KEXP gets hip to Jovanotti

I wondered on this blog in 2010 if America was ready for the Italian world-music superstar Jovanotti, whose songs I love and believe in, as he readied a musical invasion on these shores across the Atlantic (after two decades of collaborating in Europe with everyone from his pal Bono to Ben Harper, Sergio Mendes, Michael Franti, and The Beastie Boys).

Later that summer, I shared my massively radiant delight at getting to interview him on a pier in Santa Monica about music, creativity, social justice, and the importance of rhythm. I’ve argued vociferously that his music can enrich and expand your aural life, even if you don’t parlo a lick of italiano. The way his voice flows over the consonants and vowels is hypnotic — at times blissful like a sedative, at times ennervating like a tumble in a rock polisher where everything gets smooth and brilliant.

Now Jovanotti has gone and visited Seattle’s KEXP (!) to record his first ever U.S. radio performance – a completely delightful session that I hope will convert legions of you guys to his music. After a jaunt down the West Coast this month (including a stop at Amoeba Music), he is on tour across the U.S. for the first time in October, playing all sorts of wonderful venues that you know and love. I guarantee you (as in, I will reimburse you the cost of your concert ticket) that if you take a chance with him, it will be one of the most mind-bendingly exuberant concerts you have ever seen. The KEXP session feels more like the sedative we talked about (a happy sedative), while his full show is a spettacolo of rhythm and color.

Jovanotti just released his first album of music specifically for an American audience, the Italia 1988-2012 collection, on the venerable ATO Records imprint (My Morning Jacket, Alabama Shakes, Hey Rosetta!, Allen Stone, and Two Gallants, among others). The tracks are hand-picked for us and our American tastes –whatever that means– from Jovanotti’s long and varied career, and forego some of his massive European hits (that are as fun as hell to sing along to, or to watch Italians sing along to) in favor of a whole different feel.

As KEXP host Darek Mazzone says to Jovanotti at the end of the session: “you’re gonna blow up, your lives are gonna be different — you’re gonna make it in America.” The KEXP write-up speculates that Jovanotti is on the brink of success in the U.S., after playing Bonnaroo (and Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits Festival come October). KEXP’s Ian Robinson writes:

“[This was] one of the most interesting interviews ever conducted in our studio not only because of his thick accent (the way he says “giraffe” is worth it alone) but also because the truly beautiful and inspiring things he has to say about what music truly means to an individual and what that means for the world.

Also I’m pretty sure he’s wearing Air Yeezy 2s.”

JOVANOTTI U.S. TOUR
(AKA THE “HEATHER PROMISES YOU” TOUR)
October 1 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
October 2 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero
October 5 – Boston, MA – Royale
October 6 – New York, NY – Terminal 5
October 8 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
October 9 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues
October 10 – Miami, FL – The Fillmore Miami Beach
October 12 – Austin, TX – ACL Music Festival
October 14 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
October 15 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
October 17 – Chicago, IL – The Vic Theatre
October 18 – Detroit, MI – Saint Andrew’s Hall

your hands in the holes of my sweater

A few weeks ago, a friend offered me an envelope he had brought back from Toronto. Inside were Pop Rocks, and the bilingual labelling outside was touting the “FRUIT SAUVAGES!” confection to be found inside.

This song? It’s Pop Rocks — sparkly and surprising, but effervescently addictive. Also: feels foreign, like Phoenix, or some other glossy delight. I can’t stop listening to it today, as we claw tightly at these last few days of August. The song came out in March but I prefer my late-summer delights overdue and much-appreciated.

Sweater Weather – The Neighbourhood

The Neighbourhood spell Britishly, but are from Los Angeles and maintain a shroud of mystery around themselves. That singer sounds perfectly androgynous and very 20, so we can forgive lyrics like “one love, two mouths.”

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD FALL TOUR
(with Temper Trap)
Oct. 12 – New York, NY – Roseland Ballroom
Oct. 13 – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore
Oct. 14 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
Oct. 16 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Oct. 18 – Nashville, TN – Marathon Music Works
Oct. 19 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage
Oct. 20 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues
Oct. 21 – Miami, FL – Grand Central
Oct. 23 – St. Petersburg, FL – State Theater
Oct. 25 – Fort Worth, TX – Ridglea Theater
Oct. 26 – Houston, TX – House of Blues
Oct. 28 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s

so, Blind Pilot played at my house

On August 7th, the night after they opened for My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses in Kansas City, Blind Pilot hauled ass across some state lines in their sweet blue schoolbus and arrived at my place just in time for dinner. That night they played a living room show for about fifty of us, and I am so pleased to find out that it was recorded so I can share such a special night with you.

Ever since I first heard the richly colorful music of Blind Pilot back in 2009, I’ve wanted to get them in to do an intimate Fuel/Friends show. That Tuesday, as you will hear, was totally worth the wait. The thing that really stands out in this entirely acoustic setting is their voices: the velvety, resplendent way they all knit together. At several points during the night you can hear us just hoot out our zenith of joy, like someone was poking us with a giant electric prod of musical fantasticness.

BLIND PILOT FUEL/FRIENDS HOUSE CONCERT
AUGUST 7, 2012
Oviedo
Go On Say It
Two Towns From Me
The Story I Heard
Just One
Keep You
Things I Cannot Recall
Paint or Pollen
Half Moon
I Buried A Bone
The Colored Night
One Red Thread
Three Rounds and a Sound

ZIP: FUEL/FRIENDS HOUSE CONCERT WITH BLIND PILOT

Here are also two videos from the night, including one of Tyler Lyle, who flew out from California to open the show. The song he performs (“Ditch Digger”) was partially written at my house back in March, so it was a deep treat to hear it performed there again.

And a final farewell on their bus (which is so very cool inside, Partridge Family-style):

[thanks so much to my neighbor Mike Kimlicko for recording!]

really, i’m not ready

When Seattle folk songwriter Noah Gundersen decided to cover Vic Chesnutt’s “Flirted With You All My Life” very late one night at this year’s Doe Bay Fest, it felt surreal. A bunch of us had gathered for a secret show after midnight on the field, lit by a few torches stuck in the grass. Noah sat next to Daniel Blue (Motopony), John Roderick (The Long Winters), and Bobby Bare Jr., and each songwriter took turns singing songs out into the darkness. Daniel stood up and sang one completely a cappella, his vibrato piercing the night like an unearthly arrow.

The Perseid meteor shower was showing off in earnest overhead, and I was sitting with a musician whose work I deeply appreciate, our heads craned back to see the flashes and streaks of dying stars above. We were there on an island accessible only by boat. The ocean stretched black and blending with the sky around us.


I was ambushed, then, as he sang.

Flirted with you all my life
even kissed you once or twice
even though I thought it was nice
I know, I’m not ready

oh death, oh death, oh death
really, I’m not ready

It’s hard to write about the incongruous force I felt in that moment of wanting to stave off death like the song says, without sounding maudlin. But saturated as we were in late-summer-night happiness, feeling so damn young and so damn alive — this song was like a small plea out to the gaping universe. What is it about August that fools us sometimes into thinking that we’re untouchable? If ever there was a setting for believing in lies, it was this one.

The rueful smile on Noah’s face in this video as he sang, well it just hits me in the center. We know what’s waiting; while we flirt with each other and open-mouth kiss this life, we know. All of us wished, I think, that maybe the nastiness of death would just forget about us all there on that speck of land in the sea for another day, another summer. Another year.

I’m not ready.

You can listen to Noah Gundersen’s EP here; he blew all of us away during his regular sets at the fest as well, when not covering amazing songs on a firelit field. A solid (“highly-touted“) talent, with clever sharp phrasing and a commanding voice that makes you stop what you are doing and listen:

I haven’t been able to string together a review of the weekend yet; I think it will come out in trickles. Megan from the Music vs Misery blog and Adam from the Songs For The Day blog also came as part of our group this year, and their reviews are much more cogent and compelling than I am capable of assembling right now. I also agree with everything they wrote, so let’s just pretend they’re mine. Easy.


[the photo of the starry night above us that night was taken by Natalie Kardos, and the video was captured by Eratosthenes Fackenthall, by a scintillating stroke of kismet.]

the way your eyes light up when you’re caught in my beams

There’s a wistful knowing and a coy restraint in the way Charity Thielen (from The Head and The Heart) sings. Her voice has a redolent timbre that could just as easily be coming from a lazily-turning Victrola as a silvery modern pop record — it’s irresistible and won me over from the first time I heard her. I’m a big fan of her forays into her own territory, whenever I’ve gotten a chance to hear her sing up a storm on her own solo material and side projects.

This duet is charming and easy, a playful repartee between Charity and Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, The Minus 5) on his forthcoming record Danzig In The Moonlight. Stringfellow is a musician who I have heartily dug over the years (the man can craft a power-pop gem), and seeing them work together is exciting. The tune reminds me of the banter between Jade and Sharpe on “Home” (do you remember that day you fell out my window?), except with overt and pleasingly languid old-country overtones.

This is backporch flirting at its best.

Doesn’t It Remind You – Ken Stringfellow & Charity Rose Thielen

[top photo credit: Charity, me from Doe Bay last year. Ken Stringfellow by Alex Crick]

and soon you’re 33 / and everything you tried to be…

Yesterday I turned 33; it’s my favorite age in a while because it is symmetrical and feels balanced. Since I like appropriate soundtracks, my brain yielded up two tunes to loop in my head yesterday that sing about my new age, as I get accustomed to it like a pair of squeaky-soled new shoes.

In the first part of the day, the Counting Crows lyrics at 17 had a better dream, but now I’m 33 / and it isn’t me took the lead in my mental symphony, and then was eclipsed by the opus “Welcome” from Canadian band Hey Rosetta!, where Tim Baker sings to a new kiddo about the life that waits in the wings. At the same time, though, he also sings to those of us who might need a readjustment to the knob that filters all the static and contrast:

I’m sorry this is it, it’s cold and hard and badly lit
and there’s no backing out of it
so forget where you’ve been, it’ll never be that good again
and we must only look ahead

and soon you’re thirty three, and everything you tried to be
is pulled apart by fear and greed
let young hands build you up, and carve your face in honest rock
with sunlight on your noble jaw…

Also in the last few weeks, the Blogotheque version of this song came onto my radar and somehow manages to be even more incredible (I mean, that clap-slappy syncopated percussion aside, even!) because it adds a special new verse to this middle bridge.

Welcome (Blogotheque version) – Hey Rosetta!

So I welcome you to it, sing ‘let the goddamn games begin’
the god that gives deliverance
has a thing for disappearing, kid
and the fighting on the beaches hit
and the 5am to Winnipeg
the nights of fights and poison pits
and the needle-edge of old regrets

but the wind will only shift again
and the breath beneath your epaulets
is strength enough to carry it

Deep breath, there.

So it starts with a fitting theme song for 33, but this unrolls into a pretty damn glorious landscape far beyond that: I’ve been on a colossal Hey Rosetta! kick for months — the torrential depth of which I have not yet told you fully about. Beloved in Canada, they remain relatively (and bafflingly) unknown here. So we need to talk about that today, because this is a band and a record (Seeds) that you need to listen to, over and over, thoughtfully and joyously and through all the needle-edges of old regrets as well.

Here are some thoughts on why Hey Rosetta! is important to me right now.

I was sitting on pebbly beach off the coast of Washington two weeks ago at the Doe Bay Fest, talking at length with songwriter Isaac Pierce about what music does; for us as listeners and for us as musicians. Isaac hit upon one of the most interesting distinctions that I’ve considered recently, when he talked about what music gives and what it demands. There’s a carefully-balanced tension there that’s razor-sharp, a tightrope walker who could fall either way but isn’t always sure the right way to lean. Maybe increasingly we want our music to give us more, without asking us to invest in return. In the same ways that porn pokes its shiny fingers directly to the pleasure-center of our brain without asking anything of us in return, our shimmery pop radio megahits substitute substance for slickness and don’t require much in terms of thoughtful unraveling. As much as it is fun to simply receive, the conversation with Isaac made me think about how my favorite music tends to push me back, to shove my shoulders a little bit and pugilistically jut their chin at me, a “Whaddaya got, Browne? what will you make of this?”

I find that the music of Hey Rosetta! is complicated, and I love that push-back because it’s keeping me interested. Listening to this record as a connected work keeps yielding up new threads that I haven’t plucked at yet, but am fascinated to give a go at. Their songs don’t follow a traditional narrative, but are instead constructed with multiple segments that seem to parallel life in all its crazy disparity and contrast — when you think you know where you’re headed, time signatures shift, and whole orchestral movements swoop into the middle to change the keel of the song completely.

The songs wend through complicated iterations that ask the listener to engage even as the pleasure-centers hum. Tim can write thoughtful lyrics laced with alliteration (“searching these serpentine streets for the signs of a spark”) and equal measures of introspection, scored by creative percussion and a whole host of instruments; the combination makes this record explode like roman candles for me.

Ever since a five-hour roadtrip I took on the spur of the moment in May (and listened to this record the entire time), I’ve been most stuck on the bookend pairings that I hear in the two songs on the record “Yer Spring” and “Yer Fall,” tracing the trajectory of a relationship. The 2:53 mark on this song is one of the best song moments ever, followed closely by 4:10 (but, IMPORTANT: listen loud).

Yer Fall – Hey Rosetta!

The band pays close attention the visual representation of their layered, anthemic songs through brilliant videos that I can’t stop watching, with goosebumps every time. If you’re visual like me, watch these, and then every time you hear “Yer Spring” you will see ballerinas and sparklers and sweat.

Perfect.

YER SPRING

– I saw Hey Rosetta! at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC in March and it was just this ebullient and electric, and I think I sang along as loud as anyone. My only edit to this video would be that at 3:14, I really want the visual image to be a ballerina being thrown in a free-fall. Visualize it.

And then this video, which I have posted before; I still cannot get enough of this one. It might be my favorite video of the last few years, in all the wonderful ways they engage their community of St. John’s, Newfoundland. And I just love the knowing smile in Tim’s eyes at 4:47 when there is a whole town chorus behind him on the cliffs — but we don’t know it yet.

BANDAGES

This record is waiting, patiently, to demand.

who protects the ones i love when i’m asleep?

KEXP radio posted this yesterday and it has been captivating me on repeat; it’s a new song from my friends in Typhoon, recorded live at the Pickathon Festival a few weekends ago. All of it is stunning, but the last ten seconds with the lupine howling that lilts and aches — completely shiver-inducing.

Right now Kyle Morton’s songwriting hits on all my cylinders. I identify with the non-linear way his brain works as it tries to unravel those bindings between life and struggle, and the fears that crouch all around the edges of grownup life, persistently. It weaves around things and draws connections, without ever feeling like it settles into a pop song, but more of a free-form elegy. Lyrically this song sits next to Josh Ritter’s “Wolves” in my mind; Josh talks about waking up one morning and the wolves all being there, in the piano, underneath the stairs, circling round his door, at night clicking across the floor…

Kyle also sings about knowing how the wolves are coming for their share. Life feels full of wolves right now for me, hungry and skinny ones, and for a lot of folks that shine in my universe of friends. So, you know — I get it, guys, as much as I wish we didn’t.

Morton’s Fork – Typhoon

I haven’t slept in seven nights and I’m not tired
who protects the ones I love when I’m asleep?
and though there’s little I can do, I say a prayer

that when the wolves come for their share
they’ll come for me