Monday Music Roundup

[Editor’s note: While I’m somewhere between Luckenbach and Marfa today, I’ve asked my friend Dainon to write today’s Monday Music Roundup. He has superb taste. You are in good hands]

GO!

Blood Red Sentimental Blues
Cotton Jones
Cotton Jones’ EPs have surfaced here and there (mostly whenever Maryland’s Michael Nau was taking breaks from his other outfit, Page France), but he finally got serious and released a full-length of this half-folky, half-psychedelic stuff earlier this year. It works better than all that came before it, too. Page France was one of those love at first listen sorts and he gets it right on this band and number, too, just in an all new way. Here, you see dust particles hanging in the sunlight. You fully expect the organ to kick in when it does. You can even feel its sepia tones.

Also, if whistling makes you happy and you know it, turn up “By Morning Light” and tap-tap-tap along to that ketchy rhythm.

Look In On Me
James Jackson Toth
Remember Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice? Maybe? James Jackson Toth spearheaded that movement but, in this music lubber’s opinion, it wasn’t entirely listenable. And his first solo album is kinda wordy and scattered, too, but, when he’s channeling early Mick Jagger, as he is here, it feels warm and right and slightly drunk. There’s a story to attach to this, too, one that involved a ridiculously great night, a morning-after walk of shame and still buzzed smiles as this song up and declared itself the perfect soundtrack of that long moment, but that’s all that needs to be said about that.

Also, try his “Beulah The Good.” It’s a different sort of fantastic, but an absolute thrill ride all the same.

Them Kids
Sam Roberts
One of those Big Deals up in Canada who still hasn’t managed the same kinda success south of their border, I read someplace that this album has enough heart in it to change alla that noise right quick. Perhaps. Listening to Sam Roberts channel the energy of the Strokes here (without the silly pretense to go along with it), it’s hard not to believe that. If you’re not a giddy headbanger singing “The kids don’t know how to dance to rock ‘n roll!” by the tail end of this one, well, rewind and repeat it already. Only do it louder this time. That’s an order.

Also, the lovely “Words and Fire” deserves to land on movie soundtrack in the near future. Just saying.

Funeral Song
Laura Gibson
I like this description of this lovely Portland-based singer-songwriter, borrowed from Hush Records … “She couldn’t tell you what band put out what particular album in what year, but she could probably describe where she was, how she felt and what you talked about, when she first met you, or what the trees looked like the last time her heart was broken.” Laura’s voice comes from another time. Listen closely to this song and you might hear some Billie Holiday in there. Listen closer and you’ll hear a saw being played.

Her recently-released Beasts of Seasons is a disarmingly good album that seeps into your skin the more you allow it to. Her songs sound like shared secrets. She recently said she is more influenced by her books of poetry than she is other musicians; there appears to be some real truth to that.

Also? “Where Have All Your Good Words Gone?” is likely to knock you flat. Catch her when she plays with Damien Jurado at the Hi-Dive in Denver on 4/4.

Bottle Rockettes
Peter & The Wolf
You gotta love a guy (Redding Hunter) who records his own CDs, designs each cover with his own artwork (owls wearing bling necklaces are big right now) and makes his way across the US of A, playing ramshackle house parties for gas money. Fresh off 5+ shows at SXSW and currently working on something he’s wont to call his “disco record,” this song is a fast favorite off Mellow Owl, Peter and the Wolf’s latest offering. Is it enough to say this one feels like a summer’s day? Sure, there’s a lazy love story in there, too, but it comes second to the feeling of it. This one really benefits from the vocals of Moss Bailey, too, who pops up all over the album.

Also, “Trainhopper” is classic PATW: an acoustic geet, the story of some kinda gypsy wanderer and lots of those long drawn-out oooh’s to dress it up right nice.

And, just for fun, here’s Peter & The Wolf in action from a couple weeks back. This is an old one called “Silent Movies,” recorded live at KRCL 90.9 in Salt Lake City, UT, where he both managed to play one bar with a transvestite blues house band (yep) and one packed-to-the-rafters house show while he was in town.

[aw heck Dainon. You’re so hired]

Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain

“Six miles east of Fredericksburg on highway 290, turn south onto FM 1376. Go four miles. Off FM 1376 to your right at the South Grape Creek Bridge. Luckenbach.”

After breakfast at the Moonshine of green chile & cheese grits, I left the loud and wonderful music mecca of Austin this afternoon and we pulled onto the highway in a dusty red Jeep. Our destination tonight was Luckenbach, Texas. I told some Texans that I was heading there on the drive home and they looked at me with some confusion, but as my friend succinctly stated it in the golden Texas sunlight, “What Haight-Ashbury is to rock music, Luckenbach is to country.”

On the road, after listening to the Waylon Jennings classic about our destination, we put this story on the stereo:

The Story of The Ballad of The Devil’s Backbone Tavern – Todd Snider

The Ballad of The Devil’s Backbone Tavern – Todd Snider

We pulled off the asphalt and bumped onto a dusty road curving gracefully towards some small buildings, an old general store and a dance hall. I saw a longhorn steer and evermore folks in cowboy hats. An older man tipped his hat at me as I walked by, and we got some cold longnecks from the outdoor bar. I wandered into the general store to look at the yellowing prints on the wall.

Following the sound of rising harmonies caught on the breeze, we went and sat beside a circle of musicians on tree-stump stools in the dappled sun. Under the live oak trees, the music ebbed and flowed between them as they sang sweet songs of the South and of the rivers and of love lost. The circle was fluid as folks would join and leave the circle, walking over to get a cold Lone Star or scratch the dog, coming back to pick up their well-worn instrument. There was an air of eager anticipation as one musician would pluck and strum their way into a new song, the others watching intently, nodding and then figuring out the melody to join in with their own contribution.

Punctuated by encouraging calls of, “Tell us all about it!” and “Yeah you do,” they took their mandolins and guitars, their banjos and gut buckets and just made sublime music in the Sunday twilight.

I want to start a music festival there. We’ll get the Avetts to headline, we’ll bring a bunch of great indie bands who know their roots, and we’ll two-step til sunrise. I learned how to two-step today under the globe lights, as the sun set. Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas.

Today was a good day.

[all pics here]

SXSW: My ears and heart are full

This festival has been amazing and overwhelming, in a very good way. I’m barely alive (among other things the Hold Steady nearly killed me last night, two shows from them in one day) so what I can offer right now is a look through my lens these last three days.

Words to follow when I find my voice again, after all the singing along.

[click any image to see it full-size]

Mile-Hi Fidelity party today!

Please come by and say hello!!

Elvis Perkins, midnight church, and redemption

Elvis Perkins just restored in my faith in the hot-blooded beating heart of music, in a cavernous church sanctuary in the middle of Austin tonight.

Playing a midnight set with his impassioned band Dearland, he left me reeling in the front pew as he wailed and pounded and jangled through his heartbreaking song catalog. I had never seen Perkins before and even though my feet are aching and holy mackerel have I seen a lot of music these past two days, Perkins stripped away all the jaded varnish on my ears with one of the most real, brilliant shows I have ever seen.

The whole set sounded incredible, reverberating off the arched walls and stained glass windows, but the last two songs knocked me flat. “While You Were Sleeping” is one of the most beautifully honest and aching songs I’ve ever heard, and when he sang the lines about “while you were sleeping the babies grew, the stars shined and the shadows moved….time flew, the phone rang, there was a silence when the kitchen sang…,” I started crying pretty embarrassingly honestly in the front row. But by the time he moved on to the next and final song, “Doomsday,” it was like redemption. All eight or so of the musicians, the brass section and the giant marching-band drum guy, all poured off the stage into the front of the church, dancing and kicking and hollering and raising their instruments to the arches. People were dancing in the aisles to the thump of the giant bass drum and I swear I’ve not felt like that in a long time.

Perkins comes to Denver May 8th and a bunch of other places in the coming months. Please go.

NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday (thank you Bob!)

[my camera….well, I might have dropped it in the bathroom, and my good lens just might be in four pieces. I don’t want to talk about it. I resorted to flash + daytime lens. Sigh]

Monday (SXSW) Music Roundup

In just over 36 hours I will be in Austin, Tejas for my first SXSW Music Festival. I may be a bit disoriented from my way early AM flight, blinking the bright Texas sunlight. I’ll be planning my musical attack, my strategy for eating BBQ and pacing my drinks. Marathon, not sprint, etc etc.

I was up til past 1 last night trying to scrap together some loose semblance of a schedule of bands I would be interested in seeing. Here are five brand new ones that I’ve not written about before, but that my preliminary scientific midnight musical research indicates that you might like as well.

Sugarfoot
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
Just click play. Seriously.

James Brown struts and kicks again in the music of twenty-six year old Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears. This 8-piece band from Austin makes music full of things that can’t quite be expressed with words, so there’s a lot of “whoo!”s and “unh“s and fabulous call and responses. Band members also have names like Sleepy Ramirez and Big Show Varley (come on!). Out tomorrow on Lost Highway, Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is is an immense amount of fun and I just know their live show will be also.

Harold T Wilkins
Fanfarlo
There’s an effervescent shimmer to this song with distinctively David Byrnesian vocals that loop and swirl all over. Hailing from London, Fanfarlo is a band I first read about over on Bruce’s blog full of impeccable SXSW choices. The best way to experience this little gem of a song is absolutely gonna be through the kitschy video that gets it perfectly right, all blocky colors and bright lights with a timewarp gloss. This tune is one side of a split 7″ with Sleeping States, and will also be on their forthcoming full-length. Brilliant.

Night Owl
Jack Oblivian and the Tennessee Tearjerkers
Okay, wow. One thing I’ve enjoyed about prepping to go to this festival is that everyone I meet seems to have a suggestion about that band that I must see. When someone actually recommends a band called Jack Oblivian and the Tennessee Tearjerkers (which happened at the Blitzen Trapper show Thursday), I’m inclined to listen just because of that blessedly wonderful name. Heck I want to be in that band. SPIN Magazine called Jack Yarber (Oblivian) “arguably the finest rock talent Memphis has produced since Alex Chilton,” and his music runs the crazy gamut from garage to classic pop to Chuck Berry soundalikes. His new album The Disco Outlaw is out on May 5 on Goner Records. Do the skate.

Mango Tree
Angus and Julia Stone
This sibling duo from Sydney, Australia has composed a stirringly lovely folk album of delicate harmonies and slowburn arrangements. Angus & Julia Stone‘s distinctive voices (his fragile and clear, hers brassy and sometimes childlike) fit together flawlessly, the result of a childhood spent singing camp-song harmonies. They recorded their 2007 Hollywood EP at the house of Fran Healy (of Travis), and he produced their debut full-length A Book Like This, released a few weeks ago on EMI.

Violent Sensation Descends
Violens
Zombies! The Zombies stumble into a very fashionable ’80s club where everyone has long angular bangs cut diagonal in a swoop. The music of Violens strikes me as a little new wave, a little smoky, but with good structural bones and catchy melodies under all the haze. This New-York-via-Miami four piece has a self-titled EP in stores tomorrow, and one year-end list of ’08 said, “In 1966, this alternately ominous and sparkly nugget would’ve been the No. 50 British single of the year, after the Creation’s ‘Making Time.’ It’s that good.”

And sweetheavens do you even know how many other bands I am trying to find a way to cram into my happy schedule? In a perfect world where I could clone additional little Heather Brownes to run around to shows for me, some of the folks I would like to see include:

Ben Sollee, The Boat People, Ume, M. Ward, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Starfucker, Ladyhawke, The Donkeys, Department of Eagles, Dan Auerbach, Avett Brothers, Haley Bonar, Radioclit, Eli Paperboy Reed & The True Loves, Sky Larkin, Hymns, Justin Townes Earle, The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Hold Steady, Afterhours, The Features, Grizzly Bear, Laura Gibson, Lisa Hannigan, Tori Amos (!!), These United States, Thao Nguyen And The Get Down Stay Down, The Soft Pack, BLK JKS, Emily Wells, Blind Pilot, Henry Clay People, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Lucero, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Pretty & Nice, Primal Scream, Beach House, Handsome Furs, Harlem Shakes, Here We Go Magic, The Low Anthem, Waz, The Postelles, Madi Diaz, The Ettes, Scissors For Lefty, The Felice Brothers, Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers, Tinted Windows, Future Clouds & Radar, Okkervil River, Explosions In The Sky, Deadstring Brothers, Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, Zee Avi, Say Hi, Voxtrot, and Superdrag (who has a new video and new guest blogging duties). Whew. And I’m not even done going through the calendar yet.

I’m on it.

[header image via]

Ain’t no party like a trepanation party

trep⋅a⋅na⋅tion /ˌtrɛpəˈneɪʃən/
The process of cutting a hole in the skull, believed by some to lead to enlightenment. Either that or open-mindedness. Oooh.

After taking a few years of sabbatical, Voxtrot wants to have a special kind of party with you, with this brand new mp3 made available today. The brooding, catchy song was produced by Jim Eno of Spoon at his Austin, Texas studio.

It is especially fitting for this week of the year when preening musicians shed their downy winter coats and the musical industrialists begin their violent rutting in Austin. Voxtrot will play twice at SXSW this week.

Trepanation Party – Voxtrot

The honest and compelling music of Mumford & Sons

Mumford & Sons sounds like a dignified British jeweler, or perhaps a men’s clothing store, but instead they are a potent and wonderful quartet out of London that is poised to shoot to the top (and well-deservedly so).

The first time I listened to their music they reminded me of a blend of two bands I wholeheartedly love — a vibe of Frightened Rabbit meets the Avett Brothers? I hear both the wrenching confessional storytelling in a thick brogue, and the almost-punk ferocity of the bluegrass glimmers. Absolutely fantastic.

A local friend who knows my musical leanings fairly well sent me this recommendation that several readers have also written in passionately to me about, primarily folks from the UK. Mumford & Sons make honest, compelling music that veers towards triumphant even as they chronicle the difficult litany of life’s woes. It sounds epic and substantial while simultaneously crawling under my skin with its vulnerability.

Perhaps it’s the multiple voices rising together of all the band members, but there is a distinct feeling of kinfolk here, almost like a gospel choir or a Greek chorus, a community vibe that lends some sort of strength through such raw lyrical content. Add some banjo and….I’m totally sold.

I have been listening to this live set pretty much nonstop this weekend.

MUMFORD & SONS
LIVE IN THE BBC ONE STUDIOS
The Cave (ack. love this!!)
Roll Away Your Stone
Sigh No More (otherwise unreleased?)
White Blank Page

You can bet your last sip of Tito’s that I’ll be seeing these guys in Austin this week. Hurrah! I cannot wait.

[audio thanks]

Neil Halstead at Denver’s Walnut Room tonight

Frontman of the influential shoegaze band Slowdive in the ’90s before forming Mojave 3, warmly colorful songwriter  Neil Halstead is now exploring a solo career which brings him to Denver’s Walnut Room tonight.

Halstead’s first solo record Sleeping On Roads was released on 4AD Records in 2002, and after six long years he returned with Oh Mighty Engine (Brushfire Records) which made it onto my Favorites of 2008 list. I wrote that it was “a humble album of acoustic folk melodies that rewards the listener for their patience. This is a slow grower for me, and I find that more hues in the songs are revealed to me the longer I sit with it — a task I am eminently willing to take on. Halstead sings about trying to get the colors right, and with these unassuming tunes I think he does.”

I first heard Neil’s music on the Sprout surf movie soundtrack, and over the last few years it has has grown so steadily and warmly on me. Timeout Magazine has called him “one of Britain’s greatest songwriters” and NME said that he’s “Britains best-kept secret.” Come see for yourself:

Neil Halstead @ The Walnut Room
with Joshua James
Doors @ 7:00, Show @ 8:00
$12 – 21+

NEIL HALSTEAD
Live at the Moonshine Festival, October 2004
See You On Rooftops
Two Stones In My Pocket
Driving With Bert
Sleeping On Roads
Who Do You Love?
Yer Feet

ZIP: NEIL HALSTEAD AT THE MOONSHINE FESTIVAL

[photo credit Laurie Scavo]

Murder By Death nearly killed me. But in a totally good way.

Sounds like a grim endeavor, what with all the murder and dying, but last week I drove to the Black Sheep in Colorado Springs (a mere five minutes from my house, and a pleasant change from my normal hour-commute to Denver shows) to see the highly-recommended Murder By Death. This band from Indiana blends an elegant Gothic Americana with some serious ghosts of the Man in Black walking amongst us. They delivered a powerful, jaw-dropping set that churned up a gut punch.

In the way that the color black absorbs all the other colors, the music of Murder By Death is dark but also displays lyrical depth and rich musical beauty. They are definitely a young band, with the defiance of punk and the wilderness of the outlaw west, but also channeling the spirit of past generations. During their whole set, the screen across the stage flickered with old movies, from Nosferatu-type silent hauntings to Clint Eastwood laying dying the desert, lips parched, their music the only soundtrack. It became eerie, and suited their mood perfectly.

Comin’ Home – Murder By Death

The stirring and ferocious baritone of Adam Turla reminds me of the heft behind songwriters like Nick Cave and, of course, Johnny Cash. Turla is tall, bearded and lanky, and too young to have been friends with Cash but the kind of guy I think he would have really liked nonetheless. Once Turla started talking more and telling stories, he galvanized the crowd through his engaging wit. He regaled us with a tale of the last time they played Aspen, how one older cougar-lady sipping white wine kept hitting on every member of the band and asking them to get a drink with her at the bar. And then John Oates (yep, that one) came and reclaimed her. It was Amy Oates, his wife. Whoops.

The venue was packed with an immense variety of folks, from the 16+ crowd (who were surprisingly enthusiastic about a band with such storied leanings) to big dudes holding lighters up to punks and rockabilly girls — and plenty of average twenty-somethings like me, all singing along and pumping their fists at the choruses. This is a band with an absolutely riveting live presence, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. My chest thudded in time with their beats and their bass lines. They’ve built up quite a following over the years, both on headlining tours (like the current one) and opening for everyone from Lucero, Interpol, Cursive, Weakerthans, and William Elliott Whitmore.

Cellist Sarah Balliet was fascinating to watch, pouring herself into her heart-stoppingly sad solos. Her instrument really anchors and defines this whole band for me (along with the piano of Vincent Edwards), giving it an elegiac undercurrent of sadness, but also wailing and rocking when she’d go to town. It proved to me how certain forms of music from America’s history never lose their punch or their allure, and how smart kids are still pushing its boundaries and making it their own.

Watch: “Fuego!” from this show -

BUY: Red of Tooth and Claw (Vagrant, 2008)

MURDER BY DEATH TOUR DATES — go!!!!
Mar 20 – Low Key Arts Hot Springs, AR
Mar 21 – Hi-Tone Cafe Memphis, TN
Mar 27 – 7minus7 Alternative Artists Alliance, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Mar 28 – Larry’s Landing St John, US Virgin Islands
Mar 30 – Rhumblines St. John, US Virgin Islands
Apr 2 – The Beach Bar St. John, US Virgin Islands
Apr 15 – Blind Pig Ann Arbor, MI (superparty fantastico celebrational 1000th show!!!)
Apr 16 – Legendary Horseshoe Tavern Toronto, Ontario
Apr 17 – Petit Campus Montreal, Quebec
Apr 18 – Maverick’s Ottawa, Ontario
Apr 19 – Call The Office London, Ontario
Apr 20 – Otto’s Nightclub Dekalb, IL
Apr 21 – Triple Rock Minneapolis, MN
Apr 22 – The Aquarium Fargo, North Dakota
Apr 23 – Royal Albert Hotel Winnipeg, Manitoba
Apr 24 – The Distrikt Regina, Saskatchewan
Apr 25 – Amigo’s Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Apr 26 – The Starlite Room Edmonton, Alberta
Apr 27 – Palamino Smokehouse Calgary, Alberta
Apr 29 – The Bourbon Vancouver, British Columbia
May 1 – Railyard Ale House Billings, Montana
May 2 – American Legion Casper, Wyoming
May 4 – Nutty’s North Sioux Falls, South Dakota
May 6 – Mojo’s Columbia, Missouri
May 7 – Off Broadway Nightclub Saint Louis, Missouri
May 8- Muscatatuck Park Jennings County, Indiana

[see all my photos here]