“Left My Heart In San Francisco” mix

Five years ago I moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area for the snowy, crisp mountains of Colorado. I absolutely love my adopted home, our vibrant music scene, and the fresh air here, but no foolin’ I do often long for my hometown hills.

Over the holidays I went to San Francisco for a week to stay at the Noe Valley apartment of friends who were out of town and graciously let me “housesit.” It was a part of town I had never stayed in before. When I first let myself into their empty place on Christmas evening, and walked out to their deck, I took in a sharp breath and smiled.

The first picture below is the desktop image I’ve had on my computer for the last two years, to remind me of my homeland:

…then these two are photos I took on Christmas from the deck where I was staying:

Same hill, same view as the one I’d been looking at daily for the last two years. It’s smile-inducing moments of kismet like that which reassure me no matter how far I roam from Pacific coast, it will keep finding me.

It finds me lately in the music that celebrates the Bay Area; I started this mix to accompany my recent trip, finishing it up after that view happened on into my life. These are songs with references to all the favorite, special parts of California that helped catalyze bits of me – loosely centered around San Francisco, San Jose, and places you can (and I did) drive to in an afternoon with some friends and a picnic basket.

Thirty songs for home.

I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO MIX

San Francisco Bay Blues (Lost Tapes Vol 14) – John Lennon
Starting this mix just like my New York one, with John just screwing around on his guitar and somehow still sounding pretty perfect.

16th And Valencia Roxy Music – Devendra Banhart
Right on the edge of the Mission District, by the hundred-year-old artsy Roxie Theater, Devendra is taking us out to find our lovers tonight. Oh, and they’re gonna be riding six white horses and wearing pressed blue jeans, he suggests. But hey, this is SF. Go with it.

Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle & Sebastian
Not at all about NYC, but the story of a love affair set throughout the city of San Francisco, hanging about the stadium where the Giants and Mets will play, the Tenderloin, borrowed bedrooms virginal and spare. Meet you at the statue in an hour.

California On My Mind – Wild Light
Something a reader recommended for this mix, this is absolutely one of my favorite new songs, even if the core songwriting lyric is a repeated refrain of “fuck today, fuck San Francisco, fuck California” with a “…fuck Oakland” thrown in later for good measure. The rousing harmonica and the charmingly awkward vocals are enough to win me, and I’m sure we’ve done enough jerky things to deserve a little rancor.

San Jose – Joe Purdy
I never knew this song when I lived in San Jose (my address was always a San Jose one except for when I was in college, when it moved over a few zip codes) but it sounds like a warm, Ray LaMontagne-style blues & organ song that I’ve just always known.

Roots Radical – Rancid
“Took the 60 bus out of downtown Campbell, Ben Zanotto he was on there, he was waiting for me.” Campbell’s border is about a mile from the edge of my high school, and Rancid had origins at the neighboring high school. I totally took the 60 bus to Great America amusement park, and I also wonder if Ben Zanotto’s dad was the same guy who started the neat Zanotto’s grocery markets in town, like a prototype Trader Joe’s.

(Wake Me Up) In San Francisco – The Welcome Matt
I fittingly first heard this on a sampler from the epic KFOG radio station, and it always makes me smile, especially if I can listen to it as the song suggests, while driving in over the Bay Bridge, or landing in SFO on a big jet plane. This song namechecks so many great places, as it talks about how going home never gets old.

San Francisco – Brett Dennen
Brett is from the Central California town of Oakdale, between Escalon and Jamestown on 108, a route I have driven often enough to see why he pictures himself buying a navy peacoat and moving to SF. This is such a charming love letter to the city, we’ll allow him to be on this mix even though he is an Oakland A’s fan: “Over in the Mission it’s always a sunny day / there’s a real good baseball town but my team is across the Bay.”

Hail Mary – Pomplamoose
Not only is this husband-wife duo from Corte Madera (north of SF), but this catchy pop tune sings of driving down to San Jose at ninety miles per hour, has clattery, stick-in-your-head percussion, and their band name is modeled after the French word for grapefruit. What’s not to like?

Santa Clara – The National
Santa Clara is where I went to college and then worked for five years, and where my grandma still lives in the same house on Brannan Place that she’s been in for 50 years — so I was pretty excited to find this National b-side. It is gorgeous by any standards, even aside from how it hits the home parts of my heart.

Snow In San Anselmo – Van Morrison
Van gets a bit meandering here on this seven+ minute tune, but it feels appropriate for the kind of cold night he describes in this small town in Marin County, across the Golden Gate from SF. “The classic music station plays soft and low . . . and the pancake house is always open 24 hours a day / my waitress said it was coming down, said it hadn’t happened in over thirty years.” I remember snow maybe once in all my years in the Bay Area, and this song is mighty evocative.

San Geronimo – Red House Painters
Then just along the boulevard from San Anselmo is the town of San Geronimo, where Kozelak sings of “somewhere up fifteen miles sifting through crackling vinyl / lost memories of my youth are coming into view… weekend in San Geronimo, love how the starlit skies show.” Red House Painters were from San Francisco, so they get double point placement on this mix for that. They know the landscape well, and I could have picked any number of their tunes but this one is special.

California, Pt. 2 – Mason Jennings
Possibly my favorite of all Mason Jennings songs, about packing a box of books and a guitar into the back of a pickup and moving to CA — not Los Angeles (“I’m staying far away from there”) but moving “north of San Francisco into the cleaner air / I’m gonna get a little land with the money I’ve saved, buy a little house that I can work on / where the next nearest neighbor lives miles away, I’ll never have to mow the lawn. Right on.” Sounds absolutely perfect to me.

El Caminos In The West – Grandaddy
Jason Lytle is from Modesto, California, and so even though I realize this song may well be about the stylin’ car the El Camino, I prefer to imagine it as singing about the El Camino Real, the King’s Highway that stretches the length of the state and used to bind together all the mission churches in the state’s earliest days.

Palo Alto – Radiohead
With bleeps and bloops fitting the technological mecca this “city of the future” has become (from Hewlett Packard to Facebook) Radiohead sings an ode to Palo Alto with a pervasive feeling of alienation. But I mean, seriously, Radiohead wrote a song about them. They can’t complain.

Oakland on a Rainy Day – Jake Troth
This Bay Area songwriter writes great, humble, satisfying songs and this is no exception. There’s nearly nothing I love more than Oakland (or San Francisco, or San Jose, or Santa Cruz) on a rainy day. When I was in SF over the holidays, it poured on Tuesday night and I just opened the windows and sat in the dark and listened and smelled that rain smell. We don’t get that in Colorado much.

27th Ave Shuffle – Foxboro Hot Tubs
A 2008 side project of seminal Berkeley band Green Day, this song rocks us down 27th Avenue (which bisects Golden Gate Park and runs on up through the Richmond) and I think references jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge which of course is something we do not recommend. But this song, yes.

Rendezvous Potrero Hill – Architecture in Helsinki
Let’s pause for a little autumnal instrumental interlude dedicated to this San Francisco neighborhood, home to both Anchor Steam Brewery and the Mythbusters folks, so you know it has to be good.

Grace Cathedral Hill – The Decemberists
A new year’s day spent in this, one of SF’s most gorgeous cathedrals, lighting little white candles and then heading north to the Hyde Street Pier — “And the world may be long for you, but it’ll never belong to you / but on a motorbike when all the city lights blind your eyes tonight, are you feeling better now?” Yup.

Highway 101 – Social Distortion
One of our most maddening or beautiful highways, depending on which stretch of it you find yourself on, and what time to day. I picked this song over Albert Hammond Jr’s “Back To The 101″ because everyone knows that only Southern Californians add the “the.”

Moon Over Marin – Dead Kennedys
One of San Francisco’s most famous punk bands sing about pollution in the North Bay, decades before the Cosco Busan spill. The band was formed after guitarist East Bay Ray saw a punk/ska show at San Francisco’s legendary Mabuhay Gardens, met Jello Biafra and the rest of the band, and yelled their way into our city’s history.

Got To Have It – Soul President
From the Numero Group’s marvelous Eccentric Soul re-release series, this steel drum-peppered track was originally put out on a tiny San Francisco imprint Uptight Records in the ’60s. There’s all kind of painfully funky shoutouts here to the Haight Ashbury, laced liberally with “unh!”s. Being this cool hurts.

The Chapter of Your Life Entitled San Francisco – The Lucksmiths
This Australian band laments a friend who has moved off to our temperate Bay Area climes, and won’t even write postcards home during the long summer, so taken is she with the charms of the city by the Bay. It happens.

Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far) – The Thrills
One thing I probably miss the most here in the landlocked square I now call home is the inability to pack up the car with a few essentials and drive south over Highway 17 to Santa Cruz, the beachtown that was once so close and so appreciated. The Thrills are from nowhere near California (Dublin, actually) but the first two songs on their 2002 album So Much For The City talk about California coastal towns so convincingly, you’d think they were from here too.

Big Dipper – Cracker
David Lowery’s earlier band Camper Van Beethoven was centered in Santa Cruz, and this melancholy song compares life to entering the long tunnel and the curve leading into the iconic Big Dipper, the wooden rollercoaster at the Beach Boardwalk (from the top you can “see Monterey, or think about San Jose”). I know it well. Lowery also sings of sitting on the Cafe Zinho steps, an ’80s landmark which was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and watching all the world go by.

San Andreas Fault – Natalie Merchant
Speaking of destruction caused by the ’89 quake, this fault is the meeting of the plates that caused it. I was ten and I was begrudgingly cleaning my room so that I could join the rest of my family in watching the World Series Game 3 that was starting, Giants vs A’s in a cross-the-Bay pairing. This video of the baseball coverage that night makes me smile to see old Candlestick full, but remembering how sunny that day was makes my stomach hurt.

San Francisco Blues – Stephen Fretwell
I’ve loved Fretwell since I first heard the devastatingly perfect “Emily,” and even moreso when he put this song on his 2007 album Man On The Roof. Originally from Manchester, England, he joins a long line of Brits who have fallen in love with the city.

California Brown and Blue – Denison Witmer
Everything about this song cuts me, we’ll just leave it at that. “Weightless in the arms of the Golden Gate… I leave before we find out what it means.”

Sausalito - Conor Oberst
Conor pens a rollicking number with deceptively wrenching lyrics set in the gorgeous seaside town of Sausalito, which I remember a specific gorgeous March day spent walking around in after taking the ferry up from SF. “Hair blowing in the hot wind, time hanging from a clothespin…” He thinks we should move to a houseboat and let the ocean rock us back and forth to sleep. Yes.

(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (ripped from vinyl) – Otis Redding
Perhaps one of the most famous songs written in and about our Bay (other than, you know, Journey), Otis penned this one night on a houseboat docked in that same Sausalito, while he was in town to play San Francisco’s famous Fillmore. Everything about that sentence, I love.



ZIP: LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO MIX

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry or smile widely (sometimes at the same time) while making this mix.

[help on this mix from several friends from the Bay Area, including pal/SF resident/musician Matt Nathanson, Ken Shipley of Numero Group and my high school, Rand Foster of Long Beach’s epic Fingerprints Record Store and neighboring rival high school,and fellow SF blogger Adrian who also rocked some of the best suggestions on the Stomp/Clap Mix. Y’all do your city proud.]

goddamn these bitemarks deep in my arteries

When John Darnielle sings of vampires, like when Josh Ritter sings of cursed mummies or Mary Shelley writes of freakish monsters assembled of dead parts, it’s really probably not about any of the above. Lately I am fascinated with the ways we use stories and allegory to articulate the difficult parts of ourselves, and others.

This latest song from The Mountain Goats seems to be about a clash of youth and wildness (“someday we won’t remember this”) with the ways we are left perforated and torn. I can’t stop listening.

Damn These Vampires – The Mountain Goats

All Eternals Deck is out March 29th on Merge, and they are touring in support of it this spring. Theirs is a show that might change your life, in any case. It did mine.

i am flying on a star into a meteor tonight

The next song from R.E.M.‘s forthcoming Collapse Into Now will be played in the UK tomorrow, but leaked into the superfan internet pool this weekend through an accidental (?) posting on the Warner Brothers’ Records site.

The song follows a man wandering in a darkened Berlin (“we walk the streets to feel the ground“) looking at the lights all around, surrounded by people but choking on an alienation that echoes the faceless grey-flannel subway-rider daysleeping vibe I get from their album Up. There is a turbulent ache and distance in this song as he sings “well I don’t mind repeating: i am not complete. I have never been the gifted type.”

Musically this is absolutely a return to the form of the R.E.M. that I deeply love. A friend sent me this with the subject line “welcome back to 1994,” and without trying to resurrect an era, R.E.M. have done something classic yet fresh on this one. There will always be that piercing twang and divine jangle that the boys from Athens can do better than anyone else. I do feel like I am hurtling in the night sky as I sit and listen to this on repeat.

i know, i know, i know what I am chasing
i know, i know, i know that this is changing me

I am flying on a star into a meteor tonight
I am flying on a star, a star, a star
I will make it through the day and then the day becomes the night

I will make it through the night.

STREAM: Uberlin – R.E.M.

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The Murmers message boards are pretty unanimous in echoing my reaction to this song, with one person calling it the best R.E.M. song in ten years, and a succinctly awesome fella just saying: “Dont need any help to cry but these lines have just thrown a serious curveball to an REM cynic like me. Cried. Like a baby. Literally. Fuck you Stipe.”

Collapse Into Now will be R.E.M.’s fifteenth studio album (how is that possible?!), and is out March 8th.

EDIT: “Oh My Heart” is also completely, thoroughly breathtaking. Sweet, sad, and true.

Oh my.




[top image: engraving of the Perseids from the 1800s]

a panoply of song

Some people are happiest when music can inspire them with new songwriting technique or melodies, but me — I often find myself most thoroughly contented when a song drives me to the dictionary. I love to roll around new words; choice vocabulary thrills me like some people love a really good meal.

Therefore it’s pretty clear that Colin Meloy and I were MFEO.

panoply (ˈpænəplɪ) — n , a complete or magnificent array

“June Hymn” is one of the most achingly wistful songs on the fantastic new Decemberists album, The King Is Dead, out today. It blossoms and blooms just like the scene it invokes. Oh –

Here’s a hymn to welcome in the day
heralding a summer’s early sway
and all the bulbs all coming in
to begin

The summer comes to Springville Hill…

This song (and its companion piece, the elegiac “January Hymn”) is a poem, of the best kind. Stream the album version here (only through today, I think), “June Hymn” is third from last and starts around 26:20.

It is so, so much sweeter with Gillian Welch‘s voice in the mix – her vocals (throughout this album) balance perfectly with Colin’s precise and incisive delivery. Theirs is one of those pairings that I never would have pictured, but then I hear it and wonder why it’s not always like this.

I sat up late into last night at my kitchen table playing Colorku with a friend (the most addicting game ever), listening to the new Decemberists album multiple times, singing along to the building ah-oooohs in “Calamity Song” and reveling that strong gust of “Down By The Water.” From the first song, the first time I heard this album a few weeks ago, I knew it would be my first favorite album of 2011. Repeated listens have only confirmed that this is a completely terrific album.

The King Is Dead is a big, bursting album that drives along propelled by Peter Buck (R.E.M.) on jangly guitar and the flawless combination of Colin Meloy and Gillian Welch’s voices twining together throughout. But there are also moments like this (and the closing track, “Oh Avery” – man alive) of quiet, introspective beauty. It blends a rootsy sensibility with the Decemberists’ smart and lovely songwriting, so you have the wheezing of harmonica, a little banjo and the pierce of the fiddle but also the acoustic fingerpicking on guitar and thoughtful melodies.

The deluxe version of the album comes with a book of photographs taken by the wonderful Autumn de Wilde, a photographer I admire so much that she’s one of just three that has their own tag on my blog. Look at her lovely Polaroids here; get one original tucked in the deluxe version, if you go that route.

Colin explains:

“One night on Pendarvis Farm, whilst merrily roasting tofu dogs over an open campfire, we Decemberists, along with our esteemed Management Representatives and a certain Missus Autumn de Wilde, photographer superieur, hatched a plan wherein Mizz de Wilde would document the making of The King is Dead on Polaroid film, a full 2500 photos to be exact, and we would then include one of those unique photographs individually in each of the DELUXE BOX EDITION of the record.

Naturally, this is the sort of cockamamy scheme that lodges itself in the minds of perfectly sane adults while under the influence of a bucolic, Arcadian Oregon summer; the expense was deemed too great. This is where The Impossible Project came in; they are a group devoted to the survival of Polaroid films of all sorts and collect or manufacture this ever-rarified breed of film in order to sell or donate it to photographers worldwide. They liked our idea; they donated us the film. And so here we are, this dream fulfilled. Ms. de Wilde followed us Decemberists around all summer, snapping Polaroids; we posed obligingly. And one of those photos could be yours.”

And if you are lucky enough to live in Portland from whence The Decemberists hail, you should go see them tonight at 7pm at Music Millenium, where they’ll be signing copies of their new album. Get one for me and I’ll totally pay you back.

I think you’ll love this album as much as I do, and I am head over heels. Go get it.

DECEMBERISTS TOUR DATES
* with Wye Oak
# with Mountain Man
January 24, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY*
January 25, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY* SOLD OUT
January 26, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY* SOLD OUT
January 28, House of Blues, Boston, MA*
January 29, House of Blues, Boston, MA* SOLD OUT
January 31, Olympia De Montreal, Montreal, Canada*
February 1, Sound Academy, Toronto, Canada*
February 2, Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI*
Feburary 4, Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL* SOLD OUT
February 5, Riverside Theatre, Milwaukee, WI#
February 6, State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN#
February 7, Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, MO#
February 9, Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO#
February 10, Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO#
February 12, The Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA# SOLD OUT
February 13, House of Blues-San Diego, San Diego, CA#
February 14, Fox Theater, Oakland, CA# SOLD OUT
February 18, Paramount Ballroom, Seattle, WA#
February 19, Arlene Schnitzer Hall, Portland, OR# SOLD OUT
March 4, Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland
March 5, Barrowlands, Glasgow, UK
March 7, Birmingham Institute, Birmingham, UK
March 8, Bristol Academy, Bristol, UK
March 10, Manchester Academy, Manchester, UK
March 11, Leeds Academy, Leeds, UK
March 12, De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK
March 13, Trix, Antwerp, Belgium
March 14, Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
March 16, Hammersmith Apollo, London, UK

I also thought immediately when I heard this album, “Man, this would sound great at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.” Here’s to hoping.

Jeff Tweedy at the Boulder Theater last weekend

Last weekend Jeff Tweedy played the 75th anniversary party of our lovely old art-deco Boulder Theater. I was sadly not in attendance, but now I can listen to the gem-packed setlist thanks to an awesome taper, and so can you.

The varied setlist is packed with all kinds of fantastic audience participation (the “oooh, ahhhhh“s of Summer Teeth, likewise on Heavy Metal Drummer) and Jeff’s fantastic banter. I think Tweedy is one of the funniest stage banterers in existence; I would enjoy a spliced-together recording of just him talking to the audience.

In addition to the Woody Guthrie cover (Mermaid Avenue, anyone?), his version of “Fake Plastic Trees” still kills me, the way his voice cracks on the lyrics “if I could be who you wanted…” Also, the simple opening chord progression of “She’s A Jar” always completely makes me smile, even in this stripped version — just a guitar and that homesick-sweet harmonica.

I commented once on how Wilco fans are really unlike any other fans I think I’ve ever known. I get almost as much pleasure on this recording through listening to the crowd recognize the songs literally from the first half second and starting to cheer their appreciation as I do from the songs themselves. This sure is a feel-good show for a feel-good weekend like this one.

JEFF TWEEDY LIVE AT THE BOULDER THEATER
JANUARY 8, 2011

Sunken Treasure
Remember the Mountain Bed (Woody Guthrie)
Wait Up
How To Fight Loneliness
I’ll Fight
Someday, Some Morning, Sometime (Woody Guthrie)
Not for the Season
You and I
She’s A Jar
Either Way
Summer Teeth
I Must Be High
Theologians
Radio King
Forget The Flowers
ELT
Passenger Side

ENCORE
Red Eyed and Blue
I Got You (At The End of the Century)
Heavy Metal Drummer
Fake Plastic Trees (Radiohead)
Dreamer in my Dreams

ZIP: JEFF TWEEDY AT BOULDER THEATER

all those little teardrops dissolve

New Sub Pop signees Mister Heavenly came billed as “doom-wop” (doo-wop and doomed love songs – yes!), and our first listen today reminds me of early, funky Beck mixed through the radio signals with some sort of staticky oldies station. Bop shoo wop.

It’s an ace collaboration between Nick Diamonds (of Islands), Honus Honus (of Man Man, who likes repetition) and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer, which started as a one-off thing to record a 7″ and evolved into a forthcoming full-length album. Plus they sometimes play live with Michael Cera, which just makes me feel all smiley.

Mister Heavenly – Mister Heavenly
(download this and one more free song “Pineapple Girl” here)

They’re playing tonight in Chicago, that marvelous city, and Sunday at the Bowery. Yeah – bring on the weekend with this tune!

make it go and make it right (fire’s coming down now)

From the opening clatters and violin tension, I feel uneasy throughout this song — like everything is just about to spin off into chaos, and I love it. It feels like that overly bright, shaky feeling you would have after your second all-nighter in as many nights, stopping in at a convenience store where everything is dusty colored plastic and too close together on the shelves. This song would be playing there. The beat here is syncopated and the feeling of “slightly off” permeates. Matt Berninger’s voice is the anchor to the jumble, more sonorous and powerful than the original version of the song.

Fire To The Ground (feat. Matt Berninger) – The Forms

It’s like the empty, shiny feeling I get in the U2 song from Zooropa “Stay (Faraway, So Close),” where Bono sings about stopping in at 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes, when you don’t smoke and don’t even want to, dressed up like a car crash. This song feels like that except richer and more jittery, more out-of-sorts by a factor of ten. This isn’t even 2am fun where the night still feels young, this is 4:45am where the sunrise is coming and you just might have to work in the morning.

The Forms are a duo from Brooklyn, and have been around since 2003, with two full-length albums out. Their new Derealization EP is coming out February 15th on the Ernest Jenning Record Co label, and reworks ideas/melodies/lyrics from their past albums with different arrangements and tempos (like dropping the needle set to 45 instead of 33), and different musicians contributing. The EP features not only Berninger of The National, but also members of Shudder to Think, Dirty Projectors, Pattern is Movement and St. Vincent. Fascinating. I am drawn in by this idea of going back and mining deep within the past products of your creativity to reinvent for where you find yourself now.

Here’s the original version of the same song, pre-reworking:

Redgun – The Forms

Tour dates are here; they are going to be at SXSW and I do think I will have to seek them out amidst the Lone Stars.

[thanks Weekly Feed!]

The Head and The Heart sign with Sub Pop Records

After the ink dried way back in November, Sub Pop finally announced one of the worst kept secrets in Seattle for the past few months: they have signed The Head and The Heart, and will be digitally re-releasing their self-titled debut album on the Sub Pop label today!

If you haven’t been following my Amway-salesman-like enthusiasm for this band since summer, then you can read about why I think they are great over on the band bio I penned for Sub Pop.

The new 2011 version of the album includes a studio recording of “Rivers and Roads” (which gutted me most excellently in August, in that parking garage show) and a re-recorded version of “Sounds Like Hallelujah.” The whole album has been remastered, and will also be released on vinyl in April for Record Store Day. Sweet!

To celebrate today, the band has released a moody, acoustic, brand-new song, “No One To Let You Down” (which we saw them perform on beach cliffs at the Doe Bay Festival last summer) for free download on their website, along with “Down In The Valley,” one of the standout tracks on their album.

STREAM: No One To Let You Down – The Head and The Heart

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Free download here

And hey, while we’re at it: let’s all reminisce about why Sub Pop Records is so damn cool in the first place, shall we?

Congrats, kids.

MORE SHOWS THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT IN 2011
* – w/Dr. Dog
** – w/The Walkmen
Jan 13 – Bellingham, WA – Green Frog Acoustic Tavern
Jan 14 – Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
Jan 15 – Spokane, WA – Empyrean Coffee House
Jan 19 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
Jan 23 – Birmingham, UK – Glee Club **
Jan 24 – London, UK – The Lexington
Jan 25 – London, UK – Shepherd’s Bush Empire **
Jan 26 – Berlin, Germany – Privatclub
Jan 28 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 29 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 31 – Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre *
Feb 1 – Memphis, TN – Minglewood Hall *
Feb 3 – Charleston, SC – Music Farm *
Feb 4 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade *
Feb 5 – Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom *
Feb 7 – Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Theatre *
Feb 8 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel *
Feb 9 – Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater *
Feb 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory *
Feb 14 – Woodstock, NY – Bearsville Theater *
Feb 15 – South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground *
Feb 17 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre *
Feb 18 – New York, NY – Terminal 5 *
Feb 19 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club *
Mar 2 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks **
Mar 3 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s **
Mar 4 – Austin, TX – Stubbs’ Bar-B-Q **
Mar 5 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater **
Mar 7 – Lawrence, KS – Jackpot Saloon
Mar 11 – Englewood, CO – Moe’s
Mar 13 – Albuquerque, NM – Low Spirits

let’s go down in the water and wash off this dirty week

I know it is icy, brutal, make-you-weep freezing in so many of the places where people are reading from, so this feels like a bit of collectivist escapism between us.

But: I heard this song for the first time tonight and I want so badly for it to be July and to be driving down Highway 17 in California with this on repeat, and the windows down. And can someone also please bring a guitar so we can try to work out the chords around the campfire? This is pure, undistilled summer joy and just made my night.

Let’s Go Down – Family Of The Year

Family Of The Year is from Los Angeles (so they do summery things all the time), by way of Wales (so they appreciate all the summery things). Their album Songbook is available for whatever price you want to pay them for it. I wonder if they would take payment in s’mores.

Fuel/Friends favorites of 2010

And so, another year marches to a close — another fantastic, adventure-filled, technicolor year. It’s the time when all of us start kicking around our neatly-bulleted lists of bests and worsts. For me, the more I read these lists, the more I feel that I missed more albums and artists than I heard this year.

The stats are staggering: in 2002, about 33,000 albums were released. In 2006 that number was 75,000. Last year close to 100,000 albums were released, with only roughly 800 of those albums selling more than 5K. It’s tough out there — to be heard, and to feel as a listener that you have adequately given a shot to even a fraction of a representative sample of one year’s offerings. I always feel this keening bittersweet regret at the end of each year, as so much more music was released than any one human woman can possibly digest or invest in.

That being said, I had a fairly simple time picking what my personal favorite albums were for 2010, of the ones I heard. I absolutely loved what Carrie Brownstein wrote on her NPR blog about these year-end lists.

She muses: “So I’ll admit that I’m not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast. I’ve written a lot about music bringing people together, fomenting community, and many albums still did act as bonfires in 2010 . . . but many of us are also walking around with a little lighter in hand, singing along to some small glow that’s stuck around long enough to make us feel excited to be alive.”

That is exactly, precisely what I feel. And really, what is any top ten list but an assessment of those songs, those artists, those albums that have hit us square in the solar plexus exactly where we are sitting?

These are the albums that lodged deep and sharp into my red heart and made this year richer, smarter, harder and easier, sharper, sparklier, and all the more brilliant. And some of them seriously made me dance.

FUEL/FRIENDS FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2010

THE BLACK KEYS – BROTHERS
(Nonesuch Records)

This is just one of the coolest albums released all year — maybe all decade. And I mean the kind of cool that is quintessential, untouchable, badass, just strutting down a sunny street with-your-own-theme-song type of cool. It blends their trademark swampy, bluesy, fuzzed-out guitars with crisp sharp beats that sliced right through that weight the first time I put this album in, on my roadtrip to Missouri. I think I listened to it on repeat through at least two (long, loooong) states and it was love at first listen from that point on.

Additionally – if there is a sicker breakdown all year than what happens here at 1:02, I don’t wanna know about it.

The Go Getter – The Black Keys

…Right?!

DAN MANGAN – NICE, NICE, VERY NICE
(Arts & Crafts)

This album from the Canadian side of the verdant Pacific Northwest was an unexpected discovery this year, recommended to me by a friend who helps arrange the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (another favorite thing of this year, but hey we’ll get to that). Dan Mangan has made a dense, thoroughly gorgeous album, heavy on the intelligent lyrics, his oaky-warm voice weaving in amongst a whole orchestra of instruments. This album is beautifully arranged and well-crafted, one you can swim deeply in during rainy days all winter long (although I discovered it in August and it sounded just as good in the sticky warmth).

Basket – Dan Mangan

DREW GROW AND THE PASTORS’ WIVES – SELF-TITLED
(Amigo/Amiga Records)

Drew Grow and his band The Pastors’ Wives hail from Portland, making music that easily straddles and jumps across genres to create something marvelously rich and endlessly interesting. The sound production throughout feels like an old, warm, crackly album (tip: get it on white vinyl while you can) with something urgent to say. From those fuzzy, sexy, pleadingly plaintive blues jams like “Company” to the aggressive push-and-tug of the rowdy “Bootstraps” and the dulcet golden ’50s croon of songs like “Hook,” this album has pleased me completely. Every song is a favorite.

The opening “Bon Voyage Hymn” sets the tone for this album (if it has one) of a sort of rough-hewn, honest, rock gospel as Drew howls, “Sing a shelter over me / With a mighty chorus, slaves set free.” And by that I mean the oldest spirit of gospel, in community and a shared love of singing, with our heads thrown back and our feet stomping — but while the guitar squalls and the dirty drums crash. At the house show they played for me in November, it was like the best kind of church, a jaw-dropping explosion of goodness.

Company – Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives

N.B.: Drew also has a stunning new acoustic EP.

THE HEAD AND THE HEART – SELF-TITLED
(self-released)

From the first evening back in early summer when I streamed this Seattle six-piece’s songs on my tinny computer speakers, I was reeled in hook line and sinker. The song sang about something that sounds like a hallelujah, the sheer delight of embracing with all of your heart and both your dancing shoes, and no band this year has given me more of that musical enjoyment – whether in a parking garage very late at night, or in the living room of an old house. Amidst the warmth, the uncanny wisdom, and undeniably catchy musical & rhythmic foundations of this band, there is magic. We will be hearing a good deal more from them in 2011, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

Sounds Like Hallelujah – The Head and The Heart

JONSI – GO
(XL Recording)

This is, simply put, a kinetic album. Jónsi blends his native Icelandic language with forays into English, creating the dizzying effect of running fast through a dream forest, not exactly understanding what is being said and not needing to. He’s made an intricate, joyful album of grandeur that is uplifting and challenging without being overly twee or silly. It is a delicate balance to strike. The paint-spatter of colors on the album cover precisely depict what this explosive album sounds like – purple, yellow, deep red, shot through with sunlight.

This album was completely unlike anything else that I heard this year, and made me simultaneously smile widely and furrow my brow. It’s the most imaginative album I’ve heard all year, perfect at evoking things like riding the back of a jet-black dragon over canyons. Yes, and yes. Please.

Go Do – Jónsi

Addendum: I also just laughed very loudly for a good minute and a half after I just connected the mental dots to the possible inspiration for this album, or at least this song.

JOSH RITTER – SO RUNS THE WORLD AWAY
(Pytheas Records)

I’ve said before that I think Josh Ritter is one of the most important and talented songwriters of our generation; this album is a stellar example of why. Through these thirteen sprawling songs, Josh demonstrates to me again exactly why I love the way that he sees the world. When I interviewed him this summer, he said he admires those who “see what everybody else has seen, think what nobody else has thought.”

Josh pens incisive, piercing, widely-varying folk songs with the comfortable intelligence of one who is in no hurry, yet is passionate in pursuing his muse and getting his stories out into the world. Highlights here like “The Curse,” “Folk Bloodbath,” “Another New World,” and “Lantern” are jaw-dropping. Josh has a remarkable way of teasing out truths about the world (seen and unseen), and poking into the human conditions in my own heart with a greater acuity than most out there.

Lantern – Josh Ritter

That song also contains one of my favorite lyrics of this entire year: “So throw away those lamentations, we both know them all too well / If there’s a book of jubilations, we’ll have to write it for ourselves / So come and lie beside me darlin’ — let’s write it while we still got time.”

LISSIE – CATCHING A TIGER
(Fat Possum)

From the first time I heard Lissie’s soulful, immensely evocative voice earlier this year on her song “Everywhere I Go,” I was riveted. Who was this slight, freckled blond gal with the echoes of an entire fifty-member church choir in her lungs? Originally from Rock Island, Illinois, Lissie has harnessed both the brilliance of the sunshine of her new California home on her debut album, as well as all the gnarls of her roots. Bluesy, confident melodies and goosebump-inducing howls are here in scads — this is a notably substantial first album from a woman to be reckoned with.

Record Collector – Lissie

MATT POND PA – THE DARK LEAVES
(Attitude Records)

“We could start tonight, slide back the deadbolts…” Matt Pond suggests at the beginning of this autumnal album with rich hues that gave me endless listening pleasure this year. I was glad I took him up on the invite. I’d admired the work of the Brooklyn songwriter in spurts and starts over the past few years, but this is the first album of his that I have really immersed myself into his uniquely lovely, thrumming view of the world.

There is a sort of expansive, wide-eyed glow in this album that seems to invite transcendent things to happen. From the specks of silver he sings about in the evening sky and the illumination all around us, I love the way things look like an adventure when I am listening. “First hips, then knees, then feet – don’t think anymore,” he sings. Good idea, Matt.

Starting – Matt Pond PA

THE NATIONAL – HIGH VIOLET
(4AD Records)

This is a decimating, gorgeous, elegant album, much like Boxer was but with additional hints of weirdness and unsettled edges that I like. I was ridiculously excited about this album (in a sort of masochistic way, since I know full well what The National are capable of), devouring every word I could read about it before it came out. The single best definition I heard came from Matt Berninger himself when he said they wanted it to sound “like loose wool and hot tar.” In that regard, they completely succeed – their music is dark, burning, sticking to your skin and all your insides.

This is an incredible album full of terse, razor-sharp observations on the worries that wait in the shadows for me and gnaw when they get a chance: I think the kids are in trouble… you’ll never believe the shitty thoughts I think… I was less than amazing… I tell you terrible things when you’re asleep. But I won’t lie when I say I found some of the strongest redemption of my year in this music as well, with the closing track “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” — singing along with lines “all the very best of us string ourselves up for love / man it’s all been forgiven, swans are a-swimmin…” The honesty of the darkness shot through with these glints is what keeps drawing me back to these guys, fiercely.

Conversation 16 – The National

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH – THE WILD HUNT
(Dead Oceans)

Kristian Mattson slays me – there are no two ways about it. When he sings on this album, “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” it is almost comical because nothing really seems further from the truth. Mattson’s songs have the kind of heft and intricacy that make me certain his music will be around for a very long time after him. His guitarwork is sparkling, impassioned, and inspired. The words he selects and the way he delivers them are pointed and deliberate. I can’t tell if his lyrics are so sharp in spite of the fact that English is not his first language, or because of it – as if perhaps he can see more clearly through our muddy sea of language to pick out the iridescent rocks from the river.

Also: it’s worth noting that his EP released this year was equally good – serious brilliant work.

King of Spain – The Tallest Man On Earth

BEST ALBUM NOT FROM THIS YEAR THAT I JUST FINALLY DISCOVERED THIS YEAR:

CATALDO – SIGNAL FLARE
(self-released, 2008)

I cannot stop listening to Eric Anderson, as evidenced by the fact that I have put him on just about every mix I made in 2010, and listen to this album most days lately on my walk to work. After a chance encounter with his music on a college radio show of a friend, I’ve been smitten by his earnest, unvarnished, incredibly catchy way of looking at the world that simultaneously makes me smile and breaks my heart. You know me. I like that.

He’s got a new album “Prison Boxing” coming out in 2011, according to Facebook. I plan to be substantially more on top of that one.

Signal Flare – Cataldo

NINE SUPERB SONGS I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH OF IN 2010:
Burning Stars – Mimicking Birds [link]
Tell ‘Em – Sleigh Bells [link]
Safe and Sound – Electric President [link]
Six O’Clock News (Kathleen Edwards cover) – Paul Jacobsen [link]
If A Song Could Get Me You – Marit Larsen [link]
Second Mind (live at the SF Independent) – Adam H. Stephens [link]
Fuck You – Cee Lo Green [link]
Carry Us Over – Kelli Schaefer [link]
Baby Lee – Teenage Fanclub [link]

FAVORITE INTERVIEWS:
Bringing Jeff Buckley’s music to a new life through Shakespeare [link]
-and-
Talking to my Italian musical hero on the Santa Monica Pier [link]

FAVORITE SHOWS OF THE YEAR:
My forays into presenting house shows:
Drew Grow and The Pastors’ Wives with Kelli Schaefer (Nov 4, 2010)
The Head and The Heart (Nov 9, 2010)

Andy Clockwise at SXSW (March 2010)

Joe Pug house show (February 28, 2010)

Tallest Man On Earth (May 19, 2010)

Megafaun and their in-the-crowd rendition of “Worried Mind” (April 12, 2010)

FAVORITE FESTIVAL:
Telluride Bluegrass Festival, holy mackerel.

AND: FAVORITE NIGHT THAT ONLY TOOK 56 YEARS TO ARRIVE
This one.

*****

I started 2010 with a Polar Bear Plunge and a vow that this year was gonna be ours, a year of intentionally acquiring adventures and memories that would make me smile when I was old and withered.

I think we did it, and these were the things that soundtracked it all.

[“Sound Wave” sculpture at top by Jean Shin]