Lost In GroVont

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.