Category Archives: sasquatch

The reason my molars are so broken

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Please don’t put your face into your hands we could be friends.

This is an amazing album. I am quite satisfied with the music I have discovered this far in 2010, even if half of it was produced in 09… Yeah, 09. Mookie and I are both bummed that we didn’t “hear of them first.”

Maybe we should move to the east coast, where all this great hipster music is coming from.

Nah.

“I’d rather live in Bend, not know anything, drink tea, and look at the water,” I told Mookie. We will, one day.

And since you are my friend I would ask that you lower me down slow and tell the man in the black cloak he doesn’t need to trouble his good soul with those Latin conjugations

It’s all good though. The album just recently dropped, on April 13. So probably none of your friends know about them yet. Go check them out: FREELANCE WHALES. The album is called Weathervanes.

Download Freelance Whales – Kilojoules

So I’ve arranged for your phobias to be performed by a string quartet

Some of these catchy lyrics… They make the non carbonated Neuro Sleep I am currently pounding come out of my nose. These are lyrics in the same vein as Death Cab For Cutie… This “simple complicated lyrics” styling that I have such a thing for.

Don’t fix my smile; life is long enough…A few more of the quite brilliant postmortem instructions being doled out in the song “Generator Second Floor”…

I love this album. I love these sounds they make, what with the use of glockenspiel, guitars, banjos, tambourines, harmonium… Laptops too… Cello… You know how we love a cello… And you know how we love bands that use ridiculously-named instruments like bing carbon telephones and microkorgs.

Oh, and could this be the best part of the album? Check out this album art.

Right?

Here is what you need to know about Freelance Whales. I am pulling this off of their MySpace page:

Freelance Whales found one another in late 2008, in Queens, amidst a strange amalgam of unfamiliar instruments, and precariously arranged pop songs. Using whatever musical gadgets they happened upon (mostly harmonium, banjo, glockenspiel, synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums, waterphone), the five members worked at crafting songs with interlocking rhythmic patterns, lush textural layering, and an engaged group-vocal energy. The result is their debut LP, weathervanes, whose songs work at evoking a sense of dislocation, or sensory disorientation. They invite the human spirit to exit the body, if only for brief moments. Freelance Whales can be spotted in the streets and humble venues of New York City, and in due time, elsewhere.

In due time, indeed. They played at South by Southwest. They’re touring New England right now. They’ll make it to the left coast by the end of May. Then Lollapalooza. Sasquatch.

“Amazingly, Freelance Whales are even more arresting live than they are on record. They exhibit the exuberance of a young band that feels lucky to be sharing ideas with their audience” – Leo Maymind, Earfarm

Check out another favorite, “Ghosting”, performed live for NPR’s All Songs Considered – live at an Austin hotel during SXSW:

And all your little molars cracked under pressure

What’s keeping my tongue tied?

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Just go ahead and play the track first.

[Download Silversun Pickups – Sort Of]

Moo–Dee. Moody. It’s in the raspy voice and all the sounds from the supporting instruments that follow suit. You heard it on the first full-length album from the Silversun Pickups, Carnavas, and this time around… It’s as if our hero has finished writing stories and songs and metaphors and manifestos about things he observes and now has summoned the courage to write them directly to the one he loves.

Silversun Pickups is the indie band that hails from Los Angeles, California. It’s the one that reminds you a lil bit of The Smashing Pumpkins in their sound, and maybe of Straylight Run in their makeup. Lead by both Nikki Monninger and Brian Auburt (who play bass and guitar, respectively)they might get some comparisons to the now-defunct but just-as-sincere Straylight. Rounded out by Joe Lester on keys and Christopher Guanlo on drums, the band also sought support from local strings players and wound up with a 16-piece orchestra to back them on tracks on their second full-length album, Swoon. The angry music and strong, haunting strings are best showcased, maybe, on track 2, “The Royal We.”

But our hero doesn’t need a private blog or journal. Let’s be perfectly clear. There’s no secrets this year. Her heart has been blown open. His too.

[Download Silversun Pickups – There’s No Secrets This Year]

Catch Silversun Pickups at Sasquatch this year, or at any of their other engagements. They are said to deliver an amazing and extended set.

Can’t believe that the lure was enough

And these hazards of love nevermore will trouble us

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For some reason, I don’t fully understand the incessant comparisons between Neutral Milk Hotel and The Decemberists. “They’re like Neutral Milk Hotel,” I could understand. But “they’re no Neutral Milk hotel,” I have a hard time with, since the latter band formed long after NMH stopped recording albums.

A criticism for sounding like the band that influenced you? This makes no sense. Is it a regional thing? That a band from the pacific northwest shouldn’t dare sound like a band from the south?

Ah… Is that it? Harrison Hudson! Another twitter calling-out of a band! Wait, add it up… Harrison is from the south… Hmmm… Do I have a theory in the works?

What about Death Cab for Cutie? These three groups are often pitted against each other as if in a favorite child competition. What’s with this? It makes me conjure Max Bemis…

Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance and vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs, you know nothing ABOUT art or sex that you couldn’t read in any trendy new york underground fashion magazine…Proto-typical non-conformist. You are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store gestapo. You adhere to a set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges-BULLSHIT-giving your thumbs up and thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art. Go analog baby, you’re so post-modern. You’re diving face forward into an antiquated past, it’s disgusting! It’s offensive! Don’t stick your nose up at me!

Oh beanie-wearing artsies… Can’t we all just get along? Let’s get to the album review and leave the competition behind. This Tuesday, The Decemberists’ fifth studio album is to be released. (And I will beat the horse for just a moment to point out that The Decemberists are still making music.) This album, The Hazards of Love, may be the album to catapult the band past the other indie/experimentals into first position in the hearts of the genre’s followers, although the reviewers at Entertainment Weekly seem to disagree – they assigned a D+. Then again, that particular reviewer doesn’t seem to appreciate rock operas in the first place.

A rock opera? Yes. That’s what The Hazards of Love is. And for the first time in a long time, I can conceptualize the story from beginning to end on such an effort. Track 10, “The Rake’s Song”, is probably one of the best illustrations of such. Look, I appreciate metaphor in song. But in a rock opera, you’ve got to be literal. And I love that about this song. And you can count on The Decemberists to utilize historical, outdated, or just plain British colloquialisms throughout their lyrics. Do you know what a rake is?


[The Decemberists – The Rakes Song ]

Another item to appreciate about The Decemberists is that this opera is being performed in its entirety at their live performances, such as at South by Southwest last week. It’s meant to be heard all at one sitting; should it not, then, be performed all at once? This album gets The Little One’s approval. It’s good. Sit back on some cushy tasseled pillows with a hookah and enjoy it. I especially appreciate the album art. It’s just as I would have imagined for this story.

Just one more item, to further confuse my pac-nw versus deep indie south theory, The Decemberists are slated to play Bonnaroo in June, but not Sasquatch! in May. They’ll be playing two phases of a tour over the summer, so browse their myspace or their website to follow them.

Tell me now, tell me this,
A forest’s son, a river’s daughter,
A willow on the willow wisp,
our ghosts will wander all of the water.

So let’s be married here today
these rushing waves to bear our witness,
And we will lie like river stones
rolling only where it takes us.