now playing:

[Nick Ink]

Brian McBride - The Effective Disconnect

I listened to this album this morning whilst walking down to the town and back for some essential foodstuffs and whatnot. Brian McBride is in Stars Of The Lid, of course, but here his source sounds, mostly strings, are far more easily identifiable and the phrasing and melodies a bit more pronounced than the more heavily-treated, abstracted waves of sound you hear with his parent group. It's a delicate, balanced album, and it fit very well with the bright winter sunshine, arcing gulls and sleepy Sunday-morning hedgerows of my small coastal town. It's a soundtrack to a film that I haven't seen - Vanishing Of The Bees.

[fishjim]

Nick, how can I say no to "arcing gulls and Sunday-morning hedgerows" of Sussex? Just added Vanishing of the Bees to my Netflix queue, though it says the DVD's not available yet. Will let you know if I like the sound.

Back here, some disappointing Sunday bluegrass:



Dave Rawlings Machine - Friend of a Friend

Rawlings has played & composed with Gillian Welch for years, who's got vocals and co-writer credits on several songs. Alas, that sap I was complaining about a few weeks back is here in spades. Makes me wonder if perhaps Rawlings is the problem.

If so, Gillian should pull a Paul Simon on his ass.

[davy]

Yeah, I thought that album was a big disappointment.

[Anne the Man]

I know this is old old news, but fuck me Nick Cave is a cool motherfucker. I been playing Dig Lazarus Dig and Abattoir Blues a lot, may start on The Lyre Of Orpheus soon. I want Let Love In and maybe No More Shall We Part back, gotta get them off Dad's computer.

Also been playing Odelay by Beck, digging it. And a couple Modest Mouse albums, mostly No One's First, And You're Next. It's been a good month for music so far, I think it'll keep up. I'm in a headspace for listening to more new stuff than usual.

[Nick Ink]

I know a couple of us already talked briefly about how great it was that Isolee had a new album out, but really I checked this on headphones a couple of times today, and it really is stupendously good.



All these little flecks and spatters of sonic detail circling around in these dizzying overlapping circles. Like if Kandinsky got let loose on a carousel and then someone made that into music. There's this one track, One Box, which stutters along brilliantly like a cousin to Ricardo Villalobos's microhouse classic, Ichso, but really each and every track here is just brimming with ideas.

[lucky strike]

fela kuti - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdV1V4vPPLI
maher shalal hash baz - don't want to post a youtube video, because though i have found many live videos, none of the ones i have found do the recordings much justice and i am overall pretty "in the dark" about maher shalal hash baz anyway.
sa-ra creative partners - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s4E6FT9J2g
kiiiiiii - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8N9N_RPEtw
nagisa ni te - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdePdG77mc
haruomi hosono - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxxWIMR1DI


some shit to check out. for real, check out that haruomi hosono track. he was in YMO, and that song bangs.

[lucky strike]

I know this is old old news, but fuck me Nick Cave is a cool motherfucker

replace brian eno with nick cave and this is me EMBARASSED FACE

[Andrew_TSKS]

I never heard that Dando solo album either. worth the effort?

I think so. Self-titled was more like a sequel to Lick, while the solo record (Baby I'm Bored) was more like a sequel to It's A Shame About Ray. Both are quite good, though Baby I'm Bored is far more subtle.

[davy]

Talk Talkin' it up right now.

[Andrew_TSKS]

back around 1994 when I discovered GBV, I immediately jumped into the Scat Records catalog. But nothing else really stuck, with the arguable exception of Nothing Painted Blue, which I think I liked more in theory than practice back then. basically, to please my dogmatic high-school-sophomore taste, songs had to be at least three of 1. lo-fi, 2. extremely short, 3. simple, and 4. melodic.

would-be contenders like A Bullet for Fidel had songs that were too long, and the more rocking Scat/greater-Ohio groups had too much classic-70s-swagger for me--Cobra Verde, Death of Samantha, Prisonshake, etc all blurred together, so I wound up rejecting them all and sticking close to my lo-fi and punk ways well into college.

all of which is backdrop to: I've finally been giving Prisonshake another chance, and my god, they're good. I really liked their comeback/reunion double-album Dirty Moons that came out a few years ago, and listening to their 1993 album The Roaring Third, which I've had on repeat all day now, is like uncovering some alternate history where the Strokes weren't prep school boys who never really let loose musically but the actual Nelson Muntzes who hung out in the boys room and shook young Julian Casablancas down.

they do a great job of achieving that synthesis of disgust and desire that I always find so compelling; not sure how this reads without the shout and guitar-attack, but there's this great verse in "2 Sisters" that I just keep going back to:

In the middle of the night we stood on the rooftop
Concrete and sky, no stars shine in this place
I never said I hated you, I just resent the fact that you exist
So keep your mouth shut for just one minute and kiss me just like this
Just like this

anyway, this is probably my favorite new discovery in a while.

Now that you've figured that out about Prisonshake, you should go back and listen to some Death Of Samantha too.

[fishjim]

I know this is old old news, but fuck me Nick Cave is a cool motherfucker. I been playing Dig Lazarus Dig and Abattoir Blues a lot, may start on The Lyre Of Orpheus soon. I want Let Love In and maybe No More Shall We Part back, gotta get them off Dad's computer.

One of the great things about discovering Earbuds these last few months has been finding some kindred folks who, far as I can tell, to a person think Nick Cave is a cool motherfucker.

My favorite Cave is The Boatman's Call, which I'm guessing isn't everyone's. It was just the right album at the right emotional moment for me. I'm imprinted, what can I say.

[jm]

Yeah man, people (including a certain board curator) fucking hate that album.  Not me, man.

[fishjim]

Glad to know I'm not alone, jm. Was about to hunt down these Boatman-hating heathen in the archives, but decided to heed our edit0r on such places. Instead, I gave it another listen, walking home.

Still a perfect album, haters. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

Been listening to Mike Watt's new LP Hyphenated Man all day. Because uh, I got an email through RVA from his publicist about it, asked for a review copy, and got back a message telling me that he is playing in Richmond at the end of March, so did I want to do an interview with him? DO I! That's happening next Wednesday. I'm really excited and really nervous. But so anyway, I didn't want to be one of those losers who gets an interview with a guy promoting a new album who just asks him a million questions about the band he was in 20 or 30 years ago, so I downloaded the new LP and have played through it three times so far. That could have been excruciating, because sometimes the new music by dudes you've been listening to for 20 years or more is not very good and you have to pretend to like it out of respect for their earlier work. But that is not the case here--Hyphenated Man is 30 concise songs that sound like what would happen if fIREHOSE rewrote a bunch of lost Minutemen tracks, applying their laid-back, loping style to the frenetic quirkiness of the Minutemen's typical song structure. Hell, Watt even gets fired up and yells on a bunch of these songs, which he hasn't done in a long time. All of the songs are named after characters from Hieronymous Bosch paintings, making it a kind of concept album (the promo stuff is calling it an "opera"), and some of the lyrics are pretty strange, but I've already come up with a whole bunch of hopefully-good questions about it and now I just have to hope I don't embarrass myself by being a starstruck fanboy. Which is easier to avoid over the phone, thankfully.

[alex]

That is great, Andrew - good luck for the interview!

I didn't realise he had a new album out, that's also cool.

[Nick Ink]

I think people like that are going to be well-disposed towards interviewers who they feel are 'fanboys' - you know, it's nice to feel that person digs your music, rather than being detached and workmanlike.

I am listening to Celer, and especially this newish release, Vestiges Of An Inherent Melancholy, which is beautiful.

[ellaguru]

Watching the Beavis & Butthead clips on Pitchfork made me want to list to Goo (because of the one where they watch the video for "Dirty Boots"). I don't listen to Sonic Youth very often these days, but man was this ever a great album.

[fishjim]

Watching the Beavis & Butthead clips on Pitchfork made me want to list to Goo (because of the one where they watch the video for "Dirty Boots"). I don't listen to Sonic Youth very often these days, but man was this ever a great album.

Was it ever. Got to see them at the Warfield in SF around this time. I remember being strangely attracted to Thurston, which confused me for a while. My first man-crush.

[Good Intentions]

Yo, we've got a new 'now playing' thread.

[ellaguru]

Oh, sorry, I thought that was Snowmageddon-specific! Damn cryptic thread titles.