Misc. Music Archives

I am totally on the record as being a recent D.C. transplant so you know I don't claim any connection to the old "D.C. scene" as it was. Frankly, I was relieved to find, upon moving here, that D.C. is full of wonderful, non-hardcore bands. But I digress...

Former Jawbox frontman J. Robbins recently found out his son Callum was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy which is as bad as it sounds. Many medical procedures and medical bills are in the little tyke's future and, let's be honest, working in the music industry doesn't pay that well. So, if you are so moved, head over to the DeSoto website and make a donation to the family. Or if you're in NYC or Chicago, you can go see some rock shows while you get your charity on.

One band that I somehow could not find space for in my year end round-up posts that definitely deserves some love is Pela. I caught them on a whim during last fall's DAM!fest and they were so much awesome. I bought their EP via iTunes a few days later and it's been in heavy rotation for the last two months or so. The above video is from last year's SXSW festival and should give you a good idea as to what they're all about. Simply put, if you like thinking man's rock, like The Hold Steady, then you need to give these guys a spin. This tune, "Waiting At The Stairs" is a bit more Okkervil River than the rest of their stuff, which tends to lean towards War-era U2 at times, but, like I said, it's the hotness. I can't recommend their EP Exit Columbia Street enough. But then again, I heart EP's.

[MP3] Pela | Lost to the Lonesome (AAC file)

But don't take my word for it. Jeff pegged them as "Big in '07" over at Gothamist.

Also, if you want more, and I know that you will, the good folks over at World's Fair pointed me in the direction if RySpace, which has a recent Pela gig from the Bowery Ballroom up for your downloading pleasure. I just grabbed it and am going to see how it sounds. I suggest you do the same.

I logged into 1115.org today, just like I do pretty much every day, and was deeply saddened to read that The Godfather of Soul passed away yesterday at the age of 73. I just started immersing myself his vast back catalog over the summer, but as most everyone knows, if you've listened to any hip-hop in the last 15 years, you've heard plenty of his work. Matt 1115 gives The Hardest Working Man In Show Business a proper sendoff and also has a mixtape for those of you that want to pump some JB today in remembrance.

Ghostface Killah | Fishscale - He ain't been this hungry since Supreme Clientele. I might have given up on hip hop if not for this record. It's that good. If you you would have told me waaay back in 1993, when I was listening to Enter The Wu-Tang non-stop, that Ghost would have been the Wu's most prolific and consistent MC, I would have never believed you.

Goldfrapp | Supernature - I'm totally late to the Goldfrapp party, but now I'm trying to cut to the front of the line. This is the record I probably listened to the most this year. There's a wealth of different electro grooves on this record, enough that something new will grab you every time you listen to it.

The Changes | Today Is Tonight - A late edition to the list. I just got this CD last month but it's been in heavy rotation since. Part Fountains of Wayne, part Tahiti 80, part Cars...If you like pretty pop records that hit you over the head with killer hooks, you need to buy this album.

Morrissey | Ringleader of the Tormentors - THIS is the record I wanted two years ago when The Mighty Mozzer made his "comeback." You Are The Quarry, to me, sounded like Moz trying to be all things to all people. This record showcases a more confident and focused Moz, all the while giving his band a bit more room to do their thing. This album will age really well and be looked back as one of his best when it's all said and done.

Camera Obscura | Lets Get Out of This Country - I hate twee but the appeal of this record is undeniable, from the Motown leanings of "If Looks Could Kill" to the pure pop genius that is "LLoyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken." Detractors say this sounds too much like Belle & Sebastian, but I don't really listen to them, so it sounds fresh to me.

William Orbit | Hello Waveforms - Perhaps the most enjoyable album to listen to out of the entire bunch listed here, for no other reason than nothing else you hear this year can come close to the tunes floating around in Billy Bubbles' head. Just gorgeous. I can guarantee you that this record is much more enjoyable than any "chill" compilation that you have. In the interests of full disclosure, I used to help manage William, so I am a bit biased.

Maximo Park | Missing Songs - A collection of odds n' sods that I enjoy much more than the record they came from. Hey, I have to indulge my b-sides fetish somehow. "Fear of Falling" and "Stray Talk" are better than anything on A Certain Trigger.

Silversun Pickups | Carnavas - I think DCeiver put it best in this year's Top 40: "The rest of you music bloggers and your darling, pointyheaded folk princes and twee-pop bullshittery bore the fucking hell out of me. So: here's a rock band, bringing actual rock. Listen to them." That pretty much says it all.

Art Brut | Bang Bang Rock n' Roll - I played "Good Weekend" for as many people as I could this year. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a song that is more fun to listen to. The same thing can be said for this album. And their live show.

Editors | The Back Room - A slow burner that definitely didn't grab me on the first few listens. But seeing them live made me listen to this album with a new outlook. It suffers a bit from a lack of dynamics, but the tunes are there if you give it a chance.

I'm in meetings all day, so instead of hastily throwing together some random linkage, I leave you instead with a Paul Weller primer, for no other reason than he's so hot right now and I am totally bummed I won't be attending his upcoming career spanning shows in NYC and LA.

I had the pleasure of seeing him during the US leg of the Days Of Speed tour, a show that was mind-blowingly awesome. I have never seen someone plays the guitar as effortlessly as Paul Weller. It was incredible, like the instrument was simply an extension of his body.

I was introduced to the Modfather through the one and only Noel Gallagher. He did a cover of The Jam's "To Be Someone" on an Oasis tour in the mid-90's and I went out and bought The Jam's Greatest Hits the very next day. After devouring their catalog, I moved onto Weller's solo work (I skipped the shaky Style Council period that made up the middle of his career). Weller's influence touches many of the British bands I love, Oasis in particular. He is credited as the father of Britpop (a term he detests) and after watching the above performance of "The Changingman," you can see the inspiration for Liam's hairstyles and Noel's fashion sense, right down to his love of scarves.

Here's a Later with Jools Holland Session from 1993:
[MP3] Paul Weller | Sunflower
[MP3] Paul Weller | Has My Fire Really Gone Out?
[MP3] Paul Weller | What's Going On (Marvin Gaye cover)

I had the chance to talk to a wide range of musical artists this year. Some highlights:

John Vanderslice
How do you feel about blogs compared with the mainstream music media?
"...It was very clear to me then that all that print media shit doesn't matter anymore. It totally does not matter. I mean, no offense to Spin or anyone like that, but people right now, hard core music people that pay attention, they're online. The big national glossies just don't have that kind of impact anymore."

Aberdeen City
What was it like working with Steve Lillywhite?
"Looking at his discography, it's pretty intense. He's one of these producers that has a real big picture approach to songs. The producer we were working with we love, he's almost part of the band. So it was great to have someone come in and look at everything from a bit of a distance and making some subtle suggestions that had a big impact on the songs. It was a pleasure to work with someone that has been making records as long as he has. You know his stuff is proven over time. It's hard to say no to the guy but everything he had to say resonated with the band."

Hopewell
You don't hide the fact that you have ties to Mercury Rev. How do you walk the line between dropping their name and making your own?
"Generally we let the people who's job it is to sell us mention Mercury Rev. It gets fairly annoying when it is in every review, every interview etc. But, I have made some peace with it. It was a formative time for me and it was a pretty life changing thing so it's worth mentioning..."

The National
Does that help the whole recording process to go out and play some shows?
"Yeah. When you're in the studio and just kinda writing stuff for a while, sometime you don't get much perspective on what you're doing. So for us it's nice to be able to walk away for a couple of weeks and just listen to the stuff and enjoy it. Sometimes you can forget where the gut of the song is and just start piling stuff on. It gets us back so we can hear where it needs to go. That's the spot we're in right now."

Silversun Pickups (Scroll down)
What's it like being an up and coming indie band in L.A.? In New York the blogs are hyping new local bands every week, whereas L.A. doesn't have as big a blog community or online presence. Did it help to be left alone for so long and be given time to grow?
"I think so. We've noticed that alot of the blogs in New York, and not in a detrimental way, but it reminds me of the press in England, where they find a new band to champion pretty often. I don't want to call them fickle, they're not like the NME,they're just horrible. But there seems to be alot more of the championing of those kind of bands whereas in L.A. maybe since it has the reputation of being the place where shitty bands go to make it big, maybe people don't pay attention to bands from L.A. as much. And in a way, that's kind of nice, not having someone constantly looking over your shoulder."

We Are Scientists
The last time we spoke was in October of 2005 and I don't even think the record was out in the US. So obviously alot of things have happened since then. Looking back, how has the year been for you guys?
"It's been amazing. There's really no way to quantify it, it's been fantastic. Obviously we do way better in the UK than we do in the US. Unfortunately or otherwise, we spent a bulk of our time in the past 21 months in Europe, which is definitely fun and it would be ridiculous of us to complain about the fact that we do really well over there and therefor have to go over there frequently. There's something nice about playing in the States, both in familiarity and just the fact that I've been to D.C. so many times in the past as a visitor and then playing really tiny, crappy places, that it's nice to play a big show and have people come out and have a good time."

I had the pleasure of interview Keith Murray of We Are Scientists last week. The full interview is up over at DCist. It's nice to talk to a band that likes D.C.:

What made you guys decide to do this one last tour before the end of the year?

We had done a co-headlining tour with Art Brut over the summer and we had a UK tour booked before then that sort of cut into the Northeastern part of that tour. So Art Brut got to hit all the good towns, Boston, D.C., New York, etc. and we got to play Lawrence, KS. You know, nothing wrong with Lawrence, but it's no D.C. We've got to stop touring eventually and start working on our next album, and we thought this tour would be a delightful way to delay that. We wanted to hit the good towns that we were so cruelly robbed of last time.

That's funny because alot of bands don't make it a point to come through D.C.

Really? We love D.C.! D.C. is definitely one of the core towns for us. Nobody in our organization, our booking agents, managers, label and those people, nobody was that interested in us doing these last few shows. But we were mad that we missed them on that last tour, so we wanted one last round in all those towns before we had to sit at home for a while.

Super Furry Animals have enough material for three new albums, frontman Gruff Rhys has told NME.COM.

"We've got about 20 hours worth of music recorded. The next record's a bit of a racket. By the end of the last tour we had dumped all the slow songs are were just doing rocky numbers. At that point we were rehearsing a batch of new songs and that influenced their direction - they're pretty energetic and extreme. It's very melodic, and there are a couple of mellow tunes too."

Pitchfork has the details of Gruff's upcoming solo record, Candylion along with a video. You can check out some tracks on Gruff's MySpace.

Lastly, and perhaps most exciting, is Daf's band The Peth! Check out these MP3's:
[MP3] The Peth | Let's Go Fucking Mental
[MP3] The Peth | Skin Up For Jesus
"Skin Up For Jesus" is an old, but never recorded SFA song that die hards like me have been waiting over 10 years to hear. Best.

Off the top of my head, and according to my quick perusal through the archives, there were the 12 best shows I saw this year.

Bicycle Thieves w/ Cedars and Nethers @ 9:30 Club - January
"Nethers is a weird hybrid of folk and shoegazer/drone rock. And by weird, I mean incredible. At times they sounded like Luna, other times like Mazzy Star and others like Sonic Youth if they went folk. It's nice to go see a band that doesn't churn out your typical indie-rock and Nethers fit the bill nicely."

Billy Bragg @ The Birchmere - February
"Bragg was in top form (apparently his voice has been pretty ragged on this tour, but not last night) and any night that you can hear "The Milkman of Human Kindness" and "A New England" is a good one. And again, even moreso when he plays the entirity of Life's A Riot With Spy vs. Spy as the encore. Best."

Wedding Present @ Black Cat - March
"The setlist (yes, I got the setlist, I am a big dork OK) wasn't as hit heavy as the last time they came through town, but I did get to hear "Go Out And Get 'Em Boy", which was the second to last song I ever played in my college radio career as well as "Brassneck" which is probably one of my 10 favortist songs ever."

Elbow @ Webster Hall - April
"Elbow was/are fucking mega. Webster Hall wasn't so bad. Big space, great lighting, tall stage. No complaints at all."

Art Brut @ Black Cat - April
"Holy shit. Art Brut were teh awesome last night. I honestly can't remember the last time I had so much fun at a rock show. Ever go to a gig and know that it's going to be incredible after the first 30 seconds? That was me last night."

Echo & the Bunnymen @ Black Cat - June
"The Bunnies ripped through a set that focused mostly on their vast catalog, so much so, that I was actually disappointed not to hear more from Siberia, but I will stop short of complaining. "The Cutter" was to die for. And the transition form "Scissors In the Sand" right into "All That Jazz" was just incredible."

Editors & Cedars @ 9:30 Club - July
"Last night was the second time I had seen them [Editors] this year and they were just brilliant. No matter what you think of the record, you owe it to yourself to go see this band in the live arena. They sound huuuuge."

Pitchfork Fest in Chicago, Day One and Day Two - July
"Overall I really enjoyed my experience at the Pitchfork Fest. Yes the writers on the site can be pretentious wankers at times (unlike the writer of this site), but they did a great job with this event. Everything there was super cheap, from the tickets ($30 for two days), food (most dishes under $5), beer ($4 for 12 oz.), and water ($1 for 20 oz.) The lines got a bit out of control at times, but most of them moved fast and everyone inside the gates was super friendly. I felt like I got a lot for my money."

Virgin Festival, Baltimore - September
"I'm a bit ashamed to say that up until Saturday, I never really "got" The Who. Sure I liked them, but I failed to see why Eddie Vedder spontaneously blows a load whenever anyone so much as mentions their name. Well, after seeing them live, I get it. I was really nervous about taking photos of them and don't really remember much about the first song they played, but "The Seeker" was second in the set and it made me step back and just take it all in. I was about 4 feet away from Bee Thousand while he was windmilling around everywhere. Wow. I stayed around for the next four or five songs and discovered a newfound admiration for a band that everyone already loves."

Massive Attack @ 9:30 Club - September
"Horace Andy and Deborah Miller in particular, really shined last night. Andy's voice was magnificent, better than any of his recorded output. And Miller brought down the house with her vocals on "Safe From Harm" and "Unfinished Sympathy."

The National w/ Nethers @ Black Cat - October
"Let me be the 3,476th blogger to go on record as saying The National are really fucking good. Transcendent at times. Last night I was struck by how U2-y their sound is. I mean Unforgettable Fire U2 (i.e.good U2), not "One, Two, Three, Fourteen" U2. I couldn't get over how beautiful "All The Wine" was. It's really understated on Alligator but live, it packs a wallop."

Beck @ Black Cat Backstage - October
"Beck and his band, all five of them, crowded onto the stage around 12:30 a.m. and worked their way through a spirited 19-song set, full of requests from the crowd, that spanned his whole career. Amazingly, out of all the requests being shouted, I don't recall hearing anyone ask for "Loser." The best part about the show? The band seemed to be having just as much fun as the crowd. At one point Beck joked, "The club owner said if we do good at this show, we can play the upstairs next time."

HONORABLE MENTION:

Scott Stapp @ 9:30 Club - March
"As for my thoughts...hmmmm....take every rock cliche you can think of for the live arena and multiply them to the nth degree and that is Scott Stapp. He'd done every move in Eddie Vedder's book in the first 45 seconds he was on stage."

Did Giant Drag break up?