You can't believe how relieved and happy I am about the Supreme Court's surprising turn towards sanity. I have been struggling with some health issues lately, probably nothing but maybe, worst case, cancer...and thinking what the hell do I want to spend $1000 on tests for something that I have no money to treat? so anyway, if it is cancer (and it's probably not) it may be too late for me, but Sean will have health care, even if he doesn't make any money, Bill will have health care...and all you musicians out there will have health care...lots fewer Alex Chilton's dying because of lack of treatment.
so I'm going to go ahead and have that ultrasound when I get home and we'll see...
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Embryonic Silver Jews/Pavement
Hey look, I just wrote this yesterday...a review of Silver Jews' Early Times, up today at Dusted.
Silver Jews
Early Times
Label: Drag City
Early Times compiles Silver Jews’ earliest out-of-print recordings: 1992’s Dime Map of the Reef and 1993’s The Arizona Record, a 7” single and an EP made while Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus was still a regular member of Silver Jews. Really terribly recorded – on a boombox or answering machine, depending on who you ask -- these noisy, haphazard songs are interesting mainly as a document of the development of two of 1990s indie rock’s definitive bands. Inside the murk and chaos, you can hear bits of Silver Jews’ incipient slanted attack on Americana and traces of Pavement’s intelligence and erratic tunefulness.
More
Silver Jews
Early Times
Label: Drag City
Early Times compiles Silver Jews’ earliest out-of-print recordings: 1992’s Dime Map of the Reef and 1993’s The Arizona Record, a 7” single and an EP made while Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus was still a regular member of Silver Jews. Really terribly recorded – on a boombox or answering machine, depending on who you ask -- these noisy, haphazard songs are interesting mainly as a document of the development of two of 1990s indie rock’s definitive bands. Inside the murk and chaos, you can hear bits of Silver Jews’ incipient slanted attack on Americana and traces of Pavement’s intelligence and erratic tunefulness.
More
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Red River Dialect
Really excellent new album from the Cornish singer songwriter David Morris...reviewed in today's Dusted.
Red River Dialect
awellupontheway
(Lono)
When I last heard from David Morris, the singer-songwriter-guitar player behind Red River Dialect, he was cleaning up the mess left behind after he put up Arbouretum, Hush Arbors, Hiss Golden Messenger and Michael Chapman during a series of shared west U.K. shows. That’s good company, a sort of who’s who of muscular, psych-leaning, electrified folk music, and with his new album awellupontheway, Morris shows that he is perfectly capable of holding his own among them. Morris’s songs, eight of them here, take the lilt and roll of British sea chanties and blow them into amplified, feedback-droning, violin squalling anthems. This is, no kidding, one of the best folk-derived, psych-filtered rock albums of 2012, a great hoary rampaging beast of a record that rakes bloody, violent claws through the symmetries of traditional folk.
More
Have a listen here.
Red River Dialect
awellupontheway
(Lono)
When I last heard from David Morris, the singer-songwriter-guitar player behind Red River Dialect, he was cleaning up the mess left behind after he put up Arbouretum, Hush Arbors, Hiss Golden Messenger and Michael Chapman during a series of shared west U.K. shows. That’s good company, a sort of who’s who of muscular, psych-leaning, electrified folk music, and with his new album awellupontheway, Morris shows that he is perfectly capable of holding his own among them. Morris’s songs, eight of them here, take the lilt and roll of British sea chanties and blow them into amplified, feedback-droning, violin squalling anthems. This is, no kidding, one of the best folk-derived, psych-filtered rock albums of 2012, a great hoary rampaging beast of a record that rakes bloody, violent claws through the symmetries of traditional folk.
More
Have a listen here.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Beechwood, Sparks
Okay, so I'm back home in Indiana, to grab a phrase from Michael Jackson, lovely weather, iffy internet and I notice that Blurt is running my Beechwood Sparks review (also in the print issue so quite short) and it goes like this:
Beachwood Sparks
Tarnished Gold
(Sub Pop)
"This goes out to my good friends," says Farmer Dave Scher, over a swirl and twang of psychedelic country guitars that has been missing for nearly a decade. The Beachwood Sparks, last convened in 2003, are back as if they never left, spinning trippy goodtime vibes, ethereal metaphysics and slacked out California pop.
More
Beachwood Sparks
Tarnished Gold
(Sub Pop)
"This goes out to my good friends," says Farmer Dave Scher, over a swirl and twang of psychedelic country guitars that has been missing for nearly a decade. The Beachwood Sparks, last convened in 2003, are back as if they never left, spinning trippy goodtime vibes, ethereal metaphysics and slacked out California pop.
More
Monday, June 25, 2012
Sonny and the Sunsets
Hey, I'm in a little town called Medina, Ohio, somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus...I drove 600 miles yesterday and didn't speak to a single person all day (well, after I left, I had quite an extended conversation with Bill before taking off) until I got to the hotel.
And still, somehow, life goes on without me.
Dusted is running my Sonny and the Sunsets review today:
Sonny and the Sunsets
Longtime Companion
(Polyvinyl)
Sonny Smith is, in a way, the songwriter with a thousand masks. He’s been a playwright and performance artist as long as he’s been a singer. One of his earliest recordings was called One Act Plays, which was exactly what it sounds like — a series of short dramas set to music. His 100 Records project created full-blown singles for 100 imaginary bands, art and all. Smith and half of San Francisco’s psychedelic garage scene acted out his musical scenarios — as Nuggets guitar-chimers, Latin garagistes and, in one case, a lost and lonely Johnny Cash-style country crooner – on 2011’s compilation Hit After Hit. The “I” in Sonny Smith’s songs is almost never the “I” in Sonny Smith’s life, and he extends this concept well beyond lyrical content, to matters of style, genre and musical arrangement.
More
I'm going to drive to Indianapolis today, with a possible stop in Columbus for lunch and a look at Ohio State (they must have record stores, right, even a football school?).
And still, somehow, life goes on without me.
Dusted is running my Sonny and the Sunsets review today:
Sonny and the Sunsets
Longtime Companion
(Polyvinyl)
Sonny Smith is, in a way, the songwriter with a thousand masks. He’s been a playwright and performance artist as long as he’s been a singer. One of his earliest recordings was called One Act Plays, which was exactly what it sounds like — a series of short dramas set to music. His 100 Records project created full-blown singles for 100 imaginary bands, art and all. Smith and half of San Francisco’s psychedelic garage scene acted out his musical scenarios — as Nuggets guitar-chimers, Latin garagistes and, in one case, a lost and lonely Johnny Cash-style country crooner – on 2011’s compilation Hit After Hit. The “I” in Sonny Smith’s songs is almost never the “I” in Sonny Smith’s life, and he extends this concept well beyond lyrical content, to matters of style, genre and musical arrangement.
More
I'm going to drive to Indianapolis today, with a possible stop in Columbus for lunch and a look at Ohio State (they must have record stores, right, even a football school?).
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Three noise bands and Gary Higgins walk into the Flywheel...
My review of last week's show Man Forever show at the Flywheel is up now at Blurt:
I'm driving to Indiana tomorrow and will be online intermittently at best.
I'm driving to Indiana tomorrow and will be online intermittently at best.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Oh Michael...2012's best covers album
I wrote about the Michael Chapman tribute once before, shortly after I received it, but it's a grower, and I like it, oh, maybe three or four times as much now that I've listened to it a few times.
My review is up at Blurt today.
My review is up at Blurt today.
Various Artists
Oh Michael, Look What You’ve Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman
Not long ago, Michael Chapman was a lot of people's favorite overlooked folk singer, the gruff voiced, lyrically-fingered veteran of the 1970s folk revival that never seemed to have gotten his due. Well received reissues of Fully Qualified Survivor and Rainmaker, as well as tours with younger pickers like Jack Rose (now sadly gone), have righted the balance.
Oh Michael, Look What You've Done goes one step further, gathering contemporaries, admirers and bill sharers to reinterpret Chapman's songs. It is a lovely tribute, one which allows the beauty of the songs to shine through multiple lenses and illuminate various facets of Chapman's appeal. There is a floor-stomping, string-band-style romp from Rose's former band, the Black Twig Pickers, Takoma-style reinvocations of the man's guitar skills from William Tyler and Nick Jonah Davis, and a heart-wrecked and luminous cover of "That Time of Night" from Lucinda Williams (with Doug Pettibone evoking Chapman's eerie, haunted guitar work). Chapman's own generation of folk revivalists kick in some of the album's most gorgeous moments, with Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span finding a shape-note spirituality in Chapman's song "The Prospector" and Bridget St. John quietly, understatedly killing on "Rabbit Hills."
Hiss Golden Messenger - "Fennario" (Michael Chapman)
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