Chris Isaak remains my Mister Lucky

San Francisco’s surf-troubadour Chris Isaak rolled back into my life last week with Mr. Lucky, his first new studio album since 2002′s Always Got Tonight and 1998′s Speak Of The Devil, both well-loved albums that I’ve listened to hundreds of times over the years and still delight me.

Isaak is a stylistic anomaly, consistently making good tunes that defy the times. There’s a bit of the California Blue of Roy Orbison, the golden slide guitar and twang of shiny old country, and the marvelous malleability of his unmatched lonesome warble. Over the years, Isaak has traversed surf music territory, Spanish adobes in the hot sun, wrenching little acoustic blues ballads, and good ole rock and roll. I’ve seen him in small sweaty San Francisco clubs and it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to Beatlemania, Elvis faintings, and that flutter of girlish embarrassment. He always evokes the winter waves crashing under the Golden Gate for me.

I adore Chris Isaak, this I will readily admit. I once had a real good friendship that first sparked over a shared love of Isaak. I think it’s rare to find two kids these days (by kids I mean twenty-somethings) who appreciate the bright talent of Chris Isaak, so those days remain an unparalleled treat. Listening to his new album this weekend, especially the bittersweet harmonies of his duet with Trisha Yearwood on “Breaking Apart” (an older song), makes me a bit melancholy for the things we’ve lost. His music is always, always good for that – - Forever Blue remains one of the greatest albums about the end of a relationship that I own. After all these years, I’m still interested in what he’s doing next.

I’ve been streaming the whole album this week through his MySpace, feeling out the sway and the break that somehow always feels immediately familiar. “You Don’t Cry Like I Do,” is an immediate (sad, sad) favorite, while “We Lost Our Way” makes me want to hit the California highway, ocean teal out the windowside. His songs remind me of places that once were home.

This tune from Mr. Lucky has been a favorite of mine, finally receiving the proper album treatment. Originally buried as an Australian b-side, it always makes me smile from start to finish. Something so simple, so immediate, so…seventeen about those lyrics.

Best I Ever Had – Chris Isaak

San Franciscans!! Go see Isaak Monday night at Amoeba, 6pm.
Do give him a kiss for me.

[photo credit Wolf Trap]

Angelenos take on Sir McCartney

My pal Justin over at Aquarium Drunkard is always doing cool stuff. In addition to, you know, the record label, the book he’s written, and the 826LA lecture this week, Justin’s managed in his spare time to gather a bunch of his favorite artists from his neighborhood to record a free album covering Paul McCartney’s 1971 solo album RAM.

The delightfully anachronistic result will be free to download come Monday, with a donation requested for No More Landmines. Win win.

Justin writes:

Los Angeles: huge, sprawling, and eclectic, has been likened to microcosm of the country as whole — truly a melting pot of various cultures, ethnicities, tastes and influences. So is her music. With various scenes and sub-scenes, rarely has there been a defining “sound” that marks the overall zeitgeist of what is happening in the city at any one time. In 2008 I set out to create a compilation of a dozen or so L.A. based artists that I felt were creating something both unique and diverse. After some thought I decided that there needed to be a running theme, something to tie the artists together into a cohesive whole, a common bond.

As records tend to do, a revisited appreciation of Paul McCartney’s 1971 solo album, RAM, had begun to see a resurgence of sorts within a number of local Eastside artists, coming up in conversations and on the turntables of various house parties.

The theme was found. Over the course of the second half of 2008 eleven Angeleno artists individually went in to various studios, rehearsal spaces and apartments to record their take on what is my favorite, and arguably, McCartney’s best solo work…. the end result is RAM On L.A.

Listen to one of the covers, from Merge Records’ Broken West. Other contributing artists include folks like Frankel, Travel By Sea, Le Switch and Earlimart.

Eat At Home – Broken West

NB: Denverites, Broken West is at the Hi-Dive next Wednesday (March 11) with Blind Pilot, a band that I just can’t get enough of lately (I bought their actual physical CD on Thursday night! Like whoa).

Should be most excellent; I shall see you there.

in the frozen nights I go roaming in the bed you used to share with me

I’ve found myself smitten all over again these days with the song “Wolves” by Josh Ritter.

Two years ago this weekend, I sat transfixed as he performed it at my first Noise Pop show of 2007, at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco.

Wolves – Josh Ritter
(something inside of me careens into a sad void, suspended in the ache, when the verse at 2:48 starts. Such a magnificent song.)

I still remember that time when we were dancing, we were dancing to a song that I’d heard. Your face was simple and your hands were naked, I was singing without knowing the words. But I started listening to the wolves in the timber, wolves in the timber at night. I heard their song when I looked in the mirror, in the howls and the moons round my eyes…

So long, so high

Then winter came, and there was little left between us – skin and bones of love won’t make a meal. I felt my eyes lifted over your shoulder, there were wolves at the edge of the fields. But I still remember that time when we were dancing, we were dancing to a song that I’d heard. Your face was simple and your hands were naked, I was singing without knowing the words…

So long, so high

Then one day I just woke up and the wolves were all there, wolves in the piano, wolves underneath the stairs, wolves inside the hinges circling round my door, at night inside the bedsprings, clicking cross the floor. I don’t know how they found me I’ll never know quite how. I still can’t believe they heard me, that I was howling out that loud…

So long, so high

Sometimes in the frozen nights I go roaming in the bed you used to share with me. I wake in the field with the cold and the lonesome, the moon’s the only face that I see. I still remember that time when we were dancing, dancing to a song that I’d heard. Your face was simple and your hands were naked, I was singing without knowing the words.

So long so high

Ritter has a “teeny tiny Spring tour” coming up, in which the band will be taking a break from the studio, shaking off some rust, and playing new songs. Yeah, I’d recommend going.

Feelin’ Extra Golden this morning

In 1995, Ian Eagleson was studying abroad in Kenya and first heard the sounds of benga guitar while attending a marriage celebration. As he writes in this fascinating Fretboard Journal article about the style of guitar-playing that can be heard in countless small Kenyan bars and across backroads, he was “struck by the sound that cut through the din.”

Eagleson returned to Africa many times while pursuing his (pretty rad-sounding) doctorate in ethnomusicology, and along the way formed Extra Golden, a fusion of members and sounds from his Washington D.C. rock band Golden and the Nairobi benga band Orchestra Extra Solar Africa. The joyously vibrant result sounds like this:

Anyango – Extra Golden

Their third album Thank You Very Quickly is available March 10th on Thrill Jockey.

And really, how good would this stuff feel live?

EXTRA GOLDEN Spring 2009 TOUR

AFRICAN SOUL REBELS 2009 UK Tour
(all dates with Baaba Maal and Oliver Mtukudzi)
Mar 3 2009 Gateshead – The Sage Gateshead
Mar 4 2009 Liverpool Philharmonic – Liverpool
Mar 6 2009 Bridgewater Hall – Manchester
Mar 7 2009 Lighthouse – Poole
Mar 8 2009 Brighton Dome – Brighton
Mar 9 2009 Roundhouse – London
Mar 11 2009 Royal & Derngate- Northampton
Mar 12 2009 The Anvil – Basingstoke
Mar 13 2009 De Montfort Hal – Leicester
Mar 14 2009 Warwick Arts Centre -Coventry

U.S. DATES
Apr 9 2009 Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Apr 10 2009 Floristree – Baltimore, Maryland
Apr 11 2009 Le Poisson Rouge – Manhattan, New York
Apr 12 2009 Middle East Upstairs – Cambridge, Massachusetts
Apr 14 2009 Comet Pizza – Washington DC
Apr 15 2009 B-Sides at Messiah College – Grantham, PA
Apr 16 2009 Kenyon College -Gambier, Ohio
Apr 17 2009 Ladies Literary Club – Grand Rapids, Michigan
Apr 18 2009 WIUX Culture Shock – Bloomington, Indiana
Apr 19 2009 Cactus Club – Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Apr 20 2009 Empty Bottle – Chicago, Illinois
Apr 22 2009 Waterfront Park – Louisville, Kentucky
Apr 23 2009 Northside Tavern -Cincinnati, Ohio
April 24 2009 Rumba Cafe Columbus, Ohio

BONUS: You may remember also hearing their thank-you song in their native Luo language to native-son Obama after he helped them secure the needed visas for a U.S. tour:

Obama – Extra Golden

[top photo credit Noel Kupersmith — and where is that Elvis print? I wanna see.]

The glory days of the Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers contributed recently to the marvelous series Hangin’ On E Street, where young rockers discuss Bruce’s influence on them and their music, and cover one of his songs. Wherever they piled all four of them to do this harmonica-laced cover (looks like backstage, or a warehouse), I want to be sitting right in the middle.

Glory Days (Springsteen cover) – The Avett Brothers

In addition to the current panorama of artists whose contributions are already live on the site (Gaslight Anthem, Ted Leo, Juliana Hatfield, etc), we can look forward to clips coming from Josh Ritter (maybe this one?), Pete Yorn (maybe this one?), and Birdmonster.

You know, I always thought this was a really sad song, and wondered how that gets overlooked.

Goodnight moon, goodnight stars

Oh, this song is all kinds of wonderful tonight; simple like the last waltz across a darkened kitchen, easy like front porch swings and fireflies. Wistful and wonderful as the moon rises.

Goodnight Moon – Will Kimbrough

Goodnight moon, good night stars
Goodnight old brokedown cars
Gone away, leaving soon
Goodnight darlin’
Goodnight moon

Thank you babe, I’m gonna miss you
When the night comes ’round
That’s when I long to kiss you
With the moon shining on the ground

Will Kimbrough is from Mobile, Alabama, and currently calls Nashville home. This song was featured on the Oxford American Southern Music Sampler in 2003. In addition to having that lovely clear tenor voice and songwriting chops, Kimbrough also has produced albums for folks like Matthew Ryan and Josh Rouse. He’s released some stuff on the Lost Highway label, and seems to have been laying low since his 2007 EP.

Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest (gesundheit) is the album event of the year

I like to picture that I’ve hired a small man with dark hair and a preternaturally deep voice to stand in my kitchen and read that post title back to me using his Movie Preview Announcer Voice.  (I say the gesundheit part. He eyes me warily).

Proving his commitment to the rock and the roll, Philly’s music machine (and good friend) Bruce Warren has created a new blog devoted solely to aggregating and covering news related to the upcoming Grizzly Bear album event: grizzlybearalbum.blogspot.com. Bookmark it for all your information needs. The anticipation is like waiting for Christmas.

I am looking forward to trying to weasel my way in to seeing these guys at SXSW (along with everybody else). Here are live versions of two shiny gorgeous songs that will be on the new album, at once golden echoey and retro happy. They get under my skin:

Two Weeks (live on Letterman) – Grizzly Bear

While You Wait For The Others (live on Morning Becomes Eclectic) – Grizzly Bear

Veckatimest is due May 26th via Warp Records and available for pre-order from Insound on CD or vinyl.

Henry Clay People play (for cheap or for free) tonight in Denver!

Hey Colorado kids, come on out tonight to see a FREE show with one of my new favorite bands, The Henry Clay People. They are in our fair town to open for the sold-out Airborne Toxic Event show, which was just rescheduled (to April 15) due to illness.

Henry Clay People are instead regaling us with their rock for free at the Larimer Lounge tonight. I am ridiculously excited; theirs is another CD that has not left my car lately: For Cheap Or For Free (out on Aquarium Drunkard‘s Autumn Tone label). Take a listen to the opening track on their album, also a favorite for steering-wheel drumming, and I’ll see you there.

Something In The Water – Henry Clay People

BONUS: Aquarium Drunkard also recently posted a live in-studio set, featuring three new songs! Check it out.

Jenny lights her cigarette, wonders how she got in this mess

The NYC Taper recently posted a live Lucero show from Terminal 5, and tonight it sounds exceedingly good to me. Their writer who attended the Lucero show had never heard them before that night but was impressed. He says, “Led by Ben Nichols, Memphis-based Lucero seem to be cut from a different part of the same whiskey-soaked cloth as Drive-By Truckers and the Replacements that Bruce Springsteen had used to wipe his brow. They present a rollicking good time that would make seeing them in some boozy little southern fried bar a mind-blowing event.” (perhaps this will be my blessed fate at SXSW?)

There’s an urgency and driving-fast beauty to this song that has resonated with me since I first heard it in 2006, off their album Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers. I still love the gritty rock-guitar riffs, the desperation in Ben Nichols’ voice paired with a thumping drumbeat that wildly echoes your own on that first date.

…Don’t look back don’t hesitate
Car’s outside and we can’t wait
Sunday morning is coming down

I can take you away from this
You got your life, he’s got his
Just set ‘em up, and knock ‘em down…

I Can Get Us Out Of Here (live in NYC) – Lucero

Get the full show here.

[image credit Brooklyn Vegan]

let’s cause a scene, clap our hands and stomp our feet

This past Friday afternoon, I had a day off work with some good company. As we drove back from a few of my state’s many fine craft breweries, we discussed the now-defunct Arizona band The Format. My friend was curious what all the fuss had been about their live show, which I told him was one of the best I have ever seen.

Thinking about that conversation tonight, I pulled up the video I shot at Denver’s Gothic Theatre in September 2007. After watching it again, I still feel as explosively happy as I did when I took it, while all of us in the crowd shouted along at the top of our lungs. This was one of my favorite concert moments up to that point, and remains still:

The First Single – The Format

The Nate Ruess half of The Format is now in a band called FUN, while Sam Means has been recording music with Michelle DaRosa (Formerly of Straylight Run) for her new project, Destry.

I love these guys, and I miss the magic they created together.