Saturday, February 5th, 2005
On this weekend’s agenda is making a preliminary list of acts I want to see at SxSW next month. Surprisingly, there’s not really that many acts that have me willing to camp out to guarantee admission. I mean, the lineup is fantastic, but most of the bands that I’m interested in, I’ve already seen live before or will no doubt see in the next year or so when they do proper tours. With only a cursory look at the list and without doing some research to identify the bands I’ve never heard of but might be interesting, I’m most excited to see Trespassers William on the list.
I’ve gone on before about how much I love their last album Different Stars, with its perfect mix of sad songs, shoegazey atmospherics and country twang, but have been disappointed in the fact that they haven’t done any sort of North American touring of consequence in the last while, concentrating instead on Europe and their former home base of California (they’ve recently relocated to Seattle). I was hoping that they’d rectify the touring situation this year after the release of their third album on Nettwerk this Spring, but if I can see them at Sx (as the locals say), then even better.
Till now, Trespassers William has been best known for their lovely cover of Ride’s “Vapour Trail”, but recently the band has been getting some well-deserved exposure through appearances on the soundtracks for A Love Song for Bobby Long (movie) and One Tree Hill (TV show), and singer Anna-Lynne Williams provides vocals on one of the tracks on the new Chemical Brothers album.
After signing to Nettwerk last Fall, the band re-released Different Stars for the third time since 2002, though this time with a few different and bonus tracks. I don’t have a copy yet, but you can grab one of the best tracks on all three versions off their website:
MP3: Trespassers William – “Lie In The Sound”
And there’s also a number of archived radio sessions with the band for your streaming enjoyment – KEXP, KCRW and XFM, for example. You can also hear samples of both Different Stars and their first record, Anchor, though I think the debut is now officially out of print.
Went out last night to one of those indie music DJ nights that have gotten so ubiquitous around town these days. This one was Miasma at SpaHa, which boasts a more shoegaze-centric playlist, but isn’t strictly drone and delay. Despite the absurd drink prices I had a good time – they even played my request for some Radio Dept. YAY. I’d forgotten how nice it is to just sit around and listen to music. Miasma takes place on the first Friday of every month and I could see it becoming a habit for me. Getting out of the house is a good thing, especially after a whiffle bat-assault of a week like this one.
np – The House Of Love / 1986:88: The Creation Recordings
Friday, February 4th, 2005
When most people talk about “dream pop” as a style of music, they’re usually talking about big washes of reverb, wispy vocals, chorus-y guitars… New York City’s On! Air! Library! deal in dream pop that sounds more like the dreams normal people have. Dense and cryptic, stuttering and hypnotic, confusing at times, unsettling at others, but always cinematic and utterly compelling. Or at least, I assume that’s what most peoples’ dreams are like. Mine tend to be depressingly mundane. For example – the last one I remember involved me sitting on a bus, getting off the bus, realizing I had gotten off at the wrong stop and then waiting for another bus. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for my id to be duller than my ego, but there you go. End digression.
On! Air! Library! (named for an radio show wherein an old man read books over the air which they saw in an African documentary) combine elements of experimental, noise, pop and shoegaze into something quite new and unique. There’s no overt wearing of influences on their sleeves, but if you can imagine what the Cocteau Twins might have sounded like filtered through the New York gloom of the first Interpol record. Perhaps the presence of Interpol’s Sam Fogarino on drums on several tracks has something to do with it? And any punnery inferred from the Cocteau Twins reference and the fact that O!A!L! is fronted by two twin sisters is purely unintentional.
They released their debut full-length self-titled album in April of last year, though I just got it last week. It’s taken a number of spins for this record to really sink in – it’s not the most immediately accessible album – but it does pay dividends. Check out the closing track from the record, “Feb”. I won’t say it’s necessarily representative of the album as a whole, but no one track really is. It’s one of the poppier numbers and is mesmerizing, before ending far too soon – kind of like a good dream.
MP3: On! Air! Library! – “Feb.”
They also toured through town last Fall supporting Solex but are planning on doing another North American tour in the second half of March and most of April. Here’s an interview with the band that Free Williamsburg conducted last year.
The Experience Music Project has a tutorial on how to write a song with Built To Spill. They must have left out the chapter on “How To Take Fucking Forever To Release A New Album” and the appendix, “How To Never Tour Through Canada”. Built To Spill’s new record is due out when Hell freezes over.
Urbanjetset talks to Fontaine Toups about her new band (The Fontaine Toups) and what the future might hold for Versus, who have reconvened to play the Teenbeat 20th anniversary celebration in DC at the end of the month. And of course, Five Seventeen won’t let me hear the end of it if I don’t plug his Teenbeat MP3 of the Week. From For The Records.
Torr has made some picks from the SxSW artists list and gone to the trouble of hyperlinking them all. What a nice guy. I am going to spend this weekend making a preliminary “to see” list. Meanwhile, Chart has compiled a list of all the Canadian acts venturing down to Texas this March. Goddamn, that’s a lotta Canucks.
Autechre are (is?) at the Opera House on May 11, $23.00. This would be the best birthday present ever… if I liked Autechre. I mean, I don’t dislike them, IDM isn’t really my thing, but it’s not like “ohmigod this makes it the best birthday ever” sort of news. I’ll shut up now.
The Lucinda Williams double-live album, Live At The Fillmore West, has a new release date of May 10. It had originally been scheduled to come out last Fall, but was quietly pulled from the calendar for whatever reason.
JAM! reports that Jack Nicholson has been added to the cast of The Departed, Martin Scorcese’s remake of Infernal Affairs in the role of the gang leader (Sam in the original, played by Eric Tsang). He joins Matt Damon (in the Andy Lau role), Leonardo DiCaprio (in the Tony Leung role) and Mark Wahlberg as some other dude.
np – Primal Scream / Vanishing Point
Thursday, February 3rd, 2005
Woot! My guesswork has been proven correct, as The Wedding Present is confirmed at Lee’s Palace on April 26! It will have been almost four years since the patron saint of romantic losers has been through town, and it’s not a minute too soon, thank you very much. Their last time through was as Cinerama and they drew only a modest crowd at Lee’s. I wonder if touring under the more familiar name and maybe with some “reunion” press will draw a larger audience, despite it being essentially the same band?
I personally don’t draw any real distinction between the Wedding Present and Cinerama. I only discovered the Wedding Present after it had morphed into Cinerama and while their debut Va Va Voom was a bit of a stylistic departure from the Weddoes material, their sound became more and more like the Wedding Present as time went by – if you graph out the evolution of Wedderama’s sound from George Best through Torino, I think you’ll find that the name change was almost wholly cosmetic. I like the Cinerama material as much as anything that came out under the Weddoes moniker and am a little sad that there will probably be far less Cinerama material played on the upcoming tour, if any at all. But of course, that’s tempered by the fact that I’ll get to hear more classic Wedding Present material – the five Weddoes tunes they played in 2001 weren’t nearly enough.
The new Wedding Present album is Take Fountain and you can hear the first two singles on their MySpace page. While the record isn’t due out until February 15 (new music from Dave Gedge on Valentine’s Day – how perfect is that?), I’ve been told that it’s already available on iTunes.
As promised last year while opening for The Delgados, Crooked Fingers will be back in town March 31 at the Horseshoe (tickets $10) to push Dignity And Shame, out February 22. They/he was quite good performing solo last time, this time he promised to bring a band. Also returining are Oakland’s Gris Gris, who by all accounts kicked serious ass the last time they played, will be back on April 5 and/or 6 (details unclear) at the Silver Dollar.
Brendan Benson’s new one, The Alternative To Love, is out March 22 and he’s at Lee’s Palace April 11 to promote. The Stands support. Get it? “The Stands support?!?” Oh fuck, I kill me. Seriously, I need to go sit down for a minute.
The lineup for this year’s edition of the Exclaim cross-Canada tour will feature Stars, The Organ, Wooden Stars, and Montag at the Phoenix on April 14. The lineup will shift a bit as the tour crosses the country, full details here.
Caribou, who used to be Manitoba, is at the Horseshoe April 28. His new album, The Milk of Human Kindness, is also out in April. And finally, the British Sea Power show that had been scheduled for April 21 at Lee’s Palace apppears to have been rescheduled for May 17, same venue. Their new one, Open Season, is out March 21 in the UK.
Check out the first official list of acts at SxSW. MADNESS. There’s over 1000 acts on this list and it isn’t even all of them… Donewaiting has done the good deed of expanding the listing into a list format, and I’ve made a nice little spreadsheet of the info, for easy access to info. I was going to start putting in confirmed show data, but that just sounded like work. But if anyone wants to download the spreadsheet for their own scheduling purposes, you can grab it here, with my compliments. And if you want to plan out what I’m going to see while I’m there, feel free. Hell, if anyone wants to assume full control of all aspects of my life, I’d be grateful. I’m not doing a bang-up job on my own.
NOW profiles the Chromewaves-approved Frontier Index, playing tomorrow night at the El Mocambo with Beneath Augusta and League Champs. I just realized I referred to myself in the third person. That’s not a good sign.
Zoilus reports on how Arcade Fire (and Final Fantasy) are conquering New York City. He has a link to an .avi of their performance on Conan O’Brien the other night and Brooklynvegan has a rough but perfectly listenable recording of David Byrne joining the band onstage last night to sing on their cover of Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody”. Also in attendance was David Bowie – I dunno, anytime I think about David Bowie in the audience for something, it just turns into the walk-off scene from Zoolander.
I was watching this Girls Guitar Club short film that someone sent me and it wasn’t until about 2/3 of the way through that I realized, “Holy shit – that’s Chloe!!!” Yes, no other than Mary Lynn Rajskub, Five Seventeen’s secret girlfriend. I’ve never understood that guy…
np – Heavenly / Heavenly Vs Satan
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005
How much do you still love The Stone Roses? Enough to pay $32 (plus applicable service charges) to see King Monkey Ian Brown whoop it up at the Mod Club on February 28? Yeah? Then you love the Stone Roses more than I do. Sure, technically he’s touring to promote Solarized, and people will almost certainly clap politely for “Corpses” (hey, I tried to get into Brown’s solo material but it just elicited raging indifference) or whatever, but you know that everyone there’s just waiting to hear those opening notes to “I Wanna Be Adored”. But you know what? No matter how hard you close your eyes and try, that won’t be Reni, Mani and Squire up there. But hey, if you want to go and pretend it’s 1990, feel free – someone’s gotta pay for Brownie’s parkas.
April 13 brings Ash and The Bravery to the Opera House. They will be pushing new records Meltdown (out March 8) and The Bravery (out March 29) respectively. Ash shmash. I want a Charlotte Hatherley show!
Stephen Malkmus’ third solo disc, Face The Truth, will be in stores May 24. Matador describes it as his “first bona fide solo recording” – which also draws attention to the fact that the album is NOT credited to “The Jicks” the way Pig Lib was. Hmm. I liked his first two post-Pavement efforts well enough, but that doesn’t make the new one a must-have. We’ll have to see how it sounds. Pitchfork has more deets.
With the impending release of Ivy’s In The Clear on March 1, some folks have been wondering what that means for the timing of the promised b-sides/rarities album – sez Andy Chase, “The Ivy bsides/dvd should appear sometime in late 2005/early 2006, once In The Clear has basically run it’s course”. I guess I didn’t really need to quote that directly.
Tired of waiting for that new Sigur Ros record? Stop waiting – play your own, with these Sigur Ros guitar tabs! Perfect for singalongs around the campfire. Actually, it’s a pretty neat site – the tabs with MIDI accompaniment are actually quite nice. I am going to learn to play “Vaka”. Someone else can sing.
And you know what’s fascinating listening? The individual instrument tracks for “Hunted By A Freak” on Mogwai’s Happy Songs For Happy People (these tracks were provided along with some multitracking computer software to allow the fans to make their own remixes of the song). Following along with just one guitar line, say, is like an education in space. Anyway, I think I need a new Mogwai record – the BBC Sessions disc out on February 22 will satisfy for a bit, but I want a new studio album.
Happy Groundhog Day. Celebrate by eating a groundhog.
np – Mogwai / Happy Songs For Happy People
Tuesday, February 1st, 2005
Spoon.
Gimme Fiction.
May 10.
About.
Bloody.
Time.
Pitchfork has more details.
The Ambulance Ltd show that had been scheduled for March 2 at the Mod Club (yes, I just used the past tense) is no longer. Earlier yesterday, Ticketmaster had the show listed with the date TBA and Autolux, who had been tipped as support, appeared to be confirmed in Virigina on that day continuing to support The Secret Machines. Emerge has confirmed that the rescheduled date is April 16, still at the Mod Club, and that all tickets for the March 2 show will be honoured on the new date. I have no idea who will support, but I am going to stop saying “Autolux” because I’m starting to sound stupid. But on the plus side, it’s a Saturday show now.
Of course, what this also means is that I may well have the energy to hit some CMW shows on the Thursday night after all. We shall see.
The Ratio is a new online music zine based out of Toronto that just started up. Their first issue (looks like they’ll be publishing biweekly) looks promising with some interesting feature topics (Gowan?) and the writing is pretty good. Worth a look.
Another new site is Popstars Feet, brought to my attention by Largehearted Boy. The idea of a blog based on photos of indie pop musicians’ feet is a novel one, but you just know what someone, somewhere, is getting off on this.
24: I don’t know, are we supposed to cheer that Soul Patch (nee Tony) is back in the game? What I want to know is, what has he been doing for the past two years that he can be at a garage in Burbank, armed, within 10 minutes of getting a phone call from Jack. Driving a cab? And next time I need a security firm that can efficiently get massacred in their own offices, I’ll be sure to call those guys. Otherwise, not too much to say about the other storylines. Behruz and Mom on the run, CTU not quite getting the job done. Etc etc. I like how Sarah told Maryanne in precise detail where Jack and Audrey were going – she’s just helpful like that. And this Jack/Audrey/Paul triangle thing would be a lot more interesting if the husband didn’t look like Mr Bean.
Wonderfalls is out on DVD today! Go buy/rent it. It’s good.
Yes, Canadians buy our milk in bags. Metafilter is agog.
This is turning out to be kind of a slow week.
np – M Ward / Transfiguration Of Vincent
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