Have I mentioned yet just how wonderful the debut album by The Leisure Society is? Well, it is. I hope you've got some disposable income, because if you don't already own a copy of it, I'm about to sell you one.
These two clips made me smile a lot today when I really needed to do that.
Tragic news from Illinois courtesy Jim DeRogatis tonight:
Jay Bennett passed away in his sleep last night, no cause determined as yet.
I haven't the words to put to this loss, but I will say that if you only thought of Jay as "one of the guys in Wilco", you gravely underestimated his importance to that band. Bennett was a genius in the studio and at arranging songs, and was a rather formidable talent in his own right--anyone who's heard his post-Wilco solo stuff...or listened to a Titanic Love Affair disc...or seen him playing guitar alongside folks like Tommy Keene....well, they can tell you the real depth of this loss.
Jeff Tweedy has sold quite a few more records as a member of Wilco than his former bandmate Jay Farrar--who maybe came out of Uncle Tupelo with more native talent--ever has as Son Volt. A big part of the reason for that is that Tweedy has never been shy about surrounding himself with equal talents (Wilco bassist John Stirratt gave up a career fronting his own band to join Wilco 15 years ago to join Wilco, for instance) to push him to higher levels and develop his own abilities. Farrar never had a musical genius and competitor and aide-de-camp and challenger and like Bennett in his band.
Huge condolences to those reading this blog who knew him very well. I'm very sad.
...just a brief, pre-bedtime thought on music I've heard the last 6 weeks:
--new High Strung --new Leisure Society --new Outrageous Cherry --new Hard Lessons (what the hell is going on in Detroit???) --new Green Day --Dark Night Of The Soul project (Sparklehorse fanboy here) --new music from Steve Ucherek's (the late and lamented Living Blue) new band, Village --issue/re-issue of the Pretty Things/Phillippe DeBarge collaboration --The Faraway Places new record (I had it cranked today and was thinking that it was the best-sounding guitar record I'd heard this year) --new Office album
Honestly, I can't remember a better 6 week run in my personal music history than all this stuff. One great record chases another out of my iPod or CD player at alarming speeds. If Dragoon gets around to getting their years-in-the-making debut out soon, my cup will have truly overspilled itself.
For now, my eyes hurt. I need to write something about The Hard Lessons, and probably Outrageous Cherry soon, but I'll get to them later or sooner.
...got word today from the folks behind the folks who are the folks in The High Strung about the "Monday-Wednesday-Friday" project. On those three days, the band will post a new song not available on any record. They mention that sometimes the song will be a live recording, or an alternate take, but most of the time it'll be a brand new song no one (outside of, presumably, the band itself) has heard before.
Cool!
They're also blogging, adding awesome photos and all kinds of stuff like that. Here's the blog, and you're welcome:
I hereby promise to not ever refer to Derek Berks as "David" ever again, too. The High Strung are what a Wes Anderson movie would be if it was a rock band, and I mean that in the most praiseworthy way possible.
2009 is shaping up to be the best year for new music (for me anyway) since 2006 or so. Too much great music, too little time! Still, there's a record out now that has simply chucked every other record off my playlist, and it occupies my senses. When you're hearing songs from a record in your dreams, waking up with them running through your mind, and generally just totally possessed by these songs...well, something's up.
Before I get to the record and band here, I want to put them in a larger context. I want to talk about something I call "Muttfactor". Back when Creem was still semi-readable, they did a story on the Replacements and referred to them as the most lovable mutts playing rock and roll--and it's always the mutts who have the real staying power over the purebreds; mutts never let you down, and they're wise, wise, wise beyond their years, and so gloriously easy to love and embrace and cheer for.
My 1990's-era Mutt band was the glorious (and now seemingly quietly defunct) Liquor Giants. With the LG's--like the 'Mats--you'd get nothing fancy, just great rock and roll played straight from the heart. If the band seemed to be playing up their own self-deprecating goofy-ness a bit, one spin through an album revealed a depth and heaviness that few other artists could challenge. I miss the Liquor Giants, dammit.
But now I've got a new mutt band to hold on to and never let go of. They're an unlikely group of guys who are clearly dorks in the most affectionate method of applying that term. They're called The High Strung--which is a GREAT name for a band--and I first heard of them on the basis of their wonderful debut album These Are Good Times. That first record was shambolic, messy, lo-fi, loud, and even occasionally obnoxious. It was wonderful. It sounded like the very teen rebel spirit of rock distilled into pure essence and poured into a compact disc. Songs of ragged genius like "Wretched Boy" or "Show A Sign Of Life" (with the memorable chorus of "Come on Loretta/Lemme put my free hand up yer sweater") come along rarely in rock, and plenty of bands would kill to get one of those; that those are just two of about a dozen ripping rock anthems on that debut is a small miracle. Have a taste:
Yeah, right? "Wretched Boy" is right there with "Can't Explain", "Teenage Kicks", "I Wanna Be Sedated" and any other teen anthem you'd care to bring up.
After that debut, The High Strung went from being a 4-piece to being a 3-piece. They had some trouble getting their follow-up out (I remember at the time it was listed as "released"--but then wasn't available for order) before ending up on the artist-friendly Park The Van label. They recorded a third album that came out about a year ago. I've gotta come clean now: I listened to the second album, Moxie Bravo, exactly twice before walking away in disappointment. I listened to their third album, Get The Guests a little more, but still kind of wondered: what happened to the noisy, funny, geeky brats who put out These Are Good Times?
I guess I'm too young to have been around when Replacements fans picked up Let It Be or Hootenanny and shook their heads in confusion, wondering what had become of the band who recorded Sorry Ma, but I think I went through the same sort of thing with The High Strung. See, they weren't interested in painting themselves into a musical corner; they're too creative for that. So when they began to develop a more fully-rounded sound, began to bring to the fore the pop creativity that is clearly under the rough-hewn surface of the debut, I sort of missed that.
The High Strung weren't sitting around waiting for me or anyone else to catch up to them. No, these guys were out touring. I mean really touring. I mean playing more gigs in a year than any band I've ever heard tell of. They became literary celebrities of a sort by playing libraries to promote libraries as cool places for younger adults to hang out at. Now I know what you're thinking "Oh yeah! Like that band that re-enacts Harry Potter stuff!" No, not like that. You go see the High Strung play at a library and you're gonna see them play a show just like they'd play at a bar (ok, maybe with their onstage banter a little more age-appropriate), as loud and freeform as they'd play a basement dive. They know kids aren't stupid--play down to them and the library remains uncool. Kick out the jams, though and that's something else entirely. Here they are at the Des Plaines Public Library:
Stuff like that couldn't possibly be any more endearing, right? There's more to The High Strung legend though. See, for nearly 2 years they were most likely what you'd describe as "homeless", since every day in that span was spent either playing a gig somewhere, or traveling in their beatup van to get to somewhere to play another gig. Through little towns in Oklahoma and Idaho, The High Strung would play tiny shows in towns that never really got to see a real live (and very talented) rock and roll band come through. They put up over 300,000 miles on their first van, and then--realizing it was on its last legs--took the plunge and bought a new one. But what of the old van? It was a legend in its own right, a veritable bulletin board where fans were allowed to spraypaint whatever on the sides, the band's only home for a few years of road life. Seems as if the band hit on total inspiration: they drove it to Cleveland and then up the massive set of concrete steps that lead to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
leaving it at the front doors with a plaque that read as follows:
"This is a 1988 Chevy G30 used by The High Strung. Although the odometer reads 18,621 miles, it is actually 318,621 miles. The spray painting was done by various people all over the country but never by anyone in the van. The van contains countless notes, photos and song ideas inspired by those met along the way."
they also attached the following note:
"Dear Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, We believe rock and roll can make man heroic, make man Superman, can make giants out of the audience and artists alike … The High Strung’s donation to you is a wild multicolored beast of a vehicle that, despite its age and demand placed upon it, carried us to 500 shows across America without asking us to cancel one. Oh, yeah, and don’t you worry about any potential towing costs, the keys are in the ignition."
"We believe rock and roll can make man heroic..." Jeez. They should've put that under glass and carved it into the very steel and glass of the Hall Of Fame building--and those words should be displayed at any bar, club, auditorium, music studio, or record store on the planet. Hell yeah.
So yeah at this point, if you're not a fan of at least the idea of The High Strung, if not the band and their music itself, there's something seriously wrong with you. Get out, heathen.
For the rest of you, please do yourselves a favor and check out that new High Strung album I've been meaning to write about for this entire blog post and am finally getting around to doing. The album is called Ode To The Inverse Of The Dude, and for production they've come full circle now, enlisting David Newfeld, hot producer du jour (Los Campesinos!, Broken Social Scene, Super Furry Animals among others). The album is gorgeous and lovely, with only a few peeks at the band's more raucous side. Instead, guitarist/vocalist Josh Malerman has written some of his most personal material here ("I Got Your Back" and "Rope" are stunners and should-be cuddlecore classics). They take a stab at good old fashioned soul music on "Out Of Character" and "Guilt Is How I'm Built", and then deliver the incredible, all-over-the-map sort-of instrumental "House Party" to finish off the record. With nary a song going over 3:30 in length, this small miracle joy of a record speeds by without ever being breakneck, and by the time "House Party" is over you'll be instantly nostalgic for spinning the whole thing again. Not only is Malerman fully on his game here with the songwriting, but the rhythm section of Chad Stocker and Derek Berk demonstrate why they may be the best bass and drum duo you've never heard of by keeping everything moving at snappy pace that manages to be unhurried when its supposed to be. (Stocker is simply a bass guitar god; if you dig the bass, meet your new favorite bassist.) The other neat trick this record turned for me: I'm re-visiting those 2nd and 3rd albums I'd dismissed before, listening to them in an entirely new light and totally, totally falling in love with them too now. Crazy, right? No one is supposed to take 2 years to "get" a record.
What Ode To The Inverse Of The Dude really is is a triumph of feeling and heart over anything else. You can feel the emotion and sweat and tears and joy that went into recording this amazing disc. They poured it all out here, and you can hear that. The High Strung are rapidly becoming my favorite band; they're the mutts of rock, waiting for you to dismiss them as silly or ugly or inconsequential, and then able to spring a song like "Anyone" or "Real Stone" on you to confound every expectation you had of them. They make the heart glad and the world a better place for them being in it and making music.
Here, let's have some damn music from the new disc:
...and so is one of the very best records of the year. The album (pictured above) is called Mecca, and it is by a once-Chicago-now-suburban-Detroit band called Office. In just a second I'll tell you how you can get it for free without having to don an eye-patch and put a parrot on your shoulder; Office main-man Scott Masson wants you to have it for free, y'see.
At any rate, let me first mention that if you're a fan of tuneful music that is willing to take some chances and follow a melody line down blind alleys and make unexpected twists and turns (think Loud Family/Game Theory, or New Pornographers, or XTC) then I'm thinking you're going to love Office. Masson writes wonderfully interesting songs that go all over the place without ever wandering blindly (ok, maybe "Trainwreck DJs" needed an editor). He can arrest you with an immediate hook (as on the double-entendred "Enter Me/Exit You"), or build one slowly and then deliver the goods in a glorious chorus ("Ridiculous Plans").
There's some "you don't really want to see how sausages and laws are made" gruesome details to the tortured (and eventually free to the public) release of Mecca, but I'm not particularly interested in them (suffice to say that my fanboy-ism of Mitch Easter and Scott Miller should tell you all you need to know about the folly of joining a "learn the songs" band and expecting to someday wield input over important things like artistic and personnel decisions). What I am interested in is how wonderful this lovely, brilliant record sounds.
Enough of my yakkin' as Marty DiBergi would say. Let's get you to the Mecca download page, which can be found right here:
I am so pre-disposed to hating any sort of music that the latter half of the Oughts tags with the "folk" label that I'm sort of surprised to recommend one of my happiest discoveries of the year to you with full knowledge that the folk tag fits it perfectly.
The album is called The Sleeper, by UK band The Leisure Society. The LS is a 5-7 piece band with former Telescopes and friend-of-other-famous-talented-people Nick Hemming on lead vocals and various stringed (banjo, guitar, etc.) instruments. Trust me when I say that this disc is a must-have, chock full of some of the prettiest and best-arranged music you'll hear all year. Need a 3am soundtrack? This is it. Need morning music to get a sunny day started? Here you go. Need a soundtrack for a rainy afternoon? Again, perfect choice, right here.
I suppose my biggest problem with the recent variety of "folk" music or folk-influenced music has to do with the same bias I have against recent varieties of "pop" or "power-pop" music. In both genres, it seems far too easy for lesser talents to come up with songs that sound the right notes without actually being interesting on their own merits. In folk, you get some good harmonies, a gentle acoustic strum, and for too many artists that's the whole problem, licked. So, for every Gorky's Zygotic Mynci or Skipping Girl Vinegar bathed in wonderful golden glow you have to wade through thickets of terrible, forgettable dreck.
I obviously approached this record with some caution, ready to keep it at arm's-length. That lasted about 30 seconds in to the song "A Short Weekend Begins With Longing", with it's Jackson Frank-inspired vocal phrasing by Hemming. It fell away completely by the chorus of the Ivor Novello Prize-nominated single, "Last Of The Melting Snow". The Sleeper sounds at once both effortless and painstaking, full of gorgeous bits of fiddle, ukelele, flutes and other assorted strings set in perfect service to the wonderful melodies they're part of.
From my hometown comes word that Joe Thebeau is busy recording a follow-up disc to the record that I think is still the single best CD to have come out in 2006, the remarkable Escape Velocity by Finn's Motel. Thebeau, the singer/guitarist/songwriter of note in the band has once again enlisted the ace assistance of 3/4ths of Prisonshake--Robert Griffin, Steve Scariano, and Patrick Hawley (one of America's sexiest husbands, allegedly; we knew him when...)--and they've done at least one gig where they played quite a few of the new songs, or so I'm told.
At any rate, Thebeau recently did a radio show on KDHX where he performed acoustic versions of a couple of new tunes, and you can hear that right here:
With all the hype around other records due out this week, I'd like to at least call a little attention to an absolute gem of an album I've been listening to for the last month, a record that should get official release tomorrow.
The album is called Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning, and it is the 6-years-in the making product of a California-by-way of Boston band called The Faraway Places. To read the band's own promo materials, they'd have you believe that krautrock pioneers like Can and Neu were a huge influence on their sound. I...guess I hear it. More than that--in fact much more than that, I hear what sounds like a great fat slab of brilliant American rock and roll, a sound that puts me very much in mind of the music that came flowing like a torrent out of the southeastern United States back in the early-to-mid 1980's. I hear echoes of Pylon and early B-52's (Chris Colthart and Donna Coppola can't help but sound a wee bit like the early days of Schneider and Pierson on the bouncy "The Sun Goes West"), traces of Windbreakers and Primitons...and a production sensibility that sounds right out of the good ol' Drive In Studio.
To be more clear: the guitars on Rain/Thunder/Lightning sound totally fuzzy and totally kick-ass. The hooks on the album go deep and pull you in, even when they're buried ("F-F-F-F-Fall Down" is the best example; you know that the song title just *has* to be part of a totally kick ass chorus, but they actually ratchet up the tension in the song and make you wait for the coda for the sing-along payoff--but what a payoff it is!)
Maybe the best song on the disc is the incredible and memorable "You Can Cry". The song is a slow-building stunner that uncorks an awesome George Harrison guitar figure in the chorus, and it just pushes the song into the upper realm of the best songs of the year so far.
The Faraway Places really want you to hear their record for free, so do yourself a favor and head here and give it a bunch of listens:
Still blown away by 21st Century Breakdown, I'm happy to report.
I've read a number of reviews from blogs, magazines, newspapers, etc. on the record over the last few days. Many of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Far too many, however, seem to have assigned the review to a writer clearly in over his or her head and not up to the task.
I'm talking most specifically about the number of writers (especially in the UK press) who seem to be hung up on the relevance of Green Day's lyrics of social/political angst in light of the band being millionaire Grammy winners. Then there's the clueless jackhole from SPIN, who seems to be mortally offended that Billie Joe & Co. might still express feelings of anger and disillusionment in the post-Bush rainbows and unicorns era of St. Obama.
Here's a memo for those folks, and any of y'all falling into the same trap, then. What I want you to do is think of the most galvanizing, memorable, impactful rock and roll records of your formative years. Nevermind? Sure, absolutely. Doolittle or Surfer Rosa? Hellsyeah. Slanted And Enchanted? Definitely. Now then. What song, specifically on whatever album you chose (if you chose Bruce Cockburn or Billy Bragg you're disqualified for hating music already, so get off the bus now) really *spoke* to you as an adolescent or post-adolescent? "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? "Debaser"? "Gigantic"? "In The Mouth A Desert"? Now then: tell me what those songs are actually about.
See, those songs are lyrical gobbledygook. 99% of all pop and rock and soul music is lyrical garbage. Take the music and the singer's delivery away from the lyrics and you've usually got some pretty awful doggerel going on. The thing of it is, it doesn't matter what the specific message is; what's important is that the song itself is the message. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" isn't great because it has great lyrics; the song is great because it sounds like it is about something, and that something is teenage rebellion. Who the hell knows what it's actually about, but it sounds totally kick-ass, and that's good enough.
Which brings us to Green Day and 21st Century Breakdown. For all I know, the lyrics are utter tripe, the specifics vapid and empty. I don't care, because it all sounds like a great statement of post-adolescent rage and anger and disillusionment and even hope...and whether it actually is or isn't any of those things isn't the point. It sounds like it could be those things, and that's enough for rock and roll. Don't be the jerkoff egghead in the mosh pit trying to tell us that Green Day is already set for life off royalties for the godawful "Time Of Your Life" song, because we don't wanna hear it when we're pogo-ing to the amazing riff from "Horseshoes And Hand Grenades".
One of the best rock shows I ever attended was in the cold drizzle in Louisville, Kentucky on Derby Eve, 1994. Pavement was playing a set at an outdoor stage called Cliffhangers, and I just remember being in the pit while they did "Conduit For Sale" and all of us drunk twentysomethings, full of piss and vinegar, screaming along with Bob Nastanovich "I'm TRYIN' I'm TRYIN' I'm TRYIN' I'll TRY..." as if those words were some sort of national anthem. They meant nothing, but they felt as if they meant something, and so they did have meaning for us, after a sort. When you finally get to spend some quality time with 21st Century Breakdown--and if you like rock and roll at all, you really should do that--don't get hung up on the McGuffin; just let your goosebumps tell you how good it is.
...and the big musical elephant in the room for 2009 has turned one hell of a trick.
I'm talking about Green Day's over-anticipated, over-hyped, over-everything forthcoming release, 21st Century Breakdown. The trick this disc has managed?
Record of the year.
Ok, maybe. I'm not gonna call it until I spend a bunch more time with it, but I'll throw this out: it is every bit as great as any hype has projected it to be.
Both MTV.com and Rhapsody are currently streaming it. Enjoy!
Although I've not been updating as often as I should or could, I did want to spend a moment saying a fond farewell to two bands that meant a great deal to me over the last few years. First off, anyone who had Myspace connections to The Stabilisers got a rather stark message on Sunday afternoon: "The Stabilisers have split up." No news beyond that, but I do remember the band saying in some previous updates that they were thinking of a hiatus for family stuff for various members, and I guess a full-on breakup was the best way to resolve things eventually. Hopefully we'll hear from the various members down the line.
Next up, shortly after they released their long overdue lp Walk Talk Rhythm Roam, Chicago's The Living Blue surprised few by announcing a split up. I gather that most of the original band was gone, other than singer/songwriter/guitarist Steven Ucherek, so that makes some sense. The good news here is that Ucherek already has a new music project going, a band called Village. No, I'm not sold on the name yet, but the music? The music is awesome. It sounds not very much at all like what The Living Blue (or even The Blackouts) were doing musically--no one's gonna call this "garage rock". Instead, the Village tracks Ucherek has made available have a sort of loose-limbed spontaneity that induce an almost psychedelic vibe, but without resorting to gimmicks like delay pedals and backwards loops and whatnot. Again, connecting the Myspace dots, Ucherek blogged that he'd be going to Portland to record a full-length Village disc in March, and just updated his status there with "New Record Is In The Can". Awesome. I'm not sure whether the Village tracks available on their Myspace site are the finished songs, or if they're versions of those songs Ucherek pretty much self-recorded in Chicago while TLB was in it's death throes....but either way these are some terrific tunes and I can't wait to hear the album that results.
...and so is one of the very best records of the year. The album (pictured above) is called Mecca, and it is by a once-Chicago-now-suburban-Detroit band called Office. In just a second I'll tell you how you can get it for free without having to don an eye-patch and put a parrot on your shoulder; Office main-man Scott Masson wants you to have it for free, y'see.
