Guest List: GREEDY HEN'S TOP 10 ALBUMS '09

Greedy Hen are kind of like our Pete Best, if the Beatles were a kind of sloppy mp3 blog and Pete Best was an amazing graphic designer instead of a not very good drummer. The important thing is that we fucking love Greedy Hen. We loved them before they did us a massive solid by creating the beautiful banner you see at the top of the page and we love them even more now. We thought the best way to express that love was to ask Katherine Brickman and Kate Mitchell (aka Greedy Hen, doye) to sink even more of their valuable time into Rose Quartz by compiling a list of their top 10 albums of 2009, which they kindly have done. Here is that list:



1. Papercuts - You Can Have What You Want
sample track: Future Primitive

The first time we saw Papercuts play Katherine gushed and gushed overt enthusiasm at them like a total nerdburger until everyone was a little awkward. Needless to say this new record incites the same reaction.

[MySpace / buy]

2. Atlas Sound - Logos
sample track: Shelia

Bradford Cox is a genius. This album is making summer time sunnier.

[MySpace / buy]

3. Girls - Album
sample track: Hellhole Ratrace

"Wow, this Girls record is what Elvis Costello would sound like if he wasn't boring." Katherine actually said that once and now has no friends.

[MySpace / buy]

4. The Middle East - Recordings Of The Middle East EP
sample track: Blood

This year we spent many many hours cutting out paper trees and water colouring skies for an epic hand-made stop motion film clip for one of our most favourite bands, The Middle East.
The song is called Blood, and we still get goose bumps from its mighty whistling solos. It's a powerfully climatic joy to behold. In fact the whole EP just breaks our hearts every time.

[MySpace / buy]

5. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
sample track: Bluish

100% pure joy. That's what our faces radiate when we listen to this record. Our cheeks get sore from smiling so hard.

[MySpace / buy]

6. Jack Ladder - Counterfeits EP
sample track: Case Closed

OK, so it's come to our attention that Jack Ladder has evolved. Jack Ladder is the new Nick Cave, and the new Tom Waits, and the new howling preacher man, and the new Suicide... Basically he gets compared to a lot of old things, but no one's mistaking those deep rich vocals and stage swagger for anyone else. The Counterfeits EP scratches the surface of what the recent live performances have been like and gives us a hint at things to come. Basically what he's doing right now is exciting. We're excited!

[MySpace]

7. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
sample mp3: While You Wait For The Others

Embellished harmonies, intricate meandering crashes and turns. It builds and falls and twists us up. We're in love.

[MySpace / buy]

8. Cass McCombs - Catacombs
sample track: Prima Donna

When I first heard Cass McCombs I was completely struck by his rambling melodies, alluringly delicate voice, and occasional intermittent diabolical lyrics. I decided that I never wanted to see what he looks like until the day I see him performing live. so I carefully avoided all photographs and film clips. Three albums later, due to geographical differences, I still haven't had the opportunity to see him play. Right now in my head he looks more like a drawing than a person, so to me Catacombs is as expected, once again a stunning album by a man that looks like an illustration.

[MySpace / buy]

9. The Twerps - The Twerps
sample track: Dance Alone

It's D.I.Y calamity jams in it's purest funnest form. Messy slapstick garage pop. Humorously insightful lyrical gold. Basically when ever we listen to it we want to hunt them down and be their best friends forever. BFF's!!!

[MySpace / buy]

9.5. Crystal Stilts - Love Is A Wave 7"
sample track: Sugar Baby

OK so this isn't an album or even an EP, it's a magnificent 7", and we included it because the b-side Sugar Baby makes Kate's shoulders move in a way that's unnatural. Seriously every time that organ kicks in her shoulders jive. It's powerful.

[MySpace / buy]

10. Cloud Control - Gold Canary 7"
sample track: Gold Canary

Seeing as 7" records are so tiny, we thought we'd continue to be cheeky and squish another one into the list. Gold Canary has the usual hauntingly beautiful vocal harmonies, nostalgic jangly guitars and organ that define the Cloud Control sound, but this one also has - wait for it - a winding African vibe! Seriously, who saw that coming?! It sends us straight to Graceland. It's pure joy. B-side vintage track 'Vintage Books' is also a winner, we hope Cloud Control are feeling seriously triumphant.

[MySpace / buy]

Guest List: MICHAELLA'S TOP 10 ALBUMS '09

Michaella Solar-March is one of the coolest people we know. She does a million awesome things really well, like working for Spunk, the terrific record label that distributes bands like Akron/Family and Spoon in Australia, and before that she did an amazing show on a great radio station, and on top of that she also works on this cool thing and writes Grey Gardens, one of our favourite blogs on the whole internet. So we thought we'd capitalise on some of her coolness and get her to write a list of her best 2009 albums for us. Here's what she said:

Dear Rose Quartz,
So I always get super self-conscious about end of year lists. Don’t you think ten is a silly number? There were definitely more than ten amazing albums released this year. In fact, I tried to make a list of my top ten songs for a friend the other day but had to stop when my list was already sixty tracks long and I’d not yet reached ‘S’ in my iTunes library. But Max asked me to make a list of my favourite 2009 records. And I like Max, so I said yes. Only problem was, he specified that my list be ten albums long. Here goes nothing!



Mi Ami – Watersports
sample mp3: New Guitar

I always called these guys “Miami” as in beachside, Florida. It was only until I met my New Yorker that I learnt they were called “mee amee”. I found the album in his record collection and said how much I loved it, and his reply was to tell me they were his really good friends and that I was calling them the wrong thing. However you pronounce it (potato, potato), ‘Watersports’ is a rambling, screaming, crashing drum-driven mess and it's totally killer.

[MySpace / buy]

The xx - xx
sample mp3: Islands

Two things: I like moody electronic music and I also find it hard to concentrate while I am at work if I have music playing. This album is suuper moody which is one reason I am so into it, but another is that it is understated, and that gentleness means I can listen to it while I work without it distracting me from whatever I am doing. Double winning.

[MySpace / buy]

Glasser -Apply 12”
sample mp3: Apply

Apply is probably my favourite song this year. I'm a pretty indecisive person so I don’t want to say it definitely is my favourite song, but it's up there. Moody, pensive, sexy, and anticipatory. What a woman. I wish I could live in her head for a while. Every mix CD I made someone this year included this song. It’s just the best. “If the walls were too thin, you’d break right in” If you want to let your guard down babe, be sure I’ll get your back.

[MySpace / buy]

The Twerps - The Twerps
sample mp3: Dance Alone

I want to give every member of this band a hug. 1970s punk through a 1950s pop filter? Amazing.

[MySpace / buy]

Girls - Album
sample mp3: Lust For Life

I came to this record really late. I’d heard the singles and loved them, but I tend to shy away from albums when everyone's raving about how good they are. I want to come to them with fresh ears and I feel like I can’t when all I’ve read and heard everywhere is how brilliant something is. So I gave this some time. When I came around to listening to it in full (6 weeks ago, maybe) I died. I was missing out! Why did I do that to myself? This record is so good. It makes me want to move to San Francisco, buy a drum kit, and find a cute guy to sing and play guitar while I hit my kit with one hand and drink scotch and dry with the other.

[MySpace / buy]

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson - Summer Of Fear
sample mp3: The Sound

I loved Miles’ debut, and this continued on the same tangent as his first Kyp Malone-produced effort. Brilliantly crafted, introspective and melancholic, this album is tortured and burdened but somehow hopeful at the same time. I found this really cathartic – it is fucking heartbreaking but it's so awesomely refreshing to hear someone sing about the bullshit we all put ourselves through while we cross fingers we come out OK at the other end.

[MySpace / buy]

DaM-FunK - Toeachizown
sample mp3: Mirrors

OK, this is a tricky one. Issued as double album, Toeachizown is repetitive and not fully realised at times, but when it’s good it’s totally jamming. Plus, it’s a funk record and funk is always a little same-same so the repetition is to be expected. When it’s at its best, this album makes me want to have loads and loads of sex and that's definitely worthy of top ten listing.

[MySpace / buy]

Grass Widow - To Where 12”
sample mp3: To Where

This is the most exciting band I have heard in a long time. Sassy vocally-driven post punk with quirky, contagious 60s pop harmonies. It is messy and charming and great and I just want more!

[MySpace / buy]

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
sample mp3: Stillness Is The Move

Stillness Is The Move. What a jam! Amber Coffman’s lead vocal commands your attention but she manages to still sound humble at the same time. Dear David Longstreth, you are a god. ‘Bitte Orca’ is like a more accessible version of ‘Rise Above’, ‘Rise Above v2.0: The pop years’ maybe? Which leads me to…

[MySpace / buy]

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
sample mp3: While You Wait For The Others

I know I'm being totally predictable and this album's on everyone’s lists, but when something is good, it's good, and you can’t argue with good. While You Wait For The Others gets me right there every time. I was in a Grizzly coma for about a month after this album was released and I used to sing along very loudly while at work. One time, my singing was so loud someone in the office across from mine tersely requested I “try to keep it down”. They obvs weren’t feeling my 100% Grizzly vibe. I was and still am excited that a band who had been on the fringes so long managed to break into the mainstream with such ease. Of course Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors also did that this year. Three cheers.

[MySpace / buy]

Honourable mention my friend Chris said I can’t include because it wasn’t a full length album (does it matter that this is a 7” not an album? Chris says it does, but what does he know?)

Best Coast - When I'm With You 7”
sample mp3: When I'm With You

I love 60s girl groups and Bethany of Best Coast combines the best of those manicured pop songs with a fuzzy, hazy blissful California vibe. Scuzzy pop. I spent a lot of this year listening to her for days on end without listening to anything else. I tried to see her twice in New York this past October but couldn’t get in to either of her shows. Still devastates me.

[MySpace / buy]

Others I would have liked to include had I been allowed more than ten albums:

Atlas Sound - Logos, Those Darlins - Those Darlins, Nite Jewel - Good Evening, Wildbirds and Peace Drums - The Snake, Bat For Lashes - Two Suns, DM Stith - Heavy Ghost, Warpaint - Exquisite Corpse, Real Estate - Real Estate, Washed Out - Life Of Leisure, Jim O’Rourke - The Visitor, Fever Ray - Fever Ray, Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion.

One I would definitely never include:

Amanda Blank ‘I Love You’ (I definitely was not in love with Amanda after this. Babe, that shit was tough).

MAX'S TOP 20 SONGS OF 2009

Hey bros! Thanks for checking out my list of 20 songs I liked this year. I hope you like them too. This week, you can check out similar lists from all us Rose Quartzers; next week, we give you our top albums of 2009 - WITH A TWIST. We'll tell you about it next week. Anyway, here are the songs:



1. Bachelorette - Dream Sequence
from My Electric Family

I'd use the word magical to describe the way this masterpiece balloons and unfolds as you listen: tinny beats become drums, synthesiser brass becomes a technicolour Sgt. Peppers horn section. It's fitting that this lush pop imaginarium is called 'Dream Sequence': it treads (actually, waltzes) the line between reality and artifice, incredible flights of fantasy mingling with vivid & eclectic flashes of memory.

[MySpace / buy]

2. Monsters of Folk - Say Please
from Monsters of Folk

So much to love in this song - the swaggering 3/4 time signature, Conor/Jim/Matt trading vocals - but best of all is the motherfucking guitar solo which is both melodic and face-melting in a way I thought only J. Mascis remembered how to do.

[MySpace / buy]

3. Royal Headache - Girls
from Demo cassette

“This absurdly FUCKING good garage pop gem is full of lovestruck madness, but in a way that you can, y’know, respect, because it’s all loose and raw and kinda manly. Girls... is all joyful, lust-fuelled abandon... with its transcendental Guided By Voices supermelody.”

[MySpace]

4. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday
from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

In about 10 years when everyone who's cool right now is making overly-sentimental films about their life circa 2009 they're gonna use this song because it's such a golden indie rock gem it's making me nostalgic for this year now.

[MySpace / buy]

5. Washed Out - Feel It All Around
from Life Of Leisure

"...rather than producing big, shiny, plastic beats that sound custom-made to blare out of lousy car speakers, tracks like Feel It All Around have the noise and the dust and the charm turned way up, like Ariel Pink for the dancefloor... all heavenly and shit with twinkly synths and spacewalk harmonies."

[MySpace / buy]

6. No Through Road - Party To Survive
from Winner.

"This is a ridiculously classy jam, like Guided By Voices fucking around with Pavement, and it’s the kind of thang you’d play at a party if you wanted to make sure that it turned out to be UNBELIEVABLY memorable."

[MySpace / buy]

7. Lightning Dust - Antonia Jane
from Infinite Light

The bar's always high for Black Mountain side projects, but this record was even more terrific than I was expecting: narcotic, noir-ish alt.country with a melancholy vibe.

[MySpace / buy]

8. Grizzly Bear - While You Wait for the Others
from Veckatimest

I thought that Veckatimest deserved the hype, but I love While You Wait For The Others because it reminds me the most of Yellow House, which deserved it more but didn't get it.

[MySpace / buy]

9. Yo La Tengo - Periodically Double Or Triple
from Popular Songs

I interviewed Ira Kaplan earlier this year and I was like, "lulz, how did you think of such an amazingly dorky and neurotic and cerebral character for this song?!" and he was like "...". White boy funk is the best and so is the weird Casio breakdown in this song.

[MySpace / buy]

10. Street Chant - Scream Walk
from Scream Walk 7"

Maybe one day New Zealand will teach everyone else how to make three-minute pop songs sound like the freshest, most incredible things ever invented, even better than the chewing gum with the liquid centers.

[MySpace]

11. Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
from Merriweather Post Pavilion

Man, how about that Animal Collective?

[MySpace / buy]

12. The Daredevil Christopher Wright - Clouds
from In Deference to a Broken Back

"There’s highs and crashing lows, falsetto and handclaps, fucking polyrhythms. Constant surprises: references to the pastoral pop that’s going crazy right now as well as vintage pop and 70s guitar heroism. And really, really good songwriting."

[MySpace / buy]

13. Here We Go Magic - Fangela
from Here We Go Magic

Feels like Here We Go Magic got kinda lost in the hypnagogic pop avalanche despite a) being one of the best things about it and b) touring with Grizzly Bear, which at this stage is pretty much the best thing that could happen to any band. The album's solid but this is an amazing song with basically the best use of that kind of production I've ever heard.

[MySpace / buy]

14. Faux Pas - Silver Line
from Noiseworks

"...rich, lush melodies are kind of a Faux Pas hallmark but Silver Line mirrors the Flaming Lips' recent transition to a more muscular kind of pop glory. It floats and shimmers and throbs, surging forward and dissolving and surging again, all wondrous and cosmic but with a vibe that's ever so slightly unnerving."

[MySpace / buy]

15. Saudade - Hidden Talented
from Lookouts' Journal

"This is some hazed out space-age shit, like getting high through a motherboard in 2200. Pretty fucking creepy, too: the white noise builds and builds and the whole time there’s this melody way up high that’s all noble and righteous yet out of reach, like the human spirit facing the apocalypse or a lone astronaut adrift in a galaxy of evil."

[MySpace / buy]

16. Neon Indian - Terminally Chill
from Psychic Chasms

It's sweet that a Brooklyn band made the perfect record for us here in the Southern hemisphere to have the best summer ever to.

[MySpace / buy]

17. Telekinesis - Coast Of Carolina
from Telekinesis!

At first, Coast Of Carolina sounds like a perfect power-pop anthem but behind the percussive riffs and crunched-out guitars lies a gentle 60s pop gem.

[MySpace / buy]

18. Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard - Slogans
from Em Are I

This is like the ultimate combination of exuberant 90s indie rock and Jeffrey Lewis reining in his tendency to be totally verbose.

[MySpace / buy]

19. Ganache - In Pidgin
from A Halter Pardon Him and Hell Gnaw His Bones!

This song is so hilariously wordy and boppy I pretty much listened to nothing else for about a fortnight after I heard it the first time. Feels good to know if anything should ever happen to Stephin Merritt we've got another hilarious dude with a badass baritone to turn to.

[MySpace / buy]

20. Weezer - Can't Stop Partying
from Raditude

I only like this song ironically, but it's such an intense blast of irony it makes my knees weak and I refuse to belive this isn't the way Rivers intended.

[MySpace / buy]

Interview: GRIZZLY BEAR

Grizzly Bear – Ready, Able

In this SENSATIONAL, X-CLUSIVE INTERVIEW, Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste (rhymes with ‘toasty’) SLAMS* the vague definition of old Native American words; DEMANDS* more on-street freakouts; and ADMITS his SHAMEFUL* obsession with reinvention!

(*not actually.)

ROSE QUARTZ: Hi Ed Droste. This album has been insanely hyped. Someone started a blog counting down the days until it’s released and Dazed & Confused said it’s “An album so good it could potentially end all human conflict”. Have you had any bad reviews?

ED DROSTE: (Laughs) I don’t know! Probably, I haven’t read them all. I think we’re probably only given the ones that are good. So I’m sure the bad ones get filed away in some bad cabinet where we’ll never see them.

RQ: How do you react to reviews as ridiculously OTT as that one from Dazed & Confused?

ED: I mean, it’s of course flattering and nice but it’s also totally hyperbolic, so… I mean, I don’t think anyone would actually really… you know, it gets to a point where people use descriptives that are a little too intense, and I’m sure people all around the world know that it’s just a bit of hyperbole. But it’s of course very nice, and I wouldn’t… I’m not criticizing the person for being kind to us, but of course it’s taken with a grain of salt.

RQ: Did you at any point while you were working on this album realize it was going to be a record that people would comprehensively lose their shit over?

ED: Uh, I guess I still don’t really believe that people are losing their shit over it, are they? I need to go see someone lose their shit.

RQ: Oh, yes. I assure you they’re losing their shit.

ED: I’d like to see someone literally just have a freakout on the street. I’d like to watch that. (Laughs) I mean, we didn’t… All I know is that when we were recording it, our criteria was that for each song we had to reach the point where everyone in the band could stand by it… And there were many songs that fell to the wayside. So it wasn’t until we came up with a collection that we all loved equally that we felt like we could release it. It was less about what other people think and more about, “Can we back this up if people hate it?” Because in the long run, if we can stand behind it, it doesn’t really matter whether other people like it or not.

I mean, obviously it does in terms of touring and making a career out of it, but, you know, we just have to feel secure enough in the material ourselves before we could release it.



RQ: This is a heaps different record to your previous releases, especially Yellow House, which was quite dark and claustrophobic. Veckatimest is a lot sunnier, a lot more upbeat – are you happier people now?

ED: I think we are. Also, we’ve matured a lot. I sort of look at this album as a very sort of grown up record for us in the sense that we’ve learned how to work together, we’ve travelled a lot together, and I think everyone’s a lot more secure in their roles and confident in their abilities and also OK with their weaknesses. So that was really refreshing. There was a lot more freedom and sort of interplay and collaboration because there was sort of less of a barrier around people.

RQ: Veckatimest is a small uninhabited island off the Massachusetts coast. Why did it grab your imagination?

ED: We spent time in the region rehearsing in the past and now recording with this album. I think we just grew really fond of it. It’s abstract and sort of hard to pronounce and something you can attach your own meaning to, because it’s got this… it’s not technically a nonsense word, because I’m sure when it was named hundreds of years ago or whenever there was a meaning behind that word in that language, I’m just not aware of it. So for most people buying the record, unless they know those languages, the word is a bit of nonsense we’ve attached our meaning to, which I think is kind of fun.

RQ: One thing that really makes this a Grizzly Bear album for me despite the difference in tone is the intricacy of it – it sounds like you put a lot of care into the most insignificant sounds, like the way a particular snare roll sounds. I read a while ago that a bunch of you guys have done time playing in jazz outfits – does that have something to do with your collective attention to detail?

ED: I’m the only one in the band who’s not a trained musician. My other bandmates are, they’ve studied jazz or classical. But I think the attention to detail is a production of our aesthetic because a lot of those things that you’re talking about are things that are afterthoughts or spontaneous ideas and fun things to sort of add into it as a new layer to discover after a few listens or something like that. But the arrangements are carefully orchestrated, and I’m sure that their training plays into that as well. I mean, for me, when I write, it’s very intuitive and sort of childlike in the sense that I don’t even know what key I’m in when I’m singing, or what I’m doing exactly, it just sort of bubbles up. But yeah, I think generally it’s a nice balance between being consciously aware of the details and also not overly aware of them.



RQ: Are you a big studio band?

ED: We have a lot of fun reinterpreting music for the live setting. I think we like what we do in the live setting. It’s different from the studio, for sure, because we layer so much, so it is really close to impossible for us to recreate that in a live setting without an extra set of hands, but every once in a while we’ll team up with a string quartet or an orchestra and sort of try to get the grandiose feeling of the album but there’s still a lot of layers and textures in the live show when it’s just the four of us, because we do a lot of looping and layering of our vocals. Luckily everybody in the band sings, so we still get to achieve a lot of those four-part harmonies.

RQ: You guys are pretty into the whole remix/mash-up thing. Who is it in the band that’s into all that?

ED: Oh, that’s mostly me, I will confess to that. I get a kick out of it. But I think the other guys are into it in the sense that we all really enjoy re-inventing the tunes. We sort of have the perspective that the songs are never really done. There’s always room for interpretation, it’s always fun to see someone else’s perspective on a song, see what part they pick up on and sample and choose to use. And also, I mean, even in a just inter-band level, we like to redo our songs ourselves in various versions, like an acoustic, stripped-down version or a horn version or like an electric version of an acoustic song, depending on where we are and what kind of setting we’re in. So yeah, I think we just kind of have a lot of fun playing around with our material and letting it evolve and change into different formations.

RQ: Do you have a favourite remix or cover that someone’s done of one of your songs?

ED: I’m a big fan of the Fred Falke remix of Two Weeks. It’s just, like, totally the opposite of anything I’d ever make. It’s like a French house-techno-jam version of that song and it’s really fun. There’s a totally different spirit and energy to it than anything we’ve put out, which is sort of always exciting for me because I love the ones that are so far from the original that you can’t even believe that someone decided to do that.

RQ: You were pretty chilled when a rip of Veckatimest leaked to the internet in March.You said on Twitter that you were glad people were enjoying it. Did it piss you off anyway?

ED: I’m not mad at people for file-sharing and I think it’s harder the way things work right now and it’s kind of inevitable. And we were all expecting a leak, it was just extremely early. There are a couple of things that bother me about it: one, it leaked in a really poor quality - we spent so much time trying to make it sound beautiful and using all this vintage equipment and transferring it to analogue tape and all these things. And then it leaked and it basically sounded like a really horrible YouTube video stream of it or something. So that was frustrating. The other thing that bummed me out was that I sometimes worry that the art of the album is dying a bit and that people are just deleting things prematurely and sort of being rash armchair critics and everyone wants to blog about it and talk about it and delete songs they don’t like, and, you know, it’s just a bummer sometimes to think about all the work that went into something and it leaks in a terrible quality and everyone’s going around and judging it immediately. I don’t wanna sound really precious, but I sort of wish that when it had leaked it had leaked in full quality. If you are gonna make a snob judgement, at least you’re listening to it in its nicest form possible. But mostly, I think the internet is a wonderful tool for sharing music.

[Grizzly Bear MySpace]

[Veckatimest will be released 26/5 through Warp Records]

NEWZ YOU CAN USE #1

Carey Mercer from Swan Lake and Frog Eyes started a blog and it’s fucking hilair. Things I’ve learned from it so far: Destroyer’s Dan Bejar is “a pompous member of the bourgeoisie”! What fun! Cloud Of Evil

For his new record, Josh Freese (Devo, Guns N’ Roses, The Vandals) is offering a fairly comprehensive variable pricing model. The cheapest is $7 for a digital download of the album; the most expensive is $75,000, which buys you, amongst other stuff, an EP written and recorded by Freese about your life and a limo ride down to Tijuana where “he’ll show you how it’s done”. Tiny Mix Tapes

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Phoenix track.

Pre-order Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest on vinyl.

Magnet put together a list of the most over- and under-rated Radiohead songs, apparently because they thought it was five years ago. (Just kidding!) Magnet

The Isolationist lists the six best bands of the UK’s north-east. FINALLY! The Isolationist

Former Ariel Pink band-member Robert Robinson has a new project called Sore Eros. Raven Sings The Blues

Seun Kuti, son of Fela, talks Afrobeat and Nigerian politix. Cyclic Defrost

98 DAYS TO GO

Grizzly Bear - While You Wait for the Others (Live on KCRW)