After reading the fantastic interview with The National over on The Quietus website, where Berninger said he wanted the new record to sound “like loose wool and hot tar,” I’ve been even more excited (if that’s possible) for May 11th when High Violet is released.
But back when frontman Matt Berninger and bassist/guitarist Scott Devendorf were students at the University of Cincinnati, they had a band called Nancy (named after Matt’s mom). Together with bandmates Mike Brewer, Casey Reas, and Jeff Salem, they played in Nancy until graduation, when Matt and Scott moved to New York to pursue graphic design.
I’ve been intently listening all morning to what they sounded like. Of all the tracks, “Export” sounds very much like it could be a National demo to me (especially in those lyrics), and also the moody instrumental “Track 10″ shows nuances of depths to come. The other songs vibrate with that mid-90s loud punk enthusiasm that speaks to their love of Pavement, where the only connection I hear to what some members would evolve into is through devastating lines like: “I still talk about you when no one is asking, I still put shirts while my chest is collapsing.”
If you’re feeling fashionable and adventurous on Saturday night, I’ll be DJing the closing Mix and Assembleparty for the fabulousCreate Denver Week festivities.
Starting at 7pm at the Hi-Dive on South Broadway, I’ll be spinning some tunes with Julio from Cause=Time, Eryc Eyl from Reverb, and the formidable Robert B. Rutherford of the Donnybrook Writing Academy (have you checked out his new super column Backlog?).
Julio and I (or as I like to say, Me & Julio…) will be selecting your ear candy during the earlier set from 7pm-9pm, and there will be mingling, dancing, and silent-auctioning, with these gorgeous concert posters from Ink Lounge Creative (for shows like The Hold Steady, Modest Mouse, The White Stripes, Nada Surf, and Death Cab).
After we finish up, the other two DJs will take over (peacefully) and there will be a fashion show from local designers from 9:30-10:30, then live music from Bad Luck City and Cloud City! It’s FREE until 10pm (or three bucks after), so you have no excuses. Come enjoy!
Monday night I ran smack into some musical magic, that kind that keeps me going and replenishes me.
After a kinetic supernova of a house show at the Team Gigbot HQ House with the guys in These United States, I skittered on over to the Megafaun show at the Larimer Lounge. Since I got sidetracked up on rooftops on the way over there, I only caught the last few songs of Megafaun’s set. These former bandmates of Bon Iver rock the same lumberjack/Deliverance chic, resonating with beautiful songs like this one:
It’s a timeless song, like campfires, or gospel. They performed “Worried Mind” for the final encore, extinguishing out all the lights and joining us off the stage in the audience.
I didn’t get any postable video because it was black as night, with just the twinkling Christmas lights strung around the stage. But what made it remarkable was how everyone in the venue sang along loudly and confidently, growing in volume each time we circled back through: “Come on ease your mind, ohhhhh come on ease your mind…” It did, in fact, ease any worries I might have had ricocheting around in my brain — there always seem to be a few.
My little brother first told me about the marvelous and literate music of Augie March several years ago, and now he’s up and moved to the band’s native land of Australia. While he’s off doing things like abseiling near waterfalls and boating on the Sydney Harbor (someone give this kid a job), Augie March released their fourth album Watch Me Disappear over a year ago, and it slipped right past me.
You can hear one of their new songs below (the new album was recorded at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios in New Zealand, and is certainly recommended for fans of the Finn Brothers) — but reading this news made me decide to re-up an old set of Augie March playing with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. It’s one of my most-requested old posts, and for good reason. “One Crowded Hour” is still one of my favorite, gorgeous sad songs; alongside “Sometime Around Midnight” by Airborne Toxic Event, they both evoke a very young and desperate kind of love to me. With strings it becomes even more brilliantly devastating.
New(er) song: Pennywhistle
I keep getting cascades of shivers at the lyric: “I dreamed you, like you dreamed me, oh the bomb dreamed the fuse and the drowner dreamed the sea…”
Tonight I am happy to share a bit of heartfelt enthusiasm that I received from my friend Katie, who DJs a marvelous Friday afternoon radio show at the college where I work. I have come to regard her as an eerily prescient musical twin, and I found her written narrative of a recent show she saw with Adam H. Stephens (of the San Francisco band Two Gallants) to be worth sharing.
Hers is unvarnished joy in great new music, and well — it sounds like I should take a listen. She says:
People ask me how I can have 15,000 songs in my iTunes and love so many musicians and still be able to pin down my favorite band, favorite album, and favorite song. My favorite song is on this aforementioned album by the very same band. Since the 10th grade (four years ago), I have held the conviction that “Jesus, Etc.” is my single favorite song that I’ve listened to in my life. I find other songs catchier, more lyrically intriguing, more musically intricate. The essence of the song, however, is completely indefinable. It is this sense of quality that Robert Pirsig spends two novels (Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila) hopelessly pursuing. That immeasurable but glaringly obvious sense that what you’re touching, seeing, hearing shows human artistic genius at its finest. In essence, art is a way we remind ourselves that we are human; we make art, therefore we alone are unique, and a song that gives me chills every time I hear it must embody this principle.
But I digress. I’m contemplating this today because yesterday, I saw a live performance that left me speechless. Adam H. Stephens opened for Rocky Votolato, and although I (as expected) enjoyed Rocky just as much as the first four times I saw him, the opener was the progenitor of those feelings of awe. Often, during an opener, I find myself feigning interest in the music in an effort to keep up my façade of being a concert snob while secretly wishing the band I paid for would just get on stage already. I can try to articulate exactly what made the Adam Stephens performance so incredible, but I’ll end up coming back to the same dilemma I have every time I hear Jesus, Etc. Technically, I loved how uncannily he sounded like Conor Oberst when he sang, comfort in the unknown territory of new lyrics and melodies. The bassist picked up the cello for the last song and she played it beautifully… The keyboards, barely discernible over Stephens’ technically impressive guitar playing added that essential layer of complexity and emotion to the songs. The drummer, like any lovable percussionist, bounced in his seat with unrestrained intensity. Yet none of this explains why I know that this music means something.
When I heard these songs, one after another striking me in a wholly new way, I felt, sincerely, just as I did when I listened to music like my first Radiohead or Wilco albums, that this music was why I was proud to be a part of this human race. Why I knew that if only some LPs could stick around, the aliens who inevitably stumble upon the remnants of our civilization might not think we were so worthless after all.
This all may sound ridiculous, but I know what I heard and more importantly, what I felt. I wish I could give you an mp3 and let you judge for yourself. But, in the silence after Adam introduced himself and his band (failing to mention his last name of course), I yelled out, “Adam, how do we get your music?” His coy reply, “Well, we don’t have any, but we do have t-shirts”. As an afterthought, he added, “We just recorded an album, but I guess until then,” while pointing at the stage, “this is how you get our music”.
I returned home, doubting the truth of this statement; who goes on tour without any released recordings? There had to be an EP. Despite all my best efforts, his statements proved true and all I could find were two lo-fi, acoustic demos on his myspace page – absent the complexity of his full band. I’m signed up for the email list, and until he finally releases music, I’m content to watch and re-watch youtube recordings of live songs.
All I can say is that if in three years I’m not saying, “Adam H. Stephens? Oh, I saw him before he even had an album, opening at the Hi-Dive for a $13 Rocky Votolato show,” all while waiting in line to see him play the sold-out Seattle Paramount — then, I have lost all faith in my musical instinct.
There is indeed precious little audio floating around from Adam to share with you, but he just went into Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles this past September and began recording his debut solo record with producer Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, The Shins, White Stripes). Stay tuned.
There’s a raggedy-haggard old country vibe to Deer Tick‘s John McCauley’s rasp, and on this song it could damn near make Tom Waits cry. But lest you think they only have an introspective sad-bastard wave to drown under, you must also see the youthful punk vibrancy that they bring to their live show, in order to understand them.
Deer Tick hails from the corner of the country up in Providence, RI, and this song is the first listen we have from their forthcoming Black Dirt Sessions LP (due June 8 on Partisan Records).
It’s rough and sad, but melodic and beautifully moody. The Black Dirt Sessions (named for the upstate NY studio where it was recorded) seems more introspective and raw than the jangle and clamor of last year’s Born on Flag Day.
They stole my heart when we all sang wholeheartedly with them on a Beatles cover at Monolith last September. Yup. Check them out at Coachella or Lollapalooza, or one of their 32 other upcoming tour dates — for a good time and a soundtrack for your whiskey. A documentary about the band, City of Sin, was also completed last year and should be out in 2010.
A new theatrical adaptation that combines Jeff Buckley‘s music with Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet will premiere this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, August 5-20. Under the direction of Michael Kimmel, with music direction and orchestration by Kris Kukul, The Last Goodbye weaves a dozen of Jeff’s songs into the ill-fated love story we all know so well.
Stage readings of its early incarnation sold out in New York last year. Now that the adaptation is completely fleshed out and ready to hit the stage, I’ll admit an intense curiosity to see his songs yearn and take flight inside this story, live on a stage in the open air once again — but it seems a daunting undertaking. Certainly, you can clearly see the story arc that this fits into – “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” during the pining, “Last Goodbye” in the tragic final moments, even “Everybody Here Wants You” or “Forget Her,” all seem almost tailor-made for a story like Will Shakespeare’s. But…it’s Jeff, and that still holds a sacrosanct place in my musical heart.
I am reassured by fans who saw the readings last year at Joe’s Pub; the Music Slut wrote of a fear that the tunes would be butchered, but “the ninety minute show was stunning from start to finish. In fact, I’m still reeling from it, twelve hours later.” “My mind is blown,” wrote another Jeff fan. So yeah — this could be magical. I’d at least give it a shot, in the August twilight in the Berkshires.
One of my favorite quotes of Jeff’s, and one that makes me curious to see how his songs will tell secrets in this adaptation, is where he says:
“Music comes from a very primal, twisted place. When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you really can’t explain but that mean something anyway. People are completely transformed when they sing; people look like that when they sing or when they make love. But it’s a weird thing–at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I’ve told everybody all my secrets.”
And, oh: Wilco also is curating and headlining the new Solid Sound Festival down the road during the same chunk of August: Friday the 13th – Sunday the 15th, in North Adams, Mass. It’ll be Wilco’s only East Coast summer tour dates, and the Buckley show may soon head off to Broadway, never again to hit such intimate spaces. Summer vacation? My birthday on the 19th? YES, please.
I am on a lonely road and I am traveling . . .
looking for something, what can it be
oh I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some
oh I love you when I forget about me
I want to be strong, I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some jukebox dive…
If Sigur Rós albums make me feel like I am in a dream about floating on an iceberg or walking through a frozen black forest, shoes crunching in the snow underfoot, the new Jónsisolo project is that moment when the sun cracks jubilantly across the horizon on some bright Sunday morning.
I’ve spent the last few days streaming his new solo album Go, letting my mind wander to lands I haven’t seen, and my heart twitterpate over dawn returning.
Go is out Tuesday on XL Records, and was produced by the formidable Peter Katis (The National, Frightened Rabbit). Jónsi is embarking on a massive tour; I feel pretty certain it would be a transcendent evening of explosive multi-hued jubilance.
[photo credit Lilja and Inga Birgisdottir, Jónsi’s sisters, who also shot the Fanfarlo artwork]
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.
If you’re feeling fashionable and adventurous on Saturday night, I’ll be DJing the closing 
I knew the words to sing from last year’s chill-inducing video of 
Name: Heather Browne
