Telegraph

Anybody seen Joke Man lately?

Man, Telegraph is really falling apart.

A Skin, A Night

I got this a while back- a double disc of a documentary DVD about The National making "Boxer" called "A Skin, A Night" and an audio CD of B-sides, demos, and live tracks called "The Virginia EP". It is an unusual package showing a cover for the film on one side and a cover for the CD on the other. I saved the movie until I could watch it with some friends who were also interested, which I did a couple nights ago.

The DVD:

This is hardly a documentary. Just some footage of the National recording their masterpiece, but in the most mundane way (which is how recording is done), showing things like the bassist recording his plunk plunk plunk bass line to a tick tick tick clicktrack. This might be interesting to someone who's never seen recording done, but this kind of stuff is supper boring to me. This is supplemented by arty subway footage and psychedelic color swirls and photoshop tricks. The problems with this movie: 1. No narration. 2.During the arty 5-minute subway scenes, there would be no sound (?) , which left me and my four friends sitting in awkward silence watching the screen basically change colors like sunspots.... without any sound. If you're going to put sort of a visual art abstract piece for 10 excruciating minutes in the middle of a music documentary, play some music for corn sake!

The EP:

Not sure why they're calling this an EP, it has 12 songs on it. But they're brilliant. Well worth the price, even iff the movie is a toss-away. As a fan, I love the idea of collecting "lost songs" on hard copy (long live the CD!). Love this collection ending with the song "About Today", which asks the question, "How close am I... to losing you?" and contains the universally familiar dialog:

Hey, are you awake?
Yeah I'm right here.
Well, can I ask you about today?

Love that. Love the National's honesty. It kind of crescendos and the audience claps along and it's great. Great. Great. Great.

Pretty Amazing Performance

P.S. Has anyone tried backwards devilhorns yet?

Raise your hand...

...if you remember these Hamm's beer commercials on Saturday morning cartoons.

Fleet Foxes- "fleet foxes" review

This Fleet Foxes record was recommended to me by my friend, Ch, who always has some great music tips (but also loves the new Mariah Carey record). Well, at first I checked it out online and really wasn't that into the Fleet Foxes. They sort or sound like Band of Horses or My Morning Jacket (the cool kids say "MMJ"), but it never hits. You know the band never crashes in. Being a child of the late 80s and early 90s, I wait for every song to hit- for that moment when the chorus bursts in and I put up backwards devil horns (backwards devil horns are so much more satisfying- try it!). This never happens on the Fleet Foxes self-titled record. So I reported back to Ch that Fleet Foxes just didn't do it for me.

Later I was listening to my favorite podcast, All Songs Considered, and they featured a live performance of Fleet Foxes and I got super into it. No, it never hits. But the Fleet Foxes develop their anti-hooks around polyrhythms, unconventional song structures, and dark vocal harmony arrangements. In fact, this is a vocal record, where the instruments aren't really that essential and the unusual chords that the 3-4 vocalists make are very unusual- in the same way that Midlake had those crazy early Fleetwood Mack harmonies.

Anyway, after listening to the live performance, I was sold and bought the record yesterday. It's been on repeat rotation and we even played it at low volume while having dinner guests and it worked as great dinner music, because it sounds kind of like choral music. I really dig the whole other-wordly vibe that the lyrics give off. Again, it's very Midlake-ish in that way. It makes you feel like you're out in the woods in medieval times foraging for berries and herbs. So, I was wrong, the Fleet Foxes are right.

GOURDICULTURE !

Dear faithful readership,

I've decided to branch out and launch a new blog documenting my adventures and misadventures in growing gourds, curing them, and turning them into a variety of musical instruments. Rather than cluttering this, my music blog, with gardening info- I've decided to create a new blog called:

GOURDICULTURE

http://gourdiculture.blogspot.com/

Hayden: "in field and town" review

Hayden is one of those guys I've followed since I was a teenager. He's sort of the Canadian David Bazaan (of Pedro the Lion) with a Heart-of-Gold-era Neil Young thing going on. I've bought basically everything he's put out, which all has the common threads of being a little folky, all instruments recorded and performed by himself, bedroom-pop feel, etc., but this record was slated to be his "rock record" by journalists/bloggers. This album does not rock. It rolls in the way that Hayden must have rolled out of bed to press the record button while making this record. And that's not to put down the album. It just lulls at the same pace the last few records did and does not achieve the exititng variances of his first two full-lengths (1995's "Everything I Long For" had a Tom Waits rasp and 1998's "The Closer I Get" had sort of an indie-rock Pedro the Lion/Bedhead feel).

"Field and Town's" strong pieces are "Damn This Feeling", which is a simple piano tune where you can actually hear the pedal mechanism inside the piano (sounds like he stuck the mic right in the top of the upright), and the synth in "Worthy of your Esteem" provided the one fresh element on the record. "Did I Wake up Beside You?" has a syncopated electric guitar upstroke that pays homage to Neil's "Southern Man" The disappointment here is "Lonely Security Guard" whic fits the story-telling that Hayden likes to do, but it seems ill-conceived.

Folks, my recommendation is to go out and buy Hayden's "Live at Convocation Hall". It's a double disc live record that covers his best prior to 2002. I've written before on this blog that sometimes live records are better than "best-of" records and this is a fine example. It's just Hayden and a home-town crowd and the interaction between them. A wonderful double-record that I take on road trips and that I strongly recommend to those wanting to check out Hayden.

Amazing Starflyer 59 quote for their near-perfect album, "Americana"

"Time is all you need when you stop to think."