This likely will be a woefully short post because it’s late and it’s my Friday night (I’m off work on Wednesday and Thursday) … but let me tell you that Mobius Band, from Brooklyn, is opening some West Coast dates for the National. The shows also include So Much Silence favorite Baby Dayliner. Need I say more?

I’m going to do my damndest to make it out to LA for either the Oct. 9 or Oct. 11 show at the Troubadour. Mobius Band seamlessly meshes electronica into crisp guitar lines, leaving The Loving Sounds of Static as a song to which I’ve slowly, surely become addicted.

You can pick up Mobius Band’s album, The Loving Sounds of Static, on eMusic.

Mobius Band | The Loving Sounds of Static

Video: The Loving Sounds of Static

In anticipation of the new Badly Drawn Boy album, Born in the UK (due on Oct. 17 on Astralwerks), I dusted off his back catalog over the weekend to reacquaint myself.

No matter what Badly Drawn Boy (born Damon Gough) does from here forward, he’ll always be a sentimental favorite for me; Annie and I chose his song The Shining for her walk down the aisle at our wedding more than two years ago.

But I’ll be interested to see how his new album is received. He doesn’t strike me as the type of artist that will stir much buzz among the blogs.

Talented as I think he is, Badly Drawn Boy does just as much to befuddle me. We saw him in Tempe, Ariz., in support of his last album, One Plus One Is One, a couple years back. For some reason, BDB insisted – somewhat stubbornly – on playing only new songs for the first half of the show, as if he had some point to prove. I’m sure there was some deep, artistic interpretation to what he was doing, but it didn’t seem like the best way to ingratiate himself to the crowd.

Musically, One Plus One Is One threw me a bit as well. It felt – and still does – dense and overdone. The song Year of the Rat is a great example. I love what that song should be; instead, there’s timpani drums, a disrupting ride cymbal and a chorus sung by children. His arrangements seem headed toward exaggerated levels that wash out his more introspective sincerity, which is what drew me to him in the first place. Though, he’s always been prone to unironic (cheesy?) grandioseness: “The keys to your heart open the door to the world” (opening line on the title track to Have You Fed the Fish?). Yipes. Yet, I still get chills listening to You Were Right, which lays on the cheese factor pretty heavy.

So I’m curious just enough to see what he has in store on Born in the UK, a pretty obvious play off Born in the USA. An homage to his home country, the title track, a straightforward rocker, references Sid Vicious, John Lennon and the Union Jack among others.

Video: Born in the UK
Real Player: High | Low
Windows Media: High | Low

I’m trying to secure an mp3 from the new album. Until then:
mp3: The Shining (The Avalanches Good Word for the Weekend Remix)

If not for Chad over at Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands it’s likely I might have let Jeremy Enigk, former singer of Sunny Day Real Estate, fade to black the digital black hole of my iTunes library.

When we last left in Enigk, in 2003, he had formed the Fire Theft with two of the other three members of SDRE. I enjoyed the group’s self-titled debut, though at that point, there had been so much drama surrounding Sunny Day – too many breakups and makeups to keep track of – that fans maybe disregarded the Fire Theft as just another tease to a SDRE reunion that wouldn’t materialize.

But there was the matter of Enigk’s epic (yes, I said it, epic) 1996 solo album, Return of the Frog Queen. (Speaking of, thank you, Sub Pop, for selling it on vinyl for $5 at the Pitchfork Music Festival.) Enigk’s declaration of born-again Christianity was rumored to be reasons for the breakup (the first) and the inspiration behind Frog Queen. As someone who grew up with hardly any religious direction (mother is Jewish; father is Irish-Catholic), I never was emotionally stirred by Enigk’s motives of faith … it didn’t bother me either way. That’s an admittedly naive outlook, but I didn’t – and still don’t – think that my limited religious views needed to be in line with Enigk’s to appreciate what he was doing as a musician.

So here we are 10 years later, and Enigk finally has a follow-up: World Waits (irony?), due for an October release on his Lewis Hollow imprint. In anything he’s done, Enigk somehow coaxes swells of uplifting and inspirational sound. SDRE’s final album, the Rising Tide, is a great example – or it could be that it caught me at a more vulnerable time: out of college, not really sure what the hell I was doing living in Milwaukee, away from girlfriend/family/etc.

But already on his new material, I’m finding myself pulled in emotionally. On River to Sea, Enigk, with that desperation in his voice, pretty much hits me over the head with this line:

“I’ve found my place where I have longed to be /
I can’t erase any mistake”

Pretty elegant in its simplicity, if you ask me.

Jeremy Enigk | Been Here Before
Jeremy Enigk | River to Sea

Of all the reviews, wrap-ups and write-ups I read about the Pitchfork Music Festival, one glaring omission from nearly all of them (including my own) was the set in the Biz 3 tent by Glenn Kotche, also known as the drummer for Wilco.

Having once aspired to play drums myself, I’ve been enthralled by Kotche in the Wilco setting. On stage, he’s focused and passionate; to me, he’s the most inspiring part to watch from the Wilco shows I’ve seen. Go back and listen to the drum work on I Am Trying to Break Your Heart for an example.

This year brought the release of his third solo release, Mobile (on Nonesuch), a riveting and disciplined collection of interpretive percussion work.

We watched Kotche’s live set at Pitchfork from behind the stage, where it still seemed impossible to take in the scope of his performance. (For the record, all members of Wilco, save for Jeff Tweedy, at least from what we could tell, were on hand.) He had drums, chimes, carved-up cymbals and doo-hickeys that looked like fruit baskets. There might even have been a laptop, too.

Despite the jammy/improvisational mask his music wears, you get the feeling Kotche meticulously maps out every note and movement. No sound seems wasted.

Glenn Kotche | Individual Trains

Having never paid much attention to Archers of Loaf or Crooked Fingers – despite being told on numerous occasions I should – I wasn’t sure what to expect from Eric Bachmann’s solo LP To The Races (out on Saddle Creek on Aug. 22). What I do know is that he is set to tour with Richard Buckner, one of my favorite artists, so I probably owed it to myself to listen. And, I gotta be honest, this is the first Saddle Creek release I’ve listened to (sorry, Bright Eyes fans).

According to a one-sheet at Saddle Creek, Bachmann wrote To The Races in June and July of 2005 “while voluntarily living in the back of his van.” Um, OK. I’m not sure why anyone would do that to themselves what with all this modern technology of running water and electricity we have. Bachmann then recorded the album in a hotel in Buxton, N.C. Is this the indie-rock Henry David Thoreau or what?

Living in a van (“down by the river!”) is either a genuine motive to reach some higher artistic power that I could never attain sitting in the comfort of my synthetic leather IKEA swivel chair or a story that looks great on a press release. I’ll guess the former.

It must have worked because To The Races is pretty gorgeous: the type of sparse, haunting acoustic storytelling that I love so much about Buckner. Their touring together seems like a natural fit.

The Buckner/Bachmann tour hits Tucson on Sept. 2 as part of the Club Congress anniversary party. (We’ll be at a wedding … which also happens to be the same day Centro-Matic plays Modified in Phoenix. This better be one hell of a wedding.)

Eric Bachmann | Lonesome Warrior
Eric Bachmann | Carrboro Woman

Related:
Muzzle of Bees, with its fresh new design, has a new Richard Buckner track.

Unrelated:
It’s my mom’s birthday today. She probably never reads this, much less logs on to the insanity that is the information superhighway, but I thought I’d tell her happy birthday anyway. She’s on an Alaskan cruise with a good family friend whose lymphoma is in remission, and I hope they’re both having a great time.

SHITDISCO bring their funky-disco-punk-whatever the fuck all the way from Glasgow, Scotland. They are known for throwing little shindigs around town in abandoned spaces through out Glasgow.

This may not be an earth shattering music experience, but I dare you not to shake that money maker a little (or at least swivel in your computer chair). Here’s a couple of songs from their sold out, self-produced single.

SHITDISCO | I Know Kung Fu

SHITDISCO | Disco Blood (Errors remix)