Last weekend Jeff Tweedy played the 75th anniversary party of our lovely old art-deco Boulder Theater. I was sadly not in attendance, but now I can listen to the gem-packed setlist thanks to an awesome taper, and so can you.
The varied setlist is packed with all kinds of fantastic audience participation (the “oooh, ahhhhh“s of Summer Teeth, likewise on Heavy Metal Drummer) and Jeff’s fantastic banter. I think Tweedy is one of the funniest stage banterers in existence; I would enjoy a spliced-together recording of just him talking to the audience.
In addition to the Woody Guthrie cover (Mermaid Avenue, anyone?), his version of “Fake Plastic Trees” still kills me, the way his voice cracks on the lyrics “if I could be who you wanted…” Also, the simple opening chord progression of “She’s A Jar” always completely makes me smile, even in this stripped version — just a guitar and that homesick-sweet harmonica.
I commented once on how Wilco fans are really unlike any other fans I think I’ve ever known. I get almost as much pleasure on this recording through listening to the crowd recognize the songs literally from the first half second and starting to cheer their appreciation as I do from the songs themselves. This sure is a feel-good show for a feel-good weekend like this one.
JEFF TWEEDY LIVE AT THE BOULDER THEATER
JANUARY 8, 2011
New Sub Pop signees Mister Heavenly came billed as “doom-wop” (doo-wop and doomed love songs – yes!), and our first listen today reminds me of early, funky Beck mixed through the radio signals with some sort of staticky oldies station. Bop shoo wop.
It’s an ace collaboration between Nick Diamonds (of Islands), Honus Honus (of Man Man, who likes repetition) and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer, which started as a one-off thing to record a 7″ and evolved into a forthcoming full-length album. Plus they sometimes play live with Michael Cera, which just makes me feel all smiley.
Mister Heavenly – Mister Heavenly
(download this and one more free song “Pineapple Girl” here)
They’re playing tonight in Chicago, that marvelous city, and Sunday at the Bowery. Yeah – bring on the weekend with this tune!
From the opening clatters and violin tension, I feel uneasy throughout this song — like everything is just about to spin off into chaos, and I love it. It feels like that overly bright, shaky feeling you would have after your second all-nighter in as many nights, stopping in at a convenience store where everything is dusty colored plastic and too close together on the shelves. This song would be playing there. The beat here is syncopated and the feeling of “slightly off” permeates. Matt Berninger’s voice is the anchor to the jumble, more sonorous and powerful than the original version of the song.
It’s like the empty, shiny feeling I get in the U2 song from Zooropa “Stay (Faraway, So Close),” where Bono sings about stopping in at 7-11 for a pack of cigarettes, when you don’t smoke and don’t even want to, dressed up like a car crash. This song feels like that except richer and more jittery, more out-of-sorts by a factor of ten. This isn’t even 2am fun where the night still feels young, this is 4:45am where the sunrise is coming and you just might have to work in the morning.
The Forms are a duo from Brooklyn, and have been around since 2003, with two full-length albums out. Their new Derealization EP is coming out February 15th on the Ernest Jenning Record Co label, and reworks ideas/melodies/lyrics from their past albums with different arrangements and tempos (like dropping the needle set to 45 instead of 33), and different musicians contributing. The EP features not only Berninger of The National, but also members of Shudder to Think, Dirty Projectors, Pattern is Movement and St. Vincent. Fascinating. I am drawn in by this idea of going back and mining deep within the past products of your creativity to reinvent for where you find yourself now.
Here’s the original version of the same song, pre-reworking:
After the ink dried way back in November, Sub Pop finally announced one of the worst kept secrets in Seattle for the past few months: they have signed The Head and The Heart, and will be digitally re-releasing their self-titled debut album on the Sub Pop label today!
If you haven’t been following my Amway-salesman-like enthusiasm for this band since summer, then you can read about why I think they are great over on the band bio I penned for Sub Pop.
The new 2011 version of the album includes a studio recording of “Rivers and Roads” (which gutted me most excellently in August, in that parking garage show) and a re-recorded version of “Sounds Like Hallelujah.” The whole album has been remastered, and will also be released on vinyl in April for Record Store Day. Sweet!
To celebrate today, the band has released a moody, acoustic, brand-new song, “No One To Let You Down” (which we saw them perform on beach cliffs at the Doe Bay Festival last summer) for free download on their website, along with “Down In The Valley,” one of the standout tracks on their album.
STREAM: No One To Let You Down – The Head and The Heart
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MORE SHOWS THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT IN 2011 * – w/Dr. Dog
** – w/The Walkmen Jan 13 – Bellingham, WA – Green Frog Acoustic Tavern
Jan 14 – Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
Jan 15 – Spokane, WA – Empyrean Coffee House
Jan 19 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
Jan 23 – Birmingham, UK – Glee Club **
Jan 24 – London, UK – The Lexington
Jan 25 – London, UK – Shepherd’s Bush Empire **
Jan 26 – Berlin, Germany – Privatclub
Jan 28 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 29 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club *
Jan 31 – Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre *
Feb 1 – Memphis, TN – Minglewood Hall *
Feb 3 – Charleston, SC – Music Farm *
Feb 4 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade *
Feb 5 – Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom *
Feb 7 – Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Theatre *
Feb 8 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel *
Feb 9 – Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater *
Feb 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory *
Feb 14 – Woodstock, NY – Bearsville Theater *
Feb 15 – South Burlington, VT – Higher Ground *
Feb 17 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre *
Feb 18 – New York, NY – Terminal 5 *
Feb 19 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club *
Mar 2 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks **
Mar 3 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s **
Mar 4 – Austin, TX – Stubbs’ Bar-B-Q **
Mar 5 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater **
Mar 7 – Lawrence, KS – Jackpot Saloon
Mar 11 – Englewood, CO – Moe’s
Mar 13 – Albuquerque, NM – Low Spirits
I know it is icy, brutal, make-you-weep freezing in so many of the places where people are reading from, so this feels like a bit of collectivist escapism between us.
But: I heard this song for the first time tonight and I want so badly for it to be July and to be driving down Highway 17 in California with this on repeat, and the windows down. And can someone also please bring a guitar so we can try to work out the chords around the campfire? This is pure, undistilled summer joy and just made my night.
Family Of The Year is from Los Angeles (so they do summery things all the time), by way of Wales (so they appreciate all the summery things). Their album Songbook is available for whatever price you want to pay them for it. I wonder if they would take payment in s’mores.
And so, another year marches to a close — another fantastic, adventure-filled, technicolor year. It’s the time when all of us start kicking around our neatly-bulleted lists of bests and worsts. For me, the more I read these lists, the more I feel that I missed more albums and artists than I heard this year.
The stats are staggering: in 2002, about 33,000 albums were released. In 2006 that number was 75,000. Last year close to 100,000 albums were released, with only roughly 800 of those albums selling more than 5K. It’s tough out there — to be heard, and to feel as a listener that you have adequately given a shot to even a fraction of a representative sample of one year’s offerings. I always feel this keening bittersweet regret at the end of each year, as so much more music was released than any one human woman can possibly digest or invest in.
That being said, I had a fairly simple time picking what my personal favorite albums were for 2010, of the ones I heard. I absolutely loved what Carrie Brownstein wrote on her NPR blog about these year-end lists.
She muses: “So I’ll admit that I’m not quite certain how to sum up an entire year in music anymore; not when music has become so temporal, so specific and personal, as if we each have our own weather system and what we listen to is our individual forecast. I’ve written a lot about music bringing people together, fomenting community, and many albums still did act as bonfires in 2010 . . . but many of us are also walking around with a little lighter in hand, singing along to some small glow that’s stuck around long enough to make us feel excited to be alive.”
That is exactly, precisely what I feel. And really, what is any top ten list but an assessment of those songs, those artists, those albums that have hit us square in the solar plexus exactly where we are sitting?
These are the albums that lodged deep and sharp into my red heart and made this year richer, smarter, harder and easier, sharper, sparklier, and all the more brilliant. And some of them seriously made me dance.
This is just one of the coolest albums released all year — maybe all decade. And I mean the kind of cool that is quintessential, untouchable, badass, just strutting down a sunny street with-your-own-theme-song type of cool. It blends their trademark swampy, bluesy, fuzzed-out guitars with crisp sharp beats that sliced right through that weight the first time I put this album in, on my roadtrip to Missouri. I think I listened to it on repeat through at least two (long, loooong) states and it was love at first listen from that point on.
Additionally – if there is a sicker breakdown all year than what happens here at 1:02, I don’t wanna know about it.
This album from the Canadian side of the verdant Pacific Northwest was an unexpected discovery this year, recommended to me by a friend who helps arrange the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (another favorite thing of this year, but hey we’ll get to that). Dan Mangan has made a dense, thoroughly gorgeous album, heavy on the intelligent lyrics, his oaky-warm voice weaving in amongst a whole orchestra of instruments. This album is beautifully arranged and well-crafted, one you can swim deeply in during rainy days all winter long (although I discovered it in August and it sounded just as good in the sticky warmth).
DREW GROW AND THE PASTORS’ WIVES – SELF-TITLED
(Amigo/Amiga Records)
Drew Grow and his band The Pastors’ Wives hail from Portland, making music that easily straddles and jumps across genres to create something marvelously rich and endlessly interesting. The sound production throughout feels like an old, warm, crackly album (tip: get it on white vinyl while you can) with something urgent to say. From those fuzzy, sexy, pleadingly plaintive blues jams like “Company” to the aggressive push-and-tug of the rowdy “Bootstraps” and the dulcet golden ’50s croon of songs like “Hook,” this album has pleased me completely. Every song is a favorite.
The opening “Bon Voyage Hymn” sets the tone for this album (if it has one) of a sort of rough-hewn, honest, rock gospel as Drew howls, “Sing a shelter over me / With a mighty chorus, slaves set free.” And by that I mean the oldest spirit of gospel, in community and a shared love of singing, with our heads thrown back and our feet stomping — but while the guitar squalls and the dirty drums crash. At the house show they played for me in November, it was like the best kind of church, a jaw-dropping explosion of goodness.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART – SELF-TITLED
(self-released)
From the first evening back in early summer when I streamed this Seattle six-piece’s songs on my tinny computer speakers, I was reeled in hook line and sinker. The song sang about something that sounds like a hallelujah, the sheer delight of embracing with all of your heart and both your dancing shoes, and no band this year has given me more of that musical enjoyment – whether in a parking garage very late at night, or in the living room of an old house. Amidst the warmth, the uncanny wisdom, and undeniably catchy musical & rhythmic foundations of this band, there is magic. We will be hearing a good deal more from them in 2011, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Sounds Like Hallelujah – The Head and The Heart
This is, simply put, a kinetic album. Jónsi blends his native Icelandic language with forays into English, creating the dizzying effect of running fast through a dream forest, not exactly understanding what is being said and not needing to. He’s made an intricate, joyful album of grandeur that is uplifting and challenging without being overly twee or silly. It is a delicate balance to strike. The paint-spatter of colors on the album cover precisely depict what this explosive album sounds like – purple, yellow, deep red, shot through with sunlight.
This album was completely unlike anything else that I heard this year, and made me simultaneously smile widely and furrow my brow. It’s the most imaginative album I’ve heard all year, perfect at evoking things like riding the back of a jet-black dragon over canyons. Yes, and yes. Please.
Addendum: I also just laughed very loudly for a good minute and a half after I just connected the mental dots to the possible inspiration for this album, or at least this song.
I’ve said before that I think Josh Ritter is one of the most important and talented songwriters of our generation; this album is a stellar example of why. Through these thirteen sprawling songs, Josh demonstrates to me again exactly why I love the way that he sees the world. When I interviewed him this summer, he said he admires those who “see what everybody else has seen, think what nobody else has thought.”
Josh pens incisive, piercing, widely-varying folk songs with the comfortable intelligence of one who is in no hurry, yet is passionate in pursuing his muse and getting his stories out into the world. Highlights here like “The Curse,” “Folk Bloodbath,” “Another New World,” and “Lantern” are jaw-dropping. Josh has a remarkable way of teasing out truths about the world (seen and unseen), and poking into the human conditions in my own heart with a greater acuity than most out there.
That song also contains one of my favorite lyrics of this entire year: “So throw away those lamentations, we both know them all too well / If there’s a book of jubilations, we’ll have to write it for ourselves / So come and lie beside me darlin’ — let’s write it while we still got time.”
From the first time I heard Lissie’s soulful, immensely evocative voice earlier this year on her song “Everywhere I Go,” I was riveted. Who was this slight, freckled blond gal with the echoes of an entire fifty-member church choir in her lungs? Originally from Rock Island, Illinois, Lissie has harnessed both the brilliance of the sunshine of her new California home on her debut album, as well as all the gnarls of her roots. Bluesy, confident melodies and goosebump-inducing howls are here in scads — this is a notably substantial first album from a woman to be reckoned with.
“We could start tonight, slide back the deadbolts…” Matt Pond suggests at the beginning of this autumnal album with rich hues that gave me endless listening pleasure this year. I was glad I took him up on the invite. I’d admired the work of the Brooklyn songwriter in spurts and starts over the past few years, but this is the first album of his that I have really immersed myself into his uniquely lovely, thrumming view of the world.
There is a sort of expansive, wide-eyed glow in this album that seems to invite transcendent things to happen. From the specks of silver he sings about in the evening sky and the illumination all around us, I love the way things look like an adventure when I am listening. “First hips, then knees, then feet – don’t think anymore,” he sings. Good idea, Matt.
This is a decimating, gorgeous, elegant album, much like Boxer was but with additional hints of weirdness and unsettled edges that I like. I was ridiculously excited about this album (in a sort of masochistic way, since I know full well what The National are capable of), devouring every word I could read about it before it came out. The single best definition I heard came from Matt Berninger himself when he said they wanted it to sound “like loose wool and hot tar.” In that regard, they completely succeed – their music is dark, burning, sticking to your skin and all your insides.
This is an incredible album full of terse, razor-sharp observations on the worries that wait in the shadows for me and gnaw when they get a chance: I think the kids are in trouble… you’ll never believe the shitty thoughts I think… I was less than amazing… I tell you terrible things when you’re asleep. But I won’t lie when I say I found some of the strongest redemption of my year in this music as well, with the closing track “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” — singing along with lines “all the very best of us string ourselves up for love / man it’s all been forgiven, swans are a-swimmin…” The honesty of the darkness shot through with these glints is what keeps drawing me back to these guys, fiercely.
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH – THE WILD HUNT
(Dead Oceans)
Kristian Mattson slays me – there are no two ways about it. When he sings on this album, “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” it is almost comical because nothing really seems further from the truth. Mattson’s songs have the kind of heft and intricacy that make me certain his music will be around for a very long time after him. His guitarwork is sparkling, impassioned, and inspired. The words he selects and the way he delivers them are pointed and deliberate. I can’t tell if his lyrics are so sharp in spite of the fact that English is not his first language, or because of it – as if perhaps he can see more clearly through our muddy sea of language to pick out the iridescent rocks from the river.
Also: it’s worth noting that his EP released this year was equally good – serious brilliant work.
I cannot stop listening to Eric Anderson, as evidenced by the fact that I have put him on just abouteverymix I made in 2010, and listen to this album most days lately on my walk to work. After a chance encounter with his music on a college radio show of a friend, I’ve been smitten by his earnest, unvarnished, incredibly catchy way of looking at the world that simultaneously makes me smile and breaks my heart. You know me. I like that.
He’s got a new album “Prison Boxing” coming out in 2011, according to Facebook. I plan to be substantially more on top of that one.
FAVORITE INTERVIEWS:
Bringing Jeff Buckley’s music to a new life through Shakespeare [link]
-and-
Talking to my Italian musical hero on the Santa Monica Pier [link]
AND: FAVORITE NIGHT THAT ONLY TOOK 56 YEARS TO ARRIVE This one.
*****
I started 2010 with a Polar Bear Plunge and a vow that this year was gonna be ours, a year of intentionally acquiring adventures and memories that would make me smile when I was old and withered.
I think we did it, and these were the things that soundtracked it all.
When I first read rumblings of the newly-formed “supergroup” collaboration between three artists who have all released incredibly strong albums in the last few years, I was eager to hear what they could cook up together. Imagine the expansive, sunny Laurel Canyon grooves of Dawes, the incisive pianowork and gruff yowl of Deer Tick, and the clever surf-tinged pop of Delta Spirit — all in one group. That seems to me like almost too much goodness for one album to hold.
The first track off the album proves all my suspicions:
STREAM: Me, Me, Me
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Download this track as a free Christmas present from the band, over on their website. Their full-length self-titled debut album will be out in March on Partisan Records. Yes, please.
This is among my top three favorite modern Christmas songs, from the 2003 self-titled album from Leona Naess. Sublime, laden with those sweetly sad cellos – I really could listen to it for hours. It’s the aural equivalent of snow falling and thinking about those you’ve loved this year.
I fell for this Bill Fay song the first time I heard it in the Wilco movie I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. But where Jeff Tweedy’s version is a humble benediction that casts out fear (and which I’ve used on a dozen mixtapes), this version from Damien Jurado and Richard Swift rises up all spectral and echoey, like a lost gospel choir in some knockaround vacant Southern church. Affecting and fabulous.
This is the first track on the collaboration album Other People’s Songs that Secretly Canadian labelmates Jurado and Swift recorded late this summer and released for free. Yup, free.
Go get it here, and read more about the song selection and recording process over here. Swift produced Jurado’s Saint Bartlett album this year, and I once saw Swift open for Wilco — a neat perfect circle of music.
I have two musical items that I would like to share with you tonight related to Admiral Fallow, a sextet from Glasgow that I’ve just been introduced to. This band couples winsomely intelligent, sharply evocative lyrics with ambling orchestral builds — starring both clarinets and foot-stomping in equal measure.
There is an immediately warm similarity to countrymates Frightened Rabbit, and in fact the two will be sharing the stage on several dates this spring. The Admiral Fallow debut album Boots Met My Face will be re-released in March 2011. It’s spun together both fine and real.
You’ll probably be singing along with that song after two or three listens, like I was. You can stream the whole album on Bandcamp; I am particularly captivated by their songs “Subbuteo,” and “Taste The Coast,” — even though the latter may have been written about a cold northern sea five thousand miles from my home near the coast of California, I feel the same way they do about the salty air. The clever simile-lover and poetry-reader in me also stopped short over the song “Dead Against Smoking,” in which a woman with skin the color of a violet golden sky, and inspires this striking chorus:
You’re like gasoline.
You’re like the willow tree.
You’re like a split screen.
But you’re the green in me.
I’m a sucker.
Second item of note: Admiral Fallow frontman Louis Abbott (below in the stripes) recently took part in this rad mini-movement in Glasgow where the city’s finest folk musicians do “wee jaunts,” playing a number of short shows en masse in completely unlikely places, like restrooms, subways, and stairwells. This made me laugh in utter delight; they sound so joyous covering Bon Iver, with their voices reverberating all around them.
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.
And hey, while we’re at it: let’s all reminisce about 
CATALDO – 
NINE SUPERB SONGS I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH OF IN 2010:
FAVORITE INTERVIEWS:
FAVORITE SHOWS OF THE YEAR:
AND: FAVORITE NIGHT THAT ONLY TOOK 56 YEARS TO ARRIVE
There is an immediately warm similarity to countrymates Frightened Rabbit, and in fact the two will be sharing the stage on several dates this spring. The Admiral Fallow debut album 
Name: Heather Browne
