Here is a little preview of the forthcoming Chapel Session we recorded with Adam Arcuragi & The Lupine Chorale Society, which at their behest also included me for a few minutes that afternoon. I guess I can say I’ve now recorded my debut chapel session, and on one of my very favorite songs of Adam’s. “Broken Throat” is a marvelous song, and the one I often sing when riding my bike home from work, as the wind whips past. Can’t wait for the whole session to be ready.
Field Report has put together a gorgeous, slow-building record of sleet and woodsmoke and fever dreams. Appearing from seemingly nowhere, this record is needling and soothing me over and over these days of schizophrenic springtime ice storms.
“And no one saw my banners, my bruises, my flares, my flags.” BLAMM.
Field Report is a surname anagram (I love clever things) of Chris Porterfield, who used to play in DeYarmond Edison (the other members of which were Justin Vernon/Bon Iver and Megafaun), and you’ll hear those musical tentacles woven over this beautiful record. Porterfield has strung together his own collection of songs carefully-crafted over the past few years, and I have the whole thing on repeat lately. It’s understated, and keeps yielding up new quiet colors on multiple listens.
The full Field Report debut was recorded at Justin Vernon’s studio in Wisconsin, and is out this July. For now, listen to these over and over, please.
Field Report is currently on tour with Megafaun, and in my hometown Bay tonight.
04/03/12 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord
04/04/12 – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Crepe Place
04/05/12 – Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater
04/06/12 – Tempe, AZ @ The Sail Inn
04/08/12 – Santa Fe, NM @ Sol Santa Fe
04/10/12 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk
04/12/12 – Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
04/14/12 – Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom
And: this is new. The band gives a Wisconsin phone number on the website, where folks can text them. TTYL.
(414-215-9956)
This weekend was pushing 80° all along Colorado’s Front Range, and I enjoyed the bejesus out of every single one of them.
Saturday night I was at my favorite vinyl-loving buddy’s house for the first BBQ party of springtime, and Andrew pulled out a Floating Action record from 2009 and laid it carefully on the record player, lowering the needle onto some specific sort of fantasticness from those audaciously raw opening drumbeats:
Sure I’m a few years behind the curve on this one, but it’s never too late to have happy ears. Floating Action is mostly one guy, Seth Kauffman of North Carolina, creating music that he describes as “a southern band that longs for the West Coast.” I think Andrew described it as reggae for indie kids, and I loved the squonk and quirk and groove – kinda like the winning warble of Okkervil River’s Will Sheff fronting a soulful dusty band somewhere on an island.
Floating Action is part of the Park the Van Records family (also the home of Dr. Dog, Generationals, Spinto Band) — and speaking of Dr. Dog, here is a wonderful video of a song project commenced for the Shaking Through Series, showing Seth working with Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog as curator and producer of a song in two days, “Dead Reckoning.” Read more about their creative process and get that song on the Shaking Through site, for free.
As a wonderful bonus, here’s Floating Action on Daytrotter covering my favorite Rilo Kiley song ever, complete with triangle flourishes at the correct moments.
Last time Dave Bazan (formerly of Pedro the Lion) came and played a house show for me, it was a piercing, thoughtful, riveting evening. I compared it to my very first house show I saw with Joe Pug, and how the intimacy was borderline overwhelming. I wrote:
“I still feel this way about house shows, and now even moreso after seeing David Bazan lay bare everyone and everything in that room with just his voice and guitar. As I sat there listening to his songs that he often performed with his eyes clenched shut, there was a keeling unsteadiness within me, so acutely he probed. I was absorbed into his fierce and sometimes sardonic, regretful humor, his unflinching engagement with all the super-hard questions that crouch in corners.
I was wearing a hoodie and sitting directly to his right, facing much of the crowd. I kept finding myself ferociously wanting privacy, wanting to pull my hood up and disappear inside of it as I listened. I felt like all my stories were being written in black ink in public, scrawled across my face as I listened to him. He has a way of making the listener feel suddenly small, suddenly mortal. A speck hurtling along. A cascade of failings and hopes, trying to make sense of it all, thinking about the promises we keep.”
The first band I saw this year, marching along at 6th and San Jacinto at midnight
SXSW is the world’s best music festival if only for the sheer volume of superb choice. On any given day/night/early morning, I was staring at a ridiculously, totally stupidly embarrassing list of terrific musical choices. I was very cognizant that this spring break for grownups is one of the richest weeks of the year for me. I survived this, my “senior” (fourth) year, and came back bone-crushingly exhausted but smiling widely (and bruised without remembering precisely how I obtained my battle scars).
My stated primary objective for SXSW this year was to kick ass as a panelist, speaking during the Interactive segment on “Man vs Machine: New Music Discovery” on Tuesday morning. There was a write-up of the morning here from the Austin Statesman (the two pull quotes they used from me are hilarious and kind of sum up all of Fuel/Friends). It was a fascinating discussion that I strongly enjoyed taking part in, because ruminating on larger musical questions is one of my favorite pastimes, at any time of day (generally better with whiskey but I will take what I am offered, even if it is green room coffee).
The panel was pitched intentionally as a somewhat false dichotomy, since we all know that both the human recommendation and the technological algorithm can lead to a rad discovery — I suggested we just cage-match fight but no other panelists took me up on that at 8:45 in the morning.
My points eventually crystallized around the fact that I believe the nature of music discovery has changed: where you used to need a friend in the know to play you that punk 7″ they got in London in 1976 because humans helped to counteract musical scarcity, nowadays you need humans for almost the opposite reason – to place songs into some sort of a meaningful context, and to genuinely curate good music in a neverending flood of songs. An audience member asked the question of what the role of context is when it comes to music, and it was so useful for me to articulate this mission of what I do that I’ve added it over there on my sidebar: that I’ve been “Giving context to the torrent since 2005.” I think is a solid summation of what this site tries to be about, and why it is so fun for me, still. I want the context, the color, the personal framework around my music. Even if I then go ahead and create my own around that song as I weave it into my own musical life, I never forget the context in which it first came to me.
Panel completed and supernap under my belt, I moved on to the MUSIC. You can read in scintillating detail about my Austin adventures below, but everyone always asks when I come back which bands blew me away this year. I’ll tell ya without skipping a beat: Alabama Shakes and Of Monsters and Men. Those two bands are going to take all good music lovers by hurricane-level-5-storm this year.
Alabama Shakes @ Hype Hotel
Alabama Shakes @ KCRW Showcase
Alabama Shakes were absolutely, completely incendiary when I saw them early in the week at the KCRW daytime showcase. At 4pm. In the CONVENTION CENTER. Even at that hour in that business-like of a setting, I was wordlessly riveted to the spectacle before me, with shivers all over and some sort of weird lump forming in my throat through my smile.
It’s rare for me to see a band with a female frontwoman who I 100% want to be when I grow up. Brittney Howard is magnificent: ravagingly fearless in her command of the stage and her malleable play of the audience. She can shred on her red guitar and makes all of the hairs on every part of you stand on end, and she yowls out lyrics like, “I wanna take you out, I wanna meet your kid / I wanna take you home, baby tell me where you live.” Man, I love those lines, and I love even more that they are sung by a woman. I mean come ON. Even though in real life she couldn’t be sweeter, their music feels like she could rip you apart with her teeth and she is not ashamed. And that rocks. By day two of the music festival, everyone was talking about them on every street corner, and for good reason. Ho-ly hell.
Of Monsters And Men @ FILTER’s Showdown at Cedar Street
Secondly, seeing Iceland’s Of Monsters And Men at the FILTER party left me beaming. Best I can describe, this band has the loping dream-like qualities of Sigur Ros, the expansive exploding joy of Typhoon, and brightly compelling vocals from one of the singers that reminds me of Bjork. How’s that for a combo? Listen to their full debut album here.
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore…
They had a shimmering assortment of instruments, a drummer who controlled every songs with his primal percussion, and songs that just soared off that patio. It totally and completely works for this band. GO SEE THEM if you can, they are on a sizeable US tour right now. I was exhilarated by them. Also, one of the singers is kinda a girl who looks like Skrillex.
Frank Turner @ Latitude 30
Frank Turner live at Latitude 30 was so combustible that I had to go back twice in two days to hear the crowd yell along to his anthems of belief and burning. I was converted, and not just by the tattoo on his right bicep that says, “I STILL BELIEVE.” He even sang his song about Prufrock, upon my sheepishly instantaneous request when he asked what he was playing next. That man has an astounding power in what he does (even after not having slept for 36 hours), as well as an electric way of engaging his fans.
Delta Spirit was so good to see after a few years away, tightly weaving the songs from their upcoming self-titled album when I stumbled upon them at the Hype Hotel very late one night. Maybe it’s just because that party was curated by my best blogger friends (who we all know are wonderful), or because there were free drinks AND free Taco Bell (sorry, body), but I spent many hours at that Hype Hotel and saw several of my favorite shows in that warehouse.
Michael Kiwanuka @ KCRW Showcase
At the KCRW showcase on Wednesday afternoon, British singer Michael Kiwanuka radiated this warm, lapping voice that I just wanted to curl up inside of. His album seems like one I would love to put on my turntable and let play, on repeat, in its entirety on a springtime Saturday afternoon.
Man, oh man – Sharon Van Etten‘s new album Tramp is definitely one of my favorites of this year already, all excoriating elegance and lush melodies. Her performance at Stubb’s on Wednesday night was delicate and strong, fearless and smart all at once — just like the record.
Nick Waterhouse @ Hype Hotel (it’s morning but you wouldn’t know it)
The Allah-Las at Valhalla
The retro cool of Nick Waterhouse and The Allah-Las were both SO. MUCH. FUN. Musical comrades, these two were some of the most invigorating shows I saw during the week, with their squalling, dirty jams equally influenced by surf-rock and a sharper underlying punk current.
Nada Surf acoustic at the Red Eyed Fly
Thursday night’s last-minute decision to cross the street after the Allah-Las at Valhalla to see an acoustic set from Nada Surf at the Red Eyed Fly was a superb one. It was a set-up strongly reminiscent of that gorgeous show I saw a few years back in the jewelbox of SF’s Swedish American Hall, a night I was happy to revisit. On Thursday night in Austin, this Bruce fella was playing across town at the ACL Theatre, doing things like bringing Arcade Fire and Tom Morello onstage, so I was getting text after text of those happy pictures after my badge was not selected to attend that show, but hearing the golden dulcet tones of Nada Surf was a deeply wonderful salve.
I told Matthew Caws afterwards that I hope he never stops doing what he does — their music is still as sharply incisive and lyrically poetic as ever, plus they seem to be having fun still. They played several songs from this year’s superb The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy, as well as a few older ones:
Seun Kuti on fire @ the African showcase
I ended Thursday night with a tasty steak street taco that I thankfully ingested for sustenance before heading into Copa to see Seun Kuti, Fela’s son, from Nigeria. With absolutely no sense of urgency (and a band of about a dozen folks and singers to soundcheck), they ended up starting their set an hour late, around 1:30am, on languid equatorial time. They blew up that place.
Pickwick at the SXSeattle party
On Friday morning I limped across town (cowboy boots, day four yo) for an explosive set from Pickwick at the SXSeattle party. Pickwick came all the way to Austin to play just a few sets in one single day, but they used it to showcase not only the formidable pipes of frontman Galen Disston, but also to show off a substantial amount of their new material. It is intricate, and darker, and not as easy to classify in a specific soul genre, which I think is a right move.
After an amazing meal at La Condesa that I can’t stop talking about (they have FLIGHTS of GUACAMOLE, people), I headed to Auditorium Shores to give an attempt at a Counting Crows show which unfortunately suffered from the stretching grass fields full of loudly-talking aged frat boys, ditching after a handful of songs for the Magnetic Fields. Stephin Merrit and Co were heartbreaking, every weird and resonant song, beautifully constructed. I felt like I shattered and spidered apart, unexpectedly, when he did a humble performance of “The Book Of Love.” It was very much like this:
I love it when you sing to me / and you can sing me anything.
Spank Rock @ that 1100 Warehouse place
Warehouse crowd-surfing
Next, a life lesson: when a friend asks if you want to go see a hip hop show in a warehouse under the highway, the correct answer is always yes. I packed myself up front (with room for some questionable dancing on my part) for the Spank Rock and Hollywood Holt show, and it was a tremendous amount of fun, and a good palette cleanser from all the mopey shit which, left to my own devices, I will drown myself in.
I then paid a random couple stopped at a light with their window down $20 to drive me to Antone’s for the Cold Specks show. I hope my mother is not reading this fine example of what makes SXSW so awesome. Cold Specks was one of my most anticipated sets of the week and she did not disappoint. Her music from her debut album gorgeous gospel – slow-burning and evocative, yet vulnerable within the lyrical excavations. I definitely think Al Spx, the frontwoman, is one to continue watch in 2012 as she tours in support of her treasure of an album.
Cold Specks @ Antone’s
Saturday I decided to focus on the food one more time, and walked clear + gone to the far side of town for an inspiring culinary adventure at Hillside Farmacy, before catching my final show of SXSW: You Won’t on an outdoor stage with crawfish tails and parts littering the dirt around me. Creepy little fuckers (the crawfish, not the band).
You Won’t @ Banger’s (yes huh)
You Won’t was this young, fun band who scowled in the same timbre as Deer Tick’s John McCauley and played the drums sometimes with kitchen utensils. Their songs were classically-constructed pop perfection, singable and not at all overly sweet. As I walked out past the stage, the singer saluted me with “have a good flight!” (we’d talked before the set). Yep, they were that kind of endearing, perfect band to end my festival.
I hopped exhaustedly on my $1 Airport Flyer (BEST KEPT SECRET IN AUSTIN) and as my bus lumbered towards the airport, I sat back and smiled. I find SXSW exceedingly capable of sating me. In retrospect, to sum it all up tidily: last week I got to shake the hands of legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen, NPR’s Bob Boilen, and the singer from Seven Mary Three. I mean, that pretty much hits me on most of my important levels. I’d say all my cylinders were well-fired.
This is an arresting, fascinating song. So often we are valued for our smooth pearlescence, our curious mystery, our air of perfection that we like to throw out there like nothing has ever burrowed past our defenses.
This song took that and smashed it wide open for me, valuing instead the beauty of the wounds (not the scars, yet — worth noting). I sat riveted the first time I heard it, and have put it on repeat innumerable times since then. The music is unsettlingly off-kilter, and gorgeous.
Motopony played as Daniel Johnston’s backing band down in Austin last week, which is pretty damn rad, in addition to scalding their way through several of their own well-received shows. They are magnetic.
I am thrilled to have them opening tomorrow night’s Fuel/Friends Presents: Typhoon with Motopony show, at Venue 515 in Manitou Springs. It’s an early show (7pm), all ages, $10. See you there.
The music of Typhoon is big and connective and incisive; it’s thematically smart and expansive. This Portland band resides together in a big Victorian house (sketched on the cover of their latest EP), and perhaps it’s just because I live in a cohousing community myself, but the resonance of this arrangement radiates audibly in the wooly coziness of their music. Some months ago, I got to see Typhoon live for the first time — an event I welcomed with intense anticipation of the joy to come. I had watched videos of their live spectacle, all thirteen band members, and when the day came I was all over it.
Thirteen people may seem superfluous (especially touring – they are coming to my house next week. I’m still debating where to stash them all), but when you see them onstage, you realize that everyone has their own hue and shade to fill into the song – three brass players, three drummers, two guitarists, one on keys/bells, a bassist, a violinist, and a cellist at least were what I counted when I saw them in Washington. It’s pretty damn incredibly lovely.
The arc of the songs and the threads woven across albums fascinate me. I could tell the first time I listened that this music was crafted by a songwriter who gave uncommon care to the big picture, in all the shades. That primary songwriter is Kyle Morton, and I got to sit for a while with him and explore these broad brushstrokes in his music, how he sees the songs in his head and projects them outwards for the band to fill in, and how his struggles with chronic illness growing up have molded his music. It was a fascinating conversation that I am thrilled to finally share with you.
FUEL/FRIENDS INTERVIEW: KYLE MORTON OF TYPHOON
Fuel/Friends: So with thirteen people, how does the songwriting process take shape into something coherent and harmonious?
Kyle: I do most all of the writing, and more and more it’s becoming the band doing the arrangements. With the new EP, there was definitely more band involvement with the arrangement than we’d had before. You can hear it on this record, and when I listen back to Hunger and Thirst now — it’s much sparser. I do like that, but on the new EP if you listen to the tracks, there are so many more times when we’re playing all together, pockets of all the band coming in together, utilizing all of us.
In my writing, when I look at songs, I look at them in terms of the whole piece, and even the albums themselves are part of the whole piece, so I hope that all of our albums, taken together, can be looked at as kind of a continuous body of work. Like, for instance, one of the songs off of the new EP is actually a really old song, “Claws Pt 1,” and “CPR – Claws Pt 2” is on the older album. I wrote it before but it was released after because it made sense. There are definitely those connections across records. In my brain I want our music to be something coherent, at least coherent to me — to be coherent in me.
So a lot of themes are going to come back on the next record, I think, and they’ll always be there. On the one hand, maybe that might seem unoriginal, to keep recycling the same shit over and over again, but I also think novelty is overrated, and I think coherence is undervalued.
It seems to be a nod to the listener, almost, in an era where a lot of times it’s just one or two songs people will have heard from you, it’s a way of rewarding people who take the time to listen to it as a full arc.
Yeah, it may not seem like much, but I think that requires a pretty good attention span these days, like there’s a “Typhoon theme” on the horns that we use in a few different places, and it’s gonna come back around – you can hear it, we snuck it in at the very end of this song called “Happy People” on Hunger and Thirst, and it’s on a new song we working on as well. Nods like that.
I also hear a fascinating and affecting theme of mortality and human frailty throughout your records, specifically on songs like “The Sickness Unto Death” and “Summer Home” that seem to explore your struggle with Lyme disease and the bug that bit you. What are some ways that struggle has informed, or not informed, your songwriting?
I wrote that song “The Sickness Unto Death” not only about me, and my “death,” but I’d also been reading the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, and he wrote his book The Sickness Unto Death, which I plagiarized the title from. And maybe songs aren’t the right …form for those kinds of ponderings, but that’s the only thing I’m interested in writing about. With music, it’s a very interesting synthesis for me – especially trying to make the themes in the instrumentals reflect the themes in the words. It’s difficult.
Even going back to Greek philosophy, and this idea that as you get older, you start to lose your desires, which can be a good thing and a bad thing, this losing of desires for sex, or for food, because all those things are causing you pain. But I imagine, because on the other hand I see a lot of bad coming from people’s desires, and desire itself being kind of an interesting point. So that’s why I have an album called Hunger and Thirst, meditations on why we want to be anything.
When I started realizing all the things I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t want them, I just imagined wanting to be this person who was doing those things. And then I got sick [with Lyme disease], and it kind of ruined all those plans I had and I had to adapt, and it caused a lot of bitterness in me for a long time. It still does. I never grew tall, I never had the childhood that you’re supposed to have, without pain. But then maybe you don’t –maybe no one has that.
Letting go of the idea of what we thought we were promised?
Yeah. All these promises, they’re tenuous. On this last record, on the song “Summer Home,” and in lots of songs, you will see that reference to a bug that bit me, which is just –this beast, you know? This thing that affects your life, and never even seeing it. It’s almost not even the tick itself. It’s the implications of it. It becomes a symbol. It’s when you first realize that some of these promises you have, assume or take for granted that you deserve it, and that’s a pretty sobering moment.
I think “The Sickness Unto Death” does feel, at the end, like a quiet and dark place of death, but then there is also definitely, as a listener, this feeling of rebirth as it swells and explodes into “The Honest Truth,” which is like the next step – at least in my mind.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to research this for a long time, but music — I imagine its early roots being tied and intertwined with early religion. And nowadays, the world is such a secular place, but we still have music, and it still has something sacred about it. There’s glimmers out there.
Trying to capture that, I guess that’s the thing. There are a lot of problems, capturing that glimmer and then trying to share that with someone — and it changes. I don’t know how to reconcile any of that.
Do you write the songs with all the parts from all the band members in mind?
How that’s worked in the past –this is cool– I hear it in my head a certain way first – it plays itself all the way through, and with parts. But then when I try to express those to people, the way it comes out doesn’t sound exactly like what I hear in my head, but it sounds better, even. It’s like a weird projection of the inside my brain, which is not to say I’m just using all these people as a screen for what’s inside my brain, because they’re all – most of them are better musicians than me, technically speaking. But it’s just really lovely to get to hear everyone’s take on it.
So, it’s like they fill in the shading?
Yeah …and that’s the only way I’ll perform, I won’t perform by myself. That’s scary, and weird, and masochistic. But I really like performing with everybody. As opposed to being a performer, in front of people, I am much more comfortable reading, and writing — even though I wouldn’t make a very good writer, or philosopher. But music seems to work because it picks up in that place where rationality stops and the transcendent emotion that underlies all music, starts. At least, that’s what it’s always kind of done for me.
I am very self-conscious, and self-aware when I am onstage, of what a bizarre act it sometimes is. It’s also a really simple thing, though, this happiness – you’re not lonely when you have that many friends around. Typhoon used to be a lot less restrained, but not in a bad way. If you see videos of our old days, everyone kind of played everything, and there was a lot more extemporizing, but on the other hand I really like to see how we’re getting so much tighter. And hopefully we’re aware of the vanity of this whole thing, yet we’re still drawn to it – for hopefully the right reasons.
Maybe catharsis is best experienced with twelve other people on stage.
Yeah – you can’t even have that counterpoint unless you have the other members. There’s not the synthesis without the other people. In that way, with all of us up there, the songs of sickness can become the songs of healing.
Typhoon is playing all over SXSW this week, including headlining the awesome Colorado Reverb party that you should navigate yourself to at Dirty Dog Bar on Saturday.
Then as they traverse the great desert back up to the Pacific Northwest, they are coming through Colorado Springs for a gallery show that I will be hosting with our college radio station KRCC on Tuesday, March 20. Motopony opens, and it will all be terrifically wonderful. Please do join us.
In addition to apparently torrential rain at SXSW Interactive this week (which my hair is SUPER EXCITED ABOUT), the torrent of people are already flooding into the city in preparation for our annual music sleep-away camp.
The music portion starts on Wednesday, and I’ll be heading down tomorrow for my panel on Tuesday morning at 9:30m (Man vs Machine: New Music Discovery).
I always try to brace myself with a shortlist of bands that I’d like to try to see in all the wonderful madness; here are my personal picks for SXSW 2012, if you are culling through the listings too.
WATERS
The new band from Port O’Brien‘s Van Pierszalowski, whose last name I almost just spelled right without googling. This band is freshly melodic but also with enough grit and winsomely awkward rock to make me feel like I am back in high school, in the best possible way. Pretty sure Van also loves Pavement and Violent Femmes like I do.
You Won’t
I am overdue a full post about these guys, because I’m gaga over their debut album. Some days lately I just stream it on repeat, in anticipation of springtime exploding for real. Reminds me of Deer Tick sitting in front a dusty piano, in sunny Sunday morning church, in 1960.
Cold Specks
I wrote about this Canadian artist (on Arts & Crafts/Mute) in December and was thrilled over the sounds of the few clips I could find. I just listened to her full debut album last week and HO-LY CRAP; it was everything I’d hoped for. A formidable new talent, raw and perfect.
Frank Turner
One of my favorite albums of last year, I yelped in delight when I found out last week that England’s Frank Turner is going to be in Austin, and make me sweat and yell along and all will be right in Austin for an hour.
Sharon Van Etten
Her new album Tramp is devastating and smart, wry and rich, and almost too potent to listen to. All the best things.
Pickwick
My friends from Seattle should take over the world with their sweet soul music, even just based on the merits of Galen’s voice — before you even add in how fantastic the rest of the band is.
The Allah-Las
Produced by the dynamic Nick Waterhouse (and having a downright fantastic band name), these dudes make old-school, straight up surf music that should be exceedingly fun live.
Of Monsters & Men
When I first wrote about this Icelandic band, I said “Imagine if Sigur Ros and Arcade Fire made babies, and sent them to live in that big house in Portland with Typhoon.” How could anyone NOT want to see that live?
Bahamas
Afie Jurvanen’s new record is this radiant, warmly glowing gem, and he’s playing at midnight in a church. Sold.
I spent yesterday afternoon marveling over the spectacular new American Art wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was surprised and delighted so many times by the thoughtfully curated collections and themes. My three favorite rooms were the “Artist’s Studio” painting depictions, the room of portraits of women (and, by extension, conceptions of femininity), and American Impressionism.
I decided early in my tour through the wing that The Weakerthans felt like a really perfect iPod soundtrack for the collection – something in their directness, and cogent beauty. As I walked into the American Impressionism room, this song shuffled on, and this picture greeted me.
Off to SXSW tomorrow for my panel Tuesday; I’m working on a shortlist of bands I am prioritizing seeing, and will post that soon, for those of you also heading into Austin’s sweaty gorgeous fray.
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.
The music portion starts on Wednesday, and I’ll be heading down tomorrow for my panel on Tuesday morning at 9:30m (
Name: Heather Browne
