I’ve never heard the Ogden Theatre held so tightly under a blanket of silent reverence as it was last night for the Bon Iver show, with Denver’s marvelous The Wheel opening. Some said you could have heard a pin drop at the sold-out show, on one of the most sweltering nights of the summer so far.
There is pure, unfettered, urgent, honest magic in the music of Bon Iver, there is no denying that. For an album that some think of as hushed acoustic woodland grieving, there is also a lot of potential for a live show that rages like a howling river. First off: the man travels with two drummers. That alone is enough to win my heart completely. The songs grow and explode live, and knock you off your feet. Justin excoriates with his guitar freakouts, and pounds on his keys. It’s a cavalcade of something intensely real.
Taking the stage with fluffy longer hair that grows even more majestic when illuminated by golden spotlight from above, Justin sat down and the crowd was immediately silent, waiting. He started the set the same way the album begins, with the opening strums of “Flume”: I am my mother’s only one. It’s enough. Thirty seconds in and we already have a lump in the throat here — that’s one of my absolute favorite lyrics he’s written, for quiet personal reasons. From there, he led into an extended, experimental intro to “Lump Sum,” and as the meandering faded away, the familiar, pulsing melody drew us back and it felt so right. Flume (Daytrotter version) – Bon Iver (via) Lump Sum (MOKB/Laundromatinee version) – Bon Iver (via)
After a jawdropping, electrified ending to “Creature Fear,” someone down front with me yelled, “You’re a genius!” to which Justin quickly shot back, “You’re drunk,” as he smiled. But I would agree with gentleman #1 in the audience — it was an exceptional, gorgeous show. I knew what to expect, I’d been exposed to his music live before, and he still blew me away, absolutely.
With only one album and an EP to draw from, Justin laughingly promised as he tuned his guitar between songs, “We’re gonna play all the songs we know tonight, let’s put it that way.” And they did – as well as “Brackett, WI” from the Dark Was The Night compilation, and a Jayhawks cover, among others.
In a moment of humble and unaffected loveliness, the Jayhawks song they covered was “Tampa to Tulsa” (from their 2003 album Rainy Day Music) during the encore, with the band sitting around a single center microphone. Watch what I saw:
The night ended with the loudest singalong I’ve ever personally been a part of, of “Wolves (Part I and II)”. By that point I was standing in the back near the fresh air and relief from the sweltering heat inside. Usually, the back of the club is where the talkers and chatty drinkers congregate, but as Justin urged us to sing along to “what might have been lost,” I looked around and every single person I could see was singing their heart out into the humid darkness, many with eyes closed. That song crests like a huge wave, and as both drummers pounded their hardest, each beat shot like an electric jolt into my chest.
It was the most beautiful moment I reckon I’ll see in concert for a while, and everything I want to be a part of.
Openers The Wheel were playing to a hometown crowd, but nonetheless got the loudest prolonged-cheer reception I have heard for any local band in a long time. Their intricate, melancholy songs are steeped in goodness and ready for a larger stage. The band is magnetically led by the wry, exceptional voice of frontman Nathaniel Rateliff (Born In The Flood) who in the oddest coincidence that you ever think could sound good, vocally evokes a young and impassioned Neil Diamond minus the glitter. The technicolor songs pack a punch, yet sounded timeless through a symphony of strings, aching harmonica and guitars, piano, intuitive drumming, and vocal harmonies that cut through the venue and held everyone’s attention.
If I were voting for my favorite Denver bands, say, for a local music festival competition, I might put The Wheel in the top 5. Hypothetically. Check these guys out.
Bon Iver has said that Sarah Siskind‘s 2006 album Studio.Living Room changed his life, and he’s been closing his sets all summer with a haunting cover of her song “Lovin’s For Fools.” Sarah finally joined him onstage at Nashville’s Exit/In on August 11th to sing it with him.
If this isn’t enough to make you want to never give your heart again, then I don’t know what would be:
Sarah’s voice has a chill-inducing Appalachian edge to it that conjures the unflinching starkness of Gillian Welch, and this song sounds like sleepwalking and bad dreams. There’s also another fantastic rendition of this cover with Bon Iver and The Bowerbirds at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC on July 29.
Ryan Adams‘ celebrity playlist hit the UK iTunes earlier this week. Whether he meant this list in seriousness or jest (?) I’ll say it again, I love this man — even if he listens to Linkin Park, I guess.
In related news, I think I will be seeing Ryan again at a new festival goin’ on at Red Rocks on August 3rd (with –check this lineup– Lucinda Williams, Old ’97s, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, and Denver superstars DeVotchKa). Tickets onsale Saturday. Not a bad way to be introduced to Red Rocks – it’ll be my first time at the hallowed grounds.
Who’s in with me?
***************** RYAN ADAMS: CELEBRITY PLAYLIST
Lost One – Jay Z This is my favorite song (yes, song) of the year, maybe of all time. I listen to this every day when I leave home and hit the streets of the Big A – Manhattan representing or something . . .
Do You Believe In Rapture? – Sonic Youth This is a band that will apparently never suck, and will have changed your life no matter what kind of music you listen to. This is some lovemaking music or go crazy music. Either way. Both.
“Hip Hop Is Dead” – Nas Although I strongly disagree with the message of this song – because it’s awesome – which would mean it – being hip hop – only suffered minor injuries. Mainly people not unlike myself having access to breakbeats. Ah, snap.
“Kingdom Come”- Jay Z Man, this song made me almost get my license. I’m not lying. I started talking about it and everything because I wanted to jam this song in a car. People hate it when you jam songs in THEIR car too loud. So if he continues, I need a car and you people need to build a freeway in the forest for me where I cannot cause harm to others. I would press all the knobs in the car and mess with the seat and never get to the jam. Jay-Z is probably, in my opinion, the first person who should be allowed to perform in outer space and that is saying a lot.
“How To Save A Life” – The Fray This is perfect songwriting and anybody that says otherwise is a jerk. Amazing hair-raising stuff. I would write songs like this if I had an attention span, but they would have more wizards, problems, and space references, etc . . .
“I Can’t Make You Love Me” – Bonnie Raitt Instant tears. Flawless. And a sick guitarist to boot who, I have to say, sorry, but is hotter than Martian asphalt.
“Don’t Stop Believin’” – Journey Don’t worry Journey. Nobody will stop. Although Sartre would stop. Because it’s all, you know, nothing.
“Numb” – Linkin Park Amazing band, nice folks, kick-ass music. Everyone steals from them and they don’t care. They still do it like it was yesterday and yesterday was tomorrow. Times five.
“Is It Any Wonder?” – Keane This song really shook me to the core when I first heard it. I felt like the words were so on time and that the melody and meaning reminded me of that pain a person can feel right before it all goes up in smoke. Very beautiful and scary.
“Over the Mountain” – Ozzy Osbourne I once listened to this album six times in a row in one evening. Alone. It was fucking great. The album, I mean.
Portland was an unrelenting adventure of starting an intense graduate program (80 class hours in two weeks), trying to taste all the beers in the city (failed), and also seeing five tremendous shows at four different Portland venues. I slept little, laughed much, and met rad folks. As the dad of the host family I stayed with bemusedly told me, his eyes crinkled with a smile as I clung to the coffee pot one early morning: “Well, you sure are squeezing every last bit out of this city, aren’t you?”
But I’ve felt tense and dry since my plane landed home, throat closing a little at the magnitude of the schoolwork I gotta be on top of in a self-directed way for the next six months until my next residency in July. Music? What’s that?
And then I shut up and stopped the spiral, and just put the headphones on and laid flat on my bed. I put the opening song on the new, marvelously stunning Adam Arcuragi album on, and it was like a churning, splashing river just poured all through me, striking fear. From that earthquake rumble drumroll that starts the song, how can any of us doubt our reserves when there is music like this to explain the questions?
I have been listening to Like a fire that consumes all before it… (Adam’s incredibly-aptly-titled new record) without ceasing since early December. Stream the full album now on NPR, then go preorder it immediately so at the end of the year when I am naming my favorite albums of 2012 you can pull this out and we can excitedly discuss.
The album is out next week on Thirty Tigers (Centro-matic, The Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell, Jessica Lea Mayfield – they’ve got some of my favorite ears in the business). Every track is phenomenal, laced with stomping feet, ebullient golden-bright banjo, weighty piano that cascades just when you need it to, and choruses of voices. Also, track 8 “The Well” is worthy of being played at my funeral: “When we ache no more (oh won’t it be something to see)”…
Then while you are waiting for January 31 for the new album, go get their Daytrotter sessions, because there have been full days where all I want to listen to is “Broken Throat” from Daytrotter 2009, a bluesy bittersweet tune that stuns me every time with the opening lyrics: “Like swinging your arms in the dark to find out how the light sits…” and then just keeps walloping me over and over. You guys, it’s ridiculous.
You might remember the Blogotheque video I posted last month of Adam and his friends singing their pure little hearts out in a NYC market; I said if I ever got to see them live I’d probably be like that ancient Chinese lady sitting by her booth, grinning and clapping along. Well, we’re recording a Chapel Session on Saturday morning. That’ll be me, grinning and clapping along.
Oh I see them coming.
ADAM ARCURAGI WILL WARM UP YOUR WINTER TOUR Jan 27 (Fuel/Friends presents!) – Hi-Dive, Denver, CO
Jan 29 – Cicero’s, University City, MO
Jan 30 – The Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL
Jan 31 – Cafe Bourbon Street, Columbus, OH
Feb 01 – Garfield Artworks, Pittsburgh, PA
Feb 02 – Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY
Feb 03 – PA’S Lounge, Somerville, MA
Feb 04 – Cafe Nine, New Haven, CT
Feb 06 – Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia, PA
Feb 07 – IOTA, Arlington, VA
FEb 08 – Cedars Lounge, Youngstown, OH
Feb 09 – Musica, Akron, OH
Feb 11 – MOTR Pub, Cincinnati, OH
Feb 12 – The End, Nashville, TN
Feb 13 – Bottletree, Birmingham, AL
Feb 14 – The Earl, East Atlanta, GA
Mar 14 – The Green Room at Warehouse Live, Houston, TX
Mar 21 – Sail Inn, Tempe, AZ
I’ve spent the last five days immersed in green forests and small cafes, breathing the salty seaside air, and quenching my parched insides in the Pacific Northwest. The dampness clinging to my skin as I stood at the foot of these waterfalls and harbors and rivers made me glow fresh, in the same way the joy kinda got put back into my soul.
My completely fitting soundtrack for this last-summer-hurrah adventure was the new album from Seattle’s The Head And The Heart, which is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite albums this year.
I wrote about how they “sound like hallelujah” at the beginning of the summer, included another song of theirs on my summer mix, and then happily ran into the band on my birthday last Thursday night on a Seattle street corner. They gave me a physical copy of their insanely catchy album, and I listened to it about eight times through this weekend on the road. When I unlocked the door to my still and quiet house tonight, I found myself hungrily googling any new songs that they might have for me, not on the record (since I’ve kind of already worn a digital groove into it).
What I found was this.
It hit me in a profound way. I’ve heard that The Head and The Heart are complete supernovas live, but this – this felt like a moment almost too iridescent to be privy to by secondhand video. An aftershow in a Tacoma parking garage, it’s everything I love about music and about them.
At three minutes in, the spotlight hits directly opposite the camera, and in a flash they are illuminated all around, lit as if from within — as if this pure music they are pouring out of their hearts and hands and stomping feet is making them (and all of us) shine like the last lightning bugs of summer.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART TOUR DATES
Aug 27 – KEXP’s Mural Amphitheater Show [w/ Mt St Helen Vietnam Band], Seattle, WA
Aug 28 – Tractor Tavern [w/ Grand Hallway], Seattle, WA
Sep 11 – Berbati’s Pan [for MusicFest NW], Portland, OR
Sep 15 – Downtown Crossing, Sandpoint, ID
Sep 16 – Empyrean Coffee [w/ Denison Witmer], Spokane, WA
Sep 18 – Urban Lounge [w/ The Devil Whale, Future of the Ghost, Matt Hopper], Salt Lake City, UT
Sep 23 – The Crocodile [w/ Fences & Campfire OK], Seattle, WA
Sep 24 – Mississippi Studios [w/ Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives & Fences], Portland, OR
Sep 25 – The Green Frog [w/ Fences], Bellingham, WA
Sep 27 – The Biltmore Cabaret [w/ Fences], Vancouver, BC
Oct 4 – Silverlake Lounge [w/ Fences], (early show), Los Angeles, CA
Oct 6 – The Rickshaw Stop [w/ Fences], San Francisco, CA
Oct 7 – Sophia’s Thai Kitchen [w/ Fences], Davis, CA
Oct 8 – Sam Bond’s Garage [w/ Fences], Eugene, OR
They are also announcing more dates in the coming months, including — a show at Moe’s in Denver on November 5th (next to the Gothic), which will be presented by Fuel/Friends! Stay tuned here for more information and a ticket giveaway.
“Fire In My Bones provides a small peek at the incredible diversity and power of post-war black gospel. Much of this music is raw, distorted and might sound a bit strange. But it is not presented as a novelty freak show or as ‘outsider music.’ This is gospel –which we must always remember translates as ‘the good news’– as it has been sung and performed in tiny churches and large programs, from rural Georgia to urban Los Angeles.
It is clearly among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world.”
Fire In My Bones ignites just that; there is a depth of thirsty yearning and conviction in so many of these songs. This may sound weird, but if you’ve seen Avatar — listening to this music feels to me like how the creatures in Avatar can plug their central nervous system right into other beings, and sense all sorts of mysterious things outside their range of personal experience. These songs hit right at the visceral parts of me.
The collection is out now on the Tompkins Square label (with one other mp3 available to sample for free). The box set has over four hours of previously-unreleased, rare gospel music, and part of the proceeds are benefiting musicians in New Orleans.
Since you know you’re probably not gonna quit your job and Teach For America (unless you are one of my idealistic college-student readers in which case: DO it!) there’s a new compilation out that will let you toss them a few kopeks instead to help them carry on their noble educational goals. Before The Goldrush is a benefit album of freshfaced up-and-coming types (along with some moderate heavies like The Swell Season and Neko Case) covering some of the very best songwriters of the halcyon days gone by. The song selection is spot-on fantastic, and all the proceeds benefit Teach For America.
I was reading Weiss’ entertaining piece on how to avoid hippies at Bonnaroo when they start forest dancing (yeah . . . good luck with that, Weiss) and saw Wilco on his list of top 10 bands he plans to check out later this month in the Tennessee wilderness. I did not realize all the fantastic bands coming through the ‘Roo, including Wilco — which reminded me of this post that I’ve had knocking around in my head for awhile now.
I am just fairly recently getting into Wilco — and I honestly don’t know why it took me so long. I think Sky Blue Sky is understated, subtle, and solidly enjoyable, one of the strongest releases of 2007 thus far. So much of Wilco’s music has an intangibly rich and bittersweet quality to it that invites you to delve deeper. That’s rare for me to find to this degree.
For your enjoyment, here are some Wilco b-sides and demos from this album and before. Lots of gems here (to add to the fine tunes on the More Like The Moon EP which I re-upped). All run fairly melancholy except for “Student Loan Stereo” which has a bit of an agitated/defiant edge to it — kind of the way I feel each month when I pay down my student loans. It must be universal sentiment.
The inaugural Eaux Claires Music Festival in Wisconsin this past weekend was one of my favorite music festivals I have ever been to. I went because of the absolutely ridiculous lineup, hand-curated by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Aaron Dessner (The National), and was floored by the community spirit, constant collaboration of musicians I love, and air of joy that permeated the festival.
The first set of the festival for me was the freewheeling warmth and elasticity of Hiss Golden Messenger, whose redolent album Lateness of Dancers (out on Merge Records) I’ve been listening to a lot all this spring and summer.
I was dancing too hard to get any good photo or video, but they were tremendously good live, all their songs taking on new color and sounding somehow even better than on the album– especially when they were joined by the No BS! Brass Band, who delightfully showed up on stage and in the crowd at all the most wonderful times during the festival.
It also made me so happy to see Justin Vernon standing sidestage for most of their set, singing along and thumping on his chest; that’s one of the best feelings to see something you’ve booked and worked to make happen finally set off rolling:
With an entirely new backing band from the folks that we hosted at my house and in the chapel, Chris Porterfield’s Field Report was the next on my schedule to see.
After traversing the lush green forest path between stage areas (happily), I arrived to hear a completely reworked version of “I Am Not Waiting Anymore,” a deep deep favorite of mine. Even re-envisioned as a faster, more rollicking alt-countrified tune, it still gets deep in my gut every time–the word structure, the evocation. The songs they played off Marigolden, the new record, were also incredible in the live setting. Chris writes songs that are so real and honest, in the lyrical content, in the potency of delivery. They’re unflinching, and I like that.
Okay, so — new to me, because I’ve been slow on the uptake lately: Sylvan Essoholy shit completely blew my hair back (not literally because it was ten thousand degrees + humid and my hair was a giant damp frizzball of drippy sweat, even moreso dancing under the tent for their set).
Amelia Meath of Mountain Man (and also one of the busier guest performers of the festival, singing also with Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook) and Nick Sanborn of Megafaun make rich, haunting, shimmery confections of eminently danceable music together. AND AMELIA MOVES LIKE THIS, while wearing (not pictured) 4-inch platform shoes and singing like a complete badass:
I fell in love. I bought the full album immediately and am praying for enough hot summer lazy days left to listen to it on nonstop repeat.
(also check out the super cool Song Exploder podcast about the roots and guts and words of this song, which made me like them even more)
Friday night’s set from The National was what I was looking forward to the most from this weekend. I hadn’t seen them since that atom bomb of a performance at Red Rocks in 2013, and was feeling just about recovered enough to let them rip it all back open.
They delivered a set that was even more tightly furious and darkly melodic than I’d seen in a while from them. Matt seemed especially electrified, as he paced and screamed (and they performed both “Abel” and “Mr. November”?!), and then leapt into a crowd that I feared might actually consume him during “Terrible Love” (I confess to a hearty clasping of his arm when the eddy of the sweaty crowd shoved him into my orbit).
Also, because of the massive group of friends assembled as co-performers on the bill of the weekend, the set contained some pretty incredible guests.
YOU GUYS JUSTIN VERNON SANG ON “SLOW SHOW”:
(even though Matt had to publicly chastise him for wearing shorts; this is a classy band, man!)
Sufjan came out for several songs; here singing “Afraid of Everyone” with Matt:
After severe weather sirens going off at 2:30am in the UW-Eau Claire dorms that this California girl had zero idea how to deal with (google!), after surviving and not being washed away, Saturday morning crested crisp and full of the promise of another whole day of wonderful performances. The sound of Phil Cook wafting through the air made me stop my foraging for food and book it across the field immediately to begin dancing with a troupe of barely-clad college dudes (“vodka for breakfast, guys, amirite??” – my friend Michelle) for a wildly fun set that left me looking up all the music I could find from this talented gent. He also played with Hiss Golden Messenger, and is also in Megafaun. It’s all a big circle of goodness, and I definitely intend to troll around in his catalog.
The performance of this song at the festival was a beast:
After having the honor of LNZNDRF (“Lanzendorf”) playing at my college in the spring with a special chapel rehearsal that I am working to bring you a glimpse of, I was really excited to see this experimental band play again. With core members Ben Lanz (The National, Sufjan Stevens, Beirut) and the Devendorf brothers (Scott and Bryan, from The National), they were joined this weekend by Josh Kaufman (a musician who plays with Yellowbirds and Josh Ritter) and trumpeter Kyle Resnick of The National.
Together they created this otherworldy miasma of sounds that played off each other to build and dissipate under the little tent space where they played their surprise show. Watching their intuitive knowledge of each other as musicians is a joy, as they weave each performance together freshly – with no traditional setlist of songs, just a scaffolding of new sound creations, insistent and expansive.
PHOX premiered a spirited and imaginative short film at the fest, ostensibly about their mad dash to get to the festival in time in a zigzag across Wisconsin, punctuated by genies and dastardly lumberjacks, but really maybe about Monica’s quest to find her voice and learning to not look inside a bottle (ahem). After a midnight screening on the lawn Friday, they repeated the showing immediately before their Saturday late afternoon set.
Perhaps augmented by the film but also just by the fact that this band is fucking magical (and I’ve crowed it since the first time I heard their dulcet earworm creations), they received one of the warmest and loudest home-state welcomes from the crowd of any band I saw all weekend. I was hoping they’d play “No Lion,” the cover from the chapel session we recorded, but instead and even better, the culmination of their spirited set was a new a capella creation that was jawdropping. My heart swells for these kids. Everything about them just keeps getting better.
Two other memorable punctuations of the weekend included a crowd singalong with Vermont songwriter Sam Amidon conducting us enthusiastically in traditional melodies (listen) complete with sheet music, and Field Report’s Chris Porterfield joining in as he walked by:
…and a whimsical “Forever Love” matinee show with original compositions by Bryce and Aaron Dessner on a special woodland stage with elaborate set. This festival was crafted to be punctuated by little moments of delight and surprise. It made it feel so much fresher and more intimate, more honest (?) than a lot of other large festivals I’ve gone to. Even though it had 22,000 attendees, it felt closer in spirit to something like the Doe Bay Fest / Timber Music Fests of the Pacific Northwest that I’ve had the joy of being a part of. I think that’s really saying something about Justin and Aaron’s design for this happening.
I had some strong ruminations during Bon Iver’s closing set (pictured here with The Staves on backing vocals and S. Carey as one of two (!!) drummers):
As introduction, there was an exceedingly genuine, heart-swelling speech given before Bon Iver’s set by festival narrator Michael Perry (a music writer from Eau Claire, and man who Justin later said was one of the most important friendships of his life). He said:
“If you hold yourselves still and silent now, you can feel that river, runnin’ behind you, running through the night, running through all time.
It’s good to have music near a river. There’s this idea of baptism, of absolution, no matter what you believe.
Better yet, it’s good to have music at a place where two rivers come together–a confluence. For what are we but a confluence? A confluence that lives and breathes, a confluence of dream and song, a confluence of 22,000 beating hearts.
And so here we are, cradled by a river in a sanctuary of song: craving consecration, exaltation. On bended knee, seeking benediction.”
With that, Justin launched seamlessly into the first live performance of his song “Heavenly Father,” and closing vespers, so to speak, began. And it felt like benediction indeed.
I kept thinking all weekend that I was glad to be in a crowd where there were blatant hearts on actual sleeves everywhere. I saw so many Justin Vernon words permanently inscribed in flesh. More than just a gathering of the converted, a festival of the fanboys and fangirls, I was surprised that I was pretty deeply moved at (for instance) the lanky, athletic-looking dude standing behind me in the breakfast line with “and i told you to be patient and i told you to be fine and i told you to be balanced and i told you to be kind” in a block of text over his heart. We’ve heard that line a thousand times so as for it to become rote, but it wasn’t rote when it was written — it was true and that is truth, and it struck me as such. I found myself remembering the deep beauty in wholehearted loving, in full-faced believing.
As we sang along to the same words I sang back in 2009 in an afternoon set under San Francisco cypress trees, I thought about what might have been lost, what’s changed and what hasn’t. This weekend was one of fragmenting for me back into little pieces, so that I could examine and regrow some of the connective tissues and remember why it is we see and participate in live music, why we believe. In between the two new songs that Justin closed the Bon Iver set with, he tried to put into words what the festival and the weekend meant to him, as he visibly batted at tears in his eyes with a flick of his fingers. “I think what we give each other and what we can believe in each other, I think that’s how we can become …greater.” I love him for still shoving his heart out there, for still standing there bald-facedly being true and unflinching, believing in himself and music and us, all around him.
The first thing I loved about Justin Vernon the first time I heard him and saw him live was a purity, and this festival seemed to capture that pure spirit–that urgent reaching for a real connection. I can think of very few better things to strive for in this life and in the songs we sing and the music we embrace.
To quote my wonderful friend and accomplice at the fest, Michelle, I am going to be hungeauxver for weeks, I think. And I couldn’t be more deeply happy.
The Chippewa river, running through all time, and cradling all 22,000 of us.
Oh, what a year this was. 2013 was a year when I tried to slow down some (or, more truthfully, grad school & work & adult responsibilities often conspired to force me to slow down, in a very non-rock-n-roll but nevertheless badass way). In some of that stillness, though, was a gratitude — as I look back on 2013, I think I did a better job of enjoying things more deeply and with a greater attention of the heart and soul. This extended not only to people in my life, but to experiences, and also to music. Each of the eight years I’ve been writing this blog has clocked in a bit richer, more settled, probably older and wiser and less frenetic.
These are my ten favorite records of the year by a long shot, and this list is not surprising to anyone who has been following me and my passions this year. These are the easy clear winners that I spent a whole hell of a lot of time listening to, seeing the musicians perform the songs live, hosting some of these folks in my home and sitting up singing with them into the night. These records have nourished my year.
I recommend that you obtain them and let them do the same for you, if any of these flew under your radar. These are not ranked in order of love, they are ranked in order of alphabet, to be clear. Here they are, my favorite records of the last twelve months.
This is just a little wisp of two-song vinyl single, but it represents the only recorded output this year that Denver’s favorite son Nathaniel Rateliff released with his burning-soul outfit, The Night Sweats. Back in April, I called them “the best band in Denver,” and it’s not hard to see why. Even watching that video now gives me chills. This is on the list because these two songs are so damn good, better than some full albums in 2013. I listened to them about a bajillion times and hope Nathaniel releases a full-length with the Night Sweats in 2014.
(Nathaniel also released a wonderful record in his folk singer persona in 2013 that is worth many listens, FYI: Falling Faster Than You Can Run)
I am thoroughly taken by this narcotic, melodic speedball of record, all dark hues and complicated beauty. The National is one of my favorite bands, and I’ve waited three years for this. From the understated opening notes and breakingly delicate vocals, this record is magnificence that was absolutely worth the wait. (from the original review, here: God loves everybody, don’t remind me)
The songs here, like all of what I love most about The National, are tangled and conflicted and in that honestly there is beauty, for me. Seeing them live at Red Rocks in September was one of my favorite musical experiences all year — these songs grow and take on a whole new, even richer life with the visuals and lights they are traveling with. The National wedged their way even more firmly into the sharp and soft parts of my soul this year.
From the opening a capella track that is just bleeding and raw with vulnerability (“I know you get lost sometimes, man, I know you get lost…”), it is clear that this is a special and rare record. Winston has an otherworldy quality to both his voice and his person. This record rambles and pours out with little concern for anyone other than exorcising the demons of one Winston Yellen, the man behind Night Beds. Stylistically you can hear his love of old female jazz vocalists (and the way his voice uncannily resembles one — well, that or a spectre), as well as hues infused by the country cabin setting where it was recorded, with broad strokes of sparkly redolence throughout.
This is a damn fine record for such a young kid. It’s just flat out gorgeous, and honest, and brave. I remember from the interview I did with Winston almost a year ago exactly, how struck I was when he said how sometimes in the studio everyone would be crying at the end of a take. I’m so over posturing. That kind of honesty in art takes bravery, and strength.
I’ve struggled with writing this part of the post, and am still struggling. This record has blown me to bits moreso than any record I can remember in a very, very long time. There is something riveting and unsettling and deeply satisfying in the way that Matthew Houck writes songs. It is a very specific, self-effacing, hopeful, visceral-and-eviscerating language that I exactly understand. In addition to what I wrote about The National this year, this piece I wrestled out about the new Phosphorescent record (and it was a bloody battle) is one of my other favorite things I wrote in 2013:
This record wrestles with divergent, simultaneous truths about the brokenness and the bruises. “I am not some broken thing,” Houck howls pointedly in the second track, the stunning “Song For Zula” (which is hands down my song of the year), but two short songs later he is singing this simple line, that absolutely breaks my heart every time he says it: “And now you’re telling me my heart’s sick / …And I’m telling you I know.” It’s exactly that messiness (and the direct engagement with it) that spills out of this record to draw me in, underneath the timeless country veneer, under the old-time two-stepping and the lonely desert songs. Everything is tangled; everything is fucked up and bleeding, aching and glowing in the summer.
Man. And if the record itself weren’t enough, towards the end of this year a deluxe version of Muchacho was released, with a companion disc called Muchacho de Lujo. The bonus disc is a collection of songs from Muchacho and a few from previous albums, and it is just Matthew Houck and his partner Jo on piano, in the cavernous and gorgeous St. Pancras Church in London before an audience of 150 people. It is completely breathtaking — as in some moments of the recording are hard to breathe while listening to. The first time I heard the recording of “Wolves” on this bonus disc, I had to pull my car over, as he loops his voice to become a ravenous cacophony of surrender to animalism: “They tumble and fight / and they’re beautiful.” Usually a deluxe edition seems wasteful to me, but this is a rare exception where the bonus disc is every bit as valuable to me as the original album it accompanies. If you buy ONE album from this list, I would recommend this one. It’s one I will listen to for my next few decades.
This entry on the list bucks convention since the Confetti EP was a physical disc available at shows this year (in a neat little handmade envelope with a wax seal), but it is also a video EP online. If you didn’t catch them live this year, I am not sure if you can get this record, but you can enjoy the video (I recommend over and over), and some of the songs from it are heading towards their new album in 2014. “Barside” was on my Autumn Mix you can still download, too.
Phox creates malleable music: effervescent and smoky at the same time, with shimmery layers of creative instrumentation anchored by the stunning voice of Monica Martin. Listening to her voice radiantly inhabit and effortlessly anchor each song, it is hard to believe that she is a young woman just discovering very recently that she could sing. The percussion is playful and fascinating, with constantly changing time signatures and handclaps and shuffles. I love this record, every moment on it – so fresh and surprising.
We have a chapel session with PHOX coming out soon, recorded this fall when they were in town to play at the new Ivywild School I am booking live music at, and I cannot wait to share that with you. That mellifluous, honeyed voice in that cathedral was something else.
This feels like a very old record to me. Or, maybe, more timeless than old — the sepia-stained hue that our favorite memories take on as we play them over and over in slow motion. It could be the way he smiled at you this morning on the couch over coffee, but the reels clack slowly as if the memory was already somehow a hundred years ago. Jeremy Quentin (Small Houses) sings about Sarah and Karen as if we know them, as if we can see them look up from their work on the porch, as if we can hear the screen door clattering and our homes and photographs come back to life.
He also has a forthcoming chapel session recording that we did this year, so be excited to hear that – him on the big grand piano with the afternoon sun streaming in the stained glass windows. It’s where this record and these songs sounded even more perfect. His piercing, simple sweetness totally disarmed me.
One year ago in a living room in Portland, I sat down with some of the folks in Typhoon to listen to rough mixes of the songs on White Lighter. Even in their unfinished state, my reaction was immediate, and physical. I remember distinctly how my brain lit up and struggled in the best way possible, from the get go, with the dissonant fighting combination of sounds. I sat there shaking my head sharply to the side the way one does when you’re trying to clear out a dizziness. The sonic palette on this album is incredible; there are so many things happening, and it is never chaotic – it’s like this enormous organism with tentacles and razor spikes and glistening softness that is somehow all part of the same beautiful creature.
I have wanted to write about this album so many times this year, and I never have been able to. It’s so big. It’s a Sisyphean epic odyssey of an album. It’s a seamless journey and a massive battle, all the way through, the arc of a story of Kyle Morton’s life as he struggled with chronic illness. I am listening to this vinyl on my new turntable as I write this, and that is how this record is meant to be heard — all the songs bleed into one another. Themes repeat, as do codas and lyrics. The closing dual violins move me to tears in their purity, and in their wordless assertion of a sort of calm peace and beauty as we move into the next chapter. They are elegiac.
Kyle wrote, “The record is a collection of seminal life moments, in more or less chronological order, glimpsed backwards in the pale light of certain death, brought to life by a remarkable group of people who hold as I do that the work is somehow important. When we started working on White Lighter, I had reason to believe that it would be the last thing I ever did. It is now six months since we finished. I’m still here and there’s still work to be done.”
All through the autumn, as nature dried and fell, this compelling and unexpected record was my soundtrack. Justin Vernon blends the stark folk hymns of his first album as Bon Iver with explosive shiny metallic synths and even a potent Bukowski poetry sample. Along with a handful of his musician friends from Wisconsin, these anthems are crafted to somehow juxtapose vocoders with intricate acoustic guitarwork, needling blips with resonant piano, all punctuated by shouted choruses and singalong connections of human voices — in one of my most surprising loves this year.
Paste Magazine described it so well when they wrote, “It’s a musical and lyrical masterwork that builds and blooms in all the right places—and in places you’d never expect.” I saw Volcano Choir perform these songs live at First Ave in Minneapolis in October, and that building and blooming happened over and over in dazzling color (side note: the same folks doing the visuals behind The National on this tour did the Volcano Choir show lights as well). You have to watch this explosive, redemptive moment, one of my favorite live concert moments of 2013. The way that video looks is how this whole album feels to me.
This record is a finely-crafted, understated gem that I’ve been listening to constantly for these last few months, and yep: I just realized that it came out in 2011 and I don’t even care -damn everything. I am including it on this list anyways because this is a 2013 discovery for me, and it should be on your radar. That I am two years late is immaterial. Also, this is a blog so I can do what I want.
Tamara Lindeman is a Toronto musician, and kismet brought her into my orbit in November at the Denver Music Summit to see a late-night art gallery performance of her songs, under the band name The Weather Station. She sat in the center of a circle of white lights in front of the photographs hanging on the walls, and I was transfixed by her restrained, wonderfully droll delivery of these finely-wrought folk songs. She reminded me strongly of another Canadian, Joni Mitchell, or perhaps Laura Marling. I have been listening to this record on repeat, and it keeps yielding up new quiet layers. Get this album; better late than never.
I first listened to this record from Kevin Large (Widower) in Portland in January on cross-town bus rides for school, watching the grey buildings and pastel clapboard houses flick past on wet streets. It was love at first listen. Maybe it is because of the setting where I first heard it, but to me, Fool Moon is a loamy record that feels like a waterlogged seaside town smelling of salt and rust — like forgetting. Or being forgotten. This is a melancholy collection of songs that wrestles to balance beginning-again with battlescars, while being punched clean through with regrets. The night I first heard it, I listened to it once, and then three times more in quick and complete succession; it felt like an oil lamp smoldering the banish some of the damp greyness around me.
Despite some wide open big-sky moments on the album, like on the opening song “Jumper Cables” (on my Spring mix here), or the sweetly wheeling “Oh Catherine, My Catherine,” there’s this gorgeous hesitancy woven through this record on most of the songs. This year, even now, that is perfect for me and what I need.
I also wanted to end this post with my song to welcome in 2014. Curt Krause (frontman of the band Edmund Wayne) was one of the wonderful soul-connections I made this year through music when he came to my house recently to play a house concert. This new song, “1616,” briefly appeared online two weeks ago, and I recognized it as one that blindsided me in the best way at the house concert.
It’s a real nice way to welcome in this new year. Here’s to 2014.
Give me a good day
one without the heaviest load
and pockets of something
doesn’t have to be money or fame, all wrapped in cellophane
a heart, or two hearts on a boat
sounds like a good day…
a good day
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
My completely fitting soundtrack for this last-summer-hurrah adventure was 
Name: Heather Browne
