I’ve fallen hard for the humble NYC duo of Anthony Da Costa and Abbie Gardner, whose sublime harmonies and wrenching lyrics hit in the best possible way. Plus, kid sounds exactly like Ryan Adams, and I don’t think he’s even twenty years old yet – take a listen:
Their self-released album Bad Nights / Better Days is quickly becoming one of my most listened-to of the year, as well as my most sung-along-to of the year whilst driving in my car on dark nights. Deeply satisfying.
This made me yelp out loud with delight when the singing started:
Scott Avett has such a strong, gorgeous, spine-tingling voice by himself, and it gets even better when Seth joins in on the jubilant harmonies here on “St. Joseph’s,” from their Second Gleam EP. I’m in awe of the feist and kick injected into this version of a normally sedate and restrained song. Via Paste Magazine — what a moment. I’d give a nickel or ten thousand to be on that gondola.
These last few weeks I’ve been steadily enjoying the new song from the forthcoming Vetiver release Tight Knit (due Feb 17th, their debut album with Sub Pop).
“Everyday” is a warmly jangling folk tune with an electric midsummer current of joy running smack dab through it. One writer said that Vetiver’s music “unfolds like a road trip down Highway 1, towards songwriter Andy Cabic’s home in San Francisco.” I’m goofy-eyed in love with this little song — it’s moving in right next door to Blitzen Trapper’s “Furr.”
So, side story: this weekend I was also somehow convinced to go shopping for a new shade of lipstick with my sister, one of my own personal levels of hell — not only shopping, but comparing all those colors, the plum rose vs the honey plum rose, and what have you. So, we ended up at Aveda, where we were misted and dabbed with various things that smelled good by the salesladies upon entering the premises. The scent I chose contained vetiver, and I never knew vetiver was a plant.
And now, paradoxically, I think I like this Vetiver song even more.
One night last week when I should have already been asleep, instead I sat up in bed scrolling through Failblog archives and absolutely dying laughing. Along with the FYP blog (for example: omg), Failblog is my new favorite — for reasons like this or this, or this or this.
That’ll start your Monday off right; so will these songs.
Hospital Bed
Seabear
The opening violin stirrings of this song are breathlessly gorgeous, heart-stoppingly so. After the condensed symphony of the first seconds, it transforms into la-la-las and quiet plucking and patter that sounds like rain on the cabin roof on that one night, so black, during the storm. I could hear you breathing. Seabear is from Iceland, and this song is off their 2007 album The Ghost That Carried Us Away [and brought to my attention by this fine set of ears]
Help I’m Alive
Metric
I posted this last week as part of that gigantic hour-long mp3 from my set at the Larimer Lounge, but it is such a fantastic song that it deserves a starring role. Emily Haines is a sometimes-member of Broken Social Scene and Metric, in addition to putting out solid solo albums. Make no mistake, this is a kickass girl-rock moment on par with the riffs of Veruca Salt’s “Volcano Girls,” with the danceability of Blondie and Hello Stranger. Over the shadowy industrial chugging there bursts a golden sheen of ’80s rock and snarl. My favorite, favorite part comes at 1:17 — one of the absolute best moments in a song I’ve heard in months. Listen/try to sit still. You can’t. You’ll dance. This is the leadoff track from the forthcoming 2009 release Fantasies.
A Song For Milton Feher
Richard Swift
I saw Mr. Swift open for Wilco on the blessed day that they converted me to raving lunatic fan. I remember being impressed by his toe-tapping poppy, piano-based compilations and huge head of curly hair. Apparently Milton Feher is a classical dancer, and I have no idea what this song is on about, but it’s a catchy blend of sunny pop sensibilities and synthesizers. This track was first on Swift’s free EP Ground Trouble Jaw last year, and will also be featured on the forthcoming full-length The Atlantic Ocean (both via Secretly Canadian). [thanks Bruce]
Black Lung
Cedarwell
I love the homespun charm in this song, the way it sounds like it’s being recorded in someone’s kitchen. The double-tracked vocals have a shimmering air of transparency that reminds me of Bon Iver’s home projects. Cedarwell is a man named Eric Neave from Wisconsin, and there’s a pretty little breakdown at the end with campfire clapping that always makes me smile. Find a dozen more songs for download on his site, with a donation suggested. Thoroughly lovely. [via MOKB].
Back From Exile
Nickel Eye
While The Strokes continue to consider offering us a new album, bassist Nikolai Fraiture has become the latest Stroke to embark on a side journey with his band Nickel Eye (get it? Nikolai?). The album brings old poems of Nikolai’s to musical life, and features Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Regina Spektor.
CONTEST: You can win one of these autographed 7″s I’ve got (pictured below on my kitchen table, “Brandy of the Damned” b/w “Back From Exile”) just by leaving a comment for me. Discuss Strokes side projects if you wish, or something else I will find entertaining, and I will pick two random winners. Contest runs through the end of this week, and the Nickel Eye album (The Time of Assassins) is out tomorrow on Rykodisc.
…but it sounds closer than ever with the sublimely sepia ebb of Band of Annuals and their sleepy, country-inflected male/female harmonies. A Christmas gift from a friend out in SLC, their album Let Me Live (2007) is one of my favorite new discoveries. If you love Whiskeytown like I do, this can help fill in some of the cracks and gaps in your heart since the Caitlin Cary/Ryan Adams project parted ways in 1999.
Band of Annuals (not to be confused with The Annuals from North Carolina) been selling out venues lately with their fantastic live show, and I would love to bring them to Denver. There’s a strong and unwavering purity to Jay Henderson’s voice, blending perfectly with the gorgeously honest timbre of Jeremi Hanson (who reminds me some of Gillian Welch).
I have listened to this particular cut, off their Live Warehouse EP, about a dozen times on repeat today. The snowflakes twirl quietly outside my house, and I am spending all day curled inside with this music warming the walls of my house, the harmonica echoing through the rooms. “Love is tough for me these days…”
This is worth a mention because I’m reading Rilke right now and, well… I always love Bono. Plus it’s a cool scarf. Have at it, hipsters.
With all its eyes the natural world looks out into the Open. Only our eyes are turned backward, and surround plant, animal, child like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.
We know what is really out there only from the animal’s gaze; for we take the very young child and force it around, so that it sees objects–not the Open, which is so deep in animals’ faces. Free from death.
We, only, can see death; the free animal has its decline in back of it, forever, and God in front, and when it moves, it moves already in eternity, like a fountain.
Rilke-print scarf, via Edun (“increasing employment and trade for developing regions, especially Sub-Saharan Africa.”)
Kinda like a warm liqueur seeping through the messes of this week, tonight I came across these two National videos and they help ameliorate things. As I wrote after I saw them at Coachella: “The National carved something out of me and put something back in, is the best way I can put it.”
These videos are both shot by Vincent Moon, the amazingly artistic and evocative videographer behind many of the Blogotheque videos (who I got to meet once and totally dorked out over). I love how both of these never quite relent, never quite let you see all the way through the darkness, into something clear.
First, “Abel,” and the chaos of a mind not right:
Side note: I just saw Everything Absent Or Distorted end their set with this last week [read my Denver Post review], and it’s been etched on my brain since then. I’m no Vincent Moon but I wish I’d brought my little digital video camera because it was a phenomenal rendition of a cathartic song.
And then “Baby, We’ll Be Fine,” a song whose lyrics always scrape at me. There’s so much uncertainty in the words, but then these perfect reassurances are offered — even while I sense that the protagonist here needs the reassurance the most.
The good news is I survived this kicker of a week. Baby, we’ll be fine.
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.
Thanks to the magic of the internets, you can listen now to my DJ set from last night’s “New Music Monday” shindig at the Larimer Lounge (streaming, or download the gigantic mp3 to play at your own par-tay). We had so much fun! Uhh, turns out I really like making people shake it. HB Larimer Lounge Set (Jan 19, 2009)
MIXLIST:
Bag of Hammers – Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down
Fall In Step – Jaydiohead
Nothing – The Hands
My Drive Thru – Santogold, Julian Casablancas and N.E.R.D.
Mr. Tough – Yo La Tengo
King of Karat Flowers (remix of Neutral Milk Hotel) – DJ Mark E. Moon
Blankest Year – Nada Surf
The Book I Write – Spoon
Amy (Ryan Adams cover) – Mark Ronson
Multiply – Jamie Lidell
Gratification to Concrete – Robert Pollard
Filthy / Gorgeous (ATOC vs Superbuddha remix) – Scissor Sisters
Help I’m Alive – Metric
Hardcore Days & Softcore Nights – Aqueduct
Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby? (Rae and Christian remix) – Dinah Washington
Do The Panic – Phantom Planet
Pile of Gold – The Blow
The First Single – The Format
Vertigo (Trent Reznor remix) – U2
Tora Tora Tora – Pretty & Nice
Head on over to Gigbot to read my interview with Cody Dickinson, of Hill Country Revue and the North Mississippi All Stars. Cody plays the electric washboard. That’s pretty rad.
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.
Name: Heather Browne
