another elbow drop

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There are five things I love about Elbow:

1. Asleep In The Back (2001)
2. Cast Of Thousands (2003)
3. Leaders Of The Free World (2005)
4. The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)
5. Build A Rocket Boys (2011)

Well actually, there are quite a few more. The band makes excellent music, chooses great songs to cover, and is generally a class act. I wrote about them here before so use the search feature before you read ahead if you’re not familiar.

Elbow’s new release, Build A Rocket Boys does nothing to tarnish their reputation. After a few listens it falls around the same place as Leaders Of The Free World on the Kilter Lists Elbow’s Profundity To Order (KLEPTO) scale. That’s actually on the low end of the scale, but let me qualify that statement: A) It’s still new to me and it generally takes me a while to really digest an album by these guys, and B) that’s like being on the low end of the Times I Had Awesome Sex With A Supermodel scale. When you’ve been as consistent as Elbow has over the years it’s not a question of whether the album is good. It’s just a new chance to see what these guys have been up to and remember how touching they can be.

Click to play Elbow – Lippy Kids

I won’t gush about this release. I’ll just post a couple more songs for you. This one reminds me of something Erik Satie would have whipped up.

Click to play Elbow – The River

Here’s one of the more upbeat songs, which was also the first single:

Click to play Elbow – Neat Little Rows

On an unrelated note, other than they’re another of my favorite bands, Veto released their new album in late February. It’s called Everything Is Amplified . I haven’t been able to find it for sale in the US yet, so I’ll admit to checking it out via other methods. It’s very interesting, as they’re going in a more experimental direction. Once I find a copy that doesn’t require me to use babelfish to purchase it I’ll write a full review. All I can say is that if you find it out there you need to buy it and support this band. They’re one of the freshest things out there, if you ask me.

If You Pull Me Apart Don’t Swallow My Heart

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Early one morning (read: as in, the gaudy tramp stamp *above* the butt-crack of dawn), I was seized with a desire to listen to some music that was going to make me happy.
I reached one hand out from under the covers and grabbed for my iTouch. I opened the “Remote” app and started my computer’s iTunes from bed. I played some Starlight Mints for what I thought was the first time. I thought I had never heard of them before.

The name of the album was what was so intriguing to me, since it’s inspired by perhaps my favorite Shakespeare quote. The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of is the first album from Oklahoma indie/psych pop band Starlight Mints. This album makes me happy from beginning to end. Beginning to end! I curled up all nice and content and listened with a smile on my face.
I don’t know if I’ve heard it before. It’s ten years old, after all. It feels like home. Yes, it’s full of synth, full of clanging, a mix of Pixies and Violent Femmes-style vocalizing, and various forms of crafting and tweaking. And orchestra music. And cartoon music. I love it so.
I think one of the songs on this 2000 album that best represents what they’re doing here, but still ventures further out from any “mold” they might have created, is super-deep in: Track 11, “Margarita.”

Click to Enjoy Starlight Mints – Margarita

Listen. There’s no tour scheduled. There’s no new album. They haven’t logged in to MySpace since December. Maybe I shouldn’t be promoting them to you. But this is good stuff, and if you haven’t heard it, you need to.
They aren’t a one-hit show. After Dreams, they recorded three more albums every few years. By all accounts, they are currently just relocating and taking care of other life kind of stuff right now. You have to truly appreciate that in a good artist. So when they return, or when you see them on the OutsideLands or FrollaChella lineup, you will know who they are and you can tell all your friends how you totally have to go see them.
The last album released was 2009’s Change Remains, still full of surprises and experiments.  Check out “40 Fingers”, then buy the stuff and get ready.

Click to Enjoy Starlight Mints – 40 Fingers

Is it me you’re looking for?

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Perhaps the really provocative area for future development lies… in cyborg rock; not the wholehearted embrace of Techno’s methodology, but some kind of interface between real time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement.

–Simon Reynolds

Mogwai

Post-rock is made up of guitars like a regular rock band, but processed through so many filters and effect pedals that it barely sounds like a guitar on the other side of the speaker. Bands of this genre also tend to rebel against the norms of rock bands. Macho posturing and power chords are replaced by lengthy, textural instrumentals and often computers playing a part in the sound of the music.

Todays post is about my favorite Post-Rock band Mogwai from Scotland. They formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (electric guitar, vocals), John Cummings (electric guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (electric guitar, piano, synthesiser, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drum kit). The band is named after the creatures from the film Gremlins, although guitarist Braithwaite comments that “it has no significant meaning and we always intended on getting a better one, but like a lot of other things we never got round to it.“

Mogwai’s style could easily be called shoegazing or Math Rock and occasionally instrumental metal. These are all genres that can fall under the heading Post-Rock. Mogwai is at the forefront of the genre and moving it forward with confidence and purpose.

Let’s listen to some Post-Rock shall we? …and before the title of the track throws you completely for a loop, I’ll mention that the band often has a hard time with titles since most of the songs are just instrumentals. The band has said in the FAQ off their website that they sometimes just use strings of words they have “said or seen that sounds good or makes us laugh“.

Here is the closing track from Mogwai’s seventh album, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (released 2/14/2011).

Click to listen to Mogwai – You’re Lionel Ritchie

The song starts off almost as something from the score of a movie. Cinematic and shimmering we hear some vocal samples (I’m assuming they are Scottish) that really frame a picture in your head. The song simmers for 4 minutes until the heaviness sets in. The bass comes in like an oppressive force of nature. All the members of the band painting pictures in your ear.

Barry Burns once stated in an interview with Chillville that he and the rest of the band do not like the categorization of Post-Rock because he believes “it overanalyses everything.” I get it. No one wants to be so easily put into a box, forever feeling limited by the parameters of said box. But the thing is… To explain music to others, we sometimes have to put boxes around it, even if they’re just made with pencil.

Set My Soul At Ease

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It was during season 14 of Saturday Night Live that I first heard of Edie Brickell. I watched every episode religiously that year, so that I could return on Monday to the first of many Algebra classes I had failed and re-hash the entire episode with Mike Popowski. We would roll in the aisles laughing about Giant Business Man, Church Chat, Girl Watchers, Sweeney Sisters, The Anal Retentive Chef, Hans and Franz, Pat Stevens, eventually Wayne’s World, then to close out the season the sketch that would absolutely kill – Toonces! Then there were the “commercials.” The Change Bank. I have always loved this one. We can handle requests like that; usually the same day.

Back to Edie Brickell. I watched SNL in the TV in my teenage bedroom. I didn’t have a DVR. There was no such thing. I didn’t have a VCR. Never mind what that is. There was no pause, no rewind, no let’s go look that up online. I had one shot to remember these sketches and one shot to be introduced to some of these artists.

So when this mousy girl from Texas got up and started singing strung-together existential silliness in the song “What I Am”, I just wasn’t sure how to react at first! I joked about it at school. But I looked further and I kind of got into folk sensation Edie Brickell and New Bohemians.

SNL has played a major role in Brickell’s life, since it was during her performance on the show two years later that she met her future husband, Paul Simon. Literally, she was performing a song, he got in the way of the camera, she flubbed her lyric, and then the two were married two years later in 1992. Following this union, they had three children, Brickell released two solo albums, and then reunited with the New Bohemians to record another album. After that Edie and Paul’s son from his first marriage formed a band called The Heavy Circles with a few other famous children. She formed another band with yet more artists last year. The indie and folk flow and creativity that must be going through this woman’s life at all times… Speaking of Bohemian!

So here we are in 2011, and we have a new album not only from Edie Brickell but also from The Gaddabouts, her most recent formation.  Brickell writes a lot of songs on the fly – some get written and recorded the same day – and to keep the sound of her latest solo album pure and organic, she has included several live tracks.  It’s not that she tours, but she does perform live shows here and there.  She opened for one of our favorites, Iron and Wine.

Maybe one of the cleanest, sweetest songs on Brickell’s latest release (self titled) is Track 3, “Been So Good.”

Click to Enjoy Edie Brickell – Been So Good

Don’t forget you’re the best one that I’ve ever known.

Grab the album. Edie Brickell is a talented musician who isn’t always around when you expect her.

Charlie Sheen Is An Asshole, But Let’s Learn From It

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“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” – Marcus Aurelius

Watching the one-man circus sideshow known only as Charlie Sheen gave me some fits of anger. Why? Well, his comments on AA are what really made my blood boil. The insinuation that the ideas behind AA were “written for normal people” and that there was a specific path to go by is just disingenuous. Yes, there are the 12 steps. It doesn’t mean that one has to have rigidity in how they practice and follow through on those 12 steps. Anyhow, that wasn’t really what made me upset. It’s the fact that I’ve personally witnessed a life change positively – due to the help they provided – makes me a bit angry. My own mother hit rock bottom from alcoholism almost 20 years ago, and hit the point where she tried to take her own life.

Now, it’s my understanding that the teachings of AA are inspired by Christian teachings. Personally, I’m an atheist. My own mother grew up in a strict Irish-Catholic home, but doesn’t practice, now. She still stays with her mission to stay sober, so it does do some good. The fact that we now have a celebrity slamming a program that helps millions that have nowhere else to go is honestly showing how out of touch he is. His comments about how “special” he was only stoke those flames and show the true amount of disconnect.

His unfortunate path is his own, but he’s now acting out in a manner that affects people in society. The everyday people that he called “losers” that are addicts and know nothing else, for example. It’s sad, really. The anger I originally felt has actually turned into pity. The ranting while talking about how underpaid he was also struck a nerve, as I was an education major in college, and watch as the governors of Wisconsin and New Jersey are openly battling teachers’ unions. Teachers are underpaid. Not Charlie Sheen. This sad arrogance is 100% anger, which he denies.

So what should I do? Do I lash out? I seriously thought about it. The media does play a large role in this, as they keep giving Sheen a podium to stand on. That role is what will likely end up being Sheen’s downfall, as people will quickly tire of the pity he’s asking for. When one out of ten people in our country are without a job, you’d find nary a few that would feel for a man that spent his money irresponsibly by snorting it up his nose. The media will have to take a large part of the blame for joyously allowing one man’s self-destructive behavior to simply worsen and hit a low.

Instead of lashing out, I hit a point where I simply now want to refuse to add gasoline to the fire. The decisions he’s made serve well to teach us all. He really is right in that his kids will learn from him. However, they won’t learn the lessons he thinks. His father, Martin Sheen, has already had enough, and is simply saying that he would be there for his son. There really isn’t shame in it. I can’t say I would be a bigger or better person for wagging my finger at him, though. It’s a natural reaction, of course. My willingness to understand the wrong in being angry is part of how he instead teaches me more about myself and how I could be a better person on my own, as I hope many with drug and alcohol addictions learn to do, too.

To find an AA chapter near you – visit here.
For help with drug addiction – visit here.

Click to Play Daft Punk – Teachers

I Will Meet You In Your Heart

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I am currently smitten  with Minneapolis band Tapes N’ Tapes. The group is named after the boxes of tapes the band had recorded demos on.
Their first full-length album, The Loon, was released in 2005 and was recorded by the band… Indie DIY style. The recording took place in a Wisconsin cabin with no running water.
Tapes N’ Tapes had some great timing with the release of this record. The hype of music blogs had really begun to achieve new heights and prominence. Many up and coming blogs back then wrote up The Loon favorably. They compared them to The Pixies and Pavement. They were hailed as one of the first “Blog Bands”. Then Pitchfork Media gave them a “Best New Music” commendation.
The sophomore effort Walk It Off, released in 2008, was not reviewed so favorably. I think it’s a great piece of work. It’s just a different direction that many people felt had more to do with producer David Fridmann (many consider Fridmann the 5th Flaming Lip for his influence and production on that band).
After a small hiatus, the band is back…and when I mean back, I mean back to basics. Their 2011 release, Outside, was again produced by the band. It is a return to the sound of The Loon. They have regained their status with the bloggers and the fans alike.
I for one can’t stop playing this new album. It seems the band continues to be influenced by The Pixies and Pavement, as well as by Modest Mouse and maybe even The Strokes.
The album got me searching for possible hidden meanings of a track titled Outro placed on the middle of the album. I had, at first, thought that maybe they were making a play on the fact that track 6 might have fallen at the end of side 1 of a cassette tape. I did some math…and the end of track 6 comes in at 19 minutes, 52 seconds.  I was right.  Outro finishes “side 1” with a raucous exit. 
Click to listen to Tapes N’ Tapes – Outro


Short but fucking sweet. There are some great tracks on this album. Buy the album and be sure to check out “Freak Out”, which is the band’s first single, as well as “The Saddest Of All Keys” which I have set to repeat in my car:


Click to listen to Tapes N’ Tapes – Saddest of All Keys

  

crooning from the darkness

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What do you do after you’ve nailed multiple genres and been in highly-respected bands like Murder City Devils and Pretty Girls Make Graves? You change it up again, of course.

Derek Fudesco, of the previously mentioned bands, is now a member of The Cave Singers. Their third album No Witch dropped this week. It’s a folksy romp of an album full of understated guitars and melodies that could bring the Hatfields and McCoys together for an afternoon luncheon. It made me want to drink a bottle of moonshine and dance around in bare feet. In other words, it’s got a downhome swagger that you just can’t avoid. Here’s the opening track as an example.

Click to play The Cave Singers – Gifts And The Raft

The key is the album’s simplicity. The production is very clean but there’s never too much going on. These guys aren’t trying to overwhelm you with a ton of music, they just want to overwhelm you with GOOD music. It works. I’m particularly hooked on the slinkly track “Falls” right now.

Click to play The Cave Singers – Falls

I’d put this album right up with some of the better folk/blues albums around right now. The Cave Singers can hang with The Black Keys, sure. Just let me know so I can be around to listen in.

Click to play The Cave Singers – Haystacks

Spare Bricks Can Be Dead Weight

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It’s that time again. One of my favorite bands has released another album, and it’s time for me to snot and slobber on and on about how great it is.
Enter antithetic sentence here – wait, no. I was being completely genuine. I am about to snot and slobber over how great Bayside’s fifth major album, Killing Time, is. It’s sick, sick, sick.

Click to Enjoy Bayside – Sick, Sick, Sick

Anthony Raneri’s viciously self-aware lyrics have absolutely never failed to create the sharpest possible framework for each song, each album, each live performance. The combination of guitar sounds between Nick, Jack, and Anthony make sure that no matter how complicated the issue these lyrics skillfully dissect, the track will still melt your face. And then there is the skinny little fireball drummer, Chris, who picked up after the devastating death of the band’s previous drummer and lead them right through multiple successful albums. Watching him live is inspiring.

You need a map to see how far I was sticking out my neck

Whether it is in a club setting, a dive bar, or a huge outdoor stage – the Bayside live show is amazing and not to be missed. Record store acoustic performances ain’t terrible either. It may be a lot of emo/punk/uncategorized kids who are into this band, but this can’t possibly be a bad thing. Let’s hope some of Ant’s expert wordsmithery makes it into their vocabs sometime soon.

But can a person make a difference if he never makes a sound?

You can’t define this sub-genre. It is rock. This is rock music. These are working-class guys. They speak to everyone. You are guilty of committing the crimes these songs have called out. You have felt the pain and loss that they’ve so eloquently lamented. You’ve felt as doe-eyed in love. You’ve felt as murderously wronged. You don’t have to be Emo to feel these things. It’s rock and roll music (any old way you choose it.)

So buy Killing Time, and buy it for your friends too. I mean buy it. And buy a ticket to their show. I promise you, one will come nearby. These guys tour like a… rock band.

So stand for something cause something’s overdue
And I don’t ask for much, but this could define a lifetime.

Put A Ring On It, As Well As A Twist To It

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This one just defies words. Seriously. Our house music pal Derrick Carter shared this video on his wall on Facebook last night.

I was in full scale shock. Was this real? It is, in fact, real. The Cleverlys are for real. And making a DVD. The above really just defies words. But even better? Is their cover of a terrible Black Eyed Peas song. And they made it sound great. Well, it sounds great, to me.

So, yeah. I really hope I am not pissing anyone off by posting this, but it has to be done. It’s amazeballs.

Click to Play The Cleverlys – Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Click to Play The Cleverlys – I Gotta Feeling

Click to Play Beyonce – Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

Not a single one of us has the guts to bear a cross

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The Dears

I had never heard of Montreal based band The Dears before seeing that video. Needless to say, but for the sake of word count, I’m a fan now. You might hear Morrissey in Murray Lightburn’s voice and lyrics. Lightburn has been quoted saying he is “absolutely fucking bored to death” with the comparison. He does sound a little like Morrissey, but can also sound a lot like Marvin Gaye at times.

I am mostly enamoured with the sound and songwriting of the band. It’s reminiscent of everything I love about Radiohead, Broken Social Scene, and TV on the Radio*. Adjectives that apply? Heroic, epic, expansive, dynamic.

The band had broken up after its 2008 release Missles. It regrouped, shed all members keeping only Lightburn’s wife, singer and keyboardist Natalia Yanchak. They brought back previous guitarists Patrick Krief and Rob Benvie and bassist Roberto Arquilla while adding a completely new member in Jeff Luciani on drums. With the reformation compelte they set off to record their latest album Degeneration Street. The new album is by far the best album in the discography, but I woudn’t sleep on their previous efforts. Check out a track from the Degeneration Street:

Click here to play The Dears – Thrones

I felt like the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences really wanted to bless an indie band for the 53rd Grammy Awards that took place this year. That nod went to the mostly undeserving band, Arcade Fire, who happen to also be from Montreal. I believe that The Dears might have been a more deserving nominee. Not that it was nominated. It’s just my opinion. I can also say with 100% certainty that The Dears would have put on a much better performance on Grammy Night.

There IS a reason why our post titled “Arcade Fire Sucks,” written June 2010, has suddenly shot up to the most vistied post on our site since the night of the Grammys. They just kinda suck…

Watch the video below for a glimpse of what MIGHT have been.