Lost In GroVont

An EP a month for a year...

You Ain't No Picasso: New Bishop Allen: "Vain".

After releasing one of my favorite albums, 2003's Charm School, the band got quiet for a little bit. Then, last month they announced that they'd be putting out an EP every month during 2006--leading up to the eventual release of their second album Clementines.

Go to Bishop Allen's website and pick up both the January EP (there is only a few copies left) and the new February disc for five bucks each including S/H. I've been spinning the January EP for a few weeks now and it is brilliant.

Never heard of Bishop Allen? Did you like the soundtrack for Saved!? Bishop Allen's "Things are what you make of them" was on the stereo when Mary skips school for the first time.

Still don't believe me or Matt? They have tracks from both EPs and their debut album, Charm School, available for download on their site.

the albatross mates for life

Matson Jones is all about the dueling cellos and the sometimes distorted female vocals, and they recently released a new EP called the albatross mates for life, but only after a lengthy courtship that can take up to four years. on Sympathy for the Record Industry.

From SPIN.com:

Cellos have never sounded quite so badass as they do accompanying the wounded vocals of Anna Mascorella and Martina Grbac in the Denver-based art-punk quartet Matson Jones.

The band’s name comes from a pseudonym that modernist painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg used when doing commercial work for department store windows in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

From the 7" single a little bit of arson never hurt anyone, yet another confirmation that the b-side is always better:

New York City Fuck Off (live) (mp3)

Recorded at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas on 01 January 2005. (Even though the recording is low quality, Liberty Hall is a great little theatre venue in the only Kansas town worth visiting.)

*If you like cellos that rock, visit the band's website for a half dozen tracks to download.

Of the early album releases, Rubies is a favorite for best of 2006.

A Singer on the Brink of Self-Sabotage - New York Times.

Mr. Bejar has assembled perhaps the best band of his career, along with a singularly exuberant batch of songs. But let's not get carried away. "Destroyer's Rubies" isn't meant as an outreach effort, and it surely won't conquer the indie-rock world, let alone the real world. If anything, this album is defiantly Destroyerish; he sounds more like himself than ever.

The album is brilliant. You can stream the new Destroyer LP from Merge Records.

Following the trend...

Seed: The Anatomy of a Hit Song.

Sociologists at Columbia University set out to test this theory by dividing 14,000 music-loving teenagers into two groups. They then allowed them to pick out their favorite songs by unknown bands. The experimental setup, carried out over the Internet, offered one group of listeners access to other people's opinions before they chose their preferred tracks, while other listeners chose their favorites without any outside input. According to Mathew Salganik, the graduate student who organized the experiment, the group acting under social influence couldn't get their peer's favorites out of their heads.

You can participate in the experiment too. (Although all the songs available were far too similar and mediocre.)

Update: Science Magazine has an article also.

.: Sarah Talks :.

Canadian piano playing goddess Sarah Slean has a blog. Unlike many other band blogs, she writes less about touring and more poetry and prose.

There is a rabbit in the house I am staying in. It lives in a very small cage. I watch it clean its paws and get comfortable in a pile of wood shavings. Such a short list of needs. "What a different organization of cells than mine," I marvel.

Her album, Night Bugs, still gets thrown into the rotation at my house every month or so. She recently released Day One which I will have to pick up soon. If you like girls who play the piano with raw lyrics, you should definitely give Sarah Slean a listen. Since Tori Amos softened the edges of her sound, I've found Sarah Slean to be a nice alternative, lying somewhere between early Tori and Vanessa Carlton. (Yeah, I like Vanessa Carlton.)

Here are a few tracks from Night Bugs that I recommend:

"Sweet Ones" (mp3)

"Duncan" (mp3)

"Weight" (mp3)

Will Sheff at Cafe du Nord on 08 Feb 2006

Last time Will Sheff stood behind the mic at Cafe du Nord, he had a sore throat but still ended up playing for almost an hour and a half with all of Okkervil River backing him up.

On Wednesday, a healthy Will stood alone on the tiny stage with an acoustic guitar, a set of harmonicas, and a keyboard. He kept thanking us for being there and seemed surprised by our applause, looking for our approval after each new song.

Although he played a lot of new songs which sounded great, the highlights were "No Key, No Plan" and a piano only version of "For Real" which was still as powerful as the album track.

He also played a few songs from the other band he plays a small part in, Shearwater.

Moving from the guitar to the keyboard, he was uncertain what song to play, changing is mind more than once. Deciding on a song, he stopped himself to warn us that the theme of the set was moving away from an "anti-Valentine's Day" feel to songs about decay.

The leader of a large band can sometimes flounder in the spotlight of the solo show, but Will Sheff embraced it and brought an enigmatic presence to the stage that was impossible not to watch.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend picking up Black Sheep Boy Appendix. Even though it is only an EP, the album contains some of the best songs from last year.

"Read my lips..."

Barack Obama, U.S. Senator for Illinois, in his recent blog entry writes:

Last Tuesday, the president told us it was time to get serious about America's addiction to oil. Last Wednesday, his advisers told us he didn't mean that literally. To underscore that point, the administration plans to start laying off government researchers who work on the very same renewable energy solutions the president said were our future. Meanwhile, his proposals would bring us back to the same level of renewable energy funding that we had at the beginning of his administration -- before he started cutting it.

I rolled my eyes when GW spoke of wind and solar power during the State of the Union and thought: "That's great, GW, but really? I don't believe you." Unfortunately, I was right.

Ugh, not the Warfield...

...but I probably couldn't afford to go see the Pretenders anyway.

brooklynvegan: The Pretenders & The Go-Go's | Tour Dates including:

Thu, 03/30/06 The Warfield - San Francisco, CA

Lie With Me

I link to SFist.com constantly but that is because they are the source for local happenings in the Bay Area. It helps that they gave me free passes to see a movie at IndieFest last weekend.

Though after watching the screening of Lie With Me last Friday, I was glad that I didn't actually pay for my ticket. It wasn't a horrible film. At times, the cinematography painted beautiful colors on the screen but it felt like a porn film with more attractive actors.

Two people make eye-contact and have a non-verbal moment at party and for half of the movie their relationship is love at first sight without the messy dialogue. They stick to the sex until David's dying father starts making jokes prompting David and Leila to actually start talking.

The couple's parents are the only thing in the film giving the characters depth. It is hard to watch a film when you don't care about the characters even if you are given full nudity. (Seeing the characters naked does not make them three-dimensional!)

What you are left with is two pretty, yet damaged, people who will never be together because they are too fucked up and an audience who doesn't care what happens to them.

Lie With Me stars Eric Balfour and Lauren Lee Smith. Eric played Buffy's "potential friend" in the pilot of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Lauren currently plays The Soup Chef on "The L Word".

IndieFest continues through Valentine's Day at various theatres in San Francisco. The preview for the Danielson: A Family Movie looked promising so I will probably try to catch it at the Roxie.

Track the next pandemic with dollar bills...

Show Me The Money!

To date, more than 76-million bills have been entered into the wheresgeorge.com database. But the website and its tracking abilities are more than a diversion. According to a study published in the January 26th issue of Nature, it may provide important information that will help us understand the next global pandemic.

Scientists are using a website designed to waste your time to track human movement and the spread of disease. Web 2.0 here we come!

"No fair! You got to be God last time!"

Playing God with Ryan Adams.

...with a trio of full-lengths hitting the shelves in the span of eight months during 2005, it’s time to play God with Ryan Adams. First, let’s consider the recording parameters in order of release: the double-disc Cold Roses, a set Dead-icated to 70s roots rock; Jacksonville City Nights, his best album and closest to his roots in Whiskeytown; 29, the erratic and insular song-by-year farewell to his roaring 20s.

Since Ryan Adams acts like he is the god of alt-country, it is only fair that Stylus creates the ultimate 2005 tracklist for Mr. Adams.

Noise Pop 2006

Last year, I saw Ted Leo and the Velvet Teen, discovered the Golden Republic, and was reminded why I didn't like Nada Surf.

San Francisco's Noise Pop 2006, as usual, proclaims itself better than ever and now with self-cleaning action! The website has finally appeared but is still skimpy on information.

Shows I'm likely to go to between March 28th and April 2nd:

• Thursday, 30 March 2006: The National at The Independent
• Friday, 31 March 2006: Jason Collett at Cafe du Nord
  

Shows I might go to:

• Tuesday, 28 March 2006: Feist at Bimbo's 365
• Saturday, 01 April 2006: the Velvet Teen at Great American Music Hall

Tickets to most of the shows go on sale Sunday at 10AM. However, the schedule is still quite bare. A lot of the shows do not have more than an act listed at a venue per night. I hate to buy tickets to one show when something more appealing might appear later.

Asshole walks into a bar...

CBS4 Boston: Manhunt Continues For New Bedford Shooting Suspect.

An 18-year-old is wanted for a brutal hate crime at a gay bar in New Bedford overnight.

The asshole asked if it was gay bar then started swinging a hatchet. Personally, I choose to avoid people who I don't like as opposed to seeking them out to kill them. I prefer freedom to jail but I'm not an idiot.