Category Archives: SXSW

House of 9’s Where I Belong

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I bought this album last week and meant to review it on Friday. Then I sprained two fingers and shit got real. I’m just kidding. It didn’t get real. I just like that phrase. But I did mangle my fingers pretty bad and typing just wasn’t in the cards.

I heard of this band, Everest, because an old pal from childhood actually did the album art. Yeah dude! Give some props to the wildly attractive and popular Desi Moore. Thankya.

This isn’t Everest’s first album or rodeo, but really, let’s pretend it is. They recorded Ghost Notes in 2007 when they had barely been a band for two weeks. They jumped on tour (with acts as notable as Neil Young, huzzah, and My Morning Jacket, of course) and got all set to record their second album. But a little something called SXSW happened, and before you know it, they sign with Warner Brothers instead. Mental note, prepare for an e-mail from the Web Sheriff du-du-doooo…

So May 11, On Approach was released and even though the band likes to say they don’t actually sound like other bands, well. Look. We’ve all accepted it by now. We are a product of our influences; we just are. I realize I am probably the only one who hears Exile in Track One, “Let Go” -and yes I mean Exile as in 1978, long hair and synthesizers – but then I doubt many other people grew up with the fully stocked juke box that I did. I hear “I Wanna Kiss You All Over” every time I hear this track:


Download Everest – Let Go

After that, I really don’t mean to make any other comparisons and I just want to get in to this chill album. But by the time I get to Track 8, “House of 9’s”, I am hearing Thrice – or at least Dustin Kensrue – through and through. Another listen through the album proves that if you like Thrice, you will really love Everest. They’re on a heavy-duty tour right now. I hope their van is holding up – go see them and buy some merch! Help them out! This is a solid, solid sound.

The band asks that you support your local record store, so why don’t you go ahead and do so. Browse around for Exile while you’re there too. Compare and appreciate the funky guitar sounds.

If you don’t have a local record store, try buying online here.

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

That Gum You Like Is Back In Style

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Do you know who is in Austin right now? The answer is Not Me. The tickets are just outrageously expensive. And if I recall correctly, getting a media pass required a few gymnastic moves that I just can no longer muster. Where does the money go, anyway? According to the blog posts from a few favorite bands, they apparently don’t get compensated very well either.
In fact, the compensation issue compelled Camper Van Beethoven to come up with the idea of fan-sponsored songs just to make the travel and performance at SXSW doable this year.
Yeah… Camper Van Beethoven. Do you remember them? Or does the line blur between where CVB ended and Cracker began? Or do you think back and wonder whether that was a Wallflowers or Camper song that you loved so much that one summer?
“Influential” is one of the most commonly used words when discussing this 80’s/90’s alternative/punk/ska/pop/rock band. That’s why you hear them in just about everything you ever listened to growing up.

Download Camper Van Beethoven – I Hate This Part of Texas

I hate this part of the night when the music Mookie has put on creates some odd reality within my dreaming brain. Fear not lovelies: podcasts will return soon, and Mookie can’t wait to discuss this very topic.

But back to today’s post. Camper Van Beethoven released albums throughout the 80’s, disbanded in the 90’s, and began to tour again in 2002. New Roman Times was put out in 2004 and it’s actually a concept album. I don’t totally translate the character’s point of view in every song – supposedly it tells the tale of a disenchanted chap following his stint in the military – but at this point, it doesn’t matter anymore. Now this album is simply something you need to make sure you have heard as you enter our most futuristic decade ever: if you want your hovercraft, you better remember from whence you came.

Download Camper Van Beethoven – That Gum You Like Is Back in Style

Who could be calling waking me from my dreams
Of John Paul and Ringo, and Keenan Wynn
(No George)

Check your collection… Have you got them all?

Form in an orderly queue outside your house

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We just found out that Tenacious D has replaced The Beastie Boys at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival.

A lot of attendees are pissed.

Does Tenacious D belong at a music festival?

WHY THE HELL NOT? Can you imagine another way you could have THAT MUCH FUN? I caught a video of their live performance at Reading, and areyoukiddingmerightnow it’s super very awesome.

Not that they are to be compared in any way to Tenacious D, but I think of this example because as I heard Track 9 of We Were Promised Jetpacks’ These Four Walls this morning at 4 AM, I thought,

This is the type of song you want performed when you’re at a music festival.

Take a listen to “Short Bursts” and see:

[Download We Were Promised Jetpacks – Short Bursts]

Glasgow. Yes, that’s right. You’re hearing a Scottish brogue. In fact, the Scottish Arts Council helped them with funding to get themselves over to SXSW this year. It seems there are no other festivals on the lineup at this time, but they will be coming back to the States for a tour this fall.

I’m loving them. These Four Walls is actually their debut album despite having formed a good six years ago. Each song is well thought-out, with all elements contributing from their proper place in the foreground or background of the track. And this is what makes up the energy that this whole album puts out.

Speaking of that energy, how about a love song that isn’t slow and melancholy, but throws all those heartsick feelings into a power ballad of the indie persuasion?

That’s right. Press play and enjoy “Roll Up Your Sleeves”:

[Download We Were Promised Jetpacks – Roll Up Your Sleeves]

Roll Up Your Sleeves is one of two singles put out from this record. Don’t wait and wonder if it’s going to hit the frequencies here. Just buy the album, share this post with your friends, and spread the love. You have a new favorite band.

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.

I’ve had enough, so I’m giving up.

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Will Thompson, Sam Thompson, Stephen Ross, and Z Lynch make up the rock band The Steps.

I love the sound and look of this group.

The song Pull The Cord is my favorite off the album followed closely by Dagger (video below). It’s a rockin’ track that I think you will dig.

[The Steps – Pull The Cord]

I asked Stephen Ross, the bass player in the band, a few questions:

I thought for sure you would be from the UK. The look. The sound. But you are from Austin, Texas! With all your touring, have you found a place you might consider leaving Austin for? Would it take much to leave Austin?

Uh…London was cool. I mean, I think we all would want to move there, that’d be sweet. I think it would still take a lot to leave here because our family and established following is in Austin



Are you Dallas Cowboys fans?

I am- I’d like to see them in the Super Bowl. Kind of a new fan, though

I love the sound of this album. It’s going to be an album I have in playing in my car quite a bit. It seems like it’s going to be great to drive to. Do you know what I mean? What are you listening to right now? What album/song makes you think of driving fast?

In my car right now: The Whigs- Mission Control
What makes me want to drive fast: Camaro by Kings of Leon

[Kings of Leon – Camaro]


Dagger from The Steps on Vimeo.

The video was great. Not sure if i missed the answers to this one somewhere, but; How long did it take to make this video? What, if anything, would you do different on your next video?

It took about 12 hours to make. I would film it not in the freezing cold and maybe have us come out on top in the video (since we get killed).

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one thing to eat, what would you want an endless supply of, and why?

Well I guess I would have to think nutritious. You know those little clementine oranges? Those would be tight. Or a spicy ruben.

It’s SXSW time, and The Steps will be there. Catch their performance March 19th at 3PM

Get a head start and buy the album today. Play it LOUD!