Why is lead singer Patience (yes, that’s her real name) of Australian band The Grates so excited up there? It could be because she has 2 tickets to Sunday’s Monolith Festival to giveaway to YOU, as well as a copy of their new album Teeth Lost, Hearts Won.
Email me a story about a time when patience was important to you, or why we need Patience, or something rad about Australia (other than that my little brother is moving there, omg news of the family last night)! I will pick a winner at noon tomorrow, that’s 12pm Mountain Standard Time, Friday. Include your full name with your email entry, k?
The Grates play the Monolith kickoff party tomorrow night, and at the festival Sunday at 2pm. I saw them at SXSW (which is actually what that picture up top is from) and they were a blast.
Teeth Lost, Hearts Won is out Tuesday, Sept 15th. It was produced by Peter Katis (Frightened Rabbit, The National) and features guest appearances by Kori Gardner of Mates of State (vocals on “Milk Eyes“) and Tim Fite (vocals on “Not Today”).
The third annual Monolith Festival takes over the dramatically scenic crags of Red Rocks this weekend, with more music than you can shake a stick at or, say, run up and down a gazillion stairs for. You wouldn’t think it possible, but the organizers manage to fit five separate stages within the historic park, taking full advantage of the gorgeous views of Denver in the distance and the rosy rocks all around.
For the last two years, Monolith has packed in a sizable number of good artists, both well-known and fledgling newbies. This year is no different, with dozens of folks I want to see at what still feels like a boutique festival, in a very good way. You can get thisclose to the bands and get from stage to stage fairly easily (while toning your glutes — did I mention the stairs?). I plan to make the very most of my weekend this weekend — tickets are still available, and I think you should come too.
This year, Fuel/Friends contributor-pal Dainonis coming to the fest with me, to help cover all the goodness that is rarin’ to occur. We’ve each picked a handful of bands we are putting down as “can’t miss” on our Gigbot schedules. Who would you add? And why aren’t you coming? Oh, you are? Okay, good.
HEATHER & DAINON DO MONOLITH: 2009 EDITION
HB: Simply from the band name Cymbals Eat Guitars, this Staten Island band had me at hello, before I even experienced their massively sweeping, shimmering music that alternates between chaotic lo-fi punk and the most enormous moments of Explosions In The Sky. There’s a lot of buzz behind this group after only a self-released album (it grew wings when Pitchfork named it Best New Music]. It’s like Chocolate Eats Guacamole, or Using Your Turn Signal Eats Long Hot Showers. I mean, if good eats good, you end up with something even more amazing, methinks. Let’s go see.
DM: There’s a reason why I saw Thao with The Get Down Stay Down three times in a row, three concerts in a row, three days in a row earlier this year (something I refer to as my own personal Three Thao Tour) … and it has to do with the honesty that accompanies a Thao Nguyen performance. She loses herself in her craft every single time she plays: the eyes shut and the guitar is wielded like a battle axe. Now that she’s got a new album on the horizon, with lots more shiny new songs to show off, this is an unequivocal no-brainer.
HB: I apparently like having my insides pulled out of me in devastating fashion. This makes me a good candidate for sorority girl in a slasher film or, since we’re actually talking in metaphors here, attending a Frightened Rabbit show. Fronted by a pair of literate brothers from Selkirk, Scotland, Frightened Rabbit released one of my favorite albums in 2007 and puts on a powerfully visceral, poundingly jangly, truly honest show. I will not miss this one.
DM: I hesitate to say I want to seeCotton Jones, only because it doesn’t seem like they’ve a rabid following, not that I can tell. I’d kinda sorta like to keep it that way, too. Liked ‘em when they were Page France but, with the organ in the mix, listening to their album is akin to filling my mouth with candy jawbreakers and not wanting to share. If you decide to show, just try and keep it down, yeah?
HB: Yes, OK Go does that genius dance in their backyard. Four years ago when that video came out, we didn’t have the luxury that we do now of sitting at a bar with friends watching it on an iPhone, as I did a couple of weeks ago. And guess what? It’s still marvelous. And I’ve always truly dug the sexy, driving pop sound of their music and its roots in semiotic intelligentsia (frontman Damian Kulash majored in it, and loves to create word images and twist a lyric so it rolls off the tongue just right). Dancing or no, this will be a really fun set to see.
DM: It seems like Fancy Footwork has been around forever now, right? Do you know Chromeo? Do you know they could prolly work you into a dancier, sweatier mess than Girl Talk? Did you know they lucked themselves straight into a time machine, picked up some sounds from both Hall and Oates in 1978 and polished them off for the rest of us to benefit from? Well, if you didn’t … you do now.
HB: Nothing about a band called Deer Tick can be mistaken for enchanted twee pop, or, as their MySpace page says, they are “0% indie rock. Believe it, butt-head.” There’s a good helping of rustic twang here, but not that this is a whistlin’ Dixie mullet-hunting way to spend an hour of your Sunday at Monolith. Think the old-time radio sounds of M. Ward (also on the bill this weekend) meets the rowdiest of The Felice Brothers but with a piercingly ragged, whiskey-soaked howl, and you’ll be on the right track.
DM:Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros are the new freak-folky Devendra Banharts of the festival. If their Dave Letterman network television debut taught us anything, it’s that all we need is love. And beards. And an absolute bare minimum of four tambourines.
The Features are a little band from Sparta, Tennessee who deserve more attention than they get, and ever since I first heard their fresh and off-kilter pop in 2005, I’ve been wanting to see them live. Finally, that’s happening this weekend at the Monolith Festival (1:30pm Sunday on the mainstage), where I’ll also get to dance around and doot-doot-doo to songs from their new sophomore album.
Some Kind of Salvation came out this summer on the brand-new Kings of Leon imprint of Bug Music, the first signing by KoL. I think I’ve always thought of The Features more as quirky multi-instrumental indie-pop — maybe in the same breath as The Format, since I first heard both on the same shiny mix CD from a prescient friend in 2005. But listening to their development on this album I definitely hear a tinge of what we might call anthemic Southern howl that attracted the Followills to their doorstep.
(watch a few more new songs on their Lake Fever Session from last month)
There’s a bright and bold awkwardness to their music, and I mean that in a completely wonderful way. They’ve been playing together since junior high (they’re my age now, so that’s a long time) and have hoed a long row to get to the place where their sophomore album is garnering some well-deserved buzz. After their 2004 debut release, they were dropped by Universal Records, allegedly for not agreeing to cover a Beatles song for a commercial. Their current sophomore album was first self-released last year, before Kings of Leon met them, toured with them, and got behind their latest efforts.
But still and forever, I think this song from their 2004 album Exhibit A might be one of my favorite songs to put on a mixtape ever; it captures that jittery bliss of music so perfectly for me.
Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The Nationalalong with Matt Berninger, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, Kim and Kelley Deal from The Breeders, and a 12-piece orchestra — combining with visual art of Matthew Ritchie and attempting to depict the beginning of time?
Count me in? I spent Halloween in NYC once, I would totally do it again.
The Swimmers first swam across the backyard pools of suburbia in 2007 to win my heart with their loose musical interpretation of the 1964 surreal short story “The Swimmer” (by John Cheever), about a disenchanted man who decides to swim home from a cocktail party through the teal pools in his subdivision. Fighting Trees was a bright and dreamy pop album with solid literary underpinnings, full of float-away songs about drowning, diving, and other ways of getting wet. It was one of my favorites of the year.
To my great joy The Swimmers are back after two years, and the first song I’ve heard off their sophomore release People Are Soft (out November 3) is decidedly crunchier, louder, and somehow even more delightful. This song starts like a gloriously iridescent Nada Surf b-side, before combusting near the one-minute mark with fuzzy-staticky electronic beats that made me think of that one song from Starfucker that I can’t get enough of.
In short – this song has charm in droves and I’ve been listening to it on repeat, maybe 25 times this weekend, no lie.
Also notable about this release is the fact that it’s coming out on MAD Dragon Records, the student-run label of Philadelphia’s Drexel University. I just sat in my office Friday on a college campus, chatting with a student about potential for cool music initiatives on campus, and this is one school I am jealous of.
British author Nick Hornby wrote a fascinating piece in today’s Guardian about what he’s found in mp3 blogs, and the changing ways we seek out and share and find connection with music and other music lovers. In the piece (entitled, “The Thrill Of It All“), Hornby muses:
“Keeping in touch with the things that help us feel alive – music, books, movies, even the theatre, if, mysteriously, you are that way inclined – becomes a battle, and one that many of us lose, as we get older; I don’t think enough of our cultural pundits, people who write about that stuff for a living, fully understand this.”
When I got to that sentence this morning, I stopped, and immediately re-read it three times, then set down my cup of coffee and thought about it for a good while there in my kitchen. I kinda wanted to make that first part the tagline on my blog, or script it out in flashing pink letters down the left sidebar of the site (my designers would not like this), because it simply summed up what I hope this blog would always be about to me, to you, to everyone that stops by. How do we keep in touch with the things that make us feel alive as we get older, with so many things that jockey for position and jostle to the head of the line to be attended to in the limited hours before we collapse from exhaustion at midnight, one a.m., later?
Lately I’ve really felt the weight of expectation (mine and others) in regards to my writing here, and struggled to frame and define it in a way that I can embrace moving forward. Since the inception of music blogs, and the year 2005 when many of us moderately-oldtimers started our sites, things have diverged in a dozen different directions. As with any new medium, the rules are written as we go along, and with music blogs, they’ve been written by each of us simply taking the tack that feels right to us. What I want this site to be — nay, what it really has to be for me to want to continue to be invested in it — is a place for me to keep in touch with some of the tangible, artsy-type things that help me feel alive (so thanks, Nick, for phrasing that in a way that makes it seem so clear and simple).
When I write about music, I don’t do it with an eye to the stats or an ear to the ground to bring you the hottest news out there. I figure there are dozens of sites that do the news thing far better than I do, mostly because it’s their full-time job, and this for me is something I do “in addition to.” I started writing Fuel/Friends to share my voice, and the things that poked me somewhere in the deep red of my heart, or the analytical, word-loving part of my brain. If a revised tack of increasing balance means that I post less often in this season, but I only post things that spark a genuine reaction in me, then that to me is far preferable for where I’m at in my life these days. One thing I’ve learned is that people will absolutely take as much as you will give, and more. On the one hand, it is flattering. On the other hand, it will wear me to a tiny nub of dessicated exhaustion if I don’t set hedges in place.
Ultimately, many things in the life I lead help me to feel alive. I try every day to balance the ones I don’t blog much about (namely, my marvelous little boy, my deeply rewarding job, and all my interpersonal relationships that take time and watering and love to grow) with the things that I do sit down to tippety-type about: the songs, the albums, the movies, the books, the art exhibits, the poetry that sends a jolt down my spine and lights me up inside. Lately I’ve been struggling quite a bit with folks’ comments about what they expect to find here, versus what I see this site as being and doing in my little corner of the internet. If you would like to pop in every now and again to share what I’m connecting with, please do. I love having you here. But I hope you don’t expect me to meet your news and coolness needs (and comment negatively when I don’t) because I promise you, I will let you down.
I feel extraordinarily lucky every day that I get to engage this stream of new music and culture that comes pouring through my mailbox, my inbox, my network of friends. There is so much good stuff out there that I can’t envision a time when it will ever dry up, and that feels like a miraculous thing. There was a time when I graduated college and got so wrapped up in grown-up responsibilities that I handily cut most new music out from entering my life, simply from lack of time to find it. Music blogs have meant as much to me as they might mean to you, in that they have singlehandedly revived my excitement about all the new sounds.
Now. Come, let’s carry on. There’s new music being recorded right now, new sprigs of vibrancy popping up all over the place.
I can think of much worse ways to spend an August weekend than in the heart of one of my favorite cities (San Francisco), seeing an eclectic lineup of bands both headliner-huge and quirky-small. Last year’s inaugural edition of theOutside Lands Music & Arts Festival boasted a solid roster of national and local musicians, but was plagued by a few logistical snafus that ranged from the mildly annoying (no, you can’t go that way anymore, you have to walk all the way around) to the borderline panic-attack inducing (15′-wide gauntlets of death to walk through to get to Beck, crammed like a sausage with your neighbor who is pushing the other way). It made it hard, at times, to lose yourself in the music, as Eminem advises.
This year’s festival returned with with a shimmering bang last weekend, featuring an arguably stronger lineup than last year and straightened out details, continuing to play on the gorgeous natural setting with stages spread out amidst the cypress trees. The fest also showcased local wines and restaurants with some abnormally tasty selections for a festival, far better than your standard funnel cake (not that I have ANY PROBLEM with funnel cake).
Of course, as with any festival, when you take into account the human error fudge factor, heat and/or cold, interpersonal weavings, and the occasional Heineken, it can be awfully difficult to catch all the bands you wanted. But the happy flip-side of that is that you often end up stumbling into something even better.
My three days of musical happiness began with a band that is quickly becoming one of my very favorites – Blind Pilot. This Portland, Oregon band drew a huge crowd with their rich and bittersweet tunes layered with gorgeous instrumentation, and those rootsy leanings. Frontman Israel Nebeker’s evocative voice just keeps drawing me back, no matter how many times I see them live (this was #3 this year).
“How I want that mystery / let me dive ’til I believe.”
The only other time I’ve seen The National perform was at Coachella last spring, and it is a testament to this band and their potency that even in a festival setting, in broad daylight, they’ve managed to completely knock me flat in the best way possible. I can’t imagine what they’d do to me in a dark club. As I wrote about the Indio desert, “The National carved something out of me and put something back in, is the best way I can put it.” Their set was riveting, laden with songs that I could hardly have hand-picked better (except maybe, “Lucky You.” I’d add that one).
Matt Berninger looks every bit the refined GQ businessman in a large faceless city; gold wedding band on his hand, dark collared shirt, hair nicely trimmed. But with his baritone velvet voice, dark stories spill from his mouth of all the emptiest fears and the most acute longings that wake us in the night. The bright horns and the swells of melody twinkle and shine like a candle in a colander, putting a streak of beauty through the center.
Start a War, Mistaken for Strangers, the new Blood Buzz Ohio, Slow Show — and my favorite Secret Meeting… it was over far too soon.
Next up in a magical bit of booking was Tom Jones, the Welsh crooner who can peel panties off people using only his cognac-smooth brogue. You would not believe the universal love that flowed from all sectors of the (hip-shaking) audience for his snappy set. All you need to know about the performance can be gleaned from these two pictures, and if you have more time to amuse yourself, my montage of Tom Jones facial expressions over on Facebook. As a friend texted me during his set, as I reported on the undies flying off 19-year-olds with dreadlocks and ironic t-shirts, “It’s like he went from cool to ironic back to cool.”
Friday night ended as not the best of times for me, although I did try to rally and catch Washington D.C.’s Thievery Corporation, with their Brazilian-dub-lounge groove (it looked like this, and sounded numbingly good floating through the night and turning off my brain).
Saturday started off with a double-shot of global awesomeness from different corners of the world; it was bands like these that illuminated the fest for me. First up was Extra Golden, a combo of half Kenyan-benga music and half American-study-abroad-student rock. You might remember when I wrote about these guys a few months ago, I mentioned “the sound that cut through the din,”and also mused how good they might sound live. I am pleased to report that they both stopped traffic of folks walking by (with their tribal beats and African-laced rock), and also put on a superb set. I would absolutely go see them again; I kept laughing out loud from joy.
Immediately following Extra Golden, we dashed over to the Sutro stage to catch Nortec Collective’s Bostich + Fussible, on the recommendation of my friend Julio, who is much-more-savvy than this white girl when it comes to all things south of the border. I’d never heard any nortec business, but it blew my mind — the crashing together of the traditional Tijuana sounds with effortlessly cool dudes twisting knobs to make ridiculously danceable beats. My friend nailed it when he said they could occupy the stage in the back of any Quentin Tarantino movie scene — they were just that badass. Another band I would see again live in an absolute heartbeat. I mean listen to this:
Next was Bat For Lashes (rad British chanteuse Natasha Khan), with a set that created more buzz than any other band I saw at the festival. Everyone was talking about her afterwards, and it was my favorite set of the weekend. I was only casually acquainted with her music before seeing her live, but her rich satiny alto voice flowed like a warm golden river through the middle of the sexy, synthy danceable creations. Where she was competent and confident in her stage presence, her band was amazingly kickass too, and I fell in love with both the drummer and the rainbow zig-zagged guitarist.
And: random celebrity sighting, Josh Groban totally digs Bat For Lashes; he was right by me for the set. YES, Mom, Josh Groban. Omg.
After wasting away some hours of the evening with folks like The Ice Cream Man and the Free Heineken Man, the only other set I participated in on Saturday (sadly! festival fail!) was the scorching set from Dave Matthews Band. I forget how much I do love Dave, and a sailor I met recently on my ocean sailing voyage has reminded me how many steps I may have also missed in Dave’s development through the years.
Musical hipsters like to look down our noses at plebian jam-rock like DMB, but dancing my ass off alongside fellow not-afraid-to-love-Dave-ite Nathaniel from I Guess I’m Floating to “Lie In Our Graves,” “Two Step” and a particularly passionate rendition of “All Along The Watchtower,” I was reminded how good it can feel.
(“and I can’t believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well/ I can’t believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been….”)
After two sunny warm days, when Sunday arrived grey and misty like SF likes to be in the summer (or any dang time), the layers I had fastidiously packed came in handy. Worn out from the two days already, a third day felt simultaneously like a gift (yay! more live music!) and also an uphill climb. But arriving to the festival to the pleasingly dulcet sounds of local San Franciscan John Vanderslice on the Presidio stage, I forgot my still-tired feet and smiled a wide smile.
Vanderslice is someone I have been delving more deeply into since he wowed me in Chicago at that show with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Again on Sunday I was struck by how he could join a musical club with Nada Surf and Death Cab and they’d all nestle in perfectly side by side. It was pretty well-attended too for an early afternoon show on a second stage, perhaps due to the strength of his latest (great) album, Romanian Names.
Whatever I needed to get my mojo back, I found it (of course, in droves) at The Avett Brothers‘ fervent 3pm set at the other end of the meadow.
I had just seen the Avetts in both Boulder and Denver the weekend before (see pics and a video) and loved every raucous, earnest, sweaty second of it, but the recent satiation didn’t even matter when they took the stage before a very enthusiastic crowd. I had urged all the friends and acquaintances and other photographers I met at other shows for the first part of the weekend to make their way over to the Sutro stage at 3pm Sunday, and as I looked around, I saw an awful lot of smiles and the occasional yell-along. Their set was crisp and carried out beautifully over the meadow. They started with “Paranoia in Bb Major,” and then went right into the new “Laundry Room” and then “Die, Die, Die.” When they finished that triple-whammy, they moved into “Murder In The City,” and nearly killed me. Such a wonderful set from these brothers, in a near-perfect setting for their bluegrass punk.
Switching gears quickly from furiously-strummed banjos to yowling waves of rock, we headed clear over to the Twin Peaks stage to get in position to witness the detonation that is Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs) and Alison Mossheart’s (The Kills) new band, The Dead Weather. This is the same second-stage I saw Wilco play on last year, and it was just as crowded – another act that could have/should have played the main.
Jack White coolly walked out behind dark shades and sat behind the drumkit at the far back of the stage and stayed there for the duration of the first three songs that we photogs get to have at it. Alison handily seized the mantle of being the face of the Dead Weather (fittingly), and paced and flailed and thrashed, leaning down in our faces and threatening to grab us by our hair, and hang us up from those heavens. For a small woman, she packs an intense punch — she was feral in an awesome, invasive way. Allthemembersof this supergroup are mightily accomplished in their own rights, and together they are pretty amazing to watch, even on a bright Sunday afternoon.
It’s not every day that a girl gets to see both Jack White and Jack Black in the same day, but before I did the Tenacious D rotation (and failed to get pics because I had the wrong lens), I danced as hard as I could muster to the third world democracy sounds of Sri Lankan supernova M.I.A., who puts on a marvelously enjoyable set. I saw her at Coachella last year — well, kind of saw her, whilst I was being crushed from the massive audience that poured into the smallish tent to see her. Her reputation preceded her.
This time around, after I shot the pics, I went to a vantage point where I could see the whole huge main-stage crowd dance and pump their fists in time to the three gunshot sounds in the chorus, and smile that she was finally on the larger stage she deserves.
Langhorne Slim is quietly building a solid backbone of fans through relentless (and scaldingly impassioned) live shows and substantive songwriting. His newest album Be Set Free is out at the end of this month on Kemado Records. The album was produced by Chris Funk (of The Decemberists) who also played various instruments on the record, and was mixed by Tucker Martine who has worked with folks like Sufjan Stevens and R.E.M.
This track from the new album is gorgeous, and rich, and my new favorite from him. And as usual, it was the lyrics that grabbed me primarily and viscerally. It’s always about the words with me.
Sit all day pissing away my time
looking into a crystal ball and I don’t know why
Living too fast to live too long
and I don’t wanna die, but I don’t know yet where I belong
I’ve had it better than some, and I know I shouldn’t complain
though my grandfather told me once that all pain hurts the same
Your bottle is empty, but your glass has been filled
and I don’t wanna break your heart but I probably will
Some are born to be good, some are born to be bad
most did the best that they could, and others wished that they had
If I could return to when I was a child
I’d forget what I’d learned and go back to the wild
…back to the wild
Man, I love that song. I am hotly anticipating this album.
Slim has just finished some tour dates with Josh Ritter (and swung through to headline a night of our Underground Music Showcase), and will be doing an eTown taping up in Boulder next Tuesday. I think I’mma gonna have to go.
LANGHORNE SLIM TOUR DATES
9/08 – eTown Taping – Boulder, CO
10/15 – Bell House – Brooklyn, NY
10/17 – TT The Bears – Cambridge, MA
10/21 – Grog Shop – Cleveland, OH
10/22 – Blind Pig – Ann Arbor, MI
10/24 – High Noon Saloon – Madison, WI
10/25 – 400 Bar – Minneapolis, MN
10/26 – Waiting Room – Omaha, NE
10/28 – Jackpot – Lawrence, KS
10/29 – Hi Dive – Denver, CO
10/30 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT
11/02 – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA
11/03 – Media Club – Vancouver, BC
11/06 – The Independent – San Francisco, CA
11/08 – Troubadour – Los Angeles, CA
11/09 – Rhythm Room – Tempe, AZ
11/11 – Mohawk Outside – Austin, TX
11/13 – The Basement – Nashville, TN
11/15 – Cats Cradle – Carrboro, NC
11/16 – The Southern – Charlottesville, VA
11/17 – Rock N Roll Hotel – DC
11/19 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
I’m just back from Outside Lands and already ready to do it again. Lucky for me, the third Monolith Festivalsolidifies the music lovers of Denver into one seething mass of awesomeness next weekend. For those of you who are considering coming out (and you should) get the VIP pass so you can come bowling with me on Friday at the Kick-Off Parties!
On Friday, September 11th, two simultaneous parties will take over The Gothic and next-door Moe’s BBQ & Bowling (yum!) on South Broadway. Shall we have a dance party while eating tasty shredded pork and coleslaw, and bowling?
DETAILS: MONOLITH KICK-OFF PARTIES
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 11TH
Both parties are happening side by side at The Gothic and Moes. Grab your VIP Pass and bounce back & forth between both events! Re-entry is permitted but once you leave a venue, you may have to wait in line to get back in, if we are at capacity. We stongly encourage everyone to get there early to avoid the line.
Southern Comfort Presents Kick-Off Party at The Gothic:
Doors: 6:30 PM * 21 + to enter * Admission subject to capacity
*** Complimentary fresh Chipotle cuisine for the first 150 through the door plus 2 complimentary Southern Comfort cocktails from 6:30-8 PM.
*** Southern Comfort will be giving away hundreds of limited edition screen printed Monolith Kick-off posters designed by Denver’s own Lindsey Kuhn at Swamp Graphics
11:15 PM The Cool Kids
10:35 PM Boyhollow
9:45 PM The Grates
9:00 PM Sugar and Gold
8:15 PM Woodhands
7:30 PM The Parson Red Heads
6:30 PM The Love Jones Affair
Antics/Filter Kick-Off Party at Moes BBQ
Doors open at 8:30 * Must be 18 or older for admission * Admission subject to capacity
***Check out the activity cars and give-a-ways in front of the venue. Live silk-screening, Rockband and more!
*** Free Bowling and Shoe Rental from 9pm to 11pm
Moe’s features a slick arcade, 8 lanes of bowling, full bar, BBQ and live music room. The music will be pumping throughout the entire venue!
10:30 PM Chromeo (DJ Set) – Spinning for at least 90 minutes.
9:45 PM Hot Tub
9 PM Natural Selection
Greg Laswell is one of those San Diego/Los Angeles-types, with a few well-crafted orchestral albums under his belt (including 2008’s How The Day Sounds EP). For his latest endeavor, he’s turned to reinventing some of what I consider to be modern classics.
On the forthcoming Covers EP (Vanguard Records, October 6th) Laswell tackles Echo & The Bunnymen, Morphine, Mazzy Star, Kate Bush and one of my favorite songs from Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh. From her debut solo album Hips and Makers (1994), the original haunting incarnation (no pun really intended) featured the distinctive crack of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe on background vocals. When I sing it, I switch around from his part to hers. See what you think of Greg’s (KCRW liked it enough to make it their song of the day a few weeks ago).
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 Grates play the Monolith kickoff party tomorrow night, and at the festival Sunday at 2pm. I saw them at SXSW (which is actually what that picture up top is from) and they were a blast.
HB: Simply from the band name 
DM: There’s a reason why I saw 
HB: I apparently like having my insides pulled out of me in devastating fashion. This makes me a good candidate for sorority girl in a slasher film or, since we’re actually talking in metaphors here, attending a 
DM: I hesitate to say I want to see 
HB: Yes, 
DM: It seems like 
HB: Nothing about a band called 
DM: 
In short – this song has charm in droves and I’ve been listening to it on repeat, maybe 25 times this weekend, no lie.
Name: Heather Browne
