Lost in GroVont : a blog

And the band I most listened to in 2009 is...Tegan and Sara (no surprise)

Thanks to the release of Sainthood this year and the special place Tegan and Sara's second album - If It Was You - holds on my top 5 albums, Tegan and Sara are the number one listened to band by me this year.

“When she stopped, [Tegan] was like, ‘That was really amazing, Sara. Did you write that today?’ And she was like, ‘Ah, that was Leonard Cohen.’ I was like, ‘Oh… Okay, so we still aren’t that good.’ ”
But they were good enough to write some pretty sweet indie-pop ditties of their own, including “Don’t Rush”, an insanely catchy and urgent synth-pop warning to slow down.

via www.straight.com

The top ten most listened to bands/artists by me in 2009

1. Tegan and Sara continued to be my favorite band in 2009.
2. An Horse released their first album in 2009 - the amazing Rearrange Beds.
3. Metric released probably their best album to date Fantasies this year.
4. The Jealous Girlfriends did nothing exciting in 2009, but Holly Miranda did. See below.
5. Ryan Adams married Mandy Moore and continued to be my first choice for alt-country for the past 12 months.
6. Ani Difranco released an album I didn't really listen to this year, but she has a gazillion other albums I love.
7. The National continued to be cool in 2009.
8. Whiskeytown have been defunct for a long time, but like former bandmate, Ryan Adams, they continue to be a go to listening choice.
9. Sick of Sarah are another new entry to my music library this year.
10. Holly Miranda broke up with The Jealous Girfriends and released an EP and promoted her full length which hasn't been released yet.

list compiled from last.fm music profile

Analyzing music on a Monday

Taking a look at my listening habits for the last week on a Monday. I love Last.fm.

The first single from Michelle Branch's new album was released last week, and it quickly became one of my most listened to tracks on Last.fm for the week. Sooner or Later is closer to The Wreckers' country sound than Branch's solo albums which is a bonus.

All tracks from Metric's new album, Fantasies, are still in heavy rotation with Gold Guns Girls my favorite. And Mel from American Indie turned me on to Noah and the Whale. I'm still trying to decide if just like 'em or love 'em. A few songs have hints of Broken Social Scene which doesn't fail to endear them to me.

Cage the Elephant were also new listens this week. Their performance on Letterman was intriguing enough for me to seek them out, and I have not been disappointed.

Needle in the hay

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness left an ominous message on their MySpace page a month ago:

Things are happening...
stay tuned

It has been two years since their last release, so I'm not sure what that means.

I've started listening to ILYBICD again. Or maybe for the first time. While I always liked Fear Is On Our Side, I listened to it once maybe twice, and it quickly got lost in the shuffle of my digital library. That's the good and bad of having a lot of music in various formats. I may forget about a band or an album, but I also get the fulfillment of rediscovering the sound all over again.

Finding the right album at the right time while performing some mundane task is really important for me since I work from the nearest wi-fi spot and not an office. The music helps to drown out my surroundings, draw in my focus. Music also has a way of making me feel less alone. The right music can keep the motivation going. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness' moody tones sprinkled with '80s keyboards have been perfect sounds to fill the void lately. The long instrumental sessions hinting of Explosions in the Sky without becoming repetitive. ILYBICD is definitely not a replacement for Explosions in the Sky in my library, but Fear Is On Our Side lies somewhere between The Killers and Explosions in the Sky and was created by kids who listened to the same cds and tapes I did in the 80s.

Whatever is happening in Austin with I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, I'm looking forward to a second album.

Dispatch

The Chromewaves post on Kate Nash today spurned a recollection of my recent interest in her record Made of Bricks.

While in Paris and visiting the infamous haunt of Hemingway, Shakespeare & Co., the young girl behind the counter was trying to drown out the live pianist in the back with a track on the computer which instantly caught my ear. (I'm a sucker for a girl playing the piano.) After spending a few minutes looking at books I couldn't carry, I coughed up the nerve to ask the cashier who she was listening to. "Kate Nash" was the reply in an English accent.

I was a little surprised to learn it was Kate Nash. While I had heard of her, I had never been compelled to download the album. After downloading Made of Bricks, though, I wasn't necessarily jumping up and down at my new find, but as I had in the book store, I was enjoying some of the tracks. The piano melodies are good, but the lyrics result in an eye-roll or two when it feels like Nash is trying to hard.

If you too have yet to discover Kate Nash, give the tracks Frank uploaded at Chromewaves a listen and state your own opinion.

The Reason to keep in touch with your friends

The Reason are a Canadian band that has been around for years. However, they have yet to really make a mark as their music fails to stand out from the other guy bands (The Killers, The Stills, Birdmonster, etc).

Fortunately, The Reason have maintained their friendship with a Canadian band that is on the rise, Tegan & Sara. Sara Quin lends her songwriting talent to a single track on The Reason's 2007 release Things Couldn't Be Better.

Unfortunately, the song featuring Sara is the only standout track on the album.

Listen to "We're So Beyond This" here, and you can check out the other tracks from the album on The Reason's website and MySpace page.

The zoo falls into silence.

As with most bands the are composed of a couple, the band ends with the relationship which can be brutal for both the band and the listeners. In the case of The Mendoza Line's last album, the listen is rewarded with some great songs and some throwaway b-sides.

Lane and Rory ran down the pros and cons of intraband dating in this pivotal conversation in "Tippecanoe and Taylor, Too" from season five of Gilmore Girls:

Lane: Need I mention the rock 'n' roll casualties from intraband dating?
Rory: I know they're numerous.
Lane: Not that there's not success stories. I mean, you've got your Cramps, your Yo La Tengo, your Kim and Thurstons.
Rory: Sonny and Cher, the Early Years.
Lane: Plus, you've got bands that have survived breakups: No Doubt.
Rory: Wish they hadn't.
Lane: X, Supertramp, The White Stripes. But in the negative, you have...
Rory: Sonny and Cher, the Later Years.
Lane: Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac. I know of two country music stars whose backup singers shot them in the groin.
Rory: Whoa. That's wicked hate.
Lane: Listen, I'm going to play two Rilo Kiley songs: one pre-Jenny/Blake breakup, one post. Tell me if you hear a quality difference.

The third track on 30 Year Low is a treat for all listeners who urn for the perfect fuck you song after a relationship ends. The opening line of 31 Candles tells you right away where the song is heading: "You left me in the bar for the skirt with the acoustic guitar." And she doesn't go easy on him throughout the rest of the song either. "Thirty-one candles don't a woman make. You didn't ever give me nothin' always take take take."

MP3: 31 Candles - 30 Year Low

Another highlight is Aspect of an Old Maid which is a duet with Okkervil River's Will Sheff.

Bang Bang Bang

Another update: Tickets are not available at any Amoeba store. Only by listening to KFOG or on the day of the show at Café Du Nord.

UPDATE: According to the Spoon mailing list, tickets will be given away. Here are the details:

...we'll be at Café Du Nord in San Francisco. You can win tickets by listening to KFOG and/or buying Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga at Amoeba (Berkeley) on 7/10. There will also be a small stash of tix sold at the door (for cheap) on the day of show. No advance tickets for this one. Rogue Wave opens.

Although I am not very excited by what I have heard of Spoon's new album, my curiosity is peaked by a show that was just announced for a week from Saturday. Here's what we do know:

KFOG Presents: SPOON There will be NO ADVANCE TICKET SALES for this show. All tickets will be sold day of show. Please continue to watch our website for further updates/details. Thank you!

Thank you, too, for managing to do nothing other than make me want to know more.

I'm not even sure if the show is at Cafe du Nord or the Swedish American Hall, but with tickets not being sold in advance, it means waiting in line more than once. Hmm. Saturday is my day off, but normal people also have that day off. Am I going to be able to get in? If the show is at Cafe du Nord, it will be packed with sweaty hipsters, but at Swedish American Hall there is seating and more space. (I saw Britt Daniel solo at Swedish American Hall, and it was awesome. (Read about that show.)

Even a mediocre Spoon album is better than 99% of everything else being released, so you should purchase Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga on July 10th when it is released.

While the rest of the world goes on about their lives, I'll be refreshing cafedunord.com every hour to find out more.

The Last Town Chorus

What does it take to get my attention these days? The following sentence:

Centered around Megan Hickey's achingly plaintive voice and mournful lap steel, The Last Town Chorus trades in sad, slow-burn country vibes with enough spaciness to achieve low orbit.

That one line from a post at the always excellent Chromewaves sent me to eMusic where the debut album from The Last Town Chorus was available for download. As much as I love the look and feel (scratch-n-sniff) of an album, I thrive on the immediacy of downloading music: Change Your Mind (mp3)

From an article in Dusted Magazine online:

Megan Hickey may be the first person inspired to start a band in order to realize country’s affinity with polished ‘80s dream-pop. “Standing in my living room on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn,” Hickey recalls, “I had a sudden and certain feeling about a musical sound – the push of solid ethereal pop (a la Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas) and the pull of country songs, all doused in the feeling of life in New York City.”

It is not surprising that their cover of Culture Club's "Do you really wanna hurt me?" (mp3) is amazing.

Their new album Wire Waltz is only available overseas at the moment but is scheduled to be released in North America this March.

When I did I become someone who listens to country music? Maybe I just needed to find the right musician to spark my interest. I used to loathe country music. Of course, my music collection at this time consisted of mostly Madonna, Bobby Brown, and the rest is even more embarrassing. Now, I do not hesitate to listen music I would describe as country or alt-country. Lap steel. Twang. "Three chords and the truth." I love it.

The New Tragedies

Like most new bands, I rarely remember where I first heard about them. Usually, I listen to a track on a blog and notice that the cd is only $10 when purchased directly from the band site, and I order it. Two weeks later when it arrives in the mail, I look at the return address, shrug, and tell Mailbox Guy that I have no idea what this is. He replies, "Well, then it's like getting a present. It's your birthday and you didn't even know it!" (He's an overly chipper Mailbox Guy.)

With The New Tragedies, I probably first read "...from Kansas City..." and immediately went to their website hoping they didn't suck.

I feel as though I should know about all the bands from the Kansas City/Lawrence area since I'm from there. (Unless the band was a hit in the college bar scene in the late 90s, I'm probably not the first to know any more.)

And here a few tracks from their album VanityVanity. Think Ryan Adams with Jenny Lewis on backup vocals with a little bit more rock than pop stirred in with the country. It's good and slightly different than anything else I'm listening to right now.

Talk To Me (mp3)

Monday Morning Makeup (mp3) (Remind me to include this in a songs about Mondays post later.)

stop hitting on girls

I have this terrible habit of comparing a band very few people have heard of to another band equally as obscure. Montreal based Land of Talk, for example, reminds me of Controller.Controller and Sarah Slean. Now, the Sarah Slean reference is a little obscure, but Elizabeth Powell's vocals occasionally resemble Slean or Chan Marshall. What is important to know is that Powell's voice is sexy and she has a band behind her playing rock music I want to listen to on repeat (which is what I did this afternoon).

Land of Talk's Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss was released in April by Dependent music and is a necessary addition to any indie rock fan's collection.

The highlights:

Speak to me bones (mp3)

Summer Special (mp3)

Two Seconds

Imagine if Sleater-Kinney and the White Stripes mated and produced a spinoff band. The teenaged "Sleater-Stripes" venture would resemble the Bay Area band, Two Seconds.

With drums and a guitar, Sierra Frost and Lily Faden put together thirteen songs on To Pass The Time from Popsmear Records. Call 'em pop bursts since all but two of the tracks clock in at under 2 minutes and are littered with lyrics overheard at the skating rink or lemonade stand. Nothing resembling Colin Meloy here, but it is fun and catchy and that's all that matters with a pop song.

Give these tracks a listen (a little higher quality than what you'll hear on their MySpace page) and look out for what happens on their next record.

Steadfast Kickdrum (mp3)

Pull The Plug (mp3)

New Tuesday

It is purely coincidental that I received 5 new cds today--and it is a Tuesday. I just happened to go get the mail today.

• Say Hi To Your Mom   Impeccable Blahs
• The Velvet Teen  cum laude (Listen here.)
• Two Seconds  To Pass The Time
• Spoon  Soft Effects EP & Telephono (reissue)

Although I have enjoyed listening to all the discs, I'm still not up for a review of each one yet.

Sun don't shine

For someone whose level of sadness can jump from 1 to 8 during a four-minute Ryan Adam's song, I really should listen to less alt-country. Half of my record collection would need to be burned in order for this happen and sometimes I really need to listen songs titled "Drinking Again" (mp3) and "Car Wreck" from Haley Bonar's ...the size of planets. The album is a few years old and can easily be filed between Jesse Sykes and Neko Case in my rotation.

Despite the title, the song that makes the album stand out from every other alt-country release is "Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy" mp3.

If you are interested in trying out Vox, let me know. I have a few extra invites.

Vox Vermillion

Vox Vermillion recently broke up in May of this year but that does stop Standing Still You Move Forward from being a great album. You just can't see them live.

Indie pop sounds are abundant on this album with the tinkling piano leading the way. The lyrics move from "fuck you anyway I though it was funny" to "baby girl loves her kittens" mimicking life's ups and downs.

Those first two years where[sic] great  and I quote "I love you but I don't like you."
-- from "Macbeth" (mp3)

Bonus download...Arrivals/Departures (mp3)

...on the dreamy Monday evening one November...

During Noise Pop this year, I managed to catch the Submarines opening for Jason Collett at Cafe du Nord. A duo bursting with pop energy. They were ecstatic at the show--very appreciative even though the audience was chatting through the entire set.

The music on their first album, Declare a New State!, is full of dreamy, pop songs with sometimes political, sometimes cute. Reminds me a lot of Rilo Kiley pre-More Adventurous with occasional hints of Weezer and the Rentals (especially when John Dragonetti takes over lead
vocals).

This Conversation

Modern Inventions

The track I linked to a month ago, Peace & Hate, is the song that makes me think of the Rentals.

Speaking of the Rentals...Matt Sharp wrote a lengthy piece on their website about stalking Sara Quin:

I asked him if there was a way to obtain Sara’s e-mail and phone number. Access to the former was granted, but to the latter denied...Did I have the nerve to play Sara’s pretty song in that fake, sandpapery, child molester-ish voice of mine?

I met Mr. Sharp. He seems like he'd make a good stalker. The Rentals remix of Tegan & Sara's "Walking with a Ghost" is available on their website too.

A Rant Derivatived From A Negative Memory

The Boy Least Likely To : i took my hits on a dumb road trip.

and listened to some new cds that i bought in lawrence, kansas. i found two great record shops there. kiefs downtown and the love garden. and i found a fantastic second hand book shop there too, where i picked up a biography of anne sexton and andrea dworkin’s autobiography for a couple of dollars.

the shops i went into in lawrence all seemed to be full of cats. the love garden had three cats and i bought some badges with pictures of them on. i liked lawrence a lot. it was the first place we’d been to in america that i could imagine living there. it was quiet and calm, and seemed kind of cut off from the rest of kansas. lots of wizard of oz memorabilia in the shops too. we’ll definitely try and go back there on the next tour.

If more cool bands, like The Boy Least Likely To, would visit Lawrence more often, I might be tempted to move back there.

Yes, Kief's Downtown is a great record store. And the Anne Sexton purchase was probably at the awesome and eclectic The Dusty Bookshelf on Mass Street. However, I have very negative memories of Love Garden.

During my first semester at KU, I took Calc II having taken the equivalent of AP Calc I in high school. The TA for my class wore a Love Garden t-shirt at least once a week, sometimes twice week. I was not prepared for Calc II and my TA was horrible. I walked from my class to my residence hall on the verge of tears on more than one occasion. After dropping the class and taking an Incomplete, I harbor a hatred for all things related to that TA including the Love Garden record store.

I took Calc II at 7:30AM(!) the following semester with a wonderful TA and passed without any difficulty.

Many years later, I visited Love Garden and found it to be a really cool record shop but was still hesitated to climb the stairs to the second floor store.

 

the fork ran away with the spoon

Last time Britt Daniel played a solo show in San Francisco, I was still working overnights and disappointed that I would be unable to attend. The next time Spoon came through town, they played the overpriced Fillmore and there was no way I was going to go. Fortunately, Britt decided to grace us with his presence at the charming Swedish American Hall during Noise Pop.

Armed with a toy box filled beats, like the evening's earlier performer Laura Veirs, and an electric guitar, Britt charmed us all with messed up hair and a modest "I don't know if I can play that" persona. He did play that. He played "Fitted Shirt" during the encore, although reluctantly. It was a great rendition of a song I've loved since I first heard Girls Can Tell.

He went through the back catalogue hitting a few from Series of Sneaks and, my favorite Spoon album Kill the Moonlight, including "The Way We Get By" which is a great live song.

He also played a new song that has been circling the blogosphere since SXSW, "Make Me A Target" (mp3) which I've uploaded for you to sample.

Tonight, I will be seeing Jason Collett in the dungey little basement called Cafe du Nord.

the fate of Kurt Cobain

Seattle's Laura Veirs took the stage at Swedish American Hall solo but with the help of some recorded beats and a loop pedal she created a macrame of sound that filled the large hall. At first, I was put off by her constant need to spend the last 2-3 minutes of a song building layers of vocals and guitars before a slow fade out, but by the end of her set, it was a really nice to see something other than a few chords strummed on an acoustic guitar.

Although I've spent many a night downstairs at Cafe du Nord, Thursday night's Noise Pop event with Britt Daniel headlining was my first time in the Swedish American Hall. The room is vast, in stark contrast to crowded basement venue below. And, the show was seated! The entire show was short--I was there little more than two hours--so standing would have been okay too.

Laura Veirs took advantage the crowd's orderly seating arrangement and walked through crowd while playing "Spelunking" and called for requests. (Silly me, I forgot to request "Rapture".)

Look for more on Britt Daniel's show tomorrow. It's been so long since I blogged, I thought I should spread the night out over two days worth of posts.

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.

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

"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.

Tegan and Sara Update

What are Tegan and Sara up to these days...

The other night in New York after the show At the Hammerstein Ballroom I played some of our new songs that we have Recorded for an assortment of people that work for us and hang out with us. Everyone thought that I might be drunk because we don’t usually do that sort Of thing, but no, I wasn’t.

Hopefully, Tegan's journal entry is a prelude to a break from touring to work on a new album. It is about that time. In the past every two years they've taken four months or so in the beginning of the year to produce a record for a fall release.

There is also an interesting article on NCTimes.com: Tegan and Sara share more than music.

Who said it first?

Yesterday at .: chromewaves.net v6.0:

It can't be any surprise that the ease with which people can constantly access and download new music without any real effort has devalued, at least for many, music. If something doesn't cost you anything, be it money or energy, why should you ascribe any real value to it?

The post is full of links to articles by journalists (pro and faux) and musicians who offer their take on the evolution of music distribution in the digital age.

Seven bucks to enter

If you have never been to Cafe du Nord, you should know that the stage is very tiny. But all eight members of Margot & the Nuclear So & So's managed to squeeze onto the stage and match the brilliance of their debut album, The dust of retreat, during a forty minute opening set tonight.

The band is: Richard Edwards' rugged lead vocals underscored by the soft backing vocals from Emily Watkins who also plays the synth and rhodes organ. A cello and trumpet adding so much to the songs even though the instruments were quiet and not at the forefront of the sound. An electric guitar and bass guitar huddled in the corner but still managing to move around a bit. And two percussionists--one at a drum kit, another with a suitcase full of toys.

A highlight was "Broad ripple is burning" (mp3) which is not on their currently unavailable album, but I cut it from their WOXY.com Lounge Acts performance from 28 November 2005.

You can still download three tracks from an earlier post I wrote on the band. The album is going to be re-released in March, until then you will just have to try to catch them live in a city near you.

You can not avoid the cliche

The Dears have released details on their new album. From the email newsletter:

Lots of strummy, dirty, riffy guitars. Ridiculous drumming and inventive bass-ing. Tons of creative  synthesising. It couldn't be a Dears record without that. There are no strings (thank heaven) and the only brass on the record is Chris from Stars with his F horn on songs like Ballad/Battle of Humankindness. My dad also plays tenor saxophone on a track called Last Breath; he's like seventy-something and apparently still has some chops.

Murray also mentions that he sounds less like Morrissey on the record. Is that good?

Watched Heights and Wedding Crashers recently and this article from Fametracker makes much more sense. Both films are good. Heights is a dark, family drama with good acting and dialogue. Wedding Crashers isn't laugh out loud funny, but if it had been billed as the romantic comedy it is, I would have been less hesitant to view it.

No more boundary-less ant farm to observe. Most of the ants have moved out of my kitchen. I left the house last night to go get drinks, and when I returned, the ants had dispersed.

apologies pour out of me

It has been awhile since I've blogged about a band. I hate to write about what I'm listening to when I'm not listening to anything new. I've been trying to spend less and curb any urge to purchase new cds or vinyl which means less new music. However, I have been listening to the Space Mtn disc a drawing of a memory of a photograph of you a lot lately.

It's dark and moody with Dina Waxman's beautiful voice pulling you in like a blackhole.

The two songs being flung around the blogs are far from the best songs on the album. Hell, I even skip 'em. So here are my two favorite tracks. Try not to tap your foot or bob your head along with the piano on "Oh" and you will fail.

"Oh"

"Undermining"

Space Mtn is from LA, so I don't have any right to complain about the weather up north, but it is hot today and I have ants in my kitchen. Yeah, ants. I've had a pigeon in my kitchen before but not ants. There was only one pigeon and he left once I opened the window wider. There are a gazillion ants. It's like having my own little ant farm on the kitchen wall. While washing dishes, I watched two ants carrying something the size of six ants vertically up the wall. Other ants would come and try to help them, but it only took two ants. You try walking vertically up a wall carrying something six times your size and see how well you manage. And after typing that, I've realized that I need to leave my house more often.

Two Sizes Too Small

Broken Social Scene has updated their Arts & Crafts website with one those annoying flash sites. (I think it was flash before too. Grr.) The site has no new information except for the "Ibi Dreams of Pavement" video.

It has been determined that Charon is half the size of Pluto. The size was determined by measurements taken when Pluto's moon blocked light of a distant star, the technique called stellar occultation. Astronomers also discovered that Charon had little to no atmosphere supporting the theory that "Charon was formed in a collision between two objects early in the formation of the solar system."

Grey's Anatomy now has 3 TypePad blogs for the show. Two are boring and fictitious: written by Joe, the bartender, and an unidentified nurse at Seattle Grace Hospital. The third blog, however, is updated after a new show airs by the episode's writer and is actually interesting. It's full of behind the scenes details and information about how the episode was written.

And if you want to learn something from television, check out the Did You Know section which includes education tidbits from each episode like these:

Living organ donation has become more and more common in recent years. It is possible to donate ½ a liver, one kidney or the lobe of one lung to a relative, loved one or person in need.

GCS stands for Glasgow Coma Scale. It measures three components of consciousness - eye movement, verbal response and motor response.

Why does watching porn help my Aunt Sally cope with her pain? Because porn releases endorphins. It releases endorphins. Vague enough for you? The truth is - we don't know why it works. But, if it does, no doctor will knock it.

Love's Lost Guarantee

SFMOMA has started releasing "artcasts" for your listening pleasure. You no longer need to rent a tape machine with a headset from 1982 to listen to an "educational" lecture about the art you are viewing. The "artcasts" are released in monthly installments with additional podcasts for the main exhibits.

(I'm going to test this out when I go back to check out the Kiki Smith exhibit again this week.)

The much talked about Rogue Wave album, Descended Like Vultures, was one of the few discs on music blog end of the year lists that I had yet to purchase. 10:01 (download from Sub Pop) is a great track I've listened to on repeat but I hadn't been motivated to purchase the album until yesterday. An excess of credit at Amoeba led to multiple purchases. Besides Rogue Wave, I picked up the Birdmonster EP and four 7" (The Kills, Matson Jones, Mountain Goats, and Mclusky). Of course, I ended up spending more than my credit covered but I expected as much. After a few listens to each, I'm not disappointed with my purchases. Birdmonster is a San Francisco band I should be able to see live in the future and their EP has been pimped in more a few music blogs recently.

Taking the 33 from the Mission to Haight is always an experience. (Will the bus make that knife's edge turn onto Clayton or scrape against the cement wall?) Yesterday, a women across the aisle from me, who had been talking to numerous people I could not see, choose to pull out her crack pipe and smoke a bit in response to the mechanical voice declaring that "smoking is prohibited on all MUNI buses." Lovely. I got off at the next stop, not that it mattered, since I bounded down Haight where I inhaled second-hand weed smoke for several blocks.

If you are looking for a good falafel on Valencia, please try Ali Baba's Cave on 19th. Cheap and good. Other places try to charge you extra for hummus and potatoes but not Ali Baba's. Yummy.

Smoking is prohibited on all MUNI buses.

The Globe & Mail proclaims the violin is the secret of Canada's recent success musically.

In the songs of Arcade Fire, the Dears and Stars, they're an integral part of the composition, not only defining the musical mood but laying an essential part of the harmonic foundation. Moreover, the strings don't sound as if they've been tacked on to the arrangement to add a bit of "class," like the string quartet in the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby -- they come across as though part of the music from its inception.

The article also states that Final Fantasy's new album, He Poos Clouds, is scheduled to be released in May.

The Physics Of Meaning

A recent obsession with violins and cellos has led me to the music of The Physics Of Meaning.

After adding the band as a friend on MySpace, I got a message from Daniel Hart telling me that he spent some of his childhood in Emporia, Kansas, which was the nearest college town to where I went to high school.

Emporia is home to a meat packing plant and the 18+ bars my friends and I would  visit my senior year of high school. Daniel wrote a song about the town, "small towns and invisible people", which you can download from their website. I'm amazed that anyone could write such  a beautiful song about a place that smells like meat.

You can also listen to three other songs from the self-titled album on their website and MySpace page. I highly recommend "Manhattan is an island" which combines a multi-layered drum machine beat with a string arrangement that is unlike anything I've heard recently.

The amount of reading I've been doing lately has greatly increased in relation to the decrease in my working hours. I'm sure it also has something to do with the fact that I've been reading mass market paperbacks. Such easy reading of cookie-cutter tales by mediocre writers. (Alas, I aspire to be a mediocre writer with straight to paperback novels but nevermind that.)

After finishing Crichton's State of Fear, I craved more science in my fiction. A new television show I've enjoyed this year, Bones, is based on the novels written by an actual forensic anthropologist, Kathy Reichs, so I picked up Grave Secrets at a used bookstore. In the television show, the title character, Bones, works with a team of quirky smarties and an FBI agent to solve crimes based on what little remains of the corpse--usually just bones. The books are less restricted in that the central characters travel all over the world identifying human remains; however, the characters remain two-dimensional on the page. Even the stereotypical nerds on the tv show are presented with more depth than their counterparts in the books. Although I cringe at Reichs' writing every other page, the forensic mysteries are interesting, and I will probably work my way through the books quickly especially with the frequent rain keeping me inside for most of the day.

Neptune Karaoke

On Beverly Hills, 90210, we were given the Peach Pit After Dark. On Buffy, it was the Bronze. (What is the name of the place Seth "works" on The O.C.?) Veronica Mars is giving us coffeehouse karaoke. Courtney Taylor-Taylor, from the Dandy Warhols, grabbed the mic in the third episode this season, "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang", and it is being officially reported that Spoon's Britt Daniel is going to be making an appearance on my favorite television show.

What kind of stunt musical guest casting is this? Spoon is one of my favorite bands and I love Britt Daniel's voice, but what purpose is he going to serve on Veronica Mars? Taylor-Taylor's rendition of "Love Hurts" was horrible and it disrupted the flow of the episode's story. Is a 30 second appearance by Britt going to bring the legions of Spoon fans (only 10 of which own tvs) to Neptune? I doubt it.

The New Pornographers are going to be opening for Belle & Sebastian on their North America tour? Where are they going to fit everyone? That is going to be a long caravan. No word yet on where they are playing in the Bay Area.

Pre-orders are available for all three formats of the first single off of Belle & Sebastian's The Life Pursuit. Why three formats for Funny Little Frog? I do not know. However, the band realizes the ridiculousness of it all and is offering a reasonable rate for all three with bonus tracks and videos and such. Offer only available overseas so be warned of higher shipping costs.

 

Margot & the Nuclear So & So's

The Dust Of Retreat arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and I've listened to it in its entirety (including the marching band drum solo) at least a dozen times. Sometimes emo. Sometimes rock. Margot & the Nuclear So & So's are a brilliant pop ensemble.

The lyrics are omnifarious. The music is packed with sound--the aforementioned drums, jazz trumpets, cellos, piano...

Occasionally, the acoustic guitar takes over, as in "Jen Is Bringing The Drugs", and we are treated to a folk song.

Or a round of meows!

A sea chanty of sorts.

On a freezing Chicago street.

Dress me like a clown.

RIYL: Okkervil River. Chin Up Chin Up. Colin Meloy.

The mp3s are of lower quality than those on the album and are provided as a sample of the music on The Dust Of Retreat. Please buy the record! It's only $9 and you'll love it!

The start of something

Again it starts raining at one o'clock in the afternoon. Two things in my tiny environment to set my clock by: the rain starts at 1PM and the light in the parking lot outside my apartment goes off at 2:15AM.

Something else I can count on: When Voxtrot's "Raised By Wolves" plays on my stereo, I think, "What Belle & Sebastian song is this?"

Ramesh's recent weblog post details the evolution of Voxtrot including the influences of Belle & Sebastian and The Smiths, so it's okay if I describe Voxtrot as "Belle & Sebastian with a little less twee."

If you haven't heard about the group from Austin, Texas, you will. The next ep, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives, isn't scheduled to be released until the spring. They don't even have a full-length on the horizon yet.

Now, you can check out tracks on their MySpace page and download "The Start of Something" from their website.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, here is "Raised By Wolves" from Voxtrot's current s/t ep you can order from here.

And to compare: Belle & Sebastian's "Expectations".

Without signing on the dotted line.

Kristin Hersh, formerly of Throwing Muses, has been writing frequently in her blog about the trials of a being a career musician without the support of a large record label. Her current band, 50FootWave is offering up their latest recording as a free download. Aptly titled, Free Music, the ep includes 5 tracks from an October recording session.

From 19 September 2005, Kristin writes:

...after many years as a signed artist, with large advances at my disposal, way more people heard of my band without ever hearing the actual music. That band is dead now. My new band is finding it harder and harder to find the small audience we require to sustain ourselves. I find it hard to care about file-sharing when all I ever really wanted was for people to hear, not buy my music.

Even if you aren't a Throwing Muses/Kristin Hersh/50FootWave fan, if you are a music fan you should reading Kristen's blog. She writes unabashedly and intelligently about music, family, and the relationship of the two.

And while you are at download Free Music!

Recorded in Italy for the drunk and the elderly.

The anti-C.S. Lewis? Phillip Pullman has written fantasy worlds for children, but his characters explore human existence without the need of religious symbolism. The New Yorker on-line has a great article on Pullman.

Although I have yet to read the His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman's books have been recommended to me before. After reading the article, I'm even more intrigued.

Need to be inspired?

Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Yuri Ono designs and manages the web site.

Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and see their work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience.

Some of the assignments I want to tackle:

• 27. Take a picture of the sun.
• 45. Reread your favorite book from fifth grade.
• 51. Describe what to do with your body when you die.
• 52. Give advice to yourself in the past.

In an attempt to drown out the horrible sounds coming from a boombox that was bleeding into my studio this afternoon, I listened to the Devics Ribbons ep at a high volume. Full of dense instrumentation by Dustin O'Halloran and the haunting vocals of Sara Lov (think Beth Gibbons), I'm left longing for the new full length cd scheduled for release early next year.

Don't Take It Away mp3 (5816.0K)

Keep Running mp3 (4516.2K)

If the question has no answer is it a question?

One of the few (few) things I miss about the Midwest is thunder and lightning. After this weekend in San Francisco, I think I'll be able to go another year without witnessing a storm as strong as the one I'm currently watching outside my windows. If my lightning math is still good, the strikes are more than 5 miles away with distance increasing rapidly.

A great way to spend a stormy weekend is reading. After the initial lull of the first fifty pages, Micheal Crichton's State of Fear has hooked me in. It's all about global warming. Global warming can be intriguing and suspenseful! I'm a little surprised.

In local music news, Finest Dearest is a San Francisco band who just happens to be playing down the street from me at the Elbo Room tomorrow night. Pretty keyboard tinkling and cello make the sound a little dreary (great for the current weather) but Finest Dearest are indie pop reminiscent of That Dog or a female fronted K Records band. Visit their MySpace page for two tracks from the Pacemaker EP and two demo songs. I highly recommend "Idaho".

Lab Partners

In my high school physics lab, we made holograms, played with magnets, and occasionally set things on fire with the chemistry Bunsen burners. I didn't learn anything, and my grades in physics lab at university proved it. The new album from Lab Partners, Wicked Branches, would have been a nice soundtrack[1] to our goofing off though.

Lab Partners are a four piece from Dayton, Ohio and produce brilliant space rock. Recently, they signed to Reverb Records and you can head over to the Reverb site to download two tracks from the album.

First heard on the WOXY.com Lounge Acts Podcast, I enjoyed Lab Partners' songs so much I converted the podcast into individual tracks. I highly recommend the first three songs.

WOXY.com Lounge Acts Podcast from 02 December 2005

01  Intro
02  Sold Your Soul
03  Blood Moon
04  Snow Cover Leaves
05  Interview
06  Love Don't Care
07 Sensations
08  It's How You Feel
09  Outro

And if anyone recognizes the songs without titles, please let me know in the comments. [update: discovered WOXY archives their playlists so I was able to fill in the blanks]

[1] My high school physics teacher was more of a classic rock fan with CCR and Eagles being our warm up music until the bell rang.

i'm not sick but i'm not well

Do you remember 1998 when Harvey Danger released a song called "Flagpole sitta"? The song was ambiguous. What is a flagpole sitter? But it was catchy and unavoidable if you listened to the radio. (iPods did not exist seven years ago.)

Maybe you are more familiar with the career of Harvey Danger, but I only recently realized they had released a couple more albums and were signed to Kill Rock Stars. More importantly, I found out they released their album Little By Little... as a free download on their website. A noble act, maybe. The band explains the reason behind the free download in a press release:

...it’s important that people understand the free download concept isn’t a frivolous act. It’s a key part of our promotional campaign, along with radio and press promotion, live shows, and videos.

They go on to explain the band would rather everyone hear the album than make money from album sales. Okay.

Although I enjoyed "Flagpole sitta" when I was 18, I had no further interest in Harvey Danger's sound. My opinion of Little By Little...: Blah. If it wasn't for the free download, I wouldn't have heard it at all, so I guess the band accomplished it's more noble goal.

I'll admit it. I download music regularly. Most of the songs are available legally via the band's website, myspace page, or label site. Occasionally, my downloading practices are not on the up and up though. The albums I download illegally are usually not cds I would purchase anyway. When I buy vinyl, I also download the tracks since I can't carry my turntable in my messenger bag. I don't feel guilty about downloading.

The optimist in me thinks the availability of music on the internet exposes more people to better music. I'd like to think my teenage listening habits would be less embarrassing if I had access to the music the way we access it now. The debate will continue until technology makes it irrelevant again.

No best of the year lists here.

A list of five songs I recently downloaded that have been played more than once.

1. Saint Jude's Infirmary -- "The Church of John Coltrane" from the album Happy Healthy Lucky Month to be released in January 2006. (If Hope Sandoval and Stuart David started playing music together?)

2. Maria Taylor -- "Song Beneath the Song" from 11:11. Of note, I never liked Azure Ray or the solo projects of the two song writers, but I do like this one song which I first heard (embarrassingly enough) on an episode of One Tree Hill.

3. Kelley Stoltz -- "Prank Calls" from the upcoming release Below the Branches. I heard Mr. Stoltz dj before a show not to long ago (Fiery Furnaces at Cafe du Nord, maybe?) and this track fits into the sounds he was playing that night.

4. The Februarys -- "All The Time In The World" 

5. Parks & Recreation -- "La La La La La"

The saddest book you've ever read

Please don't judge the quality of Just A Modern Rock Story by the long period of time it took me to read it.

I wanted to read the book because I love Dear Catastrophe Waitress and I love to read. I knew very little about Belle & Sebastian before picking up Paul Whitelaw's biography of the band up to 2004. Now I know too much?

"I didn't want to be singing about school when I was thirty," [Isobel] says waspishly. She thought it was curios that Stuart [Murdoch] should write so much about school? "I though it was a bit disturbing, yeah." To be fair, it's not more disturbing than Isobel actually dressing as a schoolgirl.

A quote from Isobel Campbell followed by a backlash from Whitelaw was a common trend throughout the book.

There is undoubtedly something slightly voyeuristic, almost obsessive, about Stuart's fascination with characters like this, but he writes about them so beautifully, and with such genuine empathy, he succeeds where other writers might sound exploitative.

Whitelaw comes across as a devoted, long-time fan of Belle & Sebastian. However, other than his apparent dislike of Isobel, his writing is honest when an album (Fold Your Hands Child, Walk Like A Peasant) fails to live up to the band's potential.

The book also includes an invaluable resource for Belle & Sebastian fans with an appendix of all official releases, covers, etc. and liner notes.

This is our problem tonight

Rain is flooding the Bay Area but I made it to the Great American Music Hall to see Aberdeen City open for Rasputina.

Going to mid-size shows only to see the opening act is always a little disappointing. Aberdeen City's set was a little over a half hour with about 5 minutes devoted to technical difficulties when the drummer broke a microphone. Rob McCaffrey was playing drums with two broken fingers and food poisoning and still managed to bang the drums hard enough to break something. (Of course, Brad Parker (vocals, guitar/bass guitar) said Rob was playing through the pain. I try to refrain from putting too much stock in between song banter.) The band managed to put forth a strong set though with "God is going to get sick of me" being a highlight.

I look forward to these guys returning to the Bay Area and headlining Bottom of the Hill or the Independent in the near future.

If you haven't gotten a hold of their debut album, The Freezing Atlantic, you can listen to my favorite song off the album here:

Sixty Lives.mp3 (3680.0K)

Next, go buy the album here. The art for the band website and album is beautiful! Even the SFist likes them!

What's good for your soul will be bad on your nerves

For over a year, I've had a great recording of a Jenny Lewis solo show from June 10, 2004, so there weren't a lot of surprises for me when I finally heard Rabbit Furcoat. It is good, really good.

If "I Never" was your favorite song on the last Rilo Kiley album &/or you like Neko Case, you'll like the new album set to be released on January 24th. (The album leaked on to the internet a few weeks ago.)

You can't call Rabbit Furcoat Jenny Lewis' solo album because The Watson Twins are there too. However, the standout tracks ("It Wasn't Me" and "Melt Your Heart") benefit because Jenny's voice dominates with all other vocals minimal or non-existent.

I recommend listening to the cover of the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle With Care" over at gorilla vs. bear. It features Jenny and the Watson Twins with additional vocals from Conor Oberst, M. Ward, and Ben Gibbard.

The only song from the live show at The Echo that didn't make the record is here:

Somebody Else's Clothes.mp3 (3682.3K)

There is a reason why it isn't on the album. It's a good song, but the twelve songs on Rabbit Furcoat are better.

 

Fighting physics to survive

Change is good, I guess. I'm in the process of adjusting to a new schedule and environment and my focus has been blurry lately. Transition is my word of the week.

Aberdeen City is playing at the Great American Music Hall tomorrow and I will be there.

Matador Records has posted an mp3 from the new Belle & Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit. My interest in B&S has been peeked lately because I'm still reading their biography. An iTunes exclusive release of a live taping of the entire If You're Feeling Sinister album is going to be released soon. The new album will be available on February 7th. In the meantime, you can listen to the "Another Sunny Day" mp3 via Matador.

In local music news, Live 105 is hosting a local band competition at Cafe du Nord on the 7th of December. Minipop is one of the bands competing. It's a $7 show on a Wednesday, what else are you doing?

Any advice for adapting to working from home is appreciated.

Angry about a letter he received from his friend

Scenestars is streaming Ryan Adams' third full length release of the year 29. I like Ryan Adams but my interest has waned over the years (post-Heartbreaker). As I listen to the stream though I'm thinking my love for Mr. Adams will be renewed.