Monday Music Roundup

I’m still recovering from my weekend, what with all the SoCo-sponsored libations in the hot hot sun that set off other fun and unexpected happenings (like my rookie winning streak at the Klacker dice game, netting me a championship $7 –seven dollars!!– all in singles). Incidentally the SoCo also improved both my Cornhole game and my Rock Band skills (oh! doubtful!!).

Here are a handful of new songs I’ve been digging lately, the first two from bands I saw this weekend:

Photograph
Eagle Seagull
This was the first thing I heard coming into the festival Saturday, and I was impressed with the soaring, rich layers of melody and caught by the singer’s voice. Eagle Seagull are from Nebraska, and something has been made of them sharing the same “scene” as fellow Cornhuskers like Bright Eyes or Tilly And The Wall, but I frankly hear more similarity to British bands like The Cure. In fact, I incorrectly thought they were from England, and that I’d caught a hint of accent there. I especially enjoyed watching their cool-as-ice violinist play her minty green instrument with panache. This tune is from their 2004 debut Eagle*Seagull.

LSD (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds remix)
Bassnectar / Insane Bangers
I wrote some in the Paste article just how much I enjoyed the set by DJ Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar, an SF/Berkeley artist who I’d never had the thrill of seeing live before. He only played for an hour but I doubt there was a single person there who was not enjoying themselves, stretching that 60 minutes out into what seemed like much longer. Amidst all the flailing dancers, even this guy got into it (and he tried to dance with me but I didn’t want to break him or anything; he looked brittle!):

Ah, Colorado. Anyways, this song was one of the crowd highlights of the set — made better when combined with the delight that Ashton took in watching all of us as he recreated it with his laptops and turntables. I recommend an experience with Bassnectar when he comes through your town.

Alphabet
The Notwist
As previously mentioned on Fuel/Friends, German ambient-indie band The Notwist are finally giving us some new music, and the day is here (er, past). The Devil, You + Me was released June 16 on Domino Records, and I am loving its muted elegance, deceptively urgent percussion, and swirling overall presence. I’d wondered what they had been up to and according to a reader, they’ve been busy with side projects in between 2002′s Neon Golden and the new album. They released an album with spoken-word/rapper Dose One as 13&god in 2005 and some members are also in the Munich band Lali Puna, who released their third album in 2004. But it’s good to hear a full new Notwist album, and I think it will sound especially fitting once the summer heat dies and the crispness of autumn hits the wind.

Song For
Earlimart
There’s a delicious thrum and counteractive pause on this song, almost like holding your breath — an atmospheric sense of foreboding. Named for a small California town halfway between Fresno and Bakersfield (some hot fun to be had out there, let me tell you), Earlimart has been making oft-dreamy tunes for almost a decade. For this new record, the rotating cast of Earlimart whittled down to just Aaron Espinoza (him) and Ariana Murray (her), their graceful harmonies intertwining like a dance. Because of Espinoza’s friendship with the late Elliott Smith, many comparisons will never cease, but he has acknowledged the ways that the friendship influenced his music — here there might be something between the lines, a quality in the timbre and the breath. Hymn and Her is out tomorrow on Shout! Factory.

On My Mind
Romantica
Irish band Romantica first blipped onto my radar with singer Ben Kyle’s gorgeous duet with Ryan Adams when they opened for him on tour last Fall. A chance encounter with that cover on my iPod this weekend (and the consequential singing along in harmony all the rest of my day) sent me trawling to their MySpace to see what they are up to. On this song, I find the combination of his Irish lilt alongside a very American-heartland brand of music to be simply irresistible, as he sings typical lyrics of desperation and heartache like “You’re too young to get married, honey, you ought to be sleeping around” (listen for that fantastic pronunciation of the final word). Their MySpace lists shared hometowns of Belfast and Minneapolis, and this song sings about MPLS locales like First Avenue with a charming brogue. I’m just getting into their 2004 album It’s Your Weakness That I Want, and you can catch them all this week at Summerfest (4 shows?) if you’re a Milwaukee type.

Also folks . . . it’s a time of change around these parts — I start a new job tomorrow, among other major shifts. Wish me luck! Also, go download “Mover,” a new b-side from The Verve for free this week on their site. It’s a big song.

[top image credit orange32]

Gnarls Barkley cover Violent Femmes in Denver

Under the July sunshine, the SoCo Music Experience took over an open-air lot outside Coors Field in Denver on Saturday. The free festival drew thousands of Denverites for sunshine, interactive games, booths, and of course, the free music…

Read my full review here, in Paste Magazine online.

Gone Daddy Gone (Violent Femmes cover) – Gnarls Barkley, and then the Violent Femmes return the favor; stream it here.

Julio’s great festival pics are here, and my rather decent by comparison pics are here. Oh, how I need a fancy camera with a zooooom lens.

From the vaults: The Stones & Papa John Phillips

Previously on Fuel/Friends, we talked a bit about the cool sessions that Mick Jagger recorded with John Lennon during the so-called “Lost Weekend.” Another interesting moment in Stones-related history comes out of their eponymous record label which was launched in 1976. The first solo artist signed to the imprint was Papa John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.

Recording sessions grew out of a conversation that Phillips had with Jagger during a long weekend of cricket matches in Old Trafford, England in late summer 1976. Back at their hotel, Phillips took out his guitar and showed Jagger some of the material he had been working on. “You really ought to do an album with all these tunes, man,” Jagger said, “They’re great.” Phillips replied, “I’ll make you a deal – if you produce it, I’ll record it.” It was agreed that they would start recording the following week.

Phillips had initially thought Jagger was joking, but 10 days later they were together at Olympic Sound Studios in London with Jagger producing a first track. Among the musicians present were Ron Wood on bass, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards on guitar, and Jagger himself on backing vocals. There was a great synergy present at the sessions, perhaps partly traceable to the fact that Keith Richards had been living with Phillips since earlier that year, and John said that the two would “jam for hours in the upstairs loft, mostly country and blues classics.”

I have this rough recording of a version of Phillips’ song, “Oh Virginia,” which clearly features Jagger’s unmistakable yowl. This is probably from those sessions, although thanks to the mislabeling power of the internet, I can’t say for sure. Either way it’s a rolling, charming ode to the South that gives us a taste of those ten days in London.

Oh Virginia (studio bootleg) – John Phillips & Mick Jagger

After 30+ years, Varese Vintage Records is re-releasing the recently-located original ’70s mix of the album they recorded together, called Pussycat. The release will also include newly-discovered outtakes and material from Phillips’ sessions that same year for the soundtrack for the film The Man Who Fell To Earth, featuring David Bowie (but really, could it possibly be better than this?).

Pussycat will be released September 9th.
Listen to a sample of the album here.

Saturday, Saturday, SATURDAY!

(you gotta say that like you are at a monster truck rally):

I’ll be covering the Southern Comfort Music Experience: Denver for Paste Magazine. Admission is free, it’s at Coors Field starting at 2pm, and SoCo and I concur that you should come on out.

cut out all the ropes and let me fall

Absolutely jawdropping. This made the back of my scalp feel hot and tingly when I watched it, and the breakdown at the end always stabs me full in the gut.

The whole Blogotheque/Take Away Shows session with Bon Iver is definitely worth some of your time today. Bon Iver plays Outside Lands in August.

Free Hold Steady show in Boston tomorrow

While we wait for Stay Positive to fully unleash upon the masses, Miller Lite and Going.com are bringing Bostonians a free show with The Hold Steady tomorrow (Thursday) at The Paradise.

You gotta dance with who you came to dance with, and also you gotta RSVP here: going.com/theholdsteady

Opening act is Boston’s own Aberdeen City. Show at 8pm, 21+. If past performance is any indication of future results, it just might be a massive night.

Massive Nights – The Hold Steady

(man I love that song).

Neil Halstead and a new vinyl giveway from Brushfire Records

British musician Neil Halstead has produced some lovely, starry-night music in his years of tunes; with Slowdive, with Mojave 3, and solo. The first time I probably heard him was on a surf movie soundtrack, or something that conjures up a sparkling ocean in my mind. It’s gorgeous, melancholy, sleepwalking music with a strong support of melody holding it up from slogging around in the dreamland.

This song is the first listen from his forthcoming Oh! Mighty Engine album (out July 29th on Brushfire). He sings, “I just want to live somewhere where the air is sweet and clear,” and this sounds like it will be the perfect accompaniment when he does get there.

Paint A Face – Neil Halstead

This song is also the lead-off track on the newest contest item I have for your winning: Brushfire has supplied me with two 12″ vinyl samplers left from the festivities of Record Store Day. It features eight songs from their artist roster –

12″ TRACKLISTING
Neil Halstead – Paint A Face
Mason Jennings – Something About Your Love
Jack Johnson – What You Thought You Need
Matt Costa – Never Looking Back
Money Mark – Summer Blue
G. Love and Special Sauce – Crumble (from the new album Superhero Brother, out yesterday)
Zach Gill (of ALO) – Beautiful Reason (from unreleased new album Stuff, out July 29)
Christians In Black – Rogue Wave

Not a bad selection, there. I’ve got two to give away, leave me a comment if you would like to be entered for one of ‘em. You can also buy the vinyl here if you don’t win it. Neil Halstead will be the opening act for labelmate Jack Johnson in August from Toronto to Salt Lake, and then will be announcing a West Coast headlining tour soon.

Ryan Auffenberg and the burnished glimmer of Marigolds

There’s a desolate ache to the brand of dusty Americana that Ryan Auffenberg creates from his outpost in the busy heart of San Francisco. As the SF Weekly wrote, “sweet, rough, singer-songwriter kids like Ryan Auffenberg have a powerful animating force — they like to fuck around with folk, and they’ve got love songs to sing.”

I called Ryan an artist to watch a few years ago after first hearing the gorgeously melancholy harmonies of “Under All The Bright Lights” and seeing him perform at Noise Pop 2007. Now signed to independent San Francisco label Evangeline Records (home of Chuck Prophet), Ryan is releasing his newest album Marigolds today. It was produced and mixed by former American Music Clubber Tim Mooney, and mastered by Matt Pence of Centro-matic.

There’s a bittersweet molasses smoothness to Ryan’s voice as it crests and burrows through his songs with a streak of the romantic west gleaming through. Whether plumbing the cold depths of loneliness in songs like “Deep Water” or driving a highway with the windows down amidst the bright Midwest jangle on the closing track “Alright, Okay,” he urges us all to have some faith.

Alright, Okay – Ryan Auffenberg

Lay off the novocaine
’cause you’ve been asleep for days
it hurts but it’ll go away

Almost the first of May
the San Francisco Bay’s
all swollen up from last night’s rain

So if you just come down
we’ll get out of town
take a breath and drive all day . . .

Ryan took a few minutes to answer some questions for Fuel/Friends, since this is one artist whom I tend to get a lot of questions about, and who’s been flying under the radar lately.

RYAN AUFFENBERG
INTERVIEW / UPDATE
Q: You’re from the Midwest but live in San Francisco. How does location and the mood of the city affect your songwriting, in contrast with the twang of your roots?

A: Some of the initial press about the album has played up my Midwestern “country” roots, which I think my St. Louis friends and family find amusing. While I never really considered St. Louis to be much of an epicenter for roots or “country” music, I did grow up 20 minutes away from Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar’s hometown, so I guess there is a bit of that scene in my lineage. I remember listening to Uncle Tupelo when I was 11 or 12 years old and they were just a local band. They had a poster that said something like “Fourth best country band in St. Louis!”

While St. Louis does have a pretty auspicious musical heritage, especially in regards to blues and early rock ‘n’ roll, I would say that I identify much more with San Francisco as a place that has shaped my sensibilities as an artist. Cultural influences aside, I think my music is definitely affected by the atmosphere and climate of San Francisco. I live in a particularly foggy neighborhood, which I know has had a big effect on the mood of music I often write.

If you sit down to play some music and it’s foggy outside, that’s going to have an effect on what type of music you play. “Missouri in the Morning” is actually a song I wrote on a particularly foggy day when I was missing home and the blazing heat of the summer time. There’s something really sensual about that kind of weather. I miss that out here.

What can you tell me about your songwriting process on Marigolds?

My songs usually seem to start out with chords and a melody. Once some sort of melody starts to take shape, I’ll sing a bit of free-form nonsense along with the melody until an image pops out that I feel like I can run with. Once I’ve got those images then I’ll start trying to weave some sort of narrative through lines into the song, and piece it all together.

What I find really fascinating about this process is that when I’m nearing completion of a song and take a step back, I often find that what I’d thought was simply some sort of free-association exercise has really turned into a means of expressing emotions or ideas that had been percolating for a while, but I hadn’t quite figured out how to articulate them. Many of what I feel to be my most emotionally honest songs have come out of this process. Also, the writing always happens at different rates of speed. For instance, I wrote “Deep Water” and “Under All the Bright Lights” in about a half hour each respectively, whereas the song “Marigolds” took me six months to finish.

After your self-released first album Climb, your second album Golden Gate Park was never released and seems shelved for the time being. That seems to me to be a bit like the second part in a trilogy being missing. Any plans to revisit the songs on that album?

I would eventually like to release Golden Gate Park in its originally-intended album form. After recording it, I was looking for a label to help put some resources behind the release. So in the interim period, I took four of the songs off of the album, released them as The Bright Lights EP and held off on putting out the rest of that material.

When I was eventually approached by Evangeline, their original intention in making an album with me was to go back in a re-record those songs with a slightly different production approach. However, by that point in time I had already written a new album and expressed to them that I’d much rather make a new album than go back and revisit material I’d emotionally and creatively moved on from. I sent them demos for the songs on Marigolds and they signed off on the idea of making an album of all new material.

I am proud of Golden Gate Park though, and I would eventually like all of those songs to see the light of day, but for now it’s currently locked in the vault (“the vault” being my bedroom closet).

You’ve played shows with quite a variety of musicians, from Mark Kozelek to Laura Veirs to the Watson Twins. What other music has been influencing or astounding you lately?

I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Neil Young. Tim Mooney (Marigolds producer) and I, aside from being musicians, are also pretty big music fans and would spend a lot of time in the studio just talking about records we loved. After the Goldrush was a recurring topic of conversation. We’ve actually been tooling around with a cover of “Tell Me Why” and may include that as a bonus track in some form or another sometime.

As far as new stuff, I’ve been enjoying the Bon Iver album a good bit lately. Flume, Skinny Love and Re: Stacks are all really beautiful tunes. Sun Kil Moon‘s “Lost Verses” off the new April album is the first song in a long time to give me that “lump in your throat” feeling.

Other newer stuff: Spoon‘s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a badass album. Britt Daniel crafts these incredibly lean and mean pop songs, and then they’ll do these wild production things like making one tune sound like The Supremes, which seems like a pretty unique choice for a rock band to be making these days. Another thing about Britt that I love is his solo-ing style. Often times during solos, he intentionally plays all these wrong chords or notes and creates this really messy, dissonant, incredible sounding noise.

There’s a moment at the end of “Interstate” (on Marigolds) that’s sort of a mini-musical nod to Britt. I was overdubbing piano on the song and in the outro I just started banging on the piano, playing wrong notes while Tim messed with that fucked-up signal generator noise. Good fun indeed.

###




Auffenberg’s record release party is tonight at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord. Head on out to support this talented artist; Willow Willow and Robert Francis open. Ryan also heads out on the road in July & August.

Marigolds is available today.

[portrait of Ryan credit Peter Ellenby]

Monday Music Roundup

Porca miseria! (That means pig misery. That’s also exemplary of the reasons why Italian profanity is one of my interests). Italy lost to Spain yesterday in the Euro 2008 quarterfinals, despite the loudest cheers of my small viewing contingent. It’s always agonizing and ultimately a bit unfulfilling to see big games come to penalty kicks, but Spain played exceptionally well and I can’t begrudge them. Much.

And if you care not for soccer, you can walk away from that last paragraph with (at minimum) a great new Italian curse, suitable for work and use around your grandma. Pig misery!

Music this week –

Perfect Games
Broken West
Last time we heard from addictively delicious Los Angeles foursome The Broken West, they were topping all kinds of best-of lists in 2007 (including mine) with their album I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On. The good news this week for fans of intelligent, robust, catchy-as-hell pop is that they are at it again. I absolutely love this song already, from the opening notes about spilling our ice cubes on the lawn, and the underlying sadness that subtly gnaws through the layers of memorable melody that I’ve been humming all day. Now or Heaven is due in September on Merge Records. [image from their recording sessions]

The Ground That We Stand On
Hawksley Workman
I got an important-looking courier package from Luxembourg this weekend, with Cartier listed as the sender. Diamonds? An exquisite watch? Nay — instead of fancy jewelry, Cartier has lavished an eclectic sampler CD of music upon me. Heck, why not. They have a new campaign/website/charity thing called “How Far Would You Go For Love?” (second base?). Other contributing artists with original tunes include folks like Lou Reed, Grand National, Phoenix, Marion Cotillard (who won an Oscar for her role as Edith Piaf), and this Canadian artist Hawksley Workman. I’d never heard of him before but this was surprisingly my immediate favorite track on the comp, with a warm voice like Sea-Change Beck and wistful autumnal lyrics. Listen to this tune, like it, and then go download the other songs (for free!!) at Cartier’s site.

Peace Like A River
(Paul Simon cover)
Spoon
The folks over at Daytrotter recently posted a top-notch session with Spoon, and as those Daytrotter guys are so good at doing, they enticed Britt Daniel and Co to play a little gem of a rarity for us — this time in the form of a sandpapered Paul Simon cover. Spoon often has such a cinematic, evocative quality to everything they lay hands upon. Here they take a tune which originally ebbs with Paul Simon’s smoothness wafting in the air tonight, and push it a bit more ragged and on-the-edge, making the song simmer with a touch of pounding mania. As for an album link, how about the new reissue of Spoon’s 1998 album A Series of Sneaks on 180-gram vinyl? Yeah.

Divine Hammer (Breeders cover)
The Modifiers
Kim Deal is the bass player for The Pixies, and co-founder of The Breeders with her twin sister Kelley Deal and Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donelly. Deal is a formidable musical force whose creativity and innovative songwriting spirit is celebrated on a new tribute album from the excellent little American Laundromat Records. Songs of Deal’s from her time with The Breeders and The Amps are covered by a wide variety of backyard indie bands of all stripes (The Modifiers are from Boston, but the rest of the featured bands are from all over). The liner notes are by Donelly, and the whole thing was mastered by Sean Glonek (who’s worked with her ex, Frank Black). Gigantic is available now for your rocking out this summer, and if you order it from the label, they promise to ply you with “buttons, stickers, and other goodies with each order.” I can vouch for their largesse.

Play Your Part (Pt. 1)
Girl Talk
An ambush addition to this week’s roundup, Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) popped in out of nowhere last week with a brand new album of schizophrenic, mile-a-minute sampling. Feed The Animals is out on his Illegal Art imprint and is another pay-what-you-want deal (but if you pay $0.00 you have to explai yourself, apparently). So come on – this song samples Temple of the Dog, Sinead O’Connor AND UGK’s “International Player’s Anthem”?! It’s akin to the way my brain plays music snippets all right on top of one another when I flip through a really eclectic jukebox in a bar after drinking a few. It feels like that; disorienting but so nice. Girl Talk hits Colorado July 11th at the Fox Theatre in Boulder (for what is sure to be an insane show), and the album will see a physical release on 9/23.

[top image obv credit Getty Images]

New bands added to San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival in August

It’s looking like the next festival on the Fuel/Friends docket is the inaugural Outside Lands Art & Music Festival at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in August. As a native from the Bay Area, I am looking forward to returning for a festival of this magnitude, quality, and scenic placement (akin to Treasure Island in terms of taking advantage of the local environment).

Check the full lineup, with some new additions announced today (and relevant links to Fuel/Friends content to entertain you while my server is down and Monday Music Roundups languish):

OUTSIDE LANDS ART & MUSIC FESTIVAL

*FRIDAY AUGUST 22* (starts 5pm)
Radiohead
Beck
Manu Chao
The Black Keys
Cold War Kids
Steel Pulse
Black Mountain
The Felice Brothers
Howlin Rain
The Dynamites
Carney

*SATURDAY AUGUST 23* (starts 1pm)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
Primus
Steve Winwood
Lupe Fiasco
Café Tacvba (so much fun at Coachella)
Regina Spektor
Galactic’s Crescent City Soul Krewe feat. Dirty Dozen Horns
M. Ward
Devendra Banhart
Matt Nathanson (always a riot)
Two Gallants
Dredg
Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet feat. Bela Fleck
The Walkmen
Sidestepper
Kaki King
The Coup (these guys blew me away in 07)
Donavon Frankenreiter
Nellie McKay
Goapele
Sean Hayes
Rupa & The April Fishes
Everest (hot tip!)

*SUNDAY AUGUST 24* (starts 1pm)
Jack Johnson
Wilco
Widespread Panic
Rodrigo Y Gabriela
Broken Social Scene
Andrew Bird
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Drive-By Truckers
Toots & the Maytals
Stars
Rogue Wave
ALO
Jackie Greene
Mike Gordan
The Cool Kids
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals
Little Brother
Bon Iver
The Mother Hips
Nicole Atkins & The Sea
K’naan
Back Door Slam
Culver City Dub Collective

Tickets are on-sale now (single day or 3-day passes). This one won’t have camping, but I’m stoked to festivate again!