For deep insight into the sordid trials and tribulations of Marty Anderson, esteemed frontman for Bay Area art-rockers Okay, I refer you to this excellent piece by Voice associate/friend/groomsman Garrett Kamps for SF Weekly a couple years back. Marty's voice—a cracked, frail, disquieting, but inspiringly defiant thing—gets the point across pretty well. Following 2005's double-disc extravaganza High Road/Low Road, Okay next month will unveil Huggable Dust, another inspired burst of merry-go-round-broke-down cacophony anchored by vocals that are tough to get used to and even tougher to shake off once you've warmed to them.
The killer here is "Half-Asleep." As this quick Paper Thin Walls chat shows, Dust largely concerns itself with heartbreak, despondence, self-loathing—the classics. As Marty faintly croaks "I'm afraid/I'm no fun/I'm nothin'/I'm no one," angelic backing vocals underscore the beauty he's convinced he lacks. It's the virtuosity with which he insists he's right that proves him wrong.
Fools Gold is the record label started by DJs A-Trak, famous for being Kanye West's tour DJ and the youngest ever to win the World DJ Championship, and Nick Catchdubs, famous for many a legendary blog post and ironic mashup. Yes, they have already remixed that track you were gonna bang out on your MPC next week. They'll be spinning club music alongside Steve Aoki, Sammy Bananas, Sinden, and Kid Cudi, so wear a fresh digi-color-print tee and expect a Kid Sister cameo. — PETE L’OFFICIAL
MYSTERY SAMMY BANANAS MIX FROM JULY 2005 (LIMITED EDITION)
'FOOLS GOLD VS DIM MAK TOUR': Hiro Ballroom at the Maritime Hotel, 371 W 17th New York. Tickets are $10 and available here.
Guess which one of these people has a man-crush on Caron Butler?
Pavement questions are like "getting questions about the giant monsoon you survived but [that] killed your whole family"
Stephen Malkmus's latest release Real Emotional Trash, the first with former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, begs comparison to '60s-era jam-band staples like the Grateful Dead and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Fittingly, Pavement's former mastermind was recently tapped to provide the singing voice for Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's 2007 biopic I'm Not There. Like Dylan, Malkmus continues to be prolific as he matures—seemingly to spite the ebb and flow of critical reception—and he's also one of America's more lyrically clever rock stars.
Recently, we caught up with Malkmus by phone, where he proved ramblingly lackadaisical and poetic as ever. He and his band the Jicks play three New York dates, starting tonight at the Bowery Ballroom.
VV: Wow, your voice sounds awful.
Stephen Malkmus: Yeah I'm okay. But after five days of shows, my voice is lost for a while.
VV: What was your mindset while producing this new music?
SM: It's something I just do without thinking. It's always a struggle for me. We just wanted it to be great, and I don't know what else to say. There's no real goal other than making good strong songs that aren't like other people's and are instrumentally good, and also to have some aggressively emotional moments musically. Maybe lyrically, too—you know, playing music and the primal trance formation, some technique involved, physically hard playing. It's not just brains and words and cleverness. It's beyond that.
VV: How about the historical dimension? There's something archetypally early-60s era jam-band about the sound. Compound that observation with your vocal reproductions of tracks for Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan portrayal in I'm Not There, and one wonders if you're getting dangerously close to being stereotyped as "retro."
SM: Not that Bob Dylan thing so much, because it really had very little to do with me as a movie. But perhaps Cate Blanchett is retro too. Everybody associated with that movie is retro, so let's throw that out the window. But the music reviews? [The new tracks] are definitely in that genre. It's of that time. It's more comparable to '60s music than it is the '80s or grunge or disco.
VV: Was that deliberate?
SM: Well, I think that kind of songwriting and playing is more suited to the way the river flows in my body and that's just where I go to. I don't know what the future is or anything, or what it knew, but I'd hope that we have enough censors in our mind that our sound isn't a parody or quotation. I think there's enough originality in my voice and song structures that they haven't exactly been done before and, you know, you need some materials that are signifying, otherwise it's not going to mean anything to anybody. So that's what we chose to use. I think everything we hear is at least a mix of something that's happened in the past. It depends on your time frame—if you choose, like, six months or 12 years or, like, all 40 years of electric whiteboy music (laughing).
VV: You've been living in Oregon, but Pavement was in New York for a while, and of course there's that famous footage of you being hit by a big rock while performing in West Virginia the mid-'90s. Are you scared to come back an play the rough-and-tumble venues in Kentucky, Virginia, Philadelphia, New York?
SM: [laughing]...Sure, that was at Lollapallooza. That show was just 'How on earth?' I personally would have thrown something at anything. It was hot, miserable and so poorly organized. It was like the natives were restless, and they were just taking out their frustration, and so became cunning. It was funny to be there. What an awful place [laughing].
VV: The crowd embarrassed itself.
SM: No, no, no...it was just a couple of people so uncomfortable in the mud and heat, and I can't believe they had to pay to do that.
VV: So, whom are you secretly hoping might be in the audience on the East Coast this time?
SM: Obviously Caron Butler from the Washington Wizards. Both women in the band have a crush on him, and I have my own man-crush on him. It's a great story. His mom was basically a crack addict in a really rough area of Wisconsin, and he's managed to keep the team in the playoffs. It'd be really nice to meet him. Not anyone specifically from within the Beltway so much.
VV: I have to ask. Every journalist asks you about the prospect of a Pavement reunion tour. Does that irritate you after a while?
SM: [laughter] ...I noticed you didn't ask, and neither did the last journalist earlier today [still laughing]. That's the thing...I guess you just try to block it out of your mind. But it never happens. Shit, you survive an earthquake in India, and eventually you have to block it out. That's sort of what it's like: getting questions about the giant monsoon you survived but killed your whole family. That's what Pavement questions feel like. It's not bruising, but it gets repetitive. It's a verbal repetitive stress injury. That's all.
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks play the Bowery Ballroom tonight, tomorrow (Tuesday, April 1), and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Wednesday, April 2. All three nights are sold out.
So five British guys decided to come to Austin and play a little prank on us Yanks.
"Let's wear all white jumpsuits," one of them said.
"And we'll say we're from Kansas!” said another one.
"No, Oklahoma!" chimed in another. "Just like the Flaming Lips."
“Awesome. They will never know. We will play our brit rock. We will get them all sexed up. We will swirl our guitars, and make the pit pogo. It will be grand.”
“And we’ll call ourselves Colourmusic,” said the last one. Ah, the spelling almost gave them away.
“But we’re not shaving our beards, right?” said the first one.
“Hell, no,” they said in unison.
And there they were on Maggie Mae’s rooftop on the last night of SXSW, pretending to be a handful of bearded guys from Oklahoma.
You can’t tell much from the photos, but I implore you to go to their MySpace page and listen to the closer of the set "Yes!"
Now listen to the entire thing. Now pretend you are on a rooftop in Austin at nearly midnight, after four days and night of music, your blood thinned to turpentine status, your body begging for Sunday afternoon. Ahh, you now see. Colourmusic are not a bunch of cuddly Oklahomans with a penchant for matching white jumpsuits and beards. They are not Man Man. Yes, they can sound like Wayne Coyne’s stepchildren, but on this track, I’ve got their number. They are some sort of supergroup filled with members from Primal Scream or the Happy Mondays, or whoever the hell else. At least that’s what I was thinking as I watched them close out their set with that song, the crowd being more into it than any band I had seen to that point in Austin, including Lou Reed. This is bullshit. The chants. The harmony. The crunchy chords. The guitar wails. The handclaps. The cowbell. Yes, the cowbell.
After their set, I find myself standing at the edge of the stage now occupied by British Sea Power, talking to the tall one from Colourmusic. He hands me his card. It reads “Roy G. Biv.” I later learn this is a mnemonic device for remembering colors: R(ed)O(range)Y(ellow)G(reen)B(lue)I(ndigo)V(iolet).
We are shouting over the sound of his compatriots pounding in front of us. He is masking his British accent, trying for some sort of Midwestern twang. It sounds convincing considering the circumstances.
“Fucking bullshit artist,” I think. “Go back to Glasgow or Manchester or wherever the hell it is you’re from.”
The Teenagers’ “Streets of Paris” is like an illiterate version of Pulp’s “Common People,” where all the class details are compressed into a couple lines about Nike caps and the chorus comes in under 30 seconds. “The streets of Paris,” they sing. “Man, it’s crazy.” They wrote a song called “Starlett Johansson,” a seventh-whiskey pickup attempt in which our narrator manages to get turned on by the fact that Johansson “whispers in horses’ ears.” That will do it for your band in the MySpace era, but to guarantee the eventual XL contract, they dug up “Homecoming,” a sub-Strokes ballad about fucking a girl who’s “a cheerleader,” “a virgin,” and “really tan.” The chorus is a charming Grease-style interplay in which one dude says “I fucked my American cunt” and then a blank-sounding girl agrees: “I loved my English romance.”
Actually, the band’s French, although they live in the UK. Though they say “cunt" on their record they also say, “You know we’re gonna make it!” on “Make it Happen” and “We’re teenagers, we don’t care!” on “Streets of Paris.” Not exactly the type of reserved, masculine sentiment that might allow you to crush tourists on holiday. Imagine, I guess, something like the Modern Lovers starring in University Sluts Of St. Petersburg 2.
Which, come to think of it, might not have been so different from the University Sluts of the Upper West Side tableau unfolding down the block last night at Vampire Weekend’s sold-out Bowery Ballroom victory lap. Since I’m not convinced that a band has ever formed without some expectation of eventual ejaculation, the Teenagers’ appeal to the “teenage girls of Europe and New York,” as they had it from the Mercury Lounge stage last night, didn’t seem particularly reprehensible. And although I don’t think they’re smart enough to be sending up much of anything, the fact that this so-called trio has, in addition to the three main guys, a female drummer and a female rhythm guitarist who plays half the riffs makes for a decent joke at their own expense.
They’re not teenagers, by the way. Bassist Michael Szpiner is 26. The three had adult jobs before doing a band. But they are a naifish act, in that they write their songs about the exact things that take place in their everyday lives. On “Love No,” a girlfriend tells one of them to stop spending so much time in front of his computer. He tells her he doesn’t love her anymore—making them the most debauched emo band of all time. It’s all girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, and girls they want for their next girlfriend. That your average teenager might merely allude to last night where the Teenagers will describe in detail what happened can be chalked up to the trio being a decade older and from the continent.
“You’re cooler than we are,” said their singer, Quentin Delafon, at one point. Their bassist, Dorian Dumont, got nervous and attempted to end the set a song early. As it turns out, their songs are good to the exact extent that Delafon can awkwardly dance to them. They’re giddy without meaning to be. “Feeling Better,” which rhymes “teenagers” and “feeling better” and talks about wanting to make the world a better place, is probably a sincere song, but that only occurred to me later. I was walking into the Bowery Ballroom Vampire Weekend circus and saw Dumont and Szpiner walking out. We passed each other on the stairs. When I got to the top, VW's Ezra Koenig had just finished asking, “Do you want to fuck?”
Posted by Camille Dodero at 12:00 PM, January 21, 2008
Had the unexpected serendipity of seeing endlessly wry Noah Britton, one third of the toilet-touring Best Thing Ever, perform this tune in a Fort Greene apartment on Saturday night, before a last-minute set by Jeffrey Lewis. During this song's introduction, one spectator noted this was "probably the only Martin Luther King Jr. Day carol ever." Unsurprisingly, "Got MLK" is not: never mind the odes sung to the tune of B-I-N-G-O, there're two U2 tributes from The Unforgettable Fire (one of which was covered by Joan Baez), one kiddie-schmaltz homage from a lady named Mary Miché, one Dion reworking of "Abraham, Martin and John" from Ray Charles, and onand on. So the following song is definitely not the first MLK eulogy put to music, but it's gotta to be the first to begin with an expletive.
Holy shit
Have you ever really thought about
Dr. Martin Luther King?
Britton has heretofore remained virtually undetected on the rest of the bloggeradar, likely because he plopped down in New York in late 2007, has only played a handful of local shows, and maintains a rather confusing MySpace profile. His songs fit squarely in the anti-folk terrain of sparse melodies assembled as excuses for minor monologues, but he's also got this baritone ribbit of a voice that inevitably recalls Stephin Merritt—an unavoidable reference considering that Britton's also very fond of understated punchlines.
[Martin Luther King, Jr.] got shot
But he won
Cuz now I go to school
With Deondre
Britton's written and performed under more monikers than a casual observer can possibly keep straight: aforementioned The Best Thing Ever, Hip Hip Hooray, Hubcap Pretty, Bike Punx, A Pretty Sunset. This song's falls under the iTunes tag of A Pretty Sunset, but it's distinctly Noah Britton—a kid who tours toilets with his friends.
Posted by Camille Dodero at 3:30 PM, January 9, 2008
Rob Trucks's "Possibly 4th Street" expositions, in which he invites musicians he likes to perform live and impromptu somewhere in New York City, run frequently here at the Voice music blog. This week's Deadstring Brothers installment took place when we were still shooting with a Fisher Price digicam. Consider the dateline for this issue BC (Before Camera).
photo by Doug Coombe
Possibly 4th Street
Volume I, Issue Eight (Part One)
Deadstring Brothers
by Rob Trucks
If ever one band embodied a singularly iconic, angry ‘70s classic rock album it would be Detroit’s Deadstring Brothers. Kick Out The Jams, you venture? Fun House, you guess? No. The Nuge’s Catscratch Fever or Double Live Gonzo? Not even close. And no Seeger, Suzi Quatro (though that might be interesting), Motown or Mitch Ryder either. Nope, the Deadstring Brothers heartily eschew their Midwestern roots (well, the Midwestern roots of singer, songwriter and head Deadstring Kurt Marschke) by copping a close, respectful feel of the Stones’ Exile on Main St.
I am not the first music writer-type to point this out. I may not even be in the first fifty music writer-types to point this out. In fact, you may safely say that, on this point (that is, the Deadstring Brothers sounding like the Stones’ Exile on Main St.), there is an undeniable consensus. (If only gun control, abortion rights, stem cell research and universal health care were this easy).
Even Marschke and his partner and fellow band member, Masha Marijeh, agree.
“It’s obvious,” says Masha. She laughs warmly as she cuts in front of Marschke (who has a mouth full of Doritos) to answer a question so blatant it might as well be rhetorical.
Late (late) on a Saturday afternoon, the ‘Strings have completed a long drive (from State College, PA), loaded their gear (including an electric organ that appears hernia heavy) into the Mercury Lounge, and laid claim to a parking spot (no small feat that) to rest their exhausted van and trailer.
Waiting for the delivery of two acoustic guitars (so we can, you know, do this thang) is an interval seemingly made for junk food ingestion. At least for road weary musicians. Music writer-types pass the time hoping the sun doesn’t vanish completely before the guitars arrive.
While confined to backup duty on earlier releases, on the ‘Strings third and most recent album Silver Mountain (Bloodshot), Masha not only sings more, she sings more out front. Which makes the whole Exile comparison a little less of an issue since Nellcôte didn’t host what you would call a strong female presence.
So when Masha sings lead, like on disc starter “Ain’t No Hidin’ Love,” the similarity of sound between Exile and their kindred Deadstrings does not immediately reach out, punch you in the face and take your lunch money.
This is not the case with Starving Winter Report, Silver Mountain’s predecessor and the band’s first record for Midwestern indie Bloodshot. At the same place (disc starter “Sacred Heart”) just one album prior, Kurt’s vocals, Kurt’s guitar, indeed, the overarching ambiance of “who gives a fuck? let’s play” (maybe that’s what Detroit offers) has reared back, let loose a host of haymakers, and pummeled its prey into an aggressive acquiescence.
Here Marschke (now Dorito-free) does not exactly concur.
“I think it sounds like a really wimpy version of it,” says the surpassingly self-deprecating Kurt of Winter Report’s commute to Main St. “I thought it was kind of Stones Lite, personally.”
Nevertheless, his vision, as it were, for the Deadstrings’ sound has remained constant.
“It was conscious ever since we started the band,” he says. “It was Dylan, the Stones and Willie Nelson. The outlaw movement and that late sixties country rock movement was basically all I really wanted to represent with this band.”
“I think you can write better songs, and you can get better at songwriting but I don’t really want to do anything musically that much different with this band. I kind of like what we’re doing, the way it sounds.”
But is it a problem, a dangerous dalliance with derivation perhaps, when your band is recognized for its strikingly similar sound to a record that just celebrated the 35th anniversary of its release?
“I don’t mind being compared to that,” Kurt says with a smile. “I have no problem with it at all. I just wish we did a better job at it.”
photo by Rob Trucks
Possibly 4th Street: Deadstring Brothers
Volume I, Issue Eight (Part Two)
by Rob Trucks
Today the part of 'videographer' will be played by Karan Rinaldo
Who: The Deadstring Brothers. All six of ‘em. Kurt, Masha, E. Travis Harrett, Jeff Cullum, Spencer Cullum and Pat Kenneally.
When: Just before that time of night when it’s just too dark to see the ball anymore and mothers across America call their children home using their full and proper names.
Where: The Southwest corner of Ludlow and Stanton
Doritos consumed at: Hot Bagels & Pizza, Houston St.
Something Kurt Marschke, the youngest of seven children, has done once and one time only:
“I only played hockey once. But I can ice-skate.
“When I was young we didn’t have any place to skate even though we grew up in Michigan. We skated, but nobody ever played hockey. And then I played hockey once and got the shit kicked out of me, and I figured, 'Well, maybe that’s why I don’t play hockey.'”
A short reminiscence regarding growing up the youngest of seven in a house full of music:
“I was like five years old when I actually put a needle on a turntable. You know, I was really young. That wasn’t because I was passionate about music. It was because I wanted to do what everyone else in the house was doing. They were putting records on and shit.”
Two things Marschke, a right-handed guitarist, does left-handed:
“I shoot pool left-handed. I skateboard left-footed, too. My friends, when I was a little kid, used to say, ‘You’re goofy-footed.’ I’d say, ‘What the fuck is goofy-footed?’ I don’t know. Skateboarding is something else I sucked at.”
The album he’s listened to more than any other in his life:
“Do I have to admit Exile on Main St.?”
Kurt’s favorite Stones albums (in chronological order):
“Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile.”
Six by Dylan:
"Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, Blood on the Tracks and Desire are my favorite Dylan records.”
We might as well close this trinity and talk about Willie Nelson:
“Shotgun Willie was my favorite early ‘70s studio record that he did. Willie and Family Live is one of the best records, I think, ever made. Those versions of those songs live are better than the studio recordings.”
Kurt’s one previous busking experience:
“I used to stay in D.C. My sister works at a hotel there, and I used to walk down to Dupont Circle from the hotel a lot. And this dude was always playing Hendrix songs on his guitar. He was there all the time. Every night I’d walk by and he’d be playing his guitar. He had this battery-powered amplifier and this really cheap electric guitar. And I’d sit there and talk to him, and he’d ask me, ‘Hey, do you want to sit up and play some tunes.’ And so I’d sit up there and play. And so that was me busking.
“All he played was Hendrix songs. That’s all he played was Jimi Hendrix. And the guy believed that he was somehow cosmically related to Jimi. It was kind of a strange thing. He was a sweetheart of a guy. He kind of even looked like him a little bit. A little heavier. But he told me that he thought that he and Jimi shared relations somehow.
“He used to take the bus there. He used to live in Southeast, which is not a very nice part of D.C. And he’d take the bus to Dupont and play his guitar and sing. He didn’t do drugs either. He seemed like a pretty straight up guy. He seemed like a good guy. I hope he’s doing all right.”
There’s no shortage of love for The Big Sleep around these parts; so when their second full length arrived in ye ol’ postbox, I jumped on the opportunity to get some more information on the surreptitiously titled Sleep Forever, due February 19, 2008 on Frenchkiss.
Oh, you don’t know much about them? They’re a three piece consisting of husband/wife team Danny Barria on guitar / vocals and Sonya Balchandani on bass / vocals, and new father, longtime Redskins fan Gabe Rhodes on drums. They’ve garnered a favorable following over the last few years, mainly due to a blistering, ear-splitting live show that teeter-totters between fast, hard-hitting guitar heavy instrumentals and swirling psychedelic-post rock. Post-post rock, if there is such a thing.
Sleep Forever, while still delivering more of the swirling, sprawling psychedelic goodness from before, shows a bit of their softer-side. Tender, and at times delicate. But they haven't gone all James Bluntified; there’s still enough hard-hitting jams to blow your socks off.
Full e-mail transcript below. . .
First, lets get down to the nitty-gritty: where was Sleep Forever recorded?
Danny: We recorded the basic tracks at this amazing studio called Shorefire in Long Branch, New Jersey. It has this great live room and the amps of my dreams all in one spot. It's not that far away, but it was just the right amount of distance from the city. It let us focus on getting things done, and this record is about nothing but taking care of business. Then we came back to Brooklyn and recorded all the overdubs and mixed at Stay Gold. The whole recording process took about a month and a half, which was lightning fast compared to Son of the Tiger.
Did you work with anyone?
Danny: We co-produced the record with Chris Coady, who's worked with TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blonde Redhead, Celebration, etc. He was the voice of reason and experience to all our amateur hour ideas, and he provided a lot of ideas of his own whenever we were trying to get somewhere and weren't quite sure how to get there.
Was there anything that the group wanted to do differently (in terms of recording) than what was done with Son of the Tiger?
Danny: We definitely wanted to do things quickly this time, to capture a sense of urgency and intensity, but not in quite the same "reckless abandon" way as the first record.
We did a lot of preparation for this record so we could make the most of our time in the studio, and knew going in that it was going to be a tighter, more focused affair.
Sonya: We wanted to capture some sense of the live sound, and to be a little less precious about things - to try to keep in mind the point of each song and focus on that coming across.
Gabe: Also, there's a depth of emotion in this album that was missing from the first one, so I'm glad that we found it and were able to capture it in the studio.
There seems to be some slower tunes this time around - near ballads that I don't recall existing on Tiger. Did you guys want to slow things down a bit. . . or at least dabble in more quiet arrangements? Slow might be a bad word choice.
Danny: Personally, I want every record to feel like we've grown or developed in some way, but it's not really a conscious choice to have quieter songs.
Sonya: There were a couple of slower/mellower ones on Son of the Tiger, and that is definitely a side of us that's there. It often doesn't come across live, mainly because of the songs we choose to play. We weren't trying to slow things down or soften things - it's more that's a part of what we do as much as anything else. We can be tender. In terms of the feelings those songs evoke, they are consistent with the rest of the material to me, just maybe executed differently.
Gabe: I don't think we have an agenda to slow things down; it's just where the mood of the band took us, I guess.
Sonya, your vocals seem to have a much more immediate presence, than the last one- maybe just because we hear you first. Was there a decision to get your voice into the record earlier this time?
Sonya: Not really. Danny and I each did a few sequences, and we ended up with similar ideas for it. So the order just felt right. We didn't really think about it in terms of vocals/no vocals, or Sonya singing/Danny singing. It was more about the feelings of the songs going into each other. But since I sing first, I guess I win.
Yes, you do win. And is that a drum machine I hear on “Chorus of Guitars?”
Danny: When Sonya and I first started playing music together, it was mainly a guitar and keyboard affair, and we went out and got the most basic, K-Mart style Yamaha keyboard. "Chorus of Guitars" was supposed to be me on piano, everyone else we could get on guitars, and I wanted a drum machine that sounded like a heartbeat. It ended up only having two guitars on it, but the title stayed. Anyway, I borrowed a few drum machines and tried a bunch of different things out, but it turned out that the drum sounds on this Yamaha just fit perfectly.
That said, how are Big Sleep songs constructed these days?
Sonya: Most songs started with Danny bringing in an idea, and then all of us building on those, arranging things together.
Danny: It gets put to the Sonya and Gabe test. We can usually tell right away if it's something we want to turn into a song, and I do a lot of self-editing, so I don't really come in with anything that is too outrageous for us. Then we go through a few different arrangements. While we're doing that, we also hammer out parts to add on top of that main basic idea. We demoed all the songs on the record before we actually went into the studio, which was really valuable in helping us figure out what worked.
And lastly, to get a bit sentimental on you: what are you all most proud of with Sleep Forever?
Danny: I'm really proud of the fact that we went in with pretty clear ideas for what we wanted, but were still open to spontaneity and input from our producer. It was a different experience for us because we did everything so quickly, so there wasn't a lot of time to deliberate, and it felt good to just pick an idea and know you were committing to it. I also cut out a lot of feedback guitars, which was my usual way of filling in the spaces. It was something new and good to let the spaces stay. The whole record just generally feels more adventurous and like it strayed from our "safety" areas.
Sonya: This record takes some listens to get, but I love these songs. I think there's a consistency to it, and a depth that I'm pretty proud of.
The Big Sleep play the Knitting Factory on December 3; admission is free. They’ll also ring in the New Year at The Mercury Lounge with Earl Greyhound.
I’m downstairs at the Bowery Ballroom with Jared Swilley, bassist/vocalist of the Black Lips. We’ve just returned from Sara D. Roosevelt Park where Jared and Joe Bradley, the only two members of Black Lips who don’t play guitar onstage, took out acoustics and strummed a few songs. We're near the end of our interview when Jared asks if he can take one of his answers back. The reason: “Because my dad might read this.”
[Exclusive Black Lips MP3 after the jump]
Jared’s dad is Bishop Jim Earl Swilley, founding pastor of the Church in the Now in Conyers, Georgia, a man recently recognized by no less than the Georgia State Legislature for his “leadership” of a “cutting edge, multicultural, interdenominational church . . . with a life-changing message of restoration, the nowness of God, and a progressive vision for the future.” Bishop Swilley is yet another rung in a long, long ladder of Swilleys called into the ministry. According to the Bishop’s son, the Swilleys of Georgia have been ministers “probably since they got off the boat in Savannah or Brunswick.”
And since parents are parents, regardless of whether or not they work on Sunday, Jared’s desire to exorcise the part of our discussion dealing with a certainly private and likely illegal act is understandable. Until you realize that he and his bandmates have been documented—over and over and over, in fact—participating in onstage behavior that is much, much worse.
For a goodly part of the Black Lips career, the group’s live shows have been better known more for what the band did than what the band played. So surely Bishop Swilley has read of the multiple offerings of bodily excretions made by his son’s band. For starters, vomit and spit and piss (oh my). Some of which ends up on the floor, some on the audience.
The Lips’ most infamous New York show took place in February 2006. Opening for Wolfmother at the Mercury Lounge, the band engaged in at least one onstage makeout session and one instance of a Black Lip (guitarist/vocalist Cole Alexander) urinating into his own mouth before discharging his discharge onto the audience. That the band refused to end their set even after the PA was cut off and the lights turned on was, of course, mere icing on an unbelievably disgusting cake.
The performance was sufficiently shocking to get the Lips banned, at least for a time, from all Bowery Presents facilities. But as they say, money talks and bullshit walks (or gets thrown on the audience), because in less than five hours after Jared Swilley asks me to edit and excise a certain part of our talk, his band will play to a sold-out house here at the previously enraged promoter’s mothership, the Bowery Ballroom.
Who the hell is Sara D. Roosevelt?
Sara Delano Roosevelt was the mother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her only child. She died at the age of 86, three months to the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed. The park, which stretches from East Houston to Canal, was dedicated in 1934, two years after her son was first elected President.
A really strong case for our inaugural Band That Busked The Furthest Award:
“Originally it was supposed to be like we were going to do like Palestine versus Israel. Like where’s better to busk? But we never ended up having time to busk in Jerusalem. But we just thought it would be unfair if we went over there and only played in Israel.
“Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any rock clubs in the West Bank, so we just had to take it to the streets. And actually it was really well received. I was kind of nervous because the first taxi driver we saw, he like said we were fucked, but we were with some locals and a bunch of kids came out and people, they brought us tea and gave us kaffirs. ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was the only song they recognized. We started doing it and they started singing a Hamas chant along to the tune of ‘Johnny B. Goode.’”
The “most random thing” Swilley saw in Palestine:
“We did see [the Southern fast-food joint] Checkers in the West Bank, which was really weird. Oh, and we also saw Flipper graffiti inside. It was on the wall, like on the Palestinian side of the wall.”
Previous busking experience:
“We used to do it on tour to subsidize not getting paid from clubs. The first five plus years of touring we were always kind of in the red as far as like money. Actually a lot of times we would make more money busking outside of a show than we would at the actual show.”
A spooky rung in the Swilley’s ministerial ladder:
“Actually my great-grandpa, they called him The Walking Bible. He used to travel around in a wagon, like a horse-pulled wagon, all around Georgia. And since he was Pentecostal and spoke in tongues, people would think he was a snakehandler. And he used to have to drive with his brother who had like a shotgun. I heard all these tales. I mean, you know, I think they’re just old stories, but like one time a crowd of people came up and they said, ‘Hey Preacherman, here’s a snake,’ and they said he grabbed the snake in the air and it turned into like a stick and he broke it over his knee. And then one time like a mob came on him and he quoted some scripture and they all started fighting each other.”
One thing Jared Swilley says he's never done:
“Bought underwear.”
Please Come Back Jeff Mangum!
If you don't, Lon Guyland emo pukes will continue to murder your songs at guitar-store solo performances. Perhaps you think this is funny? DOWNLOAD: Brand New's Jesse Lacey, "Oh Comely"
[On the Download]
Add This To Your "Rain" Playlist
Bishop Allen dress in pigeon suits, make song about precipitation, rhyme "gray" with "away" and "day." Note to Justin Rice: Please write songs about pigeons instead. DOWNLOAD: Bishop Allen, "Rain"
[Stereogum]
Posted by Camille Dodero at 9:40 PM, April 23, 2007
Other Music's digital-download store finally opened today. As with anything still in beta, there're a few momentary cons, chiefly that the site loads really slow. But it's the Other Music brand, so there're plenty overwhelming pros: DRM-free 320kbps MP3s for only 12 cents more a track than iTunes; a Hype-Machine-like streaming feature where you can preview long clips of entire records, instead of having to click on each track separately to preview entire albums; the kind of completely unpronounceable catalogue you've come to know and lisp from Other Music: Islaja's Ulual yyy, Neoangin & Psoy Korolenko's Gonki, Kuusumun Profeetta's Riemun ja kurjuuden sälekaihtimet. Full-length prices seem to fluctuate from between $9.99 (Neon Bible) and $14.99; for example, the 24-track bundle of Kompakt Total 6 is $12.99.
Posted by Camille Dodero at 2:34 PM, March 26, 2007
Did you bring the ice skates?
Novelist/music writer Jonathan Lethem recently issued a challenge: randomly inviting musicians to actualize the fictional centerpiece of his recent rock-and-roll novel You Don't Love Me Yet — an invented opus called "Monster Eyes." So far, Lethem's posted two versions on his site and they're . . . meh. Not even remotely on the same planet of greatness as what's posted (here for the first time on the Internet!) below.
The band responsible is Hallelujah the Hills, a Boston six-piece who're not crunk, black metal, or western swing despite MySpace reports to the contrary. Ostensibly named for the ridiculous 1963 Adolfas Mekas indie-comedy, HtH is actually a happy, poppy joyous Moog/cello/Melodica musical collective who finished third in Salon's Song Search for their eponymous fight song "Hallelujah the Hills." Sort of impressive considering that one of the bands they lost to was Bishop Allen.
Hallelujah the Hills's recorded stuff has always been pretty great, but "Monster Eyes" is fifty shades of AM-radio awesome. Admittedly, Lethem's lyrics look kind of dumb on the page ("Get you/out of range/of my/monster/eyes"), but somehow they've managed to turn the four-line refrain into an absolutely gorgeous piece of psychedelic '60s pop— the Moody Blues without the melodrama, Love without the drugs. Call the musical glossies: this might just be the "Best Song You've Never Heard."
Tonight, Hallelujah the Hills open at the Mercury Lounge, playing at the unenviable time of 7pm. You should kill time before the Ponys and go. What else are you gonna do?
Posted by Camille Dodero at 12:45 PM, February 9, 2007
Dudes, yo, this was one hell of a party.
Photo by Jenny Frazier
After two days of YouTubingYouTudeath, we got you a thank-you-for-letting-us-crash-on-your-couch present. That Jarvis Cocker/Air reference a couple days ago? Deliberate attempt at giving SOTC's first real week some semblance of a narrative thread. Cheap rockist tricks, we know. So what.
So the Friday-afternoon gift we got you—a sign of gratitude for letting us eat your Cheerios and smell up your sofa—is an unreleased version of an unreleased song: Boston band Age Rings covering Air's "One Hell of a Party," a track leaked from the French duo's upcoming Pocket Symphony. For the sake of relevance, the MP3 is also vaguely related to Pazz & Jop: Age Rings's guitarist is one of the 494 critics who voted this year—his name's Will Spitz, he hates dance-punk, and loves sushi. Make fun of his ballot here.
Age Rings is from Boston, but don't hold it against them, you big-city snobs. Core members—Spitz, frontman/guitarist/songwriter Ted Billings, and bassist Andrew McInnes—played in a high-school band for six years called Slater, which eventually morphed into Age Rings when a fourth member moved away. One of their locals described them like this: "If Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era Wilco covered tunes by Pavement and Spoon, it might sound something like this band and these songs." That's a relatively accurate comparison, but we wish he'd have taken a little more time with that sentence.
Anyway, we've had these two tracks on repeat for the last four hours and we're starting to like Age Rings's version better than the original. The preference is mostly emotional: one version is full of regret, the other afterglow. Set in the aftermath of a sleepless bender, Air has Pulp's demigod stewing from a night that sounds both nefarious and Dionysian, as if last night included at least one of three things: 1) an affair with his brother's wife; 2) a Rope-style murder; 3) a coke mountain that left his dopamine receptors all fried.
Meanwhile, the party at the Age Rings house sounds like it was way more fun. Ted Billings's exuberance leads you to believe: 1) Every guy in the band finally hooked up with their longtime crushes; 2) At one point, a tubby mutual friend got naked and jumped on the sofa; 3) Somehow, at the end of all this, there's more PBR in the fridge—the beer genie must've come. Air makes us want to swallow pills and slit our wrists; Age Rings makes us want to hit brunch and drink Bloody Marys.
Tomorrow night, Age Rings play Piano's at 8 pm. Kid-buzz band Care Bears On Fire open!
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