I really love this title track from the Helio Sequence’s new album Keep Your Eyes Ahead. It feels a little thin here, but I suppose there’s only so much two guys can accomplish. I think this song has grand potential if, say, a full band were to play it.
Remember: The Helio Sequence with Grand Archives on March 18 at Rhythm Room. Get tickets ($10) here.
This isn’t one of my favorite tracks from Sky Blue Sky, but I am growing to at least appreciate the dear diary-like honesty of the lyrics. (Thanks, Brooklyn Vegan.)
SUNDAY NIGHT: We headed to Modified to check out the Hands on Fire/Fleet Foxes/Blitzen Trapper show. All three are excellent, and I am already a couple spins through the Fleet Foxes’ Sun Giant EP (8.7 at Pitchfork.)
As it turns out, keyboardist Casey Wescott is a hip-hop head, so you’ll be seeing an I Used to Love H.E.R. entry from him in the near future. He told me about his dad throwing out hip-hop CDs when he was young – Midnight Marauders, Quik is the Name. Trashed. Man, that’s like tossin’ a Mickey Mantle baseball card. He also spoke of his fondness for The-Breaks.com, a massive repository of sample usage in hip-hop, and how he taught himself sampled material on Wu-Tang Clan records on the piano. All in all, it was a fantastic conversation, one that made me miss the first few songs by Blitzen Trapper.
According to Billboard, Elbow has hooked up with Geffen for a U.S. release of The Seldom Seen Kid, due out April 22. A single for One Day Like This will be available digitally on March 18.
The band will follow with some tour dates, with a May 9 date in Los Angeles the closest they will get to Phoenix:
April 26: New York (Webster Hall).
April 27: Washington, D.C. (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue).
April 29: Chicago (Park West).
April 30: Minneapolis (Fine Line).
May 8: San Francisco (Bimbo’s 365).
May 9: Los Angeles (Avalon).
Twisted Ear has singer Guy Garvey’s track-by-track breakdown of the record.
You can also go to theseldomseenkid.com to hear a new song (Audience With the Pope) by clicking the cubes to, as Elbow puts it, “build the tune track-by-track until the full glory of the song is revealed.” Or you can just furiously press your mouse button all over the screen like I did.
In case you missed it, here’s a radio rip I recorded of Grounds for Divorce.
And here’s a video of Elbow performing said song on Jonathan Ross’ show:
Rogue Wave owed one to Stateside Presents after backing out of a show scheduled for Jan. 22 and hooking up with a local radio station’s corporate-backed Tempe Third Thursdays night.
I went to the show, and it was about as horrible as you’d expect. Not Rogue Wave, mind you, but the commercial culture surrounding the show. My guess is Rogue Wave realized it, too. In that regard, they’re coming back April 24 to the Rhythm Room, where the Jan. 22 show was supposed to happen. Grand Ole Party opens. Tickets are $12.
It’s so great to hear more new music from Alejandro Escovedo, who, in 2003, became ill after a show in Tempe and was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which caused advanced cirrhosis of his liver.
He’s apparently in recovery mode after releasing 2006’s The Boxing Mirror, which included the song Arizona. On June 10, he’ll release his ninth album, Real Animal on Back Porch Records. Not sure if this new track, Fall Apart, on his MySpace page will be on the album, but a bulletin says it’s a “solo acoustic performance recorded at Alejandro’s home studio on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Texas Hill Country.”
Not surprisingly, Escovedo reflects on his health and the indiscretions of his younger days (he also references Phoenix in the song):
“Everything’s so strange / my body doesn’t feel the same.” And then: “I had a few, a few hundred drinks too many / I’m at the point of no return.”
STREAM: Alejandro Escovedo | Fall Apart
Here’s a video with Escovedo and producer Tony Visconti in the studio:
The National, creators of my favorite album of 2007 (and 2005 for that matter), stopped in for an interview/session on PRI’s Fair Game with Faith Salie, which kindly made mp3s of the performance available for download.
My good friend from high school texted me Friday night after seeing the National in Brooklyn, a show we damn near flew out to New York for. “Just got out of the national show. Brilliant.” Sigh. Although I spent my evening with a nice seat for the Celtics-Suns game, I’d much rather have been in Brooklyn.
Maybe they’ll come to Arizona soon. Maybe? Please?
The National on Fair Game from PRI, 2/19/08:
NPR streamed a Webcast of the Black Mountain/Bon Iver show Tuesday night in Washington D.C. By Wednesday, a podcast of the Bon Iver set was available.
It’s great timing because I just picked up the newly released Bon Iver record, For Emma, Forever Ago (at eMusic on Jagjaguwar). Well, I know it’s not exactly new seeing as how Justin Vernon self-released it last year, but it’s new to me because I didn’t give it a whirl until just this week. And I’m growing obsessed.
I’m sure all the five-dollar adjectives have been used to describe this one, so I won’t even try. It’s music that moves you, for sure. And I’ve only been able to give it my partial attention. It sounds like a record written that could have been written in the cold, isolated woods of Wisconsin … oh, wait. It was.
Here’s Skinny Love from the NPR Webcast. Listen to the full performance here.
And here’s Vernon performing Flume at 89.3 The Current:
Veron also answered some questions for Muzzle of Bees and My Old Kentucky Blog last year.
The Black Keys have released Strange Times, the first single from their forthcoming record Attack and Release (April 1). You can stream it at their MySpace page or buy it at Amazon.
Remember: The Black Keys and Jay Reatard at Marquee Theatre on March 28 (buy tickets).
A kind taper has made available his/her recording of the Editors’ Feb. 12 show in Tempe at Marquee Theatre, the band’s first Arizona concert. Files are in flac format, which, in layman’s terms, means you have to do a little work to turn them into mp3s. I discovered a free program called xAct for coverting to wav files; then use iTunes for converting wav to mp3.
Here’s the set list from the show:
1 – Camera.
2 – An End Has a Start.
3 – Blood.
4 – Bullets.
5 – The Weight Of The World.
6 – Escape the Heat.
7 – Lights.
8 – When Anger Shows.
9 – Spiders.
10 – All Sparks.
11 – Munich.
12 – Push Your Head Towards the Air.
13 – Bones.
14 – Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors.
Encore:
15 – You Are Fading.
16 – The Racing Rats.
17 – Fingers in the Factories.
I’m happy to see this available because I wasn’t familiar with the first song after the encore, You Are Fading, apparently a rare B-side (via). I can’t believe this song didn’t make The Back Room cut. Drummer Ed Lay just goes to town on the snare in this one, pretty much fueling the song’s frantic energy.
I’ve talked a couple times now about Mike Doughty’s forthcoming album Golden Delicious, out Feb. 19 (also known as “this Tuesday”) on ATO.
While I wait for that, Stinkweeds was cool enough to hook me up with a five-song promo CD by Doughty called Busking, a word used to define the art of performing in public places for tips.
According to Doughty in a note on the back of the CD sleeve, he busked between the 3 train and the F train at 14th Street in New York when he was 19: “I lasted about ten minutes.” He went back recently with gear to record for this pretty unique release, which seems more like an experiment in sociology than field recording. This time around he was a little more successful: “I got lots of smiles, and made $3.10. Two dollar bills, four quarters, and a dime” (via).
The CD is great because you can hear all the incidental (and sometimes deafening) noise of subway stations – people chattering, trains roaring past, echoes. You can even pick up Doughty chatting with a few passers-by, presumably those who chipped in a few cents.
Tracklisting:
1. Looking at the World From a Bottom of a Well.
2. F Train.
3. The Only Answer.
4. 40 Grand.
5. Sunkeneyed Girl.
In more Doughty news, I posted the 27 Jennifers video last month. Well, MySpace is hosting an alternate, if not sorta creepier, version here.