Wake up kids: today is the Christmas, birthday, and Valentine’s Day of the indie music world all rolled into one. Record Store Day is in its fourth year today, and you would be smart to head down to your local independent record store to celebrate the vibrant role they all play in keeping good music alive. There are also a slew of Record Store Day exclusives being offered today, so maybe break that piggy bank to take with you as well.
In the spirit of celebrating everything that’s right about Record Store Day today, Fuel/Friends has a special giveaway pack for one lucky reader.
To note all the excellent new releases that will be available today for the first time, the first item in the pack is the debut record from The Head and The Heart on vinyl. Sub Pop is releasing their album today, now remastered and with “Rivers and Roads” on it, with expanded liner notes / sweet art. You know by now why I like them; or you can read what I wrote for Sub Pop. Can’t wait to hear the record on warm, crackly vinyl.
The second item in the gift pack is to note all the re-releases coming out on vinyl today. For the first time, Matt Costa‘s 2006 debut record Songs We Sing is coming out on vinyl through the good folks at Brushfire Records. This is a sunny acoustic gem of an album that will serve you well all summer long, also one that will sound great on vinyl.
And finally, Fingerprints Records in Long Beach –a terrific independent record store– is contributing a signed poster from the in-store they are doing today with Brett Dennen. I bet your local record store is having musicians play amidst the stacks today as well.
To enter to win the Fuel/Friends RSD 2011 prize pack, leave me a comment telling me what you are doing today and why. I’ll pick one winner at the end of the weekend. I am in Chicago, so a whole new city beckons. I have my Reckless Records tshirt to guide me.
Two weekends ago on a sunny Saturday afternoon, we recorded the very first Fuel/Friends Chapel Sessions in an empty stone church sanctuary, something I have been wanting to do for years now and never had the help I needed to make it happen. The Head and The Heart and Kelli Schaefer filled those colossal stone halls with a sound that was so huge that I kept feeling like I was drowning.
The Saturday afternoon before the house show, I rousted Jon, Josiah and Charity from my couch and coaxed them over to the historic Romanesque halls of the Shove Chapel on the campus of the college where I work, and they rewarded us with a profusely vivid, simple, stunning time of musical inspiration. Thanks to my wonderful friends at local Blank Tape Records, the recording gear was running.
After multiple takes of whatever felt right, three of the four songs we ended up with here are not recorded or released anywhere else, and the fourth (“Rivers and Roads”) is reinvented with the richly profound resonance of the piano instead of the fiercely-strummed acoustic guitar that we’ve previously heard. I could not be more pleased with how these turned out. Growing from the fertile feeling of comfort that filled that space, it felt more like a private songwriting session than a concert.
It was a session permeated, for me, by a flooding sense of luckiness. There were only three of us non-participants sitting in that sanctuary watching the three of them play, their instruments and voices reverberating off the old stones and the stained glass. You can hear it on these recordings, the dusty space in the air as the light streamed in. I have a strong intuition that this band is going to be significant to a much larger audience, as they have been to me and so many of you. The three of us sitting in the pews kept just looking at each other across the room; we couldn’t believe how heady it felt when the moment resonated and the chords struck and the harmonies fit like keys and locks, or fingers interlaced, or an embrace.
After the session when I hugged each of them, they were sweaty and elated — clearly electrified from the moment we all felt hanging in the air all around that Saturday. Listen.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART ::
FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSIONS
In The Summertime
In its purest essence, this is a song about the certainty of love, and the undeniable beauty when you just know. Some things you just know. Josiah wrote this song in the green room in Memphis before their show with Dr. Dog last month. At the beginning of our session while we were setting up mics and cords, and the band was exploring the gorgeous setting we found ourselves in, Josiah sat down at the massive black piano that was on the stage, and started to pound out these chords, then launched into the words, “Lord, give me to the one that makes me whole…“ There is a traditional structure here that made me first think it was an old gospel or hippie-church song, but I soon realized it was all his.
It was one of the first times he had played it for his bandmates, and Jon walked over with his guitar and started feeling out the strum of the chords alongside Josiah, gauging the building ferocity as Josiah’s voice strengthened and cracked, smiling at Josiah so that his eyes crinkled. As I stood there, I could almost see the bluish-purple energy crackling between the two of them when things hit just right. Then the sad sweet song of Charity’s violin pierced across the stage as she felt out the parts where it wound and fit into this new song that they created there. When they recorded it a bit later in the session, her last notes sound like a deep cold river and make it hard to breathe.
Chasing A Ghost
This is a new song that readers first started emailing me about just in the last few weeks; the band closed the Chicago show encore with this one, a heady and molasses-sweet song with Jon on lead and the duetting “oooooh”s sweetly shading in the colors. The song has the flickering warm campfire glow of an old country lovesong, ballasted with Jon’s raspy warmth that commands notice. The lyrics detail the struggle to not fall in love with someone you’ve already kinda fallen in love with, the jumping without a rope to catch you.
There’s a point at 2:30 where everything else cuts out and Jon belts “and I am falling, falling for you…” and it shot chills up my neck, both when we recorded it and again now each time I listen to this.
Josh McBride
From what I understand of this song, it’s an older one, based on words penned by an old friend of Josiah’s. This is the same one I have been calling “Attic Ladder” or “The Seat Beside Me” for several months now since I first heard it; I love the weight of classicism and the delicateness woven throughout it. It feels very ancient somehow, timeless. As they played this song, Jon slid behind the piano and started feeling out those little piano fills you hear in between the guitar picking, for the first time. This weekend as we listened to it, my friend Michelle pointed out that the piano cadence that Jon made up sounds like the ladder referenced in the song, the up and down.
There’s a direct contrast between “you are in the seat beside me” (I picture driving in a car, knee close enough to touch) and “you are in my dreams at night.” It is a wonderful thing when the actual aligns with the nighttime meanderings of our dreams.
There is also so much resonance in me with the line about how this is “not the last time, we are learning who we are, and what we were.” Oh, we all are. This is a song for that.
Rivers and Roads
There was a Daytrotter session once with The Tallest Man on Earth where he sang his song “I Won’t Be Found” completely on piano. The first time I heard it I literally stopped dead in my tracks, riveted. That also happened with the pendulous sadness that “For Emma” absorbs when Bon Iver plays it on piano, and it’s the same way I feel about hearing this song reinvented with Josiah on piano, and Jon and Charity crowded in closely behind him, over the building chords.
It’s an undeniably great song either way but, wow, this version has my number and stole my heart; I think the piano is my favorite instrument. The tinkly top notes on the piano towards the end (after the “rivers ’til I reach you” lyric) come from Jon leaning in over Josiah’s shoulder to plink out those shiny accents. And inbetween the tapping of toes, those harmonies on the last line of this song create one of the most chill-inducing moments of the entire session — you can hear the echo and feel, truly, like you are at church. A benediction and a blessing, a hope of paths that will continue to cross. Oh, and Charity also completely knocks it out of the park on her verse here. She leaned back and opened her chest to the heavens.
On Wednesday night, as we braced ourselves for the marvelous musical onslaught that was churning ready to release onto the streets of Austin, somebody told me that the SXSW Festival was 40% larger this year than last. I have no idea if that is true because I am terrible at estimating numbers of anything, but I can certainly believe it, as SXSW continues to grow and draw so many acts down to Texas that I always leave feeling like I’ve been through a musical washing machine. Or maybe I feel like that episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ where she is trying to eat the chocolates that just keep coming so fast, and more, and more, and more. No one can keep up with all that deliciousness, but I was game to try. I’m always game.
After a splendid opening reception for media at Austin City Hall with some excellent local talent and gift bags with bottles of Tito’s (uh oh), I headed as quickly as I could over to Bat Bar for Walk The Moon, to start my SXSW 2011 off right. You know I was mightily excited. With the crowd packed close and the bar walls open to Sixth Street passersby stopping to watch, their set was crackling with the kind of kinetic confidence that comes easiest in youth. Their energetic, dancey set can best be illustrated by two texts I sent to a friend while I was trying to convince him to come over.
9:24pm: “These guys are adorable. And twenty.”
9:26pm: “And wearing facepaint.”
It was everything I had hoped for. The first show of my SXSW was also the feel-good winner. I had to stop filming a video clip because I decided I had to dance instead.
Walk The Moon
I want to join Wild Flag. I want them to adopt me as egg-shaker rocker girl (since I couldn’t depose the formidable Janet Weiss, of Sleater-Kinney, as their drummer) and take me on tour with them, so I could bask in their rock glory every night. Fronted by Carrie Brownstein, this new band of Pacific Northwest badasses were phenomenal at the NPR party, playing their squalling guitars held behind their heads. Their songs had strong driving melodies and basslines, with that singsong female voice that sounds even better with the right heft behind it.
Their MySpace helpfully says “Apt adjectives for describing the band’s music: wild. Also: flaggy.” To that I would add: really damn good. Cannot wait to get their (Britt Daniel-produced) first 7″ on Record Store Day.
Wild Flag
After lunch on Thursday I started out from the house I was staying at, and walked past the Auditorium Shores where The Strokes were due to play that night. There was already an amazingly long line of kids standing waiting in line for the free set. Even if it hadn’t been for the multitude of Strokes shirts in incarnations from the last decade on every other person, it would have been fun (and easy) to try and tell which band they were waiting for just based on the fashion.
That night was my first time seeing The Strokes, and it was long overdue. I was giddy with anticipation. For a band that saw its comeuppance in small NYC clubs and the sweaty intensity of raucous tiny shows, I was acutely aware that something was missing from the way I was experiencing them for the first time, but beggars can’t be choosers, as they say, and to me they sounded absolutely terrific. With the Austin skyline silhouetting them, their set peppered with new songs, Julian brought his lackadaisical drawl (I’ve always said it sounds as if he can’t be arsed to get up off the couch), but there was that underlying edge, the guitars and drums tight and spot-on.
On most days, this is my favorite Strokes song, and I just stood there with a big stupid grin on my face to get to see it from so close.
The set ended with a massive bombardment of surprise fireworks that started exploding during the opening drumbeat of “Last Nite.” I am a sucker for fireworks. I also thought fleetingly about some sort of metaphor in there for a band that used to cause all the fireworks themselves in small dark clubs, now playing such massive stages that they can light off pyrotechnics into the night air.
After a quick beer with my drummer friend Robby from These United States (who looks awesomely like Jesus these days, and whose sets I totally missed in Austin this year, sadly) I headed off – to church.
The rootsy new G. Love album, produced by the Avett Brothers, feels very much like the album he was always meant to make, and since it was recorded in a church, this seemed also like the setting I was absolutely meant to see it performed live in for the first time. Joined by Luther Dickinson from the Black Crowes and the North Mississippi Allstars for a few songs, he wailed and howled and stomped his way through his very solid and compelling set.
G. Love
Lord Huron from Los Angeles were more potent and feisty live than their warm and woolly EP suggests. Instead of bringing that Fleet Foxes meets Edward Sharpe vibe, they cranked up the percussion (dude was wearing a washboard on his chest and I wanted to run away with him immediately into the Texas night) and were entirely danceable, in a near-tropical way.
My night ended on Thursday watching all dozen+ members of Gayngs (with Justin Vernon, and a dude in a white cape) cover George Michael’s “One More Try” to a packed Mohawk crowd. I just looked around a little confused and tried my best not to enjoy it (longstanding hatred of GM). And then sang it all the way home, dammit.
Gayngs
Friday’s mercury climbed into the sticky-uncomfortable range, and became the day I decided to start a new photoblog called hipstersinhotweather.com. It is going to be completely amazing. From the moment I left the house, the sweat beads formed and were unrelenting, and I saw a large number of skinny jeans pulled up into man-capris, and plenty of dark clothing and impractical scarves sweat through. I was grateful for my dress.
To escape the heat, and because there is a fantastically vibrant scene there right now, our first stop of the day parties on Friday was the SXSeattle showcase at Copa, where we caught Ravenna Woods, Young Evils (harmonic, well-crafted pop with a kickass girl drummer named Faustine), and a hip-hop artist named Sol that we danced our asses off to, to spite the heat. I also had the WINNING moment of Damien Jurado showing me his driver’s license so I would believe who he was. Ummmm, the heat was scrambling my brain? Sigh. Sorry Damien. You are awesome and I know it.
Later that afternoon, I caught one of the most high energy sets with Middle Brother playing to a packed Barbarella backyard porch. This is the supernova collaboration between three excellent bands: Deer Tick, Dawes, and Delta Spirit. There was a genuine affinity between the three frontmen (see kiss below) and lots of interaction with / dancing in / throwing beer on the crowd to complement their crunchy riffs and early-’60s garage rock feel. [VIDEO:Me, Me, Me]
Middle Brother
I also, not surprisingly, kept finding myself at The Head and The Heart shows – I think three in 2 days, by my count. The buzz on the street for them was thrilling. After SPIN Magazine hyped them as their #2 band to watch at SXSW 2011, it seemed that everywhere I went (photographers pit, radio lunches, that welcome reception) people were asking each other if they’d seen them yet. I had a few friends to drag to see them, so I happily went along spreading the gospel.
They played a wickedly hot midday show at Lustre Pearl for the Dickies/FILTER party on Thursday afternoon (their first “real” one, they said, meaning to a bunch of sweaty kids instead of to industry folks). Then on Friday, both the legendary Antone’s as well as headlining the Sub Pop showcase at 1am, before heading to the airport for their European tour with The Low Anthem. They left vapor trails in their wake, from an explosive week for them.
The Head and The Heart
In between Head and The Heart sets on Friday night, I popped into the Ale House for my favorite Australian from last year’s SXSW, Andy Clockwise. Completely dousing the audience with charisma like gasoline, Clockwise commands you watch him, and commands you enjoy. He brought the girl next to me up onto stage to play electric guitar and I couldn’t help but be jealous of her badassery.
Andy Clockwise
Josh Ritter played the St. David’s Church sanctuary at 10:30pm, and I got in only for the last few songs. It was quite a shift after Andy Clockwise, but it was utterly spellbinding, and –as you can imagine– transcendent. If there is a more poignant moment than Ritter performing “In The Dark” in a church, in the dark, with the crowd singing softly and spontaneously along, I don’t think I can handle it.
Josh Ritter
Saturday morning I hopped right on up out of bed (ouch, cowboy boot blisters, ouch) ready to tackle the final full day of SXSW. By that day, everyone is feeling it and you best be talking quiet. Denver’s soiree of the music year at the Reverb Party was happening at Parkside, and it was on the lovely rooftop patio overlooking Sixth Street. Since I forgot to have a breakfast taco back home, my day started gently with Great Divide’s Wild Raspberry Ale (I mean, this is Colorado, so we do up our free beer at day parties RIGHT).
Port Au Princeis the new project of some good friends from the now-defunct band Astrophagus, back with a completely different sound. They are more accessible but still smart, with call-and-response melodies that made me happy when they rang down over Sixth Street.
Port Au Prince
I headed over to the Ryan’s Smashing Life blog party at Rusty Spurs, where Adam Duritz did a cameo appearance with the rapper NOTAR that he has signed to his T Recs label. I definitely gushed on a little too much when I met him about what his music has meant to me over the years. But then again, let’s be honest I am not known for hiding my feelings, and Duritz has been a major force in my musical development over the years. It was a great moment for me.
Also at that same party I got to check out the super talented Ivan & Alyosha from Seattle who were having quite a bit of fun up there. They’ve named their band after brothers from Dostoyevsky who struggle with faith and family ties, and chats with them before their set belie a depth of intelligence that is palpable in their smart, substantial songwriting. One of my favorite unexpected discoveries of the festival.
Then I went and decided to Mess With Texas at their free outdoors day party on the other side of the highway, and in a shocking role reversal it ended up just completely messing with me instead. I was sending texts about !!! and people thought I was so excited that I was forgetting a word in there, but really I was just totally wowed by their live set. For a man wearing (very) short blue shorts and a purple striped polo shirt, the lead singer of !!! had charisma in droves. Despite my weepingly aching feet, I found myself dancing harder than I have in a very long time, there on the dusty field.
I’ve been googling lead singer Nic Offer today (since I’ve decided to abduct him for a dance party, after that show – and that Prince outtake they covered!), and this quote from the A.V. Club profile on him pretty much sums it up in the very best possible way:
“A few years back, I perfected ‘The Prance,’ where you’re almost skipping in place and you have a look on your face that says “Nobody’s business, ain’t nobody’s business if I do!”
I do so adore a man who isn’t afraid to dance. As one of the best songs on their new album says, my intentions with him are unabashedly bass.
I packed into the giant sweaty tent for the ass-shaking extravaganza that was a Big Freedia show that I was promised would change my life (I never thought I would see a black man with a pompadour that impressive also have those sort of limber hips) and then almost died during Odd Future (no seriously) and evacuated the premises.
The last show I saw at SXSW 2011 was Rural Alberta Advantage at the Central Presbyterian Church late Saturday night. I have an affinity for the resonance of churches, and the simple quietude that is found in the shows that happen there. I am someone who is familiar with the interiors of churches, and lately shows like the RAA are the most deeply resounding and peaceful of the connections I make. Their set sounded fantastic: affecting, urgent, and honest. There was a simple joy, and words that needed to burn their way out. Their latest album Departing has been on non-stop repeat even before their set, but so much moreso after.
For their final song, they unplugged and walked down the red velvet aisle to stand among us and perform a stripped and perfect version of “Good Night.”
rush into the woods where we first felt god
ripple through our veins from the moment when we touched
When Nils threw his head back and the veins popped out on the side of his neck and he howled, “someday if you get it together in your heart / maybe we might get back together but good night….” I started crying and wasn’t even sure why, except for identifying with the longing permeating each syllable. It wasn’t a specific loss, rather a cumulative one.
I wandered alone through loud and colorful streets for about another hour, watching the expansive Laurel-Canyon sounds of Dawes for a few minutes from the street outside the crowded Lustre Pearl, but ultimately took my iPod, cued up Departing, and started the long walk home. The air was heavy and warm, and the as I crossed the river the almost-full moon was reflecting off the ripples. And of course, with so many songs ringing in my head, I was happy. There is no festival like this one.
This weekend was drenched full of soul-refreshing music, to the point of overflowing.
So wow, in the span of 24 hours, I got to see The Head and The Heart combust their second sold-out show at Moe’s in Denver before a happy, sweaty crowd (including them dedicating their encore song “Gone” to a very blushing and shocked me), record my very first two acoustic Fuel/Friends Sessions in an empty stone church (stay tuned!), and then host a joyous house show for a packed crowd of about a hundred enthusiastic music fans. It literally was too much for me to absorb, leaving me totally zoned out and kind of wordless on Sunday after the bands left.
This is the condensed, live-wire way that music is supposed to be heard and felt.
At both the Friday night show and the Saturday night house show, one thing that amazed me about the audience was that this time around, it felt like everyone was singing along to all the words for The Head and The Heart’s songs, just in the span of four months since the last time they were here. It was amazing to stand in the sea of that. I also was introduced this weekend to the music of both Ravenna Woods and The Moondoggies through stripped bare-bones performances. Ravenna Woods opened the house show with frontman Chris Cunningham pacing and roiling across the floor with a contained fervor and a song to sing. With just one drum and a xylophone backing him up, their music soared – and they ended with a cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” that was driving but haunting. They really made it their own.
The Moondoggies were even more elemental, relying mostly on their four voices to carry the audience along with them. They were also the first of the bands to breach the imaginary stage line on the carpet, pushing into the audience which immediately enveloped them and stood with appreciative smiles on their faces. Their humble, affecting four-part harmonies (reminded me a lot of Neil Young) with the round notes plunking out from the banjo are definitely something I have to check out more – I just downloaded two free mp3s from their label Hardly Art.
Kelli Schaeferwas so good that I almost had to excuse myself for a moment — the pounding, intensely gorgeous waves of her music were threatening to drown me, if that makes any sense. Ask anyone who was there or who has seen her live: there is something astoundingly special about this girl. Not only can her voice command a room with seemingly no effort on her part (the best definition of a gift?), but her lyrics read like the truest gospel I’ve heard in a long time. The crowd pushed up close around her at her request, so we were face to face in the strongest of communions.
Trying to see all our faces, she climbed atop a chair to sing the riveting “Better Idea” from her new album. Her searing words grapple with the divine meeting the profane; in this song she sings, “Well I can’t treat my body like a temple when it is failing / are you kidding / was that your plan to keep my grounded? It’s not working / and this seed that you have planted is needing things that I can’t give it.” Instead of watching Kelli as she sang, I too watched everyone in that room, and saw a host of intense darknesses and joys flicker across their faces.
The Head and The Heart started their set in the waning minutes before midnight to a room that had sweltered and convected to sauna temperatures, a stark contrast to the refreshing night outside. I appreciate the freedom inherent in a house show that seems to make artists more willing to try out different arrangements and versions of their songs. Last time, THATH did “Cats and Dogs” totally a cappella, and this time it was a stripped-down and resonant version of “Lost in My Mind” that delighted us. And when they lit into “Sounds Like Hallelujah,” I was a bit worried about the stability of the floors in supporting all that dancing.
The house show got some pretty rad coverage, with folks in attendance from KEXP, The Denver Post (for Sunday’s paper?!), and the Seattle music blog Sound On The Sound. I am grateful that they were also there with their lenses and their journalism because as we’ve established, I was completely overwhelmed in all that happiness.
A few pictures and words from KEXP’s James Bailey (full article here, gorgeous shots) who made the trek from Seattle:
(Ravenna Woods, opening the evening)
(bartending Charity invented the signature drink of the evening, The Whiskey River)
(we were actually singing David Bowie’s parts from Labyrinth. wow.)
Also! The silvery screenprinted posters for the house show turned out even more stunning than I had thought. We have some left, and even if you weren’t there, you might like this lovely piece of art of your walls. They are for sale now over at Jupiter Visual for $15.
Our show caught all four of these bands on their peregrine journey down to SXSW, so if you are also (like me, in the morning, once I, uh, pack) please check all of them out. So very worth being on your shortlist. And remember I have David Bazan coming through next week as well (from Pedro The Lion), with tickets still available.
I am ready to do this again. Just give me a few months to recover.
[all my pictures are here; top photo & Kelli Schaefer bluelight shot credited to Michelle who first told me about this great band playing a tiny venue by her house in Seattle…]
Well if this isn’t just about the raddest thing I’ve ever seen – voila, I present to you the limited edition screenprinted poster that we are going to have available at my house show next Saturday night with The Head and The Heart:
The tree will be shimmering in silver ink, which I think is amazing with the dark blue and red. Alan Peters of Jupiter Visual in Denver offered to design something to commemorate the night and I am so pleased with what we came up with. Alan is an uber-talented poster artist that I’ve worked with once before for that Lucero poster giveaway. We’ll have hand-numbered copies (100 of them) to sell next Saturday night for $15 each.
So when your dayjob hands you lemons (uhh, Indianapolis in February?), I say you make a lemonade and whiskey mix, with a drive down to see a best friend in Nashville and an uncle along the way in Kentucky. And if it turns out that The Head and The Heart is playing at the Cannery Ballroom that night with Dr Dog, well heck that’s even better.
So this past weekend I rented a zippy car, drove across rivers, through snow, and past Elizabethtown — and found myself in Nashville for less than 48 hours. After a stop at the Flying Saucer, Bethany and I headed straight to the Cannery Ballroom, which was buzzing with excitement (and a long line outside by 7pm). First thing to delight me was that The Head and The Heart has proper merch now (they only had a suitcase of CDs last time I saw them at my house show): white vinyl 7″ singles of “Down In The Valley” b/w “Ghosts,” two sweet tshirt designs (I got the brownish one with raindrops) and posters, as well as download cards for their albums in advance of the Sub Pop physical re-release coming up on Record Store Day.
Down in the front waiting for The Head and The Heart to take the stage, I smiled to listen to the crowd around me talk about them. The excitement was palpable, and it was a shift to have so many people singing along to their lyrics around me, and so far from home (mine or theirs). This band keeps playing bigger stages –just announced: um, Sasquatch mainstage– and it is a joy for me to get to dance and sing along. And I am glad so many more are dancing along with me – their three part harmonies, their clever rhythms, all the smart lyrical twists continue to delight and convert new audiences.
And then wow, did Dr. Dog completely blow me away live. Their technicolor stained-glass stage and fuzzy-knit everything was the perfect visual metaphor for their music – explosive, bright, and warm.
They’re one of the best live bands I have seen in a long time — they’ve forever been on that list I keep running in my head of “I know I need to see this band, really” but never had until Saturday night. I was negligent in 2010 by not naming Shame, Shame one of my top albums of the year. I’ve been compensating the last few months by just listening to it on repeat and trying my hand at the resplendent harmonies, wishing I could shred a guitar like them.
The night ended just exactly like this video shows, shot two days before the Nashville show I was at (in fact many people appear to be wearing the same exact thing). The Head and The Heart joined Dr Dog on stage for a jubilant closing rendition of “Jackie Wants A Black Eye,” probably one of my favorite songs I heard all of last year.
“And we’re swapping little pieces of our broken little hearts….” Absolutely marvelous.
These two bands will pair back up to play the Pearl Street Music and Arts Festival in Boulder in May, and it was announced today that The Head and The Heart have been invited to play at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival June 16-19, one of the very best music festivals this world has to offer you. Telluride organizer Brian Eyster wrote to me last week to tell me that they’d booked the band, and said the opportunity was something that “we rarely if ever give to a young band like this… but we believe in them.”
Me too, Brian. Yay.
SHOW ALERT!
The Head and The Heart are playing another Fuel/Friends house show on the night of Saturday, March 12th, on the way down to SXSW. Follow Fuel/Friends on Facebook to be notified when I post all the details!
After the ink dried way back in November, Sub Pop finally announced one of the worst kept secrets in Seattle for the past few months: they have signed The Head and The Heart, and will be digitally re-releasing their self-titled debut album on the Sub Pop label today!
If you haven’t been following my Amway-salesman-like enthusiasm for this band since summer, then you can read about why I think they are great over on the band bio I penned for Sub Pop.
The new 2011 version of the album includes a studio recording of “Rivers and Roads” (which gutted me most excellently in August, in that parking garage show) and a re-recorded version of “Sounds Like Hallelujah.” The whole album has been remastered, and will also be released on vinyl in April for Record Store Day. Sweet!
To celebrate today, the band has released a moody, acoustic, brand-new song, “No One To Let You Down” (which we saw them perform on beach cliffs at the Doe Bay Festival last summer) for free download on their website, along with “Down In The Valley,” one of the standout tracks on their album.
STREAM: No One To Let You Down – The Head and The Heart
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MORE SHOWS THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT IN 2011 * – w/Dr. Dog
** – w/The Walkmen Jan 13 – Bellingham, WA – Green Frog Acoustic Tavern
Jan 14 – Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
Jan 15 – Spokane, WA – Empyrean Coffee House
Jan 19 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
Jan 23 – Birmingham, UK – Glee Club **
Jan 24 – London, UK – The Lexington
Jan 25 – London, UK – Shepherd’s Bush Empire **
Jan 26 – Berlin, Germany – Privatclub
Jan 28 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 29 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 31 – Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre *
Feb 1 – Memphis, TN – Minglewood Hall *
Feb 3 – Charleston, SC – Music Farm *
Feb 4 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade *
Feb 5 – Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom *
Feb 7 – Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Theatre *
Feb 8 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel *
Feb 9 – Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater *
Feb 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory *
Feb 14 – Woodstock, NY – Bearsville Theater *
Feb 15 – South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground *
Feb 17 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre *
Feb 18 – New York, NY – Terminal 5 *
Feb 19 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club *
Mar 2 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks **
Mar 3 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s **
Mar 4 – Austin, TX – Stubbs’ Bar-B-Q **
Mar 5 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater **
Mar 7 – Lawrence, KS – Jackpot Saloon
Mar 11 – Englewood, CO – Moe’s
Mar 13 – Albuquerque, NM – Low Spirits
And so, another year marches to a close — another fantastic, adventure-filled, technicolor year. It’s the time when all of us start kicking around our neatly-bulleted lists of bests and worsts. For me, the more I read these lists, the more I feel that I missed more albums and artists than I heard this year.
The stats are staggering: in 2002, about 33,000 albums were released. In 2006 that number was 75,000. Last year close to 100,000 albums were released, with only roughly 800 of those albums selling more than 5K. It’s tough out there — to be heard, and to feel as a listener that you have adequately given a shot to even a fraction of a representative sample of one year’s offerings. I always feel this keening bittersweet regret at the end of each year, as so much more music was released than any one human woman can possibly digest or invest in.
That being said, I had a fairly simple time picking what my personal favorite albums were for 2010, of the ones I heard. I absolutely loved what Carrie Brownstein wrote on her NPR blog about these year-end lists.
She muses: “So I’ll admit that I’m not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast. I’ve written a lot about music bringing people together, fomenting community, and many albums still did act as bonfires in 2010 . . . but many of us are also walking around with a little lighter in hand, singing along to some small glow that’s stuck around long enough to make us feel excited to be alive.”
That is exactly, precisely what I feel. And really, what is any top ten list but an assessment of those songs, those artists, those albums that have hit us square in the solar plexus exactly where we are sitting?
These are the albums that lodged deep and sharp into my red heart and made this year richer, smarter, harder and easier, sharper, sparklier, and all the more brilliant. And some of them seriously made me dance.
This is just one of the coolest albums released all year — maybe all decade. And I mean the kind of cool that is quintessential, untouchable, badass, just strutting down a sunny street with-your-own-theme-song type of cool. It blends their trademark swampy, bluesy, fuzzed-out guitars with crisp sharp beats that sliced right through that weight the first time I put this album in, on my roadtrip to Missouri. I think I listened to it on repeat through at least two (long, loooong) states and it was love at first listen from that point on.
Additionally – if there is a sicker breakdown all year than what happens here at 1:02, I don’t wanna know about it.
This album from the Canadian side of the verdant Pacific Northwest was an unexpected discovery this year, recommended to me by a friend who helps arrange the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (another favorite thing of this year, but hey we’ll get to that). Dan Mangan has made a dense, thoroughly gorgeous album, heavy on the intelligent lyrics, his oaky-warm voice weaving in amongst a whole orchestra of instruments. This album is beautifully arranged and well-crafted, one you can swim deeply in during rainy days all winter long (although I discovered it in August and it sounded just as good in the sticky warmth).
DREW GROW AND THE PASTORS’ WIVES – SELF-TITLED
(Amigo/Amiga Records)
Drew Grow and his band The Pastors’ Wives hail from Portland, making music that easily straddles and jumps across genres to create something marvelously rich and endlessly interesting. The sound production throughout feels like an old, warm, crackly album (tip: get it on white vinyl while you can) with something urgent to say. From those fuzzy, sexy, pleadingly plaintive blues jams like “Company” to the aggressive push-and-tug of the rowdy “Bootstraps” and the dulcet golden ’50s croon of songs like “Hook,” this album has pleased me completely. Every song is a favorite.
The opening “Bon Voyage Hymn” sets the tone for this album (if it has one) of a sort of rough-hewn, honest, rock gospel as Drew howls, “Sing a shelter over me / With a mighty chorus, slaves set free.” And by that I mean the oldest spirit of gospel, in community and a shared love of singing, with our heads thrown back and our feet stomping — but while the guitar squalls and the dirty drums crash. At the house show they played for me in November, it was like the best kind of church, a jaw-dropping explosion of goodness.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART – SELF-TITLED
(self-released)
From the first evening back in early summer when I streamed this Seattle six-piece’s songs on my tinny computer speakers, I was reeled in hook line and sinker. The song sang about something that sounds like a hallelujah, the sheer delight of embracing with all of your heart and both your dancing shoes, and no band this year has given me more of that musical enjoyment – whether in a parking garage very late at night, or in the living room of an old house. Amidst the warmth, the uncanny wisdom, and undeniably catchy musical & rhythmic foundations of this band, there is magic. We will be hearing a good deal more from them in 2011, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Sounds Like Hallelujah – The Head and The Heart
This is, simply put, a kinetic album. Jónsi blends his native Icelandic language with forays into English, creating the dizzying effect of running fast through a dream forest, not exactly understanding what is being said and not needing to. He’s made an intricate, joyful album of grandeur that is uplifting and challenging without being overly twee or silly. It is a delicate balance to strike. The paint-spatter of colors on the album cover precisely depict what this explosive album sounds like – purple, yellow, deep red, shot through with sunlight.
This album was completely unlike anything else that I heard this year, and made me simultaneously smile widely and furrow my brow. It’s the most imaginative album I’ve heard all year, perfect at evoking things like riding the back of a jet-black dragon over canyons. Yes, and yes. Please.
Addendum: I also just laughed very loudly for a good minute and a half after I just connected the mental dots to the possible inspiration for this album, or at least this song.
I’ve said before that I think Josh Ritter is one of the most important and talented songwriters of our generation; this album is a stellar example of why. Through these thirteen sprawling songs, Josh demonstrates to me again exactly why I love the way that he sees the world. When I interviewed him this summer, he said he admires those who “see what everybody else has seen, think what nobody else has thought.”
Josh pens incisive, piercing, widely-varying folk songs with the comfortable intelligence of one who is in no hurry, yet is passionate in pursuing his muse and getting his stories out into the world. Highlights here like “The Curse,” “Folk Bloodbath,” “Another New World,” and “Lantern” are jaw-dropping. Josh has a remarkable way of teasing out truths about the world (seen and unseen), and poking into the human conditions in my own heart with a greater acuity than most out there.
That song also contains one of my favorite lyrics of this entire year: “So throw away those lamentations, we both know them all too well / If there’s a book of jubilations, we’ll have to write it for ourselves / So come and lie beside me darlin’ — let’s write it while we still got time.”
From the first time I heard Lissie’s soulful, immensely evocative voice earlier this year on her song “Everywhere I Go,” I was riveted. Who was this slight, freckled blond gal with the echoes of an entire fifty-member church choir in her lungs? Originally from Rock Island, Illinois, Lissie has harnessed both the brilliance of the sunshine of her new California home on her debut album, as well as all the gnarls of her roots. Bluesy, confident melodies and goosebump-inducing howls are here in scads — this is a notably substantial first album from a woman to be reckoned with.
“We could start tonight, slide back the deadbolts…” Matt Pond suggests at the beginning of this autumnal album with rich hues that gave me endless listening pleasure this year. I was glad I took him up on the invite. I’d admired the work of the Brooklyn songwriter in spurts and starts over the past few years, but this is the first album of his that I have really immersed myself into his uniquely lovely, thrumming view of the world.
There is a sort of expansive, wide-eyed glow in this album that seems to invite transcendent things to happen. From the specks of silver he sings about in the evening sky and the illumination all around us, I love the way things look like an adventure when I am listening. “First hips, then knees, then feet – don’t think anymore,” he sings. Good idea, Matt.
This is a decimating, gorgeous, elegant album, much like Boxer was but with additional hints of weirdness and unsettled edges that I like. I was ridiculously excited about this album (in a sort of masochistic way, since I know full well what The National are capable of), devouring every word I could read about it before it came out. The single best definition I heard came from Matt Berninger himself when he said they wanted it to sound “like loose wool and hot tar.” In that regard, they completely succeed – their music is dark, burning, sticking to your skin and all your insides.
This is an incredible album full of terse, razor-sharp observations on the worries that wait in the shadows for me and gnaw when they get a chance: I think the kids are in trouble… you’ll never believe the shitty thoughts I think… I was less than amazing… I tell you terrible things when you’re asleep. But I won’t lie when I say I found some of the strongest redemption of my year in this music as well, with the closing track “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” — singing along with lines “all the very best of us string ourselves up for love / man it’s all been forgiven, swans are a-swimmin…” The honesty of the darkness shot through with these glints is what keeps drawing me back to these guys, fiercely.
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH – THE WILD HUNT
(Dead Oceans)
Kristian Mattson slays me – there are no two ways about it. When he sings on this album, “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” it is almost comical because nothing really seems further from the truth. Mattson’s songs have the kind of heft and intricacy that make me certain his music will be around for a very long time after him. His guitarwork is sparkling, impassioned, and inspired. The words he selects and the way he delivers them are pointed and deliberate. I can’t tell if his lyrics are so sharp in spite of the fact that English is not his first language, or because of it – as if perhaps he can see more clearly through our muddy sea of language to pick out the iridescent rocks from the river.
Also: it’s worth noting that his EP released this year was equally good – serious brilliant work.
I cannot stop listening to Eric Anderson, as evidenced by the fact that I have put him on just abouteverymix I made in 2010, and listen to this album most days lately on my walk to work. After a chance encounter with his music on a college radio show of a friend, I’ve been smitten by his earnest, unvarnished, incredibly catchy way of looking at the world that simultaneously makes me smile and breaks my heart. You know me. I like that.
He’s got a new album “Prison Boxing” coming out in 2011, according to Facebook. I plan to be substantially more on top of that one.
FAVORITE INTERVIEWS:
Bringing Jeff Buckley’s music to a new life through Shakespeare [link]
-and-
Talking to my Italian musical hero on the Santa Monica Pier [link]
AND: FAVORITE NIGHT THAT ONLY TOOK 56 YEARS TO ARRIVE This one.
*****
I started 2010 with a Polar Bear Plunge and a vow that this year was gonna be ours, a year of intentionally acquiring adventures and memories that would make me smile when I was old and withered.
I think we did it, and these were the things that soundtracked it all.
The Head and The Heart may well be my favorite new band in quite some time. With the amount of music I consume, I find that the times are getting fewer and farther between where I find myself with that fervid touch of missionary fever, the borderline frothing at the mouth in telling friends and acquaintances and random people on buses about a new band that has snagged me good. These guys (and gal) have done that, and this past week they came and rocked the faces off Colorado, happily, twice. I think parts of me are still sore from dancing.
To recap, my friend Michelle recommended I listen to them back in the springtime. She lives (and rocks) in Seattle, and was converted by their ardent live shows. I cued up “Sounds Like Hallelujah,” and it was indeed a hallelujah on tinny computer speakers (kind of like paradise by the dashboard lights, but with less Meat Loaf). I got my hands on their full-length debut early in the summer, and have not stopped listening since.
What I tell people about their music is this: it means something, and it is beautiful. The melodies get under your skin; whatever these kids have hit on, it is magic, and it only seems to be getting better with the new songs they’re writing. The three vocalists (Jon, Josiah, and Charity) hit all those sweet spots they are supposed to, rising up above the gajillion other harmony trios out there. Jon’s slightly raspy warmth, the clear and powerful depth that Josiah adds, and Charity’s lovely warble that reminds me of some glamourous voice from the 1940s radiating out of a phonograph — when all three come together, I’m tellin’ ya that something celestial happens.
And no night more magical than Tuesday night, after the band accepted my spur-of-the-moment invite at their sold-out Friday night Moe’s show up in Denver, to come back through town and play a Fuel/Friends house show in an echoey old empty home at the top of a steep driveway, surrounded by a huge stone wall like a castle of awesomeness. The waxy pastel wallpaper smelled musty, but the floors reverberated marvelously when we would all stomp and dance in time, and the arches of the ceiling sharply cast back all the vocals into a mighty chorus.
During warmup for the house show, I sat with several members of the band in the old dining room as they loosely worked through some new songs, and I must say that the seeping richness and nuance in their artistic development is exciting. It would be frighteningly easy for them to rest on the catchy, toe-tapping melodies and clever timing changes of the nine songs on the album — that sound that makes Starbucks baristas (where their music has been playing these last few months) confidently tell customers, “Oh, yeah, this is the Beatles,” when asked. But nah. We got some real good heft coming from this band – the best is yet to be, I think.
Their debut album was self-released with no label backing and as the result of them pooling, from what I understand, pretty much all they could scrape together. The nine songs were recorded at Studio Litho in Seattle (Stone Gossard’s digs) and range from piano-laced frenzied dancing tunes to the thoughtful, soft-steeped divine.
The album is absolutely not one of pretense, which appeals to me deeply and personally. There is a hungry earnestness here painted all over their music, and maybe that’s why it hits this right into this chest. Who among us can’t sing along with their lyrics (if we’re honest): “we’re just praying that we’re doing this right”? Despite the wrestling, this album resonates with a sort of revolutionary optimism. You can hear it in Kenny’s piano crescendos, in the heads-back harmonies, and in Charity’s piercing violin. Chris’s malleable basslines percolate a richness, while the drums from Tyler echo that racing, thumping heartbeat to carry the songs through.
Call it a symptom of mostly being new transplants to Seattle, maybe call it lots of long hours staring down endless asphalt roads from windows of a white 12-passenger touring van, but I hear strong ruminations on the concept of home. In the standout gem “Down in The Valley,” Jon weaves together clippings that would be at home in old country songs to make a sepia postcard of “California, Oklahoma, and all the places I ain’t ever been to.” It is instantly familiar and relatable. Meanwhile Josiah imagines an old man trying to entice his longtime, long-overlooked partner to return to him in “Honey Come Home,” as he realizes there is nothing physical around him in the home they shared that will not break down. It is a wrestling with the temporal and physical, tempered with what will last.
The album ends with a refrain of “all these things are rushing by, these things are rushing by.” Seeing the reaction they are getting from every place they play, that line seems prophetic. Good things are rushing by them and at them, and I am so thankful they’ve taken the time on this album to memorialize a few and set them to melody.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART
FUEL/FRIENDS HOUSE SHOW (with The Lumineers)
Tuesday, Nov 9th 2010. 8pm til real late.
(note: All the new songs I am guessing completely on the titles.)
Afterwards, following an impromptu singalong session in the darkened kitchen with the swinging door closed and the lights all turned off, we reconvened in the main room for a collaborative version of Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love,” by special request from me who loves covers. It was messy and rough and imbued with a healthy dose of liquid courage for some of us, but I think everyone there hustled out into the cold night afterwards glowing just a little more brightly.
Both shows were opened up special by fledgling Denver band The Lumineers. Even as brand new-newbies in our local music scene, there is a sweet strength to their songs, even playing without any microphones or PA–just yelling into the room with the power of their harmonies.
1. Charlie Boy
2. Classy Girls
3. Ain’t Nobody’s Problem
4. Submarines
5. Flapper Girl
6. Stubborn Love
7. Morning Song
8. Ho Hey
9. Flowers In Your Hair
They were absolutely fantastic & raw (hey! ho!), like this at tiny Moe’s BBQ on Friday night, when so many of us enjoyed getting to know them for the first time:
So, yeah. This week is going to seem a bit pale by comparison. Let’s do it again sometime.
It may be Rocktober here in Denver, what with all sorts of marvelous shows rolling through here this month. But in a few weeks, forget Rocktober because Fuel/Friends is presenting three absolutely fantastic shows coming through Colorado in the first week of November, with bands from the fertile loamy shores of the Pacific Northwest.
We’ll call it Rockvember, which really doesn’t have nearly the same snappy effect as Rocktober, but it will have to do.
Seattle’s The Head and The Heart and Portland’s Drew Grow and The Pastors’ Wives — both bands are becoming addictions of the most socially acceptable kind, meaning that I pretty much just rotate between their two albums in recent weeks but maintain my hygiene and there’s no lying or drug-seeking behavior.
First off, Drew Grow and The Pastors’ Wives are playing the Larimer Lounge on Wednesday, November 3rd (with Kelli Schaefer, the girl joining in for a show-stopping duet on the last lines of the song in the video below). The next night, Thursday the 4th, they are playing a Fuel/Friends house show down in Colorado Springs and I think you should come. It’s $5 and you can BYOB and rock out in my ‘hood.
Every last thing that you need to know about why you should come see Drew Grow & The Pastors’ Wives for one of those two shows can be gleaned from this post here, and from this video here. Wait until three minutes in, when the best kind of musical cataclysm starts to occur:
Their album is one of my favorites of the year, easy. Recently at the Doe Bay Festival in Washington, the Seattle Weekly reviewer wrote, “Two weekends ago, I had one of those rare, game-changing live music experiences, the kind when you’re watching a band and your chest swells up big and red and raw like a great frigatebird during mating season and there’s a lump in your throat and an ACME anvil could fall on the person next to you and you probably wouldn’t even notice the blood spatter because HOLY FUCKING SHIT this band is amazing.”
Then on Friday, November 5th –if we survive the two nights with Drew Grow, maybe rehydrate our electrolytes– Seattle supernovas The Head And The Heart are playing their first show in Colorado at Moe’s (next door to the Gothic), co-headlining with local favorite Ian Cooke, with support by The Lumineers.
Guys, I can’t even tell you how blindingly quick things are exploding for this likeable, insanely catchy band right now, and deservedly so. They just toured through my home state of California, and I had friends at each stop along the way either texting me effusive praise from stageside, or stuck outside in the rain (like in LA, where apparently many folks couldn’t get in, despite the band adding a late show the same night). I have never seen them perform live yet, just pretty much watched the bejesus out of youtube videos.
This is a new song, “Gone,” they have been performing, with a bridge that I just can’t get out of my head. I’m trying here…
BIG OLE’ TICKET GIVEAWAY!
I have five pairs of tickets to give away to both of these Fuel/Friends presented shows (11/3 with Drew Grow and 11/5 with The Head And The Heart) to folks who email me. You can go to both, I’d absolutely love to share these bands with you.
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.
To note all the excellent new releases that will be available today for the first time, the first item in the pack is the debut record from The Head and The Heart on vinyl. Sub Pop is releasing their album today, now remastered and with “Rivers and Roads” on it, with expanded liner notes / sweet art. You know by now why I like them; or you can read what I wrote for Sub Pop. Can’t wait to hear the record on warm, crackly vinyl.
The second item in the gift pack is to note all the re-releases coming out on vinyl today. For the first time, Matt Costa‘s 2006 debut record Songs We Sing is coming out on vinyl through the good folks at Brushfire Records. This is a sunny acoustic gem of an album that will serve you well all summer long, also one that will sound great on vinyl.
Also! The silvery screenprinted posters for the house show turned out even more stunning than I had thought. We have some left, and even if you weren’t there, you might like this lovely piece of art of your walls. They are 
SHOW ALERT!
And hey, while we’re at it: let’s all reminisce about 
CATALDO – 
NINE SUPERB SONGS I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH OF IN 2010:
FAVORITE INTERVIEWS:
FAVORITE SHOWS OF THE YEAR:
AND: FAVORITE NIGHT THAT ONLY TOOK 56 YEARS TO ARRIVE
BIG OLE’ TICKET GIVEAWAY!
Name: Heather Browne
