This song was love at first listen, sauntering out of my speakers with a cocky dip-shake-dip move of the hips and that unbridled scream of exuberance. Fyfe Dangerfield is the lead singer of The Guillemots, and this is off his forthcoming solo album Fly Yellow Moon, due January 2010. It’s all kinds of soulful, riotous fun — an instant yell-out-loud favorite.
Also: when you have a name like Fyfe Dangerfield, you sure as heck better have a moustache. When You Walk In The Room – Fyfe Dangerfield
The independent music documentary “D Tour” (Dialysis Tour) is about Rogue Wave drummer Pat Spurgeon’s struggle with a failing kidney, a search for a donor, while still trying to still pursue the music that is vital to his contentment. I watched it one warm evening this summer and found it both inspiring and challenging — punctuated throughout with terrific musical moments.
In addition to being a compelling look at the organ donation system in the US today, the pitfalls that can snare underinsured musicians, and some of the difficulties and nastiness of life, the film prominently features a lot of excellent music footage from that benefit show at SF’s Independent back in 2006 that I so wanted to go to. it speaks compellingly to the healing power of music. At that delicious show, Rogue Wave was joined on stage by friends like Ben Gibbard of Death Cab, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, and John Vanderslice.
Here’s the lilting song that plays over the credits, a brand new one from Rogue Wave. To download an mp3 version, please go over to their site and sign up!
Positive Hero Worship – Rogue Wave
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Despite listening to this album almost nonstop for the last few months, you and I haven’t yet delved into the full-scale conversation that their debut album Reservoirso clearly deserves. One of my favorite releases of 2009, this British/Swedish 6-piece has crafted a joyously shimmering album that arches and soars, and thumps compellingly through the speakers.
Reservoir was recorded late last year at Peter Katis’ Tarquin Studios (whose producer’s hand has also lent texture to some of my favorite albums lately, by bands like The National and Frightened Rabbit – “using all the colors“). Combining their youth and enthusiasm with Katis’ seasoned treatment gives us a gorgeous result.
Fanfarlo’s songs use a hugely expressive palette of instruments, heavy on the shiny trumpets, the dazzling saws and accordion, perforated at all the right places with pounding bass drums and quirky time-shifts in the beat. One of my favorite songs on the album is the flawlessly crafted “Comets” that waveringly coalesces at the beginning and end, like the deepening twilight and the stars appearing, wrung tightly with an almost tangible melancholy. “Harold T. Wilkins” is absolutely the best driving and yelling song all year, maybe all decade (“they’re trying to say – SAY!! they’re trying to say — SAY!!”). It feels good all the way down to your toes. The whole album dazzles the ears, and sounds just as delicious on a quiet Saturday morning as it does on a Friday night.
There is a large dose of Arcade Fire’s jubilance, but with a greater effervescence (like a sheer wash of fluorescent color dripping down) and it is uncanny how the swoops and lilts of Simon Balthazar’s voice evoke a young David Byrne. It doesn’t get much better than this. Ghosts – Fanfarlo Harold T Wilkins – Fanfarlo
And just in case their well-placed affinity for the song structures of Neutral Milk Hotel isn’t apparent enough, check their recent terrific cover of “In An Aeroplane Over the Sea.”
WIN TICKETS! I have a grip of tickets to give away to Fanfarlo’s Denver show, this Friday the 13th at Moe’s, to celebrate the launch of their national tour. It’s one of the most hotly-anticipated shows of my year. Please email me if you would like to win a pair, and I will let you know by Wednesday night if you can get your dancing shoes on, or bowling shoes, as it may be. There are lanes next door and if you’re brave enough, we’ll play (when we’re done singing along).
FANFARLO FALL TOUR DATES
Nov 9 – Schubas Tavern – Chicago, IL
Nov 11 – Triple Rock Social Club – Minneapolis, MN
Nov 13 – Moe’s BBQ – Englewood (Denver), CO
Nov 14 – The State Room – Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 16 – Knitting Factory – Boise, ID
Nov 17 – Crocodile Cafe – Seattle, WA
Nov 18 – The Media Club – British Columbia
Nov 19 – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR
Nov 20 – Great Basin Brewing Co. – Sparks, NV
Nov 22 – Rickshaw Stop – San Francisco, CA
Nov 23 – The Echo – Los Angeles, CA
Nov 24 – The Casbah – San Diego, CA
Nov 27 – Muddy Waters – Santa Barbara, CA
Nov 29 – Club Congress – Tucson, AZ
Nov 30 – Sante Fe Brewing Co – Santa Fe, NM
Dec 2 – The Independent – Austin, TX
Dec 3 – The Loft – Dallas, TX
Dec 4 – Walter’s On Washington – Houston, TX
Dec 6 – The Bottletree – Birmingham, AL
Dec 9 – Metro Gallery – Baltimore, MD
Dec 10 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
Dec 11 – IOTA – Arlington, VA
Dec 12 – Brillobox – Pittsburgh, PA
Dec 14 – Majestic Cafe – Detroit, MI
Dec 15 – El Mocambo – Toronto
Dec 16 – Il Motore – Montreal
Dec 17 – T.T. The Bear’s – Cambridge, MA
Dec 18 – Webster Hall – New York, NY
Some feel-good Friday music, anyone? Speaking recently of cool things at Fingerprints reminded me of the time this summer when this clip made me smile — “El Scorcho” recorded live in Long Beach, CA on 11/25/08, a crowd singalong of an exceedingly fabulous variety:
From a post on his website, Rivers invited super fans from across the country to dress sharp and join him in a makeshift band where they would get to pick the set list. That set list ended up being a mix of Weezer classics as well as obscure fan favorites. The 150 lucky friends had never met or practiced together, but without fear came to rock out their favorite songs with their favorite guy.
Some songs are just truly meant to be sung with 150 people you don’t know, and a collection of BYOI (bring your own instruments).
Bottle rockets and smoke bombs lying dead on the sidewalk
black marks on the concrete now but they were beautiful last night
the picture of our life
can we make this what it was?
everything is right, everything’s wrong
sparklers only burn for so long
…watch the light dance in the dark ’til it’s gone
sparklers only burn for so long…
Seattle’s Rocky Votolato specializes in the kind of hushed, pensive songs that sound especially extra-good in the gray chill of November, so it’s fitting that Barsuk Records (Death Cab, Nada Surf) just announced his forthcoming third album True Devotion (Feb 23) with a live version of this melancholy song.
This version of “Sparklers” was recorded at a house concert this summer in East Palo Alto, up the peninsula from where I grew up, onetime Murder Capital of the US, now with an IKEA. I think the domestic ambiance of the house concert idea is especially well-suited to a gorgeous little song like this one.
This song reminds me quite a bit of something that Ryan Adams could have written, and thematically the bits about sparklers and explosions feel like the remnants of what started in the that fabulous Fourth of July song from Jason Anderson. The domestic intimacy continues with a series of living room shows in the East these next few weeks:
ROCKY VOTOLATO LIVING ROOM TOUR
(buy tickets here – and agony, he just came through my town and was looking for a house. Fail!) Nov 6 – New York, New York
Nov 8 – Boston, Massachusetts
Nov 9 – Boston, Massachusetts
Nov 10 – Providence, Rhode Island
Nov 11 – Burlington, Connecticut
Nov 13 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nov 14 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nov 15 – Washington DC
After I peeled off the rainbows and scrubbed the last traces of red lipstick off the morning after Halloween, I set out to find the Borders bookstore in the farthest reaches of Denver suburbia I’ve yet had the disoriented pleasure of venturing to. Irish songbird Lisa Hannigan was performing a free in-store at one o’clock on Sunday and I was thrilled to get to see her in such an intimate setting.
Lisa’s voice is absolutely, quietly, and thoroughly devastating. I first heard her, as most of us did, singing the haunting counter-melodies and duets with Damien Rice on his stunning breakout album O in 2003. In addition to her captivating parts on songs like “The Blower’s Daughter,” did you ever hear the final hidden a cappella track at the very end of that album? Like whoa:
Since she parted ways with Damien, I’ve been following her work with the Cake Sale charity benefit and a handful of unreleased works that would occasionally surface between her and Rice. But Sea Sew (out now on ATO) is an album I’ve been waiting for, and although it’s been out for months now, Sunday was the first time I had really let the whole thing come to life and dance and grieve for me in a cohesive way. I now am sure it’s one of my favorites of the year.
There’s an unvarnished air of clean-scrubbed honesty and serious inquiry on this album. In addition to set highlights like the charming imagination of “I Don’t Know,” and a new song called “Passenger” that traces her travels around the USA with someone on her mind, Lisa closed the set with the final song on her album, “Lille,” just as I was fervently hoping she would.
I first heard and wrote about this song a year ago when things seemed much rockier and sharper in my life. The line “went to war every morning,” got me then and still gets me now. If you’ve read this blog with any regularity, you know that sometimes my eyes tend to water (!) with the right gut-punch of a song, and I found myself sitting next to the Christmas ornament display in a brightly lit Borders, blinking back tears at the way she delivers this song live. It’s absolutely perfect.
But this time, amazingly, instead of feeling the most affinity to the lines about going to war, in this year I felt it most when she sang, “what you said in my arms … what i read in the charms that i loved durably, now it’s dead and gone, and i am free…”
You must must must please purchase her new album Sea Sew. Nominated for the prestigious UK Mercury Prize this year, and already platinum in Ireland, the album is laced with clever word pictures, coyly delightful musings on love and life, a kaleidoscope of instruments (“Is there anything she doesn’t play?!” my sister asked me, as Lisa picked up a keyboard with a windpipe to blow into) but most of all — that gorgeous, gorgeous voice.
I’m in love, even more than I was before. Not a bad outcome for a Halloween weekend.
Ocean And A Rock
…i feel you in the pocket of my overcoat
my fingers wrap around your words
they take the shape of games we play
i feed your words through my buttonholes
pin them to my fingerless gloves
green and prone to fraying
thoughts of you warm my bones
I’m on the way, I’m on the phone
let’s get lost, me and you
an ocean and a rock is nothing to me
i keep you in the pockets of my dresses and
the bristles of my brushes spin you
into my curls today
I spoon you into my coffee cup
spin you through a delicate wash
I wear you all day…
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.
In addition to being a compelling look at the organ donation system in the US today, the pitfalls that can snare underinsured musicians, and some of the difficulties and nastiness of life, the film prominently features a lot of excellent music footage from 
Reservoir was recorded late last year at Peter Katis’ 
WIN TICKETS! I have a grip of tickets to give away to Fanfarlo’s Denver show, this Friday the 13th at Moe’s, to celebrate the launch of their national tour. It’s one of the most hotly-anticipated shows of my year. Please 
You must must must please purchase her new album 
Name: Heather Browne
