You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
CAMPFIRES did a little question and answer with MME last week and mentioned there was something special and secret in the works… Turns out Jeff Walls is putting out a 7″ on Mexican Summer in addition to two cassette tapes. It’s due to hit the street and the internets in late November. He’s on fire! Check a song here, a couple on his site, and this exclusive, unfinished track, “Rustic Arcadia.”
Campfires: Rustic Arcadia
That’s what i’m going to call this new genre of vocals free, found sound rich, electro-instrumentation heavy, songs that i’m hearing every day. Atmospherica. Because all of a sudden i’m on a fucking cloud. This track, “Sooli” is by Ghost Wave, formerly Street Beat. It reminds me a lot of early High Places… without the haunting Mary Pearson vocals. Thanks to Small Estuaries for turning the lights on. There’s another track at S.E., too…
matt/josh
Ghost Wave makes music in New Zealand. They opened a show for Ducktails. I want to visit.
Ghost Wave: Sooli
Pic by Lauren Bilanko
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Lightning Bolt. I was at a hometown show- in Providence- visiting my friend Joe. He’s a Rhode Islander by birth and introduced me to the band while we were still in college. Let’s just say I’d never heard anything like that before. We took acid and were like “woah!” Anyway we went to the show, we were out of college. The room was hot as hell- and dark and smelly. I couldn’t believe the devotion of the fans. I mean, I was dripping, with other people’s sweat! It was so nasty and yet I didn’t care. The band was so ferocious I had to put my own issues aside. Anyway the LB have a new album coming out soon and they are now super popular. The last show I went to was in Brooklyn and there were probably 10 times as many people at that show. It is NYC though- wayyy more people live here than in Providence. Anyway, here’s “Flooded Chamber” off the upcoming album, “Earthly Delights,” out tomorrow. Props to The Fader for posting.
Lightning Bolt: Flooded Chamber
The Kurt Vile that performed at Mercury Lounge last week was calm, collected, directed and certainly enthusiastic. But he was NOTHING like how he is in the “Freak Train” video. And that’s rad. And I think this is why I like some music videos. They allow the band or singer to be actors for a bit.
In Vile’s songs he sings lyrics that are biting: “flapping and flipping around like a fish!” “turns his back when he was down, down.” ETC. But live Vile didn’t have the passion and punch. He does in this video, for sure:
We luv the 90s. For serious. Good thing so do many, many other nostalgic blogs. Butter X Face just posted a 90s mix. It’s full of hits- both rock and R&B. These are all songs you’ll know- nothing random and/or rare here. Still, it’s a good mix, albeit with some songs that I never want to hear ever, like the first track “Hand in my Pocket,” by Alanis. Ouch.
Some favs: Coolio, The Rentals and Salt n Pepa (ALWAYS). Full track listing at BXF.
Thanks to The Good, The Bad and the Unknown for posting this song- sometimes it’s easy to forget how songs can feel. This is a live version of Built to Spill’s “Car,” so it’s not exactly as lo-fi sounding as you may remember. Still, a perfect song for the beginning of the day.
Built to Spill: Car (live)
There’s a whole list of the best Built to Spill songs over there- some I agree with, some I don’t- but the timing is of course, right. The band plays NYC next week and the new album, There Is No Enemy, is out.
The Wire Magazine is a hefty music journal out of England. It’s very serious stuff. Heavy writing, theory, reviews- all of bands that are worthy of dissection. Music for survival, not entertainment. Overall anyway. Suffice it to say, they are arbiters of good taste.
Sometimes when you buy The Wire you get a CD Sampler, too, which they call Tapper. I got Tapper 17 in Spring, 2007. Little did I know that on that almost useless digital platform called the “compact disc” would be a song that is worth wayyy more than just some simple file, given away for free. To me, it meant everything for a couple of months. Then i forgot about it. That’s the way things go. Recently, I found Tapper 17.
The song, “Sudden Sun,” is by a Oxford band, Jonquil. The band is on Try Harder Records, which appears to be a decent boutique label. The song is utterly gorgeous in its instrumentation and the echoes and choruses swell like flowers after a long rain. Maybe this is a song better suited for Spring but so what. It feels good right now, too.
Jonquil: Sudden Sun
Hopefully this won’t screw me out of a Thurston Moore interview in the near future but this shit is just going one step too far. Ok. Let me calm down and explain. They are performing live on “Gossip Girl.” Ok, I can accept that. They are releasing a single of the song they are playing on “Gossip Girl.” Ok…i’m still alright. The song they are releasing is an acoustic version of the ever-cool, awesome “fuck you to all who fuck with me” song, “Star Power.” WHAT??? (I wrote about why I love the song, and you can get the mp3, here.)
Now, I am not trying to tell Sonic Youth what they should do, to retain a shred of authenticity or purity, or whatever. I’m asking them this: why why why would you take such a perfect song and desecrate its history, its meaning?? Do you really think you’re turning little kids onto Sonic Youth? No. And you know it. That’s why you’re releasing it with hand printed and numbered posters, because you know your die hard fans will want something meaningful.
I like the fact that they want to release an acoustic version, (what is it, 23 years after the album on which it came out, EVOL, my favorite Sonic Youth album, was released?) I like that they are doing that. Timing it with “Gossip Girl” is what really pisses me off. And it’s not about this show in general, it could be any show. Sonic Youth- you’ve gone too far. You’ve embraced sponsorships and shitty pop culture and now you’re saturated.
Extinction is next.
This is the review of last night’s show I wrote for the NYPress:
Kurt Vile hid behind his hair but stood center stage firmly and confidently. He had nothing to lose, nothing to fear. His Matador release, “Childish Prodigy,” just came out, he’s been on the positive side of the blog-buzz for many, many months and the Mercury Lounge was sold out.
Vile is from Philly, a city that seems to have a “strong solidarity behind our bands” thing going on. Birds of Maya, another Philly act, have played a couple of shows with Vile and the Violators on the tour. My friend from Philly told me to check them out months ago- “shredders” he called them- and he was right.
But back to Vile. He began the show with two acoustic numbers- the second and better one being “Peeping Tom,” which is so devastating in its intensity that I had to tweet the lyrics.
“I don’t wanna work, but I don’t wanna sit around.”
Here’s a video of that song shot at the Silent Barn by Ray Concepcion:
more about “Live Review: Kurt Vile and Birds of Maya“, posted with vodpod
Vile’s band then joined him on stage for what can only be described as a riotous attempt. Attempting to tackle something is half the battle, but sometimes you don’t make it. Even though some of Vile’s new songs, notably “Hunchback” and “Overnite Religion,” were great with all the added embellishments (2 guitarists and a drummer) something was lost in the overkill. With so much behind him, Vile’s vocals took a back seat, and were delivered almost lazily. This is too bad because he is an expert syllabic singer: meandering over lines, changing notes and exchanging yelps with howls easily.
That said- the songs are still intriguing indie rock- some a little country, some a little bluesy, some even more avant-garde than you’d expect. On one particularly rollicking song, J Turbo, one of his 2 guitarists (why isn’t there a bassist???) literally wailed on the saxophone.
Kurt Vile performed well at what was surely a high-stakes show- I think as the tour goes on the band will get even more into the groove- and hopefully Vile will get the confidence to bring his singing back to the forefront.
A few words on Birds of Maya- damn!! Okay that was one word. But seriously, these guys were rhythm and blues with a punk rock kick. The guitarist, unlike Vile and his 2 guitarists, played with no pedals and was dancing and storming and jumping all over the stage all while playing like Jimi Hendrix- no joke. Vile and his bandmates seemed almost held back by the number of pedals in front of them- this guy had no issues like that. Heavy rhythmic bass guided the songs- leaving the guitarist to squeal all over them.
This is the most interesting and actually not at all far fetched example of how music writing can exist in the future that i’ve read in a long time. And of course it comes from Wired, such a great publication, that is also having some monetary troubles these days. It’s called “Can Device Integration Save Music Journalism?” and basically presents the idea that music writing and music information should exist on the same digital platforms on which we listen to that music- makes sense.
The writer imagines a Pitchfork App that syncs to your iTunes library and delivers reviews, and all other pertinent info to the music you’re listening to. And you can imagine how far it goes from there. With the technology we have today the options are limitless- and the number of app’s are, too. Aggregation can save the world, perhaps.
The conversation was born out of a panel at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit, which just concluded in DC. Wish i had been there.
With app’s there is also a way to get the dollas. Advertisers are very interested in getting on board.
But will actual long-form music writing work? Sure- short reviews, thumbs up or down and user recommendations can easily be a part of this. But what about long reviews? Can you read, say, an album or even a track review in the time it takes to listen to one song? And what about lots of reviews about that one song, if we’re talking aggregating lots of publications reviews together? Will the text actually get read?
