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.
I’m writing this from a quiet campground near the Utah/Colorado border, by a wide silvery river. Tomorrow I end a month of travelling all over eight Western states, and tonight I find myself sitting here with all sorts of rambling thoughts bumping around in my head, like stones in a tumbler. The road has such a strong and lovely allure; there are all these vistas I’ve never stood and looked over, so many rutted highways I am just starting to make an effort to take. Going home is going to be tough.
Utah was my final state to spend some time in before I re-entered Colorado tonight at sunset; last night, several of Salt Lake City’s finest musicians got together for a summer evening BBQ to welcome me to the Beehive State. Since many of them are on the mix, I was reminded of a terrific little compilation CD that my good friend Dainon made me last year to celebrate all the music happening in his home state. After I floated in the Great Salt Lake today (and blasted a little Band of Horses in honor), I listened to Dainon’s Utah mix on my five-hour drive across the state, between those red mountains.
I want you to download a bunch of music from Utah? You don’t even know Utah.
Well, yes. But let’s be adventurous. Two thoughts struck me as I listened: first, Utah is a completely gorgeous state that I haven’t given much thought to. Second, Utah has this fantastically vibrant and diverse musical scene that I haven’t given much thought to. These twenty songs are the perfect score for any roadtrip, but especially one through this state where it was made. If you wish that you could also go on a roadtrip through the desert this summer, but maybe can’t, this tasty and substantive collection can whisk you away.
Utah music as Dainon presents it here to me is strongly-rooted in folk with a distinctly Western feel, and reflects a genuine community of folks who overlap on each others’ projects in the best ways. Several of these musicians I have written about before or included on other mixes (like Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arm, Band of Annuals, Jay Henderson, Joshua James), but so many of these songs were new to me.
Dainon wrote in the liner notes for me: “While I am not sure the state has an easily recognizable or definable sound, what its musicians create, they create well. There’s a sense of community, of belonging, of wanting to be and do and perform more and better and with new ideas. These are men and women who have created some fantastic songs. Listen hard and you can see images, too: mountains and desert and snowflakes. I think you’ll like this.”
The lyric in the title of this post comes from the aching roadweary song from Parlor Hawk. I completely fell in love with the song from Ryan Tanner and listened to that about ten times in a row, and it’s also worth noting on this mix that Jon, Tyler and Charity from The Head and The Heart are the backup singers on that Devil Whale track. I added the final two tracks based on delightful music discovered at the BBQ last night (Dustin Christiansen, and the new Lower Lights Vol. 2 album).
But I think the most affecting moment on this mix for me might have come with the Sarah Sample song, as the sun sank behind huge black storm clouds on a stretch of highway that didn’t even show any names on the map. Sarah sings, pure and piercing:
no one’s to blame for being lonely
no one’s to blame for getting lost
I’m so far from anything holy
I’ll just send my prayer up
and hope that it gets caught
I’d reckon that the Campfire OK show tonight at Seattle’s Crocodile Cafe will involve a healthy dollop more joyful bouyancy, tambourining, and electrically-transmissible energy across the air than the gorgeous quietude here. But this slice of redolence is how I started my morning today as I lay in bed with the window open, and I enjoyed every bit of it.
This rendition of “Brass” (from 2011′s Strange Like We Are) was recorded in an abandoned steel jail cell, just the band and the sunlight. Video-wizard Christian Sorensen Hansen continues to impress me every time he makes a video. I want him to film me brushing my teeth, all dulcet and golden-hazy in rich bathroom light. He could make even that look good, I’m pretty confident.
Campfire OK is playing a set punched through with new songs tonight, from their forthcoming sophomore release (which we’re anticipating in late 2012). I’ll be there. You should come too.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: the first moment I ever heard the music of Typhoon, in the same month I recorded my first chapel session, I desperately wanted them all in there in my little cathedral to reverberate their expansive, yell-out-loud, massively melodic symphonies of songs all around me and my microphones. Almost a year to that March day, they did. And this session is everything that any of us could have hoped it would be.
One of Typhoon’s strengths and glories is all the people that this Portland band makes good use of. There are eleven members of the band, and probably twenty instruments played among them. They also have two drummers, which is essentially the best idea I can think of. Kyle and I discussed how he is the primary songwriter, which lends a continuously-wending feel to all of their songs, but also how each addition of another musician’s coloring and shading into the song helps make them come alive. It was joyful to hear them fill that space.
You had to peel me up off the floor multiple times during the recording of this session, what with all those yelling-together crescendos that felt like one of those chest saws they use in open heart surgery. Only one of these songs (“CPR – Claws Part 2″) has been on an official record; the other three are new or unreleased. “Common Sentiments” will be on their upcoming album that they just spent a month recording on Pendarvis Farms outside of Portland, while “Pain, love” is even newer, and is slated for the album after this next one.
I’ve tried to write about each individual track in this session, but maybe because of the coherence of their music, it all just keeps jostling and nestling around each other and I can’t untangle it into discrete parts. Just do yourself a wonderful favor and put the whole session on continuous loop, like I’ve been doing nonstop lately in these weeks I’ve been in Portland.
Their music was made for this setting. Come, listen.
FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION: TYPHOON
MARCH 20, 2012
[audio by the wonderful guys at Blank Tape Records, and on this one, also by the terrific Paul Laxer, Typhoon’s sound guy for their records and the road. Thanks, Paul!]
I woke up this morning still glowing and reeling from last night. Justin Townes Earle captivated the Aladdin Theatre in Portland, the way I have a feeling he does every single time he brandishes that guitar and opens his mouth to sing. I see hundreds of shows, and this man sparkles with charisma of the real deal. I had a strong sense that I was watching greatness. I don’t say that lightly.
Justin is Steve Earle’s son, sure. Justin is named partly after his dad’s friend Townes Van Zandt, sure. Both musical legends swim in his blood, alongside all the bits of experience and struggle he’s accumulated. But there is a whole other kind of self-impelled magic that he owns and possesses that is solely his and, whoa — that is unmistakeable when you see him for yourself.
You should add him immediately to the very top of your “must-see live” list. Justin is a consummate storyteller, in the vein of the traveling salesman that rolls into your town with a twinkle in his eye and a smile that twitches with a deep, unseen pleasure that’s unfolding in his brain and he tells stories through his songs. He’s watching worlds that we can’t see. It’s riveting to watch his process from four feet away, as I did. As I said the last time I saw him, “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.”
This is a song from his newest album, Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now (out now on Bloodshot Records), and when he sang it last night by himself under those blue lights, it hung out there in the air and pressed down on me as one of the loveliest, saddest, most perfect songs I’ve heard in a very long time. It’s a simple song about a girl named Anna, and about that longing we’ve been trying to name and wrestle down for a long time. The way he weaves it is breathtaking and timeless — somehow completely young and entirely his own, and also belonging to the ages. Like all of his songs.
Britain’s Neil Halstead writes albums that grow slowly, the way a science class time-lapse video of a seed turns into a green shoot, curling into a bud and finally unfurling into a flower.
I keep returning the music of this former Slowdive/Mojave 3 frontman as a perennial favorite: deep, understated, and redolent in its reminiscence. Neil has a new album coming out later this summer called Palindrome Hunches (Brushfire Records, Sept 11), and lately I just keep listening to it in full. This is the first we’ve heard from him in four years, since 2008′s Oh! Mighty Engine, a record that was one of my favorites that year. Full Moon Rising – Neil Halstead
In honor of that big bright full moon on the horizon tonight, here’s the first single from the new record. All pensively resonant piano and wending violins, it’s pretty damn perfect for summer evenings.
This song is a complete change-up from all the summery fantasticness we’ve been rolling in lately around these parts, but since we last spoke, Colorado Springs (and the whole state) has been wrestling with a major asshole of a wildfire, so when I listen to music lately it’s been a bit melancholy.
I’ve been putting the new song from Seattle’s Ivan & Alyosha on repeat lately to sedate my whirring brain-gears. It is rich with classic, gorgeously bittersweet harmonies and a pensive feel like a slowly-seeping warmth behind your sternum. And man, with Aimee Mann sharing the vocals? Gahh.
After being wooed by the literary nods of their moniker, I’ve been a fan of these guys’ music since I saw them at a day party at SXSW 2011, leading me to include them on my Spring ’11 Used Hearts/Fresh Starts mix. All the music I keep seeking out from them is rich and wonderful: I am trying to recruit them to a Fuel/Friends house concert this fall. Their new record is out August 7, and while you wait you can download some good free stuff on Noisetrade or Bandcamp. So redolent and good.
If you want to help support the fire relief efforts and evacuee support in Colorado (the whole state is fighting nine different fires), consider buying one of the beautifully-designed tshirts put together by a group of local graphic-arts friends at Wild Fire Tees: $20 per shirt, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Colorado Red Cross and our Care & Share Food Banks. In the last 24 hours, they’ve sold over $100,000 worth of shirts, and after they heard that firefighters liked their design, they added an option where you can buy a shirt for one of those guys & gals fighting the good fight. DO IT.
You’re blinded by the dazzling attractiveness of this sextet, no? Wait until you hear them perform a stripped-down, all-acoustic set at my house on Tuesday, August 7! And then add to the mix that Tyler Lyle is flying out from California to open the show, and I think you got yourself the house concert of the summer.
Blind Pilot has been a favorite of mine ever since I heard this song in 2009, via my friend Dainon. Since then, Blind Pilot has continued to release amazing music, and most recently I just saw them wow a crowd of thousands at Red Rocks, opening for The Shins and The Head & The Heart. You also know that Tyler Lyle is one of my favorite new songwriting talents, and I am beyond thrilled to have him coming back.
TICKETS ARE HERE. This will probably fill up (please see the “HOW IT WORKS” segment on the EventBrite page). Whee!
Just to make sure that we get the point that summer starts today, the air along Colorado’s Front Range has been hovering around 100 degrees this week and every time I ride my bike to work or downtown to see a friend, I show up looking red-flushed and sweaty. It’s pretty glorious. Makes me feel like P.E. in the fifth grade all over again (also: remember what tanbark smells like when it gets really hot outside?).
I’ve had so much fun stringing together this mix of songs that are soundtracking the heat thus far. I am driving solo out to Portland (via Rock Springs and Nampa) at the beginning of July, and then roundabout home, close to the ocean out the passenger-window side, all through San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Yosemite, and then some other places we haven’t figured out yet. These are the incandescently sunny tunes that will go with me.
SMOOTH SAILING FROM HERE:
THE FUEL/FRIENDS SUMMER 2012 MIX
Smooth Sailin’ – Mike Clark
One quiet night in May, my friend Conor played me this demo that local treasure Mike Clark had just recorded earlier in the week. There in the darkness, I completely fell in love with this song and everything about it and what I want my summer to sound like. Lazy, appreciative, and unhurried. I turned to Conor as we laid there, and said “Um, I know how my summer mix is starting this year.”
Sebastian – Reptar
Then once you drift off relaxed and smiling, trailing your fingers into the water with that opening Mike Clark song, let’s dig into all the bright, dancey parts of summer. You’ll be humming/whistling/singing the chorus to this one, with that squiggly guitar line that sounds engagingly mischievous.
This Summer – Superchunk
Yep, Superchunk has written the song of the summer. Ocean views, sweaty seats, clear paths, and sleeping bags on the floor. This is your anthem. Go forth; drive fast. “Oh, your shoulders look good to me.”
Who Knew – You Won’t
Effervescently-strummed mandolins should be the official instrument of summer. Every song on this record is delicious.
Nashville – Tyler Lyle
I’ve been spending a whole lot of time lately listening to Tyler Lyle’s wonderfully evocative songwriting, and this one is no exception. In addition to just being tailor-made for backporch listening, I picked this song for the lovely line, “I have only known two teachers in my life, one is summer and one is fall.” Tyler also gives a shout-out to taking his time with paperbacks and boxes of wine, which incidentally are two of my favorite summer activities.
Broadway (feat. No BS! Brass Band) – Black Girls Black Girls are neither black nor girls, but they are friends of friends in Virginia, and they opened some shows for The Head and the Heart earlier this year. This song is swaggery and impudent like a nineteen-year-old, and a ton of fun with that brass band and ragtimey piano.
For You (Travelin’ Bags) – WolfRider
Hailing from the oft-foggy Sebastopol, just north of San Francisco, this band has nonetheless a whistly sunny jam that makes me feel all Foster-The-Peopley, without having to go see that Beach Boys tour.
May This Be Love (Waterfall) (Jimi Hendrix) – Michael Kiwanuka
I knew I wanted to put Michael Kiwanuka on this summer mix because his voice is all warm and redolent, and every time I listen to his record it feels like a still July Sunday afternoon, no matter where the clock and the calendar point. Finding this cover was like a double win.
Swim Club – Cave Singers
I’ll be gettin’ to see these guys on Orcas Island in the San Juans come August, and this song of theirs feels like you are heading out on a dusty road, specifically and precisely: in an old truck, to go fishing.
Late July – Shakey Graves
The way this song starts from squawky, slow blues electric guitar to full-on midnight werewolf yowls seems to perfectly fit in with late July. The word-picture person in me also loves the death-penalty line “to fry like bacon, hang like lace” (if not supporting the general sentiment).
Welfare – Tom Eddy
Another artist I’ll see this summer at Doe Bay Fest – he’s playing the stage on the bluff that overlooks the water under pine trees and I think this sounds just about right.
50 Lashes – Floating Action
The opening beat here makes me do this exceedingly lame little “push-it-down, push-it-back” move with my hands and my hips. You’re so sorry you’re not here to see it.
Stay At Home – Yellow Ostrich
I loved The Format and I miss The Format and this song makes me feel pleasantly awkward and heart-pounding, maybe sophomore-year summer all over again, and like The Format never broke up. I saw Yellow Ostrich opening for Of Monsters & Men recently and whoa, they were a furious explosion.
Anthem – King Tuff
Sub Pop artists King Tuff have a bright orange album cover that makes my head hurt when the sun hits it, and the whole damn album, from these opening notes, is a flawlessly pugilistic summer soundtrack that evokes all the best smartasses like the Dandy Warhols and here, the Stones Roses. Also very good for air-drumming.
Blame It On The Tetons – Modest Mouse
Oldie but a goody, this one feels late-August summery at its essential core, especially once those indulgent strings kick in — like we’re reminiscent for things that haven’t happened yet. I also gravitate strongly towards the lyric, “language is the liquid that we’re all dissolved in.” Summer should be for dissolving.
Must Be In A Good Place Now (Bobby Charles) – Vetiver & Fruit Bats
I’ve been waiting to post this since last September when these two fantastic bands played an in-store together at our rad Twist & Shout Records in Denver, and covered this song. It is perfectly blissful — wild apple trees blooming all around, and catching the sunset in the hills, with those harmonies. So, so good.
Silent Way – Milo Greene
When, when, when we’re older / can I still come over?
Everybody Needs Love – Drive-By Truckers
This expansive, golden song feels rough-hewn and right at that point of acquiescence, unclenching the fists and recognizing all those simple messy feelings. Ah, summer. You siren.
Beacon Hill (Damien Jurado) – The Head and The Heart
One of the best songs from Damien’s Saint Bartlett gets the deluxe three-part harmony singing-on-a-rooftop treatment from one of my favorite bands. I listen to this one a lot; feels spontaneous and full of real joy.
Fatal Shore – Andrew Bird
Y’all: THE NEW ANDREW BIRD RECORD IS FANTASTIC. I have it on constant repeat and will probably tell you more about it at a later point but just go get it now. This luminescent song ends the mix and the evening and the summer by floating off on our backs, eyes upwards towards all those stars.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Name: Heather Browne
