Picks from the pile

This morning I picked out three CDs at random from the pile of promos I’ve received over the last several weeks, and now I’m going to listen to them once and write down some general impressions. I am, of course, far more likely to pitch reviews of albums I’ve actually listened to, so if I like stuff, there’s a good chance I might spend more time on it and write a formal review (Though editors play a role in this, and they can always say no or at the very least, “It’s not a priority.”)

I’m going to try to do this once a week or so, because the piles are hella big and who knows, there might be some good stuff in there. Here we go:

Jay Brannan Goddamned (Great Expressions)
Soft, clever pop, artfully embellished with strings, guitars, piano, but eccentric enough not to cloy. For instance, right now, the guy is singing “I wanna be a housewife/What’s so wrong with that?” in his high smooth tenor, a gender switch that is all the more unsettling because it’s hard to tell from listening whether the singer is a boy or a girl. My favorite cut is “American Idol”, with the memorable line “American Idol/get the hell off my TV.” Yeah, who says you can’t be gentle and melodic and pissed off at the same time? Brannan is frequently a dead ringer for Sufjan Stevens, so if you like him, head over to the MySpace for more:
http://www.myspace.com/jaybrannan

Or Jay’s website:
http://www.jaybrannan.com/page3.html

And here’s a video of the title track, “Goddamned”


The Weeks, The Weeks (Esperanza Plantation)
The cover blurb promises Southern boogie a la the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, but the first song (“Comeback Cadillac”) is more of a post-punker frenzy, with these giant stop-start riffs and not a mustache or southern accent in sight. Not bad, not quite a sale…let’s hear some more…ah, song two, “Teary-Eyed Woman” is all acoustic guitar and glockenspiel, more of a country thing? Nope, now there’s that razory punk riff and straight-up beat…this I kind of like, though it’s all over the place with at least three fundamentally different kinds of songs slapped together. You could pogo to it, no doubt, though, and that is a good thing. The all-important song #3 (have you noticed how many times the third song is the single?) “Altar Girl” is a bit simpler and more conventional, but not bad at all. I’m thinking American Princes as a reference point, a band that’s Southern by origin and occasionally lets it show, but is mostly a straight up rock-punk-garage kind of experience. Here’s the MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/theweeks

Drunk Stuntmen, State Fair
Okay, here’s the Southern Boogie we were looking for, that heel rockin’, back-leaning country blues beat. This band has been around forever and sets up its tents in Northampton, MA. I’m pretty sure we saw them one year at First Night, but this album is still kind of a surprise, way better than you’d expect from a plain label, self-release out of a band that no one seems to have heard of. I am really liking the instrumental break in “Every Third Thing,” a long sidewinding guitar solo, leading into some sort of electric piano boogie, and then a groove-repetitive vocal chorus a la Little Feat. This is my pick out of the three. There are all kinds of Drunk Stuntmen downloads and streams here:
http://www.archive.org/details/ds2008-04-25.flac16

And here’s the MySpace
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=81793593

Wolf Parade and some alternate mid-year bests

A few more reviews from recent days...

Wolf Parade
At Mount Zoomer (Sub Pop)
Rating: Excellent

Towards the end of "Kissing the Beehive", Wolf Paraders Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug bleat nervy cries of "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" over and over again, as if all should abandon this particular ship, still four minutes or so from shore. No one will jump, though since listeners who have made it this far through At Mount Zoomer will have noticed that these two have already set every indie convention on fire. "Call it a Ritual" is a piano-banging pop song fed through an echoing, disorienting hall of mirrors, while guitar-chiming "California Dreamer" makes an anthem out of half-heard radio choruses. From the thumping, surging rhythms, to the anguished yelps to the image-drenched, puzzle-complex lyrics, to the non-linear yet fist-pumping choruses, At Mount Zoomer remakes Wolf Parade's own baroque brand of indie rock. Arcade Fire, Sunset Rubdown, Handsome Furs, consider your bets met...and raised.

Sub Pop has made two cuts off the album available on its website:

"Call It a Ritual"
http://www.subpop.com/assets/audio/4274.mp3

"Language City"
http://www.subpop.com/assets/audio/4380.mp3


Earlier in the week, I posted a link to Dusted's Mid-Year Round-Up, where various writers picked their favorites for the year so far. Mine was Big Dipper. Others picked Nick Cave, Toumani Diabate, Kurt Vile and others...

Anyway, as usual I had trouble deciding on just one, so I wrote a few other blurbs on particular favorites from the first half of 2008, which I am including here:

Experimental Aircraft, Third Transmission (Graveface)
Post-shoegazer bands are a dime a dozen this year, but none of them have made a record like Third Transmission, with its shimmering walls of altered guitar and dreamy 4AD-girl vocals. The two principles split singing, each taking the mic for one of two stand-out songs, Rachel Staggs in pulse-droning "Stellar," TJ O'Leary for the more strident, punk-rhythmed "Upper East Side." Both are stunning. No one warned me about this record, and hardly anyone seems to have heard it, but it's a good one, no question.

Thalia Zedek Band Liars & Prayers (Thrill Jockey)
The always excellent Zedek gathers her best band in years, adding Mel Ledermann (from Victory at Sea) and Winston Braman (a one-time Come bassist) to the core line-up of David Curry and Daniel Coughlin. A full band frees Zedek to loosen up her guitar playing, even taking the occasional solo, and gives her often elegiac songs an edge of anger. She hasn't sounded this powerful since Come...and maybe not even then.

Human Bell Human Bell (Thrill Jockey)
David Heumann, the guitarist from Arbouretum, and Nathan Bell of Lungfish, join their names -- and their instruments -- in radiant patterns of acoustic guitar. The disc turns electrified and distorted towards the end, in long, rock-leaning "Ephaphatha (The Opening)" drones coalescing around picked patterns like Kirlian auras. Weightly, mysterious and wonderful.

Retribution Gospel Choir Retribution Gospel Choir (Caldo Verde)
Loud is the new loud on this sludgy, distorted mass side-project from Low's Alan Sparhawk. You'll have to listen to a couple of times before you even recognize the Low songs, "Breaker" and "Take Your Time" wrapped as they are in splintering, rupturing volumes of feedback, yet it's worth well worth the extra spins. Delicate melodies emerge from harsh over- and undertones, in their way as lovely as Sparhawk has ever done.

The worst movie ever

Do not rent Dan in Real Life, quite possibly the most false and cloying movie of last year…it’s about the kind of family that plays charades together at a big beach house, but whose matriarch is still casually cruel and thoughtless enough to start the dryer up (with sneakers) just as her son tries to get some sleep in the laundry room. Oh, and there’s a dead mom character…eeesh, isn’t there always? Worst of all, it is not funny, not touching, not smart and not believable. The main question is “What the hell was Juliette Binoche thinking?” (Perhaps: “Money, I need money.”)

Anyway, I have a couple of new reviews up at http://www.blurt-online.com, the avant pop of Au (pronounced sort of like “hey you”) and the freaky classico-folk of Fern Knight.


Au
Verbs
(Aagoo) www.aagoo.com

Pitched somewhere between the arty campfire songs of Animal Collective, the whole-grain, free-jazz clap-alongs of Akron/Family, and the choral ephemeries of Grizzly Bear, Luke Wyland's Au plays feel-good experimentalia. It is joyful, explosive and improvisatory, altogether more communal than exclusionary. First single, "rr vs. d" starts in a rumble of piano notes, a flurry of handclaps, a syncopated, chorale-in-unison island lullaby. "Get it, one, two, three" sings Wyland, ushering in a frantic march of brass, bells and melodica, as crazily celebratory as a circus parade. "All My Friends", Verbs' biggest production, gathers 22 singers into a PDX Ecstatic Singers chorus. The track filters sun through hazy layers of tone, its slow-sung lyrics and piano rolls curling like steam around hand-clapped, xylophone plunked rhythms. Towards the end, Wyland cuts back to just himself in "Sleep," a slow-bowed, whispery coda to one of this year's most joyful experiments.
Standout tracks: "rr vs. d," "All My Friends" JENNIFER KELLY

Fern Knight
Fern Knight
(VHF) www.vhfrecords.com
Cellist-singer-songwriter Margie Wienk's third album as Fern Knight has the same rich baroque drone, the same rupturing 1960s psychedelia as Music For Witches and Alchemists. This time, however, she's got a fully-formed band with Jim Ayre of Flying V picking up the acid leads (from Greg Weeks of Espers on the previous album), James Blackshaw back on renaissance harp and electric bass and James Wolf on achingly pretty, sad violin. Eerie cymbal rolls and angelic runs of harp lend drama to "Silver Fox," a tale of casual cruelties and chains encircling the neck. "Sundew" unfolds languorously, breezy jazz-tinged guitar and bass pulsing through the throb of cello. Wienk sings so sweetly that you might not catch the threat and intelligence of post-classical "Magpie Suite," a three-part suite that starts with a Milton quote and ends in giddy reels and dizzy harmonies. Fern Knight is organically gorgeous, but never oversweet.

Standout tracks: "Silver Fox," "Magpie Suite: Part II" JENNIFER KELLY

Here’s Margie and crew playing “Magpie Suite” last month:

200 miles, 10 people, yikes

This weekend is the solstice and I will be celebrating (suffering) it by running the Green Mountain Relay, a 200-mile team run from Burlington Vermont, way up near Canada, to Bennington, Vermont, which is all the way down by Albany. From what I hear, the relay legs are mostly in the 4-6 mile range and everybody does 3-4 of them depending on how many people you have. (I assume, since they let me in, that my team is a little short.) The race starts Saturday morning and runs all day and night and most of the next day. Am I looking forward to those country jogs at 3 a.m.? Yes, I am, you bet, thanks for asking. So those are my weekend plans, which may well spill over into Monday…at least in terms of sleeping in afterwards.

Other news, my son Sean has completed 7th grade…highlights:
* Most improved XC skier…he took about ten minutes off his time in one race.
* Starring role in local production of “Tom Sawyer”…very amusing southern accent.
* Most improved award in track, too…did a personal best of 6:25 in the mile, which is faster than I can run…yeah Sean!
* Reasonably good academic performance, but not the all-As that would get him an X-Box or possibly into Yale or Dartmouth
* Selected for advanced algebra next year
* Will play Diesel this summer in a New England Youth Theater production of “West Side Story”.

Okay, and music…

My interview with David Berman of the Silver Jews went up today at PopMatters:

Clearer Vision: An interview With David Berman of the Silver Jews
In between his fifth and sixth albums as Silver Jews, David Berman underwent eye surgery that both physically and metaphorically extended his range of vision. He explains, "The changeover to sight, for me, is accompanied by a larger agenda -- being able to take on more, being able to see farther, but also having more confidence about any number of things because I can see."

More here:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/59536/clearer-vision-an-interview-with-david-berman-of-the-silver-jews

Here’s David performing “What Is Not But Could be If” from the new album:


Also, today, Dusted picks its favorite records so far:
http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/744

Mine is Big Dipper. Here they are playing “Ron Klaus Wrecked His House” fairly recently:


And “Man o War” in their prime”

What a firedrill!

On Friday, I threw caution to the wind and pitched three album reviews for Philadelphia Weekly, all for albums that I didn’t at that exactly moment possess in my hot little hands. Come 5 p.m. when assignments were made, I found that I needed to obtain both Alejandro Escovedo’s Real Animal and Bardo Pond’s Batholith immediately. The reviews were due Monday at noon.

So I asked everybody I knew, and my friend Michael came across with the Bardo and my editor at PopMatters with the Escovedo. Both have been an absolute joy to listen to…and I think Alejandro has just knocked Big Dipper off its #1 slot. I haven’t actually reviewed the Bardo yet, but I’ve been listening to it all morning and just about ready…

Meanwhile, a couple of new reviews up today.

Wonderful, totally over-my-head avant-classical/jazz piano from a lady who has worked with Anthony Braxton and a whole bunch of other high profile jazz guys.

Marilyn Crispell, Vignettes (ECM)
Pianist Marilyn Crispell, according to her bio, trained at the New England Conservatory and played nothing but classical music until she was 28. Then, transfixed by Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, she turned towards jazz, playing over the next several decades with Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Barry Guy and the Reggie Workman trio, and, most recently Paul Motian and Gary Peacock. Here, in the solo album Vignettes, Crispell brings together both sides of her experience, in a series of 17 mostly improvised pieces that tread the line between contemporary classical and jazz, compositional structure and improvisation.

Seven abstract “Vignettes” frame the album, brief distillations of moods and ideas that are, perhaps, the most challenging elements of the CD. The longer, named pieces are, in general, more lyrical, “Valse Triste” moody and full of searching pauses, “Time Past” awash in romantic longing, the extended “Sweden” jazz-like in its thoughtful exploration of themes. Crispell improvised most of the tracks, but a few were based on existing pieces. “Stilleweg” follows a composition by Arve Henrikson, the trumpet player from Norway’s Supersilent, while the melody of “Cuida Tu Espirito” comes from a piece written by flutist Janya Nelson. The whole disc is surpassingly beautiful, full of clarity and shimmering with melancholy introspection. It would be a shame if only the jazz cognescenti or the classical avant-garde took notice of Vignettes, because has a elegiac loveliness that any music fan can appreciate. [Amazon ]

And a not-so-overwhelmed review of the Lodger…a Leeds-based pop band that sounds a bit like Orange Juice.

The Lodger, Life is Sweet (Slumberland)
The next gig that Leeds-based the Lodger has listed on its MySpace page is something called "Rip It Up: Edwyn Collins Night," so it's probably fair to infer that any similarities between this band and the late, lamented Orange Juice are not exactly accidental. And indeed, there are lots of similarities––the scrambled, jangling guitar flourishes, the almost disco-funk of the bass, the wistful smiling-through-discouragement pop lyrics. The problem is that the Lodger gets many of the elements of Orange Juice's sound exactly right, but ignores its angsty melodic soul.

As an experiment, try listening to OJ's "Blue Boy," then the Lodger's "My Finest Hour." The Orange Juice song starts in a flurry of martial drums, a tangle of hasty, manic guitars. Collins' voice, when it comes, pushes hard against the pop contours of the song, as if effort could (and perhaps did) transform easy melody into something weightier. Now, take "My Finest Hour" with its cracked-dry drums, repetitive keyboards and Ben Siddall's off-toned, wistful voice. It drifts rather than grips, glides rather than catches you short. It's like Orange Juice, but in the way a line drawing is like a sculpture of the same person, flattened, simplified, an allusion rather than a full-body experience.

More here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4355

You can do your own comparison test with these two videos:
The Lodger



….and Orange Juice


Also saw the movie Son of Rambow, which was wonderful, sweet and very funny…reminded me a little of My Life as a Dog, which is one of my all-time favorites.

Oh, and I can highly recommend MOJO’s current giveaway CD, a Class of 1977 punk compilation which ends with my friend Robert Lloyd’s old band, the Prefects, playing “things in general.”

Now for that Bardo….

Ends, beginnings and, oh screw it, middles, too

There's a scene in Tom Sawyer where Tom and Huck have run away to an island and sneak back into town just in time to attend their own funeral. They are surprised, as I suppose most people would be, at all the nice things people say about them.

I had a similar experience this week, after flushing my MOG page. I'd sort of meant to go quietly, because MOG can be a very dramatic place...and anyway, the new site enhancements meant that I couldn't post or comment anymore without driving ten miles into town for WIFI. I've been kind of bored with MOG lately, to tell the truth. There are people I like on there and people who post interesting stuff...but there's a lot of commercial dreck on there, and the site seems to value it more than the good stuff. (The main page is particularly, aggressively awful.)

Anyway, I had been unable to upload music from home for a year and a half, since an upgrade that timed you out of the system if you were inactive for more than 10 minutes (uploading a song counted as inactive for some reason). Another upgrade a few months ago made it impossible to listen to music clips (you couldn't let them load and listen to them later). The last upgrade cut me off from even posting text. So it was time to go, and I went.

And then my friend Cody did this: http://www.mog.com/Cody_B/blog_post/167343

It's the nicest obituary anyone's ever written about me, and I didn't even have to die for it. Thank you Cody.

I've had two experiences recently, which illustrate both the up- and downside of not being on an active social site (this one doesn't count because as far as I know, no one reads it).


On the upside, on Friday, during the time I might have been screwing around on MOG, commenting on clips I can't hear, videos I can't see, etc., I listened to about an hour of an WFMU show by (sometime MOG-ger) Lou Ziegler and heard about six bands/records that I want to check out.

In order of appearance:
Allez Allez -- Belgian synthy dance punk, sort of like ESG or Delta Five
Battant -- also in the crevice between punk and dance, but more current and more punk I think.
Future of the Left -- Here we go all the way over to the punk side...this could be classic late 1970s stuff, but I think it's not...
A.H. Kraken -- super distorted garage punk from France on the can-do-no-wrong-ever In the Red Label.
Bardo Pond's Batholith...which my friend Michael already sent me, which I am reviewing for tomorrow morning for Philly Weekly and which is pretty mind-splitting great, if you ask me.

You can listen to this show, too, if you want, by clicking on this link:
http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=27545&archive=43361

So in terms of hearing new music, I think MOG has been a bit of a sinkhole, and it's good, no strike that, it's downright exciting to be out there foraging for new experiences again.

The other thing, also on Friday, was that I went to an open mic with to meet my friend Ann's new boyfriend, who plays guitar. His bass player has a washtub bass, something I had never really looked at up close, but it's kind of cool how you can move the stick around to tighten/loosen the string and change the note. As a joke -- oh yeah, this is fairly pathetic -- I asked the guy if he could play any Pere Ubu songs. I mean, it was a ridiculous thing to say, but the idea of "Final Solution" on washtub bass kind of tickled me. My friends' new boyfriend never heard of Pere Ubu, to the extent that he asked what kind of music they played. So this is the lonely thing about not being on MOG...that no one will know the what the hell I am talking about when I talk about music and I will have to learn to shut up about it again, at least around people that I want to stay friendly with.

As for new stuff, here are some links:
Thalia Zedek interview in Philly Weekly
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/?inc=article&id=358&x=thalia-zedeks-tragic-muse&_c=music

Review of Grand Archives/Sera Cahoone show in Blurt-Online

This has utterly disappeared from the index of the website at www.blurt-online.com...so the only way anyone can ever see it is by following this link:
http://www.blurt-online.com/concert_reviews/view/14

Sigh.

Review of Bishop Allen/War on Drugs show in PopMatters
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/reviews/article/59619/bishop-allen/

Review of a totally insane a-capella-on-steroids, art-freak record by Lexie Mountain Boys
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/reviews/article/59475/lexie-mountain-boys-sacred-vacation/

Oh, and the new Alejandro Escovedo record is freaking brilliant, way more rock than the last one and a kick in the ass all the way through. I'm reviewing this one, too, for tomorrow, for Philly Weekly, and I might be interviewing him for Popmatters.

I think I’m going to do this about once a week, to keep track of what I'm doing for my own purposes at least.

Another Muxtape

I’m putting this up at jennythek.muxtape.com, and also there’s a download link in the comments if you want to listen to the songs over an over until you’re sick of them. (IMO, it will take a while.) Anyway, as usual, it gets a little weird at the end. If you’re squeamish, you might want to stop after Shearwater.

Elvis Costello, “American Gangster Time”
During the MOG strike, I had a fairly extended last.fm conversation with Cody about this album, the gist of which ran like this. Momofuku is fun because it sounds just like Elvis Costello, even down to the keyboard parts (check the Vox on this track and see if it doesn’t take you back, say, 25 years), but especially the voice. However, even the first three tracks, which are quite good, are probably not as good as classic EC, or even the better songs off When I Was Cruel. None of these tracks would stop you cold like the first time you heard “Watching the Detectives” or “Mystery Dance” or “Alison”or “Red Shoes” They just remind you of them…so really what we’re buying here is nostalgia, good nostalgia but still.

Thalia Zedek, “Do You Remember”
This is the 9/11 song off Thalia Zedek’s fantastic new album “Liars & Prayers.” I just finished writing up an interview with her for PW, which gives the background on the 9/11 experiences that inspired this song…suffice to say that she arrived in NYC that morning without any idea of what was going on. The cool thing about this record is that Thalia has a full band, so it’s a very strong, very rock, very guitar-oriented sound, and I like it a lot.

Lights, “Break, Run, Fly”
Another in a string of very cool, female-centric, rock-leaning freak folk records from Greg Weeks’ label Language of Stone. This one reminds me of PF’s “Interstellar Overdrive,” but with pretty harmonies added.

The War on Drugs, “Taking the Farm”
I went to see these guys about a week ago, and they blew their monitor about five minutes into the show, so kind of disappointing…but I do really like this song.

Julie Ocean, “#1 Song”
Really good power pop, a la Big Star or, ahem, the Undertones (from whence the band name) or even Jim Spellman’s old outfit, Velocity Girl.

The Church, “Hotel Womb”
I was writing a show preview for Marty Willson-Piper’s solo gig in Philly, and ended up listening to Starfish again a couple of times, and man, what a great album.

Shearwater, “Century Eyes”
Also went to see Shearwater a few weeks ago, and they were selling the new CD Rook that night for the first time ever…so of course I bought one, and it’s rather lovely. This is the rocking-est song.

Sun City Girls, “Mr. Lonely Viola”
From the Mr. Lonely soundtrack to Harmony Korine’s new movie. Sun City Girls, who have as much claim to inventing freak folk as anyone, did half the tracks. J. Spacemen (from Spacemen 3) contributed the other half. And there are some clips from the movie, a nun declaring her faith as she drops out the window, Werner Herzog decrying man’s filthy nature…good stuff, but this cut is my favorite. Isn’t it lovely? (Oh, and we have entered into the weird part of the mix, hang on.)

Stars Like Fleas, “I Was Only Dancing”
This band sits at the intersection of organic and electronic, improvisation and melody…sort of like Akron/Family’s first album and very, very beautiful. It’s from the album The Ken Burns Effect, so you might want to look at old photos while it’s on.

Make a Rising, “Your Karmic Obstacle”
Another freaky, multi-instrumented extravaganza…typically performed in costume. (See the video from a couple of days ago http://mog.com/jenny/blog_post/161385)

Nalle, “Alice’s Ladder”
Extremely left-of-center improvisatory folk from a Scottish trio, led by a Finnish singer and kantele player (apparently it’s like a zither).

Charlemagne Palestine, “Tritone Octave 1/2: Part 3”
This is cool…minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine discovered a one-of-a-kind instrument called the doppio borgato, a kind of double piano with the lower 37 keys repeated on a ground-level keyboard played with the foot, and recorded a double CD set on it.