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.

Utah Carol - Rodeo Queen

Utah Carol - Rodeo Queen
(2007, Stomping Ground)

It's apparent from the opening bars of "Rodeo Queen" that Chicago Husband/Wife duo Utah Carol know a thing or two about writing music that billows with a lonely loveliness and just a hint of twang. The knowledge that Grant Birkenbeul and Jija Davis have released a mere three albums in their 12 years of musical collaboration should clue you in on the laid-back pace that their songs follow. Having been satisfied up until this point with a local following in Chicago and a larger fandom in Europe, "Rodeo Queen" has the potential to finally bring these two to the attention of the U.S. indie community.
Let's get this straight right now, we are not talking about the dour downbeat drudgery that has invaded indie rock in the last few years. Utah Carol is way too sappy, and I mean that in a good way, to be completely lumped into the Americana genre. Their style falls somewhere between Iron & Wine and The Starlight Vocal Band mixed with a bit of Ida or Mojave 3. Nearly the entire album is sung in unison by both Birkenbeul and Davis with a smooth, breathy sweetness. While varying in both style and substance, the songs of "Rodeo Queen" are all draped with the same blanket of low-key dreaminess conjured by the lovers' dual warbling.
Despite Utah Carol's propensity for starry-eyed sentimentality, the lovey dovey schmaltz so rampant in some other couple bands is actually kept to a relative minimum. Don't get me wrong, that element IS present but most of the songs paint overly romanticized pictures of the love that got away and all the accompanying notions of regret, heartache, obsession and self-sabotage. With soft guitars and sweet melodies Birkenbeul and Davis often seem to be telling personal stories of other people's lives which is all well and good as long as they keep doing it with such a bleary-eyed, twinkling, coffee house kind of panache.

For your Idfest consideration

I know there's going to be alot to choose from this weekend in regards to aural pleasure in the Asheville area. One band in particular may elude you Idfest-going eye but is worthy of your precious attention.

Through the Sparks hail from Birmingham, Alabama. They play a paticularly easy going yet thoughtfully paced and structured brand of psych-pop. They're on the same page with bands like Big Star.
On May 1 they'll release "Lazarus Beach". It's an impressive enough collections of songs made all the more impressive with the knowledge that it's their first long player. With an other worldly musical camaraderie and tasteful sensibilities they maintain a perfect balance of grim playfulness, subtle depth and engrossing melody.

Through the Sparks will play the Wedge Gallery at 10:30 on Saturday April 28th as part of Idfest.

If you require more convincing then please feel free to peruse their Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/throughthesparks

The Asteroid #4 - An Amazing Dream

The Asteroid #4 - An Amazing Dream
(2007 - Rainbow Quartz)

On these frosty overcast days of mid-winter I usually seek out the familiarity of simple melodies heavily blanketed in swirling reverb. Something airy yet grounded, melancholy but not self-indulgent and, most of all, something that can be at once expansive and sparse. These sounds are my aural comfort food. On their fourth album, An Amazing Dream, Philadelphia's The Asteroid #4 have delivered such an album.
Having never heard of The Asteroid #4 I'm thankfully spared the bias some critics have from the band's apparently awful preceding effort. All I know is that I love An Amazing Dream's billowing...um, dreaminess. Most of the songs are build around a strumming acoustic rhythm guitar peppered with the shimmering jangle of an ultra-effected electric. The ethereal airiness is kept firmly cemented by a grounded yet unassuming rhythm section. The drums and bass work together as an inseparable unit, keeping the momentum brisk and oak solid.
The album only has two real missteps. One is "Into the Meadow", a dismally white bread murder ballad that is very repetitive, very boring and very long. The other is tacked onto the end of the "Belong", the epic closing track. A few minutes after the song ends there is a two and a half minute session of pretentious ramblings about Alan Ginsberg, and yes it is as lame as it sounds.
The Asteroid #4 owes much of their sound and fashion to bands like The Trash Can Sinatras, The Ocean Blue and The Church. In fact An Amazing Dream contains a faithful rendition of The Church's "In Your Eyes". If this were released 17 years ago you'd probably Dave Kendall introducing a video for "Ask Me About Pittsburgh" or "Go Ahead" on 120 Minutes. And with that last reference I betray my age and will now take my leave, thank you and good night.

The British Army ... on LSD

Barton Carroll - Love & War

Barton Carroll - Love & War
(2006, Skybucket Records)

The first thing one hears on Love & War is Barton Carroll's mournful mountain warble as he vocalizes a traditional Appalachian lament. In the song a young man says goodbye to his lover as he must leave home. Although the reason for their separation is never stated outright, we can easily assume that there is a war and the boy must go into battle. Why? Well, there is the album's title for one. There is also the fact that the running theme of Love & War is the effect that battle has on the lives of civilians.

Carroll has one of those voices that pours emotion with a weary but steadfast honesty. His delivery may seem frail at times but Carroll's vocals are always front and center, breathing life into the otherwise sparse arrangements. The accompaniment doesn't disappoint either, this is after all the guy who played a truckload of various instruments for Crooked Fingers. The instrumentation, be it a bassoon, piano, violin, or the more traditional guitar/bass/drums combination, is gorgeously arranged but remains minimal, allowing the words to resonate with much more loneliness. Stylistically Carroll switches things up a bit, staying rooted in Appalachian/roots territory most of the time but manages to kick out a couple Tobin Sprout-style indie rock jams as well.

Most musicians, when taking on the subject of war, choose the political outrage/moral high ground road. Carroll would rather chronicle the situations of the individuals who have no choice. His lyricss are not about the politics of war but more about the basic humanity and inhumanity that happens in its midst. The fact that Love & War was recorded way back in August 2001, just before our current situations began, somehow adds to the timelessness of these songs.

So Many Dynamos - Flashlights

So Many Dynamos - Flashlights
(2006, Skroki Records)

Wow, what a difference a year and a half makes. When we first heard from So Many Dynamos they were a brimming pot full of potential. They were already a good band with a confident, well-defined sound. However they were also mired in hero worship for The Dismemberment Plan, a fact that hindered almost as much as it helped. Now they're back with Flashlights, an album that shows a band that's growing up in all the right ways while still retaining that essential spark of new-band energy.

The first album, When I Explode, had a tense precision about the proceedings. The songs themselves felt tightwound, almost suffocatingly so. A common byproduct of a new band over scrutinizing every detail with a need to impress right out of the gate. On Flashlights the band employ the same tight performances but with more of an openness that comes with virtuosity. They've always sounded confident but now they sound comfortable being confident.

Without pressure to immediately grab attention and "make a name" the songs can open up more, allowing for things like horns and vocal choirs. The guitars still snap with jarring dissonance or by contrast, interplay with mathy tenderness. Clayton Kunstel's drumming, while still precise, is more alive this time out, taking some jazzier excursions to find more of the rhythm between the accents.

It's clear that So Many Dynamos have no intention of divorcing themselves from their influences. It's also clear that they're not about to let their sound stagnate as a rehash of over traversed territory.

Ho-Ag - The News From Pluto

Ho-Ag - The News From Pluto
(2006, Hello Sir Records)

There are a few things we've come to expect from bands brought to us by Hello Sir Records. These include, but are not limited to, a blitz of guitar driven energy, time signatures that change on a dime, ass kicking riff/melodies and quite a bit of screamin' and yellin'. All of these elements are present and accounted for on The Word From Pluto, the new collection of recorded music from Boston's Ho-Ag.

Their sound lies somewhere in the badlands between the heavy riffage of NoMeansNo and the mathy kookiness of Devo. Drums pound and drive. Guitars nimbly rock the hell out. The occasianally obnoxious synthesizer is for the most part tastefully used and is rarely at the musics forefront.

Ho-Ag play with a vicious precision that rides the line between control and spastic entropy. The music continually threatens to collapse under the weight of its own energy but flashes off into a new direction before that happens. A tasteful dollop of melody and ear for off-kilter hooks distinguishes Ho-Ag from the other wannabe, art-punk mathnicks.

My new favorite web celebrity

This picture really makes me laugh....alot.

Go to Harvest Records to see people play music

Don't know much about The New Sound of Numbers but I must say that their show does look like a promising way to spend an evening.

The music happens tonight, October 29, 2006 at Harvest Records in Asheville

Here's their myspace page if you wanna know more http://myspace.com/thenewsoundofnumbers

The Theater Fire - Everybody Has a Dark Side

The Theater Fire - Everybody Has A Dark Side
(2006, Undeniable Records)

Hey look everybody, my choice for best new label of 2005 is back with a third release. Oh what fun! And yes this one is just as strong and memorable as the first two. Coolness!
The Theater Fire have been kicking around North Texas in some form or another since 2000. On their second album Everybody Has a Dark Side they've blossomed into a laid-back, unassumingly sublime outfit that is quite comfortable in its musical skin. As the thirteen presented tracks ramble through forty odd minutes of playing time, we hear yarns spun about lovers, loners, brothers, dusty strangers and guilt ridden survivors. These stories are set to music that consistently changes things around while avoiding most of the formulaic trappings of americana or roots music.
Things open up with "Kicking Up A Darkness", an account of an approaching stranger that could have been a transplant from a Lambchop or Leonard Coen album. It's the most formally arranged and studio polished song you'll hear. Things don't exactly go lo-fi, they just become sort of... let's say informal. "Fiddleback Weaver" throws in some mariachi horns resulting in a darkly festive border town drinking song. From there the styles jump from front porch sing-a-longs to love lorn soldier ballads to campfire stories to rollicking road tunes to... you get the picture.
Entirely recorded at home with analog technology, the songs on Everybody Has A Dark Side breathe with the laid back, organic energy of a sunny southwestern afternoon. They have the unguarded, casual intimacy of hanging out with old friends and playing songs you've known for years. Mostly sentimental, sometimes mournful and occasionally droll, Everybody... is a refreshingly unambitious late summer treat. It's not perfect, but then again good music should never have that as an aim in the first place.

All this time...

... and still, the number one search topic that leads people to this blog is "Amish Girls".

Black Fiction - Ghost Ride

Black Fiction - Ghost Ride
(2006 - Howells Transmitter)

More than anything, Black Fiction wants to be an old, beat-up cassette onto which your best friend has copied his or her eccentricly amateurish bedroom recording project. Every song on Ghost Ride goes out of it's way to be different from the last. The crazy thing is that it kind of works. The problem with Ghost Ride is that it spends too much time trying to convince you that it has been created by amateurs when it is obvious that the opposite is true. For the most part the songs are genuinely creative and well written like the stunning title track, there are however a few time wasters like the band's namesake.
This may be the next step into the SUPER-disaffected-self-aware arena of indie rock where artists go out of their way to include as many elements and genres as possible and at the same time go out of their way to sound like they are very bored and not trying very hard. The result is that Black Fiction is a good album when in fact it could've been a fantastic one. The experimental nature of pushing your limits in order to find your feet is the reason that many a band's first album is it's most memorable. But with Black Fiction it's hard to tell how much of that is genuine and how much is engineered to be odd and hip.
The songs are good enough, employing creative home recording techniques, incongruous instrumentation and darkly misanthropic lyrics. The vocals however are presented with a disaffected, hipster staleness that either attempts to emulate someone else's style or, when delving into more personal lyrical content, refuses any emotion or personality at all.
All gripes aside, Ghost Harvest is different from anything else I've heard this year and, as this shoegazer-packed summer finally winds down, different is what I desperately need right now.

7 more weeks of free busses in Asheville

Hey Asheville folks, don't forget to take advantage of the free busses whenever you can. The more people ride during the free fare experiment, the more money the city will throw into the transportation system next year.

New Songs + Jukebox = Good Times

Hey folks, we've updated the jukebox on the website's music page. There's some Conner songs as well as goodness from The Bleachers and Venice is Sinking and some revelry from The World/Inferno Friendship Society.

Enjoy

Iron Hero - Safe As Houses

Iron Hero - Safe As Houses
(2006, Self Released)

Yet another head-turning band from Athens, Ga that shows enormous potential. For a band with six members Iron Hero is surprisingly taut. This is due to the guidance of an amazing rhythm section.
Thomas Wilcox (drums) and Ben Simpson (bass) keep things steady and under control with tense precision allowing the other players to cover everything is a thick blanket of post-rock atmosphere. The guitars interplay with simple, serpentine phrases which are occasionally washed in reverberated fuzz. The vocals are nice and melodic but don't seem as confident and distinctive as Iron Hero's other elements.
There are gobs of little intricacies on Safe As Houses for future discovery. Thanks to the immaculate production (provided by Josh McKay of Macha) everything shows up in the mix.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of American Football, Tristeza, The Church and Echo & The Bunnymen, I'm glad that the remnants of the post-rock movement has landed in such capable hands.

The Scourge of the Sea - Make Me Armored

The Scourge of the Sea - Make Me Armored
(2006, Alias Records)

Do my eyes deceive me? Is the label that disappeared after signing every band in Chapel Hill in the early 90's really back? It's true, the label that brought you The Archers of Loaf has returned and they've picked an oddly unmemorable album to do it with.
Don't get me wrong, this debut from Lexington, KY's The Scourge of the Sea is for the most part a perfectly serviceable college pop album. In fact they remind me of early Connells or a less ambitiously literary version of The Trash Can Sinatras. Solidly arranged, mid-tempo ditties sung wispily by heartbroken young men resigning in the face of unrequited love seem to rule the day.
There is, in fact, alot to love on Make Me Armored. The album shows great potential with songs like "Out of the Trash" and "Smitten Kitten" which may have been time-warped from my college radio station from fifteen years ago. Many a melody from this disk has popped into my head long after the spinning is done. However, despite a few saccharine sweet melody lines, Make Me Armored leaves no real lasting impression.
Unfortunately the last few tracks sail along rather lifelessly suffering from frequently trite lyrics. "The Birds of a Feather" in particular suffers from the most distracting case of every-two-lines-absolutely-MUST-rhyme syndrome in recent memory.

Snowlgobe - Oxytocin

Snowglobe - Oxytocin
(2006, Makeshift Music)

I'm honestly rather unfamiliar with Memphis, Tennessee's Snowglobe, a band that has previously put out two apparently fantastic albums that I've never heard. All I know is that Oxytocin is the first in a series of five albums, each of which will be a "solo-directed project" by a different member of the band. This one here was written and conducted by Mr. Brad Postlethwaite. Incidentally, Oxytocin is a hormone that is released during orgasm, ejaculation and birth.
The musical styles are all over the map. There's some bouncy pop, some gigantic, blown out arrangements ala The Flaming Lips and more than a little attention to detail and orchestration. Most of the songs seem to be built around Postlethwaite's promonent vocal melodies, showcasing some formidable songwriting abilities which although catchy and memorable are for the most part downright uncheerful.
Call it unfocused. Call it diverse to a fault. You can even call it the second coming of Elephant Six if you like. The thing you can't call Oxytocin is uninteresting. Unlike most songwriters Postlethwaite doesn't force his lyrics onto every second of every song. He knows when to let the music breathe. With stacks upon piles of instruments always in the mix there are plenty of rewards for the attentive listener.

The Never - Antarctica

The Never - Antarctica
(2006 - Trekky Records)

The Never may just be North Carolina's most ambitious indie-rock outfit. Their second album, Antarctica, is half of a multimedia project which includes a fully illustrated storybook featuring 50 original paintings by bandmember Noah Smith. Inspired by the storybook records of our childhoods, Antarctica tells the story of a country boy who is on a quest to return a nuclear bomb to the city. There are also witches and minions and some sort of love story and changing seasons. My details are hazy as I don't actually have the storybook with my promo.
As is necessary in telling a story of youthful innocence combating the ways of the world, The Never's music is unapologetically sentimental and self-important. It's also damn impressive for a sophmore release. Delicate indie ballads, catchy power-pop, riffs, reprisals, interludes and quite a bit of anthemic arrangement all have a hand in telling Antarctica's story. At times I'm reminded of Queen at their most Beatlesque along with a dose of Death Cab For Cutie before they were boring. It's refreshing to hear such layered and dense music coming from people naive enough to sing lines like, "I will find my heart in Antarctica." with sincerity and in four-part harmony.

The Bleachers - Suspicion

The Bleachers - Suspicion
(2006, Village Industries)

The first two and a half minutes of Suspicion paints a densely moody backdrop for the rest of the album to play-out against. Its a foggy, billowing, wastland of a world with the soft rumblings of thunderclouds far off in the distance. Once the instrumentalists cast off the droning and chanting and lurch foreward into the body of "Witch Trials" however, everything explodes into a controlled but primal flash. Guitars shimmer, drums pound and the bass carries most of the melody as dreamily processed vocals echo to and fro.
Why The Bleachers inspire comparisons to early R.E.M. is beyond me. I mean yeah, the guitars DO jangle and shimmer most of the time and the lyrics are of the hard-to-understand-and-incomprehensible-when-you-do variety, but that's where the similarities end. This trio from Las Vegas is actually more like a striking mix of The Charlatans U.K. and Bauhaus. They've got the shoegazer ear for dreamy melody but a menacing, neo-industrial edge that keeps things nice and interesting.
Another thing I love about Suspicion is that the individual songs, although although being diverse and distinctive, create an emotional arc that connects the album as a single movement. The gentle acoustic melodies of "Don't Make No Roads", the metallic claning of "Slumberjack #2" and the acid house rockout of "Poltergeist" don't simply coexist in a disjointed jumble but rather flow in a logical progression which connects the album as a single body.

Venice is Sinking - Sorry About the Flowers

Venice Is Sinking - Sorry About the Flowers
(2006 - One Percent Press)

Here is some especially satisfying fare for all you melody loving, indie-minded shoegazers out there. Sleepy guitars and lush strings build and layer around heart melting male/female vocals. Thoughtfully arranged dreaminess that evokes just enough wistful melancholy for those rainy summer afternoons. Not the self-indulgent, "Boo hoo for poor me," variety of melancholy mind you, more like a sudden moment of understanding and acceptance after a great loss.
Sometimes low-key and other times anthemic, the songs on Sorry About the Flowers are mainly of the stalwart mid-tempo ilk. Stunningly gorgeous and with plenty of musical variety to keep things interesting, Venice is Sinking consistently succeed in recapturing the shoegazer stylings of the early 90's.

The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Red Eyed Soul

The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Red Eyed Soul
(2006, Chunksaah Records)

This is the kind of band that I quickly find myself falling in love with. The World/Inferno Friendship Society is eclectic, vibrant, festive, soulful, irrevrent, creative and generally radiates good times. The band, which employs only two permanent members but may contain as many as twelve at any given time, has been around for several years, entreated the world with a few releases and converted a gracious plenty showgoers into devoted followers.
The players and their truckload of various instruments are tight and together in that non-clinical, feels-like-it's-natural sort of way. At first the vocal stylings of the frontman/ringmaster guy (sorry, there were no credits on my copy) seemed much too white bread for the musicians' jazzy, art-punk mayhem. However, after a couple listens I really couldn't imagine the words being presented any other way. Everything about The Society (as we'll refer to them henceforth) is just that infectious.
As one of the original purveyors of cabaret punk, The Society mix all the fun of a Gypsy Halloween carnival with pop melodies and punk attitudes to summon forth a funtastically danceable anarchy. This new album is somewhat lacking in the punk department, leaning more heavily on body moving theatrics and orchestration but Red Eyed Soul is still a slap in the face of convention. It may not have the frantic insanity of past releases and it may incorperate more ambitious musicianship but there is still a floor stomping good time to be had.

Conner - Hello Graphic Missile

Conner - Hello Graphic Missile
(2006, Sonic Boom Recordings)

The comparisons and likenesses applied to the Lawrence, Kansas quartet Conner are true and accurate but at the same time somewhat misleading. They do belong in the same bullpen as The Strokes, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand and dozens of other danceable rock revivalists. The mislead is that, while most of their compatriates are all forced swagger and no substance, Conner skips the posturing and just delivers damn good songs. The swaggering coolness is just gravy.
Compiling the best tracks from the band's first two self released albums, Hello Graphic Missile is Conner's first attempt to reach a national audience. Soundwise, the influences vary from T-Rex to Gang of Four to a little bit of Rolling Stones boiled down into modern indie rock structures. Phil Bonahoom's plump basslines bounce along with Bryce Boley's no-nonsense dance/rock beats. The guitars, provided by Tom Wagner and James Duft, marry straightforeward riffage with memorable melodies for a result that is complex but never degenerating into art-wank. Duft's vocals are certainly affected in that Brit Glam / New Wave fashion that The Strokes brought back into vogue.
The initial gut reaction to Conner may be to dismiss them as another face in the crowd of an already overpopulated sub-genre but there is honestly something more to this band. Conner proves that style doesn't necessarily have to mean formula. A band can have a definite sound and still do more than one thing. What it all comes down to is that Conner offers a joyful affirmation of everything that is right about the whole dancey/rock/new wave revival thing. What's more, they're better than most of their fellows and as good as the best.

Widget

I've got a widget. A brown furry widget that lives in a shoe. I downloaded him from Apple. He likes brown rice and potted meat and publishes posts to Blogger from my swanky widget thingie on OSX. I'm typing on my widget right now. Hold still widget. You can get your own brown fuzzy widget here... www.google.com/macwidgets/

Now I can drunk post even easier, not that I'm drunk now, I just saying, though my widget tells me to have a beer. I'm at work Widget, I tell him. But he doesn't care. He mocks me and has now crashed. So maybe my Widget isn't worth downloading. I'll give Widget another try.

World/Inferno Friendship Society playing in Asheville on Sunday

Don't forget that Sunday night, July 23rd is your chance to enjoy the cabaret/punk stylings of The World/Inferno Friendship Society at Joli Rouge. Here's what their Wikipedia entry says:

"A rotating cabaret of punk/klezmer/gospel featuring horns, piano, guitar, a number of percussionists, as well as a variety of other instruments, such as accordion, xylophone and orchestra bells. All of this adds up to a mayhem-inducing live presence.
The band has historically had over 30 members, including former members of Dexy's Midnight Runners. Usually one can expect to see about nine or ten members on-stage when they perform. The group is led by singer Jack Terricloth and drummer Benjamin Kotch, who have been the most constant members throughout the group's history.
Their annual Halloween show, Hallowmas, is usually their biggest show of the year and the group tries to make it a memorable event with such things as half the band and most of the audience marching down the street, pumpkins held aloft, during the last (and hallmark) song, Pumpkin Time, which references The Great Pumpkin of Peanuts fame. Pumpkin Time has also featured dangerous, home-made pyrotechnical displays, flying band members, enough candy corn to form a thick sludge under the dancing feet of the crowd, burned effigies, or terrifying, wall-sized singing apparitions."

You can also learn more at www.worldinferno.com

We're Seeking Writers

We're looking for writers. Funny writers. Politics, Local (Asheville N.C.) Humor, Features, Current Events, Inane Scribblings are all welcome, but must be funny. If you'd like to be published online, have no use for money, and can write things that make us laugh, then we would love to hear from you. Send submissions to captainspiffo@hotmail.com

New songs on the jukebox

Howdy folks, just letting you know that we've changed the songs over at the website. We've now got songs by cinemechanica, final fantasy, about and Candy Bars. You can find 'em here: http://www.ashevilledisclaimer.com/music/

Three more days to see The Devil and Daniel Johnston

I saw this at the Fine Arts Theater last night and it was fan-freaking-tastic. It will only be playing through Thursday here in Asheville so get thee to see it. If your unfamiliar with Johnston or the film then go here and be informed: http://www.sonyclassics.com/devilanddaniel/

Cracker is to play Belle Chere

I just got a tip from one of my contacts that David Lowry and company will be playing in Asheville on Saturday July 29th as part of the Belle Chere city festival thingy. This will be their only show in NC in support of the new album Greenland.

Album Review: Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
(2006, Tomlab)

When The Arcade Fire came through town a couple years ago, their string arranger and touring violinist Owen Pallett also served as opening act under the moniker of Final Fantasy. The crowd loved his geekishly sincere songs about romance, magic, myth and video games. Many of us eagerly bought copies of his album, ...Has a Good Home!!!!!!!!!!, but were a bit disappointed that the recording didn't capture the creativity and wonder of his live set. It was pretty good but seemed hastily recorded and had little variety although there were a couple stand out tracks. Now Pallett is back with a bigger budget and sharpened skills. From the opening bars of He Poos Clouds, it's clear that the ante is being uped.
There's more of everything on He Poos Clouds. More orchestration, a greater variety of instruments with highly nuanced arrangement, better production values, more creativity, more melody and generally more realized potential. Pallett's loveably absurd pretenses are also magnified, the recording itself is a concept album based on the 8 schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons. The title is a sillified reference referrence to some mystical proverb or such.
As could be expected, the primary instruments are strings. This time he brings in an entire quartet as well as quite a bit of harpsichord, piano and percussion. Not so many effects pedals and tape loopings I'm afraid. Don't mislabel this as chamber-pop though. The instrumental choices may imply it and at times even sound it but each song creates it's own nitch with the sound without really adhering to any one genre. To say it another way, the writing style changes even if the instruments don't.
Whereas ...Has A Good Home!!!!! mostly sounds the same, things get a bit diversified here. Some tracks like "I'm Afraid of Japan" sound as if they're composed for quartet, others such as "Song Song Song" and "This Lamb Sells Condos" are more like pop songs that've been adapted. With different instruments a song like "Many Lives -> 49" would be a riff-heavy rocker.
Did I mention that the guy has an amazing voice yet? He does. It's youthful yet seasoned and endlessly emotive, swoonworthy even. It can deliver lines such as, "When his massive genitals refuse to co-operate no amount of therapy can hope to save him marriage.", with the utmost sincerity. With that emo hair and his gayness I'm suprised he isn't a bigger hit on the Myspace circuit.

Album Review: Cinemechanica - The Martial Arts

Cinemechanica - The Martial Arts
(2006, Hello Sir Records)

Much like Nashville, our friends to the south in Athens, Ga have been busy adding a new chapter to their town's already rich musical history. In the last year bands like Ham1 and Untied States have chipped away at the musical preconceptions most listeners have about Athens. A major player in the current musical scenery is Hello Sir Records, the owners of which perform in one of the labels finest bands, Cinemechanica.
I was wondering when the first of the summertime-road trip albums would get here. The ones you pop in on a long distance drive with friends exclaiming, "Holy Shit! You HAVE hear this!" Then Cinemechanica's debut, The Martial Arts, came along and I stopped wondering.
Embodying a veritable avalanche of energetic riffs and intense rhythms, Cinemechanica are usually filed into genres with the prefix "post". Dueling guitars intertwine, race along together and then unexpectedly diverge summoning order from chaos and then nimbly diving back into chaos. The guitars may be the stars of the show here but the rhythm section is there to underline and punctuate every step of the way. The drums produce a controlled frenzy of snare and cymbal that never drowns out the prominently powerful bass. As for the vocals, they are of the screamin', yellin', make my throat hurt if I try to sing along variety.
The running time may seem brief clocking in at just over 31 minutes, but there is so much energy exuberated in that time that you may need a nap afterward. Every second of The Martial Arts demands your attention. Every riff and abrupt change wants to be the one you remember. These are songs for folks who like their riffs to come fast and furious and seldom pause for a breath.
Cinemechanica's frantic gutar work and masterful execution of complex time changes often invites comparisons to bands like Drive Like Jehu, Q and Not U, Faraquet and Don Caballero. I'll leave the genre classification to you people, just know that Cinemechanica is loud, fast, complex and will kick your indie/emo ass. Also they have given us THE guitar album of summer 2006. So far at least.

Mt. Egypt and Band of Horses at the Grey Eagle tonight, June 19

Hey all you hep cats. Don't forget that there's a damn good show at The Grey Eagle tonight (June 19th) with....

...Mt. Egypt

"Travis Graves is the singer/songwriter/frontman/forest ranger for Mt. Egypt, a band of honesty, sensitivity, romance and greatness that nods its musical head in the direction of The Flaming Lips, Willie Nelson, The Walkmen, Cat Power, Will Oldham, James Mercer, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen."

..and Band of Horses

"Guitarist/vocalist Ben Bridwell and guitarist Mat Brooke formed Band of Horses in 2004, after the dissolution of their nearly ten-year run in northwest melancholic darlings Carissa's Wierd. Carissa's Wierd trafficked in sadly beautiful orchestral pop, whose songs told unflinching stories of heartbreak and loss, leavened with defeatist humor. And, Band of Horses rises from the ashes of that well-loved and short-lived band. After playing music with each other for over a decade, Bridwell and Brooke picked up together again when Bridwell began fleshing out his compositions post-Carissa's. "It was really just a natural thing we started doing," explains Bridwell. Buoyed by Bridwell's warm, reverb-heavy vocals (which strangely channel a dichotomous blend of Wayne Coyne, Brian Wilson and Doug Martsch,) Band of Horses' woodsy, dreamy songs ooze with amorphous tension, longing and hope."

New Al Qaeda Head Deemed to Have Sufficient “Crazy-Eyes” to Run Organization.

Asheville Disclaimer News - June 15, 2006: 2:17 PM EDT- Days after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a press release announcing its new leader Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Members of Al Qaeda are very excited, but are wondering if he will maintain their current sick-day policy or get rid of Hawaiian burqa Fridays.

“Regardless of his leadership skills," said an al Qaeda spokesman, "we felt he had mastered the crazy eye needed to be a great al Qaeda leader. Leadership skills are great, but when you’re cutting the head off a hostage on TV, it’s really about the look. Even more than that, it’s about that “crazy eye” look. We think he’s nailed it.”

In a press release by al-Masri himself, he said that his past beheading experience, his many terrorist workshops, and his BA in Infidel Destruction and The Explosive Arts lets him bring to the table a cache of valuable work experience, not to mention a face full of “crazy eye”.

“I look forward to bringing al Qaeda in Iraq into the new millennium. I see our beheading output tripling. I see many new things exploding. It’s really an exciting time to be in Iraq. I look forward to the short time I have left before I’m martyred by a large American bomb. ”

Album Review; About - Bongo

About - Bongo
(2006, Cock Rock Disco)

A glance at the cover of Bongo would indicate that it is maybe the product of a rap/rock outfit from your local high school. That assumption is not the least bit accurate by the way. Those poorly drawn animal heads pasted on heroin chic bodies merely represent the cut & paste, deconstructionist nature of the album in question.
About is not a band but in fact a studio and stage project by Amsterdam's own Rutger Hoedemaekers. The album Bongo is the result of three years and several collapsed lungs worth of work.
High energy, creative and catchy to the extreme, Hoedemakers rearranges samples and snippets of collected sounds and lays them next to his own recorded material for an eclectic, indie/electro fun fest. About comes across as playfully disjointed with the starts and stops and the hopping of genres between tracks. That incongruity never really disrupts the pop aesthetic of each individual song however. Trendy as the style is, I can't deny that Bongo is as anjoyable as anything the genre has to offer.
The caveat emptor on this one is that the album comes with a mere 32 minute running time and five minutes of that is cluttered, pointless filler. Songs like " Furry Dice (dangling from the guitar)" and "Boo (Hoo)" are pointless excursions and serve no purpose other than boosting the album's playing length over half an hour.
Still, all gripes about the filler aside Bongo is, for the most part, one catchily dancetastic release. I plan to use most of these songs on various summer mixes for family and friends. However it would've been tighter and had more impact as an EP.

Album Review: Candy Bars

Candy Bars - On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation
(2006, New Granada Records)

I don't even know where to start. Most people read the first few scentences of an album review, just enough to get the gist of a band's basic style, and then move on. That would be the wrong thing to do in this case. You see a certain musical trio from Tampa called Candy Bars has come along with a debut album that is completely one thing without be everything you're tired of about that one thing. That one thing (and stick with me to the end on this) is dreamy, orchestral dream pop.
You'd be right to say that the genre's resurgence is getting old fast. Most of the groups sound identical and are steeped in cliche. What Candy Bars reminds us is that ANY genre, no matter how stagnant, still has the potential to be thrilling and vital as long as there is genuine effort by the artist to find his or her own voice. In the case of Candy Bars that voice is the menacingly eerie whisper of vocalist Daniel Martinez.
With their debut, On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation, the members of Candy Bars have restored some of the mystery to psychodellic pop. They've made a melancholy album of remarkable textural depth that sinks its hooks deeper into your heart with each repeat listening. The music swells and unfurls in a breathingly loose and organic fashion without transgressing into long-winded freeform boredom. The core instrumentation consists of guitar, drums and cello although there's plenty of auxillary layering throughout the album's 11 tracks making On Cutting Ti-Gers far more rewarding through the magic of stereo headphones.
As for the Martinez's lyrics, they almost make sense some of the time and then suddenly flee from grasp and into a surreal, semi-decipherable haze. With the typical passage being in the vein of, "A closed-eye Houdini with a deck of breath plays silk harp in the morning." you should know that these words have no intention of revealing any sort of meaning. Their true function is that of conjuring of vivid but mysterious imagery which may sort of allude to whatever the song is about if indeed it is about anything....ahem.
At it's lowest point On Cutting Ti-Gers... is still a damn good recording and although the album's second half isn't nearly as rivetting as the first, there's still quite a bit of melody and dreaminess to be enjoyed. It isn't quite slowcore, it isn't quite psychodellia and it isn't quite chamber pop but Candy Bars incorperates elements of all three genres into something at once distinctive and familiar.

Wes McDonald playing this Saturday

Hey folks, just letting you know that Wes McDonald will be playing at Jack of the Wood this coming Saturday (June 10th). If you're unfamiliar with his rock stylings then scroll down and read my review of his new album. Better yet drop by the Disclaimer website website www.ashevilledisclaimer.com and listen to his songs on the music page's jukebox.

Album Review; 13 Ghosts - Cicada

13 Ghosts - Cicada
(2006, Skybucket Records)

13 Ghosts didn't exist in its current form until nearly a decade after its inception under a different name. The members came together in 1990, played around for a couple years and then scattered until the 1998 death of the original bass player. The two remaining members, Brad Armstrong and Buzz Russell, rekindled their musical partnership the day of their friend's funeral in an attempt to exorcise their own grief. The resulting recordings have never been released but Armstrong and Russell went on to make three proper albums and two EP's. Their third album, Cicada, came out a couple years ago with limited distribution. Now Skybucket Records has come along to bring Cicada to the rest of the country.
The thing about Cicada is that it does not sound like a band's third album. It has the kind of go-for-broke-and-throw-every-passing-idea-into-the-mix quality that most bands shed on their first album. Americana, lo-fidelity cut and paste arrangements, laid back pop, old-timey spirituals, the occasional drum machine, pedal hopping indie rock and straightforeward country all come into stylistic play as Cicada meanders through it's 60 odd minutes on your stereo. Disjointed? Yep! Unfocused? You betcha, but something about 13 Ghosts' complete disregard for clarity makes the album all the more worthwhile.
13 Ghosts' genre-hopping never comes off as forced or desperate. The songs sound natural and perfectly fit into the skin of whatever style they happen to be presented in. This bullseye faithfulness to far-flung sensibilities is no doubt a byproduct of the rotating asseblage of 20 or so contributing musicians who appear on the album. Buried in the ranks are quite a few recognizable names including Daniel Johnston and Azure Ray's Maria Taylor.
While Cicada never jells stylisticly, it certainly does so thematically. I believe it's a concept album, but about what I have no idea. I do know that it is broken into two parts and many songs examine life cut short by untimely death or changed in an instant by unforseen events. The songs themselves often cut off suddenly and immediately throwing the listener into new territory with little time to adjust. 13 Ghosts sounds less like a band and more like a friendly neighborhood recording project with too much talent to keep among friends, Armstrong and Russell would be wise to let it remain that way.

DVD Review - The Passenger (1975)

The Passenger
(1975 - Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

To call the 1975 masterpiece, The Passenger, an existential thriller is mostly correct. Is it existential? Oh sweet Christmas yes! This is Michelangelo Antonioni after all, the man who made Blow Up, La Notte and L'Aventura. A man whose career-long obsession with identity and alienation produced some of the most enigmatic and discussed films ever made. Then there is the "thriller" part of the moniker.
What elements of a thriller do we have? Do we have a hot young star on the rise? Yes, we have Jack Nicholson at his absolute peak, smack dab between Chinatown and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. We've also got; international intrigue, potentially fatal mistaken identity and an alluring young woman who may provide some steamy answers. However, this is an Antonioni film, the man never had much interest in telling a conventional story. The Passenger, like most of the director's other films isn't about the plot, it's about something much bigger.
Jack Nicholson plays David Locke, a London-based journalist working North Africa. When a fellow traveller named Robinson dies in the next hotel room over, Locke impulsively switches information with the man he barely knows and assumes his identity. Keeping the appointments in Robinson's notebook, Locke revels in what he thinks is a newfound freedom from the stuffy confines of his old life. What he doesn't know is that Robinson was an arms dealer and there are some mighty dangerous folks looking for him. Soon he meets a beautiful young girl, identified in the credits only as "The Girl", and the two trot the globe attempting to escape themselves and the people chasing them.
For an Antonioni film that's a hell of alot of story, but don't worry it unfolds at a snail's pace. Even the chase scene seems poderous and slow. Then again we don't watch Antonioni for mind blowing action. His films are for the most patient of viewers. The story and the people and the dialogue are merely set-pieces, they are only important in their relationship to the world around them. The Passenger's central theme is the desire to be free of the life you have made. While driving down the road in one scene the girl asks Locke, "What are you running from?" Locke tells her to put her back to the dashboard. She does so and watches the road behind them stretch into the distance.
As in other Antonioni films there are no easy answers. The body of the film is constructed and layered in such a way that the central theme is explored in great depth but the resolution is ultimately up to the viewer to put together. In The Passenger's legendary 7 minute, one shot final scene, everything unfolds silently, beautifully and with the kind of tension and release that only a master like Antonioni could build and control.
This is the very first time The Passenger has been available on DVD or available at all in its original restored length. I really wish Criterion had picked this one up and given it the full treatment. The transer is good but nowhere near the level that a film of such scope and beauty demands. There are some nice extras including a rare commentary by Jack Nicholson himself who, although not what you would call "chatty", is clearly in awe of Antonioni and regards his own appearance in one of the director's masterpieces with much pride.

Hazard County Girls - Divine Armor

Hazard County Girls - Divine Armor
(2006, Rev'd Up Records)

Straight outta bayou country, these three ladies power things up with pounding drums, sultry vocals and gut crunching riffage. After losing their bass player to Nashville Pussy and endless delays resulting from that Katrina storm, Hazard County Girls finally have their second full length release out for people to hear. The result is a mixed bag of fuzz, melody and old fashioned fanny kicking.
Having made the rounds opening for the likes of Hank lll and Rasputina you know to expect an ominous, southern gothic brooding to their sound. Add to that some heavy fuzz with steady mid-tempo riffs and you've got some pulsing black magic melodies to make the stoners happy. Although they seem to be labelled a "female Black Sabbath", Hazard County Girls actually sound more like a doom rock version of Throwing Muses.
Christy Kanes' raspy voice has a darkly coy sensuality and for all the attention paid to pounding drums and chug-a-chugging guitars there is a remarkable amount of melody on Divine Armor. Songs like "Fine Lines" and "Insect" take the band's driving darkness into more restrained and melodic territory with stunning results.
Unfortunately the album does drag occasionally in its second half as some of the more unremarkable tracks go on a couple minutes too long with few dynamic changes. That being said, Divine Armor's high points thankfully overwhelm those few low ones.

Untied States - Retail Detail

Untied States - Retail Detail
(2006, Self Released)

In modern music, nothing should be cherished so much as the unexpected. Surprises are rare things these days musically speaking. Most songs, and in some cases entire albums, can be predicted by the attentive listener after hearing just a couple bars. Fortunately Atlanta's Untied States have successfully incorperated enough imagination on their second full length, Retail Detail, to keep even the most jaded listeners guessing as to what is coming next.
Born of the near life-long friendship of Colin Arnstein and Skip Engelbrecht, Untied States presents an intriguing pastiche of incongruous parts and pieces jammed together to somehow form a satifying disarray. The 12 tracks on Retail Detail are experimental without resorting to drone or feedback, dissonant without sounding atonal and oddly melodic without sounding formulaic.
There IS structure and cohesion here but it's a different kind of structure, one that hinges on agressively shifting time signatures and jarring changes in tone. It's the kind of giddy inventiveness you'd find with Deerhoof, US Maple or early Sonic Youth. The songs themselves rarely sound like one thing through their short lives. Untied States keep things fresh by switching gears often although there are a couple songs such as "My Cause is My Curse" where the deconstruction slows down a bit to allow for a more traditional post-punk experience.
Although theres quite alot of sonic juxtaposition on Retail Detail, things never degenerate into cacauphanic mess of noise without reason. When two conflicting sections are jammed against one another they simply create tension and thankfully not a mess. Even though there are heaping loads of art flying around on this album it's at least been tethered to a very strong leash. Energetic, engaging and hugely satisfying, Untied States haven't come to bury the A,A,B,A song structure, just to rebel against it a little.

Ian Love - S/T

Ian Love - ST
(2006 - Limekiln Records)

You may not know is name but Ian Love has been on the NYC music scene for quite a while. He's been in hardore bands and emo bands and toured Europe a few times and been addicted to heroin and essentially lived a colorful and storied life. With his first solo effort however he shows himself as a family man who has finally settled into a life worth holding on to.
Being in a band is great. Being in several bands is also great. Trouble is that musically you can never really know much about youself until you sit down alone and at home with the recodring device of your choice to see what comes out. That's what love has done here, writing and recording these ten songs in the private company of his wife and daughter. He understands how many times he's almost thrown his life away to hard living. These songs mean to bury that old life for good and show the greatfulness he has to still be around for the life of a family man.
But what does it sound like? For one thing it doesn't sound for one second like it was recorded at home. The sound quality is crisp and clean. Love's gentle, family man vocals intimately glide across a tasteful blend of acoustic guitar, piano, mellotron and whatever else he decides to embellish with. When I say gentle vocals I don't mean weary, dour and self-indulgent. I mean a gentle with a spark of excitement, kind of like he's singing these songs directly to his daughter. Musically he keeps things well clear of of folkiness favoring straightforewaryd melodies with subtle and occasionally intricate embellishments.
This is not a perfect album. It's not intended to be. It is in fact a personal act of catharsis embracing beauty along with the blemishes. Love has come through a period of searching and self-destruction to find himself safe, happy and in love. Those previous life experiences are recounted along the way and incorperated into the albums overall theme of joy to have finally found a life worth living.

What’s the world coming to, when a man can’t mutilate the genitals of another man in the privacy of his own home.

By Philmore McSnaggin

Some people might call me crazy, even old-fashioned, but I thought I was living in the United States of America. Am I right? I just read in the Citizen-Times that two local men were arrested for nothing more than cutting the penis off of other men. I'm sorry folks, but that's not the America I grew up in.

There use to be a time when one man could be another man's man-whore in the privacy of their home and that was okay. I remember the days when you could have gerbil spelunking nights and gag-ball tea parties and that was just fine and tootin'. I grew up with the typical barnyard antics, if you know what I mean, and my neighbors nary raised an eye. What happened to those days? Now a man goes to jail simply for mutilating the genitals and penis of another man? Outrageous! I guess if I dressed another man in leather, kept him in a cage and fed him only raw meat I'd be thrown in jail for that too?

Well folks, the terrorists have won. I was told 9/11 changed everything, but I didn't think it mean that I couldn't castrate a man in my kitchen with a Henkle without fear of prison time. For shame, America, for shame. Tonight, my man-whore and I will shed a tear in the dungeon before I start spanking him with a mounted squirrel ... in the privacy of my own house.

Westside Daredevils - Twilight Children

Westside Daredevils - Twilight Children
(2006, Self Released)

Knoxville's Westside Daredevils want to be your new favorite bubblegum-pop band. They've got alot going for them too; they've got three part vocal harmonies, melodious guitaristry and enough knowledge about how to put a song together to fill several books. They can indeed build a song. They can put all the parts in the right places and execute them flawlessly. Real fancy stuff too with all the frills and fun. The only problem is that is does feel like these songs have been constructed out of tried and true parts instead of being written to express a point of view.
When I say these boys know all the tricks, I mean, DAMN! If there were an MIT class about writing pop music then Brett Cassidy, Jeff Caudill and Gray Comber would be teaching it. They've got it down to a science. The problem is that the proceedings feel acedemic rather than resonant. After listening to their second album, Twilight Children, three times I couldn't readily recall a single song on it. I remembered thinking, "This reminds me of The Young Fresh Fellows or The Gin Blossoms."but couldn't really remember why. It just didn't stick with me.
Something of that may have to do with the impeccable clenliness of the album. The production is so clean as to be completely steril. Even the frequent distortion and occasional dissonance are squeeky clean, radio ready and pruned of the rough edges that would make them stand out.
Westside Daredevils have alot going on, good pop songs by excellent musicians.However there's no real identity. Twilight Children comes across like bar-bq chicken eaten with a knife and fork. The ingredients and flavor are there but it would be more satisfying if it were more messy.

Wes McDonald - 1:50 In The Furnace

Wes McDonald - 1:50 In The Furnace
(2006, Skybucket Records)

Wes McDonald is a man refreshingly in tune with his own sensibilities. He's had plenty of time to find his voice with three long-playing releases already under his belt. The songs on his new album 1:50 In The Furnace come across as impulsive, confident and natural, attempting to please no one but their creator. The results are enjoyably worthwhile only with a few missteps.
A couple decades ago Wes McDonald would've been a collage radio king. He'd be in heavy rotation on 120 Minutes and be a darling chick in a nest weaved by Paul Westerberg, Bob Mould and Michael Stipe. Although he seems to be lumped in with the Americana crowd these days , 1:50 In The Furnace is in fact just good old twangly jangly alternative rock from way back when it was still hip and novel to be labeled "Alternative". Listen to "Day One" and try to tell me I'm wrong.
"I Would Never" is an odd choice as a first track although it IS in tune with the individualistic, curve-ball nature of the album. However, it neither sets the stage nor launches you into the rowdy rawkus. It's a decent song, but it's place in the album makes it just be kind of...there with no sequential purpose. Things pick up quickly with the jangly rock of "Shot Stered" which springboards into the shining kinetic strength of "Chinese Rug".
McDonald's music is what we in the industry call "Badass". Songs meant to be mouthed with head nodding in time to the music and hand firmly clutching the working man's beer of your choice. Blue collar indie rock if you will. Catchy guitar riffs set to body moving beats and memorable vocal melodies delivered with raspy twang, damn good stuff.

Lylas - Lessons For Lovers

Lylas - Lessons For Lovers
(2006 - Ficticious Records)

Another exanple of an album coming out at just the right time of year. The days are longer. The sun is warmer. The evenings of hammocks, front porches and block parties are just beginning. In this lithe atmosphere, brimming with frivolity, the festively baroque chamber-pop stylings of Nasheville's Lylas seem as natural as the emerging greenery.
Referring to their first full-length release as unobtrusively pleasurable may seem condescending but it's not meant to be. Most of the songs on Lessons For Lovers jauntily drift by like a spring breeze and packing 16 tracks into a mere 35 minutes, it never wears out its welcome. Ignoring the frequently tragic nature of the lyrics, Lylas' music bounces by with an entrancing mix of Americana, Old English and 60's English pop stylings.
Delightful as it is as a background piece for those Springtime evenings on the porch, Lessons For Lovers also offers much to the attentive listener. Thoughtfully intricate arrangements showcase delicate melodies born of a plethora of various instrumentation. The results are memorable melodies, beautiful musical twists and at least two pop masterpieces; "His Master's Merriment" and "Years and Years".
Lylas seems like a band with alot of spark and hopefully long life. The constant associations with the likes of Donovan, Belle and Sebastian, The Kinks, The Clientele and The Ladybug Transistor are 100% warrented. Their music is very familiar and easily peggable but at least they're making an effort to bring something of their own to the table. It's not likely to bowl you over from the offset but there's alot of fragile beauty on Lessons For Lovers. Another nice addition to the New Nasheville rennaisance.

Listing Ship - Time to Dream

Listing Ship - Time to Dream
(2006 - True Classical CD's)

The first thing that I couldn't believe about Listing Ship was that they come from LA. They may possibly be part of a larger punkish, avant-folk-pop scene but I haven't heard sounds like these coming from that particular city in many a year. The second thing I couldn't believe was the discovery that Mike Watt plays bass on most of the album. If nobody told you, you'd never know. The third thing I couldn't believe was that this is their fourth album and yet I'd never heard of them. The internet, music journalists and even my friends in Southern Calli had failed to bring such a wonderful band to my attention.
Listing Ship is fronted by dual songwriters Lyman Chaffee and Heather Lockie and backed by an assemblage of friends and colleagues. Lockie's sprightly vocals carry an exquisitely sweet melodiousness. Sounding at times girlishly naive. Chaffee, by contrast, croons in a soothingly dour baritone comprable. Contrast, by the way, is the very heart of Listing Ship. True to the album's title, the songs of Time to Dream ebb and flow across the American subconscious in a dreamlike haze. With very few uninspired moments Chaffee and Lockie treat the listener to fractured fairy tales, laments, upbeat girly pop, odes, bluegrass ditties and French minstrel revues.
Theres more than a bit of cheekiness present on Time to Dream which thankfully remains innocent and steers well clear of the trappings of ironic posturing. Glancing at song titles like "The Temptation of Miss Piggy" and "Baise Ca" (French for "Fuck That") you know you're in the hands of musicians who are as fun and irreverent as they are serious and proficient. The occasional dashes of pretense seem to deprecate themselves on the spot.
As backing musicians Lockie and Julie Carpenter (Listing Ship's violinist) have performed string arrangements for everone from Lydia Lunch to Brian Wilson to Dave Pajo to Sparklehorse to Arthur Lee of the band Love. Listing Ship seems to smirk at its own pedigree however. Sure they're fantastic musicians with deep respect for American musical traditions but that doesn't mean they can't let their silliness come out occasionally.

Nothing Painted Blue - Taste the Flavor

Nothing Painted Blue - Taste the Flavor
(2005 - Shrimper Records)

Let's not split hairs, Nothing Painted Blue is my favorite band of all time. I could easily kick out a long form essay on why Franklin Bruno is the most criminally underrated songwriter of the last couple decades. He's been described as witty, brainy, literary, scholarly, mathy, jaded, playfully morbid, hopelessly romantic and relentlessly catchy. In addition to his work with NPB he's recorded several solo albums, been in The Extra Glenns with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and been the subject of a tribute album by Jenny Toomey. None of the other stuff, good as it may be, has ever quite reached the heights of the band proper.
The poshumous Taste the Flavor is arguably NPB's sixth album, although technically it's the fifth. Rarities compilations don't count for us geeks. On it, we get glimpses and nods to the band's various stages and incarnations. There's the noisely impetuous, Minutemen inspired, power pop of the early days with songs like "Self-contained" and "Striver", all the way to the more mature subtlety of "Dry Spell" or "Longer Leash". Through it all the band reenforces its command of all things catchy with a flair for jaded empathy. With this release, more than any other since the early days, the emphasis is on immediacy and performance rather than polish and refined overdubs.
The thing about Bruno's lyrics, brainy though they may be, is that they never get in the way of the song. If anything the words enhance the music. He doesn't just jam a bunch of overly long words or far-flung referrences in just for the hell of it. Instead he has a knack for twisting a few simple words, and even goofily simple rhymes into complex metaphors about unrequited love, frustration and fatalistic resign without ever actually sounding depressed. Instead of sounding like they're trying to be clever, they just ARE clever while also being unapologetically sincere and always keeping the listener emotionally engaged.
On one hand I'm kind of sad that this will be the last official NPB album. On the other hand I never really expected it to come out. It has been over seven years since their last release. All in all it makes for a fine curtain call in a near flawless career.
To hear song snippets go here!

Bin Laden Livens Up Videos with Bloopers and Pranks

After acknowledging a drop in ratings to his videos, a spokesman for Bin Laden announced that he is exploring new avenues to get his message out.

“We’ve really dropped in the 18 to 34 demographic. So we thought we’d try to show the funny side of terror,” said an un-named spokesman for Bin laden. “You get these al-Qaeda members together anything can happen. It's as easy as turning on the camera and let the hilarity insue.”

Followers in the Middle East and enemies in the West will see a lighter side of Bin Laden. On one out-take he fumbles, saying,”...the lintrails of the zio…” to which he chuckles and you can hear the camera man laugh. “Wait... did I say lintrails?” Bin Laden asks looking around. “I meant to say, may the entrails of the zionist pig dogs flow through the bloody streets of America… geesh I’m really behind on my dialysis.”

Also debuting is an al-Qaeda version of "Punk’d" called “You’ve been Fatwa’d!” From exploding sandwiches to a suicide bomber who’s vest was rigged not to explode but rather to make embarrassing farting noises, you’ll see al-Qaeda members prank each other. From dressing a member up to look like an American and dropping him off in Iraq, to a television set that levels a three story building.

“It’s Benny Hill meets Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” says the al-Qaeda spokesman. “Great stuff. And they’ll be the traditional threats of world violence and imminient detruction we’ve all come to love and expect. So really, it’s the best of both of worlds.”

Conservative PBS Programming Shake Up?

Public television announced that it will shake up PBS’s core children’s programming for all public television stations. A spokesman for PBS says that these changes are unrelated to the controversy going on with the corporation and do not reflect a shift to the right.

Of the shows to be dropped, Travels with Buster was the first to get cut. "It has nothing to do with the showing of a gay couple, it has to do with fund cutting, ratings and we think that it’s dangerous for kids to believe a rabbit can fly a plane.”

DragonTales has been cut, said the spokesman.” We don’t believe that “magic” or any hints toward fictional creatures like “dinosaurs” have any place on our public airwaves.

A new segment will be added to Sesame Street, Hardline with Bigbird. "Here we'll have a roundtable with Cookie Monster, Grouch and a special guest where current topics like activist judges, abortion and gay rights will be tackled. The first new guest will be Karl Rove. Brought to you by the letter W."

Also a new Muppet Jesus will be added to the Sesame Street line along with his sidekick Cruci the Crucifix.

“We're very excited. The Jesus segment will be a song-filled romp around the world, discovering new religions and teaching why each of them is a one-way ticket to hell."

“All of these changes are standard throughout the year as we evaluate the appeal of our shows,” the spokesman said. “Contrary to many reports from the mainstream media, it is not influenced by conservatives. There are many other self-reflective questions we will be asking in the future like, what’s the deal with all these colored people on PBS? We’re going to need to do something about that.”

Album Review: Dawn Smithson - Safer Here

Dawn Smithson - Safer Here
(2005, Kranky)

After a six year hiatus from recording, former Jessamine bassist Dawn Smithson has returned with a new collection of stark, intensely personal songs. It's clear from the beginning that she has no intention to forray back into the spacey psychodellia of her former band, although former bandmate Rex Ritter (also of Fontanelle) offers up accompanyment on "How Thoughtless".
Smithson's new songs are grounded in something darker. They exude lonliness and feel like they're trying to make sense of some unknown trauma. For the most part the music of Safer Here stays focused on Smithson's guitar and vocals. She also plays bass, accordion and keys on the album, but they only crop up as punctuation.
The lady herself has said she thinks the album is better listened to alone. I would go one step further and say that the Safer Here is better listened to while doing no activity other than listening to Safer Here. The music's gravity sucks everything else out of the room. It's hard enough to lift my arms to type these words while listening. Talking to another human? Forget it. As she plucks away at her seemingly frail arpeggiated dissonance, her words of stalwart survival demand every ounce of your attention. They offer cold comfort and on the odd occasion even hope.

Album Review: Paul Duncan - Be Careful What You Call Home

Paul Duncan - Be Careful What You Call Home
(2005, Hometapes)

The music of Paul Duncan draws you in with an intimacy that few artists posess. You feel welcome and comfortable which is odd considering that the running theme of Be Careful What You Call Home is dissatisfaction with and emotional distance from the place you are. What is a home? How do you connect with it? Do you have to go to it or create it where you are? What do you do when you HAVE created it and then one day look up to see that it holds nothing for you?
In working through these questions Duncan holds back alot from the listener. The words are sparse and vague. They couldn't do the subjectmatter justice anyway. Instead Duncan lets his music do most of the talking. Originally from an unnamed town in East Texas, He clings to his small town sensibilities while spinning them into big city arrangements. With the help of eight other musicians Duncan constructs intricate, yet unassuming, composition that never wear out their welcome. The longest track has a running time of only four and a half minutes. Occasionally traditional acoustic instruments meet with a bit of technological manipulation. Despite their complexity, the songs on Be Careful What You Call Home never become cluttered. The instruments always have room to breathe giving the songs an aspect of freedom and buoyancy.
On occasion Duncan endulges in some artsier flights of fancy. Nothing so obtuse as to disrupt the album's flow but it has insighted comparisons to Chicago musicians, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Sam Prekop. However Duncan's music never gives way to the stuffy pretense that his Chicagoan counterparts often revel in. Plus if you're absolutely starving for a new Iron & Wine long player, Be Careful What You Call Home is MORE than satisfactory to fill that void.

Blogger Posts 1000th Inane Article.

A milestone was reached in the blogosphere today. After waking up at noon, Chad Johnson posted his 1000th blog article to little fanfare. After rambling about Bush and the Iraq war, Johnson posted some pictures of his cat Taurus sleeping on the sofa. There were four comments, one from his mother, one from a friend in hopes of bringing visits to his own blog sexymanpoet.blogspot.com and two from Anonymous, who it turns out is Johnson himself.

"I am the master of Bloggiating, I made that term up myself. I drink about 10 cups of coffee and then I start with my Bloggerhea, that's taking what's in my head and sharing it with the world. I usually blog naked, it helps me think, and makes for easy transition to Pornalating. That's another term I made up myself."

“I think as a middle-age white male in America,” Chad continued, “I’ve got a different insight than what you might hear from MSM. That’s the Mainstream Media and they totally suck if you haven’t figured that out.”

A sample of his post titles are “Bush is Warmonger”, “Bush Lied”, “Warmonger Bush,” “Lying Warmonger Bush Lying.” And “Warmongering Liar Lying in Bush Waiting for War.”

“I’ve got the hits going now. I’m averaging 1200 hits a day. 1000 are mine, 195 are misdirected, but those last 5… those last 5 are people I’m connecting with. We're sharing. We’re Blogelating you know. I know I’m making a difference in the world and not just taking up space on a server. In fact, after this interview I’m going to blog about it. Probably title it “Bush Sucky Lying Liar War Mong Mong.”

Amish Girls Reach Across Cultural Divide

Susan Miller and Laura Brown have broken down the barriers of their radically different lives to show what can happen if people look beyond cultural and religious differences. Susan who is Amish from Western Pennsylvania has formed an unlikely friendship with Laura, an Amish woman from Eastern Pennsylvania. Though these groups rarely meet because of the week-long 120 mile trek, they keep in contact through letters and carrier pidgeon.

“They don’t let their differences keep them apart,” says Abraham Miller, Susan’s father. “Susan likes to churn butter with a oak spoon, where as Laura churns butter with a cedar spatula. Laura uses hemp line to mend her skirts where Susan uses cotton fiber. “It’s crazy I tell you,” says Susan’s father Abraham. “We tolerate Laura's alien ways, because it’s not one’s place to condemn a culture as foreign and sin-filled as hers. We leave that for God.”

Among other cultural differences, Susan rides a buggy to church where as Laura walks. You might be asking yourself, how do these girls find common ground?

“We try not to let the big differences get in the way. Because she’s so different, I learn more about myself. Though her usage of a butter churn her father made will condemn her to a fiery hell, I try not to let the stench of her sin get in the way of our friendship.”

“Susan fastens her cloths with buttons and her father wears one suspender not two. This unfortunately means she will become Satan fodder in the bowels of eternal hell,” says Laura, “but she makes me laugh and that’s what counts.”

Spreading the Christmas Love

by Artimus Peeflower

You know. It might just be the pint of Georgia Moon speaking but I love this time of year. I just got back from slaughtering a tree for Jesus, decorating it with Christmas lights, and forcing my child to sit and watch the pre-programmed 8-mode light display. "Look boy," I tell him. "You see that flashing tree? It died for Jesus and Jesus died for you, so recognize!"

I put it in the window so my sorry-ass neighbors can see that I’m bringing the Christmas cheer to my house and that warms the cockles of my motherfucking heart. "So shut up boy," I tell him. "Sit down and respect the fucking tree."

I put up a nativity scene in front of my house. I got the plastic Jesus, the Mary, and the Joseph. I got sheep, lambs, three wise men, all that crap. My neighbor was looking at it when he was leaving his house and I wanted to spread the holiday cheer so I said, “That’s Jesus you fucking towel head. He puts the Christ in Christmas. Go to church sometime and you might learn something!” It's important to give back to the community like that.

Me and my buddies have a carolling group going. We go out and sing all the Christmas favorites. Jingles Bells, Rudolph, Hark the herald angles sing fa la la la la motherfucking la! There’s nothing better than ending a good night out drinking with your buddies than singing in front of somebody’s house at four in the morning. It’s like being awakened by angels.

I know there’s Channuka, Kwanza and all that crap. That’s cute and all, but nothing captures the message of Christmas like Christmas. I put a 25-foot tall crucifix on my front yard and wrapped it in blinking icicle lights. On top is Santa and his reindeer and a 32 million-watt light that shines down on my nativity scene like the eye of God. That’s what it’s all about really. Jesus, lights, dead trees, fat men in red suits breaking into your house, and brotherly love... not in that gay way though. So enjoy the holidays folks and respect the fucking tree!

Reviews of The Happy Bullets and The Tah-Dahs

The Happy Bullets - The Vice and Virtue Ministry / The Tah-Dahs - Le Fun
(2005, Undeniable Records)

I am officially declaring the Dallas based Undeniable Records as my new favorite label in the world. With their first two releases they've injected some life into what is becoming, quite frankly, a stagnant indie scene. Niether The Happy Bullets nor The Tah-Dahs are revolutionary, or even all that original but both bands ARE infectiously catchy, extremely clever and just plain fun. Both tackle mundane, sometimes outright depressing, subjects with a skip and a whistle making the plight of their songs' subjects seem even more futile.

The Happy Bullets keenly balance the serious and the whimsical. Their songs are like 3 minute snapshots of other people's lives. The characters in their stories are mostly oblivious to the pathetic state of their lives. An official of the Department of Weights and Measures insists that he's "The only one standing in the way of total chaos." A young man forces himself to resign his dreams as he learns to love the factory. A Suburban housewife gets a brief glimps of the apocolypse. Although the lyrics are written in character they could apply to pretty much anyone's life.

With duel songwriters, the musical stylings on The Vice and Virtue Ministry switch tracks constantly. It's obvious from the title and cover art that Jason Roberts and Tim Ruble have something of an affinity for Brit-pop. The Kinks are there, only half-buried in the mix. The track "Mr. Gray" is an answer to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" in Jeff Lynn's own style. If everyone's so happy to see Mr. Blue Sky then how must Mr. Gray feel? The Happy Bullets have other tricks too. The individual song's style is taylored to it's character. There's a bit of The Shins, The Decemberests and bassist Andrea Roberts offers a portion of girlie pop a la Cub or Heavenly. Producer Stuart Sikes (Modest Mouse, The Walkmen, White Stripes, etc…) adds a bit of unobtrusive polish and rounds things out nicely.

The Tah-Dahs are no less jauntly but their influences seem to be more homegrown. They can deliver a damn good song even if the attempts at lyrical cleverness sometimes fall flat. Not everyone can be Franklin Bruno. Still, the cheekiness and obscure movie referrences on Le Fun are undeniably charming and when lyricist Roy Ivy plays the words just right you realise how much better the band is going to get. For now the main concern is girls. Ivy may sing about making mix tapes or dismissing cute, hipster bands but at the gooey center of every track is yet another girl.

Stylisticly The Tah-Dahs' aim is fairly true. Taking elements of The Modern Lovers, The Feelies and The Pixies, they twist the these tales of frustrated adolescence into solidly well-crafted songs. Le Fun may begin as a glorified prom soundtrack but by the end proves itself to be a cleverly enjoyable romp that lusts to reclaim the adventurous goofiness of youthful inexperience. No it's not a perfect album but it shines often and can perk you right up for the drive to work or school or wherever it is you people go.

Emails from Michael Brown at FEMA During Katrina

From: Brown, Michael D.
Sent: Wendesday, August 31, 2005
To: Grozny, Dan
Subject: Re: Help Required. Need More Supplies Immediately

Gotcha Dan. Hey check this picture out. It’s hilarious.

Fatgirlmotorcycle.gif

-------Original Message------
From: Grozny, Dan
Sent: Wendesday, August 31, 2005
To: Brown, Michael D.
Subject: Help Require More Supplies Immediately

Sir, we are in desparate need. Food supplies are running out. People are about to riot. Dead are piled on the street. No phone connectivity. Please hurry, we need help now!



_______________________________________


From: Brown, Michael D.
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005
To: Green, Sally
Subject: Re: New Orleans

I understand Sally. What is it exactly that you need me to do?


-------Original Message------
From: Green, Sally
Sent: Wendesday, August 31, 2005
To: Brown, Michael D.
Subject: New Orleans

There’s 1000-gallon tanker truck with much-needed water at the state line. it doesn’t know where to go. Please send word to the driver that it is badly needed here at the Convention Center in New Orleans.


_____________________________________



From: Brown, Michael D.
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005
To: Grozny, Dan
Subject: Re: Situation Deteriorating Quickly

What’s a levee? Look, I’ve got a big press conference right now. I bought a brand new blue button-down shirt for it and it looks fabulous. I think I’m going to WOW everyone! I see a big promotion coming out of this. Cross your fingers.


-------Original Message------
From: Grozny, Dan
Sent: Wendesday, August 31, 2005
To: Brown, Michael D.
Subject: Situation Deteriorating Quickly

The levee system has crumbled. Water is continuing to rush in. Please send for more help. People are drowning. Thousands still stranded on roof tops.

I Ain't Scared of No Bird Flu

By Ralph Breakwind

I guess have to start this by saying I love chickens. And by that I mean I really really love chickens... if you know what I'm saying. Some folks have been coming up to me lately saying Ralph, you’ve got stop hanging out at that chicken coop. The bird flu’s going around, the neighbors are talking, and you smell like bird. You know what I tell them, don’t put your hang-ups on me man. Don’t hold me down with your closed minds.

Have you ever felt the sensation of a full-body peck when you accidentally rolled naked over a pile of chicken feed and just happen to stumble into coup. Have you ever had a chicken give you “that look” you know what I’m saying, that “I won’t say no” stare? Have you ever witnessed chicken on chicken action? If you had, then you’d understand. If not, take your hateful stares elsewhere you fascist.

Now everyone’s hatin’ on the birds because of this bird flu. Saying Ralph you’re going get some disease hanging out with those chickens. You’re going to mutate that chicken virus until it goes airborne. Give me a break. Sure, I get the occasional rash and open sores, but have you ever been in the throes of passionate love and had your partner lay an egg on your chest? Have you? Until you do, you just won’t get it.

So you don't scare me with your little flu story. Just keep your hating ways to yourself. Until you can open your mind to all kinds of love then you’ll live in a dark world where a man’s wife leaves him just because she finds a chicken straddling his face in bed. I can’t help that I’m so enticing to the fine hens. I’m all about spreading the love. So remember, once you go chicken, nothing else is lickin’. Okay I need to work on that, but you get the idea.

Ask Arnold - in progress

Dear Arnold,
I’m worried I might be pregnant. It's very early, but are there certain signs to look for to see if I might be pregnant.
Cindy

Dear Cindy,
If you get fat, cry a lot, and your boyfriend stops calling, you might be pregnant. Or it could be that you’re not pregnant just fat, emotional and really annoying.

Dear Arnold,
I was told you can use vegetable shortening to cure diaper rash. Is that true?
Beth

Dear Beth,
I don’t know. Will pouring a bottle of whisky on my ball sack grow back the nut that got blown off at Da Kang? How about licking the hindquarters of an enchanted fairy who lives in an elm tree? I hear that clears up a raging case of gonorrea. You people are a bunch of idiots.

Dear Arnold,
My son wheezes a lot and has been diagnosed with Asthma. Are there some day-to-day things I can do to lessen the chances of an attack
Concerned


Dear Concerned,
There’s no such thing as asthma. If he's not hacking up yellowish-green phlegm 10 to 20 times a day his lungs are too dry and he needs to smoke more. The next time your son starts faking the wheezies, stick a cigarette in front of his face and tell him to suck it down. This builds up lung power and lubes the lungs with healing phelgm. Keep this up until he stops whining or passes out. Either way he'll feel better.

Dear Arnold,
One of my friend's children is the same age as my son, but she is already counting. They're both two and a half. Is my child behind?
Gertrude

Dear Gerturde,
I had a cousin who was late in learning to count. He drools a lot and keeps getting his hand caught in his own zipper. Not saying your kid will drool, but I’d keep him away from zippers just to be safe.

Dear Arnold,
I was thinking of modeling my child. She is quite unique and attractive. Do you have any suggestions of where to start?
Donna

Dear Donna,
I’ve got some news for you. Your kid’s about as unique as that wart growing on my ass. What makes you think the world cares about seeing your little angel dressed up like a midget hooker?