Neil Young: Sugar Mountain — Live at Canterbury House 1968 (Reprise) There's still plenty of time for Neil to pull a Lucy with the football on us with The Archives Vol. 1. Rumors began swirling around this set literally 20 years ago; it's (finally) allegedly scheduled for release in January as a set of 10 Blu-ray discs (for now). In the meantime, you can tide over the Neil fan you know with this oft-bootlegged solo acoustic Ann Arbor, Michigan, set that predates Young's eponymous debut.
My Bloody Valentine: Isn't Anything / Loveless (Sony BMG, Import) Any long-time MBV fan is, by nature, a human punching bag. Waiting 17 years for anything from a hero — a sign, a word, a thought — is just pure debasement. They might as well scream to the world, "Go ahead, abuse me all you want, you can't possibly be as cruel to me as MBV guitarist/frontperson Kevin Shields." So what better way to acknowledge your friend or loved one's true nature than to give him or her an envelope containing an IOU that states, in late January, if there are no further delays, you will order them the UK import remaster of MBV's two classic long-players, and that said collections may perhaps contain bonus material and/or liner notes from Kevin Shields himself. The remasters may even sound better, or just different in some way, from the same boring old CDs that he or she's been wearing out since college. Either way, by the time it comes out, the pound sterling might have come down enough for this not to cost you a month's rent in US dollars.
Hot album stocking stuffers, or on the couch: what do we mean when we give the gift of music?
You know what? You need to know someone pretty well to get them a box set. Because box sets are so expensive, the programming has to be pretty much on the money. My wife and I have a euphemism for an expensive gift someone gives you that shows how little the giver knows you and your tastes: "The Winger Box Set." Your aunt would get you that, thinking, "Oh, he likes rock music, he'll love this," not understanding the nuanced difference between the lameness of Kip Winger and the relative awesomeness of, well, pretty much anything else.
Psychologists say it is often the giver, rather than the recipient, who reaps the biggest psychological blessings from a gift. In the case of post–baby boomer music snobs, these psychological gains come in the form of a sort of musical one-upmanship, where the gift one gives says more about the one giving than the one receiving. It's like an unspoken inner dialogue between giver and getter. So in the spirit of the holidays and the deep psychological dysfunction that will surely come to the surface when families get together to exchange pleasantries, here are some of this holiday's hottest new albums, with the transcripts of those unspoken dialogues.
Fall Out Boy: Folie À Deux (Island)
Father: I don't understand you, son, but these fellows seem to wear similar eyeliner as you. Plus, their new album features someone uncharacteristic and unexpected guest appearances by Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, and Kanye West, which should be interesting to you for at least a few seconds before you go back to your video games and other electronic avoidance techniques.
