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Archive for the ‘Indie Rock’ Category
DOUBLE BLACK DIAMOND RECORDS LAUNCH!
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009Return of the Mac, SCORE! Vol. 1: Twenty Years of Merge Records compilation
Monday, January 26th, 2009[wpvideo DVXXT1Dg]Nice one on the Merge Records package that dropped in my mailbox today on the heels of last night’s righteous High Places live experience at SF’s uber-indie club, Bottom of the Hill (see previous post below.) Vol. 1 is curated by Peter Buck so you know it’s money. No liner notes though, hmm is Buck just too cool or too busy? No matter as some of my Merge favorites are in full effect on this first of 12 discs. I’m working/But I’m not working for you/Alright? Ya slack motherfucker….yes it’s true. Happy to work for anytime, Mac. Say the word & I shall be healed.
SCORE! Vol. 1 Tracklist highlights:
Slack Motherfucker- Superchunk
Requiem –M Ward
Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft- Robert Pollard
Sour Shores- Portastatic
Freak Scene –Dinosaur Jr.
High Places, Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco 1.23.09
Saturday, January 24th, 2009[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY2wvoa4fA]
True to the hype, High Places are great. The only ‘mistake’ they made was in having a band who kinda-sorta sounds like them open, a two-piece heavy on effects and bass who were also interesting in an annoying kind of way. (Turned out it was their first-ever gig.) Couldn’t tell you any of the names of the songs, but I did recognize one or two from repeated listens to High Places eponymous first-cd on Thrill Jockey. The guy, Rob, makes all kinds of crazy percussive sounds with his drumsticks on electronic pads and they make live samples onstage which is cool as fuck as well.
![[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY2wvoa4fA]](http://chaseevan.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/11592.jpg){kind=link}
Still I can’t help but feel a little goes a long way with these guys. Far-away vocals (read: you never really know what Mary Pearson’s saying in that sweet-ass bubblegum candy lilting way of hers, nor do you much care.) Somehow reminiscent of other greats like Cocteau Twins in their day, you just close your eyes and float away. Set adrift on memory bliss, indeed.
Note: High Places now live in LA, not Brooklyn, NY.
A taste of High Places from 2008’s self-titled cd:
http://www.myspace.com/hellohighplaces
Cracker, Mystic Theatre 12.28.08
Monday, December 29th, 2008Here I am the Angel of Mirth
Here I am the Game Warden of Love
Bein’ bored & calm &….sometimes so-ber
Lowery’s still dead on it. No big surpriser there, though. The fellas were in fine fettle this Christmas-y eve, rocking out the goodjams for the true believers. We was treated to a righteous Dead cover & I Ride My Bike from that seriously oldschool ep I kept tucked away in my Dad’s dresser. Effortlessly brilliant in an off-hand kinda way, a bearded DL sporting a new Argyle sweater and smart-ass Buddy Holly glasses. The cops outside had no idea what they missed.
Loser (Dead cover)
I See The Light
One Fine Day
Gimme One More Chance
Low
I Ride My Bike
Cracker/Camper Van jam
Oh, here:
Remember To Forget: On Blur & Their Impending Reunion Tour
Monday, December 29th, 2008
Damon Albarn sure has a great sense of humor, or at the very least an amazing predeliction/penchant for irony to rival the best of sarcastic songwriters since Mr. Raymond Douglas Davies, Elastica frontchick Justine’s necessarily subjective post-breakup take be damned. As pretty much most of us know by now (or should, thanks in no small measure to NME’s continual blatherings on the gossipy side of things), “Tender,” Blur’s first single off their last interesting, hit-n’-miss collection “13”, redresses the relationship gone wrong in a sly, underhand way, and proves to my not-always-so-distinguishing ear as good a piece of popcraftsmanship we’ve seen mostly all year, its lift and swoon easing us into the not-so-tender sentiment of “Tender is the touch/Of someone that you love too much, ” after beginning with the aching reminiscence “Tender is the night/ Lying by your side.” Albarn, here playing up the role of spurned lover, lets us in on the secrets of his fragile, feral heart. The lover he sings of no longer lying in his arms, the melody suggestive of the very possibility that she’s actually lying with another, and he’s just not too bloody certain he can make it without her, Albarn & Co. then goading him/themselves back on with a plaintive “Come on come on/ Get through it….”
Reminding us and himself that we’ve all been there, we’ve all suffered the dissolution of what we felt the truest of romance and affection, and yes life does go on in much the same fashion, no matter how much at the time we might wish it wouldn’t.
Yeah, “Tender” did it for me, especially the nice live “Hey Jude-y” version of it that appeared late one superstoned Sunday night on EmptyV, did it to the point where I pretty much jumped straightup from my what was once my ex-girlfriend’s stepfather’s LazyBoy, ear-to-ear grinning at the beautiful simplicity of the number and the sheer cosmic freight of this Napolean-complexed genius of a songstyler’s take on his (and by extension, all) relationships. For “Tender,”Albarn employed both an orchestra AND a gang of soul singers to take this revenge-cum-wistfulness number to twin poles of aural revelation: it reads like a simple poem about the loss of loving and the necessity of healing oneself in the face of the ordinary human relationship “tragedies,” but then Graham Cox’s weigh-in on the tune feels to be the sweet, touching element that polishes the diamond in the rough to a sparkling, twinkling sheen.
Another Blur gem to be reckoned with, cigarette-smoked to, dissected and enjoyed over and over is “The Universal,” (from 1995’s The Great Escape) which for my stop, (please DON’T grab yr) cock, n’roll dollar is pretty much about as good as it gets. Straight from its opening swell I’m lost upon a gently swaying but somehow troublefree sea wherein the foundation of the fortress of my not-so-holy soul feels as if the world’s instantly become a safer place for moms, babies, sleeping dogs, and apple pie (who the fuck do I think I am, Gordon “Stink” Sumner? writing claptrap like that—-sorry, friends),—gently enfolded, as swaddled and protected as a newborn by a mercurial dreamlike melody in which I’m promptly assured,
“This is the next century/ Where the universal’s free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future has been sold
Every night we’re gone/ & to karaoke songs
How we like to sing along/ though the words are wrong
IT REALLY REALLY REALLY COULD HAPPPEN!!!
When the days they seem to fall through you
Well just let them go….
Then, as if that alone weren’t enough to just about ruin you or me, Albarn pleas
No one here is alone/ satellites in every home
Yes the universal’s here/ here for everyone
Every paper that you read
Says tomorrow’s your lucky day
Well here’s your lucky day
It really really REALLY could happen, etc.
How endearingly assuring! the kicker here of course being that while the music is lulling me into a false sense of emotional accomodation and your basic Georgey Harrison-y feel-good I’m ok you’re ok at-peaceness with my surroundings, Albarn’s cheeky subtext is absolutely battering my former-English major/existentialist in search of independence sense of mortality with the other, more certain & certainly much less pleasant universal: that, finally, we are all utterly solely alone, both liberated and imprisoned to think and feel whatever we will within the space between our ears, & to lift from an old friend’s lyric, echoes the resounding resurgence that one day “We all die alone, undercover or overexposed.” And yet, the music and mock-tragic depth, the coy knowing clarity and beauty of Albarn’s voice so plaintively makes it plea that for these 3 & 1/2 minutes at least we’re transported, levitated, set adrift from our fears and are, for the time being at least, somehow more accommodated or at-peace with what the eventual fate of our painfully painstakingly overexposed and overblown life-experiences have been, will be. So there.
Ps. Blur’s back together as of the beginning of 2009.
Soundtracking Our Dazes & Amazements
Monday, December 29th, 2008
One of the nice things about reminiscence is that while under its heady spell, we’re able to revise or re-paint our memories whatever emotional shade we deem most significant, appropriate. Though I don’t myself make it, music is now and I feel has always been an essential part of my spiritual and emotional make-up. Music has always done something for me viscerally, goading me on in my enthusiasms and encouraging pensive quietudes. Every part of our lives has a distinctive soundtrack, and it’s up to us to decide 1) what those soundtracks will be, and 2) whether or not we’ll carry those songs, however close they may have been to us during our pasts, into our presents. Like so many other aspects of my life I’m unable to or don’t care to compartmentalize, for the better part (especially the second half) of the last decade, I’ve chosen to carry close to my heart certain rock-&-roll songs, certain rock bands, because, for me, life without them would simply be unimaginable, or at the very least certainly less sweet. Songs have been there for me when no one or nothing else could be, and for that I am extremely grateful.
II. My Noise
Pop culture has its own soundtrack, as we all so painfully know, a soundtrack that for my emotional dollar is both empty of sentiment and bereft of significance. What, as adolescents and then later as young adults, (I’m 29 now, fast approaching 30), blows our hair back, is seldom one-and-the-same, and for good and very obvious reason: we are changed, or at least are deeply enmeshed in the process of changing. At nineteen I was told by a sociologist professor that change is the hardest thing for us human beings, and that many of us never really make it that far, that it’s simply too hard. If I didn’t (couldn’t) hear him too well back then, today I’m hearing him loud and clear again and again.
See, my short life-experience on this fair planet has taught me a few cruel and wonderful things, and one of the more significant things life’s taught me is, is continually trying to teach me, is simply this: GROW, or DIE. Through my days of drinking and drugging, looking for answers and shaking my fist at the sky, rock-and-roll’s redemptive forces have given me what I’d like to call or think of as perspective, not a unique perspective I’m come to find, but simply an aid in the recognition of the fact that we’re all in the motherhumper together, and we best attempt to do at least decent by our fellow woman and man.
M83 Digital Shades, Volume I
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Haunting, otherwordly new release on the heels of M83’s triumphant synth perfection, Saturdays =Youth.
M83’s Anthony Gonzales has surpassed himself again, only this time it’s with a slowmind slowburning late-night creeper keeper. Where Saturdays=Youth was out-of-hand indie goth this one’s just pure straight-up as-yet undreamed of magic in every way.
Light a candle, put Digital Shades on, slide under the covers & immerse yourself in some otherwordly futuristic place, finding yourself swathed in sine waves and fuzzy electronic blankets, sheets of magnetic sound.
Records like this don’t come along often nowadays & the indie & blog press is certain to have a field day on Digital Shades Vol. 1. I look forward to the other installments to come. The lush production, overall latenight dreaminess factor of eleven.
The Changes, Today is Tonight
Friday, November 28th, 2008Today is Tonight by The Changes is an altogether worthy album. Lovely & charming, full to the brim with poppy hooks. Good stuff for all the funny kids.
The Changes, a Chicago-based quartet, make me feel damn good when I’m listening to them. Great songs with titles like Modern Love and Twilight about chicks, late-night business stuff. Can’t lose. I feel light & plugged-in when I listen to these guys, connected to the world in a magic way. Makes me want to dance (Judah Bauer-stylie.) Kind of remind me of The Police Outlandos-era. Dig it !
