If I was smart, I would have kept the information about Sea Wolf coming to Modified on Oct. 30 from my wife, who has developed what you might call a little crush on Alex Brown Church. And I might hate the guy for it, if, well, I didn’t interview him last fall and find him to be quite pleasant – never mind his talents as a songwriter. Damn you, Alex Brown Church!
And though my wife’s obsession with his debut LP Leaves in the River has not waned, Church is releasing a new album, White Water, White Bloom, on Sept. 22 (Dangerbird Records). The record can be pre-ordered here, and while you’re there, you can listen to and download a bonus track, Stanislaus, for the small cost of your e-mail address.
Stones Throw soul revivalist, Mayer Hawthorne, is coming to Chaser’s in Scottsdale on Oct. 14 – the second-to-last date on his first U.S. tour.
The tour will come on the heels of his debut release, A Strange Arrangement (due out Sept. 8). A limited-edition CD/LP package comes bundled with a 4-inch vinyl single containing two non-album tracks.
On Sunday, we returned from Los Angeles, where we saw Elbow perform at the Wiltern on Wednesday night in what I don’t hesitate to call the best show I’ve seen this year. (It’s just a shame we had to leave Phoenix to do it.)
Besides dodging an equipment nightmare – singer Guy Garvey informed the crowd that the band’s gear never made it from England, forcing the crew to scramble in L.A. – Elbow showed the poise and polish of a band willing to embrace the recognition it deserves, starting with last year’s Mercury Prize victory. There are fewer frontmen more endearing and genuine than Garvey, whose Storytellers-like chatter between songs engages fans, bringing a man of immense talent down to our size – he’s just a guy you want to have a drink with.
Though the set obviously leaned heavily on the Mercury-winning The Seldom Seen Kid – I have a newfound appreciation for Weather to Fly and The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver – the band plucked some choice gems from the back catalog: Newborn and Mexican Standoff among them (a setlist is posted here).
But as isolated moments go, I’m not ashamed to admit to a serious case of chills during the pre-encore finale of One Day Like This, a song whose overpowering positivity won even me over in 2008. Garvey outdid himself at the Wiltern, pulling two youngsters on stage to help him sing and conduct the feel-good singalong, draping his arms over their shoulders like they were old pals. Nobody would have complained if the song’s enduring chorus – Throw those curtains wide / one day like this a year would see me right – rode out for another hour.
Here’s some great video of the moment:
The next day, Elbow went on KCRW to perform a session for Morning Becomes Eclectic, repeating a few tracks from the Wiltern but adding some new ones (Fugitive Motel!).
KCRW set list: 1. Mirrorball; 2. Great Expectations; 3. Grounds for Divorce; 4. Fugitive Motel; 5. Scattered Black and Whites; 6. Puncture Repair; 7. One Day Like This.
Well, so much for seeing the Cave Singers on Sept. 29. Much as I wanted to see them – their forthcoming album, Welcome Joy, is tremendous – it’s going to be too hard to pass on the opportunity to see Bon Iver at Mesa Arts Center. Who knows when/if Justin Vernon will come back.
Tickets ($20) go on sale Friday. I’m guessing they’ll be gone fairly quickly, too.
It figures that the night Source Victoria unveils a new lineup – well, drummer Scott Hessel (Let Go, Gloritone) and bassist Justin Entsminger (Limbeck) are new – I’m going to be out of town. But I have a good excuse: We’re going to Los Angeles to see Elbow at the Wiltern. My brother can’t be too mad at me.
In any event, Source Victoria is one of two openers for Starlight Mints at Rhythm Room on Wednesday night. (JP Inc. is the other.) Tickets are $12 day of show and can be purchased right here.
Our pals at the Phoenix New Times blog Up on the Sun had some words about Source Victoria, too.
If you haven’t already, you can still cop SV’s The Fast Escape at no charge at www.sourcevictoria.net in one handy zip file. Starlight Mints are touring in support of their new release, Change Remains (Barsuk).
(Note: I prepared this post on Sunday night. By Monday, I think most music fans heard the news that Adam Yauch (aka MCA) has been diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland, forcing the Beasties to cancel tour dates and push back their album release. Yauch will need surgery, but the cancer apparently is treatable. So here’s hoping for a speedy and full recovery.)
Thanks to Spine Magazine for offering up what I still contend to be one of the more unlikely collaborations – and, yet, Beastie Boys and Nas pull this off rather splendidly.
Nobody will ever crown the Beasties the best lyricists around, but MCA, especially, sounds somewhat revitalized: “I ought to charge a tax for every weak rap.” (Hey, it’s good for the Beastie Boys.)
Too Many Rappers will be on the forthcoming Beastie Boys album Hot Sauce Committee Part 1, due out Sept. 15.
Rick Shaier is the mustachioed, polyester shorts-wearing drummer of Phoenix band Miniature Tigers. He’s also the brains behind Alvin Band, a solo project he’s been working on for the past five years. On Sept. 22, his work will see a national release with the debut album Mantis Preying coming out on Intelligent Noise Records.
Part of the official press release reads thusly: “Rick holed up in a friend’s bathroom with a microphone and a Powerbook and went to town. The end result is the 9 song ‘vocal composition’ coined ‘Mantis Preying.’ … Bjork’s ‘Medulla’ served as the predominant inspiration behind Rick’s writing and layering vocals without the use of instruments.”
A more recent comparison for the work – at least from the small bits I’ve heard – would fall under the Animal Collective/Panda Bear school of vocal harmonizing. If you’ve seen Miniature Tigers in the past year or so, chances are you’ve heard an Alvin Band song. The last time I saw them they opened with Glowing Tree (stream it at MySpace).
The Mantis Preying release will include a six-song bonus EP called Lady Portrait, which Schaier had made available as a free download via MySpace a few months ago.
The 43nd installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums and songs, comes from English multi-instrumentalist/producer Max Tundra (born Ben Jacobs), who opened for Junior Boys in Phoenix back in April in support of his 2008 release Parallax Error Beheads You (Domino). While he admitted he wasn’t much of a hip-hop die-hard, he expressed an affinity for one particular song and its Spike Jonze-directed video.
The Pharcyde, “Drop”
(off Labcabincalifornia, Delicious Vinyl, 1995)
“The video for this used to come on MTV when I was working a nightshift at a shitty post-production company which has since gone out of business. At the end of a long day making coffees and teas for unappreciative clients in the edit suites, it was a pleasure to see these goofballs messing around backwards, splashing around town with their trousers falling down. The song itself is phenomenal – one of the most eery, mesmerising, wordy slaps round the face of me at the time. I haven’t followed much of hip-hop before or since, but this edgy track got under my skin for good, and infuses what I do, to this very day. Hey.”
I haven’t found any information on this show other than a listing by a our friends at Silver Platter, but if it’s true, The Cool Kids (assuming we aren’t talking about another group with the same name) are booked for the Clubhouse in Tempe on Aug. 14. That would be about nine months since they played Marquee Theatre with Q-Tip and the Knux as part of the 2K Sports Bounce Tour.
There’s still no release date for the Kids’ debut LP, When Fish Ride Bicycles, but it’s supposed to perhaps/possibly/maybe come out this year. I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime, they released the free mixtape Gone Fishing, featuring Don Cannon, whose name is blasted ad nauseam throughout the mix.
Somefriends have been posting favorite albums of the half-year, and if I had to pick, I’d say Phoenix’sWolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is floating near the top for me (along with Mos Def’s The Ecstatic, Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone and Jason Lytle’s Yours Truly, The Commuter).
Phoenix stopped by to record a session for The Interface – sans drummer, though his importance to the band cannot be overstated … for example. Sorry, a canned drum beat sucks all the vital energy out of what makes this album great. And is it just me or does singer Thomas Mars always look a little out of it while he performs?
