Monday Music Roundup

Last night my friend Jill and I were at the Denver Fillmore for the Emerson Hart/Collective Soul/Live lineup, an evening punctuated by literal spontaneous rock’n'roll combustion – one of the speakers caught fire. Afterwards my friend working the show was incredulous that I hadn’t noticed. “You didn’t smell the smoke?” he said. Yes, I smelled intense smoke but thought it was just the two middle-aged urban cougars in strappy tanks getting high to my left.

Emerson Hart was very very good, backed by his full band. I could have heard a much longer set from him. The former frontman of Tonic has a solo album out now called Cigarettes and Gasoline [previous mention] and came out afterwards by the merch booth to meet folks. Very warm, down to earth, appreciative fella. He tells me that he’ll be back with an acoustic tour this November and I will definitely be there.

Collective Soul did nothing for me. I tried. Too much posturing and posing by singer Ed Roland, as if he had practiced his microphone slinging acrobatics beforehand in front of a mirror. I did get into the performance of “Hollywood,” a ridiculously catchy single off their new album, and “All That I Know” had a delicious huge beat. Other than that . . . mmm, not so much.

Live‘s music is absolutely awesome in concert – it soars and writhes and pounds, and I adore it. I sang emphatically along to every song; they might be in my Top 5 pantheon of bands close to my heart. I am pleased to also report on the status of Ed’s sweaty nipples: they are just as small as they were last year. My sister was with me at the last embarrassing display of gyrating self-confidence by their lead singer, so I texted her an ongoing update of his state of undress (“the shirt is unbuttoned” “we have nipples!” “he is shirtless. i repeat, he is shirtless”) because it’s just so bad you can’t believe it’s actually happening, and with such barely-concealed erotic glee on his part.

She texted me back this simple admonition: “Bask in their glory.”

Lonely No More
Magnet
Starting with a high and lonesome harmonica, combined unexpectedly with big band thumping drum-major beats, this one gets my attention from the start — and then the perfect pop Buddy Holly melody sticks in my head for hours. From the new album by Magnet (aka Norwegian dude Even Johansen), The Simple Life is a kaleidoscope of instruments and influences, and it sounds absolutely fantastic to me. From the opening handclaps and Sufjan-banjo plucking of “The Gospel Song” through all the Eels-worthy strings, shiny brass, and thoroughly modern shimmer of sounds, I ♥ it with a vengeance. It deserves its very own post and a potential spot on my best-of-2007 list, but I am so excited I am throwing it out here now. My head literally spins a little with a discovery this good. The Simple Life is out now in the U.S. on Filter Recordings, and watch for Magnet opening for Stars on tour starting this month.

Shim Sham
Imperial Teen
This one hits kinda like the Breeders seething with a smatter of glam rock. San Francisco-based Imperial Teen has been making music together for over a decade, and their newest one The Hair, The TV, The Baby & The Band (out now on Merge) shares lead vocal duties by both the girls and guys in the band, as well as a pink Starburst sensibility of retro-tinged indie pop, crunchy guitars, and summertime lyrics. This tune’s all about a party at the Shim Sham club, and about “delinquent girls staying up all night / spray painting walls under suburban lights.”

Lonely Moon
The Cat Empire
An empire ruled by cats is a terrible idea, right behind a mouthful of bees. Where do these bands keep coming up with these names? I don’t know what went into the naming process of this Australian group that merges sounds of ’60s-organ rock, funk, reggae, dancehall, and more. Their fresh sounds are all over the map. “In America they tie themselves in knots trying to categorise our music,” says frontman/songwriter Felix Reibl. “It might not be easy to categorise but it’s music that’s perfectly natural whether it’s playing in a shack in Vietnam or a nightclub in New York” [credit]. So Many Nights was produced by John Porter (The Smiths, Ryan Adams, Missy Higgins) and recorded in Melbourne and Malibu, and it’s out recently in Australia with a planned invasion of U.S. shores in 2008. Listen to em now.

Rud Fins
Robert Pollard
A guy recently posted on the Ryan Adams board about Robert Pollard‘s two albums coming out this month because, as he said, “no one’s used the word ‘prolific’ around here lately.” Another supercreative artist who doesn’t try to quell the flow of tunes, former Guided By Voices leader Bob Pollard has the poppier Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love, coming out on the same day as the harder-edged punk feel of Standard Gargoyle Decisions. Street date is tomorrow for both sides of his persona, and you can stream both albums in full over on the Merge site.

Caroline
Jackie Greene
I mentioned the new Small Tempest EP from California folk-bluesman Jackie Greene recently, and have now gotten a chance to enjoy it front to back. Let this run along with another perfect little song called Caroline — and where that one was a melancholy piano-scored summer afternoon watching clouds pass, this one starts with few autumnal guitar-plucked notes that immediately call to mind the “Don’t Think Twice” of Dylan. Greene’s got a smooth and wistful voice, and some lonesome harmonica chops here. Despite the “I was a teenage heartthrob in a film noir” cover, pick up this EP if you can catch Jackie live this fall.

Live Forever & the Britpop explosion (“I’ve been on the shelf too long / now it’s time to hear my song”)

Britain in the mid-90s was a chaotic, creative, music-centric place to be. As Thatcher’s tenure as PM ended and a fresh start began under Tony Blair and the New Labour party, there was a simultaneous crackle and thrum of musical vibrancy that is explored in the 2003 documentary Live Forever (by filmmaker John Dower). On the surface it’s the story of the music, the “Britpop sound” and those who made it, but it also tries to get deeper underneath to look at the society at that moment and what fed this burgeoning supernova.

As a complete outsider to this specific moment in world history myself, but a fan of the music that ended up on my plate because of it, I thought it was fascinating to see one view of the context behind it. As Louise Wener from the band Sleeper says of those days, “There was a sense of a kind of excitement that something was changing — perhaps this music was foreshadowing something else.” The documentary undertakes the Herculean task of trying to examine the music through the social and political context of the mid-90s, teasing out its larger implications to the fabric of a generation. This is always tricky.

The story is mostly told through first person interviews from those who were there. You’ve got the big three represented in Oasis, Blur and Pulp, but also a number of other musicians and commentators. These conversations were illuminating and entertaining — not counting a few statements of general unfair snobbery related to my own culture, like “Americans have tremendous confidence, but not much talent,” and one remark that I obviously vehemently disagreed with regarding Seattle music of the time: “The only really decent group were Nirvana” (I said “Unh!” to myself and looked around at no one else sitting there with me, in indignation).

Along with snippets of music videos, concerts, newsclips and articles, the interviews carry the bulk of the story. Damon Albarn seems to have grown up quite a bit, his segments were pensive and thoughtful, accompanied by his strumming on a ukulele. Jarvis Cocker had some fantastic stories of those years and I enjoyed hearing his articulate reflection (but really, whatever he says, I just love his voice – deliciously smarmy and all rich velvet molasses). Liam was a complete wanker for most of his bits –so secure in his obvious awesomeness, relentlessly turning questions back around on the filmmakers, giving evasive answers, sitting there with that haircut and those mirrored shades sounding like he’s got a mouthful of marbles– but Noel was hilarious and awesome. Example: Towards the end, Noel’s talking about how they were in a studio one day next door to the prepubescent dance-pop of S Club 7, and how he seriously thought they were “special needs kids” there for a tour of the studios and for the free food. Touche.

The film goes through the peak years of the Britpop sound, which were right smack in the middle of my high school years — a time when pretty much every single act coming out of Britain making pop/rock music was tagged part of “The Britpop Movement.” As surely as so-called “grunge bands” of ’90s Seattle shrugged away from the label, many of these Britpop bands weren’t thrilled with the simplistic categorization, but it did create a crackling excitement and level of buzz for their music that took them places they otherwise wouldn’t have gone just a decade prior.

So which Britain was it?

Is it the carefree abandonment of youth epitomized by Supergrass frolicking on the beach, singing lines like:

We are young, we run green, keep our teeth, nice and clean
see our friends, see the sights, feel alright

But we are young, we get by, can’t go mad, ain’t got time
Sleep around, if we like, but we’re alright

The disaffected uncertainty (yet faith in music) of The Verve in “This Is Music”?

I stand accused, just like you
for being born without a silver spoon
Stood at the top of a hill
Over my town I was found

. . . Well music is my life and loved by me
I’m gonna move on the floor with my sweet young thing
Down down down, down we go
till I reach the bottom of my soul
This is music

Blur’s cocky questioning of having it all in “Parklife”?
The paranoia and ‘the sound of loneliness turned up to ten’ of Pulp’s “Fear”?
The indomitable conviction that you and I are gonna live forever?

Listening to the variety of sounds coming out of Britain at the time –all classified by someone or another as Britpop– shows you a bit of how meaningless the term really was. In the film, an interviewer asks Jarvis Cocker of Pulp as he sits on his bed by an open window, curtain fluttering in the breeze, about how his song Common People was called by one reviewer, “the perfect encapsulation of the Britpop aesthetic.” Jarvis just shakes his head, sighs a little, and says, “Oh no.”

Regardless of what it all means (and really, who knows what it all means), this is good music, and the film is 86 minutes well spent.

I had a lot of fun putting this mix together after watching the documentary, combining songs I remember liking the first time around with new discoveries and recommendations from friends on that side of the Pond. According to the film, the Britpop sound inhabited a relatively ephemeral period of time, starting ’round 1992, hitting boiling point in April ’94 with the release of Blur’s Parklife, followed in August by Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. In a similar scene that echoes the film Hype!, bands were getting signed at the height of the frenzy after having played together for mere weeks, with only a handful of songs written.

Some say that the death of the era came with a resounding thud in August ’97 with the release of the cocaine haze manifesto Be Here Now by Oasis. Other say it ended more around the time that footballer Gareth Southgate missed a penalty kick in the Euro ’96 semifinals against Germany. Come on. Is an era that exact? Go ahead and argue either way, influences started before then and the sound carried on after, but I’ve tried to mostly focus my own little mix in the thick of things, from ’94-’97.

And as with any label, you can debate it til the cows come home who fits into the category or not, so some of these may not gel in your mind as Britpop. I lack the immediate expert knowledge in this area, being more of a “grunge rock” girl myself when this was all going down (I shudder at that term, see?!). Snag the whole zip, enjoy the flow for some perfect weekend listening. In general, these make me feel a jaunty sense of optimism — and maybe slightly disaffected, but such were the Nineties, right?

THE FUEL/FRIENDS BRITPOP MIX:
Waterfall – The Stone Roses
Alright – Supergrass
God! Show Me Magic – Super Furry Animals
This Is Music – Verve
Parklife – Blur
Kelly’s Heroes – Black Grape
Common People (live at Melkweg 1995) – Pulp
Interview clip from Knebworth ’96 – Noel Gallagher
(discussing Kula Shaker & Liam’s Musical Tastes)
Hey Dude – Kula Shaker
Alright (live at Glastonbury) – Cast
Change – The Lightning Seeds
Faster – Manic Street Preachers
Wake Up Boo – The Boo Radleys
Lenny Valentino – The Auteurs
Line Up – Elastica
Step Into My World – Hurricane #1
Animal Nitrate – Suede
Hundred Mile City – Ocean Colour Scene
Getting Better – Shed Seven
She Makes My Nose Bleed – Mansun
Girl From Mars – Ash
Be My Light, Be My Guide (live) – Gene
The Fear – Pulp
The Only One I Know – The Charlatans
Live Forever (live at Glastonbury) – Oasis

ZIP FILE: FUEL/FRIENDS BRITPOP MIX

It’s worth noting that although some of these groups didn’t survive the end of the decade, many of them have gone on continue recording music that is just as good (and in may cases better) than their mid-Nineties output. Verve is reuniting and touring, Jarvis Cocker has a swanky euro-cool solo album out now, I rather liked Ocean Colour Scene’s last one, and Ash just rocked my world with their newest single. Media frenzy or no, the talent lasts.

It’s as James (the band from Manchester) said in the fantastic smack of their 1998 song “Destiny Calling”:

“So we may be gorgeous, so we may be famous —
come back when we’re getting old.”

Bored in (not) Brooklyn tonight?

Yeah hey, me neither. Give me three weeks, then I’ll be there — but if I were in New York tonight, I’d head over to Pianos to check out The Rosewood Thieves with Ambulance LTD in a special “Concert For Peace.”

The Rosewood Thieves will be playing lots of stuff from their new EP (called Lonesome, out Tuesday, finally!) and also their album The Rosewood Thieves Rise and Shine. The fun starts at 9pm.

Head over to their MySpace (or to Bag of Songs) to check the new song “Honey, Stay Awhile,” and check the video of them getting all ready to rock you tonight.

CONCERT FOR PEACE REHEARSAL

Just a bunch of ab fab covers, thanks to Radio One

In honor of their big 40 year birthday bacchanalia, first BBC Radio One staged that Beatles coverfest back in July, and this week they’ve released an ace double-disc collection chock full of Heather’s Favorite Things – more cover songs! Radio One, Established 1967 pulls 40 hits (one from each year) and pairs them with often unlikely artists. Most of these are ones I’ve never heard before — Hard-Fi covering Britney Spears’ Toxic? The Fray take on R.E.M., Lily Allen does her best sassy Chrissie Hynde, Keane rhymes with Queen & David Bowie under pressure, Kasabian play the Specials. It’s fresh and fun for the most part; even if there are some horrific failures, I appreciate the relative inventiveness in the choices here –

Band On The Run (Paul McCartney/Wings cover) – Foo Fighters
This starts out pretty mellow and faithful to the original — all Laurel Canyon sunsets and lots of weed. But stay tuned to a 1:16 mark that made me yelp a little in delight when the Foos kick in with all their ferocious glory. I cannot wait to drive somewhere, fast, listening to this. LOVE IT.

You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate cover) – Stereophonics
As if Kelly Jones didn’t already strike me as enough of a wee sexy bastard, hearing the playful charm and come-on camp of this cover, where he sounds for all the world like he’s channeling his inner Rod Stewart, does it for me.

All That She Wants (Ace of Base cover) – The Kooks
The original version of this song evokes a reaction in me that is akin to stabbing a razor blade into my eye. Hate it, hate the Swedish ’90s pop of Ace of Base and have been subjected to this story-song of our unmoored heroine (trying to . . . get pregnant on a one-night stand?) way too many times. The Kooks, however, do elicit a few begrudging props from me for trying to salvage it, and doing so in a winsome way. But ugh — too little, too late. This song is beyond salvation.

BUY: Radio One, Established 1967

Jackie Greene’s Skinny Singers live in San Francisco with Phil Lesh

Around this time last year I wrote about a new side project of Sacramento, CA bluesy-rock wunderkind musician Jackie Greene called the Skinny Singers. This is a collaborative project between 26 year-old Greene and SF musician Tim Bluhm of the Mother Hips. I’ve been waiting for something new from Greene and this fantastic show from last month at The Independent in San Francisco fits the bill perfectly.

According to reviewer Dennis Cook who was there: “There’s almost nothing better than knowing with dead certainty the folks making music are having a grand time. Their voices – rootsy, high, lonesome and evergreen – meshed like Everly Brothers from different mamas. The trio swapped instruments freely, Greene being especially liquid, jumping from guitar to keys to bass as the song dictated.”

Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead also joined the band on 4 songs, doing bass and vocals.

THE SKINNY SINGERS
09/13/07
The Independent, San Francisco, CA
Soundboard recording
Goin’ Home Again
Infinity Blues
Heroes, Hear Me
Nothing Comes From Nothing
Where the Rain Don’t Go
Dirty Pharmacy
Silver Key
Baby’s Got a Mustache
Tim’s Story
Dear Wild Animal
Mexican Girl
Stoned Up the Road
Down in the Valley Woe
Gone Wanderin’*
Friend of the Devil*
Ripple*
Sugaree*

Lineup: Tim Bluhm (guitar, vocals, bass, drums), Jackie Greene (guitar, vocals, keys, bass, drums), Mike Curry (drums, vocals), *Phil Lesh (bass, vocals)

Stream it here, thanks to the original taper

Jackie Greene is currently on tour with Phil Lesh, and in addition to the new Skinny Singers album Strike Again! (out now, recorded at their San Francisco Mission Bells studio), Greene also has a new EP available for sale only at his shows called “Small Tempest.” This summer he also released a retrospective called Jackie Greene: The DIG Years 2001-2005 (the years before he was signed to Verve Forecast) with previously unreleased material.

This video I took of him last summer in Boulder is still one of my favorite videos to watch – love this song (off of his album American Myth) and the panache with which he plays it:

JACKIE GREENE: SO HARD TO FIND MY WAY

[direct link to video]

Ben Kyle of Romantica duetting with Ryan Adams: “The Dark” (live in Minneapolis)

Briefly revisiting the “not a meltdown” topic, here is a fantastically delicious duet from the 9/27 Minneapolis Ryan Adams show, during opener Ben Kyle’s set when Ryan joined him onstage.

Ben is the Belfast, Ireland-born frontman for Minneapolis band Romantica [see previous mention] and this collaboration is absolutely superb, full of bittersweet harmonies. So, so, sooooooo good!

The Dark (with Ryan Adams) – Ben Kyle of Romantica

BUY: Romantica’s album America (2007)
[photo of Romantica by Paige DeWees]

Monday Music Roundup

Very late on Saturday night, a group of us descended upon IHOP for french toast and pancakes because we were gripped with an urgent need for them. The place was packed, as usual, with your garden variety twentysomethings with slightly reddened eyes, talking quite a bit too loud. Everything was funny.

Front door opens, in walk three guys (no lie) straight from like a Dungeons & Dragons convention — trench coats, goggles (?!), greasy hair, a condescending look to the mortals around them. And even though it made me feel like I was back in junior high, it was really hard not to snicker, especially since ONE WAS CARRYING A SWORD. Like, 5 foot samurai ninja business.

Dude at the next table (striped polo shirt, popped collar, backwards baseball hat, used to getting his name on the board in grade school no doubt) starts lambasting the trio relentlessly. I thought I was going to die of silent laughter with tears rolling down my face when he started yelling about his retribution to their sword with his “butter knives of fury” and something about William Wallace. They can take our pancakes, but they’ll never take our freedom.

Ah, the things you miss when you go to bed early. This week’s tunes:

Slipping Through The Sensors
Fruit Bats
I was reading this weekend’s interesting article in the Seattle Times about the entitlement mindset towards free downloads and album leaks, and it mentioned all the good free (legal!) downloads on the Sub Pop site for their roster of fine musicians. I promptly clicked over and pleasantly immersed myself in all the artists I had forgotten were on their roster. It’s been awhile since The Fruit Bats have come out with anything new, but I love their past catalog – sheer melodic sunny pop harmonies and floating puffy clouds of goodness. I didn’t have this song on my iPod and it just is fantastic, echoing lazy summer days with a sound that would fit nicely on a mix with The Swimmers and The Shins — and fittingly so, since lead singer/frontman Eric Johnson has actually joined the latter band for the time being.

The Songs of National Freedom
(live on Daytrotter)
Richard Swift
Poor Mr. Richard Swift had the misfortune of facing another one of Denver’s finest drunken hecklers from three feet away when I saw him open for Wilco last month, and he took it gracefully. “We’re here to see Tweedy!” Mr. Front Row A-hole shouted at him. “I know. So am I,” Swift replied. This effervescent piano pop tune is cool but possesses just a hint of possible musical dance scenes unfolding in Technicolor. Captured live over on the wordlessly wonderful repository of free live downloads/writing/original artwork at Daytrotter, Swift says of this tune, “I wrote that one in a matter of minutes so I can’t really explain it. It kind of reminds me of ‘RAM’-era McCartney.” It will definitely stick in your head all morning, that melody. Originally found on this year’s Dressed Up For The Letdown.

Lolita
Black Francis
Charles Thompson/Frank Black reclaims the moniker he used during those years with the Pixies for his umpteenthth solo album, Bluefinger, out last month on Cooking Vinyl. This song hits a niche in my heart normally filled by bands like Pavement, Sebadoh or Guided By Voices. I am absolutely loving the combination of scraggly guitars, rebel yell vocals that are just a tiny bit “off,” and wheezy harmonica. On this stylistic departure from the sounds of his previous solo output, Under The Radar called it “the bastard Pixies album that might have been.”

Put The Sun Back
The Coral
Earlier this year, Liverpool band The Coral headed into Buckinghamshire’s Wheeler End Studios (the personal recording grounds of Oasis’ Gallagher brothers) to record their 4th full-length album Roots & Echoes. As the title would imply, this is a warmer, rootsier, largely acoustic-based sound from this band of twentysomethings with retro leanings. I’ve most enjoyed their brand of scousey, brassy fun since their self-titled debut album in 2002. Where early efforts seemed to feel like more of a zoot-suit 1930′s vibe to me, the gentle roll of this album reminds me more of a modern Merseybeat collaboration between Gerry & The Pacemakers with a young and crooney Neil Diamond handling vocals. There are some cool moments (like this track, and I love the Doors-style organ and echoey surf guitar on “Remember Me”) but overall it left me wanting earlier days. Eh, maybe it’s a grower.

Since The Last Time
Arrested Development
No, no — not the hip Fox TV show. Anyone who lived through the faux-rap fashion trends for white girls in the early Nineties (purple overalls with one side unhooked?) may have also spent some time listening to Atlanta group Arrested Development. I will grudgingly admit to getting my dance moves on (probably the Roger Rabbit) to “Tennessee” or “Mr. Wendell” — please forgive me, I was in junior high. Yet I still listen to them from time to time (minus most of the dancing), and they don’t sound at all bad. Arrested Development is back this month with their first new album in 12 years, Since The Last Time (October 30). This title track features a scratchy organic/analog vibe, Jackson-5ivey, Motown shuffle and big gospelly vocal samples. Take me to another place, take me to another land…

And PS – If I can’t root for the Giants heading into postseason, I’ll get behind the Rockies in their tussle with the Padres for the wildcard spot. Go Rockies! I would love to be there tonight.