The Dirty Nil, who appeal to our never-ending love of loud, have a new single out. This time around, they’ve gone in on a split 7″ with their friends Northern Primitive. The single is available digitally and on vinyl.
Check out a video of the bands playing both songs of the split – “Positive Bondar” and “Zombie Eyed” – in, as the band says, “the coldest barn in the history of barns”.
The best voices in modern music are not those that are technically proficient but those that are dented and torn, so full of character that they could tell a whole story just by humming a few notes. Tom Waits, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Leonard Cohen… as their careers continued their lives seeped into their voices, expanding, contracting, cracking, causing deep crevices. Adam Turla of Murder by Death is well on his way to becoming a member of this camp. In the early days of MbD, Turla’s voice was like a flower bud, green and simple. Now, a decade on, his voice has a timbre closer to another one of those vocal icons, Johnny Cash.
And like those other singular singers, Turla is not relying merely on his battered vocal chords to carry him forward. He integrates it with A) a great band, and B) great stories. While this is clearly a band with a sense of humor – not only are they named after the 1976 murder spoof starring Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, and more, but titles in their catalogue include “Spring Break 1899”, “Intergalactic Menopause”, and “Killbot 2000” – their strongest suit is balancing this voice, this music, and these stories to create transportive moods. This craft is at its most whole on their latest album – their sixth full-length album and their first for Bloodshot Records – Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon.
“Foxglove” – Murder by Death (Violitionist Sessions)
Murder by Death will be bringing it all to the Grog Shop in Cleveland on February 22 when they co-headline with the quite different, but also great Man Man. Damion Suomi will open. To get more of a live taste of these exciting bands, check out this Murder by Death concert at NPR and this Man Man performance at Amoeba Music.
Bonus: Enjoy Adam Turla navigating an interview with a couple of kids.
A new FBFY mix is live, and I’d personally like to thank our FBFY commander-in-chief for not choosing a Valentine theme this month.
“…and we’re back! I considered and then threw out a number of ideas for different themes and went with goulash (def: an eclectic and uncoordinated mixture of something). What a mixture we’ve got! We are spanning quite a few genres and yet it works! Thanks to Matt (@truersound) for this month’s artwork.”
A handful of videos to pique your interest today. We start with the lead single from Madeleine Peyroux’s forthcoming album The Blue Room. It’s a sweet, jazzy, strolling take on Buddy Holly’s “Changing All Those Changes”. The Blue Room releases in March, followed by a tour. Check her official site for more information.
“Changing All Those Changes” – Madeleine Peyroux
Next up, Skyzoo pays tribute iconic filmmaker Spike Lee, with a verse from the man, Talib Kweli. It features rapid-fire spitting, majestic horns, and a truly lovely piano outro.
“Spike Lee Was My Hero” – Skyzoo, featuring Talib Kweli
Now shake the end-of-the-week dust off with the super danceable “Cough Cough” by UK band Everything Everything. It comes from their EP of the same name, their US debut, which is set for release on February 5. The band will be playing SXSW, followed by shows at the Roxy in L.A. and the Bowery Ballroom in NYC.
“Cough Cough” – Everything Everything
When you look at the cover of Swamp Dogg’s album Rat On! now – on a black background, Swamp Dogg, in beret and fringed vest, sitting astride a white rat, Dogg’s arms held up in triumph – it just looks silly (and has indeed been called one of the worst album covers of all time). But at the time of its release in 1971, it managed to offend some people (evidence that people searching for things to be offended by is not a new development). While the photo was never intended as anything more than a visual component of the title’s play on words, Swamp Dogg hasn’t been one to back away from controversy, so he decided to stoke the fires of the offended by claiming the cover represented “the black man on top of the white man”1.
Clearly, what the cover does denote is an album from someone fond of clowning around. What you may miss from just looking at the cover, though, is that, beyond the silly cover and between some jokey songs are serious responses to race, war, sex, and more, backed by solid soul.
“Creeping Away” – Swamp Dogg
You see, Swamp Dogg is the alter ego of a man, Jerry Williams, Jr., with chops. Williams cut his first record when he was around 12 years old, when he was known as Little Jerry, and he’s been writing and producing music for himself and others since childhood. He’s worked with artists like Solomon Burke, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, Gene Pitney, and, along with writing partner Gary U.S. Bonds, was nominated for a Grammy for the song “She’s All I Got”, recorded by Johnny Paycheck.
Williams has not stopped working, either on his own or for others, and his first two Swamp Dogg albums, 1970’s Total Destruction to Your Mind and Rat On!, are being remastered and reissued on vinyl and CD by Alive Records on March 5.
“If I Die Tomorrow (I’ve Lived Tonite)” – Swamp Dogg
To hear more about this entertaining man and his interesting career, check out this appearance from public radio program Studio 360 from July 2011, where Williams and writer Ben Greenman talk about their collaboration stemming from Greenman’s novel Please Step Back.
And for a little more background, check out his interview with Jesse Thorn on The Sound of Young America from January 2008.
1interview, North Sea Jazz special, 2010
Mondays go better with music, and this particularly surf-tastic tune from instrumental band Dark City is a good antidote to the grey slush that’s passing for a day here in Cleveland.
The New York-based band released their self-titled album (which goes beyond surf) last month.
People, my head is spaced on medicine, and I can’t form a coherent post, so have a blurb and a video for Maximum Hedrum’s “Keep in Touch”, featuring his grand funkness George Clinton.
“The video was inspired by an article in Italian that my friend Wendy Morgan sent me about a young man with cerebral palsy and his relationship with his mom and a prostitute. The story felt closely related to ‘Keep in Touch’ in the sense of yearning for intimacy without the ability to express it with touch,” says video co-direcotr Sam Spiegel. “Shooting this film was a great experience in getting to know Javier Silcook (our lead actor who has cerebral palsy) and his family who are amazing (Javier has 62 adopted brothers all with disabilities as well). I hope we were able to show some of the beautiful as well as lonely moments of living with CP.”
“Keep in Touch” – Maximum Hedrum
Maximum Hedrum’s self-titled debut album will drop on March 19.
