June 13, 2008

Black Dominoes remix Fleet Foxes

Normally if you called someone a bedroom knob-tweaker they might punch you (in the neck) but for Georgia-based mixmaster Kellen Crosby –aka Black Dominoes– it would probably garner you a hug. Mr. Crosby has a knack for pushing the constraints and possibilities in songs, and does mysterious things to them. Last time we heard a Black Dominoes cut it was that Vampire Weekend remix, which eventually went from here in blogland all the way up to the BBC. Cool.

Here’s the description of his newest remix, of a song originally by those shimmery SubPop signees Fleet Foxes:

Black Dominoes lets the soft echoes of the fivesome outside to play; the throttling back of some of the original drums only creates more space for soft whirrs and 909 whispers. The added hand drums in the beginning and end of the track interweave with the electronic elements of the song; the juxtaposition is not unlike eating a piece of foreign-grown organic produce on a busy street corner. Give it a shot if you would relish the idea of Feist or Animal Collective having a campout underneath the Brooklyn Bridge with the members of ESG or Cybotron.

Got that?

White Winter Hymnal (Black Dominoes remix) – Fleet Foxes

June 12, 2008

Duchess of York provide the first addictive smash hit of my summer

Take four kids from Richmond, VA who average an individual age half that of Jack White, and all collectively have lived fewer years than one Mr. James Brown, but who exude heavy doses of both vibes in perfect collaboration.

My new favorite on-repeat listen is “21st Century Slave” from their Era In Static EP. No, seriously — like, listen over and over in my car until it’s ridiculous, trying to suppress the urge to dance in the driver’s seat, and restrain myself at stoplights so I don’t get weird looks. I find the raw and pugilistic garage scowl of the White Stripes mixed with the outrageous I-feel-good funk of the Godfather of Soul/Jackson 5 to be an absolutely irresistible sound combination. Listen! Try to sit still.

21st Century Slave – Duchess of York

Duchess Of York swagger and strut with the cockiness that only comes from not having lived long enough to know better yet. But let them for a while – this is a terrific album from a talent that is relatively unknown outside of Richmond, but who have the stuff to hit it huge.

They are 16, 17, 18 and 21 and the band is made up of two brothers and a pair of cousins. This is somehow their third proper album, all dirty growly blues with super-seductive funk and melody.

LISTEN: More tunes (try “Animal City”)
BUY: Era In Static

Joey Ryan and the evocative melodies of “Bella”

I recently got a chance to sit down and watch Bella, an independent film from Mexican director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde. I loved so many elements of it — from the believable way it traces a chance connection between two people over the course of just one day, to the gentle yet realistically untidy way it deals with the mistakes we look back on throughout our lives.

Monteverde is a tenacious Austin-based filmmaker, and Bella (his first feature-length film) was the winner of the Peoples Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. It is a visually dazzling movie with gorgeous use of light in the cinematography, which stood in contrast to the darkness that both main characters are slogging through. With the dialogue weaving in and out of Spanish and English, the film traces two realistically flawed characters struggling to make some beauty out of a pile of overwhelming life circumstances.

My ears perked up immediately when I heard a sweetly rough-voiced tenor sing a few acoustic folk songs at pivotal moments on the film’s soundtrack. For a split second, I considered that just maybe it was Ray LaMontagne (or Brett Dennen?) but it was actually fledgling Los Angeles songwriter Joey Ryan. There is no official soundtrack released yet for Bella, so Joey was kind enough to send me some alternate versions of his music for the movie, and to respond to questions about his unique involvement with the film and his inspiration behind writing these songs.

The spirit of his compositions reflects the genuineness of this film, and there’s a heartening story of how it has been a bit of a saving grace in his own musical career as well. Joey writes:

The story of Bella, well . . . I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Psychology, and a couple weeks before graduation decided to abandon my plans for neuroscience graduate school to try to be a musician. I pictured myself at 30, just hating myself for never having given my dreams a chance. So, I made an album and spent almost a year in Los Angeles (where I’m from) playing shows and whatnot. It was difficult to discover that the process was hard for me and that I wasn’t able to play the venues I had hoped for. I was admitted and enrolled in a Masters program in psychology, at that point and was quitting music. I didn’t understand how anyone could build a music career from nothing in the environment of Los Angeles.

Then, literally a week before the first day of class I got a call from a company called Mophonics in Venice Beach. I had given them my album almost a year earlier, and they said they were going to put one of my songs on a TV show. When I came in to sign the paperwork for that, they asked me to send them anything else I had been working on, so I went home and sent them my GarageBand demo of this song I had just written.

Coincidentally, Stephan Altman at Mophonics was in the middle of composing the score for Bella and immediately had a scene in mind where my song would fit. The song was “Like You” (from the bathtub scene) and they asked me to add some lyrics in Spanish for it. So in the film the lyrics are “Yo se que no puede salvarme, I know I’m on my own, Yo se que no puede salvarme, I know I’m alone”. The Spanish means “I know you can’t save me”. This is Nina’s low point. She has yet to fully accept the help and friendship Jose is offering and feels completely alone and desperate there in the bathtub.

By the end of the day the director was in love with the song and it was in the film. That was the first time I ever paid rent with money I made from music.

The second song in Bella happened a couple weeks later. Stephan called me at 8am (woke me up) from a soundstage where they were mixing the music for the film, and said that a song they had been planning on using was no longer available. He asked if I could watch the scene and write something. So I did, and by 10:30am I had written and recorded (on GarageBand again) something for the scene and by 11am it was in the film too!

“Light On” (played when Jose and Nina walk down to the beach) was written for the film, for this particular scene. I thought the main theme musically should be a sense of resolution. Each character had just gone through their most heart-wrenching depths and they were starting to climb out together. I wanted the music to sound like the first deep breath of air after a long hard cry. Lyrically, it’s about pure, platonic, and altruistic friendship between two people who need each other’s help. That was the second time I ever paid rent with money I made from music.

A string of opportunities through Mophonics over the next few weeks meant that I never went to the first day of classes for my masters program, and it’s now two years later and things are going amazingly well. Mophonics is putting out my new full length record …with its roots above and its branches below this summer. I’ve toured both coasts and am going across the country this month, from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in between. And my songs seem to find their way into different opportunities that have kept me (very happily) paying rent through music.

BELLA SOUNDTRACK / ALTERNATE VERSIONS
Light On – Joey Ryan
No One Else Like You – Joey Ryan

That version of the “Like You” is featured on Joey’s upcoming release …with its roots above and its branches below. You can preorder it on Joey Ryan’s website and/or enter your email address to be on his mailing list so you can also download two other songs for free: “Let You Go,” which was on television in the UK, and “As It Must Be,” heard on One Tree Hill. Joey Ryan has tour dates coming up, including one in Denver next Sunday at the Walnut Room (I can almost taste the pizza already).

Also, anyone else from California –especially the Bay Area– will likely love his California EP from last year, and the eponymous title track with lyrics like, “San Francisco, you’re always busy, you’re always pretty . . . on a clear day there’s no place I’d rather be.” This is effortlessly charming music with a warm streak of melody, honesty and humility.

June 11, 2008

Last night: The Old 97s in Denver

When the Texas foursome the Old 97s took the stage last night in Denver, I thought it fitting that two members were rockin the Converse (the guitarist and the drummer, natch) while the other two strut their leather boot stuff. Footwear usually ranks low on my list of important topics, but the way it characterized their dual-personality of rock and country seemed too fitting an analogy not to mention. It was my first time seeing the Old 97s and they put on a rock & roll show layered with good ole country dust. They simply vibrated with heart and soul.

The setlist rollicked through songs from all of their last 15 years of existence, from the raw bar-band twang of their earlier material to the richly varied textures of their recent release Blame It On Gravity (2008, New West Records). As Rolling Stone wrote a few weeks ago, these are “four Texans raised on the Beatles and Johnny Cash in equal measures, whose shiny melodies, and fatalistic character studies, do their forefathers proud.”

BARRIER REEF – Old 97s, Live in Denver 6/10/08

The hardworking, never-fail attitude of this live band and the refreshing (and drunk) enthusiasm which emanates in waves from their fans reminded me of my experiences seeing Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. As I left the venue, I was glad Rhett Miller and Co all made it to the stage this time through the Rockies.

A final note: Since I am not 15, I don’t usually comment on the dreamyness of the lead singer, but in Rhett Miller’s case, it’s kinda hard not to say something. Down in the front with my photo pass, I tried to get some good shots, but was nearly sucked in to the hormone frenzy of the cougar pit formed directly beneath Rhett’s feet. That is one charming and good-looking frontman, with hair so perfectly tousled and Bon Jovi windblown that you almost didn’t believe it. Julio and I couldn’t help but be dazzled by its radiance; like the sun, it’s best not to look directly at it, Julio says.

More Denver concert pics here.

Also, the mighty Amoeba is streaming an in-store concert with the Old 97s on Wednesday, June 18th at 6pm Pacific time. Watch it here.

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Delta Spirit live on KCRW

A few weeks ago I was hurredly walking down a crowded DC street at lunchhour when I got a ravingly excited phone call from my friend Bodie. Bodie had just seen new Rounder Records signees Delta Spirit the night before, opening for Matt Costa in Boulder, and was calling to yell at me with delight about how much he enjoyed their set.

The good-natured abuse reminded me of how Delta Spirit had turned in an enjoyable set on KCRW’s Morning Become Eclectic last month. Read my previous mention to get to know this band with a growing buzz, then stream their excellent golden indie-country set here:

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June 9, 2008

Monday Music Roundup

On Saturday night I decided quite by chance to see a Hebrew/Arabic language foreign film called The Band’s Visit, after finding myself downtown with no other plans. This is a humble and unassuming film about the Alexandria (Egyptian) Police Orchestra who end up in the wrong Israeli town on a concert trip. It’s quietly and subtly funny, although not a comedy. It touches on the human facets of Arab/Jewish tensions, although not a political film. The themes hover around the kindness of strangers, the depths of loneliness and desire, but most of all the power of music and its strange necessity to the soul. As the final credits rolled, I thought it deeply lovely. Go see it.

Plus, bonus points will be awarded if you also notice the scene where the big dude from the band looks exactly like an Egyptian Cee-Lo sitting on the couch.

Tunes!

It Could’ve Been Worse
Matthew Ryan
According to the liner notes, the new album from Matthew Ryan (Vs. The Silver State) was “rehearsed in [his] garage on Idaho Avenue during the summer of 2006. There was no air conditioning and more mosquitoes than musicians.” I can almost here the crickets and feel the humidity of a summer’s night on this gorgeous song. With lines that slyly borrow from the master of all repressed & padlocked teenage fury in smalltown America (“her mascara was born to run”), this album is rife with allusions to stymied desire and unfulfilled dreams. This song ruefully notes, “You promised her every thing, not knowing what every thing really was. She’s the first girl you kissed, she’s the first girl you miss when you feel like this, broken in the dark.” Be sure to also check out Aquarium Drunkard’s new Off The Record feature with Matthew Ryan.

Breakfast Score
The M’s
Chicago quintet The M’s have been keeping my ears happy for a couple years now. Each time our paths cross, I find something new to appreciate in their eclectic hybrid songwriting which melds terrific retro influences from disparate ends of the spectrum (think T. Rex meets Kinks?). Enjoy the sloppy, handclappy feel with a little rainy day women drunken singalong feel on this cut from their new record Real Close Ones. It came out last week on Polyvinyl Records, and plays up that spacey-glam edge around traditionally structured pop songs. They currently are touring with Centro-matic.

California Soul (Diplo remix)
Marlena Shaw

I have been consistently impressed with the visionary pairings of cratedigging deep cuts from decades past with modern mixmasters featured on the Verve Remixed series. They’ve just come out with Volume 4, and this preview mp3 resurrects the swanky sounds of Marlena Shaw (the first female vocalist signed to Blue Note Records) through the lens of hot-stuff Philly DJ/producer Diplo. The album boasts some ragingly fun remixes, from the R&B swing of Nina Simone-meets-Mike Mangini wailing “Gimme Some,” to the tinny Latin shimmy of the Astrud Gilberto/Psapp track, or the Afrobeat joy of “Dilo Como Yo.” It’s a conceptual series that just keeps getting better and pushing the boundaries, delightfully.

Revolution In The Heart
Ed Harcourt
Let’s just put this simply: I am a sucker for a man and a piano. There’s something so bold and yet nuanced, even heartbreaking about the way a good player can accompany his songs with that instrument. So it’s no surprise that I take a sheen to Sussex songwriter songwriter Ed Harcourt and his musical weapon of choice. I’ve heard Harcourt’s name bantied about from past tours with folks like Wilco, Feist and Magnet, but this swirling cut from his recent release Beautiful Lie is my first personal listening experience. There seems to be a lot to appreciate in this artist, over the cascades of ivories. The “new” album is really the belated U.S. release of his 2006 album, and it features Graham Coxon (Blur) as well as the Magic Numbers. Ed is currently on tour with the Gutter Twins.


Soul On Fire
Spiritualized

This back-with-a-vengeance song from seminal British space rock/shoegaze ’90s band Spiritualized starts gently, with lyrics about being born on a black day shot through with starlight, over an intimate acoustic strum. But before the first minute passes, all the strings swell and rise together and there’s a hurricane in your veins. It’s terrifically stirring yet somehow comforting, as if I’ve heard it a thousand times before and want to be a part of it. It’s a tourbus singalong, it’s a gospel choir, it’s a ballad just for me. Songs In A&E is out now (Spaceman/Fontana International).

Oh, and . . . Forza Azzurri!

June 7, 2008

but there’s no way I’m forgetting this

Frightened Rabbit are four guys from Selkirk, Scotland who have created an evisceratingly gorgeous album primarily tracing the death of a relationship — the back and forth, the moments of confident strength followed by the ravaging weakness. Released in April, their sophomore album Midnight Organ Fight was recorded last year at the Connecticut home studios of Peter Katis (longtime producer of The National).

This is an album full of incredibly visceral lyrics, some of the most excoriating for me since, well, The National. The album opens with “The Modern Leper,” wherein a damaged person laments how “vital parts fall from his system and dissolve in Scottish rain / vitally he doesn’t miss them he’s too fucked up to care.”

As our protagonist, songwriter and frontman Scott Hutchison, fights his way through the final death-rattle gasps of a love affair, the themes are of unflinching self-flagellation (“Well is that you in front of me coming back for even more of exactly the same? You must be a masochist to love a modern leper on his last leg“) and fragile introspection (“I crippled your heart a hundred times and still can’t work out why / You see I’ve got this disease I can’t shake and I’m just rattling through life“).

It’s not an album for the fainthearted, but an excellent one for the honest. “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms” is a simple examination of how she won’t need his (bad arms) now that she’s found another pair — although he tosses off a line to the new happy couple that he’s armed with the past, and the will, and a brick, and says “I might not want you back, but I want to kill him.”

The somewhat clunky album title analogy about a ‘midnight organ fight’ makes perfect sense once you hear those words repeated in the raw desire of “Fast Blood,” which goes on to remember: “I tremble, because this stumble has become biblical. I feel like I just died twice and was reborn again for all our dirty sins / And the fast blood, fast blood, fast blood hurricanes through me, and rips my roof away.”

But the primary song which I can’t shake from scrolling through my head on repeat is “My Backwards Walk” — one that grapples with failure, in full. Decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. It is very highly recommended.

My Backwards Walk – Frightened Rabbit

I’m working on my backwards walk
walking with no shoes or socks
and the time rewinds to the end of May
I wish we’d never met, then met today

I’m working on my faults and cracks
filling in the blanks and gaps
when I write them out they don’t make sense
I need you to pencil in the rest

I’m working on drawing a straight line
and I will draw until I get one right
it’s bold and dark, girl, can’t you see
I’ve done drawn a line between you and me

I’m working on erasing you
but I just don’t have the proper tools
I will get hammered, forget that you exist
but there’s no way I’m forgetting this

I’m working hard on walking out
but my shoes keep sticking to the ground
my clothes won’t let me close the door
‘cause my trousers seem to love your floor

I’ve been working on my backwards walk
‘cause there’s nowhere else for me to go
except back to you just one last time
say yes before I change my mind

say yes before i…

you’re the shit and I’m knee deep in it
you’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it


WATCH: My first introduction to these guys was from Kevin on the So Much Silence blog, when he posted this live video of them covering a bit of The National’s “Fake Empire” at the beginning of “My Backwards Walk.”

TOUR: Frightened Rabbit is currently out with the French Kicks, and you can bet I’ll be seeing them in Denver next weekend with Oxford Collapse.

BUY: The Midnight Organ Fight (Amazon US) / Or from Fat Cat Records UK

UPDATE: Frightened Rabbit interview here

June 6, 2008

Sometimes you get so lonely :: David Bowie covers

Sometimes you get so lonely / Sometimes you get nowhere
I’ve lived all over the world / I’ve left every place

Please be mine / Share my life
Stay with me / Be my wife

You may have heard David Bowie cooly exhort those plaintive words over a stylish soundscape on 1977′s Low, but today a cover from the upcoming compilation Life Beyond Mars gives us this haunting new version that melds the aching falsetto of Oxford musician Richard Walters with Faultline (aka North London DJ David Kosten, who’s worked with Wayne Coyne, Michael Stipe, Chris Martin of Coldplay, and Keane).

Be My Wife – Richard Walters & Faultline

Life Beyond Mars is due out June 23 on !K7/Rapster Records, and it even features a song from Labyrinth.

LIFE BEYOND MARS TRACKLIST
Au Revoir Simone – Oh! You Pretty Things
Heartbreak – Loving The Alien
Kelley Polar – Magic Dance (Harold and Baby O in Italy version)
Leo Minor – Ashes To Ashes
Carl Craig presents Zoos Of Berlin – Looking For Water
Drew Brown – Sweet Thing
Matthew Dear – Sound & Vision
Susumu Yokota – Golden Years
The Emperor Machine – Repetition
Joakim & The Disco – A New Career In A New Town
Richard Walters & Faultline – Be My Wife
The Thing – Life On Mars

Worth noting that Rapster Records are also the folks who put together the 2006 Radiohead covers album Exit Music, which spawned that sexed-up Mark Ronson version of “Just” that swaggers with dance beats and brassy horns.

BOWIE COVER ART: a specially commissioned illustration by Berlin artist Maria Tackmann

June 4, 2008

“Glaswegians who think they should have grown up in the American South”

“Heartache and Jack Daniels. Good sex, bad sex, guitars. Sweet love songs and dirty, chugging country tunes. The occasional bubble of self-pity blitzed by a nasty riff, and the odd spot of (justified) lechery…”

Those are a few of the visceral associations that Glasgow-born / London-based band The New York Fund use in connection with their melodic music. In their previous band incarnation of Cherryfalls from 2003-05, they played shows alongside Feeder and for a short (and ultimately unfruitful) time were signed to Island Records. In 2005 they changed personnel slightly, and inspired by the country/rock balancing act walked by artists like Ryan Adams, they formed The New York Fund.

BBC Radio 2 DJ Dermot O’Leary was an early champion of their music, and he included their ace alt-country romp “Nobody Home” on his Saturday Sessions comp CD. In February 2007 they released their six-song Guns EP which is a top-notch collection from front to back. Recently they have played with folks like the Hold Steady and Ash, which gives you a good idea of the range their music sweeps across — from the rollicking shuffle-your-feet bar rock (“Guns of Camden Town”) to the soaringly sweet melancholy of tunes like “Man Overboard,” and everything in between.

I hear a very impressive buzz about their live shows — this post is the result of a strong recommendation from a Brighton reader Caz who just saw them open for the Hold Steady, and was amazed that they are not currently signed. Also for my London readers, NYF is going to be playing along with Ash at the Ben & Jerry’s Sundae event on July 27th. I love ice cream and would count Ben and Jerry amongst my good friends. So really, you cannot fail here from any angle. Check this stuff out.

The Guns Of Camden Town – The New York Fund
Man Overboard – The New York Fund
(defeated heartbreak!!)

Buy their excellent Guns EP – strongly recommended for fans of folks like The Felice Brothers, Ryan Adams, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Jake Troth. Currently unsigned, they also have some new 2008 tracks up on their MySpace.

Bob Odenkirk’s Director’s Cut of the new Rogue Wave video: “Chicago x12″

In a strongly-worded missive over on his MySpace, comedic writer/filmmaker Bob Odenkirk gets all feisty and legally threatening about his new video for Rogue Wave‘s “Chicago x12.” After first assuming “Wow, this guy’s a serious jerk, ” now after watching the video I kinda think, “Wow, this is a brilliant bit of marketing.” You be the judge:

Rogue Wave “Chicago x 12″ (Bob Odenkirk/Director’s Cut)

With the cutout cardboard figures parading around Reseda, the surreal nature of the Director’s Cut version actually suits the imaginative feeling of the song pretty well. And then there’s the karate dude that we’re not sure what to do with. A catchy song off a rather majestic album nonetheless.

Chicago x12 – Rogue Wave

Watch for the band’s version of the video to be released in the coming weeks. Oh, it’s on.

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Bio Pic 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.

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