I did one of those short, damn-this-is-a-good-record posts about Shake My Head a few weeks ago, and now that I've had time to consider things, I like it even more. The review's up today at Dusted.
Spider Bags
Shake My Head
Odessa
About six years ago, Dan McGee pulled up stakes in New Jersey and moved to North Carolina, bringing with him a dog-eared collection of songs too countrified for his main gig (at the time), the DC Snipers. Since then his Spider Bags — currently McGee plus Gregg Levy and Steve Oliva switching from bass to guitar and Rick Forbes on drums — have made three raggedly glorious albums: 2007’s A Celebration of Hunger, 2009’s Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Cruel World and now Shake My Head.
Along the way, McGee seems to have upped the punk and decreased the twang. Where Nathan Hogan compared Celebration-era Spider Bags to the Bloodshot roster, Shake My Head sounds more like Goner’s anarchic, first-generation-urban blues. There’s an instrumental track dedicated to Shawn Cripps of The Limes, a nod to John Wesley Coleman’s working-man’s poetry and blowsy psychedelia, a hint of Greg Cartwright’s hoarse romanticism here.
More
You can listen to the whole album at this Soundcloud page.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
John Cale...and Dangermouse
John Cale's got a new album coming out in October, Shifty Adventures in the Nookie Wood, which dips pretty heavily into electronic sounds and hip hop beats. The first single, which is now available for streaming, was produced by Dangermouse.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this record, even now after listening to it a bunch of times, but it's interesting.
Anyway, a couple of things. last.fm isn't scrobbling my iPod anymore, which means that the chart on this page is not very accurate, so I think I'll take it down.
Also, we're going to Pittsburgh on Wednesday for a college visit at Carnegie-Mellon, so I might be offline for few days.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this record, even now after listening to it a bunch of times, but it's interesting.
Anyway, a couple of things. last.fm isn't scrobbling my iPod anymore, which means that the chart on this page is not very accurate, so I think I'll take it down.
Also, we're going to Pittsburgh on Wednesday for a college visit at Carnegie-Mellon, so I might be offline for few days.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
King of Spain's "Motions"
Another great surprise, the King of Spain's upcoming All I Did Was Tell Them The Truth And They Thought It Was Hell is reminding me of Ride, Swervedriver, Swirlies, the Church...all on a very limited home budget. It's out August 28 on New Granada Records.
Songwriter Matt Slate says of "Motions," the first single and clear standout:
"Motions"
We went to two staged reading-ish productions last night at Dartmouth, part of NY Theater Workshop's summer theater program. The first was a very funny one-man take on Joe Papp's battle with Robert Moses to stage Shakespeare in the Park called "This Blessed Plot." The second was a kind of August Wilson-ish ensemble piece called "Paradise Blue", set in a jazz club in Detroit...both were quite good in their ways, be interesting to see whether either shows up in a larger venue. (NY Theater Workshop did early versions of "Rent" and, more recently, the musical "Once" and "Peter and the Starcatchers.")
Songwriter Matt Slate says of "Motions," the first single and clear standout:
“It’s attempting to find meaning in life amongst the monotony and mundaneness of daily existence. We get into patterns as we are required to perform the same tasks and behaviors on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s difficult, albeit not impossible, to not get bogged down with this. The song is about these feelings, and how they are a road block, keeping us from experiencing and enjoying life.”
"Motions"
We went to two staged reading-ish productions last night at Dartmouth, part of NY Theater Workshop's summer theater program. The first was a very funny one-man take on Joe Papp's battle with Robert Moses to stage Shakespeare in the Park called "This Blessed Plot." The second was a kind of August Wilson-ish ensemble piece called "Paradise Blue", set in a jazz club in Detroit...both were quite good in their ways, be interesting to see whether either shows up in a larger venue. (NY Theater Workshop did early versions of "Rent" and, more recently, the musical "Once" and "Peter and the Starcatchers.")
Friday, August 3, 2012
I really wish more people knew about Mike Uva
I've been holding off on this, because it had some errors, but what the hell, Mike Uva is a really good, vastly underrated songwriter, back at it after a couple years of child-rearing, with a new album called Lady, Tell Me Straight. I reviewed it for Blurt a few weeks ago.
Mike Uva & The Bad Eyes
Lady, Tell Me Straight
(Collectible Escalators Music)
Mike Uva makes smart, understated pop, couching wry observations in offhandedly catchy melodies. His songs stick around like old friends, their warmth, accessibility and unshowy intelligence always welcome, never overbearing. He's in the same general family as songwriters like Salim Nourallah, Brendan Benson (solo) and Rhett Miller, clever but not glib, pop-skilled but never slick. The fact that he is far less well known than these characters (who are, to a man, under-rated themselves) can be attributed to geography (he's from Cleveland), personal style (low-key), family responsibilities (he has small children) and a commitment to the DIY ethos. When he's not recording, Uva runs the small-scale but admirable Collectible Escalators Music.
Lady, Tell Me Straight is Uva's third record, the first in five years and the first built around his new band, the Bad Eyes. In it, he takes a turn away from lo-fi indie pop a la Guided by Voices and towards a warmer, acoustic, country-tinged sound.
More
You can listen to the whole thing here.
Mike Uva & The Bad Eyes
Lady, Tell Me Straight
(Collectible Escalators Music)
Mike Uva makes smart, understated pop, couching wry observations in offhandedly catchy melodies. His songs stick around like old friends, their warmth, accessibility and unshowy intelligence always welcome, never overbearing. He's in the same general family as songwriters like Salim Nourallah, Brendan Benson (solo) and Rhett Miller, clever but not glib, pop-skilled but never slick. The fact that he is far less well known than these characters (who are, to a man, under-rated themselves) can be attributed to geography (he's from Cleveland), personal style (low-key), family responsibilities (he has small children) and a commitment to the DIY ethos. When he's not recording, Uva runs the small-scale but admirable Collectible Escalators Music.
Lady, Tell Me Straight is Uva's third record, the first in five years and the first built around his new band, the Bad Eyes. In it, he takes a turn away from lo-fi indie pop a la Guided by Voices and towards a warmer, acoustic, country-tinged sound.
More
You can listen to the whole thing here.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Moebius and Tietchens review
I blogged this a week or two ago, and now there's a review up at Blurt.
When I wrote for Splendid, I once had an Asmus Tietchens record to review, and I remember I had to turn it all the way up if I wanted to hear it at all and god help me if, say, the Coachwhips came on next.
Anyway...
Moebius & Tietchens
Moebius & Tietchens
(Bureau B)
Two extraordinary talents in electronic music reconnect after a 37-year hiatus. Dieter Moebius, a founder of Kraut-pioneering Cluster, Kluster and Harmonia, and Asmus Tietchens, an innovator in tape manipulation and musique concrete, first worked together in the Lilenthal project with Neu! collaborator Conny Plank and Okko Beck in 1976. Over the decades, they met in passing, always promising to reconnect, but it was not until 2011 that they found time to record this twitchy, tetchy, intermittently revelatory joint project, which sculpts rhythm and refracts repetition into intricate prismatic shapes.
More
When I wrote for Splendid, I once had an Asmus Tietchens record to review, and I remember I had to turn it all the way up if I wanted to hear it at all and god help me if, say, the Coachwhips came on next.
Anyway...
Moebius & Tietchens
Moebius & Tietchens
(Bureau B)
Two extraordinary talents in electronic music reconnect after a 37-year hiatus. Dieter Moebius, a founder of Kraut-pioneering Cluster, Kluster and Harmonia, and Asmus Tietchens, an innovator in tape manipulation and musique concrete, first worked together in the Lilenthal project with Neu! collaborator Conny Plank and Okko Beck in 1976. Over the decades, they met in passing, always promising to reconnect, but it was not until 2011 that they found time to record this twitchy, tetchy, intermittently revelatory joint project, which sculpts rhythm and refracts repetition into intricate prismatic shapes.
More
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Cravats
Lots of stuff running lately...wrote this in a rush yesterday...up today at Dusted.
Cravats
Cravats in Toyland
Overground
“Gordon,” the Cravats’ first 1978 single, is a ferociously uneasy thing, brought into being by a feral, bassline, ornamented in a mad, half-cocked way by two-toned saxophone and scrabbly guitar and narrated in a staccato, psychotic deadpan by the inimitable Shend. It’s as if the raw threat of the Pop Group ran into a ska-happy dance party, disturbing, dissonant and, in its way, unstoppable.
The Cravats, who came from Redditch (about 15 miles south of Birmingham), formed in 1977 around the nucleus of guitar player Robin Dallaway, singer and bassist The Shend, and saxophone player Svor Naan. (John Yapp played drums on the first single, but the main drummer was Dave Bennett.) John Peel was an early fan, inviting the band in for the first of four Peel Sessions in July of 1979 and again in 1980, 1981 and 1982. In a 1982 interview with Smash Hits, Peel observed, “I hate Toyah records and they all go whizzing into the charts, and I love The Cravats and play all their records and nobody buys them. Whenever I start to feel important I think, ‘Well, I never did much for The Cravats and I didn’t stop Toyah’.”
More
Cravats
Cravats in Toyland
Overground
“Gordon,” the Cravats’ first 1978 single, is a ferociously uneasy thing, brought into being by a feral, bassline, ornamented in a mad, half-cocked way by two-toned saxophone and scrabbly guitar and narrated in a staccato, psychotic deadpan by the inimitable Shend. It’s as if the raw threat of the Pop Group ran into a ska-happy dance party, disturbing, dissonant and, in its way, unstoppable.
The Cravats, who came from Redditch (about 15 miles south of Birmingham), formed in 1977 around the nucleus of guitar player Robin Dallaway, singer and bassist The Shend, and saxophone player Svor Naan. (John Yapp played drums on the first single, but the main drummer was Dave Bennett.) John Peel was an early fan, inviting the band in for the first of four Peel Sessions in July of 1979 and again in 1980, 1981 and 1982. In a 1982 interview with Smash Hits, Peel observed, “I hate Toyah records and they all go whizzing into the charts, and I love The Cravats and play all their records and nobody buys them. Whenever I start to feel important I think, ‘Well, I never did much for The Cravats and I didn’t stop Toyah’.”
More
Japandroids
Perhaps the last, tardiest review of the Japandroids, Celebration Rock...up yesterday at Dusted.
Japandroids
Celebration Rock
Polyvinyl
Every summer needs a record like this. Never mind the arduous backstory, that Japandroids’ guitarist Brian King nearly died between Post-Nothing and its follow-up, that the band considered breaking up in the interim, or that it took three years to come up with eight tracks. None of that is on the record. This is the kind of easy, accessible, not-quite-guilty-pleasure rock and roll that sounds best blaring from open car windows late at night. Celebration Rock bashes and clangs and manically stutters out songs about breaking old bonds and heading out for the territories. As a subject matter, it may be clichéd, but only because almost everyone feels compelled, at some point, to do it.
Musically, Japandroids fall somewhere between the Hold Steady’s fists-in-the-air drinking anthems and the scrabble and splutter of No Age. There’s something of The Replacements in their rasp-edged, sloppy romanticism, a bit of Husker Du in the way they slip sing-along hooks into abrasive sonics. Though only a two-piece (King sings and plays guitar, while Dave Prowse plays drums), Japandroids manage to fill every crevice in the sound, with long-ringing power chords, prism-splintered strumming and punch-drunk, speed-crazed, fill-scrabbled drums. There’s not a lot of dead space here.
More
Japandroids
Celebration Rock
Polyvinyl
Every summer needs a record like this. Never mind the arduous backstory, that Japandroids’ guitarist Brian King nearly died between Post-Nothing and its follow-up, that the band considered breaking up in the interim, or that it took three years to come up with eight tracks. None of that is on the record. This is the kind of easy, accessible, not-quite-guilty-pleasure rock and roll that sounds best blaring from open car windows late at night. Celebration Rock bashes and clangs and manically stutters out songs about breaking old bonds and heading out for the territories. As a subject matter, it may be clichéd, but only because almost everyone feels compelled, at some point, to do it.
Musically, Japandroids fall somewhere between the Hold Steady’s fists-in-the-air drinking anthems and the scrabble and splutter of No Age. There’s something of The Replacements in their rasp-edged, sloppy romanticism, a bit of Husker Du in the way they slip sing-along hooks into abrasive sonics. Though only a two-piece (King sings and plays guitar, while Dave Prowse plays drums), Japandroids manage to fill every crevice in the sound, with long-ringing power chords, prism-splintered strumming and punch-drunk, speed-crazed, fill-scrabbled drums. There’s not a lot of dead space here.
More
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