I am pleased as punch at the audio which has surfaced from this Sunday’s Dark Was The Night benefit show at Radio City Music Hall. How this event did not sell out is beyond me — a superb lineup of The National, Bon Iver, David Byrne, Dirty Projectors, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Feist, Dave Sitek (of TV On The Radio), My Brightest Diamond and Annie Clark of St. Vincent.
You can see Amrit’s excellent pictures from the evening here, and a million thank yous to the awesome NYCTaper site who captured this National audio. Even from the opening notes of Slow Show, this set is warm and full with additional orchestration.
You know I dreamed about you for twenty-nine years before I saw you….
The two new songs sound lugubrious and richly elegant, as can be expected from The National — just gorgeous. “Leave your heart, change your name, live alone, eat your cake….” urges the cryptic Vanderlylle Cry Baby, “the waters are rising, still no surprise.” I love the power of several strong voices all swelling together as the song is sliced through at the end by that loud and ferocious squalling electric guitar. If this is the direction of the next album, I am even more in love with them.
I hope that your Easter looked as good as that one. We got heavy wet snow and I wore my Easter dress anyways, out of defiance (yes, I still try and get a new Spring-y dress every Easter). I am glad to report the usual arsenal of Cadbury Creme Eggs and no Peeps.
Several songs in these past days have set my blogger heart ablaze in the best way. My friend Dainon pointed out that I am on a sky kick lately when it comes to song lyrics, and I was surprised to realize that he is absolutely correct. Lately I can’t get enough of the clouds, the stars, and the atmospheric explosions.
Something in the endlessness, I think.
Sleep All Summer
(Crooked Fingers cover)
The National & St. Vincent
Start with the song that I’ve listened to the most these past few days, probably close to a billion times. Matt Berninger opens with the lyrics, “Weary sun, sleep tonight, go crashing into the ocean… Cut the line that ties the tide and moon, ancient and blue,” his voice vulnerably cracking just a little on the high notes. The National and St. Vincent pair up to cover Denver’s Crooked Fingers (of Eric Bachmann, Archers of Loaf), and wistfully wrench at my heart in the best way. The songwriting here made me run immediately to go research Crooked Fingers. I am thoroughly impressed with how much exceptional material Merge crammed onto their newest 20th anniversary covers bacchanalia SCORE! (and oh, it is). You can stream the full album here for a limited time, featuring folks like Ryan Adams, The Shins, Mountain Goats, Okkervil River and Bright Eyes.
I Won’t Be Found The Tallest Man On Earth
The influence of Bob Dylan on countless young American musicians is well-worn, and almost genetically hotwired into entire generations by this point, but to find a young Swede who sounds so convincingly authentic in his folk howls and sweeping lyrical songscapes — that’s something that excites me. Kristian Matsson performs as The Tallest Man On Earth and grew up listening to rock and punk in faraway Scandinavian lands, but through Dylan he “just fell into the ocean of American folk-blues.” On this song he sings about the Serengeti, levees of stars, and growing diamonds in his chest. His album Shallow Grave is out now, and also check the twangy theme song he created for the excellent Yellow Bird Project t-shirt site for charity (I’m a happy owner of that National one).
The Sound
Human Highway
There is an effervescence and simple joy in this number from Nick Thorburn (of Islands & The Unicorns) and Jim Guthrie (Canadian musician who was also in Islands, and is Woody’s grandson). Human Highway was named after the Neil Young song (or maybe the movie), and their album Moody Motorcycle was recorded in Guthrie’s Toronto apartment over a span of two weeks. It has a spontaneous feel to it, full of humble guitar picking and familiar-feeling harmonies that would make the Everly Brothers turn their heads. It was released last summer on my birthday, but I am just discovering it now — a little burst of last summer in the final gasps of winter.
Hallie and Henry (unreleased demo) Say Hi
There are several reasons that I can deconstruct liking this unpolished demo from Say Hi‘s Eric Elbogen, ranging from the way his slightly ragged, earnest voice reminds me here of Pete Yorn, or that restrained pulse of the guitar. But mostly? If we’re gonna be honest, I think I like this song because the intro practically begs you to bust out with “Josie’s on a vacation far away, come around and talk it over.” TRY it. Say Hi has released a fabulous album called Oohs and Aahs on Barsuk, and is currently on tour with Cloud Cult.
Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen cover)
Lemonheads & Liv Tyler
This vocal pairing is something I can totally picture occurring in the break room of Empire Records after Rex Manning leaves, Evan’s golden hair falling over his eye as Liv puts aside her studying for a few minutes. Harvard can wait. Starlets who sing can be a very bad idea, but Liv Tyler actually has a dusky, delicate singing voice she can be proud of. Here she joins with Evan Dando’s golden, malleable croon to cover one of Leonard Cohen’s bittersweet gems of a relationship’s twilight (“let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie”). The results join covers of artists like Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons and Linda Perry on the forthcoming Lemonheads covers album Varshons (due June 23 on The End Records). Kate Moss also sings. The concept could go terribly awry, but I enjoyed the last Lemonheads album so much that I hold out hope.
Curated by brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, the Dark Was The Night compilation (Feb 17th, 4AD) is so stuffed full with amazing covers and duets and original songs from so many of my favorite artists, it’s almost ridiculous. The double-disc album benefits the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising money and awareness for HIV and AIDS.
The one track on here that I’ve been most itchin to hear is the new one from The National (although the Dessner brothers’ musical contributions reach further throughout the album, with collaborations with Bon Iver/Justin Vernon above, and Antony heartbreakingly covering Bob Dylan). “So Far Around The Bend” sounds like a time warp to me, like it foxtrotted in from some other era. It is almost jaunty, but with that rich gray undercurrent swirls, and drums thump like a pounding heartbeat.
The Gillian Welch/Conor Oberst duet on “Lua” is absolutely murdering me right now (listen in about a week on the MySpace player, it will rotate through to its day in the sun), and Jose Gonzalez and The Books covering Nick Drake? Really? Sigh. It really is an exceptionally high-quality and eminently listenable collection; the full tracklisting is here.
Aaron Dessner writes more about the process of how this album came to be, and the end results:
As we invited friends and peers to contribute, our collective social awareness became apparent: anyone that had the time was willing to donate their time and their music to the Red Hot cause. But there were many different stories behind each song: some we had heard live and knew had to be on the record (The Books “Cello Song”, My Brightest Diamond’s “Feelin Good”); close friends whose arms we knew we could twist enough to give us special tracks (Arcade Fire, and Sufjan Stevens); bands we asked who were too busy but had solo projects or side projects they could include (Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio and Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros); songs we had always imagined certain artists singing (Cat Power’s “Amazing Grace” and Antony’s “I Was Young When I Left Home”); and dream collaborations (David Byrne and The Dirty Projectors, Feist with Grizzly Bear and Ben Gibbard, and my own song with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver).
In the end, there was enough great music to produce two discs–one dark and homegrown with almost classical arrangements of folk themes; the other more bright and evocative of the best of independent rock music at the beginning of the 21st century. “Dark Was The Night” and the Dore illustrations for Milton’s Paradise Lost, which make up the art imagery in this booklet, evoke a “fallen” world of struggle, but also the capacity of art to inspire us to rise above the obstacles put in our path. Our nights may be dark, but music gives us inspiration and hope of brighter days to come.
Kinda like a warm liqueur seeping through the messes of this week, tonight I came across these two National videos and they help ameliorate things. As I wrote after I saw them at Coachella: “The National carved something out of me and put something back in, is the best way I can put it.”
These videos are both shot by Vincent Moon, the amazingly artistic and evocative videographer behind many of the Blogotheque videos (who I got to meet once and totally dorked out over). I love how both of these never quite relent, never quite let you see all the way through the darkness, into something clear.
First, “Abel,” and the chaos of a mind not right:
Side note: I just saw Everything Absent Or Distorted end their set with this last week [read my Denver Post review], and it’s been etched on my brain since then. I’m no Vincent Moon but I wish I’d brought my little digital video camera because it was a phenomenal rendition of a cathartic song.
And then “Baby, We’ll Be Fine,” a song whose lyrics always scrape at me. There’s so much uncertainty in the words, but then these perfect reassurances are offered — even while I sense that the protagonist here needs the reassurance the most.
The good news is I survived this kicker of a week. Baby, we’ll be fine.
I’m pretty sure that this is the first new Nationalsong unveiled since Boxer, in its debut performance earlier this week at The Vega in Copenhagen, Denmark. This mp3 is just a rip from the video above (more pics from the taper here), but for us addicts I suppose it will do temporarily. The title could also be “Believe Me.” Swirling atmosphere and sonorous horns . . . I can’t wait to hear a clean copy of this.
The first song on The National‘s 2005 album Alligator is also one of my favorites by them, ever. There is an ineffable quality to “Secret Meeting” that I never tire of listening to — the fantastic percussion that firmly anchors the song to bedrock as the luminous guitar chords dance and skitter above it. But in the midst of the beauty it has a darker chaos thrumming just beneath the surface, as with so much of their music. Berninger sings agitatedly about spies, sharks, and paranoia, all the second-guessing and questioning that forces a retreat to this secret meeting in the basement of his brain.
And the song feels exactly like an internal monologue warring. The indistinct yelling in the background builds towards the end to echo all our anxieties. But you can’t quite tell what they are so urgently telling him to do, like that dream where you can blindly feel around the edges of coherency but can’t quite grasp where you’re running or the mission you are supposed to be fulfilling. Are they yelling just drop the dice and roll it? Don’t draw the ace and fold it?How are you supposed to place your bet, to play your game, when it sounds like this inside your head? But I know exactly what that feels like; I think we all do.
The song builds into gorgeous chaos as everything degenerates and clamors inside before that final chord, the crash of the cymbal, the curtain fall and the lights out.
If you’ve never listened to The National, or never heard this song, I find it really hard to not love.
i think this place is full of spies i think they’re onto me didn’t anybody, didn’t anybody tell you didn’t anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room i know you put in the hours to keep me in sunglasses, i know
and so and now I’m sorry I missed you i had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain it went the dull and wicked ordinary way it went the dull and wicked ordinary way and now i’m sorry i missed you i had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain
i think this place is full of spies i think i’m ruined didn’t anybody, didn’t anybody tell you didn’t anybody tell you, this river’s full of lost sharks i know you put in the hours to keep me in sunglasses, i know
and so and now i’m sorry i missed you i had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain it went the dull and wicked ordinary way
it went the dull and wicked ordinary way
What I would have given to be here for this moment, this electricity:
Frightened Rabbit are four guys from Selkirk, Scotland who have created an evisceratingly gorgeous album primarily tracing the death of a relationship — the back and forth, the moments of confident strength followed by the ravaging weakness. Released in April, their sophomore album Midnight Organ Fightwas recorded last year at the Connecticut home studios of Peter Katis (longtime producer of The National).
This is an album full of incredibly visceral lyrics, some of the most excoriating for me since, well, The National. The album opens with “The Modern Leper,” wherein a damaged person laments how “vital parts fall from his system and dissolve in Scottish rain / vitally he doesn’t miss them he’s too fucked up to care.”
As our protagonist, songwriter and frontman Scott Hutchison, fights his way through the final death-rattle gasps of a love affair, the themes are of unflinching self-flagellation (“Well is that you in front of me coming back for even more of exactly the same? You must be a masochist to love a modern leper on his last leg“) and fragile introspection (“I crippled your heart a hundred times and still can’t work out why / You see I’ve got this disease I can’t shake and I’m just rattling through life“).
It’s not an album for the fainthearted, but an excellent one for the honest. “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms” is a simple examination of how she won’t need his (bad arms) now that she’s found another pair — although he tosses off a line to the new happy couple that he’s armed with the past, and the will, and a brick, and says “I might not want you back, but I want to kill him.”
The somewhat clunky album title analogy about a ‘midnight organ fight’ makes perfect sense once you hear those words repeated in the raw desire of “Fast Blood,” which goes on to remember: “I tremble, because this stumble has become biblical. I feel like I just died twice and was reborn again for all our dirty sins / And the fast blood, fast blood, fast blood hurricanes through me, and rips my roof away.”
But the primary song which I can’t shake from scrolling through my head on repeat is “My Backwards Walk” — one that grapples with failure, in full. Decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. It is very highly recommended.
I’m working on my backwards walk
walking with no shoes or socks
and the time rewinds to the end of May
I wish we’d never met, then met today
I’m working on my faults and cracks
filling in the blanks and gaps
when I write them out they don’t make sense
I need you to pencil in the rest
I’m working on drawing a straight line
and I will draw until I get one right
it’s bold and dark, girl, can’t you see
I’ve done drawn a line between you and me
I’m working on erasing you
but I just don’t have the proper tools
I will get hammered, forget that you exist
but there’s no way I’m forgetting this
I’m working hard on walking out
but my shoes keep sticking to the ground
my clothes won’t let me close the door
‘cause my trousers seem to love your floor
I’ve been working on my backwards walk
‘cause there’s nowhere else for me to go
except back to you just one last time
say yes before I change my mind
say yes before i…
you’re the shit and I’m knee deep in it
you’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it
WATCH: My first introduction to these guys was from Kevin on the So Much Silence blog, when he posted this live video of them covering a bit of The National’s “Fake Empire” at the beginning of “My Backwards Walk.”
TOUR: Frightened Rabbit is currently out with the French Kicks, and you can bet I’ll be seeing them in Denver next weekend with Oxford Collapse.
The new Vincent Moon-directed film that follows the making of The National‘s 2007 album Boxer is out today. A Skin, A Night offers the gorgeous treatment that this music deserves, making it feel even more special, all wrapped up in moonlight and grainy black and white. The film is being screened at select U.S. locations (and hmmm, should we do a Denver one?) and if you buy it, the DVD comes paired with an excellent collection of 12 rare/demo/unreleased tracks called The Virginia EP.
In addition to collaborations with like a song with Sufjan Stevens recorded at Benny’s Wash ‘N Dry in Brooklyn, some great UK b-sides including one called Santa Clara (which I like to pretend is about my alma mater), and that sublime Springsteen cover I posted in April, there are several home-recording demos and live tracks.
This cover is one of my immediate favorites on the EP — a mournful, quietly sad song written originally by a Bristol-born singer-songwriter named Caroline Martin. It starts with a fill of organ pipes like you just stopped into that little cathedral, and now are not quite sure what for. Maybe to say a prayer for someone, light a candle. Maybe just to sit in the silence.
Quickly the song blossoms within its traditional structure that caused me to wonder at first if this was a reinvention of an old doo-wop tune from a girl group. But there within the simplicity, The National wrenches out new layers of genuine loss and missing someone so much that all you can construct are lines that are three or four words long.
Yellow Bird Project tasks your favorite musicians to design a shirt for a good cause of their choosing.
The latest classy, minimalist, circle-tastic design comes courtesy of Fuel favorites The National(shown below, $25) and previous contributions have been made by folks like Stars, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Rilo Kiley, The Shins, Wolfmother, and Broken Social Scene.
And speaking of The National, this gorgeous video from Coachella made me physically ache; no, I can’t really explain why but just watching it should make you understand too.
That festival is going to beckon to me annually after the amazing experience I’ve had over this past weekend. Even with a lineup that some declared “not as strong” compared to past years, I had such a full schedule and was extremely pleased with almost every show I went to. In fact, as I scroll through the schedule now that it’s over, I feel actual pain at the shows I meant to go to and completely missed. It all felt like a well-organized little technicolor city with oases of coolness and mist and fun around every corner, worlds apart from the everyday world. The variety of music represented was truly terrific and non-stop. And I am now in love with the Coachella tacos, two for $4! It just doesn’t get much better.
The first really awesome set of the festival for me on Friday was the Black Kids. They were fun and having fun, they sounded terrific — like the Cure filtered through a little bit of a danceathon soundtrack – plus they can really play. I felt an immense sense of kinship to see all these other kids counting off “1! 2! 3! 4!!” in unison for a band that’s gained 90% of their buzz through blogs:
THE BLACK KIDS: “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You” (live at Coachella 2008)
Yeah, like that.
After the Black Kids I heard the jarring strains of Slightly Stoopid covering old Nirvana wafting across the open field to me (no!!) and then headed to the press tent for this pleasant surprise:
Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip then turned in an electrifying, stimulating, clever, fresh set over in the Gobi Tent to another packed audience. I can’t get enough of the way Pip rolls around his words into these sentences that you think aren’t gonna flow back together, and then he pulls it off with panache and wit. The beats shook that tent to its stakes. Can’t wait to see them again at Monolith:
A clamorous and multi-instrumental set from Architecture in Helsinki (not from Helsinki mind you but Australia) also popped up that afternoon. AIH were the first folks of the fest to be sporting the very popular yet really awful ’80s fluorescent fashion alongside the kind of brightly colored sunglasses you know I had in the eighth grade.
Vampire Weekend! Hugely anticipated set that delivered what I had come to see. Crest of hipness or over it, these guys know how to write an infectiously catchy yet distinctively African-infused pop song. More seriously questionable ’80s fashion, this of the preppy variety (those shorts?!), and one of my personal favorite pics I managed to snap:
And then as the golden sun began to slide behind the palm trees, and that perfect light hovered over the lawn and wrapped itself around the stage, The National took their places for a set that I was almost intimidated to see. I’d been looking forward to seeing them live for so many months here, and with so much ferocity that I almost couldn’t abide. No screaming or fainting on my part, but I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t a bit fluttery. Their music is so richly, deeply gorgeous with lyrics that drip poetry and a flawless way of phrasing things I’ve always thought but never said. The National carved something out of me and put something back in is the best way I can put it. Their set ended too soon for me, but it seemed like magic in the desert when that sun hit the mirrorball above their heads and splayed the crowd with dancing light.
Unfortunately the steep price extracted to see the National was missing about half of the Raconteurs and all my pictures were crap. What I saw was scorching as expected and led to a conversation about Jack White’s exceptionally impressive guitar skills and how Brendan Benson is always better than we remember to give him credit for.
Then another pinnacle on a day filled with greatness – The Verve! Seeing the re-formed Verve was treat enough but did anyone really expect them to sound this tight? After Richard Ashcroft famously declared, “There’s more chance of getting all four Beatles on stage together than a Verve reunion,” there they were.
From the opening notes of “This Is Music” followed by “Space and Time” and then my much-beloved “Sonnet” — it really did all sound like a sonnet, my love. Their set was one treat after another, with the newish song “Sit and Wonder” which had been played on the UK shows, and a brand new song that veered off into rave-worthy dance territory called “Love is Noise.” It was the epic seven-minute closer:
Love Is Noise (new song, live in San Francisco 4-23-08) – The Verve
But before Love is Noise was unleashed on us, the true culmination of their set came for me with that Stones-string-sampling wonder that is “Bittersweet Symphony.” This was a moment that will live on in shiver-inducing concert history for me — check that break, that crashing like a wave, all the fists pumping together across the crest:
THE VERVE: Bittersweet Symphony (live at Coachella)
The effects of running on Heineken and funnel cake for a weekend are catching up with me in force tonight and I am going to tuck it in for the evening with the sun setting on Day One. We got two more days to cover, kids. What a fantastic, halcyon Friday.
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.
The Tallest Man On Earth
Say Hi
Frightened Rabbit
Name: Heather Browne
