I grow a diamond in my chest :: The Tallest Man on Earth in concert

I don’t know much about the principles of electricity, but I do know that there is something ephemeral and hard to contain about the blue-white volts. As I watched Kristian Matsson, aka The Tallest Man on Earth, last night at the Bluebird Theatre, I thought of lightning and static, and how I could almost hear the electricity humming in the air around his tightly wound, wiry, small frame.

Matsson writes some of the most intricately plucked, passionately thought-out songs in my ears these days. His voice is insistent and pressing, enunciated and piercing. You can’t detect any accent from his native Sweden; in fact his rough voice actually does sound akin to the troubadour he’s often compared with (Dylan — not hard to see why). Watching him captivate the crowd, I wondered how anyone could think all folk music on an acoustic guitar was sleepy and rosy. Matsson powerfully channels the urgency of the best folk music of a generation past, comfortable in the soundtrack of today.

For as jovial and talkative as Mattson was, during the songs he was unable to stand still. Each one seemed to be working its way out through his very skin, as he rocked back and forth and locked eyes with folks in the crowd, sitting down for a second only to stand right back up again. It was a kinetic experience. Josh Ritter has a similar undiluted enthusiasm for the crafting of his songs in a live setting, but where Ritter seems to joyfully birth each lyric with a palpable joy, Kristian’s songs feel hard-fought and sharp edged. There is an urgency behind each story he needs to get out. He roils and paces, struggling to let the muse and the melody pass through him authentically to the audience. Standing sometimes like a bird, his skinny legs would tuck and fold one on the other, perching.

The songs were nothing short of gorgeous, even as their words ran me through. Matsson is a master guitar player, inflecting subtle musical variations into the finger-picking patterns of the songs. The bluesy notes seemed to often hang golden and round in the air, practically visible in their radiance. There was a camaraderie there down in front by the stage, like we all knew a secret (while many at the back bar of the sold-out club talked loudly over him, the opener). He played several requests and acknowledged the requesters, hugged two fans pressed up against the stage, and leaned in amongst us every chance he got – dripping sweat.

His music flows beautifully organic, rife with imagery of levees of stars, rivers and snow, and sparrows and bluebirds. But – there’s a dark and sometimes sinister undercurrent to the way Kristian sees the natural world. He’s not writing about the jasmine because it smells good, he’s writing about how it thrives based on the body buried beneath it. The secrets that we keep. The jealousies we foster.

It hit me as I watched him play just how damn much I have fallen in love with his music. As each song started (The Gardener, Where Do My Bluebird Fly, Love Is All, Pistol Dreams, Drying Of The Lawns, an exquisite King of Spain…) I kept feeling frissons of joy inside, thinking, “ooh! I love this song!” After the seventh time, I realized what I meant to say to myself is that I really just deeply love him , and appreciate his music. When I met him after the show, he gave me one of the tightest hugs I’ve yet gotten, and I swallowed hard and thanked him for making my life richer and my heart fuller. I know – cheeseball. But I’ve never claimed to be otherwise, and his music does do that for me, every time.

Now you must listen. He closed his set with a fairly unknown new song, a bonus track from his new album The Wild Hunt (one of the best albums of 2010 so far, out now on Dead Oceans). And yes — holy heck, it stripped me bare and held me fixed.

Like The Wheel (bonus track) – The Tallest Man on Earth

…In the forest someone is whispering to a tree now
this is all I am so please don’t follow me
And it’s your brother in the shaft that I’m a-swinging
please let the kindness of forgetting set me free

And he said oh my Lord…
why am I not strong?
like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on
like the wheel that will take you home

And on this Sunday someone’s sitting down to wonder,
‘Where the hell among these mountains will I be?’
There’s a cloud behind the cloud to which I’m yelling
I could hear you sneak around so easily

And I said oh my Lord…
why am I not strong?
like the branch that keeps hangman hanging on
like the branch that will take me home …

I am loving the album version above, but last night’s closing rendition was acoustic and simple with a guitar instead of the piano, and it possesses a separate kind of beauty:

Like The Wheel (live in Portland 5/11/10) – The Tallest Man On Earth

Other highlights? How about him bringing out his marvelous, wrenching cover of Paul Simon’s Graceland? (which I just learned Simon once said was the best song he’d ever written).

Graceland (Paul Simon) – The Tallest Man On Earth
(as if I didn’t know that…)

…and I still think –especially after seeing him do this one live last night– that the lyrics here remain my favorites of any of his songs:

I Won’t Be Found (Daytrotter version) – The Tallest Man On Earth

The Tallest Man on Earth has something to say. I think we should be listening.

[all pictures over on the Facebook Fuel/Friends page]

The warm musical embrace of SXSW 2010

I was walking alone down Sixth Street on Friday night around 1am, listening to the music pouring out through every open window and door into the warm night air. My boots clacked on the asphalt as I tucked away a BBQ sandwich from a street cart to drown some of the Shiner Bock. Everyone I walked past had a smile and sometimes a nice word or even a hug. I felt so in my element, so alive.

I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 South by Southwest Music Festival this year with a sailor who informed me in detail that when reading a compass, south-by-southwest is technically a direction that doesn’t exist. I’d try to recreate the explanation but it’s sailor talk. In any case, I remember thinking how I enjoy that the only place SxSW exists is in a mythical land in Austin. It’s fitting.

A thousand people could go to Austin and have a thousand different experiences, and I love that about the crowded, sweaty, jubilant mess. No one I talked to saw (and loved) the same bands. The endless options for every time slot is simultaneously fantastic and heartbreaking. I surely missed more bands I wanted to see than those I made it to, but I made it to some marvelous shows that invigorated me and reminded me why I do this, why I love music.

Here’s what made this year’s festival for me:

LISSIE

Lissie was everywhere, delightfully. This girl from Rock Island, Illinois has a voice that is even more potent and chill-inducing in person; it’s as if she has the force of a complete gospel choir of large black women lying in her belly waiting to explode through songs like “Little Lovin’” and “Everywhere I Go.” When she sang the latter at a nighttime show in St David’s Church, I actually got tears in my eyes from the lugubrious power of that sparse song. Later on that weekend I heard her cover Metallica from downstairs in Stubbs while I shook Bill Murray’s hand. Go figure.

Little Lovin – Lissie
[SXSW VIDEO: Here Before]

J RODDY WALSTON & THE BUSINESS

J Roddy Walston & The Business felt like Jerry Lee Lewis meets Soundgarden, and in a completely insane way, it worked. I wrote about them a long time ago and said I absolutely wanted to see them live, so when they played the Little Radio party, I was there in the front row. I was speechless. All I could do was look at my friends with a glowing smile; “So bizarrely awesome,” Bethany replied. The bass player stood wide-stanced, thrashing his long locks around with a force I’ve not seen since junior high dances and headbanging to Metallica, while J Roddy pounded the piano and kicked over his chair. Whew.

Rock and Roll II – J Roddy Walston & The Business
[SXSW VIDEO]

ANDY CLOCKWISE

Andy Clockwise from Australia also led me to use breathless descriptors of two artists I would never think of pairing together: Nick Cave and the Eels. Clockwise has 1,000-megawatt star magnetism, all swagger and quirky dance moves that I loved, and his music explodes into a supernova live — so much so that I went to see him twice. The fact that he came down in the audience, danced on the bar, handed me a Lone Star, and knelt and buried his face in my belly while we danced might have also helped things (I’m only human). Holy crap go see him live (and his fantastic band featuring my new favorite drummer, Stella) if you ever have the chance.

Sorry for the sometimes-shady video, but you get the fabulous idea — and know you wanted to be here:

THESE UNITED STATES
And speaking of superb live moments, These United States covered Violent Femmes! I was walking up Trinity Street immediately upon arrival to Austin when I heard this ridiculously catchy drumbeat cascading down from a window above. For some reason my brain flashed to thinking, “I wonder when that day party with These United States is?” After checking the schedule, I was thrilled that I had recognized them from their drummer warming up, and we jostled up the stairs to start our fest right. I saw them two more times at SXSW, their rambunctious, heartfelt country-tinged tunes are right at home in that environment, and I was delighted when they covered this (after some previous discussion on the matter):

JENNIFER KNAPP

Jennifer Knapp – an artist I had no idea would be at the festival (there are always dozens of such pleasant surprises at SXSW, it seems) but one I loved a lifetime ago and made a point to see. She was a young Christian artist when I was in high school and early college, a warm alto voice full of Melissa-Etheridge-like power and conviction, fierce on the guitar. I knew she’d vanished for years and years and was now resurrecting her art apart from the church, as far as I can tell. Her new work belies years of struggle that I can relate to, and a grasping at what she can still hold. I was completely blown away, one of the top shows for both myself (as an old fan) and the sailor (as a newly-converted one). This song was towards the end, as she played to a riveted and packed St David’s Church, and she said it conjured up her “Bob Dylan side.” Her album Letting Go is out May 11. [SXSW VIDEO]

STREAM: Stone To The River – Jennifer Knapp

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JBM

The music of JBM (Jesse Marchant) is completely entrancing, with his intricate guitar fingerpicking and pink moon stylings. Walking into the dark quiet of his show felt like a respite from the storm outside. The church hall was rapt and silent, and for good reason. He played this song using loops for the slide guitar part, and something in the timbre of his voice just breaks me. A friend told me a story of seeing Ryan Adams at SXSW ten years ago and if there’s any justice in the world, I feel like JBM could be an artist we look back on to this year and remember when.

From Me To You And You To Me – JBM

FYFE DANGERFIELD

Guillemots frontman Fyfe Dangerfield was tipped by Mojo Magazine as one of Four To Watch at SXSW (alongside the XX, who I totally failed at seeing despite my best line-waiting efforts) so his 10pm showcase at Lambert’s was quite packed. And for good reason – his new album Fly Yellow Moon has my favorite single of the last forever [SXSW VIDEO], but also is laced through with these heartbreaking piano ballads and tunes like this one that can’t help but make your heart jump on up and cartwheel, if just for a moment:

She Needs Me (Monarchy remix) – Fyfe Dangerfield
(“I am yours, you can do what you like with me…”)

FRIGHTENED RABBIT

Frightened Rabbit‘s sweltering daytime set at the Paste party was rife with technical difficulties from the start. Keyboards didn’t work at all, monitors went in and out, and finally the band decided on a minimalistic, stripped-down approach. “But you know,” Scott Hutchison said from the stage, “This the way it should be, isn’t it”? I completely agree. I liked hearing the visceral gut punch of the songs from their new album Winter of Mixed Drinks acoustic, and was only sad I missed a live performance of “The Loneliness and the Scream,” my favorite track on there. But since I was actively trying to avoid crying at the festival this year, perhaps that was for the best.

SXSW VIDEO: Keep Yourself Warm

JOE PUG

Chicago songwriter Joe Pug played a day party where people were chatty in the big bar, so he took the refreshing tack of asking the first three rows of us who were sitting down listening closely to join him by the stage. He came in front of the microphone and sang one of the most powerful songs on his new record (“Won’t you bury me far from my uniform, so that God will remember my face?”) with nothing between us to obscure things.

ELECTRIC PRESIDENT

The final show I saw at SXSW this year was the Electric President set in the wee small hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning, at a little venue on the far side of town. It was their first show in three years, and worth walking to in the cold Saturday night air. Their new album The Violent Blue has been on non-stop repeat around here for months. I was so dead beat from the festival that I remember this show as if through a haze, but I was deeply content to hear their intimate songs recreated live. Ben Cooper’s voice is, as he self-effacingly joked, “that of a twelve year old girl,” despite his brawny man appearance, and their songs simply shimmered in the loose, congenial midnight atmosphere.

A few other show impressions:

–I adored seeing The Damnwells live again and hearing a bunch of fresh material, including an announcement of a new album they are working on recording. Alex Dezen walked into the center of the tipsy midnight Paradise crowd to sing “Golden Days,” and for that song it felt so so right.

–Jukebox The Ghost brought pleasingly nerdy piano-based rock to the WXPN dayparty, both classic and charmingly awkward.

–The Scissor Sisters were highly hyped and I so wanted to enjoy them but I was not turned on by their set at all. Maybe it’s because I was freeeeezing all Saturday, and by their outdoor set at Stubbs I just wanted a hot tub and a hot toddy and other hot things. It felt stilted and not at all fabulous.

–Matt Pond PA‘s Galaxy Room showcase set was one of the hardest things to get into all weekend. I hope that means word of his absolutely marvelous new album is spreading. He is a hardworking artist of the best kind, with literate songs that make all my insides happy. (new tour announced!)

…And a few final favorite moments of SXSW 2010:

–Eating a fantastic Sunday brunch at Moonshine, which I am still full from, carrying on my favorite tradition started in 2009.

–Admiring the Hall & Oates coloring contest at Home Slice Pizza, and then participating in an “Only At South-By” restaurant singalong of “Hey Jude” in the very best possible way, everyone in full voice, with their whole hearts, sitting at their tables.

–Taking a ride from an elderly Austin native named Howard who drove a VW Rabbit with a handicapped placard. Go go renegade taxi services when you need one!

–Riding home on the airplane seated next to Creed Bratton from The Office and the epic ’60s band The Grass Roots. He’s my new favorite flight companion; we cracked each other up the whole two hours.

I missed seeing Hole at the SPIN party, and Warpaint who everyone raved about, and Local Natives, and the XX, and …and …and … but I did have a momentously marvelous time, drenched in the music. Anyone who doesn’t have a good time at SXSW might have their music-thingie irretrievably broken.

See you next year, Austin.

ALL MY SXSW VIDEOS
ALL MY SXSW PICTURES: On the Fuel/Friends Facebook Fan Page

Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug knocked my boots off last weekend

Today as I drove from Ohio to Indiana and pondered what a Hoosier actually was, I listened to two artists who seemed to embody those snowy midwestern hills and endless highway: Justin Townes Earle and Joe Pug. I paired their CDs together as homage to the fantastic concerts I saw last weekend in Denver: one at the Bluebird with the both of them, and then a house concert on Sunday night with just Joe Pug in a breathtakingly intimate living room setting in Boulder.

Relentlessly polite and wholeheartedly earnest, Justin Townes Earle seemed to have landed from another era completely, but his music rang true and struck directly. If I were casting a movie set in 1940s Atlanta, and I was looking for a counterweight to the golden guy that the girl is going to marry, a man who shows up perhaps selling hairbrushes or snake oil with a half smile and the promise of adventure – I’d cast JTE in a heartbeat. His lanky, super-slim frame draped with a classy suit just a fraction too short as he threw himself wholeheartedly into the performance of his songs. The cover art of his 2009 record Midnight At The Movies shows Justin sitting next to a gorgeous starlet in a movie theater, drenched in green light and a flickering glow, and in so many ways that is how his music feels.

Justin fully seems to somehow straddle the world of WWII America and the bluegrass hills and Appalachians, as well as the modern alt-country rock scene – even some intangible nod to the punk aesthetic. I wouldn’t mess with him, but I’d believe him and let him buy me a drink so he could tell me a story.

His music surely feels old-timey, all waltzing rhythms and “yes’m” tips of the lyrical hat, but seeing him live cemented for me that his earnestness makes all the difference in making this still feel like a vital, youthful genre. There is no shtick that I could detect. This is the style of music he makes, and he means it no less than Nirvana or Thao Nguyen or any other number of young folks in passionate bands.

Justin dedicated a bittersweet end-of-the-night rendition of “Midnight At The Movies” to Chris Feinstein (aka Space Wolf), bassist for Ryan Adam’s Cardinals who died unexpectedly at the age of 42 in December. They were apparently NYC neighbors. The slow-wheeling song was one of the sweetest things I’ve heard out in the night air in many months – it was a 3am slow dance, the bartender wiping the tables, the snow falling somewhere very far away from these warm walls. But then lest you forget his range of influences, he also covered both Buck Owens, the Carter Family, and The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait” (with stand-up bass and fiddle), alongside his own well-crafted tunes.

There’s a part in movie Crazy Heart that I’m probably going to misquote, but when Jeff Bridges is picking at his guitar, writing a song, and he asks Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character if she knows the song, and she’s sure she already does. “The best songs are always the ones you think you’ve heard before,” he tells her – and that’s precisely how I felt the first time I heard this song:

Midnight At The Movies – Justin Townes Earle

Justin also recently recorded a Dolly Parton cover with Brooklyn artist Dawn Landes:

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind – Justin Townes Earle & Dawn Landes

While on-stage, Justin also referred to opener “Joe Fucking Pug” as having put out one of the best albums of the year (an assessment I can get behind), and even though I only caught half his set due to a persistent snowfall, Joe completely blew me away. Again. As always.

Pug is a songwriter of uncommon weight and heft, and rare purity and conviction. If you’ve gotten jaded as to the effect that a simple well-written song can have when howled and emoted from the main stage, under the dust particles swirling in the stage lights, just go see Joe Pug (or Josh Ritter, for that matter) and have those convictions washed off and set aright. His set was an unrelenting cavalcade of identification with so many of the sentiments he elucidates, using only the right number of words and devastating acumen.

Then, two nights later I got to see Joe Pug again, packed shoulder to shoulder with 45 other people, on the couch and in the kitchen and kneeling on the floor in the living room of a home modestly-sized for half that many friends at best. I feverishly noted the setlist, since I had the overwhelming feeling that I was witnessing the best show I might see this year. Maybe ever. Hard to say.

JOE PUG – HOUSE SHOW
Nation Of Heat
I Do My Father’s Drugs
Unsophisticated Heart
Hymn #35
Nobody’s Man
The Door Is Always Open
Speak Plainly Diana
Called By Many Names (unreleased song)
These Days
Sharpest Crown
Hymn #101

I’ve never been to a house concert before Backforty Presents made this one possible. I was startled by the intimacy, as I think many of us were. I am used to (and prefer) my shows small and earnest, but often with the artificial barrier between performer and audience hedged cleanly by the drop-off of the stage to the sticky floors below. As eager as I was, it felt almost too intimate at times, especially given the songs he performs – sharper at excising things from my heart than any scalpel. It would be akin to kissing a stranger at a loud, smoky nightclub or kissing them on a quiet Sunday morning at the sun-drenched kitchen table. In such close quarters, there is nowhere to hide.

Joe is amiable and has grown, even in the last year, to become a more confident performer (no doubt a byproduct of the sheer insane number of shows he’s played). But again, the intimacy of this show and the immense wall of camaraderie reverberating back to him seemed to also take him a bit by surprise. As the final note from opening song “A Nation Of Heat” died out into the suburban condo living room, the thunderous applause that rained down like a tidal wave might have even made his eyes shine with a bit of extra glossiness as he broke into a wide smile, if my perceptions were correct. And I felt the same way.

“Not So Sure” is a gem of a song from the new album, chronicling a gnawing disillusion, with ennui mushrooming in its lyrics. When Joe stood four feet from me, stared somewhere intensely at the back wall, into space, while he plucked the opening notes and launched into lines like: “I bummed expensive cigarettes, I wrote John Steinbeck’s books / I undressed someone’s daughter, and complained about her looks” – I was done for. Then it happened again and again with his songs piercing us all, peaking at the final “Hymn #101” in front of my nose. That is such an incredible song, I couldn’t believe I was seeing it in an environment like that.

Not So Sure – Joe Pug (from his new album Messenger)

Hymn #101 – Joe Pug (from his Nation of Heat EP)

After seeing Joe Pug (twice) and Justin Townes Earle in the same weekend, I woke up Monday morning feeling a radiant, warm glow tingling around me like an aura. Did that really happen? Do shows like that still occur, despite the jadedness of life?

It did, and they do.

[See all of my photos from the show on the Fuel/Friends Facebook fan page; house concert photo credit Todd Roeth]

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Another great music moment from 2009, while we’re gettin’ end-of-the-year nostalgic: John McCauley from Deer Tick singing in the crowd with me and many of my friends at the Monolith Woxy.com stage in September. Wow, we really fail on the second verse (but a terrific moment regardless).

Deer Tick puts on a marvelous, blistering live show — even whilst McCauley wears a kilt, a Betty Boop shirt, and white aviator sunglasses. Hey, sometimes it just works. Deer Tick’s Born On Flag Day was a solid contender this year and worth your time. They also released an iTunes-only More Fuel For The Fire EP recently to tide us over while they finish up their third album, due out in 2010.

Baltimore Blues No. 1 (live) – Deer Tick

And a favorite ragged old sad-sap one from Born On Flag Day:

Smith Hill – Deer Tick

I could drink myself to death tonight
Or I could stand and give a toast
To those who made it out alive
It’s you I’ll miss the most…

The Swell Season stunned me

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova represent everything that the hot & honest parts of me love the most about music. As The Swell Season, they are completely humble and engaging, they passionately perform their craft with every ounce of their souls, and they sound damn lovely the way their voices blend together. Somehow it has taken me until now to see them live, and last night at a sold-out show in Denver, I wondered what had taken me so long.

It felt alternately like a candlelight church service or a campfire at the Ogden last night, with pin-drop silence when it was required and all-encompassing enthusiasm every time Glen invited us to sing along. “All you have to do is sing this simple melody,” he instructed us with a wide smile from behind his guitar. “I don’t care if you mean it or not, just sing it. Well no, actually,” he reconsidered — “Don’t sing it if you don’t mean it.”

But instructions aside — when all of our voices started to rise together to the melody of “Falling Slowly” or “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” I think everyone in the room had to have been convinced. I’ve sang along at the top of my lungs to “Falling Slowly” in my car dozens (if not hundreds) of times, and I gotta say — it was catharsis at its best, to throw my head back with 950 other fans and let all those harmonies soar out into the darkness. It was one of the most honest and wonderful concerts I’ve seen in years. You get the sense that they are doing this for all the right reasons, and their fans respond warmly to that.

There is an undercurrent of hope in their new material that they played last night, and as much as I loved being melancholy and drowning in longing through their past songs, I too feel I am entering a period of hope and some wholeness, and songs like this new marvelously gospel-infused rendition are exactly what resonates with me:

A High Hope (new song, live in LA) – The Swell Season

Maybe when our hearts have realigned
maybe when we’ve both had some time
I’m gonna see you there

Maybe when we’re both old and wise
maybe when our hearts have had some time
I’m gonna see you there
where the good times go
where you are forever young…

The crowd singing here with all they’ve got, the woman in the crowd with the virtuoso voice ringing majestically over the crowd — this must be how ascension feels, no other way to put it.

All of my pictures are up on the Denver Post’s Reverb site as a slide show, if you would like to see more. What a gorgeous night, what a spark in my heart.

Tonight, you take a part of my life :: The Big Pink slay Denver

The Big Pink was absolutely astounding on Monday night at the Larimer. The show was loud, loud, very loud, all smoke machines and strobes. The original duo of the band is fleshed out on this tour by an immensely enjoyable female drummer (badass Akiko Matsuura) and bassist Leopold Ross in a shirt that read, “Safe in Heaven, Dead.” The wiry energy packed into the small muscular frame of singer/guitarist Robbie Furze was magnetic to watch, while Milo Cordell hunched over his keyboards and synthesizer knobs, hands flying back and forth.

The show felt epic and monumental, like it should have happened in some cool era 25 years ago in a tiny London basement club, and then years later people would whisper to each other in hushed tones, “You were THERE for that?”

What The Big Pink is doing with their music feels important and substantial, and the songs from their debut album A Brief History of Love explode and grow to fill the space they rock in. I love the album; I loved the live set even more. They press a fresh blend of sounds from the past over their crisp electronic base. It reminded me of the ragged mix of electric guitar and huge beats of the Handsome Furs show back this summer. Between those two, I found my two favorite shows of the year. Absolutely, absolutely go see the Big Pink when they come through town.

The Clash-meets-New Order vibe of this song was my personal highlight of their set (other than the huge cheers that greeted “Velvet,” and their massive marvelous closer of “Dominoes”). If this doesn’t make you dance and do the hipster flail, your dancer-thing is broken.

Tonight - The Big Pink
(imagine it eighteen times louder, shaking loose the crud of the day)

[See all pictures here]

spin you into my curls today :: Lisa Hannigan in-store performance on a Sunday afternoon

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:

Silent Night – Lisa Hannigan

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…”

Lille – Lisa Hannigan

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…

I wanna kiss you while the band’s playing rock ‘n’ roll :: Lucero in Denver last night

Lucero was thrilling and raspy and redemptive last night at Denver’s Ogden Theatre. While heavy snows fell outside on Colfax Avenue, we all stayed warm and somewhat dry via a combination of combustible energy, communal body heat, and a generous lubrication of whiskey. Their punk-edged alt-country was authentic and earnest, swinging from wistful to rocking to full-blooded Memphis soul.

Frontman Ben Nichols impressed me in a number of ways, as his taut magnetic energy centers the stage through the sheer gravitation pull of his stage presence. First off, dude’s wiry and wily-looking, sinewed skinny arms covered in tattoos, hair standing up like he’s constantly disheveling it with his hands, white t-shirt and jeans with a red bandanna sticking out the back pocket. As my friend Josh and I decided, if he was in prison, despite his charms, he looks like he could definitely fuck your shit up. We also discussed what the difference was between a shank and a shiv. We did not settle the matter before Lucero began to rock, with this song from their new album, a fine example of what we were in for:

Sound Of The City – Lucero

All the elements I love about Lucero’s recorded music simply explode in concert. Even though the lyrics are often aching ones of loss or bad decisions, there is often a hearty streak of wild romanticism in the music, or sly turns of a phrase that made me smile (“I was kissing the bottle when I shoulda been kissing you”). This tour features the addition of two Memphis horn players (a sax and a trumpet) and, man — did that cut through the air superbly, those frissons of shiny brass sound classing up the joint last night. Along with six other band members (pedal steel, guitar, kickass drums, bass, keys, and Ben’s fronting) the stage was as crowded as the sticky floor.

I also had A Moment at that show last night, one that I won’t soon forget, one of those moments where you feel your insides get so hot and full of some sort of unexpected joy that you think something might burst. As I’ve mentioned before, “I Can Get Us Out Of Here” (from 2006′s Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers) is one of my very best-loved songs of the last five years or more. I’ve listened to that melody hundreds of times, and it is good for fist-pumping, fast driving, but also feeling the most plaintive kinds of yearning known by folks like Springsteen.

Trying to beat the storm last night, I was edging (very slowly) towards the door for every song after about halfway through the set. I just could not pull myself away, slick ice and fiery autocrashes be damned. After Ben worked through a gorgeous mini-set of solo material from the Cormac-McCarthy-inspired Last Pale Light of the West, I had given up hope of hearing my favorite song before prudence made me leave.

Suddenly the band took the stage again, and the familiar kickdrums thumped out as the band peeled into a simply blistering rendition of the song. The final guitar solo sounded more like epic transcendence than anything of recent memory, and as Brian Venable played the last note he threw his arms out to the side, cutting the hot air with electric finality. The sweet, sad piano refrain picked up, and Ben half-smiled when he sang, “Come on babe, don’t look so sad, you know it ain’t half that bad…” and in my creative imagination, he glanced in my direction. I felt like, yeah, you know… it really ain’t that bad.

I believed him.

[The setlist (and torrent) of last night’s show is here, already.
Lucero has some crazy dedicated fans. After last night, I kinda count myself as on my way.]

And be my everlovin’ baby (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2009)

One of the highlights of my fabulously sunny, Indian-summer October weekend in California was seeing the legendary Gillian Welch with David Rawlings at the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Saturday at Golden Gate Park. I’d never gotten to see her sublime and lovely music live, and it positively sprouted wings under the San Francisco eucalyptus trees. The Emmylou Harris made a surprise appearance with her and David to clutch a lyrics sheet and sing a wide-smiled version of “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby” (from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack).

Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby – Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & Alison Krauss
(some video I found from Saturday)

Gillian’s longtime musical partner, David Rawlings has a new album out November 17th, which will include a version of the song “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)” he penned with Ryan Adams, and guest appearances by Gillian Welch, Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers, Nathaniel Wilcott of Bright Eyes, and members of Old Crow Medicine Show.

Okkervil River also absolutely completely blew me away. I reacted like a good Generation X-er and texted every music lover I know with (hardly strictly Moose-Drool-influenced) words of fawning and amazement. This Austin, Texas band puts on one of the very best live shows I’ve seen all year. Their songs grow and shimmer (and yes, kick) live, and the early afternoon audience scaled trees to get a better view, hooting and hollering. As we walked to their set, I tried to define their sound for my companion who hadn’t seen them before, and found that I couldn’t, and once they started in on their first song I conceded to her simply: “Man, I need to dive so much deeper with these guys.”

Effing watch this amazing set closer; my insides wanted to leap out of my chest:

Unless It’s Kicks – Okkervil River
Unless It’s Kicks (demo version) – Okkervil River

What gives this mess some grace unless it’s fictions
Unless it’s licks, man
Unless it’s lies or it’s love?

What breaks this heart the most is the ghost of some rock and roll fan
Exploding up from the stands
With her heart opened up
And I want to tell her, “your love isn’t lost”
Say, “my heart is still crossed”
Scream, “you’re so wonderful”
What a dream in the dark
About working so hard
About glowing so stoned
Trying not to turn off
Trying not to believe in that lie all on your own…

[read the rest]

The wet, wet glory of Monolith 2009 (come see what we saw)

The third annual Monolith Festival took over scenic Red Rocks in Colorado last weekend, with one of the most pleasantly-varied assortment of music yet, and I found much to entertain my ears. Perhaps I was more motivated this year than last, but despite the rain Saturday and drizzles on Sunday, I constantly found myself making tough choices between acts slotted simultaneously that I wanted to see. It’s good to have more than enough choices at a festival, running back and forth to catch the next buzzed-about act — and I certainly did at Monolith this year, along with lots of other folks.

Having just come from the massively spread-out Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, I was struck by how small and intimate this festival still feels. Despite being packed in with several thousand of my closest concert-going friends of the Western States region, Monolith still felt like a boutique arrangement, with five stages squeezed into the rather compact natural park. I got to see some terrific folks.

Let’s start with a nice assortment of three videos I shot, showing why this is a marvelous festival:

Anni Rossi – “West Coast”

Rahzel – Beatboxing to “Seven Nation Army” and “Sexy Back”
(White Stripes and Justin Timberlake covers)

Monotonix, not yet showing his hairy buttcrack.

The diversity of artists this year was terrific. From discovering a new singer-songwriter with clever lyrics and gorgeous viola-playing skills (like Chicago’s Anni Rossi, who reminded me of Regina Spektor with strings), to clapping and hooting along while Rahzel (from The Roots) beatboxed his way through some wickedly enjoyable covers (that’s me laughing on the video when he announces “Remix!” and then does just that), to the roiling crowd response to Tel Aviv punk/rocker/remover-of-clothes Monotonix (who performed most of his set on the shoulders of the audience, and pulled his terrycloth shorts off in glee), Monolith kept me hopping (and climbing).

LISTEN to how I fell in love:
West Coast – Anni Rossi

Concert-companion Dainon and I are gonna tell you about a few other loves we each experienced during the weekend. One that we both agreed on is The Features from Tennessee, recently signed to Kings of Leon’s 429 Records, and one of the absolute best live shows I’ve seen in a long time: propulsive, melodic, catchy rock with a winning wail. I told the Facebook during the set that I thought I’d just bruised my thighs with the force of my leg-drumming. Their set meandered from awkward-punk-pop songs about falling in love on a Thursday to blistering rockers like this one:

Dainon says: True to the name they’ve attached to their music, The Features ought to really be featured on your radios, car stereos, and subconscious. Add one tiny, bearded man-wail to some of the loudest feeling music in all of Monolith (they filled up alla that wide open, Red-Rocked empty space) and you’re left with a band that demands you stay with them as they go about propelling themselves forward. Onward and up and through the hoops that should make ‘em famous. Prediction? They’ll be big. The band will overcome their height. The Features make you proud to be a lover of music. They’re a budding secret that needs passing on.

Thursday – The Features

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes were definitely the most visually and kinetically stimulating band I had the pleasure of getting up close and personal with all weekend. I’m not sure I’d listen often to their utopian fantasy music that belongs frolicking wildly in a peyote-induced dream somewhere, for sure, but this band (fronted by a man not named Edward Sharpe, like whoa) wowed me with their obvious joy.

Dainon says: Cotton Jones looks like a bunch of guys had just stumbled in from a sleepy, fishing town (after a long hard day of the deep-sea fishing even) and decided to try their hand at some sangin. This is the beautiful stuff, the kind that sounded best on that darkened stage with those red lights—ambiance was on their side. This is the performance that invited the festival audience to catch its breath before stumbling on to the next. It was as invited as it was needed. In this world, flannel was spoken and razors were ignored. In this place, love is whispered through sidelong glances, key tickling and warm-on-a-rainy-day songs.

I (Heather) love this song even more after seeing it shimmer and slowly coalesce live:

Blood Red Sentimental Blues – Cotton Jones

“I just thought I’d tell ya, all the demons have been slain / there’s no need for hesitation, honey I been re-arranged…”

Denver’s Natural Selection at the opening night party was more fun to dance to than Chromeo’s shiny DJ set, for sure. I love basslines that make my chest vibrate and my teeth rattle in my head while I shake my hips. That sounds like some sort of torture method as I read that sentence back but trust me, it is fun. This bi-city band (Denver + St Louis, somehow) is a “funk-disco attack” of the finest variety — and appears to have a required uniform of a) awesome denim mini-cutoffs b) gold pants and a vest, no shirt or c) neon. Totally works for me.

Dainon says: The Grates are a happier, skippier take on that early No Doubt action, whether you choose to squint your eyes and go about seeing Gwen in its lead singer or not. There’s a sailor suit here, lots and lots of skipping and a smile so bright, your heart has no choice but to go boom (read into that whatever you choose to). She even took time to tell us about her having farted about 100 times since she’d got there on account of that crazy CO altitude. What’s more? It was endearing. Then again, what isn’t in an Australian accent? All’s I know is I wanted a hug when it was all over, if just to transfer some of that pixie-tastic energy over my way. For a good time, pick up either of their two albums. For a better one, go to a show and give the singer a shoulder ride when she asks for one, because she will. She so will.

I mused out loud during M. Ward‘s dense and gorgeously-rocking set that I seem to forget how much I adore his music. This was the first time I had seen him live solo (once with She in SF), and I decided during his set that a) Post-War is probably on my list of top ten albums from this decade that I will continue to listen to for years and years to come and b) his catalog really expands and becomes much more raggedly rocking in concert, in a very very good way. I was also transfixed by his anachronistic peculiarness, which reminded me of a traveling salesman+blues musician from the 1930s or something, one that truly knows his way with a guitar. He’s so interesting to watch, and completely his own.

Dainon says: There’s a weird energy that accompanies Of Montreal and its stage show, though it never fails to puzzle me. I can’t make sense of what’s going on, though I try so earnestly to do so, every single damn time even. Still, if you can manage to get past the tiger-headed humans, the half-naked men, the munching on genitalia, the leotards, the sparkling blue eye makeup and the feather boas, well then, Of Montreal treats you right. They’ve a show to go with their story to go with their music. As in they’ve got groove in their respective hearts. Is it Prince light, as goes the rampant accusation? Maybe. One thing’s for certain … the band’s avid followers will make the floor shake every single time, even if it is made of heavy rock. Boogie yer two shoes, indeed.

All my pics –and more commentary– are over on Facebook, if you’d like to see the rest of what we did and how we barely survived (spoiler: Dainon had a run-in with a drag queen, I got my lip caught in a can while shotgunning a beer). It was a long, pretty rad weekend:

Opening Night & Saturday
Sunday

And here’s a few more, just because there was so much to see. Next year, you should come.

CHROMEO (video: “Tenderoni“)

DEER TICK

GIRL TALK

PHOENIX
(what album cover does that remind me of?!?)

YEAH YEAH YEAHS