I’ve long had loud, clattery, live cover versions of this song in my arsenal of cry-into-your-coffee music, but thankfully Adam Duritz sat himself down in a quiet room with his piano and a will last week to record a bunch of Valentine’s Day cover songs, and this was the fruit.
Other songs he posted for download last week included versions of material from Steve Earle, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan. God bless the internet and prolific musicians at home.
Such a flawlessly scathing song, and a pitch-perfect video. I cannot get enough. Adele’s sophomore album 21 is out in the States next week, and she also stopped by NPR’s Tiny Desk Sessions for Valentine’s Day. A little bitter regret to go with your candy hearts.
I am having so much fun with these house shows. In addition to a new one I got going on March 12th with The Head and The Heart (plus Kelli Schaefer, The Moondoggies, and Ravenna Woods), I am extremely excited to have just confirmed another house show with David Bazan on March 23rd! Bazan is one of the most talented songwriters I know of, from his time with Pedro the Lion through his solo career. He’ll be playing to just 50 of us on that Wednesday night.
Ticketing for my show is here, and other dates can be found below. Some still have tickets left – get them here if he is coming to your neck of the woods!
That mini-documentary from 2009′s Curse Your Branches tour will give you some sense of what we’re in for, just in condensed, undiluted living-room form.
DAVID BAZAN LIVING ROOM TOUR 2011
Fri 3/18 – Spokane WA
Sat 3/19 – Missoula MT
Sun 3/20 – Bozeman MT
Tue 3/22 – Ft Collins CO
Wed 3/23 – Colorado Springs CO
Thu 3/24 – Omaha NE
Fri 3/25 – Iowa City IA
Sat 3/26 – Minneapolis MN – SOLD OUT
Sun 3/27 – Milwaukee WI
Tue 3/29 – Chicago IL – SOLD OUT
Wed 3/30 – Grand Rapids MI – SOLD OUT
Thu 3/31 – Cleveland OH
Fri 4/1 – Rochester NY – SOLD OUT
Sat 4/2 – Montpelier VT
Sun 4/3 – Allston MA – SOLD OUT
Tue 4/5 – Brooklyn NY – SOLD OUT
Wed 4/6 – Mechanicsburg PA
Thu 4/7 – Arlington VA – SOLD OUT
Fri 4/8 – Virginia Beach VA – SOLD OUT
Sat 4/9 – Alpharetta GA – SOLD OUT
Sun 4/10 – Nashville TN – SOLD OUT
Tue 4/12 – Birmingham AL
Wed 4/13 – New Orleans LA
Thu 4/14 – Baton Rouge LA
Fri 4/15 – Houston TX – SOLD OUT
Sat 4/16 – Denton TX – SOLD OUT
Sun 4/17 – Austin TX – SOLD OUT
Tue 4/19 – Tucson AZ
Wed 4/20 – Phoenix AZ
Thu 4/21 – San Diego CA – SOLD OUT
Fri 4/22 – Los Angeles CA
Sat 4/23 – Visalia CA
Sun 4/24 – Fremont CA – SOLD OUT
Tue 4/26 – Eureka CA
Wed 4/27 – Corvallis OR
Thu 4/28 – Portland OR
The Decemberists were absolutely perfect last night in Boulder, in my first time seeing them live. I wrote of their new album that it is clear Colin Meloy and I are MFEO, and now I amend that to say TMFEO (totally made for each other). He is as engaging a frontman as my other favorite, Jeff Tweedy, and every single song they played, even the ones I didn’t know, were intricate, shimmering, smart, and galvanized us from the stage. The crowd participation (“Mariners Revenge Song,” anyone?) is truly amazing. I sang and screamed and swayed along as best I could.
This gem of “January Hymn” came halfway through the set and set me off into bliss. “What were the words I meant to say before you left?” So bittersweet.
The set closed with the bookend of “June Hymn,” and it was almost too sublime to breathe or say anything. It was exactly as I hoped it would be — a panoply of song.
Superb, superb show. Go see them live on this tour and get tix in advance — they are selling out many of the shows. And they just announced a second leg which starts in… Colorado Springs?! Uh, okay. Yes please.
DECEMBERISTS WINTER TOUR # with Mountain Man
+ with Justin Townes Earle
February 12, The Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA#
February 13, House of Blues-San Diego, San Diego, CA#
February 14, Fox Theater, Oakland, CA#
February 18, Paramount Ballroom, Seattle, WA#
February 19, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR#
March 4, Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland
March 5, ABC, Glasgow, UK
March 7, Birmingham Institute, Birmingham, UK
March 8, Bristol Academy, Bristol, UK
March 10, Manchester Academy, Manchester, UK
March 11, Leeds Academy, Leeds, UK
March 12, De la Warr Pavillion, Bexhill, UK
March 13, Trix, Antwerp, Belgium
March 14, Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
March 16, Hammersmith Apollo, London, UK
April 16, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO+
April 17, Holland Performing Arts Center, Omaha, NE+
April 18, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA+
April 19, Overture Hall, Madison, WI
April 21, Benedum Center, Pittsburgh, PA+
April 22, Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI
April 23, The LC Pavilion, Columbus, OH+
April 25, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI+
April 26, Iroquois Amphitheater, Louisville, KY+
April 27, The Pageant, St. Louis, MO+
April 29, House of Blues, Dallas, TX
April 30, Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheatre, Austin, TX
May 1, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, New Orleans, LA
May 2, Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Atlanta, GA+
So when your dayjob hands you lemons (uhh, Indianapolis in February?), I say you make a lemonade and whiskey mix, with a drive down to see a best friend in Nashville and an uncle along the way in Kentucky. And if it turns out that The Head and The Heart is playing at the Cannery Ballroom that night with Dr Dog, well heck that’s even better.
So this past weekend I rented a zippy car, drove across rivers, through snow, and past Elizabethtown — and found myself in Nashville for less than 48 hours. After a stop at the Flying Saucer, Bethany and I headed straight to the Cannery Ballroom, which was buzzing with excitement (and a long line outside by 7pm). First thing to delight me was that The Head and The Heart has proper merch now (they only had a suitcase of CDs last time I saw them at my house show): white vinyl 7″ singles of “Down In The Valley” b/w “Ghosts,” two sweet tshirt designs (I got the brownish one with raindrops) and posters, as well as download cards for their albums in advance of the Sub Pop physical re-release coming up on Record Store Day.
Down in the front waiting for The Head and The Heart to take the stage, I smiled to listen to the crowd around me talk about them. The excitement was palpable, and it was a shift to have so many people singing along to their lyrics around me, and so far from home (mine or theirs). This band keeps playing bigger stages –just announced: um, Sasquatch mainstage– and it is a joy for me to get to dance and sing along. And I am glad so many more are dancing along with me – their three part harmonies, their clever rhythms, all the smart lyrical twists continue to delight and convert new audiences.
And then wow, did Dr. Dog completely blow me away live. Their technicolor stained-glass stage and fuzzy-knit everything was the perfect visual metaphor for their music – explosive, bright, and warm.
They’re one of the best live bands I have seen in a long time — they’ve forever been on that list I keep running in my head of “I know I need to see this band, really” but never had until Saturday night. I was negligent in 2010 by not naming Shame, Shame one of my top albums of the year. I’ve been compensating the last few months by just listening to it on repeat and trying my hand at the resplendent harmonies, wishing I could shred a guitar like them.
The night ended just exactly like this video shows, shot two days before the Nashville show I was at (in fact many people appear to be wearing the same exact thing). The Head and The Heart joined Dr Dog on stage for a jubilant closing rendition of “Jackie Wants A Black Eye,” probably one of my favorite songs I heard all of last year.
“And we’re swapping little pieces of our broken little hearts….” Absolutely marvelous.
These two bands will pair back up to play the Pearl Street Music and Arts Festival in Boulder in May, and it was announced today that The Head and The Heart have been invited to play at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival June 16-19, one of the very best music festivals this world has to offer you. Telluride organizer Brian Eyster wrote to me last week to tell me that they’d booked the band, and said the opportunity was something that “we rarely if ever give to a young band like this… but we believe in them.”
Me too, Brian. Yay.
SHOW ALERT!
The Head and The Heart are playing another Fuel/Friends house show on the night of Saturday, March 12th, on the way down to SXSW. Follow Fuel/Friends on Facebook to be notified when I post all the details!
Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing Langhorne Slim rock the gorgeous Boulder Theatre, just around the corner from where we did that excellent photo shoot and long, chatty interview in ’09.
I’ve raved before how marvelously anachronistic his rootsy music is, and how much I enjoy his raw, ragged, intelligent songwriting. He’s now touring with a band billing themselves as “Langhorne Slim and The Law” (with this rad hoodie I wanted). They shredded the banjo, the standup bass, and the drums, Avett Brothers-style. In fact, Langhorne is now working with Dolph Ramseur (who started the Avetts career) in a pairing that was a long time coming, but according to Slim, just feels right.
Someday I would really really like to see Langhorne backed by a full gospel choir. Can we make that happen, please? Langhorne also told me that they’re working on a new album for 2011 and I, for one, can’t wait.
He closed his set with this Leonard Cohen cover:
you kept right on loving, I went on a fast,
now I am too thin and your love is too vast…
…and she’s moving her body so brave and so free.
If I’ve got to remember that’s a fine memory.
LANGHORNE SLIM TOUR DATES # with the Avett Brothers March 21 @ Visulite Theatre – Charlotte, NC
March 22 – The Pour House – Charleston, SC
March 23 – Jack Rabbits – Jacksonville, FL
March 25 – Ruth Eckerd Hall – Clearwater, FL #
March 26 – McRaney’s Tavern – Winter Park, FL
March 27 – Bell Auditorium/Augusta Ent. Ctr – Augusta, GA #
March 28 – The Bottle Tree – Birmingham, AL –headlining March 29 – Classic Center – Athens, GA #
March 30 – Mercy Lounge – Nashville, TN
March 31 – Proud Larry’s – Oxford, MS
April 14 – Verizon Wireless Theatre – Houston, TX #
April 15 – Old Settler’s Festival – Austin, TX
April 16 – Palladium Ballroom – Dallas, TX #
June 4 – Wakarusa – Ozark, AR
Five years ago I moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area for the snowy, crisp mountains of Colorado. I absolutely love my adopted home, our vibrant music scene, and the fresh air here, but no foolin’ I do often long for my hometown hills.
Over the holidays I went to San Francisco for a week to stay at the Noe Valley apartment of friends who were out of town and graciously let me “housesit.” It was a part of town I had never stayed in before. When I first let myself into their empty place on Christmas evening, and walked out to their deck, I took in a sharp breath and smiled.
The first picture below is the desktop image I’ve had on my computer for the last two years, to remind me of my homeland:
…then these two are photos I took on Christmas from the deck where I was staying:
Same hill, same view as the one I’d been looking at daily for the last two years. It’s smile-inducing moments of kismet like that which reassure me no matter how far I roam from Pacific coast, it will keep finding me.
It finds me lately in the music that celebrates the Bay Area; I started this mix to accompany my recent trip, finishing it up after that view happened on into my life. These are songs with references to all the favorite, special parts of California that helped catalyze bits of me – loosely centered around San Francisco, San Jose, and places you can (and I did) drive to in an afternoon with some friends and a picnic basket.
16th And Valencia Roxy Music – Devendra Banhart
Right on the edge of the Mission District, by the hundred-year-old artsy Roxie Theater, Devendra is taking us out to find our lovers tonight. Oh, and they’re gonna be riding six white horses and wearing pressed blue jeans, he suggests. But hey, this is SF. Go with it.
Piazza, New York Catcher – Belle & Sebastian
Not at all about NYC, but the story of a love affair set throughout the city of San Francisco, hanging about the stadium where the Giants and Mets will play, the Tenderloin, borrowed bedrooms virginal and spare. Meet you at the statue in an hour.
California On My Mind – Wild Light
Something a reader recommended for this mix, this is absolutely one of my favorite new songs, even if the core songwriting lyric is a repeated refrain of “fuck today, fuck San Francisco, fuck California” with a “…fuck Oakland” thrown in later for good measure. The rousing harmonica and the charmingly awkward vocals are enough to win me, and I’m sure we’ve done enough jerky things to deserve a little rancor.
San Jose – Joe Purdy
I never knew this song when I lived in San Jose (my address was always a San Jose one except for when I was in college, when it moved over a few zip codes) but it sounds like a warm, Ray LaMontagne-style blues & organ song that I’ve just always known.
Roots Radical – Rancid
“Took the 60 bus out of downtown Campbell, Ben Zanotto he was on there, he was waiting for me.” Campbell’s border is about a mile from the edge of my high school, and Rancid had origins at the neighboring high school. I totally took the 60 bus to Great America amusement park, and I also wonder if Ben Zanotto’s dad was the same guy who started the neat Zanotto’s grocery markets in town, like a prototype Trader Joe’s.
(Wake Me Up) In San Francisco – The Welcome Matt
I fittingly first heard this on a sampler from the epic KFOG radio station, and it always makes me smile, especially if I can listen to it as the song suggests, while driving in over the Bay Bridge, or landing in SFO on a big jet plane. This song namechecks so many great places, as it talks about how going home never gets old.
San Francisco – Brett Dennen
Brett is from the Central California town of Oakdale, between Escalon and Jamestown on 108, a route I have driven often enough to see why he pictures himself buying a navy peacoat and moving to SF. This is such a charming love letter to the city, we’ll allow him to be on this mix even though he is an Oakland A’s fan: “Over in the Mission it’s always a sunny day / there’s a real good baseball town but my team is across the Bay.”
Hail Mary – Pomplamoose
Not only is this husband-wife duo from Corte Madera (north of SF), but this catchy pop tune sings of driving down to San Jose at ninety miles per hour, has clattery, stick-in-your-head percussion, and their band name is modeled after the French word for grapefruit. What’s not to like?
Santa Clara – The National
Santa Clara is where I went to college and then worked for five years, and where my grandma still lives in the same house on Brannan Place that she’s been in for 50 years — so I was pretty excited to find this National b-side. It is gorgeous by any standards, even aside from how it hits the home parts of my heart.
Snow In San Anselmo – Van Morrison
Van gets a bit meandering here on this seven+ minute tune, but it feels appropriate for the kind of cold night he describes in this small town in Marin County, across the Golden Gate from SF. “The classic music station plays soft and low . . . and the pancake house is always open 24 hours a day / my waitress said it was coming down, said it hadn’t happened in over thirty years.” I remember snow maybe once in all my years in the Bay Area, and this song is mighty evocative.
San Geronimo – Red House Painters
Then just along the boulevard from San Anselmo is the town of San Geronimo, where Kozelak sings of “somewhere up fifteen miles sifting through crackling vinyl / lost memories of my youth are coming into view… weekend in San Geronimo, love how the starlit skies show.” Red House Painters were from San Francisco, so they get double point placement on this mix for that. They know the landscape well, and I could have picked any number of their tunes but this one is special.
California, Pt. 2 – Mason Jennings
Possibly my favorite of all Mason Jennings songs, about packing a box of books and a guitar into the back of a pickup and moving to CA — not Los Angeles (“I’m staying far away from there”) but moving “north of San Francisco into the cleaner air / I’m gonna get a little land with the money I’ve saved, buy a little house that I can work on / where the next nearest neighbor lives miles away, I’ll never have to mow the lawn. Right on.” Sounds absolutely perfect to me.
El Caminos In The West – Grandaddy
Jason Lytle is from Modesto, California, and so even though I realize this song may well be about the stylin’ car the El Camino, I prefer to imagine it as singing about the El Camino Real, the King’s Highway that stretches the length of the state and used to bind together all the mission churches in the state’s earliest days.
Palo Alto – Radiohead
With bleeps and bloops fitting the technological mecca this “city of the future” has become (from Hewlett Packard to Facebook) Radiohead sings an ode to Palo Alto with a pervasive feeling of alienation. But I mean, seriously, Radiohead wrote a song about them. They can’t complain.
Oakland on a Rainy Day – Jake Troth
This Bay Area songwriter writes great, humble, satisfying songs and this is no exception. There’s nearly nothing I love more than Oakland (or San Francisco, or San Jose, or Santa Cruz) on a rainy day. When I was in SF over the holidays, it poured on Tuesday night and I just opened the windows and sat in the dark and listened and smelled that rain smell. We don’t get that in Colorado much.
27th Ave Shuffle – Foxboro Hot Tubs
A 2008 side project of seminal Berkeley band Green Day, this song rocks us down 27th Avenue (which bisects Golden Gate Park and runs on up through the Richmond) and I think references jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge which of course is something we do not recommend. But this song, yes.
Rendezvous Potrero Hill – Architecture in Helsinki
Let’s pause for a little autumnal instrumental interlude dedicated to this San Francisco neighborhood, home to both Anchor Steam Brewery and the Mythbusters folks, so you know it has to be good.
Grace Cathedral Hill – The Decemberists
A new year’s day spent in this, one of SF’s most gorgeous cathedrals, lighting little white candles and then heading north to the Hyde Street Pier — “And the world may be long for you, but it’ll never belong to you / but on a motorbike when all the city lights blind your eyes tonight, are you feeling better now?” Yup.
Highway 101 – Social Distortion
One of our most maddening or beautiful highways, depending on which stretch of it you find yourself on, and what time to day. I picked this song over Albert Hammond Jr’s “Back To The 101″ because everyone knows that only Southern Californians add the “the.”
Moon Over Marin – Dead Kennedys
One of San Francisco’s most famous punk bands sing about pollution in the North Bay, decades before the Cosco Busan spill. The band was formed after guitarist East Bay Ray saw a punk/ska show at San Francisco’s legendary Mabuhay Gardens, met Jello Biafra and the rest of the band, and yelled their way into our city’s history.
Got To Have It – Soul President
From the Numero Group’s marvelous Eccentric Soul re-release series, this steel drum-peppered track was originally put out on a tiny San Francisco imprint Uptight Records in the ’60s. There’s all kind of painfully funky shoutouts here to the Haight Ashbury, laced liberally with “unh!”s. Being this cool hurts.
The Chapter of Your Life Entitled San Francisco – The Lucksmiths
This Australian band laments a friend who has moved off to our temperate Bay Area climes, and won’t even write postcards home during the long summer, so taken is she with the charms of the city by the Bay. It happens.
Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far) – The Thrills
One thing I probably miss the most here in the landlocked square I now call home is the inability to pack up the car with a few essentials and drive south over Highway 17 to Santa Cruz, the beachtown that was once so close and so appreciated. The Thrills are from nowhere near California (Dublin, actually) but the first two songs on their 2002 album So Much For The City talk about California coastal towns so convincingly, you’d think they were from here too.
Big Dipper – Cracker
David Lowery’s earlier band Camper Van Beethoven was centered in Santa Cruz, and this melancholy song compares life to entering the long tunnel and the curve leading into the iconic Big Dipper, the wooden rollercoaster at the Beach Boardwalk (from the top you can “see Monterey, or think about San Jose”). I know it well. Lowery also sings of sitting on the Cafe Zinho steps, an ’80s landmark which was destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and watching all the world go by.
San Andreas Fault – Natalie Merchant
Speaking of destruction caused by the ’89 quake, this fault is the meeting of the plates that caused it. I was ten and I was begrudgingly cleaning my room so that I could join the rest of my family in watching the World Series Game 3 that was starting, Giants vs A’s in a cross-the-Bay pairing. This video of the baseball coverage that night makes me smile to see old Candlestick full, but remembering how sunny that day was makes my stomach hurt.
San Francisco Blues – Stephen Fretwell
I’ve loved Fretwell since I first heard the devastatingly perfect “Emily,” and even moreso when he put this song on his 2007 album Man On The Roof. Originally from Manchester, England, he joins a long line of Brits who have fallen in love with the city.
California Brown and Blue – Denison Witmer
Everything about this song cuts me, we’ll just leave it at that. “Weightless in the arms of the Golden Gate… I leave before we find out what it means.”
Sausalito - Conor Oberst
Conor pens a rollicking number with deceptively wrenching lyrics set in the gorgeous seaside town of Sausalito, which I remember a specific gorgeous March day spent walking around in after taking the ferry up from SF. “Hair blowing in the hot wind, time hanging from a clothespin…” He thinks we should move to a houseboat and let the ocean rock us back and forth to sleep. Yes.
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (ripped from vinyl) – Otis Redding
Perhaps one of the most famous songs written in and about our Bay (other than, you know, Journey), Otis penned this one night on a houseboat docked in that same Sausalito, while he was in town to play San Francisco’s famous Fillmore. Everything about that sentence, I love.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry or smile widely (sometimes at the same time) while making this mix.
[help on this mix from several friends from the Bay Area, including pal/SF resident/musician Matt Nathanson, Ken Shipley of Numero Group and my high school, Rand Foster of Long Beach’s epic Fingerprints Record Store and neighboring rival high school,and fellow SF blogger Adrian who also rocked some of the best suggestions on the Stomp/Clap Mix. Y’all do your city proud.]
When John Darnielle sings of vampires, like when Josh Ritter sings of cursed mummies or Mary Shelley writes of freakish monsters assembled of dead parts, it’s really probably not about any of the above. Lately I am fascinated with the ways we use stories and allegory to articulate the difficult parts of ourselves, and others.
This latest song from The Mountain Goats seems to be about a clash of youth and wildness (“someday we won’t remember this”) with the ways we are left perforated and torn. I can’t stop listening.
The next song from R.E.M.‘s forthcoming Collapse Into Now will be played in the UK tomorrow, but leaked into the superfan internet pool this weekend through an accidental (?) posting on the Warner Brothers’ Records site.
The song follows a man wandering in a darkened Berlin (“we walk the streets to feel the ground“) looking at the lights all around, surrounded by people but choking on an alienation that echoes the faceless grey-flannel subway-rider daysleeping vibe I get from their album Up. There is a turbulent ache and distance in this song as he sings “well I don’t mind repeating: i am not complete. I have never been the gifted type.”
Musically this is absolutely a return to the form of the R.E.M. that I deeply love. A friend sent me this with the subject line “welcome back to 1994,” and without trying to resurrect an era, R.E.M. have done something classic yet fresh on this one. There will always be that piercing twang and divine jangle that the boys from Athens can do better than anyone else. I do feel like I am hurtling in the night sky as I sit and listen to this on repeat.
i know, i know, i know what I am chasing
i know, i know, i know that this is changing me
I am flying on a star into a meteor tonight
I am flying on a star, a star, a star
I will make it through the day and then the day becomes the night
I will make it through the night.
STREAM: Uberlin – R.E.M.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Murmers message boards are pretty unanimous in echoing my reaction to this song, with one person calling it the best R.E.M. song in ten years, and a succinctly awesome fella just saying: “Dont need any help to cry but these lines have just thrown a serious curveball to an REM cynic like me. Cried. Like a baby. Literally. Fuck you Stipe.”
Collapse Into Now will be R.E.M.’s fifteenth studio album (how is that possible?!), and is out March 8th.
EDIT: “Oh My Heart” is also completely, thoroughly breathtaking. Sweet, sad, and true.
Oh my.
[top image: engraving of the Perseids from the 1800s]
Some people are happiest when music can inspire them with new songwriting technique or melodies, but me — I often find myself most thoroughly contented when a song drives me to the dictionary. I love to roll around new words; choice vocabulary thrills me like some people love a really good meal.
Therefore it’s pretty clear that Colin Meloy and I were MFEO.
panoply (ˈpænəplɪ) — n , a complete or magnificent array
“June Hymn” is one of the most achingly wistful songs on the fantastic new Decemberists album, The King Is Dead, out today. It blossoms and blooms just like the scene it invokes. Oh –
Here’s a hymn to welcome in the day
heralding a summer’s early sway
and all the bulbs all coming in
to begin
The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens
disrupts my reverie again
pegging clothing on the line
training jasmine how to vine
up the arbor to your door, and more
Standing on the landing with the war
you shouldered all the night before
Once upon it, the yellow bonnets
garland all the lawn
you were waking, day was breaking
a panoply of song.
The summer comes to Springville Hill…
This song (and its companion piece, the elegiac “January Hymn”) is a poem, of the best kind. Stream the album version here (only through today, I think), “June Hymn” is third from last and starts around 26:20.
It is so, so much sweeter with Gillian Welch‘s voice in the mix – her vocals (throughout this album) balance perfectly with Colin’s precise and incisive delivery. Theirs is one of those pairings that I never would have pictured, but then I hear it and wonder why it’s not always like this.
I sat up late into last night at my kitchen table playing Colorku with a friend (the most addicting game ever), listening to the new Decemberists album multiple times, singing along to the building ah-oooohs in “Calamity Song” and reveling that strong gust of “Down By The Water.” From the first song, the first time I heard this album a few weeks ago, I knew it would be my first favorite album of 2011. Repeated listens have only confirmed that this is a completely terrific album.
The King Is Dead is a big, bursting album that drives along propelled by Peter Buck (R.E.M.) on jangly guitar and the flawless combination of Colin Meloy and Gillian Welch’s voices twining together throughout. But there are also moments like this (and the closing track, “Oh Avery” – man alive) of quiet, introspective beauty. It blends a rootsy sensibility with the Decemberists’ smart and lovely songwriting, so you have the wheezing of harmonica, a little banjo and the pierce of the fiddle but also the acoustic fingerpicking on guitar and thoughtful melodies.
The deluxe version of the album comes with a book of photographs taken by the wonderful Autumn de Wilde, a photographer I admire so much that she’s one of just three that has their own tag on my blog. Look at her lovely Polaroids here; get one original tucked in the deluxe version, if you go that route.
Colin explains:
“One night on Pendarvis Farm, whilst merrily roasting tofu dogs over an open campfire, we Decemberists, along with our esteemed Management Representatives and a certain Missus Autumn de Wilde, photographer superieur, hatched a plan wherein Mizz de Wilde would document the making of The King is Dead on Polaroid film, a full 2500 photos to be exact, and we would then include one of those unique photographs individually in each of the DELUXE BOX EDITION of the record.
Naturally, this is the sort of cockamamy scheme that lodges itself in the minds of perfectly sane adults while under the influence of a bucolic, Arcadian Oregon summer; the expense was deemed too great. This is where The Impossible Project came in; they are a group devoted to the survival of Polaroid films of all sorts and collect or manufacture this ever-rarified breed of film in order to sell or donate it to photographers worldwide. They liked our idea; they donated us the film. And so here we are, this dream fulfilled. Ms. de Wilde followed us Decemberists around all summer, snapping Polaroids; we posed obligingly. And one of those photos could be yours.”
And if you are lucky enough to live in Portland from whence The Decemberists hail, you should go see them tonight at 7pm at Music Millenium, where they’ll be signing copies of their new album. Get one for me and I’ll totally pay you back.
I think you’ll love this album as much as I do, and I am head over heels. Go get it.
DECEMBERISTS TOUR DATES * with Wye Oak
# with Mountain Man January 24, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY*
January 25, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY* SOLD OUT January 26, Beacon Theatre, New York, NY* SOLD OUT January 28, House of Blues, Boston, MA*
January 29, House of Blues, Boston, MA* SOLD OUT January 31, Olympia De Montreal, Montreal, Canada*
February 1, Sound Academy, Toronto, Canada*
February 2, Royal Oak Music Theatre, Royal Oak, MI*
Feburary 4, Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL* SOLD OUT February 5, Riverside Theatre, Milwaukee, WI#
February 6, State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN#
February 7, Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, MO#
February 9, Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO#
February 10, Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO#
February 12, The Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA# SOLD OUT February 13, House of Blues-San Diego, San Diego, CA#
February 14, Fox Theater, Oakland, CA# SOLD OUT February 18, Paramount Ballroom, Seattle, WA#
February 19, Arlene Schnitzer Hall, Portland, OR# SOLD OUT March 4, Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland
March 5, Barrowlands, Glasgow, UK
March 7, Birmingham Institute, Birmingham, UK
March 8, Bristol Academy, Bristol, UK
March 10, Manchester Academy, Manchester, UK
March 11, Leeds Academy, Leeds, UK
March 12, De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK
March 13, Trix, Antwerp, Belgium
March 14, Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
March 16, Hammersmith Apollo, London, UK
I also thought immediately when I heard this album, “Man, this would sound great at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.” Here’s to hoping.
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.
SHOW ALERT!
Collapse Into Now will be R.E.M.’s fifteenth studio album (how is that possible?!), and is out March 8th.
The King Is Dead is a big, bursting album that drives along propelled by Peter Buck (R.E.M.) on jangly guitar and the flawless combination of Colin Meloy and Gillian Welch’s voices twining together throughout. But there are also moments like this (and the closing track, “Oh Avery” – man alive) of quiet, introspective beauty. It blends a rootsy sensibility with the Decemberists’ smart and lovely songwriting, so you have the wheezing of harmonica, a little banjo and the pierce of the fiddle but also the acoustic fingerpicking on guitar and thoughtful melodies.
Name: Heather Browne
