Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The Nationalalong with Matt Berninger, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, Kim and Kelley Deal from The Breeders, and a 12-piece orchestra — combining with visual art of Matthew Ritchie and attempting to depict the beginning of time?
Count me in? I spent Halloween in NYC once, I would totally do it again.
It was dorm move-in day of my sophomore year of college, hot as all get out. My lovely roommate Tricia was listening to Cher’s “Believe” on repeat for that entire week, the rest of September and all into October. The vocoder-superhuman effects of Cher asking me if I did, in fact, believe in life after love still echo through my head (somewhat painfully) to this day.
Cher’s hit of 1998 is cited as the start of a new era of widespread use of tech trickery and adjustments in the music which ultimately makes it through our headphones. In a classic case of “If we have it, why don’t we use it?,” modern music production is sometimes only a matter of only how crafty one can be with the knobs — not necessarily capturing the sounds actually emitting from instruments and vocal cords. Nowadays anyone can sound like, well, anything.
Along with producer Steve Albini, Kim Deal from the Breeders has been at the forefront of designing a forward-thinking, punk-ethos upholding concept pertaining to the recording of their (and hopefully more artists’) music in the years to come: The All-Wave Recording Movement.
Their creed is loosely stated as “everything should be an analog sound recording of someone playing or singing, rather than using a computer to generate or digitally manipulate sounds separated from the dimension of time in which they were performed. In short, to record All Wave one must use no computers, no digital recording, no auto-tuning, or any other mainstays of contemporary production. A parallel drawn with the realist film movement . . . is not inappropriate.” The 2008 Breeders album Mountain Battles was recorded using All-Wave philosophy, and Deal has even designed a pretty kickass logo (above) to shine as a beacon from the cases of those albums that would choose to adopt this philosophy as well.
The goal, Steve Albini writes, is to create a movement that is “at least as significant as the Ska revival, or perhaps the WNBA.” Ooh, godspeed with that one.
Porca miseria! (That means pig misery. That’s also exemplary of the reasons why Italian profanity is one of my interests). Italy lost to Spain yesterday in the Euro 2008 quarterfinals, despite the loudest cheers of my small viewing contingent. It’s always agonizing and ultimately a bit unfulfilling to see big games come to penalty kicks, but Spain played exceptionally well and I can’t begrudge them. Much.
And if you care not for soccer, you can walk away from that last paragraph with (at minimum) a great new Italian curse, suitable for work and use around your grandma. Pig misery!
Music this week –
Perfect Games Broken West Last time we heard from addictively delicious Los Angeles foursome The Broken West, they were topping all kinds of best-of lists in 2007 (including mine) with their album I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On. The good news this week for fans of intelligent, robust, catchy-as-hell pop is that they are at it again. I absolutely love this song already, from the opening notes about spilling our ice cubes on the lawn, and the underlying sadness that subtly gnaws through the layers of memorable melody that I’ve been humming all day. Now or Heaven is due in September on Merge Records. [image from their recording sessions]
The Ground That We Stand On Hawksley Workman I got an important-looking courier package from Luxembourg this weekend, with Cartier listed as the sender. Diamonds? An exquisite watch? Nay — instead of fancy jewelry, Cartier has lavished an eclectic sampler CD of music upon me. Heck, why not. They have a new campaign/website/charity thing called “How Far Would You Go For Love?” (second base?). Other contributing artists with original tunes include folks like Lou Reed, Grand National, Phoenix, Marion Cotillard (who won an Oscar for her role as Edith Piaf), and this Canadian artist Hawksley Workman. I’d never heard of him before but this was surprisingly my immediate favorite track on the comp, with a warm voice like Sea-Change Beck and wistful autumnal lyrics. Listen to this tune, like it, and then go download the other songs (for free!!) at Cartier’s site.
Peace Like A River (Paul Simon cover) Spoon The folks over at Daytrotter recently posted a top-notch session with Spoon, and as those Daytrotter guys are so good at doing, they enticed Britt Daniel and Co to play a little gem of a rarity for us — this time in the form of a sandpapered Paul Simon cover. Spoon often has such a cinematic, evocative quality to everything they lay hands upon. Here they take a tune which originally ebbs with Paul Simon’s smoothness wafting in the air tonight, and push it a bit more ragged and on-the-edge, making the song simmer with a touch of pounding mania. As for an album link, how about the new reissue of Spoon’s 1998 album A Series of Sneaks on 180-gram vinyl? Yeah.
Divine Hammer (Breeders cover) The Modifiers Kim Deal is the bass player for The Pixies, and co-founder of The Breeders with her twin sister Kelley Deal and Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donelly. Deal is a formidable musical force whose creativity and innovative songwriting spirit is celebrated on a new tribute album from the excellent little American Laundromat Records. Songs of Deal’s from her time with The Breeders and The Amps are covered by a wide variety of backyard indie bands of all stripes (The Modifiers are from Boston, but the rest of the featured bands are from all over). The liner notes are by Donelly, and the whole thing was mastered by Sean Glonek (who’s worked with her ex, Frank Black). Gigantic is available now for your rocking out this summer, and if you order it from the label, they promise to ply you with “buttons, stickers, and other goodies with each order.” I can vouch for their largesse.
Play Your Part (Pt. 1) Girl Talk An ambush addition to this week’s roundup, Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) popped in out of nowhere last week with a brand new album of schizophrenic, mile-a-minute sampling. Feed The Animals is out on his Illegal Art imprint and is another pay-what-you-want deal (but if you pay $0.00 you have to explai yourself, apparently). So come on – this song samples Temple of the Dog, Sinead O’Connor AND UGK’s “International Player’s Anthem”?! It’s akin to the way my brain plays music snippets all right on top of one another when I flip through a really eclectic jukebox in a bar after drinking a few. It feels like that; disorienting but so nice. Girl Talk hits Colorado July 11th at the Fox Theatre in Boulder (for what is sure to be an insane show), and the album will see a physical release on 9/23.
So last Sunday in San Francisco I picked up this random $1 pin at the Noise Pop Expo (in addition to a cool business card holder for my forthcoming cool business cards, and I waited too long to buy this gorgeous necklace and it was gone when I came with cash. Sad).
Anyways. The pin on my bag strap now, which you can sort of make out over there in a bad cell phone snap, is a sensitive graphite rendering of Patrick Swayze circa Roadhouse. He beams at me, which made me feel good for about three days, and then I read that he’s got pancreatic cancer and now I want to mutter things like “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” and giggle when he touches the back of my arm. I will admit a huge weakness for Dirty Dancing, I cannot explain it. Who can. I hope Patrick gets well soon.
Tunes I am listening to this week:
Dragonflies Ike Reilly New from Ike Reilly — an artist that we are big fans of ’round these parts (top ten!)– comes an album called Poison The Hit Parade (April 8). The label says it is a collection of outtakes, demos, and alternate versions from his last three albums, and Ike adds that “it isn’t so much of where I’m going but more like the places I’ve been that people don’t know about.” One of the things that Ike verily exceeds at are songs that feel rebellious and triumphant at the same time, with intelligent lyrics that penetrate deeper than your standard radio fare. This previously unreleased tune shimmers and pushes over an urgently pounding piano cadence, while Ike sings to someone ravaged by cancer but whose skin still shines.
Into The Ground The Brakes Philadelphia band The Brakes just signed to Hyena Records and their full length debut Tale of Two Cities is out on May 6. None of these guys are over 23, but they’ve opened for acts like The Hold Steady and Robert Randolph, and have some shows coming up with Jackie Greene. They seem to have a vocal fanbase in Philly and beyond. This catchy tune is a simple ode to being “in her bed, and in her arms” with a toe-tapping lush spaciousness to it, and subtle hints of a modern jazz vocals that echo a bit of Jamie Cullum. And a trumpet solo, even!
Chances Are (Jim Eno of Spoon remix) Apostle of Hustle “Drunk, drunk in the Taco Bell,” is where we first meet our protagonist of this song, and down to the clattery unsteady rhythm and the shiny brass backing notes, that’s exactly what it feels like. Jim Eno is the drummer of fair Spoon, whose percussive sense can get me moving any day of the week. Combine that with the always well-constructed rhythmic backbone in songs from latin-indie-gypsy folk Canadian prophets Apostle of Hustle, and you have this very winning combination. The original version of this song was on last year’s National Anthem of Nowhere (Arts & Crafts).
Paisley Pattern Ground The Black Hollies You’d probably think this was released in the ’60s, from the name of the band, to the ode to the paisley, and the rockin sounds of psychedelica, guitars, and bells here echoing through the misty morning. But actually, The Black Hollies are from Jersey and bring “a mash up of British Invasion blues, guitar heroics and psychedelia that would bring a smile to Brian Jones’ face” according to Rolling Stone. Plus they’re apparently in a new Dell commercial which I should pimp because my new (pink) Dell laptop is scheduled to arrive Thursday and right now that makes me happy. The Black Hollies sophomore full-length album Casting Shadows is out today.
Bang On The Breeders Hold onto your Docs, The Breeders are back. With tones of surf guitar and rubber-ball bouncing beats that could fit easily in at a club, Kim and Kelley Deal come back with new sounds here that really surprised me; a hundred miles from the snarly-harmonic girl rock that I so loved in the early Nineties. The Steve-Albini-produced Mountain Battles is out on 4AD April 8, and they’ve got a ton of tour dates coming up, including one at Coachella (yay!).
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
