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This is just such a fucking good song. It rides the 90s line so well. Part girl-fronted-rock, part Nine Inch Nails spoken spooky word, Luscious Jackson‘s “Naked Eye” is a golden track. I remember when this was a radio hit- GOOD OLD DAYS… See if it feels just as good for you, too.
“And it feels alright…”
Luscious Jackson: Naked Eye
In early November Alex Bleeker stood on the stage at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey with his band, Real Estate. The four-piece was sound checking in front of an eager crowd, which can sometimes be a nerve-wracking experience. Everyone wants the show to start, the band wants to make the show sound good. Luckily, Alex Bleeker is the type of person that makes situations comfortable.
As his bandmates checked guitar levels and microphones, Bleeker, who plays bass in the band and is 23, cracked jokes and talked with the crowd. That’s just the kind of guy he is.
His joke had something to do with the state of New Jersey, which is apt. The show was in Jersey and Bleeker and his band mates all, with the exception of drummer Etienne Duguay, grew up there and still live there. The show at Maxwell’s was also the first stop on a tour opening for Girls, the most hyped indie act this year.
Bleeker, as his friends call him, just released his debut LP on Friday. So while he is still on tour with Real Estate, (they conclude the tour this Friday with a show at Market Hotel), he is also putting out his own work. This release is a first for many– the record is also the first ever LP put out by Underwater Peoples, which is a collaborative effort and a cooperatively run label started by Bleeker’s childhood friends.
Alex Bleeker and the Freaks is a loving collection of classic rock and roll tunes. Over Budweiser’s in the Maxwell’s dining room before the show Bleeker mentioned he wants his band to sound like Neil Young and Crazy Horse. You can definitely feel that desire coming though on the record and in live settings. The music has a rough edge to it, a kind of electric haze that makes pretty sounds feel more desperate.
“His music really speaks to me,” he said.
Bleeker leads the Freaks in a kind-of rag tag way- the group is not as clean and focused, perhaps, as Real Estate, even though the groups share members.
Bleeker as well as his Real Estate band mates, Matt Mondanile and Martin Courtney and another friend and musician Julian Lynch, recorded and mixed this record on July 11, 2009. The thrown together yet dedicated vibe fits this group. The songs feel immediate and have an almost playful vibe to them, which is just what Bleeker was going for.
“At the time this album was recorded, I was reading Neil Young’s biography, Shakey. That had a big influence on the recording process, the idea of getting good cuts, live, raw in the room. If you listen carefully to the record you can hear some missed notes or mistakes, and that’s how I like it. It’s like capturing the way that the songs were recorded at one particular moment in time,” he said.
One track that has been downloaded all over the internet over the past few months is “Never Goin’ Back,” a nostalgic paean to college daze. Bleeker attended Bennington College, a tiny liberal arts school in the Berkshires of Southern Vermont, (the same school as Mountain Man, and yes, they were friends and he brought their songs to Underwater Peoples, which is releasing a 10″ from Mountain Man this winter.)
Bleeker studied theater at Bennington, but he says playing in a band onstage is a similar experience to playing a character.
“In both scenarios you’re conveying a version of yourself, somewhat enhanced, to communicate or forge some kind of recognizable emotional connection,” he said.
Bleeker graduated in Spring, 2008, which is when he wrote “Never Goin’ Back.” Bleeker writes songs that wrap around you and pull you in– even with subjects that listeners can’t easily relate to, like just graduating from school, perhaps.
“All of these songs are specific to my own personal experience,” Bleeker said. “But I hope they are ultimately relatable to many people on a more grand human scale.”
Alex Bleeker is playing solo acoustic with Mountain Man, Liam the Younger and No Demons Here on December 11 at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Greenpoint.
Animal Tracks: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks (Mountain Man Cover)
Never Goin’ Back: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks (from a forthcoming Group Tightener 7″)
Joe Goddard of Hot Chip fame has unleashed some solo jams, which I have been pleasantly turned on to by my fav Australian bloggers, Rose Quartz. The album, Harvest Festival is filled to the brim with electronic blips and bleeps with earthy tones and feelings oozing out of the cracks. And with track names like “Tinned Apricot” and “Half Time Oranges” I mean, come on now! Get hungry. (All the songs are named after fruits, prepared or otherwise). Go and stream bits of the tracks at Greco Roman, who is putting out the album.
Specifically check “Go Bananas.” Anyone remember what that’s from?
Listen to “Half Time Oranges,” which is the most ambient of them all.
I am utterly checked out today. I’m ready to get on a plane to the midwest and eat turkey and chill. I’m a little out of the feeling of writing, blogging, working. But this track arrived and it’s half chilled out, half soul searching. The Seven Fields of Aphelion is a member of Black Moth Super Rainbow and this project is a departure from that– while still maintaining synth beats and beauty drawn out from extended jams and drones. This is a good track to get you through the day.
The Seven Fields of Aphelion: Mountain Mary
This song is off the debut album, Periphery, which is out on February 16.
I would love to see the Pixies this week, they are playing Tuesday through Friday at the Hammerstein Ballroom, but I don’t want to pay and i’m not going to be here. I’m sure everyone will have a great time. And thanks to the Pixies for offering some live tracks for free on their website. Here’s the best one: “Dancing The Manta Ray.”
Pixies: Dancing The Manta Ray
Even though we didn’t get famous guest appearances, the Dirty Projectors show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg Saturday night was still energetic and fun. Even though the band didn’t play “Knotty Pine,” the song Dave Longstreth penned with David Byrne, unreleased tracks like “Ascending Melody” and awesome oldies like “Fucked For Life” added to a pitch perfect set. Dirty Projectors don’t mess up. They’ve been touring more more than six months. They’ve got the act down.
This is not to say the band’s set was uninspired, but there is something to be said for freshness. While on Sunday night, guests spiced up an otherwise tired set, on Saturday it was just the band of six.
Back in June in a sticky Philadelphia church basement with a low ceiling I saw Dirty Projectors play a very similar set. The difference was time. The band’s acclaimed album, “Bitte Orca,” had just been released and the buzz was thicker than summer BBQ air. They were so excited and grateful for the audience’s support and enthusiasm. On Saturday night the enthusiasm was probably more like, “Thank God I’m Back in Brooklyn.”
Which begs the question: why did all the famous guests drop in at the Bowery Ballroom on Sunday night? Aren’t Dirty Projectors a Brooklyn band? That’s what NYMag said, so it must be true! Perhaps it’s just convenience- The Roots and David Byrne surely live in Manhattan. Right?
All of this may lead you to think the show was boring– it certainly wasn’t. The music Dave Longstreth writes is rich with detail, nuance, complicated chord changes and three-part harmonies that ride on the edge between shrillness and heart-stopping beauty. His band members are all at the top of the heap- not one of them is a mediocre player or singer. Longstreth has assembled the New York Philharmonic of indie-rock. So each amazingly intricate song, “No Intention,” Cannibal Resource,” “Temecula Sunrise,” were performed perfectly. Sometimes you want to scream at how well done the songs are. Sometimes a person wants rare, or medium-rare.
Longstreth is a fan of shifts, cosmic changes, bumps in the road, which is probably why he sets his sets up the way he does. He started Saturday’s show off with a bang, then moved into more delicate territory with Angel Deradoorian taking the vocals on the Nico-esque “Two Doves.” Longstreth accompanies Deradoorian on the guitar and then he and the original four DP’s, (Deradoorian, drummer Brian McComber and guitarist and Longstreth GF Amber Coffman), played a few old-school pre “Bitte Orca” numbers. Longstreth’s old songs are much more raw and abrasive- both lyrically and sonically. “Police Story” is about cops:
“This fucking city, is run by pigs….They hit me across the head, with a billy club.”
Fair enough. None of the new DP’s songs stray into that territory.
The now-considered-epic Dirty Projectors song that Coffman takes the vocals on, “Stillness Is The Move,” was performed toward the end of the set. While Coffman has the pipes of Mariah and the attitude of Joni Mitchell, she didn’t seem to have either going in full force on Saturday. One particular high-note was missed, and singer Haley Dekle backed Coffman up more than on the album. This is really understandable- it’s a tough song and the petite Coffman has been singing it every night for many, many months.
A friend whispered in my ear, “Too bad Solange isn’t here.” If you don’t know what this refers to, click here.
A few words on tUnE-YaRdS. Merill Garbus has got it going on. She is a strange performer who is both rootsy and bluesy but also noisy with punk-inflection. Equipped with only a loop pedal (she must have had at least 5 loops going at a time), two snares and a baritone ukulele, Garbus wove a tapestry of funky indie songs. Where did this woman come from? She sounds like she could be from Ireland or England, or West Virginia, or Seattle-even. A woman born out of many, many inspirations. Here’s one origin story…
Not From Wednesday Night
By Kemp Baldwin
Wednesday night at the Bowery Ballroom, tUnE-YaRdS – the one-(wo)man band flanked by a bassist when playing live – shook my brain and excited my ears enough that I wanted to find her parents. An alternative cut of Mama Mia, a movie I have never seen, but whose trailer I’ve been subjected to a number of times, unfolded before me. ABBA’s Dancing Queen wasn’t assisting a bride-to-be find her father, but instead tUnE-YaRdS’ frenetic hodgepodge oddball jams had her possible dads coming out of the woodwork. (Her mom, a combination of Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, and Betty Davis (the singer, not the actress), didn’t show because her three heads tend to distract the crowds.) But her plausible father candidates chimed in:
Yo, so I show up to the Bowery because this chick, tUnE-YaRdS sent me a facebook message that said something to the effect of, “Hey, despite you being a machine primarily used to make beats, you may be my father,” which makes sense because I made a lot of babies back in the 80s. Bitches can’t say no to a funky beat and really all you have to do twist my knobs and punch my buttons and I’m ready to explode like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. Have you motherfuckers heard, “Sexual Healing”? That little sperm of a song has been knocking ladies up for nearly thirty years. My boys swim hard and long! The shits would have pruned fingers if they had hands.
Anyway, this wild looking white chick comes on stage with this bassists that looks like Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords and I’m like, “Nah, this cracker can’t be my daughter. She looks nothing like me.” But then I’m like, “TR-808, don’t be too quick to pass judgment. You’re a machine. You’ve made kids that look like Phil Collins before.” The girl starts to sing, bouncing her voice over eight octaves and looping the shit so it harmonizes with itself to form an a cappella group on acid in jungle and I was about to walk because I’m not really into that type of party. But then she grabs two drum sticks and boom, she drops it like it’s hot or 1986 – boom fucking bap. She’s got Daddy’s rhythm – but in analog. And I start to try to piece it together. Now, I’m wondering if the condom broke the night me, Run DMC, and Madonna had a freak fest.
Here’s a little song I wrote this little lady sent me a note, “Don’t worry you may be my Daddy.” I’m like, ohhhhhh oh oh oh shit oh shi-hithit-hit, I can’t afford any more child support on this one hit. But I’m Bobby McsuperniceguyFerrin, so I go see my maybe daughter open for the Dirty Projectors.
She hits the stage – be bop bop bo bo boooh – and holy moly, this girl has pipes that could provide plumbing to the Pentagon. Can you say, bootybasbabo? Probably not, because it takes having at least a seven octave range to make it sound right. But she can – the apple of my eye. Her voice is mellifluous, piercing, buoyant, goofy, frightening, and soulful. I want to hop on stage and vocal-jam hug my little girl and tell her that eccentric pop tends to yield only one hit, but don’t worry you will have a catalog rich with gems that dozens of devoted fans will love. Then she starts to get funky on a baritone ukulele and I notice that stringy-hair freak, Tiny Tim, and that odd night comes rushing back.
OK, I’m a weirdo. I have witch hair, a shrill voice, and play the ukulele. But that little girl up there is the fruit of my loins. I mean she plays the ukulele, the baritone ukulele at that– it’s not even funny like the soprano axe I wield. No one chooses to play the ukulele. It’s either forced upon you by your mother or it’s in your blood. And for my baby girl to have that thing sounding like Sly Stone bored in Hawaii, she must have the uke gene deep in her double helix.
Bobby, don’t give me that look. We’re musicians things get weird and babies get made, even when it defies biology. A three-headed woman, a machine, a one-man orchestra, and the original freak folk, came together to produce this incredibly innovative eccentric-pop cherub. Let’s hope the world accepts her and she becomes a star.
Your Mommy and Daddies love you, tUnE-YaRdS.
tUnE-YaRdS: Sunlight
Matt Mondanile and Martin Courtney
Real Estate’s debut album is like a moving train–and you’re along for the ride. It’s pleasant, you’re going somewhere nice, the journey is easy, carefree and free of bumps in the road…
Those ellipses are meant to symbolize the feeling of an early summer evening, when the sun takes hours to set. This album is all about the enjoyment of time, and also the understanding that time passes and memories fade.
The self-titled album starts off poppy with “Beach Comber.” This is good placement—you’re instantly humming along. The melody is quick to catch and easy to like. The staccato drums imply skipping and throwing stones into lakes. Still, the notes struck are slightly melancholy, which is part of the utterly unstoppable appeal of Real Estate: the band’s songs seem light and enjoyable, and they are. But there’s something there under the surface: complicated feelings coming though in the chords and sometimes in the lyrics.
Indeed, these songs are mainly ruminations on suburban life–pools and dogs are common themes–but there are also songs that feature close to no lyrics at all. Maybe that’s because it’s easier for Martin Courtney IV to get his feelings out through the notes.
This works to the band’s advantage because it leaves room for the listener to get lost. Every time I listen to this record it happens.
In a day and age when full albums are falling out of favor, to hear one as cohesive as this is a slap in the face. It doesn’t hurt. It feels like the first drop on a rollercoaster. You’re alive!
The second track is another that blooms with time and a steady beat, which bassist Alex Bleeker provides throughout the album. “Pool Swimmers” is slow and hazy and the vocals are drenched in a reverb-induced echo. It’s almost like you’re underwater. Remember that scene in The Graduate when Dustin Hoffman jumps into the pool with his scuba gear and everything is muddled and he’s confused and then a Simon & Garfunkel song begins playing? This song would be used in that scene were the movie made today.
I am, of course, not likening Real Estate to Simon & Garfunkel. The power of the latter’s songs at that time were of extreme consequence—politically and otherwise. Real Estate songs are mostly about passing the time, getting lost, feeling numbed over with bliss. Is the bliss real? Or is it a necessity in hard times to find bliss and soak it up? I’m not going to get into an economic discussion here but I will say the members of Real Estate are all recent college grads who probably saw many of their friends graduate with no prospects. Good thing these guys have been playing music together since they were young, and good thing they have some business savvy friends from their formative years (the dudes behind Underwater Peoples Records) who wanted to put out early 7 inch recordings of them.
By the time the third track pulls into the station the album is really off and running. Each song progresses into the next without a break, like honey. “Black Lake” and “Atlantic City” are jams that keep folding and unfolding. The next track, “Fake Blues,” is the album’s centerpiece, as well as the song that gives the album a spine. With lyrics like these, everything becomes very clear:
Now it’s not as if I choose/ But I got to find a reason to write this song/ And I wont be here for long.”
Again the theme is time. Time is what keeps everything moving, ticking, passing by.
“Green River” follows “Fake Blues” like the sun follows a rain shower. “You know these days I ain’t hard to please.” Everyone needs a little pick-me-up.
The last three songs on the album are extremely atmospheric, each one giving off a feeling that you can instantly tap into. Whether it’s nostalgia: “Snow Days,” tranquility: “Suburban Beverage,” or relaxation induced confusion: the instrumental “Let’s Rock The Beach,” there’s something tangible in each. For all the soul searching that seems to be going on in this album, the songs are extremely accessible.
The members of Real Estate, with the exception of the drummer Etienne Duguay, grew up together in suburban, leafy Ridgewood, New Jersey. The town is actually a “village,” and one of the only “villages” in New Jersey. This place has served as a huge inspiration for the band and in fact they all still live there. Perhaps time passes differently there. Maybe things don’t change. Maybe memories linger longer.
Real Estate: Fake Blues
Correction: Etienne Duguay did go to high school with the other band members.
Actual Fact: “Matt (guitar), Bleeker (bass), and I all grew up together in Ridgewood, NJ. Etienne is from Massachusetts, but has started saying that he is from Jersey to make things easier. So yeah, we are a New Jersey band.” Thanks to Pixelhorse for the info. Read more here.
Jason Segal is so cute. Remember him in Freaks and Geeks? He was a terrible drummer… but he was so sensitive and emotional! Lindsay liked him and didn’t like him for both of those facts. Anyway– his appearance last night at The Swell Season show helped me remember what a cutie he is. Here you go– i’m sure the number has been changed by now…
The Swell Season is Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard. I remember them best not for their original music-making or the movie they made together, but for their breathtaking contribution to the “I’m Not There” soundtrack. They sang, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” which is one of my favorite songs in the world. I hope I don’t get in trouble for sharing…
Marketa Irglova & Glen Hansard: You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
Wowity Wow. New sounds like this haven’t graced my ears in awhile. And while this actually isn’t a NEW song, it’s a reissue, it’s new to me.
The Black Angels are an Austin-based fuckin-rock band. They’re considered “psychedelic” by some– and their name was taken from the Velvet Underground song, “The Black Angel’s Death Song.” Two points!
Thanks to Get Off The Coast (i’m always thanking you brother) for turning me on.
The Black Angels are touring Europe. If you see them i bet it’ll be crazy…
The Black Angels: The First Vietnamese War
