So I talk some smack about the Current. I love that I have the luxury of smack-talkin my local alternative radio station. It is one of my favorite problems to have.
This weekend my jaw almost fell off when I heard this song on the radio: The 757s - Mary Lucia (2009)
Mary Lucia rocks. No matter what I ever say about the Current, that will stand.
I was in the middle of different musical headspace when I remembered that Danger Mouse had a new project that had just come out. Broken Bells (Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Shins) dropped their new album in March and I had originally ignored it. I was looking for some kind of something else entirely when I first listened to it, so I dismissed it at first.
Broken Bells - The High Road (2010); this track combines some of the bleepy techno with almost a classic rock vocal line. Then it goes to a more modern indie place and evens out, but that original incongruence is nice.
Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside (2010); listening to this is like the cold hand of my decade-ago self reaching out from the past to clammily touch my face. If this were a late-nineties/early-aughts transitional fossil, I would be less confused. But it's not because it sounds like I've heard it before. Its sounds just fall in a weird place in the nostalgia spectrum. Old ghosts I haven't made peace with yet.
Broken Bells - Vaporize (2010); I find this track basically inoffensive. I think the rest of the album is nice for having on in the background but not necessarily something I can really sink teeth and claws into.
I'll be poking at it more, see if anything else interesting is in there.
I just got around to digesting my friend Ian McCowan's last tweet:
Björk sang Schönberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" and only 1:14 of recordings are extant. This makes me sad. http://tinyurl.com/2g899nd
It makes me sad too! The quality is just awful, the audio equivalent of your phone taking a picture of the inside of your pocket. But the site is almost like a case file, trying to track down scraps of the past and figure out what exactly happened there in 1996.
Björk - Mondestrunken
Björk - Galgenlied
I myself have a lost hard drive filled with Björk mysteries; in the filesharing heyday of the early aughts I downloaded anything I could get my hands on. I have mixes never seen before or since, and recordings I have no clue the origins of. Though I am sad that there may be no record of this performance, in our increasingly pinned-to-the-corkboard world, I do appreciate some mystery.
I apologize for missing yesterday's Song Set, but I had the screaming vomits for most of yesterday and today. So let's do a double up on Cecil Otter.
Cecil Otter and Paper Tiger - Forensics (2008) - I was expecting, I dunno, vocals from this track, since it's a Doomtree project, but I really liked how lowkey it is.
I think I may have only ever heard Cecil Otter live. The internet does not yield up tracks of his very easily.
Cecil Otter - Rebel Yellow (2009); recorded at South by Southwest.
Both Dessa and Cecil came up through the Twin Cities' slam scene, and you can hear the echoes in their lyrics. The strength of our spoken word scene is underappreciated.
Doomtree was on the current just before Christmas (3 December 2009): Dessa and Sims - The Wren, Cecil Otter - Demon Girl, and Sims - Like You Mean It.
Ed Bok Lee - How to Survive in America (2009); Lee was in town last April for the first Urban Griots awards. (Via El Guante's blog.)
Guante performing The Last Words of a Roach, Underfoot (2009); (from Minnesota Microphone's youtube channel, where you can find a crapton of MSP poets.)
Lauren Zuniga - To the Oklahoma Lawmakers (2010); I am very much hoping she makes the OKC team and that I get to see her this summer at the National Poetry Slam. (Hat tip to Pharyngula of all places.)
So Trans-continental Hustle, Gogol Bordello's new record, came out, what, a week or so ago? I made the mistake of looking at a review while pecking around for undersecured mp3s:
I don't understand this attitude. I have never gotten anywhere near my upper limit for gypsy punk. I mean, that's when they'll be issuing me dentures and two fake hips.
However, listening to the two tracks I've been able to find (Pala Tute and My Companjera), I reluctantly agree with some of her assessments:
Well known for his stripped-down arrangements, Rick Rubin is an odd choice of producer for a band noted for their energetic live shows, and this cleaner sound is a mistake.
They must have a pretty dedicated media person(s) cleaning up loose mp3s because every one I've found has dried up. So, the best I can get you is this live studio performance from 25 April 2010, two days before their album dropped. Songs played are Pala Tute, We Comin' Rougher, and My Companjera.
So, Start Wearing Purple got, er, 'market saturation' because it was in a commercial (for Yahoo I think?). This song you may not know, from their East Infection EP:
I am not sure how they accomplish being wistful-feeling while keeping some of their signature rowdiness but I like it.
I am consistently aggravated by the lack of plays GB get on the Current. Basically when they're in town, they'll throw a play or two, and they played the single from the new album, Trans-Continental Hustle, a few times in the week or two before it hit, and I heard Start Wearing Purple a couple of times while it was in that commercial. I'm irritated by how much of the pre-chewed indie homogeny gets overplayed and they could easily spice it up a little of the gypsy punk. Also, Madagascar would be a sweet track for radio, a gentler point of entry. Sigh. Gnash. Become a DJ.
Ok - I don't know anything about any of this except that I stumbled over it this morning via Weaponizer and liked it a lot. Dubstep is sometimes attached to things I like and so I listened to it. It is three tracks of dark, crunchy, scaly goodness.
I am not sure what to make of these dudes, because Frank, AB goes to such a complicated emotional place and has the music to back it up, driving guitars and plaintive vocals etc, but then there's this one, which is has nice strings, but is sort of thin, predictable and safe. The plaintiveness floats over unchallenging major chords, taking the teeth out of it. And the vocals are a little sloppy in the verses, not in a "I'm making artistic choices" way, but in a "go back and record it again" way. It's sad to me, because the subject is a rich one, a great place for the deftness RAA might be capable of.
So, Gayngs has kind of been on my radar a little while. Somewhere below Courtney McClean and the Dirty Curls (that is until yesterday when she mugged for my camera during the May Day parade (hooray puppets!) and went up quite a few notches) and, say, M.anifest (i.e. local artists who I should probably pay more attention to).
Holy Shit, I should have paid attention sooner. There are approximately nine jillion members, many of whom I already know and love, including the Eau Claire contingent: Joe Westerlund, Phil and Brad Cook, Nate and Justin Vernon (every one of them stellar musicians and much missed by me) and Maggie Wander, aka Dessa.
Also, incidentally, I read the Vernons are organizing a concert and music resource space in Eau Claire at the old women's college, which I had heard NOTHING about. That would be so awesome! That town needs it; it has one of the best university jazz programs in the country and so much musical talent just sort of bubbling away below the surface in so many of the sketchy, sketchy venues I went to in my squandered youth there. Good for them.
Music now. Gayngs - The Gaudy Side of Town (2010) forthcoming on Relayted in May.
