) circa 2004.  Well, some web-browsing indicated a number of later project and side thangs, one of which was Drug Cabin, headed by Marcus Congleton (and joined by Nathan Thelen of Pretty Girls Make Graves).  It is a quirky, beatle-esque, countrified thing that is really hard to pin-point.  A little Kinks, when the Kinks were weird, some Beach Boys and Byrds, some Teenage Fanclub, and some Wilco.  In short, super great.  Unfortunately, this album was super limited (can’t find a physical copy anywhere) and the band seems inactive.  Choice track: “Ruby”.

My Top 100 Favorite Songs 2009 to 2018

It is the 10-year anniversary Behind the Scenes of the Sounds and Times, along with the introduction of my all-time Top 500 favorite songs list.  This original list (with two exceptions) covered 1965 to 2009, or 45 years of music; or, on average, about 11 songs per year. 

10 years later, it’s time to add to the Top 500.  Building a newly updated list that stuck to a 500 song limit was an option, but an awful one.  Awful because of the massive amount of work this would entail, but also because I could not stomach jettisoning these precious songs in favor of more recent ones, ostensibly because they are now “more favorite”.  No, the Top 500 is now sacrosanct in my mind, and cannot be meddled and muddled with.

So on to a new list, a complement to the old, with the following criteria:

• 100 songs, a nice round number that approximates an average of 10 songs per year.
• Songs released from 2009 to 2018.  Songs from 2019 are too fresh, with not enough listening time to warrant inclusion.
• Songs must be so loved by me that they would have warranted serious consideration for the original Top 500 had they existed back then.

As per usual practice now, you can find this list on Spotify here.  A couple notes, however, on the inevitable Spotify gaps and inconsistencies:

#2 Hold On – Alabama Shakes.  This crackin’, outrageously soulful rock song is considerably improved upon in the official video version.  This is how I first heard it, and when I picked up the album, the song felt like it lost some power.  The Spotify version is the album version.

#21 Celebration – Un Blonde.  My third favorite album from 2016 was Good Will Come To You, by Un Blonde, the moniker of unsung genius Jean-Sebastian Audet (well, maybe sometime sung in certain corners of the interwebs).  Audet changed his alias, however, to Yves Jarvis recently and Good Will Come is available on Spotify under this new identity, along with a new 2019 LP (The Same But By Different Means).

#33 Where We’re Going - Gashcat.  The horribly named Gashcat was the original outfit of the now solo Kyle Craft.  Craft, after disbanding Gashcat and moving to Portland from Louisiana, put out a couple of good glam-rockish albums on Sub Pop records over the past few years.  But Gashcat sounded to me like the second-coming of Neutral Milk Hotel (singing saw included) and I mourn the loss of an amazing band that never took hold.  Craft, in the process of reinvention, removed any and all official links to Gashcat’s debut Reunion! and follow up EP Devil Kid Demos (but did re-record “Lady of the Ark”).   The songs, thankfully, still persist on YouTube.  Listen to “Where We’re Going” here.

#54 We Have Failed – Elika.  I discovered this song on When the Sun Hits: 200,000 Gazes, a digital compilation of lesser known and/or unsigned shoegaze and dream pop artists (yours truly included, with my Green Palm Radiation track “Rachel Brook” appearing on the third issue, 300,000 Gazes, Vol. 2).  Elika has a lot of releases widely available in the digital world but this darkwave gem was always my favorite, and appears to be exclusive to the compilation.  Listen here.

And now, my Top 100 favorite songs, 2009 to 2018:

 

1 Swim Until You Can't See Land Frightened Rabbit The Winter Of Mixed Drinks

2 Hold On Alabama Shakes Hold On

3 Call It Dreaming Iron & Wine Beast Epic

4 Let's Play / Statue of a Man Mutual Benefit Love's Crushing Diamond

5 Written on the Forehead PJ Harvey Let England Shake

6 Yesterday's Fire Moonface Heartbreaking Bravery (with SIINAI)

7 Rill Rill Sleigh Bells Treats

8 Sprawl II  (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Arcade Fire The Suburbs

9 English Subtitles Swervedriver I Wasn't Born To Lose You

10 Avant Gardener Courtney Barnett How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose EP

11 The Hair Song Black Mountain Wilderness Heart

12 Lorelai Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues

13 Surrounded By Your Friends Hooray For Earth Momo

14 I'm Not Talking A.C. Newman Shut Down The Streets

15 High School Lover Cayucas Bigfoot

16 So High Ringo Deathstarr Colour Trip

17 What Would I Want? Sky Animal Collective Fall Be Kind

18 Poor Old Lance Frank Fairfield Out On the Open West

19 Man On Fire Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Here

20 Necronomicon Besnard Lakes A Coliseum Complex Museum

21 Celebration Un Blonde Good will come to you

22 I Don’t Know Sheepdogs Learn and Burn

23 Their Pie (Hawthorne Version) Mark Orton Nebraska

24 Clawing Out at the Walls Dominant Legs Young at Love and Life

25 Haze Angelo De Augustine Swim Inside the Moon

26 Invisible Republic Young Galaxy Invisible Republic

27 Cease To Know Eluvium Similes

28 45'S and 33'S Drew McIvor 45'S and 33'S - Porchlight

29 Disco-Slave Songs Two Koreas Science Island

30 The Ballad Of The Space Babies Jim Guthrie Sword & Sworcery LP - The Ballad of the Space Babies

31 Middle Sea Yuck Glow & Behold

32 Baby Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Mature Themes

33 Where We're Going Gashcat REUNION!

34 Albatross Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night

35 Getting Gone Mutual Benefit Skip A Sinking Stone

36 Waiting For Something To Happen Veronica Falls Waiting For Something To Happen

37 California EMA Past Life Martyred Saints

38 Back To You Twerps Range Anxiety

39 The Scene Between Go! Team The Scene Between

40 Blue Skies Kathryn Calder Kathryn Calder

41 Bad Texan Lucid Dream Compulsion Songs

42 Sun's Coming Down Ought Sun Coming Down

43 Lady of the Ark Kyle Craft Dolls of Highland

44 I Wonder? Swervedriver I Wasn't Born To Lose You

45 Line Them All Up Black Mountain IV

46 Zombie Langhorne Slim Lost at Last  Vol. 1

47 You Day Wave Headcase / Hard to Read

48 Voidfish (Plural) Rachel Rose Mitchell Voidfish (Plural) - Single

49 Carcassonne Angelo De Augustine Carcassonne

50 Lost Dreamers Mutual Benefit Skip A Sinking Stone

51 Freebird II Parquet Courts Wide Awake

52 Womb Adrianne Lenker abysskiss

53 Ascension I Break Horses Chiaroscuro

54 We Have Failed Elika 200,000 Gazes: Volume One

55 Oh, Naoko Sun Airway Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier

56 My Only Pains of Being Pure at Heart The Echo of Pleasure

57 Latin America Holy Fuck Latin

58 Bluebird of Happiness Ulrich Schnauss Missing Deadlines - Selected Remixes

59 Fool's Gold S. Carey Hundred Acres

60 Killer Crane TV On The Radio Nine Types of Light

61 The End of That Plants and Animals The End of That

62 Capacity Big Thief Capacity

63 Leonard Sharon Van Etten Tramp

64 The Park Secret Cities Strange Hearts

65 Feel Ty Segall Manipulator

66 Jigsaw Heart Elliott Brood Work and Love

67 Pedestrian At Best Courtney Barnett Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

68 You See Everything Low C'mon

69 Take It Slow Rogue Wave Delusions of Grand Fur

70 Ablaze School Of Seven Bells SVIIB

71 Feel You Julia Holter Have You in My Wilderness

72 The Mermaid Parade Phosphorescent Here's To Taking It Easy

73 Star Roving Slowdive Slowdive

74 An Impression No Age An Object

75 Halfway Home Broken Social Scene Hug Of Thunder

76 Don't Delete The Kisses Wolf Alice Visions Of A Life

77 Feel It All Around Washed Out Life of Leisure

78 Catamaran Candy Claws In The Dream Of The Sea Life

79 Blue Rose Amen Dunes Freedom

80 Cali in a Cup Woods Bend Beyond

81 Chinese Letter Ulrich Schnauss Missing Deadlines - Selected Remixes

82 Olympians Fuck Buttons Olympians 12"

83 Cover The Walls Internet Forever Internet Forever

84 Stay Close Delorean Subiza

85 Lovin' on an Older Gal Sonny & The Sunsets Tomorrow Is Alright

86 The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack Liars Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack

87 When We Were Alive Thermals Now We Can See

88 C'est La Vie No.2 Phosphorescent C'est La Vie

89 Valley Hump Crash No Age Everything In Between

90 She's Closer Than I've Ever Been Adam Franklin I Could Sleep For A Thousand Years

91 All Be Gone Buffalo Tom Quiet and Peace

92 Nothing Brings Me To My Feet Favourite Sons The Great Deal Of Love

93 Glass Jar Tristen Sneaker Waves

94 My Old Man Mac DeMarco This Old Dog

95 Ends of the Earth Lord Huron Lonesome Dreams

96 James Ex Cops True Hallucinations

97 Continental Breakfast Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile Lotta Sea Lice

98 Talking Backwards Real Estate Atlas

99 Your Type Alvvays Antisocialites

100 Young Blood Naked and Famous Passive Me - Aggressive You