A Midnight Miracle from Joseph Childress

We are no longer the generation of guitar. It stands as a backbone, but we’re not enamored as we once were. Now, no matter who you are, something else is edging in, whether it’s auto-tune and synthesizers, or xylophones and orchestras, or of course, an accordion. Anyone who can get our attention with a mere six strings anymore is, well, simply worth our attention.

Last summer, while working graveyard shifts at a local boys’ home – just me, a computer and some security cameras in an office – I listened to endless hours of internet radio. Honestly, this whole music genome project doesn’t work as well as anyone would have hoped, but it does fill the air with something that won’t threaten to step outside your chosen genre (although it may woefully play many, many failed attempts at said genre). So I was surprised one night when Joseph Childress came onto those scratchy little computer speakers, because it was brilliant. At three in the morning, and three-and-a-half hours yet to suffer, this song made me feel like I had just woken up from a nap on a sunny afternoon.

The song was “Chariots,” which begins with a disjointed verse of enthusiastic singing against a mechanically picked guitar, not unlike Danielson. However, it soon breaks into a warm chorus of gang vocals, which made me feel on that lonely night like I was being embraced by the very arms of brotherhood.

 The song ended far too quickly, and was then gone. In fact, the only trace I could find of it was a thirty-second clip on Pandora’s search page. Childress had a few songs up on his myspace page that were quite good – especially ‘Animal,’ but they weren’t ‘Chariots.’ In fact, strangely, ‘Chariots’ was not available for download or purchase anywhere, and I have no idea how Pandora and its affiliates got their hands on it, but I was jealous.

Until now. Childress is releasing an album in the beginning of the year, “The Rebirths” at Endless Nest Records, and within it, possibly two and a small fraction of the greatest recorded minutes in this soon-ending decade:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Astronautalis: “You and Yer Good Ideas”

Upon the release of Why?’s Eskimo Snow last September, I was heart broken. Yoni’s pseudo-hip-hop stylings (best self-described as, “I always wanted to be the voice of the streets / But my father was a rabbi and my mother made beats / I mean books.”) had found a special place in my heart, and his separation from it (even if only temporarily) wrecked me.

So Astronautalis, (originally, Andy Bothwell) though perhaps a rebound, has filled that hole in my heart. After coming across a couple of tracks, I gave the entirety of his first LP, You and Yer Good Ideas, a listen. I was enthralled with the subtle and dirty indie-electronica, coupled with a spoken word flavor of hip-hop. It’s simple, and to be frank, generally hookless. But it’s fun to once again explore this no man’s land between indie and hip hop, a place that many of set out to find (ie. Cake), but few have successfully inhabited.

Though having gained fame as a battle rapper at Scribble Jam, fortunately the “yo, emcee!” persona remains suppressed, other than a single one-and-a-half minute track. Instead, Bothwell consistently delivers whispered confessions. Behind the beats, he’s a country boy; whether it’s the subtle Johnny Cash loop or the disclosures in ‘Fax Machine’, “I need my room to breathe / My own private patch of dirt / Where I can raise my sheep and make my beats / And teach my kids to curse.” And he’s sloppy and slurred like a country boy, to an endearing extent. Bothwell is quirky, including how troublesome it is to live the life of a vampire (note: this was released back in 2003, long before this current fad), not to mention singing through a fax machine.

Greatest of all, the record is inspiring. It has a “I could do this myself,” feel, while hinting that if I really could, I’d have to spend years jotting down lines and rhymes, and funneling it down to a precise, poignant manuscript.

Astronautalis “You and Yer Good Ideas”