Brasseries—that louder, brasher variety of French dining that usually involves hearty food and booze (brasserie means "brewery," after all)—were all the rage in L.A. in recent years. One of the newest brasseries to hit the Southland is Anisette, a big, boisterous spot just off the Promenade in Santa Monica with a bar imported from France, lofted seating at the back, and a menu of decent Gallic cuisine wrapped in a bright package with impeccable service.
Anisette is also the place where we chose to ring in my 34th year (wow! What a geezer!) on a Saturday afternoon. We thought the brasserie atmosphere would be great to tow along a toddler—we figured any shrieks or hollers would just get sucked into the general noise level—and sure enough, we weren't the only ones toting youngsters along for a foodie adventure. Probably the best thing, menu-wise, was Anisette's croissants. "They're the best in L.A.," our waiter said. I wanted to reply with a Liz Lemon-ish, "Oh really? Have you tried Costco's?" but the guy was so great with Aki I didn't want to be rude.
Aki proposes a toast at Anisette
Sure enough, the croissant was pretty damn good. We tried it plain and with chocolat, and it was head and shoulders above Europane or the little place on Montana Ave. I used to go to.
Tommy's burger: No, not that Tommy's!
The burger got a thumbs-up from Tommy. And I thought the steak au poivre was decent (though we've made better bechamel) and the croque monsieur was pretty damn good. And Aki, of course, gave the frittes two greasy thumbs-up.
> Yuri's croque monsieur
But by far the shiniest spot on Anisette's report card was the terrific service (including "valet parking" for our stroller). The decor is pretty spectacular, too, including the dizzying floor tiles, high ceilings, and spectacular wall of liquor, which, besides a couple of mimosas, we didn't get to sample.
This was all a few weeks before the Biblical floods that have swept L.A. set in, so we got a chance to stroll down to Ocean Ave. and soak up some of that spectacular Santa Monica air and sunshine.
I used to head down to the same patch of grass above the water after working the graveyard shift, and just suck in the cool ocean air and let the sun charge me up with Vitamin D like a human solar panel. It's a touristy spot, to be sure, but it also used to be home.
It was a wonderful gift to be able to touch base at one of my old haunts. It was just the way you're supposed to spend a birthday: Having people who love you show you just how well they know you!
Look what a couple of mimosas will do for your complexion!
2010 is already shaping up to be a great year for indie music, with some knockouts by Vampire Weekend, Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck, and Spoon, among others. But let's pull a Lost for a second and flash back (or flash sideways?) to our Top Ten Tracks of 2009.
(OK, so it's February 2010. But procrastination has its benefits: All the other top ten lists, the indignation, backlash, and hater-ation has died down. Now we can look back and be more "fair and balanced," like a music blog version of Hannity & Colmes, if you will.)
So, without further ado (or adon't), here's our top ten from 2009. As usual, we crammed in a few more than ten to be democratic, and not in any particular order. Listen to the list (minus Madera Limpia and Why?; couldn't find any MP3s) by clicking on our playlist.com below. And click on the link for a blow-by-blow review.
This glammish, power-pop single just made the cut, with Glasvegas dropping in the U.S. in January of '09. Certain parts of the globe were just hot last decade, like Austin, Texas, Montreal, and...Glasgow?! Anyway, you indie-rocking Scots (and we like the fact your brogue (is it called brogue for Scots, too? Sorry!) shows through in your vocals), we've got to say it: Clever name, clever name. And juiced up anthems like this will keep us coming back for more.
Artist: Phoenix Song: Lisztomania Album: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Everybody loved these Frenchies last year, including Madison Avenue. (You stil hear them these days in a certain car commercial.) Call us chumps, but when someone writes pure pop like this with ingeniously bright, infectious, and uppity hooks, we can't help loving it. We'll take that car, thank you very much! Sold!
Song: Boca Floja Artist: Madera Limpia Album: La Corona
Some musicians reel you in with their image. (This goes for you, hipsters, as much as it does for Lady Gaga fans: Opting out of image is still a kind of image, to paraphrase Grace Paley.) Others hook you with their story. Such is the case with Madera Limpia, a raw, genre-bending but also back-to-basics duo from one of the islands that gave birth to salsa: Cuba.
More specifically, these cats are from Guantanamo. As you can imagine, there's some politics thrown into their lyrics. There's also a nice injections of experimental and roots salsa. Only a couple of tracks of La Corona might be Conga Room-friendly, but just listen to that freakin' bass drum on Boca Floja: Pure awesome. And isn't it nice to hear handmade claves as opposed to synth loops?
To hear Boca Floja and read more about this band born on the edge of Camp Delta, check out NPR.)
What do you want to be when you grow up, Charlotte Gainsbourg? A Wes Anderson-ish indie waif, or a chanteuse like Mom and Dad? OK, fine, do both. Just keep these ultra-mod songs (like 2006's "The Songs That We Sing," another good candidate for the decade's Top 40) coming. (Collaborating with pop geniuses like Beck, Air, and Nigel Godrich doesn't seem to hurt, either.)
Song: Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh! Artist: Sunset Rubdown Album: Dragonslayer
Positive thoughts you might have when you first hear a track off Dragonslayer: ambitious, epic. Negative thoughts: sprawling, incoherent. Listen to the songs a few times, though, and you start to see how carefully structured and complex they really are: the two-part "Apollo/Anna" opens with an instrumental lick that that ends up being the melody for the second half; the lyrics by frontman Spencer Krug (of Wolf Parade) spin a tapestry of tales of dragons, ghost herds of extinct buffalo, and world-weary gods. You can almost hear the fire crackling.
"Apollo/Anna" has one of the best choruses I've heard in years: a great progression, a catchy-as-hell melody, and Krug's voice in its most comfortable and compelling range. And Krug & Co. only give it to us twice.
Song: Sleep Alone Artist: Bat for Lashes Album: Two Suns
If we ever finish our Top 40 of the Decade (Give us a break! We have a baby!), Bat for Lashes's "What's a Girl to Do" will surely be on it. Even though we've never seen "Donnie Darko," we feel like that particular song -- and Natasha Khan's songwriting style in general -- captures some of its spirit.
The first four tracks off Bat for Lashes' sophomore album are all surprisingly strong (though K Dizzle thinks her songs all sound the same!). Most critics shouted out "Daniel" at the end of the year, which is a great, gloomy episode all in itself, but "Sleep Alone" has more of what made us like Bat for Lashes in the first place: breathy goth, booming high school gym acoustics, brooding lyrics, and well-made, pensive melodies in a minor key.
Thank you, Noisettes, Amy Winehouse, et. al. for bringing back the hand-clapping, brass-hit laden, Motown-ish summer jam. But where others led the way, The Generationals last year brought the summer jam out in its finest form. (Thanks, KCRW, for tipping us off to these guys!)
But surprise, surprise: This retro track comes from a couple of gents (and their beehived backup singers) who are not only melanin-deficient hipsters, but from The Big Easy. Huh? Go Saints?
Speaking of The Noisettes, we had to keep this summer jam segment going with some serious Mary Wells reminiscent diva-ness. How can you not like that crazy hair-do? How can you not like this group? We recommend you roll your windows down, slide on your sunglasses, and enjoy this track immediately, even if you don't live in a warm weather climate (or have a driver's license, for that matter).
Artist: Andrew Bird Song: Fitz and Dizzyspells Album: Oh No!
It takes a real man to use hand claps in a song. It takes an even manlier man to incorporate whistling into the bridge. How do you get any more masculine than that? Why, you whistle in harmony and with vibrato, of course. Now that's truly sensitive! And boy is it a catchy bridge!
We've plugged more than our fair share of shoegazer pop here on Mixed Well -- some Raveonettes tracks qualify, and so does a large chunk of M83 -- but Asobi Seksu (Yuki Chikudate and James Hanna) amp up their dream pop with infectious energy. Plus, they rock out half their lyrics in Japanese. カっこいい！
This is off my favorite album of the bunch. Didn't see Dark Knight of the Soul on many lists? That's probably because it was never actually released.
Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse -- collaborating here with an insanely talent-packed lineup, including director David Lynch (singing!), Suzanne Vega, and frontmen from The Flaming Lips, The Shins, The Strokes, Sparkehorse, and Super Furry Animals -- ended the decade much like he rode it (see The Grey Album): embroiled in a legal battle with his label over the right to release his music on his own terms. To give the finger to the tightwads, DM sold blank CDs (packaged with art from the Twin Peaks co-creator), slyly suggesting fans download the music off the net.
Every single track off this unreleased album is amazing. Thanks again to NPR, you can listen to the whole album streaming. If you dig around (I won't say where), you can find hackers who've cracked NPR's stream codes so you can rip the tracks.
My favorite is this epic little number featuring Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. Hard to put into words, but it combines saunter and grandeur in an amazing way. Ambles along unassumingly, then builds into Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles-like ecstasy. The title track, featuring Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, is pretty good too. Hands down, I'd say this is the best album of the year.
Artist: Animal Collective Song: My Girls Album:
Apparently, according to the snobs at Pitchfork, Animal Collective has been around for a long, long time. Great: Good for you, underpaid (if paid at all) music lackey! Animal Collective was new to us, and to a lot of folks, in 2009, but that didn't make me enjoy "My Girls" any less.
There's something bizarre and fresh about Animal Collective's layering on this track, tribal beats and shouts laid on top of a flickering street light loop of electric sounds. Basically, this is more of that catchy, upbeat stuff (with lyrics we don't even want to penetrate) we like. 'Nuff said.
Less hip-hop than 2008's Alopecia -- actually, there's no hip-hop at all -- Eskimo Snow still dishes out songs in the same vein as Why's first album, somehow repeling at the same time it fascinates. Frontman Yoni Wolfs rattles off a complex, articulate, and probably offensive stream-of-consciousness in punkish, Berkeley-bred vocals. He's literate and he's also crass. The band is virtuosic and multi-faceted: I can't help loving the use of vibes and other keyboard percussion. But, boy! Some of those lyrics: Not for the faint of heart.
It's nice to have someone else plan an outing for you. That was the case when Tommy and Lisa invited us to take the Metro from South Pas to Chinatown on a recent Saturday.
After taking Aki on his very first train ride (on the sparkling and sun-splintered Gold Line), we sprinted over to Empress Pavilion, which was just wrapping up dim-sum for the day, and stuffed our faces with all kinds of goodies like sticky rice, shumai, and spare ribs.
Picky? Or a one-track mind?
It was Aki's first time on the train, and even though it's not really a "choo-choo" train (his favorite book right now is Freight Train by Donald Crewes), he seemed to love riding the Metro as much as he enjoys the reading about good old steam trains.
Tommy orders...
Ah, dim sum. The only drawback this time around was the sticker shock: Since when have we ever spent more than forty bucks on dim-sum?! Either there was some kind of error, we were ripped off, or we ate so fast we didn't see everything we ate. Definitely a possibility!
...and Aki approves!
Afterward, we strolled around Chinatown in the sunlight (this week's Old Testament rain storm hadn't yet set in), and ducked down an alley we'd never walked before, which was lined with shops selling knick-knacks and knock-offs on the cheap. It reminded us of any number of cheap little markets all over the world, and was a perfect way to walk off some of that no-MSG-added goodness.
Back alley shopping in Chinatown
As we've mentioned before, South Pas is one of our favorite places to either wind a day up or down. We hopped off the train at the South Pas stop, chit-chatted with a Dad ramming a Twinkie down his happy son's throat while we sipped java at Kaldi's, then strolled over to where we'd parked by the library. A perfect day? Pretty much. Thanks, Tommy and Lisa!
Jan. '08: Lolo and Lola make Aki a Purple People Eater
It isn't easy being 15 months old. According to books we've read, Aki's feeling a lot of conflicting impulses: a desire for independence, but also a fear of being apart from us; the hunger to verbalize and speak, but a raging frustration when he can't make himself understood.
Well, thanks to the Santiago side of the family, he'll be even more conflicted tomorrow: the Brett Favre-led Vikings are battling Tony Romo and the Cowboys in the playoffs.
...and Dec. '09, Uncle Sean and Auntie Connie...
Last year, Lolo and Lola set Aki up with a slick Vikings track suit, ensuring his status as a Purple People Eater. This year, though, Tito Sean and Tita Connie set Aki up with some Dallas Cowboys gear.
...make Aki a Cowboys Fan?!
We're not sure who Aki will root for during tomorrow's big game. It makes us think of Luke and Vader in Return of the Jedi:
She's a lumpia-lovin' nisei. He's a ramen-ravin' pinoy. Our little boy is like our favorite dessert, halo-halo, which means "mix mix": the best ingredients stirred together, mixed well.
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