Today our album of the day is brought to you by Tom Waits.
rain dogs
The list of personnel is endless, as is the list of instruments used in recording this album. 1985 never sounded so good.
Los Angeles has been creeping in on me for the last few days, so Waits seems all the more fitting here.
Raw, uncomfortable, commanding, thoughtful and meaty – this record shouldn’t have taken this long to reach me. Download here and enjoy yourself an off beat Wednesday.
I discovered this band the good old fashioned way. Radio! After biking to work I like to exercise in the gym and take a shower. (It’s the best move I’ve ever made.) We have our radio in the gym and I tuned to XMU – I like to watch the bands scroll across my desk all day, but I never listen. I like Jake Fogelnest, he does decent interviews and doesn’t talk too long. He brought me some new chillwave (thanks, Rusty, for introducing to me what to call this genre) Washed Out. Although they are on the list of worst performances (maybe?) at SXSW, but their new track got me into the sound. With Toro Y Moi and Dirty Beaches (by Monday I’ll have seen both) I’m finding myself drawn to the euphoric, romantic lo fi (yet highly digital) sonics. So we have our album of the day. Download here.
washed out
Their (Ernest Greene, a Georgian) new record comes out July 12. So far, the album covers are just as catching as the sounds.
apparently the photo appeared in cosmo?
And if you’re looking for a hit about Obama that doesn’t involve Osama Bin Laden (and if you are, here’s an interesting piece with unusual ideas) Vice Magazine brings us their Friday Tyrant.
After a shit storm of a work week, with lots of things changing and getting busier every day, I had a nice find online – a fresh sound. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, record out June 21, also lo fi with some catching drum beats. Check out this new track.
Last night I saw Tame Impala and Yuck. A great show full of rock music and trippy sounds from Aussies and Englishmen (respectively) – their last show together on this tour before Yuck goes to headline themselves (that’s right, they were the opener). I’m glad I got to see it. I got myself a tee shirt with the great Yuck art, done by their lead singer/songwriter, found on their record (download here.) I also asked for any extra posters and they gave me the one right from the front of the venue. All around successful night. Enjoy ya’ll.
yuck (also my favorite onamonapia)
underrated bliss
Of all the bands from the psychedelic era and to go even Further – get it? hahaha – I have declaired in the past and know it’s true that Jefferson Airplane is my favorite San Francisco band. Overshadowed by the Dead and only thought of for White Rabbit (which is on this record), this band is remarkable. They are purely psychedelic, full of musical genius and poetic. Have you ever listened to the lyrics of Somebody To Love? Just watch A Serious Man – growing to be one of the most underrated Cohen Brothers movies. It’s full of this band, weed jokes, dark humor, Jewish humor and lo fi mid sixties mid-western suburbia.
When the truth is found to be lies / and all the joy within you dies / don’t you want somebody to love / don’t you need somebody to love / wouldn’t you love somebody to love / you better find somebody to love
Since getting my records down to the district, I have been revisiting my favorite bands from high school, like Airplane, and I can fall in love with them all over again, just how it was meant to. On vinyl.
It won two Grammys, including Best Alternative Music Album, and debuted at #1 in 1998. After loving on the new record via stream, and recognizing that Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA have grown up to be hot dads (I’m not sure if they are actually dads) I am starting a new, yet long over due love affair with the Beastie Boys. Shame on me. Download here.
hello, nasty
Why is it – thanks Dave – that we hear (heard?) them on rare rotation on modern rock stations (whatever that format is now) and never hear them on any hip hop (or dare I say) hits channel? Too white for one and not white enough for the other? Either way, pay your dues and listen. Cause these men know what the hell they are doing.
Whoah, it’s May. When did that happen? Oh well! Enjoy and download here.
Being an adult has its ups and downs. The downs being bills to pay, whether it’s collecting the bill for dinner and drinks with friends or if you’re paying your rent (vomit.) And the ups, well there are too many to list. So we usually put up with paying our rent because we love our freedom (an American tradition and love affair?). Even with a desk job there is freedom, you might have to look harder to find it than others, but it’s there (note, we should be lucky to have said boring desk jobs.) And those of us with unusual hours and a non-conformist job with non-conformist co-workers, our freedom is free flowing. Which can be tricky, as good as it sounds. You need to learn the balance of complete freedom and some sort of structure. Without any form of guidance would we have anything? Without rules, what is there to break? How could we rebel, and would we want to? Isn’t it easier to not upset the herd, just say yes, and make someone happy even if it doesn’t please you? Or should we stick to our own, just beliefs and possibly tarnish others along the way? These are the things that we learn as we get older. There are more details to pay attention to that we never saw before. Maybe because someone else was doing them for us. Or perhaps we weren’t looking.
Even though I haven’t been a student for a long time (the anniversary of graduation is looming) I am still learning new things. But these are the sorts of things that no one taught us before. There is no curriculum to figuring out the nooks and crannies of everyday, you just have to be there and see how it works for yourself. These ‘b-side’ of life rules come at you every day. You grow to learn that being hungover at work ISN’T fun and that maybe inside voices exist for a reason. And that carpal tunnel IS a real thing. Like my wise (crazy) aunt says, and this is a good phrase I forget too often – people will do what they want to do.
While all of this is OK and very normal, there is another side. The b-side. In a nut, I have learned how to be wrong. While I do what I want to do, so does everyone around me. Being honest about something big and small can open up new doors. And admitting to people that you are wrong and flawed not only brings trust but strength within yourself. I have been wrong before and unable to say it, or maybe it’s that I have never noticed it before? Being vocal about this has become very powerful. I’ve recently found that when I openly admit to being wrong about something, people are surprised and recognize that I am being as honest as possible. Maybe (I secretly hope) they will see it as OK to do themselves. Now that it is a frequent occurrence people seem more willing to tell me anything. Knowing when you are wrong about something is just as important as finding the right answer.
As you may or may not know, for months I have disregarded Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs. After listening to it over and over again, I never saw their popularity and understood why they were blooming. Grammy and all, I still kept listening and couldn’t figure it out for myself. After having been vocal about my distaste for them for too long I had one of those moments when you realize why something is there. All of a sudden it just makes sense, takes on a new form and shows you. Now that I see the value of this record, I can’t stop listening to it. It is epic, 16 tracks long and full of emotion. With great lines of kids’ longing in suburbia driving around, standing with their arms folded tight and wishing to be free – it is a soundtrack (hence the film?) with re-occurring lines, musical themes and two part songs.
So lately I’ve been telling people that I’ve been wrong about it. “You know, I’ve been listening to The Suburbs more and more, and I can’t get enough of it. I was wrong all along.” My favorite part has been the feedback, positive and welcoming. As I let my guard down so do they. People seem happy to hear I’ve finally found what they’ve been listening to. And they are excited to share it with me. It’s not that I let myself experience this. It just happened. And I couldn’t be happier about the whole thing. “…music being the only art without physical form, and therefore the most powerful.”
When you’re bored you can become desperate. After playing out the realms of chillwave and rushing on the Toro Y Moi record, I perused the internet and found a newly reviewed record as some ‘Best New Music’ via Pitchfork last Monday. It was a burst of energy to my ears on a Monday morning that I had downloaded just a few minutes earlier. What a fresh, new sound. I’ve been listening to it ever since and sending it around via Dropbox for friends. You can download it here.
I would link you to the Sasha Frere-Jones article in the New Yorker, but it is a subscription only online reading. He explains how Merrill Garbus who is tUnE-yArDs grew up in Connecticut and studied abroad in Kenya, where she thought she had injured her voice and became accustomed to yodelling her scales and vocals. An advisor encouraged her to do her thesis on Taarab music, so she went to Lamu – an island off the coast of East Africa. That is where her tribal beats and innovations come from. It is a fascinating article.
She has a 2009 release that she put together on, WOAH, Audacity – called BiRd-BrAiNs. Hipster and indie as it seems, which it is, Garbus plays with the capitalization of her name and titles in repsonse to early MySpace days: “to grab people’s attention and to get people to hold down the shift key.” It’s obnoxious to spell out and even the new record, w h o k i l l, does it too. But once you hear the music, you will learn to live with it.
Merrill Garbus
Before this New Yorker review came along, I saw this. Written by our Programming Department’s former intern who went on to intern (and soon be in charge of all of us) for NPR Music. He was interviewing Garbus about the single from the record called Gangster. Her lyricism is touched upon just as much as her unusually beautiful and comforting sounds. She builds up from nothing and tries to take it further each track. The thing about loops is there are so many versions and directions you can take them in. We’ve all heard the same ones before, used over and over again. But we haven’t heard them like this before.
I have grown to love this record and easily can call it one of my favorites from the year. Some of the tracks have vocals that remind me of the female leads on The Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca (my favorite from 2009.) It’s remarkable to hear all the ranges Garbus reaches in her vocals and the detail she pays to her arrangements that build the songs. The music is constructed with ideas and beauty. And it shows.
wednesday
thursday
saturday
I got to see three incredible shows this week. Two of which were desert island top five favorites. Angeline had sent me a dcist link about upcoming shows of the week, which included Aimee Mann at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA. Which I might have originally overlooked due to price and due to the fact that its OUT IN Virginia. But here’s a lesson, if you learn about a show two days before hand, you’ll have a different instinct. Which is to drop everything you’re doing at work to go see Aimee Mann, in the flesh. She is a bad ass, beautiful musician dressed like a rock star. Black leather riding boots and jacket with long blond hair and black horn-rimmed glasses (that looked thick even from where I was sitting.) She played a lot of new stuff, including songs written to compliment the maybe upcoming musical adaptation to her very under-played record The Forgotten Arm - a concept album about a boxer, John, his addictions and his lover, Caroline. She played my favorite, Guys Like Me and the songs you want to hear live like Save Me. Mann was chatty and funny and had the support of her bassist and key player – fender rhodes and baby grand. And, like she always does, she played her own high hat. Overall I was ecstatic to see a hero in person. And even more excited to hear that when she returned to LA she will be recording more. As much as @#%&*! Smilers was weak, I have enough hope that she’ll go back to her poetic storytelling ways, leave behind the repetitive choruses and bring back the verses full of intelligentsia.
Thursday’s show was a treck to a new place. Underestimated distance from the train, and with no lights on my bike I didn’t want to ride into the dark unknown. Ended up walking four miles that night, but it was very worth it. When I asked Nate if he liked Toro Y Moi, and told him that I was seeing him, he told me ”urban outfitters is so gay for him”. While hipsters have united over this guy, I was surprised when the crowd was full of bros drinking can beer, wearing pastel dress shirts and trying to feel OK dancing. I snuck in front of 100 or so people, passed the folks grinding on each other- which was strangely bothersome at this show - and and found kids wearing flannel, sweating and singing along. It was a strange crowd and the closer I got to the stage the more surprised I was of who I found. Overall the show was tight, the band played well together like they had for years and the lights made your mind wander. They were color blobs in a rotating petri dish – or what looked like one – on an overhead projector. The walls were a bit uneven, a nice touch. The light design and construction reminded me of the shows Tom Wolfe wrote about. Toro Y Moi is the brains of Chazwick Bundick, and this is just his sophomore album. Just now is the circut noticing him. When I first heard it, it was great to hear something so fresh that knew where it came from. The remnants of funk and jazz fushion while remaining entirely psychedelic, tied with vocal filters and synth drone provided a retro sound that everyone fails at recreating. The record, Underneath The Pine, is complimented with a weird photoshopped up-close of his mouth and, I believe, some grape fruit? (See above.) But if you give it time and put it down while you still love it, the next time you pick it up- he’ll surprise you again. Its one of those you have to just let play all the way through. Best for train and car rides, check it out.
CAKE exceeded my high expectations. John McCrea was energetic. He sang with his hands like Craig Finn, only with large encompassing gestures to accompany his story like lyrics. The crowd was a combination of young teens and moms & dads with everyone in between. At moments in Italian Leather Sofa and The Distance, we sang louder than they did. McCrea only encouraged it. (At one point he split the audience in two and mandated us lines from Sick Of You, like the quintessential Ben Folds live version of Army, only WAY better.) We heard beauties like Mexico and cuts from the new album, Showroom Of Compassion, that were once overlooked and now stuck in my head. John McCrea is into farming, reminding the crowd that we exist without facebook and that – I’m not kidding here – one day we’ll all die. Which got a huge laugh. It was an evening with CAKE meaning they played two sets. We were all close, sweating, and shouting at the top of our lungs. The bassist played even better than he does on the record and their trumpet player has the chops of a veteran jazz soloist. While the electric guitar ripped, McCrea strummed and beat on his acoustic. I’ve never seen a band love their music so much. They’ve been together since 1991 and their first record came out in ’94. They’ve rumoured that they won’t continue on much longer, so catching the third of three sold out shows seemed like the best way to go. I’d hate living without ever seeing this band live again, but as McCrea told us, everything must come to an end. So instead, I got a tee shirt.
dear brooklyn-
Thanks, Mary, for this one.
Speaking of NYC, there has been lots of musical events going on. Including the sold out LCD Soundsystem mess – that looked like a giant rave. I caught the last hour of it last night on Pitchfork’s live broadcast. I caught Home, All I Want, and of course they closed with New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down with a sea of white balloons dropped onto the crowd. It was advertised on Pitchfork as being a one time watching event and I’m glad I remembered to tune into it. Over at Stereogum, you can watch a bit of it and check out the set list. You can also “Take The Indie Cred Test”. Which is fun.
The night before, The Strokes played a sold out show at Madison Square Garden too. From video of Elvis Costello joining them on stage (he opened!!) it looked like a cool rock show, despite the fact that none of those band members have ANY stage presence, they can play. And they did.
And with more fun with LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy did a DJ session in a series of 89.3 The Current’s called Theft of the Dial. It might be my favorite smart radio pun, ever. (Left of the dial. Get it??) He includes in his set one of my most favorite Talking Heads songs (on my favorite TH record), Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place). When I saw it as one of his favorites it made sense of how the strange rock genius of David Byrne influenced Murphy’s dance punk palate of songs that rise and fall. And after watching the end of their show and how genuine he is, it made me love LCD more than I already had. Thanks James.
monument
jefferson memorial
For those of you interested in my life, the bike is going well. I bought a helmet so please stop worrying. This weekend my parents were planning on coming to visit for the Cherry Blossom Festival, but bad weather and travel plans got them down. It was nice for me though, because I had a weekend here at home without working or entertaining anyone, or traveling to see folks. It has been such a relaxing weekend. With all the free time I barely knew what to do with myself. Angeline and I got over to the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson memorial. There were so many cherry blossom trees that it looked white, like you were looking up into snow. Quite beautiful but cold and windy, crowded and full of tourists who can not control their children. It was fun for an hour. Glad to live here, we escaped after having enough and went on with our lives.
Speaking of which it’s time to continue the habit I’ve built of eating lunch later and later every day. Groove on, folks.
First of all, last night Angeline and I went to see Jo Koy. He’s the bald Asian comic, can be found on Chelsea Lately (I show I’ve never really liked. I just know his stand up.) We got there early for our general admission (great!) seats and met him after the show. He was so funny and down to earth, intelligence really does breed comedy. There was a promoter lurking after the show on the sidewalk handing out fliers. I was happy to partake because he was promoting a not yet scheduled date of Daniel Tosh coming to DC. Nothing makes me happier than the prospect of seeing that man in person. There’s a lesson here – always always go see live comedy. If you never have, its an experience. And when you know the comic, it’s even more worth it. SO. FUN.
I’ve recently (shamefully) JUST discovered Black Cat here in DC. With an awesome bar and well, kind of a cantina, serving veg and vegan foods (in addition to meaty delights.) Another easily accessible dive that I want to find myself at more and more. New things are abound. Even though I hadn’t listened to them before, Peter Bjorn and John’s new record Gimme Some is that fresh wake from boredom I’ve been suffering. And, thankfully I’ve made friends with our neighbor who is reminding me that punk is everywhere (how could I ever need reminding of this?) And bands with three minute songs rock harder than anyone can argue. The 90s are reemerging with Yuck (opening for Tame Impala!) and J Mascis having a solo album that is just as much a beautiful open wound as the new Kurt Vile. There is plenty waiting on the edge of town waiting to challenge you, make you almost unsure of yourself. There is nothing quite like it.
There is this group out called Odd Future Wolfgang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA). Known mostly as Odd Future. They were on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and have been popping up on Pitchfork a lot. I also found this from Esquire. And they were blogged about by NPR over a month ago. A group of 10 rappers from LA, they are dirty like I’ve never heard. As a new fan of hip hop and promoter of its enjoyment, I say – listen. Not for the faint of ear, they are foul and dissonant. Making their own sounds and impressing the hip hop community (music community?) Their ages range from 17 to 23 years old (so they say) and despite those who will tell me that they are boring and too over the top for their own good, I still think they have something to say and create. And people are noticing. There is something about the presence of hip hop in our mainstream culture – how accessible it’s become and where it has come from. Even though the sometimes uncomfortable topics of race can be all that matters in this genre, we can still find it everywhere. Odd Future is not holding anything back. We hear the culture, style, politics and philosophy itself in the music. And while I still feel like an outsider to a genre that doesn’t classically belong to me – every day someone tells me to forget about it and move on. But I still think, with hip hop becoming more and more dominant each day – where do discussions about race begin and end? Confidence and skepticism go hand in hand.