La Blogotheque has one of the coolest concepts of capturing live music out there, alongside Daytrotter. Both are run by independent music lovers who entice fantastic bands to perform exclusively for them in a natural setting for the enjoyment of their readers via the magic of the internet.
They coax these intimate and laid-back performances from a range of folks, and then share the resulting songs with us. I could not help but smile for this whole bouncy, swirling, impressionistic serenade from The Shins as they walked the streets of the Montmartre district of Paris with their acoustic guitars, like the best kind of strolling troubadours. Sheer brilliance.
One of my trusted musical savant pals recommended I take a listen to this San Francisco Bay Area artist he recently saw at an open mic. After taking a few spins, I have fallen for his music too, in a big way. It’s got tones of My Morning Jacket vocals, resonant piano chords, and raw doo-wop harmonizing of the 1950s. All this from a kid of nineteen, recorded at home.
Jake Troth is a North Carolina native, currently passing time in the Bay Area before heading out here to Colorado for college. The Ups and Downs of Being At The Bottom is his first EP, and he’s putting the final touches on it for a spring/summer release. My friend pointed out the semblance to some of the simpler tunes of Coldplay, but noted that “they don’t sound like that anymore so it’s good someone is filling the shoes.” Personally, I find this stuff more compelling than Chris Martin and Co. in its unassuming purity, although I hear the similarities too.
Gram LeBron of Rogue Wave also helps out with two songs on this EP — the title track (stream on MySpace), and a lovely tune about songwriting and slick grey streets called “Oakland On A Rainy Day”. I would posit that there are far too few songs about San Francisco’s lesser known cousin to the East, and Jake’s tune is a killer offering.
Check out these tracks like whoa:
Hold You Tight – Jake Troth The best Under The Sea school-dance music from the ’50s sockhop that I never went to. I love how the acapella harmonies are raw and echoey, not glossy, the lyrics endearing. This is one of my favorite songs I’ve heard in the last few months. Hot dang it’s good.
Caroline – Jake Troth
A small, perfect, piano tune about driving out to California, leaving Caroline far behind — and I just don’t want to stop listening to it.
It ends, I restart it.
Make your ears thrilled and head over to his MySpace to check out more of his work (I love all three songs he currently has up, definitely download “Not Enough”). The EP The Ups and Downs of Being at the Bottom is now completed, written, recorded, screen printed, and copied by Jake himself. They’re available for a mere $10 by emailing Jake or contacting him through MySpace. I hope Jake keeps doing what he is doing, ‘cos this is good stuff with loads of talent and potential.
Ûž And I finally got my act together and posted a little something to the blog all about those songs on TV that catch your ear: The Commercial Music Blog. I watch so little TV (and even fewer commercials: thanks TiVo!) that it’s almost comical that I’m even on the contributor board for that blog, but I finally saw something I wanted to post about. Check it out. And don’t even try to say that it doesn’t make you laugh too.
My other Elliott Smith post recently was the actual album mp3 of “High Times” from New Moon, out May 8. I’ve also just come across this radio rip of one more song from the album, a demo from the Either/Or sessions called “New Monkey.”
Because it’s a rip of streaming audio, it is lower quality sound-wise (so wait for the album to fully enjoy!), but what a great track. We sometimes forget that Elliott knew how to bring some of that rock too. Plus he actually sings the lyrics here, “He’s busy shaking hands with my monkey.”
I literally woke up with this Josh Rouse cover in my head this morning, and laid there barely half-awake with the sun streaming in between that crack in the blinds, these crystalline opening notes running on repeat. It really is a sunrise kind of song. So I decided to temporarily preempt what I was going to post in favor of this cover-licious compilation.
What would possess a bunch of modern-day indie rockers to contribute to a cover album of ’70s AM-radio deluxxe group Bread? All of their stuff forever sounds like it should be listened to on a big ‘ole 12″ vinyl LP whilst wearing platform espadrilles and a loudly patterned shirt. Or maybe just nothing at all. But if you can get past the overarching soft-rockness, the harmonies are tasty, the music has definitely affected the generation of fine music that I like now, and there is a laid-back goodness oozing all over this stuff.
Josh Rouse’s lovely cover is pretty much note-for-note faithful of this ridiculously sad-sap, “please walk all over me because I love you, you goddess” song, but it absolutely works with his striking tenor, and is nice to wake up to on brain radio:
It Don’t Matter To Me – Bread (add that to the list of worst band names to Google, along with Cake and Live)
Friends and Lovers: The Songs of Bread was released in 2005 (actually, two years ago to the day as luck would have it) and in addition to Rouse also features Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, Cake, Erlend Oye (of Kings of Convenience), Oranger, Rachel Goswell (of Mojave 3), and Bart Davenport (of Honeycut). Friends and Lovers (Bread cover) – Erlend Oye
Man alive, listening to this stuff –the originals and these covers– makes me feel like an 8-year-old again, riding my bike really fast, or sitting on the cracked tan vinyl backseat of my dad’s dusty green Datsun with the radio on. You don’t realize how much Bread you’ve probably passively absorbed in your childhood. Rhino Records recently released a Best Of Bread album as well, if you just can’t get enough.
And if you’re still too insecure to fully bask in side of your brain that wants to love Bread, let John McCrea of Cake excoriate you as he defends their cover of “Guitar Man”:
“Yeah, why make fun of a well-written song unless you’re an insecure person that needs to use music almost like insecure middle-age people use fine wine,” he said. “You’re using music as a badge. And simultaneously I think what you do is drain the actual joy out of it, and it becomes somewhat of a calcified exoskeleton of your pathetic and, I guess, not fully defined ego.” - John McCrea, Cake
Last Tuesday I saw Street To Nowhere again, opening for Rocky Votolato. Turns out this was kind of the third time I saw them because they opened for that awesome Format show I was at last year at the Cervantes. But I was either late or not paying attention that night, so my loss. They put on a really good set this time around, showing more of their “singer-songwriter” side due to the nature of the following acts, and less of the Weezer-meets-Bright-Eyes rock. Drummer Joey still broke both snare drum and drumstick by song #3, a foreseeable mishap if you were watching the pounding he was giving to those bad boys. Sweet.
In any case, one of the songs that STN included in their set was a surprising Leonard Cohen cover of Chelsea Hotel #2 (I mean, what are the kids covering nowadays from Cohen other than Hallelujah?). After the show, leadman Dave Smallen told me that at the above-mentioned Denver show last year they were kind of off, partly because Dave’s entire extended family was there to distract him. I asked if he was embarrassed or otherwise discomfited by singing Cohen’s lyrics about “giving me head on the unmade bed” in front of his mom and family. He just shrugged — and tells me that his cool mom is actually the one who introduced him to the music of Leonard Cohen. Props to Dave’s mom. My mom introduced me to hippie folk and countless lullabies with three-part harmonies, but no Cohen.
This version was recorded in bassist Bryce Freeman’s basement in Oakland. And a word of correction: In my previous post, Dave says I called him a 17-year-old. Ladies, let it be noted that he is actually 22.
Check out their album Charmingly Awkward, out now on Capitol. All the kids love it, ’twas selling like hotcakes at the show last week. And look who wrote something nice about them way back when. Chris posted “Boxcars Boxcars Boxcars” [listen], but they did a smashing job on this one Tuesday night, a real crowd-pleaser that’s fun to sing along with:
There’s a new b-sides and rarities compilation from Tennessee power-punk/pop band Superdrag out today called Changin’ Tires On The Road To Ruin. I meant to try and finesse a cool post of rarities for the occasion, but the day snuck up on me. So it’s out now, only ten bucks and you can order it here. Even though I was blinded to their wonderfulness when they first hit the ground in the ’90s, now I will admit to having seen the light. Superdrag has a crunch and a zing all their own, plus a distinctive echoey drum clatter that I love.
Superfans of Superdrag have told me that this rarities collection is a bit disappointing to the hardcore fans because most of these tracks have been circulating among the rabid for years, but for us non-rabid it looks to be a solid collection. Singer John Davis writes:
When you play in a band for 10 years, you write a lot. Usually, you only get a record out every couple of years so you’re going to end up with a fair number of songs that never see the light of day for one reason or another.
Sometimes the version that’s issued on record will be your second or third attempt to get it “right” so your demos are left behind like pieces of evidence. People sometimes care about ‘em, sometimes they don’t. You’ll wind up with hundreds of live recordings, mostly of dubious origin. A good percentage of these will be terrible, others might be great, and some will hold sentimental value because of the places and times they stand for: good or ill.
These are just some of the things this record is concerned with. Arena Rock Recording Co. put it all together for you, and I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy it. There are hours and hours more where this came from… miles of cassette tape.
TRACKLIST 01. Here We Come (8-Track Demo, Bearsville, NY, February 1997) (*previously unreleased) 02. She Says (8-Track Demo, Bearsville, NY, February 1997) (from the out-of-print Rock Soldier CD) 03. My Day (Will Come) (8-Track Demo, Bearsville, NY, February 1997) (from the Rock Soldier CD) 04. Sleeping Beauty (8-Track Demo, Bearsville, NY, November 1997) (*previously unreleased) 05. Doctors Are Dead (8-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, October 1998 ) (*previously unreleased) 06. Comfortably Bummed (8-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, October 1998 ) (*previously unreleased) 07. No Inspiration (8-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, October 1998 ) (*previously unreleased) 08. Keep It Close To Me (4-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, 1999) (*previously unreleased) 09. Extra-Sensory (4-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, 1999) (*previously unreleased) 10. I Am Incinerator (8-track Demo, Stealth Studio, 1999) (*previously unreleased) 11. Relocate My Satellites (4-Track Demo, Stealth Studio, 1999) (*previously unreleased) 12. The Rest Of The World (4-Track Demo, October 2001) (*previously unreleased) 13. Lighting The Way (Live At The Exit/In, Nashville, TN, 6-21-03) 14. True Believer (Live At The Exit/In, Nashville, TN, 6-21-03)
“I kept recording more songs with no regard whether or not they were gonna be on anything. That’s what I’m used to doing, recording all the time and not going, ‘What should I record for this record?’ Usually it’s put out whatever happened in the last six months. With this, I had way too many songs and no mechanism for picking between them.” –Elliott Smith, Tape Op Magazine, 1996, on finishing Either/Or
On May 8th the Kill Rock Stars label will release New Moon, a double disc of mostly unreleased songs which melancholy, beautiful singer-songwriter Elliott Smith recorded between 1994-1997. Only three of these songs have been released before (all on compilations), and while live versions exist of many of these songs, Smith fans welcome the opportunity to enjoy these mastered studio recordings.
A breakdown of which tracks appear on the album (and where they’ve shown up before) can be found here. A chunk of change from the album sales will go to Outside In, a Portland-based social service organization serving homeless youth and low-income adults.
You may have read about the ooooh-ahhhh coolness of the new iConcertCalplugin you can download for iTunes which will automatically cull all the upcoming concert dates for whatever city you type in, based on who is in your iTunes library. What I didn’t know until yesterday is that it is now available for Windows users as well as Mac.
I did actually find myself ooohing and ahhhing when I loaded it — very cool & helpful and now all of us Windows Luddites can join in on the fun. Plus, it’s good for travelling (as I am doing to San Diego next month for my brother’s graduation — I gotta take that kid out and now I have some ideas of where to whisk him).
Here are some new tunes to feed your ears this week.
Look At You Now Golden Smog When does a side project become a “real” band? I love side projects for the freewheeling ways that they let the collaborating musicians explore common ground with no long-term commitment — they’re doing it because they want to. Blood On The Slacks (har har) is the second release in less than a year from Golden Smog (a supergroup comprised at times with members of The Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Run Westy Run and Wilco — although this release is Tweedy-less), and it’s out April 24 on Lost Highway. There are several great tracks among the 8, including the blush-inducing falsetto ballad “Scotch On Ice” about a bendy and compliant sex partner, and the fuzzy & bright “Can’t Even Tie Your Own Shoes.” This particular cut is more ’60s harmonies and pop-influenced than some of the other more alt-country/rock pieces on the EP — a great summer song.
Os Novos Yorkinos Bebel Gilberto Daughter of legendary bossa nova musician Jọo Gilberto and Brazilian jazz singer Mi̼cha, Bebel Gilbertohas a solid gold pedigree in making music. Momento is her third solo album, a deliciously global and seductive collection of earthy rhythms influenced by her native Brazil and recorded in London, Rio de Janiero, and New York. This track jumped out at me for the acoustic guitar and handclaps+congas foundation mixed with her slyly knowing voice. This song (and the whole album, really) deserves to be liberally splashed throughout all of your summer mixtapes this year Рdelightful and warm.
Are You Prepared The Concretes A charmingly retro-sounding closer to the new Hey Trouble album from Sweden’s The Concretes, illustrating the unvarnished ’60s girl-group undertones layered with synthy-Scandinavian pop and tambourines. The aforementioned “trouble” refers to the tumultuous year they’ve had with the loss of lead singer Victoria Bergsman (who is busy whistling and singing about not caring about the young folks lately) and their decision to carry on as a band without her. Her voice is certainly missed on this album, but it’s a new era for The Concretes with a new sound that’s growing on me. Hey Trouble is out now physically in Scandinavia and digitally elsewhere.
White Headphones The Mother Hips I posted a bit from Jackie Greene last week where he mentioned the new Mother Hips album. It sparked something in my memory and I delved into the immense & growing pile of promo CDs sitting on my stereo cabinet, and eureka! there it was. Kiss the Crystal Flake has an odd egg/ocean-themed cover and a psychedelic title, but it’s got some good stuff within. I’ve never seen the Mother Hips live, as everyone says I must, but I very much liked the ’70s-Stones swagger of this track, which also features Mr. Greene on piano. It also definitely recalls the opening of the Beck track “Strange Apparition” for me, which in turn also reminds me of the Stones too. All that to say – it’s good. Check it out.
Don’t Give Up The Noisettes Pardon me while I sexually harrass another female. This album from The Noisettes is one, if you get it, that you should buy the actual album. The front cover is the trio busting out of some sort of carnival-mouth thingie. The back cover is a rear view of their exodus, and the central focus is pretty much lead singer Shingai Shoniwa’s exceedingly lovely bottom in magenta spandex. I mean come on, you can’t help but check that thing out. The Zimbabwean/Londoner yowls on this track with a take-no-prisoners snarl that belongs in the halls of the baddest female punk rockers. I feel fierce just listening to her verbal assault in front of a wall of thick guitar that Brian Setzer would approve of, and unrelenting punk drums. This is fun stuff (even if I think noisette is French for . . . hazelnut?). What’s The Time Mr. Wolf (??) is out tomorrow in the US on Universal/Motown. *
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
The King sits there brooding, giving his blessing over your music scene as you feed him quarters.
Name: Heather Browne
