Come out, Hear music & Support the Free Book Exchange on Saturday Nov. 15!

If you hadn't heard the news, Asheville has a newish recyclery for your old books. Run by volunteers and surviving on the generosity of donations, The Asheville Free Book Exchange offers exactly the service that the name suggests. In addition to keeping the community's unwanted books in circulation free of charge, the center also features free wi-fi, relaxing couches and a children's section.
The benefit taking place on Saturday will attract the talent of five familiar Asheville artists. The psychedellically ambient Indie stylings of Body of John the Baptist, and Jeff Markham (of The Bluelight Transmission). Veterans of the Asheville scene, Night's Bright Colors will also be playing. With intricate compositions and ecxeptional songwriting, NBC often draw comparisons to artists like Elliott Smith.
There will also be two bluegrass bands to diversify the line up. The plucky, banjo driven Bluegrass lumber Company as well as the more ballad oriented Honeycutters (formerly known as The Bees Knees).
This will be a kid-friendly event with a suggested donation of $5. There will be no alchohol for sale but responsible showgoers will be welcome to bring their own.
The Asheville Free Book Exchange is located at the Riverview Station (191 Lyman St. in Asheville's River Arts District). For more information, you can contact them at (404)933-9173 or email at info@freebookexchange.org

OMG!! Girl Talk @ The Orange Peel tonight!!!

Girl Talk (or Gregg Gillis) ain't just the king of mash-ups, Girl Talk is your wittiest friend who's gone through every item in the stockpile of pop-culture you call a memory, a musical mad scientist with a short attention span and the DJ that you've wished for at every dance party you've ever been to all rolled in to one. No seriously, I'm serious!! Also yes, he IS the king of mash ups.
To get me all hyped up to write this I've just listened to and am still listening to "Feed the Aninmals", Gillis' fourth album under the name Girl Talk. After 50 minutes and around 300 different samples I should be, by all rights, exhausted. The way Gillis builds, mixes and unfolds his compositions keeps the listener's energy up however. The elements switch up often, sometimes before you want them to to be honest, allowing the momentum ebb and flow while the beat keeps up a consistently brisk pace.
As with any good mash-up, most of the fun is in hearing a familiar song (or two or six) in a completely different context. It's just fun to hear Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike" playing on top of some dirty, dance club hip hop. No matter who you are there is at least one familiar element running through every second of "Feed the Animals". Be they snatched from classic rock, dirty south, top 40 pop or any era of R&B, Girl Talk's musical constructs always keep you guessing where they'll go next and pull you through deftly balanced juxtapositions that are anywhere from neat to exciting to fucking rad.
Tonight's sold out show at The Orange peel looks to be the dancinest event of the season. I feel bad for you poor sods who'll be on the outside come 9 O'Clock.

Unicycle Loves You

(2008 - High Wheel Records)

Without a doubt it's my biases from the 90's that make me think of Chicago's independant music community as a haven for for self-importantly dour experimentalism and stuffy artistes who'd rather have the critics call them "important" than create an enjoyable ditty of the toe-tapping variety. With all the major southeastern scenes undergoing such remarkable facelifts in the last few years I guess it's way past the time that I should dispose of my Shytown expectations especially given the upbeat bounciness created by bands like Unicycle Loves You.
Waiting a couple years to release a debut album is usually a good sign that the band in question is going to produce something that's worth your attention. Formed in 2006 by Jim Carrol (and no not THAT Jim Carrol), ULY have an eclectic yet well-defined sound. Every song on their self-titled debut takes its cues from a slightly different source, selecting musical elements from the last few decades of pop music in a way that compliments the arrangement without stretching the limits of ULY's overall style. Lovely vocal harmonies and catchy, guitar driven hooks ride with confidence over enegeticly upbeat percussion creating some of the most engaging power pop of 2008 so far.
The lyrics dance around subjects giving quick snatches of a half realized picture but never fully revealing their relevance to the casual listner. Even the male/female trade-off that occurs during "Under 18" incorporates the same juxtaposition of disseperate trains of thought rendering it an insular exorcise that refuses to give up its true meaning to anyone but the songwriter himself. Could be obviewscation. Could be stylization. Could just be that last wall between ego and audience that needs to come down before Carroll's full potential as a songwriter can be fully tapped.

Rocket Club! Tonight! EAR PWR! Love It!

This may or may not be the kids' last local show til after their big multi month national tour.

If you need some convining here's a link to my Mountain Xpress article about em

www.mountainx.com/ae/2008/041608earpwr

Silver Mt Zion @ The Grey Eagle Tonight!!!!!

Grey Eagle continues its run of bringing a respectable roster of national acts to town tonight with A Silver Mt Zion. Or Thee Silver Mt Zion, or even Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra La La Band.

Call them what you will, the Montreal collective seems to have finally outgrown the rather generic moniker of "Godspeed You Black Emperor sideproject". In fact, with Godspeed on what seems like permanent hiatus, both Silver Mt Zion as well as other offshoot bands like Do Make Say Think are evolving at something of a breakneck pace.

For someone like myself who missed the last couple SMZ releases, their new album "13 Blues for Thirteen Moons" is something of a radical departure from the band's earlier work. After multiple listens though it's not difficult to put to rest the spectre of expectation and embrace the new.

The most noticably different aspect SMZ's current incarnation is the emphasis on vocals and guitar riffage. The band previously specialized in densely complicated orchestral exorcises in tension and release which would often diverge into unexpected directions with minimal vocal chorus that was used sparingly and always in the background. We now get Efrim Menuck's jaggedly unpolished voice right up front delivering buzzsaw lamentations that cut right through the tension.
In some sense A Silver Mt Zion seems to have turned itself inside out. Instead of the repetitive elements anchoring the orchestra, the songs now build with layered deliberation becoming progressively more intense while the strings play and important backup role taking the main riffs to thrilling new heights.
With every song on the album breaking the 13 minute mark it's impossible to speak of Silver Mt Zion without using the words "epic" or "grand", but as breathtaking as these these songs may be they also posess a quality of introspection and more often than not, explosive episodes of quiet desperation.
With the upfront intimacy that a show at the Grey Eagle affords, this show could be not just a great performance but the emothional experiance of the season.

Cryptacize - Dig That Treasure

(2008 - Asthmatic Kitty)

The most musically refreshing thing to hear in this day and age is a band who's sound seems to be sired by the actual tasts and sensibilities of it's members. That's how you avoid sounding like generic band x with an adiquate but disposable presence and really make music worth remembering. The bay area trio Cryptacize are like that. Distinctive, individualistic, almost iconoclastic but still perfectly accessable for fans of low-key, melodic indie-pop.
Comprised of Chris Cohen (formerly of Deerhoof and The Curtains), Nedelle Torrisi (Kill Rock Stars solo artist and also formerly of The Curtains) and Michael Carreia on percussion, Cryptacize excell in intimately sparse pop music whose arrangements employ frequent changes in both rhythm and key. The every note in a Cryptacize song is given the space and attention to flourish and the chords allowed to ring out clearly and fully.
Their debut album "Dig That Treasure" finds the trio playing with structure and arrangement in a way that comes across as dramatic but never obtusely so. The melodies progress minimally and unobstructed, occasionally veering off into unexpected new territory as tempos and rhythms change seemingly on impulse. Without ever really raising the volume level Cryptacize constantly remind the listener that the dynamic possibilities of the 3 minute pop song are quite literally limitless.
Tonewise the music's shifts often (even within the songs themselves) from solemn and sparse as in "Water Witching Wishes" and "Stop Watch" to an airily spacious jangle in songs like "Heaven is Human" and "Say You Will". Thematically Cryptacize burn at both ends of the spectrum, from mournful lamentations on the unstoppable passage of time to plafully naive assertions that life is a "Cosmic Singalong".
Hopefully future releases will find Cryptacize exploring structure and arrangement with the same dramatic vigor. There's no reason to think that they won't considering how naturally they meld musically. With a sound that's as well-formed as it is malleable it'll definitely be interesting to see where they go from here.

Biirdie - Catherine Avenue

(2008 - Love Minus Zero/Drive-Thru Records)

It's somewhat condescending when writing about an artist to begin by referring to said artist as "charming". If we were doing free word association however, that would be my instinctual response for the Los Angeles based Biirdie. Fortunately, in this case, there is much more to say.
Comprised of idealistic wanderers from various corners of the U.S., Biirdie has a sound that is ditinctly American and specifically Southern Californian. Their group harmonies and homespun melodies often inspire the moniker of "indie rock's answer to Fleetwood Mac". A casual listen to their second release, Catherine Avenue, may leave the impression that these are innocent songs with simplistic arrangements. Closer inspection reveals a deeper layer of depth however, and lyrics that yearn to re-examine missed connections while lusting for geographical cures.
Biirdie has a flair for playing long songs that don't seem that long when you're listening to them. That's because they're constantly evolving, unfurling even. Songs often begin with an elegant simplicity before slyly adding instuments or subtly leading into increasingly grand new phrases. The changes come about so naturally and organically that it's easy to forget that these moments have to be orchestrated.
In other hands these songs could very well lead to dull pretense and stuffy self-importance. Refreshingly however, these players know the difference between engaging intensity and pointless high drama. They're also not above a bit of sillyness as eximplified by their Camper Van Beethoven-ish cover of The Texas Tornados' "Who Were You Thinking Of?" or "Estelle", Birdie's equivalent of The Beatles' "Don't Pass Me By". It's an unapologetically goofy singalong which suddenly comes into beauty in the closing minute or so.
Over and over again on Catherine Avenue Biirdie show that they don't just know what the musical conventions are, they also understand how those conventions work and how to use them effectively. It's an unassuming album that doesn't so much demand your attention as it does reward it, especially for us misanthropes who more often than not are mistaken for nice.

Zillionaire - The Street Lights Have Been Turned Down

(2008 - New Granada)

An album like The Street Lights Have Been Turned Down probably won't grab you on first listen and that's okay. It doesn't really want to. The band responsible, Tampa based indie quartet Zillionaire, doesn't deal in hooks and riffs anyway. Instead the emphasis is on nuance and sophistication. Zillionaire is also a band which bears the distinction of carrying on a tradition as opposed to revelling in a trend.
Zillionaire's sound combines the deliberation and intertwined guitars of mid-90's slowcore with elements of the more restrained indie acts of the same era (think Bedhead or Versus). The guitars are, for the most part, free of distortion with deep tones and clean chords that are permitted ro ring free.
One of the halmarks of a truly great album is that the strongest run of songs, the ones most distinctive of the band's identity, come in the middle. Though each of the tracks on Street Lights... have their individual merits, there is a sizeable chunk of the album from around "The Incident of the Water Heater" through "Turn It On" in which it becomes more apparent that the musicians have put a considerable amount of time and thought into these arrangements. These songs are something of a cornerstone for the album with gorgeous vocal couplings and entrancingly simple guitar lines that gracefully compliment eachother while building to a satisfactory release in the occasional noisy sections.
Zillionaire's overall mood may seem dour and gloomy but at times there is the spark of a wry sense of humor. I mean come on the lyrics to "No Contest" are almost entirely comprised of titles from Versus songs. Possibly a statement that they're aware of the occasions in which they put their 90's influences front and center? Zillionaire needn't feel self-conscious of sounding derivative, especially when they're picking up a torch that's been mostly cast aside for quite some time.