I’ve completely fallen for the short and sweet debut album from L.A. trio Little Joy, who hit Denver’s Larimer Lounge on Tuesday night. After a chance meeting at a Portuguese music festival, Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes and Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos) sat beside a river and talked about their musical leanings. Upon returning to Los Angeles, they formed this trio along with local musician Binki Shapiro. The three moved into an Echo Park house, starting recording demos, and named their project for the cocktail lounge down the street.
Like a Shirley Temple, there’s an innocence from another era captured here, but also a hearty dose of more modern sounds cultivated in both garages and bossa nova clubs. The sum effect feels like someone took a band like the Strokes (no denying — Amarante often sounds delightfully like Casablancas, at the peak of his lazy lounge-singing), plunked them down in some post-war era American nightclub in Rio de Janiero, and gave them a regular gig on Tuesday nights. That’s how this fantastic album feels – without pretense, eclectic, wistful . . . but music you can dance to.
The singing occasionally lapses into Portuguese, the vocalists croon while the backup singers shoo-wop in Motown moments. The music clatters and sways with Latin influences and island ukuleles. Some of the slower songs –especially the ones fronted by Binki and her charmingly honest voice (listen: “Don’t Watch Me Dancing”)– sound like the perfect soundtrack to a Technicolor 8mm film projecting in slow motion. Or maybe something I want to listen to on a sticky-humid night, unable to sleep in hotel sheets, while watching the ceiling fan lazily spin and waiting for an ocean breeze through the open window.
Of all the side projects of Strokes members, this one checks in tops with me because there is an almost-kitschy but genuine joie de vivre captured in these thirty minutes. As Moretti said when asked about how this project came to be, he replied that “We weren’t doing it for the sake of doing it; we were doing it for the love of doing it.” And you can tell.
Hey guys, remember that time my blog hit the third birthday mark and I didn’t notice? Last week marked three years of Fuel/Friends’ existence, and in those thousand-plus days we have had a lot of fun.
As I say continually and every year around this time, I am humbled that you stop by to see what I am listening to or reading or exploring, and it has been my distinct pleasure to unearth some sonic gems for your enrichment and mine.
In keeping with tradition, here are twenty songs from Year 3 that have been high on my list of radness and worth parading past one more time as we embark on our fourth year. As I began going through my monthly archives I thought the culling might be difficult, but as always, several effortlessly effervesced to the top, and this is a list I feel great about.
Make sure that you didn’t miss these the first time around; burn yourself a CD with these twenty, and let’s celebrate another year.
TWENTY FROM YEAR THREE! One Crowded Hour (with orchestra) – Augie March A few days into Fuel/Friends Year 3, I posted a gorgeous set from melodic and wistful Australians Augie March, playing a set with a full orchestra. I wrote, “Already literate and lavish, their songs become absolutely something else in this setting. ‘One Crowded Hour’ makes me want to climb inside of it even more than before. What an elegant, evocative, soaring song.” Some of the best lyrics of the year, too. [Nov 23, 2007]
Frankie’s Gun – Felice Brothers Even now, every single time the wheezy opening notes of this song cue up, a wide smile spreads across my face. The Felice Brothers are from the Catskills in NY, and there’s a raw and unfinished sound to their storytelling brand of folk-americana. I wrote that “as you sit with them, the colors of their music start to come out in a warm rich burn, like a campfire at 2am. Very few artists write stories like this anymore, except for folks like Ray LaMontagne or the Hold Steady, in very different-sounding ways. Their vivid music is populated by characters with names like Long-Legged Brenda, and take the listener along on all kinds of wild narratives that echo Dylan in their complexity and seeming unsingability.” I absolutely adore this song; seeing them do it live in SF was a highlight of my summer. [Jan 18, 2008]
Nothing – The Hands The Handsare from the Pacific Northwest, and there’s something “slightly off and unnerving in the melody and rhythm here– just a half-second syncopated, or too fast. Either way, it feels like about seven cups of coffee in the morning: all jittery and yowling, but anchored by a classic rockin’ feel with those dead-ringer Jaggeresque vocals. I want to keep replaying the opening notes to figure out what’s going on there in those first thirty seconds.” [Jan 28, 2008]
Monk Chant – The Monks A recommendation from a friend sent me on a historical dig into the music of The Monks from the mid-’60s, American G.I.s stationed in Germany whose sound was leagues ahead of the era and laid the groundwork for the punk and rock I love today. “There’s an urgency and an animal primacy to the music that belies the sweaters and the bobby socks of 1965,” and this crazy tribal chant and electric feedback swamp gets my blood running hot. [Jan 31, 2008]
You Left The Water Running – Otis Redding One of my favorite dork-concept mixes this past year was loosely based around a kids book called That’s Dangerous!, and following the model of the book, I soundtracked all sorts of bad ideas and the grown-up trouble we can get ourselves into. I wasn’t familiar with this Otis Redding song before, but from the opening countdown and that bewitching thump of melody, this soulful burner is one of my favorites to sing along with when I feel that somebody done me wrong. [Feb 2, 2008]
Grounds for Divorce – Elbow I was recently reacquainted with this fabulous song from Manchester rockers Elbow that starts off as a subdued tale about “working on a cocktail called Grounds For Divorce,” then explodes into “a haunting, gospelly blues track with a guttural punch and stomp.” I love being surprised by the way it shimmers with almost-glam overtones. [Feb 11, 2008]
Rat Within The Grain (b-side) – Damien Rice One day before leap year, I posted one of the best songs Damien Rice has written, overlooked by the world as a b-side but amazingly piercing and terribly sad, soaked in a wistful bitterness. An intensely personal song for me, it “gouges pretty harshly at the softest parts of my insides, as his jaded self-contempt seeps into the tender, almost-hidden professions of a maybe hopeless kind of love. In one long sentence, he goes from wanting to keep her at arm’s length because he knows that parts of him are a turbulent ocean, and wanting somuch to be wonderful in her eyes.” [Feb 28, 2008]
Circus of Horror – Quiet Village “Sometimes a song sneaks up on you and surprises you with the way it insinuates entire cinescapes in your mind. That picture above belongs with another film, but it is a vague representation of the colors, the era, the intrigue that this song (by Quiet Village) conjures up for me. This seems a perfect soundtrack to a forgotten ’60s Italian spy movie — a little campy but sleek, ready for some fast driving down narrow cobbled streets. Or perhaps you can hear a change of locales with a dash of cool saunter down the Miami waterline, scoping out the sinister antagonist.” [April 17, 2008]
Lovely Allen – Holy Fuck This was the year I finally discovered Coachella for myself, and one of the live highlights was seeing Toronto’s Holy Fuck create this song urgent and perfect inside one of the shady tents. “My mind was sent reeling by their brand of lo-fi improvisational electronica, which was anything but sterile. Watching them pour their hearts into their music, doubled over their machines, radiating intensity — and then hearing the warmly soaring sounds that emerge — made me reconsider what’s possible with that genre.” They closed their set with this marvelous song, and “I know it sounds a bit hyperbolic, but for those final five minutes my soul levitated a little.” [May 4, 2008]
The Only Moment We Were Alone (live in SF) – Explosions In The Sky This was also the year I first heard Austin, Texas’ Explosions In The Sky, a band that “tells amazing stories through songs which happen to lack words.” A live recording of their epic show in SF conjured up a half-dreamt vignette in my mind that is still one of my favorite things I wrote this year. Maybe the earth is not a cold, dead place after all. [May 6, 2008]
Gratification To Concrete – Robert Pollard Former Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard made huge waves in my kiddie pool at the beginning of summer with this “monster jam of a summer pop song.” I’m still not sick of this, two seasons later. I originally cautioned that “this will work best if you don’t try to understand Pollard’s lyrics but just enjoy the crunchy riffs at play.” ‘Bout time concrete got some gratification. [May 12, 2008]
Soul on Fire – Spiritualized “This back-with-a-vengeance song from seminal British space rock/shoegaze ’90s band Spiritualized starts gently over an intimate acoustic strum, with lyrics about being born on a black day shot through with starlight. 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 tour-bus singalong, it’s a gospel choir, it’s a ballad just for me.” [June 9, 2008]
Seven Fingers – Black Francis “‘I was born with seven fingers and seven toes, in my dark face sadness always shows,’ claims the thumping, thrumming acousto-punk title track from Black Francis; a tasty return to classic form for the former frontman for The Pixies. It’s only one minute and forty seven seconds long, but it is addictively refreshing as he sings, ‘Tonight I’ll be with you, and in the morning when we’re through, please know that you have helped me with my pain.’ Tunes like this’ll numb it for me too — it makes me feel as happy as I did that summer when I was 14 and listened to the Violent Femmes on cassette nonstop through June and July.” [June 21, 2008]
I Woke Up Today – Port O’Brien This tune from Oakland’s Port O’Brien is easily one of the most vibrant tunes of my aural year. When I saw it performed without amplification in an SF Diesel Store happy hour in February, “the spirit in the air was nothing less than jubilant. I would even call it riotous as people sang along, the percussion beat at full-force, and the vocals keeled into an almost war chant. That mood of spur-of-the-moment explosion was fitting because it’s a song that feels chaotic and wonderful.” [June 22, 2008]
No Water – Hearts of Palm Since I first posted this superb song in preview of the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase this summer, I’ve seen it performed live by Hearts of Palm approximately seventeen times in various venues throughout Denver — and it’s always a fantastic uprising of crowd participation. It makes me puff up inside to hear the momentum behind the song, the way everyone sings along above that bouncy bassline, and “how enthusiastically the band gives back to us all.” They always perform with joy, and this is one local band that is going places. [July 17, 2008]
Trees – Everest In quiet moments for the last six months, the “muted Buddy Holly classic vibe with autumnal colors” of this song from Everest streams through my head on repeat. I’d heard it somewhere and learned it enough to hum the melody, but then forgot to write down who it was and promptly forgot. After rediscovering it, I’ll never let go (Jack). It’s a lovely, humble, halcyon song and I still feel perfect when I am listening to it. [July 28, 2008]
Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare – Matt and Kim “Brooklyn duo Matt and Kim turned in one of the single most enthusiastic performances that I saw at Monolith last year, a cataclysmic explosion of spirited yelling and jubilant rhythm. This shiny song opens with such a sunny simplicity that it could be one of those homemade ditties you would compose on your new Casio keyboard on Christmas morning, using the program function and your siblings’ handclaps for backup percussion.” It also sounds like a whole army of awesomeness stomping their feet and clapping in a warehouse in the “We Will Rock You” of today. [Sept 1, 2008]
Get Yourself Home (In Search of The Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous) – These United States “The most recent Colorado show that Washington D.C.’s These United States played was at a farm party for Labor Day out near Nimbus Road and Diagonal Highway in Niwot. I hear the two things that existed in some abundance were farmland and alcohol. This sounds like the kind of band that you could have a lot of fun with in those doses. There’s a rustic folk charm here with a feisty and jittery thread weaving through this that would make M Ward proud.” An excellent album this year. [Sept 22, 2008]
I Can’t Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt cover) – Denison Witmer Philadelphia artist Denison Witmer self-released an inspired set of covers this year, and I keep on letting this Bonnie Raitt cover rip into me. It’s worth a few minutes of your time “even if you haven’t given Bonnie Raitt much thought since you (like my sister) sang this song in Girls Choir in high school.” This reimagining of Raitt’s 1991 song “starts with a settling in a room; you can hear the grey empty space starkly bouncing back his plaintive, resigned voice. It is an absolutely devastating song, and especially the way he does it — all void and defeated.” [Oct 13, 2008]
And hey — I am absolutely looking forward to year four! Thank you (sincerely) for playing along. What have been your favorite discoveries here this past year? I do so love to hear about it.
On Monday afternoon, I called the bowling alley at Moe’s BBQ, next door to the Gothic Theatre, to reserve a lane before the concert. “Big show tonight?” the man (sadly not named Moe) asked me. “Yeah, Calexico is playing next door,” I replied.
Bowling Man was unfamiliar with their music and asked me to describe it. “Well … there’s a southwestern element in there, but it’s not country. There are mariachi horns and steel guitar — I guess it’s indie-minded with kinda a wild desert streak.” That’s the best I could muster; Calexico is a difficult band to describe to someone who has never heard them because they straddle so many genres and defy easy characterization. This makes their live show stunning, an ever-shifting blend of enormous sounds and complex layers of melody. I’d never seen them live before, and I was riveted.
Here are some pictures from their gorgeous multi-hued set Monday night — with mp3s from one of my favorite concert collaborations below:
A few weeks ago I was loitering in a gigantic record store in Denver, and I noticed a Winter Songs EP from NYC band Matt Pond PA. Originally released in 2005, the EP caught my attention because of a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” alongside sparkling original compositions and creative reworkings of songs by Lindsay Buckingham, Richard Thompson and Neil Young.
I’d only heard a few Matt Pond PA songs before that little find (I love the icy crystalline “Brooklyn Stars” on my New York City mixtape), but my new EP has been on repeat in my car as a perfect soundtrack these last few weeks as fall decides whether it wants to hold its ground or surrender to colder nights and hard whirling snowflakes.
In a happy double dose of a good new discovery, tonight I got this nice little note:
Hello,
As a preamble to the American tradition of Thanksgiving, we are giving away a batch of completely new songs in form of a digital EP called The Freeep.
To accompany this gift of goodwill is a brand new video for “People Have A Way” by the incredibly talented Ed Lowther.
We owe our existence to our fans and your act of listening. We give our thanks!
The new collection follows the same format of subtle, numbered instrumental soundscapes interlaced with well-crafted tunes, although this time my cover-radar doesn’t detect anyone else’s songs in the mix. Download the whole new EP here and listen to it all this long weekend.
Nice thing #42 about working at a college? Matthew Caws from Nada Surf comes to chill in the building next door in a few weeks. The eclectic Boulder radio show eTown is doing a taping on December 10th in my humble hamlet with Caws and Denver’s Flobots (an odd pairing, but that’s what keeps the show interesting). I helped interview Caws back in February, and that cemented my fandom of the “magical realism” in his literate, pop-heaven tunes.
Caws will be playing an acoustic set, drawing from songs throughout the sixteen-year career of Nada Surf. It should be lovely. The band just released a retrospective of all five of their studio albums on vinyl. The limited 1,000 copy pressing includes their very first 7″ single and download codes for all their albums, plus a collection of rare and out-of-print bonus tracks and b-sides.
The box set is already sold out at Barsuk, but local indie retailers may still have it around. Here’s one of the bonus tracks that you can download with the box set:
As excited as I am to bust out my near-expert turkey skillz this week, I kinda hate late November. Around this time of year I suffer from unrelenting twinges of anxiety every time I listen to part of a new album, because great is my worry about excluding a late-year release for consideration as one of my favorites of the year. What if I just don’t know it yet, and mistake that for not loving it? Will I adore it come February? What kind of a huckster am I?!
I’m reprising my talking head role (like Max Headroom) on NPR’s World Cafe this year, and I am so aware of all the wonderful music this year held, and the inverse proportion to my amount of listening time. Sigh. I think I have 8 of the 10 favorites nailed down with two dark horse spots left to be filled. Wish me luck. What are your favorites of the year?
A few more tunes from 2008 that are very good:
City of Electric Light Chad VanGaalen The opening lines of this song are among my favorite this month: “And I thought you were the moon in the sky, but it turned out you were just a streetlight, you were burning like a hole in the night.” Ah, the old story of mistaken identity; an error that many of us make. This track traces the journey from infatuation to disillusionment, and uses what sounds like xylophones. You cannot go wrong. Calgary’s Chad VanGaalen makes shiny, multi-instrumental homespun recordings, with his newest release Soft Airplane out now on Sub Pop.
Not The One Francois Virot My NYC friend Cara posted this track from Francois Virot out of Lyon, France, saying that he had a “sort of shambolic happiness, a violent acoustic guitar player type. he’s got the right kind of crazy going on in his voice.” I love the torrent of strumming acoustic guitar as percussion, and the way he flirts with an untamed edge throughout this song. As he repeats, “It’s over now; I’m not the one, not the one, not the one…” it’s as if he is primarily trying to convince himself. Virot has a bunch of tour dates coming up, but mostly all in France. My brother is teaching English in Calais for the year, so maybe he can scrape together the funds to see this guy — this kind of passion would be amazing live. Yes or No is out now through Red Eye Distro.
To Ohio The Low Anthem Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, The Low Anthem has made a fantastic album that friend Bruce says sounds like a night ride home in Joni Mitchell’s car. That’s the best way I’ve heard yet to capture what this song feels like, from a band who hand silk-screens their CDs with love and says their ethos is “not entirely jaded yet: music that really is music, not an advertisement. Imagine that.” Citing influences in the vein of Dylan, The Band, Tom Waits and Neil Young, they vacillate between stripped-down acoustic arrangements and a more rollicking jam that echoes modern contemporaries like The Felice Brothers. The female vocal harmonies on this song also add such a warm and bittersweet undertone. The band is currently unsigned, and their album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin is out now.
The State I Am In (live on BBC) Belle and Sebastian From 1996-2001, Glasgow’s twee extraordinaires Belle & Sebastian recorded five sessions at the BBC for folks like John Peel, Mark Radcliffe, and Steve Lamacq, and they are now releasing this look into their early years as a band. If it’s possible for the songs to take on an even more vulnerable timbre, they do here. I enjoy hearing the intimacy of these sessions, the acoustic takes on favorites, and the four previously unreleased songs. The BBC Sessions is out now as double-disc on Matador (second disc is a live gig from Belfast in 2001).
GMF The Features In 2005, I fell in love with the awkward indie pop of Nashville’s The Features, with their song “Blow It Out” (celebrating sitting between a pair of speakers and playing vinyl very loud) making it onto pretty much every mixtape I created that year. This first single from their new album Some Kind of Salvation pulses with darker textures, and surprisingly reminds me more of The Killers. How did that happen? It’s an interesting development for this ebullient band.
In what could be described as a fit of regret, I’m salving my wounds for missing the Eulogies show a few nights ago by wistfully listening to their music on repeat. I’ve just met Eulogies fairly recently, and if their tunes were a person in a bar, I’d stoop to lines like, “Hey, baby, where have you been all my life?” or offer to kiss their music (in a metaphysical sort of way). I’m in love, or something like that, with the nuanced, melodic pop of this Los Angeles four piece.
Pitchfork wrote that Eulogies “brims with understated hooks, registering nearest the sensible introspection of Wheat‘s Hope and Adams, Nada Surf‘s The Weight is a Gift, or Death Cab for Cutie‘s Transatlanticism.”
I said “Okay.”
This coy little duet features the warm honeyed voice of Silversun Pickups’ Nikki Monninger, over a smooth and rolling bassline that reminds me of that undercurrent on the Cowboy Junkies version of “Sweet Jane.”
From the Tempted To Do Nothing EP, a precursor to their second full-length Here, Anonymous due out April 7th on Dangerbird Records (The Dears, Sea Wolf, Silversun Pickups).
And a bonus tune because these guys are seriously great (off their first self-titled album, from 2007):
EULOGIES TOUR DATES (other than, oh, that Denver show) w/ Darker My Love 11/21 || 7th St. Entry || Minneapolis, MN 11/22 || Vaudeville Mews || Des Moines, IA 11/25 || Berkley Front || Berkley, MI (NO Darker My Love) 11/26 || The Summit || Columbus, OH
w/ The Duke Spirit 11/28 || Bottle Tree || Birmingham, AL 11/29 || 40 Watt || Athens, GA 11/30 || Exit In || Nashville, TN 12/2 || Radio Radio || Indianapolis, IN 12/3 || The Basement || Columbus, OH
w/ Longwave 12/9 || Casbah || San Diego, CA 12/10 || Troubadour || Los Angeles, CA 12/11 || Rickshaw Stop || San Francisco, CA 12/13 || Dante’s || Portland, OR 12/14 || Chop Suey || Seattle, WA
“I’ve been thinking about this record for 15 years; during that span, I’ve thought about this record more than I’ve thought about China, and maybe as much as I’ve thought about the principles of democracy. This is a little like when that grizzly bear finally ate Timothy Treadwell: Intellectually, he always knew it was coming. He had to. His very existence was built around that conclusion. But you still can’t psychologically prepare for the bear who eats you alive, particularly if the bear wears cornrows.”
There are nights when I think that this simple song may be one of the most perfect things ever penned.
dance with me my old friend once before we go let’s pretend this song won’t end and we never have to go home and we’ll dance among the chandeliers
and nothing matters when we’re dancing in tat or tatters you’re entrancing be we in Paris or in Lansing nothing matters when we’re dancing
you’ve never been more beautiful your eyes like two full moons than here in this poor old dancehall among the dreadful tunes the awful songs we don’t even hear
Superdrag has announced the title of their first full studio album with the original line-up of Coffey, Davis, Fisher, and Pappas since 1998′s Head Trip In Every Key. I’ve not heard the whole album yet, but rumor has it that Industry Giants will “rock harder than Superdrag has ever been known to rock before.” So they tell me. The good-hearted John Davis says, “I can’t wait to get the record out. I can’t wait for people to hear it. I wish it could come out tomorrow.”
Produced by John Davis (whose solo work I seriously dig of late) and recorded & mixed in Nashville, Knoxville, and LA, the album is out on Superdrag Sound Laboratories / Thirty Tigers (Jessica Lea Mayfield, The Avett Brothers, Samantha Crain) on March 17.
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.
I’ve completely fallen for the short and sweet debut album from L.A. trio Little Joy, who hit Denver’s Larimer Lounge on Tuesday night. After a chance meeting at a Portuguese music festival, Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes and Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos) sat beside a river and talked about their musical leanings. Upon returning to Los Angeles, they formed this trio along with local musician Binki Shapiro. The three moved into an Echo Park house, starting recording demos, and named their project for the cocktail lounge down the street.
Name: Heather Browne
