MOG - jenny's Posts

Another live review

jenny — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:56:06 GMT

Unfortunately, not every show is a home run…sometimes the band you want to see blows out a monitor in the second song…

From PopMatters earlier in the week.

Bishop Allen + The War on Drugs + The True Jacqueline

14 May 2008: Pearl Street — Northampton, MA

"How are they live?" It’s the question you always ask before you head out to see a new band, because in a frightening amount of cases, what sounds pretty good on record turns to mush or anarchy or ho-hum in a club...and in a few counterbalancing instances, bands that seem so-so on vinyl (or whatever CDs are made of), burst out of their cages on stage. So, on this mid-May evening, the plan was to be wowed by the shimmery guitar textures and Dylanish growls of Philly’s the War on Drugs, while maybe sticking around for Bishop Allen’s clever, bubbly pop.

You really can’t plan these things.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/reviews/article/59619/bishop-allen/

Grand Archives

jenny — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:26:11 GMT

I went to see Grand Archives last night and was kind of blown away by how their already very pretty songs opened up on the live stage.

It also proved, beyond doubt, that 2008 is the year of high male harmonies, as Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, and Grand Archives all build their sound, to some extent, on falsetto in close thirds. Grand Archives is based more in a 1970s pop aesthetic...If I say that they remind me, at times, of America, Seals & Croft and Nilsson, you'll just have to take my word for it that I like them anyway.

Here's some live footage from what I think is their CD release party.

Sub Pop is giving away an MP3 of "Miniature Birds": http://www.subpop.com/assets/audio/4253.mp3

I'll be writing something marginally more coherent about the show for Blurt.com fairly soon. Meanwhile, see for yourself. It's definitely worth going.

Jun 11 2008 9:00P

GREAT SCOTT BOSTON, Massachusetts Jun 12 2008 9:00P

JOHNNY BRENDA'S PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania Jun 13 2008 9:00P

BOWERY BALLROOM NYC, New York Jun 15 2008 9:00P

ROCK & ROLL HOTEL DC, Washington DC Jun 17 2008 9:00P

LOCAL 506 CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina Jun 18 2008 9:00P

THE EARL ATLANTA, Georgia Jun 19 2008 9:00P

EXIT/IN NASHVILLE, Tennessee Jun 20 2008 9:00P

STICKY FINGERZ LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas Jun 21 2008 9:00P

STUBBS JR. AUSTIN, Texas Jun 22 2008 7:30P

THE CAVERN DALLAS, Texas Jun 24 2008 9:00P

SANTA FE BREWING CO. ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico Jun 25 2008 9:00P

PLUSH TUCSON, Arizona Jun 26 2008 9:00P

CASBAH SAN DIEGO, California Jun 27 2008 9:00P

THE ECHO LOS ANGELES, California Jun 28 2008 9:00P

SLIM'S SAN FRANCISCO, California Jul 13 2008 5:00P

SP20 FESTIVAL MARYMOOR PARK, Washington

Lights...they're the kind of girls who fit into Syd's world

jenny — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:08:09 GMT

Lights is a trippy, psychedelic rock band out of Brooklyn, whose self-titled debut I reviewed recently for Popmatters

Lights Lights (Language of Stone) US release date: 22 April 2008 UK release date: 28 April 2008

by Jennifer Kelly

There are two extraordinary things about this debut album from Brooklyn’s Lights. First, you have the close, eerie harmonies of Sophia Knapp and Linnea Vedder, sweet but with an edge of madness, casting flowers Ophelia-style into drowning currents of sound. Second, you have the guitar, filtered through every sort of pedal, different from song to song, but everywhere mesmerizing. When the two work together, as on the extended, mind-changing “Break, Run, Fly”, it is as if the female half of, say, Feathers had stepped in front of an early run-through of “Interstellar Overdrive”.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/reviews/article/58834/lights-lights/

I Love Math review

jenny — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:50:46 GMT

My review of this Deathray Davies/Old 97s offshoot went up today at Dusted, the last of a trio of very pop records in my pile for a site that doesn't really cover pop...I like this one the best, with a slight edge over Julie Ocean and the Botticellis, because it seems so worn in and comfortable. Here's a bit of the review. Follow the jump for the rest:

I Love Math Getting to the Point Is Beside It

John Dufhilo, of the Deathray Davies, has a knack for radiantly catchy pop melodies sung with just enough weariness and couched in just enough abrasiveness to wring the sweetness out. His Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory is one of my favorite underrated pop records – smart, full of memorable melodies and balanced on the fine line between power pop and garage.

The good news is that his new project, I Love Math, is very much more of the same, though perhaps with a bit more of a country slant. The "same" part is not surprising – the Deathray Davies has always been Dufhilo and whoever else was around, and he's brought two other ex-Deathrays (Jason Garner and Andy Lester) into his new band. The country part also makes sense. The non-Deathray guy in I Love Math is Phillip Peeples, the drummer from the Old 97s.

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4325

I just love this song...how about you?

jenny — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:37:56 GMT

Here's one of my very favorite songs, cast out into the void...if no one's reading this, I might as well post things I like, right?

It's called "Plastic Elvis" and it's the first song on 1991's Son of Walter by Bevis Frond...I don't know what's happened to Bevis Frond (really Nick Salamon and whoever else is around), but it's been an awfully long time since I heard anything about him.

Sunday covers...if there's anybody out there

jenny — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:32:23 GMT

My friend Max, who does the design and layout for Pure Music, sent me a mix a couple of weeks ago. It's all pretty good, but right now my favorite thing is a very freaky cover of "Great Balls of Fire" by Teitur.

Hazmat Modine for funky Friday

jenny — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:22:08 GMT

I picked this up at the local used shop for $6, and god-damn, it’s a good one. Hazmat Modine is apparently a Brooklyn-based collective of jazz and blues enthusiasts who breathe life and spit blood into classic prewar styles. On this disc, Bahamut, they bring in the Tuvan throat-singers Huun-Huur-Tu for three songs, somehow finding the common language between electric blues, New Orleans funeral jazz and whatever the hell Tuvan throat-singers do.

The record is a couple of years old, but it’s on the Barbes imprint, which, you might remember, belongs to Olivier Conan of Chicha Libre…same kind of cool, fresh take on traditional styles.

King Khan...I'm going, are you?

jenny — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:09:36 GMT

Like Blair, I've been sorting through my concert-going options lately, trying to stick mostly to close-at-hand Northampton and avoid going to Boston in these $4 a gallon gas days...and it's really not bad, what they've got on offer. Like my husband is going to see Mudhoney and the Cynics tonight (I've seen them and we can't all go, cos it's a school night), and on Monday, I'm going to see Grand Archives. Further out, I am very much looking forward to King Khan, the garage rock outfit that won my heart, soul and body with this free mp3.

So, what are you going to see this summer? Anything cool?

Chris Mills

jenny — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:46:49 GMT

So, here's the thing, about five years ago, at my very first SXSW, I was sitting on the grass at Po-ke Joe's with songwriter Bill Foreman and my editor George Zahora, getting quietly blitzed (they were selling beer tickets 10 for $10) at the Hideout showcase of Chicago artists, and Chris Mills came on stage. It was just one guy with a guitar, how interesting could that be? And indeed on the slower songs, the word of the day was zzzzzzzzz. But the rock songs were something else altogether, more visceral and exciting and able to pierce through a thick fog of warm weather and alcohol. They still are, on the evidence of Mills' latest album Living in the Aftermath, reviewed today in PopMatters.

Chris Mills, Living in the Aftermath (Ernest Jenning) Chicago songwriter Chris Mills has been around for a decade or so, alternating his sensitive, guitar-man ballads with kicking, rocking countrified romps. These latter songs are way more fun, and it’s good to see him delivering a passel of them in Living in the Aftermath. “Atom Smashers” is clearly the best, a biting indictment of poseurs and criminals, from Hitler and Tojo, all the way down to the Gitmo softball team. “All’s Well That Ends” is almost as good, a horn-charging, piano-banging rampage through rock and Americana territories. The title cut swaggers and struts through a country mile of political metaphors, swaying slightly in a headwind of drunken fiddle, banjo and organ. Mills is backed on this and other cuts by a cracking band—David Nagler on piano and organ, Silos regulars Drew Glackin and Konrad Meissner in the rhythm section and Bloodshot resident pedal steel genius Jon Rauhouse sitting in. The slower songs—“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Such a Beautiful Thing”—are pretty enough, but feel a little diluted, like just adding water to Okkervil River. Still if you like a little political acumen and dry humor with your Saturday night wreckage, the hard-living, whiskey swilling rock songs on this album are just the ticket. [Amazon]

Hot Snakes sheds more skin

jenny — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:27:17 GMT

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Obits, Rick Froberg’s new post-Hot Snakes project and now it’s John Reis’ turn. You might have seen Night Marchers in Mojo’s “Bands to Watch” wrap-up last month, alongside buzzy ands like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes. Here’s a review of the Night Marchers See You In-Magic, published yesterday in PopMatters

Night Marchers See You In Magic (Swami) See You in Magic, particularly in its first half, is a blisteringly intense, razor-sharp, and surprisingly varied outing that hits all the rough-and-tumble bases you’d expect, and also slips in bits of pop, rockabilly, jangle, and even power balladry. It starts with a flattening onslaught of one-two-three-four punk, its first two songs—“Closed for Inventory” and “In Dead Sleep (I Snore ZZZZ)”—rampaging over brutal garage rock riffs and breaking only in the interstices for any sort of melodic sweetening. Yet even “In Dead Sleep” takes a bit of a turn near the end, its jagged-sweet guitars, like Jay Reatard edging from the pure assault of punk rock into the more stylized jittery-ness of new wave. That only sets the stage for “I Wanna Deadbeat You”, the strongest song on this very strong debut, its tightly harmonized pop chorus slipping seamlessly into a raging 4/4 beat and thunderous guitar riffs. You think about the Replacements, and their meld of hook and mayhem, but Night Marchers have none of that band’s charming sloppiness. They are tight, tight, tight, only the slur of Reis’s whiskey voice hinting at any kind of dissolution.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/57645/night-marchers-see-you-in-magic/

Julie Ocean...always on fire

jenny — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:08:44 GMT

My review of the new album by the DC-based power pop band, Julie Ocean, out now on Transit of Venus. It went up at Dusted yesterday, follow the jump for more.

Julie Ocean Long Gone and Nearly There (Transit of Venus)

"Julie Ocean", the Undertones song from which this this DC-based band takes its name, is an almost spectrally sensitive song, singer Feargal Sharkey's whispery tenor trembling over a subdued jangle of guitars. (There's a sublime, shirtless version of it here. It's not from the Undertones' Ramones-influenced, spiky punk-pop "Teen Age Kicks" era, but from their baroque pop stretch, so you might think that Long Gone and Nearly There would be a fragile, carefully orchestrated kind of record. You'd be wrong, actually, but then these guys have been misleading people that way for a while. Velocity Girl (for whom Julie Ocean guitarist Jim Spellman played drums) was named after a Primal Scream song, but try to find a hint of Primal Scream's hard-pulsing drone in Velocity Girl. Can't be done.

Still, any band named for an Undertones song, even a song on the less raucous, more sensitive third album Positive Touch, can hardly avoid power pop. The chiming guitars, the harmonized choruses, the double-claps, and the fractious calls and responses are practically built into Julie Ocean's DNA. And, no question, these are very good power pop songs, short and punchy and dizzyingly sweet. More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4335

You can’t go home again…

jenny — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:55:45 GMT

Sort of proud of this Elvis Costello review where I wrestle with whether the quite good work of one of my all-time heros is quite good enough…It’s up at PopMatters today.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters Momofuku (Lost Highway)

Elvis Costello, 30 years on since “Less than Zero”, sounds very much like Elvis Costello, abrasively intelligent, rhythmically unstoppable, harsh and soulful at the same time and, er, able to leap genres in a single bound. “American Gangster Time”, the standout among this disc’s rock songs, is a dark-toned triumph, its pessimistic imagery (the song opens with a pretty woman on her knees exchanging sex for drugs) hitched to exuberant rock riffs and a soaring chorus. Nieves’ Vox Continental alone would be enough to transport you back in time 30 years, trilling and squealing above the melody, even without the complex image-heavy lyrics that Costello spits and stutters. And yet, here’s a question: if you didn’t already long for exactly that sound, due to layers of personal history and three decades of affiliation with the Elvis Costello enterprise, would it have the same impact? Would “American Gangster Time” stop you cold the way that “Accidents Will Happen” or “Red Shoes” or “Watching the Detectives did all those years ago? It’s hard to say, but I’m leaning towards probably not.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/59051/elvis-costello-momofuku/

Lousy Robot...not lousy at all

jenny — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:24:57 GMT

Still catching up on all these promos, listening to records I will never have time to review and finding a surprising amount of good stuff. For instance, Lousy Robot, out of Texas, has dropped a really excellent, lo-key guitar pop record called Smile Like You're Somewhere Else. It's produced by John Dufhilo of the Deathray Davies (and I Love Math, more on that later), engineered by Salim Nourallah and includes a cameo by John Lefler of Dashboard Confessional. Here's a really nice smouldery kind of track called "The Man Who Has Everything" with something sort of Flock of Seagulls-ish going on with the guitars.

Unclassifiable but beautiful…Stars like Fleas

jenny — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:17:10 GMT

Some strange and gorgeous avant folk/jazz/pop from Brooklyn’s Stars Like Fleas, reviewed in today’s Dusted, follow the jump for the full review.

Stars Like Fleas The Ken Burns Effect (Home Tapes)

If they didn't create their own source material, you might think of Stars Like Fleas as documentarians, amassing vast quantities of musical reference points, rifling through them like index cards, deciding what's important and what's not and, finally, fitting them all into a cohesive, organic narrative that doesn't feel pieced together. That's my best guess as to what these two Brooklyn-based, organic-electronic artists mean by The Ken Burns Effect, but who knows? Like its predecessor Sun Lights Down on the Fence, Ken Burns lives mostly outside the realm of language and logical explication, in the intersection of grainy, sepia-toned country folk, soul trembling falsetto and free-ranging improvisatory jazz. As singer Montgomery Knott puts it, late in the album, "It's like you can't see for the words."

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4330

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/starslikefleas

And here they are performing “Some Nettles” in NYC last fall

One more..a cover this time

jenny — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:31:11 GMT

I'd heard about this Alejandro Escovedo cover for a while - apparently the Stones' "Beast of Burden" turns up regularly in his rock band shows -- but never actually heard the song. Here's a live version with Chuck Prophet chipping in...nice.

Extraordinary folk blues guitar from Ben Reynolds

jenny — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:25:54 GMT

It’s probably one measure of how slammed I’ve been that I’ve had a record from Strange Attractors in my pile for about a month without even cracking the plastic. I finally got around to it this weekend, and like almost everything out of this Portland, Oregon experimental label, it’s brilliant. (If you’re curious about this label and its artists, you can check out a bunch of mp3s at the label site, which is http://www.strange-attractors.com.)

The record in question is Ben Reynolds’ Two Wings. Reynolds is a Scottish acoustic guitarist who obviously draws on a whole range of influences from American primitive style to raga to (possibly?) flamenco. Here’s the first track, which is called “Holy Spirit.”

Interestingly, the art on the album is credited to Hanna Tuuliki, who is the singer and main creative force behind Nalle (I’ve got a review of this in the pipe somewhere)…small world isn’t it?

Simply Saucer sighted again

jenny — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:21:34 GMT

Another long lost band that, probably, most people have never heard of, Simply Saucer recorded one collection of demos in the late 1970s, then disappeared. (Songwriter Edgar Breau decided to give up the electric guitar and learn how to play acoustic a la John Fahey….) CyborgRevisited, reissued in 2003, collected this band’s forgotten work and, as often happens, kickstarted the idea of an actual physical reunion. Breau and his original bass player Kevin Christoff brought in three new members and recorded their first material in three decades, Half Human/Half Live. As the title implies, it is half studio and half a live recording. This track, “Low Profile” comes from the live half.

Speaking of live, they've got some shows coming up: Jun 19 2008 9:00P Call The Office London, Ontario Jun 20 2008 8:00P Bohemian National Home Detroit, Michigan Jun 21 2008 9:00P Subterranean Chicago, Illinois Jun 22 2008 2:45P Mellwood Arts & Entertainment Center Louisville, Kentucky

And you can hear more tracks and learn more about Simply Saucer here:

http://www.myspace.com/officialsimplysaucer

Shearwater live review

jenny — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:47:02 GMT

I went to a couple of shows in May...here's the first write-up, one more to come some day.

Shearwater + Jennifer O'Connor 7 May 2008: The Iron Horse — Northampton, MA

Shearwater, the Texan indie orchestra headed by Jonathan Meiburg (also of Okkervil River), has nailed the big dynamic surge, the transformation in a breath from breathy Talk Talk-ish imagery to strident rock choruses. Their most fragile, paper-thin washes of sound are always ready to burst into flames; their most triumphant, drum-punctured, piano-pounding frenzies are ever poised to cut to nothing. Meiburg’s songs surge and ebb like natural elements—tides, storms, gusts of wind—wild and untamed, however carefully they are structured and played.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/concerts/59092/shearwater/

The Functional Blackouts aren’t afraid to make it hurt

jenny — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:38:15 GMT

Some loud, nasty punk rock from Chicago…enjoy, but be careful.

The Functional Blackouts The Severed Tongue Speaks for Everyone (Dead Beat)

The Functional Blackouts played one of the loudest, most abrasive sets I've ever seen at SXSW, easily holding their own on a more-than-solid Saturday night bill at Beerland, with the Observers, Clorox Girls and Guitar Wolf. Even the soundcheck was painful, guitar amps turned up to ice-pick-to-the-eardrum levels, kick drum vibrating uncomfortably around the kidneys. When they started to play, it was, of course, even louder, an enveloping, transporting kind of aggression that every punk band aspires to and almost nobody accomplishes. The big song, "Tick Tick Tick Tick," was more or less the audio equivalent of a flame-thrower, fast and unrelenting, burning up everything within a three-yard radius and, all in all, sort of brilliant. My ears were ringing for days afterwards, and I couldn't listen to anything on headphones without pain for at least a week. The bottom line: the Functional Blackouts live at the extreme of noisy and confrontational. They are not afraid to hurt you if that's what it takes to get your attention, and they don't care if you start to cry.

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4255

The amazing Thalia Zedek

jenny — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:41:03 GMT

Holy christ...another review up today! This one covers Liars & Prayers, the new Thalia Zedek album which is currently hovering in the top five or so of my provisional top ten.

Thalia Zedek Band and Prayers (Thrill Jockey) US release date: 22 April 2008 UK release date: 28 April 2008 by Jennifer Kelly

Hey all you "Women Who Rock" editors...you missed one.

Forget the scantily-clad wannabes who dominate most male-fantasy “Women in Rock” features. If you made a short list of women who really rock, who wield fierce guitars and write impassioned lyrics, who tour months on end in vans full of men, who are not anyone’s babydoll or sweet mama or bad girl...well, Thalia Zedek would be in the top five. Since her earliest days with Dangerous Birds and Uzi, through the no-wave years with Live Skull, onto to the slow, clanging dissonance of Come, Zedek has created a kind of take-no-prisoners rock. Her solo recordings, primarily originals but studded with covers of Dylan and the Velvet Underground, have been raw and emotionally honest, stunning in their guitar, viola, and drum simplicity.

Now for her fourth solo effort (including the EP Baby You’re a Big Girl Now), she gathers a full band, adding Consonant bassist Winston Braman and Lost at Sea’s Mel Lederman on piano to her core group of violist David Michael Curry and drummer Daniel Coughlin . Perhaps encouraged by the band’s fuller sound, or possibly just because these louder, more rock-oriented songs demand it, she has opened up on the guitar, cranking slow-churning riffs and massive distorted tones. Liars and Prayers is a bigger, more dramatic, more band-oriented offering than any of Zedek’s other post-Come albums, and an early contender for this year’s best-of lists.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/58561/thalia-zedek-band-liars-and-prayers/

What does it mean to have a favorite album?

jenny — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:08:13 GMT

There's a really interesting essay up at the evil empire right now about the whole phenomenon of "favorite albums," that is, picking just one album that represents everything that you want out of music (or at least what you want to convey to other people). I've been thinking about it a whole lot since I read it the first time and have even gone back to read it again a couple of times, so I thought I would share:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/50774-column-poptimist-15

Mine was London Calling for years and years and years...and then one day, I found that I couldn't listen to it anymore. I don't really have one anymore, though I am very, very fond of Exile on Main Street, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the first Stooges album and The Who Sell Out.

So how about you? Do you have a favorite album? How often do you listen to it? Has it changed over time?

And just on the off chance that some of you aren’t into pop

jenny — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:26:39 GMT

Eat Skull is one of that wave of Siltbreeze distorted-punk-lo-fi family that now (according to Spin no less) goes under the name Shit Gazer…charming, yes? Anyway, My fellow Dusted writer Doug Mosurock has a really interesting review of the new Eat Skull record here: http://dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4312 He does a much better job than I could of putting it into context. If it were me, I’d probably just put up this mp3 of “Dead Families” and say, “Cool.”

Quality pop from the Botticellis

jenny — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:15:07 GMT

Hard to believe it, but I’ve been writing 4-5 reviews a week lately, just like always…You certainly couldn’t guess that by my published output, which has dribbled down to one or two a week. One did slip through somehow and make the Dusted page last week though, a really nice pop record by a band called the Botticellis.

The Botticellis Old Home Movies (Antenna Farm)

It's hard to describe Old Home Movies without sounding dismissive. This first album by San Francisco’s Botticellis is simply a very good pop record, exquisitely arranged and performed. It is a modest triumph, limited in its scope but crafted beautifully. It is not easy to make an album like this, all edges softened, all textures woven into a single iridescent fabric, but it is very easy to listen to one. (More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4233)

Sunday covers...better late than never edition #2

jenny — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:32:33 GMT

I just got a copy of a new split by one of my last year's favorites, Arbouretum, and a new band called Pontiak, wherein both cover John Cale covers.

RobP says they're not very good John Cale songs -- and he knows more about it than I do. But still, I am very much enjoying this, and hope you do as well.

Sunday covers ...better late than never edition #1

jenny — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:23:49 GMT

I was internet-less all day yesterday, so I missed the Sunday covers. (I did see both the Narnia and the Indiana Jones movies this week...and would heartily recommend both to anyone with tweener kids in tow.) But I do have a bunch of interesting covers to share, so I'm plowing on, oblivious to the fact that it's Monday.

It seems too sunny and beautiful to be a Monday anyway.

SO here's my new favorite pop band I Love Math (led by John Dufhilo of the Deathray Davies) covering the Zombies.

Enjoy.

Muxtape #2

jenny — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:05:46 GMT

I’m putting this up at jennythek.muxtape.com, (and also there’s a download link in the comments at 30secondsover.blogspot.com if you want to listen to the songs over an over until you’re sick of them. IMO, it will take a while.) Anyway, as usually, it gets a little weird at the end. If you’re squeamish, you might want to stop after Shearwater.

Elvis Costello, “American Gangster Time” During the MOG strike, I had a fairly extended last.fm conversation with Cody about this album, the gist of which ran like this. Momofuku is fun because it sounds just like Elvis Costello, even down to the keyboard parts (check the Vox on this track and see if it doesn’t take you back, say, 25 years), but especially the voice. However, even the first three tracks, which are quite good, are probably not as good as classic EC, or even the better songs off When I Was Cruel. None of these tracks would stop you cold like the first time you heard “Watching the Detectives” or “Mystery Dance” or “Alison” (which has my all-time favorite fuck-off line…you know the one) or “Red Shoes”. They just remind you of them…so really what we’re buying here is nostalgia, good nostalgia but still.

Thalia Zedek, “Do You Remember” This is the 9/11 song off Thalia Zedek’s fantastic new album “Liars & Prayers.” I just finished writing up an interview with her for PW, which gives the background on the 9/11 experiences that inspired this song…suffice to say that she arrived in NYC that morning without any idea of what was going on. The cool thing about this record is that Thalia has a full band, so it’s a very strong, very rock, very guitar-oriented sound, and I like it a lot.

Lights, “Break, Run, Fly” Another in a string of very cool, female-centric, rock-leaning freak folk records from Greg Weeks’ label Language of Stone. This one reminds me of PF’s “Interstellar Overdrive,” but with pretty harmonies added.

The War on Drugs, “Taking the Farm” I went to see these guys about a week ago, and they blew their monitor about five minutes into the show, so kind of disappointing…but I do really like this song.

Julie Ocean, “#1 Song” Really good power pop, a la Big Star or, ahem, the Undertones (from whence the band name) or even Jim Spellman’s old outfit, Velocity Girl.

The Church, “Hotel Womb” I was writing a show preview for Marty Willson-Piper’s solo gig in Philly, and ended up listening to Starfish again a couple of times, and man, what a great album.

Shearwater, “Century Eyes” Also went to see Shearwater a few weeks ago, and they were selling the new CD Rook that night for the first time ever…so of course I bought one, and it’s rather lovely. This is the rocking-est song.

Sun City Girls, “Mr. Lonely Viola” From the Mr. Lonely soundtrack to Harmony Korine’s new movie. Sun City Girls, who have as much claim to inventing freak folk as anyone, did half the tracks. J. Spacemen (from Spacemen 3) contributed the other half. And there are some clips from the movie, a nun declaring her faith as she drops out the window, Werner Herzog decrying man’s filthy nature…good stuff, but this cut is my favorite. Isn’t it lovely? (Oh, and we have entered into the weird part of the mix, hang on.)

Stars Like Fleas, “I Was Only Dancing” This band sits at the intersection of organic and electronic, improvisation and melody…sort of like Akron/Family’s first album and very, very beautiful. It’s from the album The Ken Burns Effect, so you might want to look at old photos while it’s on.

Make a Rising, “Your Karmic Obstacle” Another freaky, multi-instrumented extravaganza…typically performed in costume. (See the video from a couple of days ago http://mog.com/jenny/blog_post/161385)

Nalle, “Alice’s Ladder” Extremely left-of-center improvisatory folk from a Scottish trio, led by a Finnish singer and kantele player (apparently it’s like a zither).

Charlemagne Palestine, “Tritone Octave 1/2: Part 3” This is cool…minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine discovered a one-of-a-kind instrument called the doppio borgato, a kind of double piano with the lower 37 keys repeated on a ground-level keyboard played with the foot, and recorded a double CD set on it.

I'm back

jenny — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:20:33 GMT

Let's celebrate with Cheap Talk... garage rock hot enough to raise a blister.

Make a Rising

jenny — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:13:11 GMT

Sometimes it seems like half the bands I like...I like because they are so bizarre, the other half becuase what they do is so damned beautiful. (there is a third half in there somewhere for garage bands, but never mind that now.) Anyway, it is rather wonderful when the two elements come together as in this freakishly beautiful and beautifully freakish performance video from the Philly-based, prog-classical-pop ensemble Make a Rising.

Doesn't the piano solo just about break your heart? And at the same time, the dude in the sequins is wandering around the audience making people laugh nervously.

The Modey Lemon

jenny — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:51:36 GMT

Just catching up…this review ran yesterday at Dusted and if you like trippy, groovy, drum-obsessed rock and roll, you could hardly do any better.

The Modey Lemon, Season of Sweets (Birdman) Somewhere around Curious City, the Modey Lemon made a shift in direction, smoothing its rackety, blues-drunk grooves into a Krautish, hallucinogenic trip. You could pin it all on Jason Kirker, who joined after Thunder + Lightning, but the shift is equally evident in Phil Boyd's vocals, no longer abrasive, and mixed substantially lower in the fuzz. And since Boyd has kindly created a muxtape of songs from artists that influenced him on Season of Sweets (mondoboydo.muxtape.com), we can see that it goes deeper than production values. Alongside oddities, like a track from Jesus Christ Superstar, he's included lysergic, drum-happy drone-merchants like the Boredoms, Oneida, Apes and Kraftwerk – not a scruffy blues-rocker in the bunch. About the only thing that hasn't changed on Sweets is Paul Quattrone's ferocious drumming – and that's a good thing, because the Modey Lemon just wouldn't be the Modey Lemon without it.

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4286

The last dip for now...

jenny — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:40:13 GMT

I know I've been on and on and on about this big Dipper reissue, Superconductor, a 3 CD set of the band's long out of print (and some never in print) output. It's my favorite music so far this year. Anyway, this is probably my last post about it, unless it figures in the year-end wallow. It's a feature, based on interviews with Gary Waleik and Bill Goffrier, and I wrote it on my MOG holiday this weekend. Follow the jump for the full 3000 word opus.

Lost in Space: The story of Big Dipper

From its casual late 1980s beginnings, through three landmark Homestead albums and a heart-breaking ill-fated jump to the majors, Big Dipper’s story tells you everything you need to know about talent caught in the money machine. Yet, now 15 years after Big Dipper’s break-up, there’s also room for optimism, as a great, overlooked band finally gets the reissue it deserve. “I thought there was a good chance that we would never have all of our best material on one collection,” said Gary Waleik. “I’m really thrilled that we finally do.”

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/736

Acoustic guitarists...not necessarily listening to acoustic guitarists

jenny — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:45:19 GMT

As you may know, every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. I wrote the bios this week for two acoustic guitarists from Tompkins Square Records' compilation Imaginational Anthem, Vol. 3, Cian Nugent and Nathan Salsburg.

You can read all about them, and what they’re listening to (the Gun Club! Sizzla!), here:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/735

I’ve written a fair amount about the Imaginational Anthem series, which began as a way to dig up recordings from the old Takoma-style fingerpickers (John Fahey is the marquee name here), as well as some of their younger followers. I wrote this story for Neumu about the first edition:

http://www.neumu.net/datastream/2006/2006-00002/2006-00002_datastream.shtml

I don’t have a copy of the third iteration of this series, so I can’t offer you a clip from either of the guys I email interviewed above. But why not celebrate this exceptional series with the song that gave it a name, “Imaginational Anthem,” played by Max Ochs, sometime in the late 1960s. (He has a famous cousin named Phil, in case you were wondering.)

Acoustic guitarists...not necessarily listening to acoustic guitarists

jenny — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:45:19 GMT

You can read all about them, and what they’re listening to (the Gun Club! Sizzla!), here:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/735

http://www.neumu.net/datastream/2006/2006-00002/2006-00002_datastream.shtml

Indian Jewelry hits the road

jenny — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:44:10 GMT

This has been happening a lot lately. I’ll get some kind of hip, happening CD in the mail. On inspection, the band will turn out to be the bastard child (or legitimate child, so hard to keep track) of some band I drooled over at Splendid years ago…usually to the world’s utter disinterest. As they say on Wall Street, sometimes being early is sorta like being wrong. Anyway, this time it’s Indian Jewelry, and here’s what I said in Philly Weekly:

Indian Jewelry Mon., May 12, 8pm., $8. With Lesser Known Neutrinos. Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 Frankford Ave. 215.739.9684. www.johnnybrendas.com

You may not care, but it made my day when I found out that dirgy, feedback-damaged Indian Jewelry were, in fact, the current-day descendants of NTX+Electric (and Swarm of Angels and a whole bunch of other bands). Back in 2003 I slavered over NTX’s We Are the Wild Beast thusly: “Almost every track buries its hook under off-putting atonalities, skin-stripping dissonance and blinding waves of feedback. It’s the kind of aggressively noise-filled wrapping that cuts your hand as you reach for the melody, yet the hooks are undeniably there.” Five years later these guitar-pedal terrorists still inter radiant pop melodies under miasmic soups of distortion. Main difference: This time they’ve got the bloggers on board. (J.K.)

Here are the remaining dates: 05/08 - New York, NY @ Cake Shop

05/09 - Hanover, NH @ Fuel Rocket Club (Note: The world’s oldest, squarest rock journalist is hoping to make this one…where they’re playing with Parts and Labor!!)

05/10 - Providence, RI @ AS 220

05/11 - New Haven, CT Sundazed Bar

05/12 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas

05/14 - Washington, DC @ The Red and The Black

05/15 - Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506

05/16 - Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light

05/17 - Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree

And for history buffs, here’s the review I quoted from 2003.

http://www.splendidmagazine.com/review.html?reviewid=107067540751881

Curtis Mayfield DVD review

jenny — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:33:04 GMT

I've been talking about this review for a while, and here's the finished product.

Movin' On Up: The Music And Message Of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions Director: David Peck, Phil Galloway, Tom Gulotta, Rob Bowman Cast: Curtis Mayfield, Altheida Mayfield, Sam Gooden, Fred Cash, Johnny Pate, Andrew Young, Carlos Santana, Chuck D (2008) Rated: Unrated US DVD release date: 6 May 2008 (Hip-O) by Jennifer Kelly

Most people, asked to name a Curtis Mayfield song, will come up with something from Superfly, the superlative title track, spectrally funky “Freddy’s Dead” or the ethereally ominous “Pusherman”, all classics of the ‘70s funk era. There’s no question that these are great songs, full of biting social commentary and lacerating funk grooves. Yet for Mayfield, a serious, thoughtful man with long roots in the civil rights movement, it must have rankled that his best, most commercially successful songs were from the soundtrack to scenes of drug abuse and social degradation.

Ironic, yes, that the soul singer dubbed ‘the preacher” or “the reverend”, whose luminous “People Get Ready” became an unofficial anthem of the Freedom Rides, should be so closely associated with the fallout years, that post-Vietnam period when heroin took over the black neighborhoods. Movin’ On Up, an expansive documentary, tells both halves of these interlocking stories: the early years when Mayfield, along with Impressions Fred Cash and Sam Gooden sang high, eerie harmonies about a better world; and the later ones when his incendiary funk band sketched a nightmare scenario of poverty, dysfunction and crime.

The split for Mayfield, as for many soul musicians, came in 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated. “Curtis who had sung about the triumph and the glory of us coming together as a people was now faced with a reality that I was faced with. Life without a Martin Luther King. Life without a Robert Kennedy. Life without a John Kennedy or a Malcolm X,” says Andrew Young, in an interview. “All of these were people who were voices of hope and they shared a vision. And we’ve been floundering ever since in some ways.”

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/film/reviews/57602/movin-on-up/

I'm going to see Shearwater tonight...

jenny — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:29:59 GMT

I'm not going to whine about it (well, maybe a little) but this has been a hellish spring for me, starting with the death of my dog on April 1, winding its way through difficult taxes, having to pass a homeland security clearance to coach jr. track (with fingerprints! and background check!), and just being insanely, insanely busy. last friday, for instance, my largest, least-turn-downable client demanded that I write five 8-page brochures by Tuesday ... and normally you'd get 2-3 days each. But anyway, I am starting to see a bit of daylight and tonight after the track meet, I am heading down to Northampton to see my first show since SXSW.

It's Shearwater, which is jonathan meiburg's non-Okkervil River project (I hesitate to the use the word "side" implying that it is Robin to Will Sheff's Batman, because, if anything, I'd give a slight edge to Shearwater.)

I haven't heard the rest but this free mp3 of "Rooks" is quite wonderful. Until I do hear the other songs, I'm enjoying the idea that the whole thing is a concept album about chess, but that is probably just wishful thinking.

Voila! and happy spring finally.

http://www.matadorrecords.com/mpeg/shearwater/shearwater_rooks.mp3

The Accidental's There Were Wolves

jenny — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:46:49 GMT

My other review at Pure Music this month was of a new side project from Sam Genders of Tunng and Stephen Cracknell of the Memory Band, two immensely talented guys who, as it happens, complement each other well.

Here's the beginning, follow the jump for more:

The Accidental There Were Wolves (Thrill Jockey)

In their separate ways, Stephen Cracknell (also of the Memory Band) and Sam Genders (also of Tunng) have long explored the boundaries between folk and other genres. Cracknell's Memory Band follows fairly traditional folk melodies and instrumentation, but he is not afraid to slip a Carly Simon cover or an old R&B song into the mix. Tunng adds a shaker or two of electronic experimentation to its pristine folk melodies, and with Bullets, the band turned noticeably toward the pop side of things. So when the two of them get together, as in the Accidental, you can expect folk elements but not folk songs, pop melodies but not exactly pop songs.

More here: http://www.puremusic.com/86a.html

If you like Tunng at all, I don't see how you can fail to see the charms of the semi-title track, "Wolves," but you tell me.

Vetiver's Thing of the Past

jenny — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:41:08 GMT

My review of the new all-covers Vetiver album Thing of the Past just went up at Pure Music, and it started like this:

Vetiver, Thing of the Past, (Gnomonsong) Thing of the Past is a quirky, lovingly considered covers album, unearthing long lost gems and also-ran album tracks. The band wraps these songs affectionately in warm arrangements of guitars, banjo, strings and voices. Yet though the album is worthy on its own terms, it is maybe even more interesting as a hint at how Vetiver has evolved. Or, more precisely, how the band shrugged off the free folk prettiness of the self-titled debut for the far richer, more inclusive vibe of To Find Me Gone. It was, apparently, all in the records they were listening to.

More here: http://www.puremusic.com/86vet.html

You guys are all doing a fantastic job making us jealous that you went to Coachella...

jenny — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:14 GMT

...but not quite as good as this little girl.

http://www.pe.com/entertainment/stories/PE_Fea_Daily_D_coachellakid26.2fd643a.html

Meet the roommate

jenny — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:01:24 GMT

If you haven't met Kent Lambert yet, you've missed one of the good guys on MOG. Here's a review of his latest album, We Were Enchanted, which is up today on PopMatters.

Roommate, We Were Enchanted (Plug Research) Kent Lambert’s first EP, the self-released Celebs, landed in my review pile six years ago, a delicate, somewhat ephemeral first effort embellished with the simplest keyboards and electronic sounds (I called it “sweet but whisper-thin"). His next, Songs the Animals Taught Us, was denser, more orchestrated and altogether more impressive. Still even that pales next to We Were Enchanted, in which Lambert emerges fully from the bedroom, with baroque, emotionally resonant arrangements incorporating everything from string quartet to banjo to bassoon to musical saw. Lambert is working a much larger canvas here than before, in both musical and lyrical terms, stretching out his compositions into lush, subtly textured mini-symphonies of pop abandon.

“Last Dreams of Summer” runs more than seven minutes, building from simple piano chords and voice into lavish post-modern string flourishes. And the title track, though constrained to a smaller palette of glitchy electronic sounds, is lyrically quite compelling. Its sweet-voiced evocations of disaster, “School buses exploding / Volcanos erupting from the tops of skyscrapers / Mustaches dripping with blood” are nothing if not unsettling, contrasting dreamily with pristine keyboard tones and scratchy, percolating percussion. There is one cover—of Lambert’s friend Rhombus’ “Night”—and it has an organic simplicity and directness that contrasts sharply with the rest of the disc. It’s a ukulele-strumming campfire song, leading oddly into the new wave alienation of closer “Isn’t Radio”. There is a banjo tucked into this dark-toned, Cure-textured keyboard sound, but even the world’s folksiest instrument sounds a bit unsettled. Still it’s a lovely uneasiness, couched in synthesized blurts and harpsichord-ish keyboard solos, and resolved by sweeping melodies. Who said pop had to be simple? [Amazon ]

Here's a video of the title track:

There's more at Kent's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/roommate

The Modey Lemon

jenny — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:43:37 GMT

The Modey Lemon killed at this show at SXSW, so I was kind of excited to find a video of it online. I'm on dial-up so I haven't actually been able to view the video, but if it sucks, it's all the camera. The show was a revelation.

There's a new Modey Lemon record coming out pretty soon on Birdman, called Season of Sweets, which I will tell you more about as soon as I figure out how to get 400 words out of the phrase "fuckin' a."

Also a radio show from 2006...pretty great stuff.

http://www.wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=18872&archive=27201&starttime=1:58:21

Julie Ocean

jenny — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:43:17 GMT

I posted a Velocity Girl video a little while ago, and people seemed to enjoy it. Here's one from Julie Ocean, a new band whose members people from Velocity Girl , Glow Worm and Swiz. Youtube's calling the song "Ten Lonely Words", but it's "All Alone" on the album.

It's just good clean power pop, but what's wrong with that?

I'm about as swamped with work as I've ever been, sorry about not posting much lately.

Well, at least he noticed...

jenny — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:22:52 GMT

Steven Wells has a long screed up now at Philadelphia Weekly about how boring Harp was and how glad he is that it's gone.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/?inc=article&id=256&x=harp-on-it&_c=music

There is a schism between people who want to write 'about the music' and people who want to write about themselves. I'm sort of in the first camp, but I am undoubtedly the sort of dull, middle-aged perspective that he's so glad is gone.

anyway, usually when a music publication closes the most depressing thing is that no one cares. At least this is different.

Ecstatic Sunshine’s Way (or the highway?)

jenny — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:58:21 GMT

Just reviewed this rather lovely second full-length from the dual guitar outfit Ecstatic Sunshine who are often seen in the company of Dan Deacon.

Here’s a bit from the review: Ecstatic Sunshine’s second full-length is a far more serene and lyrical work than 2006’s Freckle Wars, less concerned with punk rhythms and discord, more involved in pattern and repetition. The two guitarists, Matt Papich and Dustin Wong, once constrained themselves to the natural, unaltered sound of electric guitar, intercutting pristine intervals with frantic, off-toned strumming. Here, they make freer use of pedals and effects, eliciting watery sustained tones and mirage-like episodes of tremolo. The guitars on Way often do not sound quite like guitars – more like chimes, flutes, even harpsichords, as they pick through luminous, repetitive patterns. Way has just three tracks, two of them over the ten-minute mark, the short one extending more than seven minutes. The three cuts are markedly different from one another, yet linked in mood and approach. All of them stick to the tight, bell-like upper registers of the guitar. All evolve around short, geometrically precise strings of notes. All have a sunny, tranquil quality, tone and silence alternating like light through leaves. And more: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4258

There are the usual streams at MySpace http://www.myspace.com/ecstaticsunshine

You also can hear them playing “Herrons” on my mix at jennythek.muxtape.com

Here they are playing a (non-album) track called “Anagrams”:

And backing up Dan Deacon

No kidding, this is one of my favorite albums of 2008 so far

jenny — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:28:21 GMT

It's by an Austin-based band that's been around for about a decade...and it still came out of the blue and smacked me upside the head.

My review is up at PopMatters today.

Experimental Aircraft, Third Transmission (Graveface) Experimental Aircraft’s Rachel Staggs and T.J. O’Leary have been finding bliss as the maelstrom’s center for going on a decade now, cranking out monumental thunderclouds of altered guitar sound, yet somehow finding serenity at the center. All the dreamy guitar bands can be brought forth as references, yet a few seem especially relevant: My Bloody Valentine, (later) Sonic Youth and Flying Saucer Attack. Like those bands, Experimental Aircraft layers shimmering textures of pedal effects and codeine-paced unearthly vocals. When Staggs takes the mic, as on “Stellar”, you think about the eerie dramas of early Cure. Her turn on “Paintings in the Attic” evokes the noise-inflected gorgeousness of My Bloody Valentine, while “With a Gun” recalls the slow-pulsed dream rock of Lush. O’Leary presides over the more impassioned, rhythm-fractured cuts, the bass-pushed, guitar-squalling “Upper East Side”, the over the top clangor of “Sit Still”. He conjures the earnest yelp of the Rock A Teens on “Agent 23”, the hallucinogenic shimmer of Rather Ripped-era Sonic youth on “So Simple”. Yet while it’s easy enough to make comparisons, Third Transmission is very much its own piece of work. It borrows liberally from an early 1990s tradition, yet takes these ideas one additional step forward. This is a band as loud as its namesake jet fighters, as tranquil as the clouds and sky 20,000 feet up, and the combination of fury and clarity, noise and beauty make Third Transmission well worth checking out. [Amazon]

Chapin Sisters...songs for pretty masochists

jenny — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:49:57 GMT

I ended up double booking myself on a review of the Chapin Sisters' debut Lake Bottom and found that, while the top notes of pure vocal gorgeousness arrested me the first time around, the undercurrents of darkness came through the second. Here's a bit from my second, more downbeat review (not that I didn't like the record this time, it just seemed more murderous) up at PopMatters right now:

"Consider, for example, the lovely 'Let Me Go', which opens in a splatter of guitar notes, then adds the heady, slow syrup of three female voices in harmony...'My baby hates me...' sings one sister, taking the dusky lead, while her siblings surge in wordless sweetness behind her. 'Let me go', she continues, 'I'm so tired of being untrue / Gonna let you find someone that'll do more than I do'. The 'do' becomes a baroque vocal flourish, the simple stem of the song flowering into curlicues and arabesques at its peripheries. The song is interesting, not just for its interplay of luminous harmony and dark subject matter, but because it flips the expected. It's the narrator, a woman, who has done wrong and she wants to be punished for it, unlike so many blues songs where a female mourns the transgressions of another. For women, who are, I think, prone as a gender to self-examination and self-hatred, it's a moment of naked revelation...the 'it's my fault' that's always on our lips given form and expression and melody."

Or, it could just be me...I dunno.

Since these girls are so very, very pretty (in addition to talented and, judging from the bios, super smart), I'm putting up a video instead of audio:

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/57480/the-chapin-sisters-lake-bottom/

Of course, there's more at the MySpace http://www.myspace.com/thechapinsisters

One more from the Kills

jenny — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:19:51 GMT

I'm in Washington DC today, and I was in New York last week...if this keeps up I'm going to feel like a working woman again. But anyway, New York was pretty great, and I saw a bunch of friends, ran around the reservoir with my son, ate Chinese and Thai and chino latino, and did a surprising amount of work, given all that. But man, the city has changed big-time, scary big-time. Every time I go back another great dive is gone, another cheap place to eat leveled for those shiny condominium towers...Even the Lower East Side has a sheen of Disney polish on it now, and that's the last holdout. When it's gone, that's New York as I remember it. Poof.

So anyway, I was thinking about all this from my shiny suburban hotel in Bethesda, MD (which looks never to have been anything other than a posh suburb, but I could be wrong), and up pops this song by the Kills from their very, very strong album Midnight Boom.

So how could I resist?

Pernambuco groove

jenny — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:59:10 GMT

I have been so enjoying Fistula Spume's muxtape.com...and I know he's into Brazilian music so this is one of those Casey Kasem dedications.

It's also my favorite cut from the really wonderful What's Up in Pernambuco, which collects mangue beat pioneers and their followers.

This one's called "Bob". It's by Otto, one of the original mangue beat guys, and it just kind of shimmers, doesn't it?

Foals

jenny — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:46:43 GMT

I've been listening to Foals Antidotes lately, and like most people, I think I was a little bit put off by the sense of slickness. My friend Charlie Wilmouth put it this way, in his review at Dusted: "The trouble with Antidotes, though, is the same as one of the big problems with Bloc Party's Silent Alarm: it's so relentlessly clean-sounding. More than anything else, Antidotes is about the considerable amount of time it must have taken to make it; its eccentricities have mostly been scrubbed away."

I mostly agreed with Charlie. However, in the car yesterday, I put it on again and this time got a little bit more of the chaos and difficulty...in my view a good thing.

You might have heard that Antibalas kicks in horns on the first track and possibly the sax in this one, which is called "Tron."

Ian Matthews reissued

jenny — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:47:05 GMT

Songwriter Ian Matthews contributed to the first two Fairport Convention albums, headed up Matthews Southern Comfort and Plainsong, but he also made two long-out-of-print early 1970s solo albums which have recently been reissued by the Water label.

Here's my review from Dusted today: Ian Matthews If You Saw Thro My Eyes and Tigers Will Survive (Water)

Throughout his four-decade career, the folk-pop songwriter Ian Matthews has had occasional brushes with critical and commercial success, but he has always seemed to shy away from his best chances. He quit the early, definitive version of Fairport Convention after the first two albums. He’d written “Book Song” on the landmark What We Did On Our Vacation, but felt frustrated as a songwriter in a band more interested in dusty traditional folk songs. His subsequent band, Matthews’ Southern Comfort, was meant to be a songwriters collective, though it became most famous for a cover. This second band flourished in the late 1960s, with its rotating cast of British folk mainstays, Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol of Fairport among them. Yet, after the surprise breakthrough success of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” Matthews abandoned that project as well. Faustian bargains didn’t seem to interest him much. What he wanted, mainly, was a quiet place to record, a few friends and some interesting songs to cover.

Matthews got all that in If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes, originally released in 1970, long out of print and now reissued with lavish notes, lyric sheets and credits by Water. Supported by Fairport’s Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny, Andy Roberts of Everybody, Pink Floyd fellow traveler Tim Renwick, as well as King Crimson’s Keith Tippett and others, Matthews debuted with a set of deceptively simple, transparently beautiful songs.

More here:http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4223

Peg Simone's unearthly blues

jenny — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:04:12 GMT

Reid Paley sent me this excellent, self-released album by Peg Simone, a Brooklyn singer/songwriter who plays with his drummer.

Here's my review, up on PopMatters today:

Peg Simone, The Deeper You Get (Self-released) There is no sound quite so unearthly as slide guitar, that wavery, shimmery between-the-notes tone elicited by moving an edge of something—bone, bottleneck, metal or store-bought slide—down the neck of a guitar. Peg Simone, out of Brooklyn, employs the slide to bone-chilling effect here, fracturing raucous rock choruses and sepia-toned ballads into ghost images with its off-tuned eeriness. Her music is poised somewhere between Muddy Waters and Pere Ubu (Tony Maimone recorded this album at Studio G), pure blues tones stuttering across hectic post-punk rhythms, free-thinking modern lyrics bent around the age-old quandaries of love and violence.

Simone uses both instruments—her breathy, rock-centered voice and slide guitar—in a variety of ways during the course of the album. “I Don’t Want to Meet You” haunts its echoing space with shivering slides and gem-like harmonics, while blues-traditional “I’m Calling” is sludgier and more grounded. “Spellbound” begins in a whisper and only explodes into rubber-band slides at the interstices. Yet regardless of whether songs are slow or fast, hard or soft, there’s an undercurrent of threat. “Hey little girl / don’t stick your head in the oven / there’s a rainbow coming / the wind will cool things down,” cautions Simone in opener, “The Sun Is Leaking”, introducing the idea of suicide and betrayal right up front and in her most rocking track. Later, in “Treasure”, she dreams of mutilation at the hand of a lover… and seems not to mind the idea very much. Much is modern about Simone’s take on rock and blues, not least the fact that it’s a woman playing those exquisite slides. But themes like love and hurt are ageless, and maybe built into the DNA of blues guitar. [Amazon]

Blank Dogs

jenny — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:05:06 GMT

I know almost nothing about this band, think they're from Brooklyn, sort of an echoey, synthy, punk/new wave thing, but intense as hell and not posed or ironic as such things usually are.

They've gotten some good word from the Siltbreeze blog (http://siltblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/hysterie-connective-acte-deuxblank-dogs.html)

And they have their own blog as well http://blankdogs.blogspot.com/

They were on the most recent WFMU "heavily played", too, always a good sign. Here's "Three Window Room"

KIller, yeah?

Well, let's try this again

jenny — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:27:47 GMT

This should be Velocity Girl doing "I Can't Stop Smiling," and if it works and you can (stop smiling), you win the grand prize.

The grand prize is this extra copy of the No Age record Nouns that came in the mail this morning, second of two, return address Mark Arm (yes, that Mark Arm, the singer from Mudhoney put my Cd in an envelope...damn).

Are you all sick of Aussie punk rock?

jenny — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:59:03 GMT

Too bad...cos I just found a video of the Scientists doing "Frantic Romantic."

Damn.

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Pardon the double post...but this didn't seem to show up the first time

jenny — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:22:50 GMT

Can I admit that, once, I used to really, really like the Psychedelic Furs?

And if so, can I go even further out on a limb and say that I’m kind of enjoying this cover of “Love My Way” by the Phoenix-based, electro-new-wave duo The Foxglove Hunt? Even though it doesn’t have Richard Butler’s sublime rasp?

Maybe I’d better not. Anyway, here it is, and here’s the Psychedelic Furs in their heyday (which was my heyday, too, come to think of it).

Sunday covers…Vetiver does Hawkwind

jenny — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:04:15 GMT

Vetiver, the SF alt-folk-country-pop group headed up by Andy Cabic (and inextricably linked to sometime member Devendra Banhart, has an all-covers album coming in May. It’s called Thing of the Past and so good that it is extremely hard to pick a favorite…in addition to this cover of Hawkwind’s very first recording, I like their take on Garland Jeffries “Lon Chaney” …and Vashti Bunyan makes an appearance on “Sleep a Million Years” sounding as lovely and untouched by time as ever. But, you know, choices must be made and this one is my favorite.

And just for fun, here’s Hawkwind playing the original, though not really a video.

Great fucking song...from No Age

jenny — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:22:14 GMT

Sub Pop is giving away a No Age mp3 called "Eraser" in support of the upcoming album Nouns and damn, it's a good one.

My friend Mairead Case put every single one of No Age's songs from their last album on her Idolator Singles Ballot (then, inexplicably, declined to list the album itself on the albums list). I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now I think maybe she was right.

Do the Pop...again

jenny — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:38:54 GMT

I wrote a little bit about this comp a month or so ago (see: http://mog.com/jenny/blog_post/151533) but my review of the record runs today at PopMatters, so perhaps we can all bear another post?

Here’s a bit from the write-up:

Various Artists Do the Pop!: Redux Part One (Savage Beat) US release date: 18 December 2007 UK release date: 21 January 2008 by Jennifer Kelly

The Stooges, MC5, and the New York Dolls may have been forgotten in the US for most of the 1970s and 1980s, but in Australia, a whole generation of bands flourished under their influence, the Stooges contingent led by Sydney’s Radio Birdman, the Dolls’ aficionados by Brisbane’s Saints. As a result, Aussie bands anticipated the whole “Rock Is Back” garage revival of the US by roughly two decades, in a tremendous explosion of three-chord, lo-fi romantic bands, many of whom never made an impact beyond their native towns. This two-disc compilation, the second in a series, collects singles, outtakes, and rarities from Australia from 1976 to 1981.

Radio Birdman is probably the best known of these bands, and, through Detroit native Deniz Tek, the obvious point of origin for Australia’s sloppy brilliant, Iggy-referencing vibe. Before journeying to Sydney for medical school, Tek had attended some of the legendary early 1970s Stooges and MC5 shows in the Motor City. When he began forming his Australian bands, first TV Jones (here represented by the 1974 bonus track “Skimp the Pimp") and later Radio Birdman, Stooge-esque aggression and primitivism were upfront, though filtered a scrim of obvious intelligence. (Intelligence and primitivism often seem to go together in garage rock; see Billy Childish, the Dirtbombs, etc.) Later during the heyday of Birdman’s “Funhouse”, that influence spread. At the same time, in Brisbane, the Saints were pursuing the raucous tunefulness of the 1960s Stones and the New York Dolls. Another bonus track, credited to Kid Galahad & the Eternals, highlights an early version of the great “(I’m) Stranded”, recorded in 1974.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/56475/various-artists-do-the-pop/

I’m putting up one of the punk-est (is this a word? You know what I mean.) tracks from the album, “Home Is Where the Floor Is” by the Australian X. (Not the American X, the one headed by John Doe and Exene Cervenka, this is entirely different.)

I made a muxtape

jenny — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:46:17 GMT

http://jennythek.muxtape.com/And somehow, I got from the Functional Blackouts (super noisy punk) to Vetiver (super pretty pop folk) in 12 moves.

Check it out here:

jennythek.muxtape.com

What's On Me_and_the_Horse_I_Rode_In_On's Mind?

jenny — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:53:12 GMT

Does your living room hide a secret CBGBs alter-ego? Does it dream of one day hosting hootenannies like a Bleecker Street dive or blue-collar stomp-downs like a 1970s Stone Pony? (Mine looks like a punk squat right now, but I intend to clean it up fairly soon.) You can let your living room realize its frustrated dreams of glory by hosting a music show right there on your couch, with all your friends around.

Just talk to Henry Toft (mog.com/Me_and_the_Horse_I_Rode_In_On). He lives in Denmark, but he is currently booking living room shows for his friend Christian Kjellvander in cities and suburbs all over the States. We hear that MOG kingpin David Hyman is hosting not one, but two of these shows, and if Christian is not too leery about venturing into rural New Hampshire, there might be one at my house, too. Henry has been working pretty hard with our own LadyC (www.mog.com/LadyC, or Connie in real life) to promote these performances. Get in touch with either one of them if you want to be involved!

I asked Henry to answer a few questions about his cool project, and here is what he said:

How did you get the idea to do shows in people's living rooms? It's not a new idea. I actually think these shows take place all the time. The thought of creating a network of hosts inviting songwriters to play in their living rooms was very appealing to me. Not only did I want to bring songwriters and fans closer together. I also wanted to help songwriters travel around the world knowing that they have places to play. Knowing that they will be able to make some money doing these shows and be able to keep traveling.

As an artist, what's especially cool about playing in someone's home? Is there a downside? I don't believe there's a downside. I believe that this is a great way for the artists to connect with an audience. I don't want to say that playing living room shows is better than playing at a bar or established venue. It's just different and it enables both artist and audience to connect differently and more intimately.

Why do people usually want to do this, have people play shows at their homes? What's the benefit for them? The experience is the most important reason. People hosting these shows are major music fans. They live for this. I think these people take a lot of pride in helping other people be aware of certain artists and this is a perfect way to make a major difference in regards to finding an audience and keeping the music alive.

Tell me about the friend you're booking these shows for. What kind of music is it? How do you know him? His name is Christian Kjellvander. He's a truly great Swedish songwriter. He's very established in Sweden and around Europe. Been making records since 1996 and has been touring a lot......just not in the US.

Christian grew up in Seattle but moved back to Sweden at 16 where he formed a band. Things went from there. I met him while working in the music business. I immediately liked his music and consider him to be one of my favorite songwriters. We've been friends ever since and I am very happy that he wants to do this tour. Happy for me, happy for him and happy for all the people getting to see him and his wife Karla-Therese live.

Instead of trying to explain what his music sounds like I'll encourage you to go here: www.myspace.com/christiankjellvander

Or here: ww.christiankjellvander.com

It's kind of a logistical challenge, I imagine, to find places within reasonable distance of each other. How is that going? Haha. It's going fine but I expect it to become a real nightmare at some point. Christian will be going all over the place. New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle ........... and anywhere in-between. I am looking at maps, asking people for help, listening to my belly and just keeping my fingers crossed. I do feel extremely calm though. I am sure everything will turn out great.

Why aren't you doing it for yourself? I might do that one day. I'm a family man. I can't leave my family for months at the time. I need them around .......... but I hope that I'll be able to bring them along one day and then do a few weeks here and there. I'm just not there yet. For now it's all about Christian. I wanna do this for him, and I just know that he will make some great shows.

Can anybody do this? Anybody can do this. I am sure every artist can go on a tour like this. Personally I need to be 100% in love with the music. I will not work with songwriters who's music and talent I don't respect. That wouldn't be an honest job if I didn't stick to this rule. They also need to be good people. Loyal, trustworthy and on time. They have to meet a lot of people and be willing to socialize.

Same goes for the hosts. I have to know the people getting involved and make sure that they're up for the challenge. Being nice and friendly can get you a long way, right?

Are there specific cities/areas where you're looking for venues? I am looking for living rooms everywhere. As many as possible. The tours will continue and I don't want people to feel that they have to host a show every time a songwriter comes to town. So..........I would love to have numerous hosts in every larger city.

For now..........New Orleans, Tuscon and Chicago are three cities on my wish-list.........but as I said.......everyone living everywhere are more than welcome to get in touch.

Anything else people should know about this? A document containing everything you need to know can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/?nggz0gwyg04

Contact information is included.............feel free to contact me or Connie anytime.

Finally..........I hope to see many of you host these living room shows, and I hope to see even more of you among the audience.

Night Marchers..crippled by label avarice, but still pretty good.

jenny — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:04:08 GMT

Coupla weeks ago, I wrote about Obits, Rick Froberg's post-Hot Snakes project. Now I'm reviewing Night Marchers, another Hot Snakes offshoot, this one with John Reis heading things up. He's got Tommy Kitsos from (my friend paul's band) CPC Gangbangers on guitar, Gar Wood (!!) from FM Knives on bass and Jason Kourkounis (of Hot Snakes and Burning Brides) on drums...and it's pretty damned great.

It pisses me off though, that such a fantastic record is on a pissy label like Vagrant (via Swami, their garage punk imprint), which means that the disc for the fucking Night Marchers comes as heavily protected as a new Beyonce album. You can't play it in a computer. You can't put it on an iPod. It skips on portables and car stereos. There are no promotional MP3s.

Whatever, here's the band playing "Bad Blood" somewhere, with terrible sound quality and even worse video...but you'll get the idea. You'll have to. It's all there is. (Actually there are a bunch more performance videos, all at about this level of production.)

Unwed Sailor’s pristine warmth

jenny — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:56:40 GMT

Why do all those Midwestern bands – people from places like Nebraska and Chicago and so forth – play their instruments so well? Is it because everyone grows up in marching band? Is it because practice space is so cheap? Do they have more time because they don’t have to have four jobs, like New York band members do? It’s a vexing question…but thank goodness they do, because then we get polished, gem-like instrumental albums like this one from Unwed Sailor.

Here’s my review, up today in PopMatters.

Unwed Sailor Little Wars (Burnt Toast)

The four-note piano figure repeats mesmerically as guitars slash out a series of rising power chords, all complex elements of Unwed Sailor’s post-rock sound held in rigorous, particular relation to one another. Little Wars, the band’s fifth record, opens with the clarity of clockwork, each note clear and burnished, every point and counterpoint carefully considered. And yet, for all the care and precision involved, there is an inescapable sense of joy here in “Copper Roads”, as the volume crests and falls and the various instruments enter and exit the song. Consider Unwed Sailor’s songs the ink-and-wash style of music, outlined meticulously, yet brought to life with exuberant blobs of color. Unwed Sailor is what Omaha’s Johnathan Ford has been up to since leaving Pedro the Lion and Roadside Monument. Here, in recordings drawn from three sessions stretched over five years time, he brings together longtime collaborators Nic Tse and Matthew Putnam and like-minded fellow travelers Bryce Chambers and James McAllister from Ester Drang to realize his dreamy sonic landscapes. Geometrically precise yet warmly organic, serenely unperturbed but with a bubbling undercurrent of mirth, this is what might happen to post-rock if you put it in a warm corner of the garden and allowed it to grow.

And oh, what the hell, one more

jenny — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:05:06 GMT

Here are the Dirtbombs covering Sly and the Family Stone's "Underdog."

It's maybe my favorite Dirtbombs song ever, and it's not even a Dirtbombs song.

The &%#ing Bellrays!

jenny — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:02:45 GMT

I may not be online for Sunday covers tomorrow, so here's one in advance: the Bellrays covering AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." Amazing yes?

Erykah Badu...oh yeah

jenny — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:57:42 GMT

I think a lot of people with much better credentials than I have already posted about Erykah Badu's new album New Amerykah Part One, and if you want an incisive take on how she fits into the contemporary R&B scene, better look elsewhere. Still I have been listening to this album, just recreationally, for a couple of weeks and it seems like a really good one. It's passionate and smart and complicated and angry and very, very physical. And since I've been thinking about Curtis Mayfield a lot lately (see yesterday's post), I'm going to post the track from New Amerykah that most reminds me of him...not like she's copying, just more like she'd heard and loved and learned from him.

It's called "Cell".

People Get Ready

jenny — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:20:13 GMT

I've just started working on a review of a Curtis Mayfield documentary called Moving on Up, which has a really extraordinary wealth of TV show appearances, both for the Impressions and for Curtis Mayfield solo, starting in the early 1960s and going all the way through to an interview in 1996 after Mayfield's terrible accident. I was hoping that YouTube might have a clip from a really bizarre but sort of beautiful mid-1960s performance of the Impressions' great "People Get Ready." It was made for the Dick Clark show and recorded, somewhat incongruously, with the three Impressions in a pleasure boat in a park somewhere. (There's a recurring line about a train coming, but nothing, as far as I can tell, to justify the boat.) Unfortunately I came up empty on YouTube, but they did have this "video", essentially a recording of the song with a photo of the band superimposed. Well, whatever, it's a wonderful song.

And here's a video of the Impressions performing one of their earliest hits, "It's All Right". Look how young they all are.

New Silver Jews...funny songs for terminally depressed people

jenny — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:15:16 GMT

It looks like I'm interviewing David Berman of the Silver Jews next week and so I have been spending a good deal of time with his upcoming Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea. My favorite track, and this partly reflects what's been going on in my life the last couple of weeks, is "My Pillow is the Threshhold." It's about dreaming about people you've lost forever, and it's just kind of beautiful.

Peg Simone and her slide guitar

jenny — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:09:12 GMT

Reid Paley sent me this self-released album by NY-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Peg Simone...and I like it a lot. Ms. Simone plays a very blues-y slide guitar, sometimes to a rock beat, as on this opening cut, and sometimes in a delicate, melancholy way. She's good at both, and reminds me in some ways of the late, great Mr. Airplane Man and in others of Michael Dracula...though she sounds completely different from both.

Here's her MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/pegsimone

And her website http://pegsimone.com

Psych rock ... for wiccans

jenny — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:27:18 GMT

Ex Reverie The Door into Summer (Language of Stone) US release date: 22 January 2008 UK release date: 11 February 2008 by Jennifer Kelly

Psych rock ... for wiccans

Ripe with drama, rippling with rainbow colored acid flourishes, moored loosely with cello and violin and viola, but flapping crazily in the wind, this debut album from Ex Reverie is the most rocking, least traditional sort of freak folk, an ominous LSD daydream that can be entered but not explained.

Of course, this line of freak folk, with the emphasis on “freak”, goes all the way back to Comus, maybe further, as bands from the 1960s on have learned the traditional folk moves only to subvert them, soak them in acid, explode them into shooting star fragments. The line between psychedelic rock and folk is a fluid one, now as then, with bands like Bardo Pond venturing occasionally out of drone into delicate guitar picking, and artists like Devendra Banhart riding multicolored sea horses into styles far removed from porch blues. There are even precedents for incorporating baroque classical strings into the freakiest sort of folk. Just look at recent efforts by Fern Knight, Fursaxa and Rasputina. The bottom line is that Ex Reverie is different, but not unprecedented, following Grace Slick more than Joni Mitchell, opting for trippy, day-glo rabbit holes rather than gentle finger-picked murder ballads.

More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/56609/ex-reverie-the-door-into-summer/

Michael Goldberg put up a track for this album earlier. Try here: http://mog.com/Michael_Goldberg/blog_post/138722

Or the MySpace: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=20558165

I'll try to put some audio up later if I can get broadband.

I Love Math...not really, but I do like this song

jenny — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:24:51 GMT

fI think maybe I've enthused here about the Deathray Davies at least once, and if not, they're one of those wonderful pop bands that balance sweetness and rock on the knife edge without leaning one way or the other. Really, great stuff, I'd recommend anything they've done...and I'd also recommend I Love Math, which is another project that John Dufilho has, along with some talented guys from the Old 97s, Apples in Stereo and the Paper Chase.

Here's "Josephine Street." What do you think?

Lapsed + Nonnon album review

jenny — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:04:52 GMT

My friend Dave Madden used to write at SPlendid with me. He was the total expert on hip hop, IDM, glitch, all those genres that I really do not know enough to write about. He is also a really, really nice guy. One time my son was struggling with some tabs in Guitar One (I think it was "Knockin' on Heavens Door"), and there was a chord that wasn't in any of his books, and I asked Dave, and he sent me diagrams of the chords. Very nice. He's got an advanced degree in composition, and he writes for a Salt Lake City underground magazine called SLUG (I think?), and he's also got a new album out with Lapsed, which I have reviewed, just for MOG, below.

Lapsed + Nonnon The Death of Convenience (Ad Noiseam)

About midway through The Death of Convenience, during a very funny track called "Ad Noiseam" (also the name of the label), the bored, German-accented label owner announces that he cannot release the record now lodged in your stereo, that "It's shit. I mean what is it? Is it electronic? Is it hip hop? Is it IDM? Pick a genre. Make up your mind." The track, my friend Dave (who is Nonnon), explains to me, is a parody of a parody -- his take on Cex's parody of an Eminem skit -- but it's got enough bite that you feel kind of funny laughing. Anyway, honestly, The Death of Convenience is all those things, all mixed up, and that's part of what makes it fun.

The disc opens with "Better Your Best", a Negativland-esque pastiche of self-help samples, the squarest of all possible white man voices opining over a booming, badass beat. Dave says he found the record with the main sample in a carton outside one of his professors' offices, slated for destruction. Self-help, he explains, is a major industry in Salt Lake City...far more so, you would guess, than hip hop/electronic/IDM recording. The combination, though, is intriguing, the big thump of drums providing some sort of italicized irony around super-earnest prosody. The announcer is the sort of person who refers to himself in the third person, the sort of person who begs to be parodized. "Ben Sweetman urges you...to take these steps...which will enable you to gain tremendously...from this..." he intones, his Norman Peal self-assurance buried under the fuzz and distortion of feedback.

"Better Your Best," leads straight into a more conventional hip-hop track, "Dead End Stare (feat. Buck Dexter)", an abrasive, machine-clanking beat overlaid by rapid verses about alienation (a common theme here) and the difficulties of "being a vegetarian in a Coors light town." "Surge" is all glitchy, rhythmic twitch, while "Nothing Left" with its music box overlay and Gumby-stretched vocals, has an icy teutonic sensuality. With "God is a Glitch", we are back into more recognizable hip hop, though the voices of guest artists Nongenetic, Subtitle and Bleubird are chopped and intercut and rearranged almost as much as the scratchy beat. I find myself liking the nonvocal tracks the best -- "Nothing Left" and, particularly, the ominous, echoing "Z Crazy Eyes" are my favorites -- but there's nothing wrong with variety. That "Ad Noiseam" guy sounds like a prime asshole anyway, seeing the world through black and white categories. The Death of Convenience is wickedly, subversively intelligent and funny, and if it doesn't fit into the boxes we have, then we need a bigger box.

Amargosa

jenny — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:17:27 GMT

Amargosa is a local band – two of the three members work at the used CD story I frequent – who pursue the monumental, sheets-of-sound aesthetic of bands like Explosions in the Sky, Red Sparrowes and, as a grand-father-y thing, Slint. Their self-titled, self-released album is pretty damned gorgeous, if you like this sort of thing, though if you get a chance, I’d suggest seeing them live. (Right now you’ll have to come to Keene or Brattleboro to do this, but if you do, you are welcome to my couch.) I saw them open for Witch a couple of months ago (that’s the J. Mascis and parts-of-Feathers heavy metal/punk collaboration) and honestly, they blew the headliners away. Witch was having a tough night, but still…

Here’s “Meyou”, the only track off their debut short enough to post.

If you want more, you’ll probably have to hit the MySpace, which can be found at: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=205354648

Indian Jewelry

jenny — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:09:33 GMT

I think there are few people around into that slow, dark, fuzzy and distorted sound associated with the early 1990s (J&MC, MBV, etc.) and for them, I offer this opening salvo from Indian Jewelry’s Free Gold. The song, called “Swans” is stretched out and trippy, layered with dreamscape-y layers of altered guitar, the underlying beat a physical, animal thing, while the singing floats over untroubled. I like it a lot…hope you enjoy it, too.

Indian Jewelry is heading out onto the road, and I’m thinking I might try to hit the show up in Hanover, NH on May 9th. You should be able to find something reasonably close to you, if you’re so inclined. Okay…dates:

04/18 - Houston, TX @ The Mink 04/19 - Austin, TX @ Emos 04/21 - Tucson, AZ @ Solar Culture 04/22 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo 04/23 - Santa Cruz, CA @ The Crepe Place 04/24 - San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern 04/25 - Eureka, CA @ The Vista 04/26 - Portland, OR @ Someday Lounge 04/27 - Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern 04/29 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge 04/30 - Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive 05/01 - Omaha, NE @ Slowdown Jr. 05/02 - Saint Paul, MN @ Turf Club 05/03 - Chicago, IL @ The Hideout 05/04 - Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room 05/05 - Akron, OH @ Matinee 05/06 - Cleveland, OH @ Beachland 05/08 - New York, NY @ Cake Shop 05/09 - Hanover, NH @ Fuel Rocket Club 05/10 - Providence, RI @ AS 220 05/11 - New Haven, CT Sundazed Bar 05/12 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas 05/14 - Washington, DC @ The Red and The Black 05/15 - Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 05/16 - Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light 05/17 - Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree