Showing posts with label jamming:. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jamming:. Show all posts
15 April 2011
04 April 2011
23 March 2011
jamming: New York Hymns- Songs for Lent
25 February 2011
18 February 2011
11 February 2011
04 February 2011
22 December 2010
jamming: Top Ten for 2010
10. Women and Country- Jakob Dylan
Wallflowers’ front and legendary folk offspring continued to tick off his list of Hall of Fame producers this year. With the help of T Bone Burnett behind the board and Kelly Hogan and Neko Case in the background, he manages to craft a set typically textured and heart-rung ballads that would as easily soundtrack a John Steinbeck novel as they would a Nashville barroom.
9. Here’s to Taking It Easy- Phosphorescent
I caught onto this one pretty late, but am glad I did. A cross between Bonny “Prince” Billy’s winsome folk and Band of Horses alt-whine, Matt Houck turns in an LP without any gloss or accoutrement, just the basics. The pedal steel on tracks like “Heaven Sittin’ Down” complement his rambling vocals, and the sparse harmonious tracks like “Nothin Was Stolen” harken to Bon Iver at his de-Autotuned finest.
8. Man of Few Words- Brett Harris
From the first few strums on opener “I Found Out” to the final bluish self-pity on “Over and Over,” Man of Few Words offers a plentitude of neo-Brit-pop nostalgia. You only get this type of music when it seeps out of the pores of someone so reared on McCartney and Costello, that even “safer” alt-country breaks (“Unspoken”) bear the infectious melodies, showmanship, and profundity of such predecessors.
7. Cut Loose- The Tomahawks
Born of a songwriting backlog, Cut Loose is no haphazard dustpan of songs. Instead you find a complete and well-ordered mix of classic sounds and subjects repackaged by one of the most talented collectives (in every sense of the word) in one of the most overlooked music scenes (Raleigh-Durham-Carrboro). Moments like the first few seconds on “Hearts” or the sweeping Wilco-esque solo on Reason or Rhyme speak of more and better to come for this posse.
6. All Alone in an Empty House- Lost in the Trees
Orchestral folk music: perhaps the sub-genre with the highest potential for pretension. Instead, Ari Picker brilliantly conducts an album with so much emotion and vulnerability, anger, strife, memory, and hope that to patently discard it on those grounds discard it would be a huge mistake. My favorite tracks “Song For The Painter,” “Love on My Side,” and “A Room Were Your Paintings Hang,” display a deft self-awareness without being self-absorbed. What you get is a hybrid of Conor Oberst and Andrew Bird: screamingly honest and urgent, though playful, complex, and artistic.
5. The Suburbs- Arcade Fire
The “biggest indie album of the year” that got everyone questioning what that really means anymore anyway, got me wondering something else. Just when exactly did Arcade Fire become the heir apparent to Radiohead and U2? It wasn’t during Funeral. Not quite during the darkly topical Neon Bible. Surprisingly, it took a potentially painful concept album to get there. I wasn’t too interested in a heavy-handed hipster dirge to all things suburban, but that’s not what I got. Instead Butler and Co. put together a complex jeremiad of a spent and sometimes misspent youth.
4. Up From Below- Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
The superlative for Weirdest Cult/Traveling Musical Gypsy Circus goes to these guys. They also wrap up the companion superlative for Least Likely Band to Pull Down Constant Car and NFL Commercial Licensing. From start to finish this album is my favorite kind of trip.
3. Wild Hunt/Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird- The Tallest Man on Earth
A powder-keg of lyrical intensity, Kristian Matsson chimes in with two solid albums. The latter EP, shows no drop-off from the brilliant early year full-length. Tracks like “Kids on the Run” or “Like a Wheel” jerk at your tear ducts, while anthemic “The Dreamer” and “King of Spain” buoy those blues. To date all of the cover art matches, and his songwriting is so strong that you get the feeling that these albums come easy, that he could do this output every year for the rest of his life and us listeners would be better for it.
2. Libraries- The Love Language
Part of a powerful triumvirate of national albums put out this year by Merge Records (including She & Him and Arcade Fire). Stu McLamb steps up his low-fi, soul-biting swagger from the eponymous debut on this crushing sophomore effort. My faves include playful yet pensive “Summer Dust,” slide guitar licked “This Blood Is Our Own,” and the less-than-Violent Femmed “Heart To Tell.”
1. Sigh No More- Mumford & Sons
I don’t know of anyone that I’ve recommended this album to this year that hasn’t been wooed by the band’s earnest and powerful brit-grass tunes. From the opening harmonies which harken Fleet Foxes at their best, to “The Cave’s” topsy-turvy image of reality, to the hopeful closer’s assurance of the “time with no more tears,” Marcus Mumford and Co. set out not only to make a brilliant and cohesive musical album, but to craft an inventive vision and definition of faith, hope, and love. Oh, and there’s banjo too.
I dug these too (in alpha order): The Black Keys; Broken Bells; Carolina Chocolate Drops; S. Carey; Johnny Cash; Justin Townes Earle; Gayngs; Ray LaMontagne; Luego; Mandolin Orange; Sandra McCracken; Megafaun; Josh Moore; Morning Benders; The Old Ceremony; Josh Ritter; She & Him; Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore; Spoon; Sufjan Stevens; Angus & Julia Stone; Sharon Van Etten; Derek Webb.
18 November 2010
03 November 2010
review: The Tomahawks- Cut Loose
Originally Published at The Blue Indian on November 2, 2010.
From the soil beneath your feet to the sky above your head, opening track "Dear Mary” sets the tone for the Tomahawks’ expansive debut full-length record. What follows reads like a vintage-rock Farmers’ Almanac, telling stories of changes in mind and season; twists of time and tumult of heart. Said best, “If time can tear the concrete apart, imagine what it does to your heart.”
Second track, “Sunrise,” continues the theses, and serves as a disarmament. Frontman Nick Jaeger empties a suitcase of influences and allusions on the table: Son of a Preacher Man, Fortunate Sons and with Silver Spoon in tow, only missing a cat and a cradle. From the omnipresent ghosts of rock past, Neil Young and Creedance, to current landscapers, Wilco and My Morning Jacket, these unabashed nods allow the band to push onward, to “cut loose” from the company their sound keeps. So Jaeger continues to tell a hopeful story of a dimestore prodigal and like the rest of the album, his honest writing offers the reader faded snapshots, textured and as clear as they need to be. These “mid-fi” rhapsodies echo the album’s smooth but sometimes slurred production.
“Hearts” is a pounding, adventurous rollick. Jaeger’s grouped vocals allow him to wear his heart on his sleeve with the swagger of the kerchief that adorns his neck at the band’s live shows. Beyond the great writing though, this is in a lot of ways a guitar record. Jaeger comes off less as the son of a preacherman and more the son of a luthier. "A Moment to be Free’s” second half is my favorite portion of the whole album: part sweet harmony, part A Ghost is Born ax battle, building tension, tearing it down and then bleeding into the Comment-styled (Kicking Television) "Reason And Rhyme" to follow.
Benefiting from the indefinite hiatus of Chapel Hill mainstay Max Indian (which featured many of the album talented players), the Tomahawks seem poised to continue to develop their bouncy piano, infectious neon-soaked sing-a-longs, howling organ, and controlled shreds. Cut Loose is certainly one of my very favorite releases of a year that is rapidly coming to a close.
Rating: 9/10
23 October 2010
10 September 2010
jamming: Matt Hires live @ The Cat's Cradle
Eschewing the drive to Hopscotch for some lighter, closer-to-home fare. Starting out at Wyatt's photo exhibit and finishing up at the Cradle with one of Rach's childhood friends, Matt Hires.
30 August 2010
jamming: Luego/Brett Harris live @ Forever Duke Block Party
worlds collide for me: work. school. friends. church. rock.
19 August 2010
09 August 2010
jamming: Summer 2010 Listening (I)
So Runs the World AwayJosh Ritter
This picks up where Animal Years and Historical Conquests... left off. He manages, like his personality at his incredible stage-show, to pack some dense thought and narrative in his lyrics, but somehow come off likable and listenable. There is a certain boyishness to his personality that really comes across in a charming and transparent way. His previous work has shown that he can really identify with everyone from Huck Finn (ie Monster Ballads) to Townes Van Zandt (Me and Jiggs), this album allows him to undeniably and seamlessly channel the Boss (Lantern) and the Apostle Paul (Lark- Philippians 4), as well as weave folk tales about Mummy-love, shipwrecks, and hypothetical shootouts between fictional characters. Grab on to this one, if not for the sheer thrill of hearing such a pleasing work from a staggeringly talented artist.
Dear CompanionBen Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore
These charming Kentucky boys have been in my ear all summer. What they've managed to do is combine Sollee's apt, and anything-but-traditional cello and soft croon with DMM's even softer and croonier vocals and song writing to make an avante folk record that transports you to the joy and pain of Appalachia. Throw in the atmospheric genius of My Morning Jacket's Jim James (AKA Yim Y.) and there you have it, a protest/activist record creating awareness and funds to counter mountaintop removal, under the guise of good ole Bluegrass State bluegrass. Stand-outs for me were especially: Something, Somewhere, Sometime and Only A Song.
The Love Language
Despite the fact that you can't read about the Love Language around here without the tiresome report of the drunken and arrest-ridden history of frontman Stu McLamb (there, see how I too included it!), this album is noteworthy enough on its own. Heart To Tell is definitely the radio track of the bunch, but there's hardly a track that doesn't catch you. This one is but one of a slew of significant Merge releases this year. Really enjoyable, perfect summer musak.
Brothers
The Black Keys
“Let me be your everlasting light,” is quite the request. You’d think opening a disc with such an entreaty might doom it, particularly such a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic album such as this (“This is an album by the Black Keys…”). With Danger Mouse production and the deconstructed rock-blues we've come to know and love fromt his Ohio duo, such a bombastic request comes instead as a beacon, ushering in an album with so much cool and skill it threatens to soundtrack your day, like it or not.
Tribute To...Yim Yames
Since being thrust back into the world of "Harrisongs" through some church buddies and by voyaging through the Beatles' Anthology earlier this summer, this set of George covers has been heavily rotated. Jim James has a real knack for getting to the haunting brass tacks of the situation, that's what he does here with Long, Long, Long, Behind That Locked Door, & All Things Must Pass.
Broken BellsBroken Bells
Call me slow, but it took me a while to understand that I am indeed a Danger Mouse fan. He enticed me to buy the first Gnarls Barkley record at a time when I wasn't looking to buy a rap record, he's caused the Black Keys to blow up beyond any prediction Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory (killer as each of them are in their own rights) might have occasioned. So why not throw some Shins on top of some gritty bass and percussion? James Mercer keeps up his end of the bargain with some witty indie-rock songwriting, the only thing I really miss is the Chutes Too Narrow, Kinks-esque guitar swagger. Probably not a valid criticism based on the fact that this isn't actually a Shins record though.
Twelve Thousand Armies
Probably easier found on his myspace page than anywhere else, this set of tunes from Justin Williams displays his uncanny knack for vulnerable lower-mid fi pop songcraft. Your probably more likely to hear jams like My Bag out of the mouth of other (Drug)horses, but nothing beats the original. This album bleeds like an Elliott Smith album appropriately filtered through James Wallace fuzz and antics. Tracks like Darling Let’s Breathe and Pardon the Earthquake show the range of buoyantly honest tunes that 12K Armies is capable of.
The Tallest Man on Earth
It must be really obnoxious to play the type of music that you forces you to be consistently and legitimately compared to Bob Dylan. Of course Swede Kristian Matsson must, if he hasn't figured out how to by now, handle this problem. Because, besides a scattered few folks like Joe Pug, I can't see too many that shoulder this mantle more or better than he currently does. King of Spain wound up being such a nice gloating song for my World Cup pool victory. Other songs are so wonderfully and imaginatively crafted that they beg to speak for themselves rather than be ruined by some merely pallid description. For instance: But now the ghost is in my jacket and my stairs were built in anger/Winding forcefully but end up where I stand/But there are no rocks or salt and nails, I low my cannons not to kill you/Simply lost the words to tell you I'm afraid (from Troubles Will Be Gone).
20 July 2010
22 June 2010
19 June 2010
jamming: Jakob Dylan- Women & Country
Perhaps the other duo of unmentionables, besides religion and politics, is women and country. Or maybe Dylan, like his dad did so expertly before him, shows how these things are the most mentionable, the unmistakable currency with which we deal, like it or not. It is both women & country root us to the stuff of our lives: conflict, loyalty, relationship, hardship, violence, love and lust.
While it has been unfortunately advocated that all is fair in love and war, Dylan ventures into the complicated homeland where love can be warfare, and war the result of disordered affection.
This record bridges Dylan’s barebones, Rick Rubin-produced Seeing Things with T-Bone Burnett’s intense production from the Krauss/Plant Raising Sand record. Alongside Neko Case (New Pornographers), Kelly Hogan, and a throbbing, consistent upright bass, Dylan finds conveys the lonely forsakenness of exile in tracks like Everybody’s Hurting and Holy Roller’s for Love. The opener sounds the most optimistic note, a combination campfire sing-along and unconvinced praise chorus.
Dylan weaves a masterful soundtrack for troubled times, giving voice to the difficulties while sounding a call to band together:
We hold our ground.
We don’t kneel
If we go down,
We go down on our own shields.Sure, we may be inside of a “bottomless well,” these might be dire straits and we may in fact go down, but it’ll be together and it’ll be fighting. But, this fighting is not the scrappy, desperate fighting of the blaze-of-glory patriot, but the convinced loyalty of a lover. All this dejection in relationship and citizenship forges a new identity. After all “faith is believing what you see ain’t so,” and a crazy world good at making extremists. Dylan crafts hymns for this new persona, these holy rollers.
These are the ones who understand women and country best. Because they are willing to sacrifice, unwilling to be party to the deception and destruction. Underneath the mellow, chugging sounds, lies a zealous, subversive record of true protest songs.
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