This is a beautiful article everyone should read that I wanted to share….
Here’s to no more music snobbery, because “Party In The USA” is just too catchy to pass up sometimes.
NPR Monkey See…Let’s Resolve Together To Make 2010 The Year We Leave The Window Open by Linda Holmes
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.
Since Christmas happens to be THIS week, and I’m feeling the Christmas spirit, I feel prompted to share a holiday gem with you all.
This particular holiday gem happens to be a cover of Amy Grant’s Tender Tennessee Christmas by Drew Grow & The Pastor’s Wives. The band hails from my hometown of Portland, Oregon – and they have a knack for wintery and sultry goodness. Drew and his merry band of Pastor’s Wives have are releasing a series of singles on a new local indie label, Amigo/Amiga.
If you happen to live in the Portland metro area, catch the Amigo/Amiga Holiday Party at the Doug Fir this Tuesday, December 22nd. Kelli Schaefer (!) and The Beauty will also be playing. The show is only $5 a ticket, and $1 from each ticket will go to the Oregon Food Bank. You now have no reason not to go.
So, happy holidays to you all! If a cheeky cover of a christmas song by an evangelical superstar of the 1980’s doesn’t make you feel the Christmas spirit, I don’t know what will.
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.
Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros “KISSES OVER BABYLON” from Edward Sharpe on Vimeo.
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”
The Very Best.
Now, here is a band whose name hearkens to that cheeky little scene in The Sandlot, where all the neighborhood boys offer the “square” kid a S’more. And the square kid responds in true square fashion: “Some more of what? I haven’t had anything yet. How can I have some more of nothing?”
I don’t know how many people I have told to listen to The Very Best. Countless hundreds, maybe even thousands. And I always get the classic response. “The Very Best of what? Cher?**” (**Insert any other mediocre performer who may or may not have a ‘best of’ album.)
Thank you, no. I have not and will not listen to The Very Best of Cher.
Nor will I recommend the following:
The Very Best of Prince
The Very Best of Elton John
The Very Best of Meatloaf
The Very Best of Kiss
The Very Best of Bananarama (Ok, ok, I might listen to the very best of Bananarama).
But put those impostors out of your mind! What you really need to do is listen to a band called The Very Best who put out an album this year entitled “Warm Heart of Africa”.
(And now, for the history!)
Last year, the almighty Pitchfork declared that ”The Very Best Mixtape” by Esau Mwamwaya & Radio*^%# (sorry, I had to censor) was one of their top albums of 2008. I was skeptical. Pitchfork has failed me before. But, these guys were from Malawi! And they sampled M.I.A, Michael Jackson, Vampire Weekend, and more! And the music was just so damn happy.
So, I gotta give it to Pitchfork. They were right. Last year’s mix tape from these guys was phenomenal. And, now, this year, the band has released a full-length album…this time, under the moniker of The Very Best. The name of the album says it all: Warm Heart of Africa. If this music doesn’t warm your heart, you may not even have a heart. If you have ever been to Africa, this album will make you long to go back. If you haven’t been to Africa, this album will make you wish you had. The album, quite simply, just makes you feel good. The music is clever, its upbeat, and it somehow blurs the lines between pop, indie, and (god forbid!) world music.
As I sit here in my cold little cubicle, the sounds of track four – “Julia” – hits my ears, making me forget that I’m freezing and hungry. I have no idea what they are actually saying but that doesn’t matter. I hum and I sing and I dance in my desk chair. And my day gets a little bit brighter.
I don’t know about you, but I could use a bit more brightness in my days. So go ahead, give em a spin.
I dare you!
Along with 4 tour dates to support the release. Get your tickets now, LA. It will sell out.
January 22nd Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern
January 23rd San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
January 29th New York, NY Terminal 5
January 30th Chicago, IL The Vic Theatre
Then check out the second track from the EP, Coffee Spoon, streaming for free on EW.com.
I don’t think so. Vampire Weekend has no redeeming quality (musically) as a band and possibly the only reason people like them are because they are told to like them. It’s a pretentious statement I realize. But, how do you put a band on the cover of SPIN magazine, which used to symbolize accomplishments, a spot you had to earn, before you even release an album?!!
I believe in marketing. I believe people’s emotional reactions can be controlled. Yes, taste is subjective, but your responses to things that ultimately make you like them, to some extent, are not under your control. Maybe it was “A-Punk” used on the closing scene on the always amazing Friday Night Lights. The nostalgic tie of a song synching with an emotional episode in your mind is enough to make you love a band. Truth be told, Explosions in the Sky catapulted up on my Most Played just from scoring a lot of the scenes in FNL. The same way if you see a band everywhere, you assume you are supposed to know about them. Or that cute girl loving a no-name band makes you a bit more interested in them. No one likes to be told why they like something, but when you’re inside the box, you cannot think about what is happening outside the box. That’s like getting a hipster to admit they are a hipster, thus defying all definition of being a hipster.
One site listed “Cape Cod” in its Top 10 Indie Sex Songs. Really?? With so much oversaturation of music, and indie music more than anything, what would make someone want to listen to any Vampire Weekend song when you have so many other artists, and purely for example, like Fleet Foxes, Midlake, Band of Horses, Emily Haines, Wavves, Black Kids, Matt & Kim, Girls, Phoenix, etc etc etc. It’s marketing….it’s allllll marketing people.
“We’re in danger of discovering people before they are worthy of being discovered.” – Malcolm Gladwell
Vampire weekend “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
