I’ve had the chance to give The Spirit of Apollo, set for release on Feb. 17, a couple listens, but I haven’t formed a full opinion on it just yet. The guest list is impressive, if not a little overwhelming.
While I think Samba Soul with Del and Q-Bert is one of the best tracks, Hip Hop is noteworthy for bringing together half of the Pharcyde (Slim Kid Tre and Fatlip) with KRS-One. (That said, I much prefer to spell hip-hop with the hyphen.)
Jason Woodbury’s next round is on me. His words about Anni Rossi’s show on Monday at Modified are below.
When it rains in Phoenix, people stay inside. It’s a shame but a fact, and the Modified’s sparse but devoted crowd attested to it as they gathered to watch Stellaluna, Stephen Steinbrink, Whitman and freshly minted 4AD Anni Rossi take the stage on a soggy Monday night. Shame, too, because there was plenty worth venturing out for.
Stellaluna’s Francis, who puts on shows as Fizzle Promotions and also plays music as part of the folk-pop duo Uggamugga, performed with members of Cardiac Party, My Feral Kin, Turn Back O Man and SGJ as her backing band. Her first performance featuring these members, her twee-pop style and clear, girlie voice belied a darker, sexier undercurrent, with lyrics influenced by her beloved Bukowski, Fugazi and local boys Andrew Jackson Jihad. My Heart is an Anchor found Ryan of Cardiac Party adding subtle harmonies, and their musical chemistry was contagious.
Stephen Steinbrink, who I very recently blogged about took the stage all by his lonesome, with a notebook, a crappy Fender Squire and a tiny Peavy amp, and proceeded to destroy the room. The sound of cars and rain added a gorgeous backdrop to his sparse songs, and his solitary voice was met by a cross-legged, attentive crowd. He took requests and played an incredible cover of Arthur Russell’s This Time Dad You’re Wrong. I picked up Wedding, the CD-R companion to his recent album Ugly Unknowns, soaking myself in a walk to Circle K to pull out some cash to purchase it with and buy coffee.
Whitman, from L.A., played next. I once read that the best music is the kind that inspires extreme reaction; the only thing comparable to having someone say they absolutely love your music is to have someone say that they absolutely hate it. I’ve got plenty of respect for Whitman’s search for “musical freedom,†but the approach seemed more petulant than honest to me, like Jandek minus the sense of otherworldly, and I found myself extremely “not into†his set. SGJ and American Gil provided an interesting background of ambient, grating and found noise, but in the end, I can only propose that maybe I just don’t get it.
Anni Rossi performed with just a viola, a mic for her elastic voice and a box for elevation and stomping sounds. Her classical training is apparent; clearly, this lady knows what she’s doing. Her songs had a classic 4AD sense about them, ghostly and pretty, but alternately violent and unhinged. Her debut album for 4AD, Rockwell (Any relation?), recorded by legend Steve Albini, hits streets and record stores on March 10, and most press will say something stupid like “a female Andrew Bird.†Ignore and check out.
By now, you’ve probably heard about Dark Was the Night, an all-star compilation due out Feb. 17 on 4AD that benefits the Red Hot Organization.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been absorbed in the collection’s 31 tracks, all exclusive to the project, which was curated/produced by Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National. On the whole, compilations rarely stand up; usually, I cherry pick a song here or song there and I’m done. But Dark Was the Night is amazing in its breadth, in quantity and quality. (The artist lineup alone probably tells you something about the respect people have for the Dessner brothers and Red Hot.)
That said, if I had to pick three songs to choose for, say, an embeddable streaming widget, they would be the three below: Deep Blue Sea by Grizzly Bear; So Far Around the Bend by the National; and Tightrope by Yeasayer (which I discussed earlier). Thing is, I’m not even that huge of a Grizzly Bear or Yeasayer fan, but I’m enthralled by their tracks.
To learn more about Red Hot, read what executive director John Carlin had to write at Huffington Post, where you can also stream the entire compilation.
Visit the Dark Was the Night Web site for pre-order information.
Did I just say the Walkmen haven’t come through Arizona in support of You & Me? Their ears must have been burning.
The Walkmen are coming to Arizona. But it comes under most unfortunate circumstances. For one thing, they are opening for Kings of Leon, who are good but whose painstakingly polished exterior grates at me. For another thing, tickets are a whopping $45* for the May 19 show at Mesa Amphitheatre. The New York Times praised Kings of Leon in a recent review, but that’s not paying my credit card bill for this one. Tough call here.
It also should be noted that show time (or at least doors) is listed at 5 p.m.. Love the Mesa curfew.
* – prices subject to service fees (of course).
(Photo: Hamilton Leithauser, aka the guy my wife would leave me for in a second, at Austin City Limits festival in Sept. 2005.)
Related:
The Walkmen on KCRW, 1/19/09
The Walkmen: I Lost You (new song)
The Walkmen @ Clubhouse, 6/17/06
A couple weeks after telling us about Towncraft, Jason Woodbury checks in again with some insight on another Phoenix musician. Check out Jason in Cardiac Party and Hands on Fire.
Ugly Unknowns, the new album from Stephen Steinbrink and the first released under his given name, is now available from Tempe, Ariz.-based Gilgongo Records. If you aren’t familiar with Steinbrink’s work, now is a perfect time to get acquainted with his low-fi bedroom pop. While he’s put out a ton of releases in varying formats over the past few years, his 2008 full-length French Quarter garnered some pretty serious press: hard-earned praise from Doug Mosurock at Dusted Magazine in his “Still Single†feature, a glowing review over at Coke Machine Glow and even a sanctimonious write-up from Thurston Moore (!) and Byron Coley in Arthur Magazine.
While the term “singer/songwriter†usually calls to mind polished production and boring presentation, Steinbrink’s work is far more varied, often balancing out biting lyrics with gorgeous harmonies and lively, Built to Spill-like arrangements. Ugly Unknowns finds Steinbrink expanding his range ever further; the intertwining guitar work bares the influence of former tourmates and local stunners My Feral Kin, and tracks like Overpassing reveal a shared heritage with Neil Young & Crazy Horse.
Steinbrink with be performing at Modified with Anni Rossi tonight (Feb. 9); at the Trunk Space with Jason Anderson on Feb. 18; and will do a live on-air interview and set on the Basement, on the Blaze 1260 AM on March 1.
The Walkmen, who have not come through Arizona in support of You & Me (sigh), stopped in for a session on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic last month.
As you’d expect, it’s heavy on You & Me material. In fact, they played only one old song, and that was off A Hundred Miles Off. (Wonder how sick they are of The Rat.)
I cut up the songs into mp3s, but you can hear/watch the full session at KCRW. I think you can tell new host Jason Bentley is still feeling his way around some of the indie-rock bands he may not be familiar with, but, damn, his voice is made of butter.
Buy You & Me at Amazon or get it with an eMusic subscription.
The Walkmen on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, 1/19/09
UPDATE: MP3s removed at request of KCRW. You can watch the session here or download it here from the station.
I just got an e-mail from Kanye West. Or someone pretending to be Kanye West. This isn’t the first time either. (Here’s a shoddy screen grab of the message.) The lone content of this e-mail was a link to a YouTube page for a song by somebody named Tokin’ Black Guy, a character with which Kanye has denied any involvement.
The first e-mail I got from “Kanye West,” on Jan. 27, appeared to be an error, an exchange accidentally (or not) forwarded to a mass list – others got it as well (it was cool to see Kanye West light up my inbox, though). In a follow-up, “Kanye West” wrote:
Unaware as to how you may have receive one of my emails, thank you for respecting my messages. As for the rough version of the song, it is out there now, so you may use it for personal use or have it as a stream on your website please. Thank you and wish everyone nothing but the best.
Is this a stroke of marketing genius? Is this really Kanye West? Should I, as Gmail suggests, “invite Kanye West to chat”? Does anybody know what the hell this is about?
Stop-motion/animated videos seem to be all the rage of late (maybe you’ve already seen this new video for Mykonos by Fleet Foxes). I’m guessing production costs of videos are always a concern, and this might be a way to reduce expenses without compromising creativeness. (Also note: No band needed!)
Here’s a vid for Frightened Rabbit’s Bright Pink Bookmark, an instrumental interlude of sorts from 2008 favorite The Midnight Organ Fight. It was created by Mark Charlton of Bluestar Animation.
I warned you I’d attempt to interview Busdriver to preview his show tonight at Club Red in Tempe, and here is the result.
A couple of points worth noting:
• He’s a very nice guy.
• His new album is turned in to Anti- and he hopes it will be released before summer. It’s called Jhelli Beam.
• We talked about his touring with indie bands (Deerhoof, Islands, etc.) as opposed to hip-hop acts. When I asked him if he thought his audience existed outside the niche hip-hop crowd, here’s what he said (also in the story):
“I don’t think hip-hop circles really like it, to be quite honest. Some of them do. … The reason I was touring with those bands is, apart from me being really into them and them being friends of mine, rappers weren’t really fuckin’ with me. I really have to form some pretty strong connective tissue between another rap guy for him to invite me on a bill.”
If you live in a region with Cox cable, well, I’m sorry. But you’ve probably seen a commercial for the cable company that features music from Her Space Holiday (aka Marc Bianchi, who is a pretty big De La Soul fan). The track for that ad is Sleepy Tigers, one of the many pleasantly catchy tunes on his fifth album, XOXO, Panda and the New Kid Revival, released in October on Mush Records.
In another of the long line of shows that Stateside Presents is lining up, Her Space Holiday comes to Modified on May 10. No opening act has been announced. Tickets ($10) are available here.
XOXO was my introduction to Bianchi’s bedroom project, so I couldn’t tell you if his previous albums/EPs resemble his work here. But I love the whimsical pop and how it masks some of the more sobering lyrics, like on the standout No More Good Ideas: “Let’s be honest, lets be truthful / we’re a train wreck and this is not new.”
Related:
I Used to Love H.E.R.: Her Space Holiday
The aforementioned Cox Communications video below: