Kelley Stoltz

I've got an interview with one of my favorite songwriters, Kelley Stoltz, up now at Blurt online, a shorter version of which was published in the fall print issue a few months ago. Kelley's most recent album To Dreamers just missed my top ten this year (spent most of the post-holiday weekend working on my Dusted year-end), and, unusually for him, centers around a cover.

Here's the story.

"I Remember You Were Wild"

"I Don't Get That"

William Tyler

Still catching up on stuff that ran last week, like this review of the solo mostly acoustic guitar album by Lambchop alum William Tyler. It ran in Dusted maybe Wednesday, before the whole Turkey frenzy took hold, and it's too good to be buried there. (The album, not the review, which is so so and repeats the word "luminous" at least once too often.)

Anyway, here's a bit:

Though he’s only about 30 now, William Tyler has played with most of Nashville’s alt.Americana A-list over the last decade. He started right out of high school with Lambchop, but has also worked with Silver Jews and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. He sometimes collaborates with Paul Nieuhaus of Calexico. Around the middle of the aughts, he played with David and Hamish Kilgour. Last year, working in the shadow of late John Fahey, he released an album of finger-picked guitar and electronic experiment under the name Paper Hats. His “Between Radnor and Sunrise” on the fourth volume of the Imaginational Anthem series was one of the disc’s highlights, grounded in American primitivism and played with precision and rigor, yet glazed over somehow with an aura of almost mystic wonder. It’s not an accident that he cites Peter Walker along with Fahey as an influence. Like both of them, Tyler uses the guitar as a pathway to the spiritual.


And more

This is him doing his Paper Hat thing.



I also finished Virgil Thompson's The State of Music last night, and have to write about it at some point...what a cranky, crabby, funny diatribe on the problem of making a living in classical music, circa 1940. (And updated, a little bit, for a second edition in 1961.)

Reading Rainbow.

I used to watch Reading Rainbow when I was young, not as much as Sesame Street, but some...I was weirdly fascinated with educational shows at one point. Anyway, there's a band called Reading Rainbow now down in Philly, just two people, a boy and a girl, making bash and pop garage rock with a surprisingly sweet-sad element of choral harmony spliced in. I ended my Dusted review by saying, “There’s a slow song hidden within every fast one here, a choral elegy spliced into even the peppiest banger. Here’s what happens when you shine punk rock energy through a prism, and it breaks into a million different colors.”

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"Wasting Time" (via Gorilla Vs. Bear)

I’m back

I was in Philadelphia and then NYC this weekend and had a really pretty great time.

I ran the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday (3:48 something I think...maybe 3:49) and did not spectacularly, but not so terrible.

I also visited the Philadelphia Art Museum, where the special exhibit was by an Italian artist named Michaelangelo Pistoletto, who was, among other things, apparently fascinated with mirrors. He painted on them, lifesize figures on mirror-like backgrounds, which is cool, because when you go to look at them, you and other other people in the museum are also, sort of, in the painting. And when they are on facing walls, you can see the painting you’re looking at and the one behind it and, reflected in that, the one you’re looking at, and so on and so on and so on. You can see me taking a photo in this one.




I also went to NYC and did not very much of note, but got to see a few of my friends and had a couple of very nice meals, so that was good.

And now I’m back and have all kinds of stuff up on the web, including this review of a record by Masonic, when ran yesterday in Venus.

This Texas dream pop outfit spins bittersweet webs of Left Banke-ish melody over the muted roar of shoegazy guitar effects on their fifth full-length album. Three of the five Masonic’s are brothers—John and Kevin Mason switching off on guitar and keyboards, sibling Brian on rackety, dust-kicking drums—but their not-so-secret weapon is singer Eryn Gettys. She has a glossy, early ‘60s pop voice, warm and sweetly luxuriant, buoyant and breezy yet undercut with hard-won experience. An undercurrent of vulnerability, as on the plaintive “They Wanted So Much,” in Gettys unfailingly smooth, on-key delivery connects her to the craft of French café singers, while a dreamy gauziness ties her to ‘90s vocalists like the Sundays’ Harriett Wheeler. She is poised and professional, even mildly detached, as she sings about the most rueful sort of romantic discoveries.

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“Lifetime of Deception”

KIT

I’ve got another review up at Venus now, this one of a no-wave-ish, female-fronted outfit called KIT.
I said, “These spitfire spaz punks push the melodic envelope on their second full-length, leavening noise-blitzed shout fests with slithery bits of songcraft, strung-out dronescapes, and strings. KIT clattered onto the stage in the mid ‘00s, pitting frenetic dual guitar mayhem against abrasive upper register chanting (that’s one-named Kristy at the mic). Since then, the band has led a charmed life, sharing splits with noise royalty like Deerhoof, Thurston Moore, and Kim Gordon. Their earliest efforts—the split with Deerhoof, for instance—were nearly unadulterated blasts of energy, shrill, rapid-fire barrages knocked sideways by slanted, trebly riffs.”

And a bit more


Arthur Magazine has an mp3 of “Merticane”


I’m driving to Philly today and will probably not be blogging again until Tuesday. Have a great weekend everyone.

Oberhofer, Twin Sister and Morning Benders

Super bloggy evening last Wednesday, couldn't have been more different from Tuesday when everybody was my age and seated for Bob Mould...on Wednesday, it was all kids...bobbing around, dancing, cracking each other up and hanging over the railings to make eyes at each other. Very nice. I remember that...dimly.

Anyway, the three bands are all pretty trendy in their various ways, but that didn't stop two of them from being pretty great. I would highly, highly recommend that you see Oberhofer, highly (see that's one less "highly") recommend Twin Sister and shrug and say, "do what you want" if you asked me about Morning Benders. Because lots of people like this band, and compare it to Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend, whom they seem to like as well, but I missed it, whatever it was. I thought it was kinda boring.

Anyway, enough of this semi-conscious garble...on to the official write-up, which appeared yesterday afternoon at Blurt.

Sometimes the bill is upside down.



Tonight, for instance, when scrappy upstart Oberhofer upends strummy, sunny, two-guitar-effects-and-some-harmonies-away-from-a-jam-band Morning Benders, in a blitz of eerie "ooh ooh oohs." The middle of the bill, too, dream-tripping Twin Sister, led by the wide-eyed, raccoon-hatted Andrea Estrella, is considerably more interesting than the headliner. That the Morning Benders are vastly popular and that two-thirds of a large turnout seems to know their songs by heart only confirms what everyone already knows. The indie kids have a taste for the bland.

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Oberhofer’s “Don’t Needya” (via Stereogum)

Twin Sister would actually like all of you musical hotshots to remix their album cuts and have helpfully placed WAV files of "stems" of these songs on their website. So what's stopping you?

"all around and away we go" stem

"Lady Daydream" stem

And the Morning Benders have done a couple of Daytrotter sessions. Here's the latest one.

In other news, I am absurdly psyched to be back on the Sub Pop distribution list...about five early 2011 records came yesterday, including new Twilight Singers (score!) and Mogwai (double score! and what the hell happened to Matador). Now if I could just get ForceField with its entire In the Red, Captured Tracks and Woodsist roster back, I'd be happy.

Gorevette and Parting Gifts…stuff I heard on the radio

Now that I have an iPod touch, I can listen to WFMU again, so I am wasting lots of time DLing shows and listening to them. I’d forgotten how much I liked doing this, or how it interferes with reviewing 4-5 records a week. But on the bright side, I’ve heard a couple of things that are just too good to sit on, both in the garage vein, both by really veteran performers.

The first one is Gorevette, which combines the energies of Nikki Corvette and Amy Gore from the Gore Gore Girls.

Here they are performing the title track from their Lustfully Yours EP which is out now on Strange Girls records.


Parting Gifts, also a kind of super-group, has Greg Cartwright from the Reigning Sounds and Coco Hames from the Ettes together. Their album, Dandelion Strychnine is out now on In the Red. In addition to these two, Dave Amels from the Reigning Sound is on the records, as well as Dan Auerbach (Black Keys), Patrick Keeler (Greenhornes) and the remainder of the Ettes.

Here’s “Keep Walking” What a killer.

Also, there’s a video of Cartwright solo doing the title track in Detroit.