Category: feature

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July Video Challenge: Starry Saints, Angels

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The gentlemen above are the Starry Saints, and they are based in Portland, OR. This song is from their most recent record Serenade. I like this video because it’s in a familiar format – a live performance – but they project different moving images on to the wall behind them during the show, which adds texture but yet doesn’t look weird and fake. I also enjoy the dramatic close-ups on the keyboards.

And the song is pretty cool, too. I was hooked in the first thirty seconds and still humming the chorus in the shower two days later.

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July Video Challenge: All of My Best Friends (Are Behind Bars), Justin Haigh

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This month I’ve set myself a challenge: post a video every day. I’ve mentioned before that I have A Lot Of Feelings About Video, which is true, but more than that, I have A Lot Of Feelings About Music Television, or rather, what used to be music television, and, at least in some locations – CMT doesn’t seem to have been affected as thoroughly as MTV – is now All Reality TV, All The Time.

Mostly I’m interested in the intersection of music and image, and how artists, directors and choreographers work together to bring a song to visual life. I’m starting today with All of My Best Friends (Are Behind Bars), sung by Justin Haigh (Apache Ranch Records) and directed by Jim Shea.

I like the song, but the video itself is also a delight, because it is beautifully shot and lit and, most importantly, playfully highlights the wordplay in the title without overworking the punchline:

 

Apache Ranch Records Presents Justin Haigh's All My Best Friends (Are Behind Bars) - Official MV

 

Originally from South Dakota, Justin Haigh now lives in Texas, and before he was a country singer, he was a lot of other things, including: cattle rancher, meat packer, trucker and U. S. Air Force service man. As you might expect, he has stories to tell, and you can hear them on his new record People Like Me.

Here’s what I can tell you about the record: It was circulating through my “To Listen To” playlist during exams, and the title track never failed to make me grin and tap my pen to the beat. I also enjoyed the slower, more reflective songs, like his cover of  Kevin Higgins’ Monahans, as well as The Leaving in Your Eyes and Is It Still Cheating.

There are no melancholy love songs like country melancholy love songs, and those hit the same sweet spot as Ghost in this House, by Shenandoah, and Vern Gosdin’s Set ‘Em Up Joe. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the good stuff, and you should check it out.

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The Dad Horse Experience: Dead Babies Singing in the Sky

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“Like a dead dog on the highway…” sang an unmistakeably German voice. It was the kind of lisping German accent that my American ears associate with camp villains in bad movies. Then in came the banjo.

What?

“Like a dead dog, I’m hanging around,” the German voice continued singing over the quaint banjo melody. “Won’t you stop and pick me up? Dig me a deep hole in the ground.”

I was, to put it kindly, perplexed. What in the world was this? In my head, my conditioned American thoughts, banjo and heavy German accents did not belong together. But I kept listening, fascinated, compelled to find out what this was all about. And as unprepared as I was for the initial track, I was yet again thrown off balance by what the second track brought.

 

Kingdom It Will Come / THE DAD HORSE EXPERIENCE by dadhorse

 

Oh yes, there was definitely something worth investigating here. By the end of the album, I was smitten.

Dead Dog on a Highway is the second long player from the Dad Horse Experience, which consists mostly of a man who goes by the name Dad Horse Ottn. He sings while accompanying himself on banjo, keeping the rhythm on bass pedals and throwing in some occasional kazoo1, playing what he has dubbed keller (German for “cellar”) gospel. Keller gospel draws from an amazing range of influences from the simple and perfect country of Hank Williams, the gathered folk of the Carter Family and the outsider gospel of Washington Phillips to punk to polka. And it’s all filtered through one possibly deranged, definitely unique man who apparently didn’t begin playing music until he was 40.

Dead Dog on a Highway is a wunderkammer of an album that contains more treasures and obscure delights than I have the time and space to limn here. You’ll certainly find entertainment here and things to make you smile. You might also find a moment or two of fright. And perhaps, if you’re paying enough attention, you’ll find a song, a moment, that speaks directly to you.

You can get a download of the absolutely-worth-the-price-of-your-email-address “Tella Me, Lord” here at the Dad Horse website.

Dead Dog on a Highway is available from CD Baby, Amazon (US), Amazon (DE), iTunes and Flight 13.

 

The Dad Horse Experience Official Website

Dad Horse plays for Jesco White

 

1Kazoo is making a serious comeback, people. The Carolina Chocolate Drops and Daniel Knox have also made liberal use of the humble instrument.

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The Mad Caps: Goin’ Down

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Sometimes I wish the internet had never been invented.1 If not for a certain internet search engine (and my insistence on checking it for verification), I could have been blissful in my ignorance, believing I had coined the term garage-a-billy to describe the sound of the Mad Caps. But no, the internet brought me swiftly to task for my ego folly.

But the internet also brought me the Mad Caps in the first place (thanks to a tip from a Twitter friend), so I can’t stay mad.

The Mad Caps are a two-man outfit from Las Vegas, Nevada – Ted Rader on guitar and vocals, Jon Real on drums – who churn out some rockabilly-esque twang with volume, distortion, dirt and swagger. Check out what I mean on “Rosie and the Wolfman”.

 

 

Rader’s hiccuping delivery on “Kitty Kitty” is like the spawn of a love union between Buddy Holly and Lux Interior.

 

 

And they get into a sexy groove that ends too soon on the short instrumental “Interkitchen”.

 

 

If you like it as dirty as a pair of sorority girl’s panties drug through a back alley, get over to Bandcamp and get the Mad Caps’ self-titled release now.

 

The Mad Caps @ Bandcamp

The Mad Caps @ Facebook

 

1This is patently false; my love for the internet is deep and carnal.

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The Imperial Rooster: Decent People

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Booze, drugs, deer people, suicide, internet pornography, fire, brimstone, L. Ron Hubbard and domestic violence… that’s right, it’s time for a new album from the Imperial Rooster.

On Decent People, the Imperial Rooster once again mixes the sublime with the absurd to create the perfect soundtrack to your damnation. Check out my favorite track, “The Vintage.”

 

 

The band recently played Frogfest 6 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they rocked another new song, “DWI Marijuana Blues”.

 

 

This Saturday, June 11, the Imperial Rooster will be playing the Thirsty Ear Festival alongside the Handsome Family, Calexico, the Cedric Burnside Project and others.

Decent People is available now via Bandcamp.

 

The Imperial Rooster @ Bandcamp

The Imperial Rooster @ Facebook

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The Ridges: This Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures

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As I was listening to the Ridges’ EP last night, a storm kicked up that colored the sky charcoal grey and blew leaves horizontally through the air. It seemed appropriate to the roll and swell of moody strings and beautiful but fraught vocals of the album.

Formed in Athens, Ohio, and consisting of core musicians Victor Rasgaitis (guitar), Talor Smith (cello) and Johnny Barton (percussion, glockenspiel) – with a rotating line-up of additional musicians contributing violin, viola, upright bass, trumpet, percussion, mandolin, cello and accordion – the Ridges took their name from the institution that was formerly the Athens Lunatic Asylum. And the band continues to draw inspiration from the old asylum. Not only was their album recorded in the ornate Victorian building, but the songs are imbued with an aching hauntedness that seems to reflect the ghost stories that surround any once-abandoned institution worth its salt.

That’s not to say that the self-titled EP is a non-stop dirge full of melodramatically gothic declarations of emotion. While none of the lyrical matter could be accused of being upbeat, many of the songs invite foot-stomping and sing-alongs. Listen to and download an example of what I mean with stand-out track “Not a Ghost”.

 

Not a Ghost by The Ridges

 

Now download the full EP at their Bandcamp site and get haunted.

The Ridges @ Bandcamp

The Ridges @ Facebook

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Phantom Tails: We Turn the Wheels of Alchemy

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It took me a while to realize why the music of Phantom Tails sounded familiar. It was probably the third or fourth listen to Sounds of the Hunchback Whale when I realized that this music would not have been out of place in the goth clubs of ’90s San Francisco… but more like the ’90s goth scene if I’d had my way with it. This is not music you swoopy dance to while artfully waving your lacy cuffs. It requires a little more funk in your back-end. The band’s synth wizard Sergio Hernandez has called it Deep Space Doom Funk.

 

Real Savage by Phantom Tails

 

While it’s definitely dance music, it’s not without grit, coming down with an industrial thump at times. Songs are written, sampled, layered, sampled again, layered some more, resulting in fuzzed out laser zaps, rounded out with jagged guitar, heavy bass and drum machine beats that go down to bedrock instead of floating off into the atmosphere.

 

Streetsweepers by Phantom Tails

 

You can dance to it and still look like a badass.

Plus, singer/guitarist Orion Treon quoted the Wu-Tang Clan in an interview, and we are all the way down with that.

You can listen to and download the two songs above, then get over to Bandcamp and pick up the whole album. It’s good from top to bottom.

 

Phantom Tails @ Bandcamp

Phantom Tails @ Facebook

PhantomTailsTV

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We See Lights: Twee Love Pop

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I was going to begin this post by attempting to argue that, despite it’s name, We See Lights’ new EP Twee Love Pop is not actually twee. Considering the songs talk about holding hands, gifting a book of poetry and loving the way the object of affection’s hair curls when it rains, there was no way I was going to win that argument.

But it’s twee in a charming way.

Indeed, Twee Love Pop is so charming that my co-blogger Jennifer and I both like it. As Jennifer says, this “is one of the few times [we] agree on, well, anything, when it comes to music. Other examples: The Felice Brothers and A.A. Bondy. You are breathing rarified air, We See Lights!”

It may also be because they don’t hide their Edinburgh accents, and we’re accent whores.

We See Lights couch their sweet lyrics with acoustic guitar, banjo, bells, light percussion, a lot of happy bounce and, everyone’s weakness, harmony singing. Twee Love Pop is a sunny little love note of an EP. Take a listen to (and download) the first two songs.

 

My Oh My Oh My by We See Lights

 

I Hope You Like the Smiths by We See Lights

 

You can take a listen to the EP, plus a couple of their earlier releases, at their Bandcamp site, and then you can download the EP from Amazon or iTunes.

We See Lights Official Website

We See Lights @ Bandcamp

Twee Love Pop @ Amazon

Twee Love Pop @ Amazon UK

Twee Love Pop @ iTunes

Twee Love Pop @ iTunes UK

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The Bell

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Band members (from left to right): Nicklas, Mathias, Jan. Photo  courtesy of Bad Man Recording Co.

The Bell are Nicklas Nilsson, Mathias Stromberg and Jan Petterson, from Malmö and Stockholm, Sweden. Last month they released Great Heat, their second record, which they put together with a great deal  of help from modern technology. I carried it around with me on my iPod for a week or so, and then, intrigued by their beats, made use of technology myself, and had an email chat with Mathias and his bandmates:

Mathias, I see that you sing, but which instruments do the rest of the band play?

Jan and Nicklas play all instruments, but write most of the songs on guitar and keyboard/piano. They fiddle with the computers and then we record vocals (all of us even though I do lead) and produce/mix everything together the three of us.

 

Why did you name the band The Bell?

There really is no specific answer to this question, it springs from a lot of things. From “For Whom The Bell Tolls” by Hemingway, which is just such an excellent title – to just sounding neat. We like the singular notion of One Bell, as well. THE Bell. It sounds alarming and like enlightenment.

 

I checked a map to see just how far apart Malmö and Stockholm are, and it looks like it’s approximately the same distance, as, say, New York City to the tip of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, or about a six hour drive. I know you managed to record and mix the record while living in the different cities, but how did you all meet in the first place? And also who lives in Malmö and who lives in Stockholm?

Jan and Nicklas are small town boys both geographically and by heart. Jan’s from the north of Sweden originally and Nicklas from the south. I’m from and in Stockholm. Me and Jan go to know each other out on the town, as he used to live here. We realized we were into the same music (and books, films, wine and fonts) so we hung out more and more. Then he moved to Malmö for love.

 

Fonts? Which ones? Which font do you both appreciate the most, and why?

Today I would have to say old Poster Bodoni. Getting that fifties Italian café vibe …

 

Did you ever meet in the middle, as it were, to work on things? Or was the entire record made solely with the help of modern technology?

As mentioned earlier, we did most of the groundwork over the web and then met up to do vocals and production, both in our “home studio” in Malmö and rented spaces both in Malmö and Stockholm. So in short: we were creative online and anal producers in studio.

 

How did you all get interested in this particular kind of dark, drum-propelled synth-pop?

We all got laid for the first time in the eighties. So that’s where our very most primal love lies. For me personally, there was a lot of great synth clubs in Stockholm (and not very much else apart from horrible metal places where you’d get beaten up unless you looked like a muscular transvestite) so when I started to go out in my teens I tended to go to goth caves getting into EBM and electronic stuff. All this sort of evolved over time into more guitar driven stuff such as the Factory and Creation stuff in the late eighties.

 

The Stockholm club scene sounds like an “it’s all ABBA or Opeth” kind of situation. It is an interesting dichotomy, that “Swedish music”, or at least what Americans know of it, swings between two wildly different extremes of bright, bubbly pop and/or dance music and, well, death-metal.

Well, this it was it used to be like. Nowadays we get a lot of different clubs, ranging from obscure indie and electronica to just plain … well, bad stuff. So although I think these extremes exist (even if the death metal scene really is Norweigan rather than Swedish – here, the long hairs do garage rock or sleaze it seems) it is not as it once was.  And for this we’re very thankful. Swedes have always been an extremely open minded people so that narrow mindset does not work for the younger generations.

 

Which episode of Jersey Shore did your song end up in, and which song was it? Have there been any recent placements that top that one?

Can ANYTHING top Jersey Shore??? No but seriously, checking online the episode was called “The Tanned Triangle” … haha. How great is that? We had a song from our last album in Vampire Diaries last spring and a recent placement in No Ordinary Family and hoping to get a few more in the next few months.

 

A Jersey Shore appearance is indeed pretty epic, even if I can’t bear to watch that show at all, not even with the sound off.

I would like to be diplomatic and state that “it’s great that they’re doing their thing” but that would be indicating it had some level of artistic integrity.

 

And then the three that I ask everyone, the modified Proust Questionnaire, if you will:

What was your transformative song – the rock and roll lightning strike?

Matthias: Today I would have to say There is a light that Never Goes Out by The Smiths. It’s when I discovered heart & soul in music. Before that it was all … surface. Obviously, this soundtracked long make-out sessions when I was 14 together with the rest of the tracks on The Queen is Dead. Such a beautiful work of art. After that I realized that the alternative came in different flavours.

Nicklas: I had a friend who had a synthesizer. One evening while he was out in the kitchen eating with his parents I learned to play The Model. I think I was 8 years old at that time. Music became more transparent after that.  I suddenly knew I could play the same melodies and harmonies that were actually pressed on vinyl. Strange and shocking. I still sometimes revisit that feeling when using keyboards today.

Jan: Television – Venus

 

What was your first show (that you attended, not that you played)?

Matthias: Kraftwerk in Stockholm in … 1985, I think. It was fucking excellent.

Nicklas: 1982. A local new romantic band with loads of delay on vocals and guitars. The drummer had a white shirt with lace and very very long sleeves. The volume was so high that I lost my balance every now and then. I can’t remember a single tone they played. But I still want a shirt like that.

Jan: Ian Hunter in my home town of SkellefteÃ¥. I was 10 years old and I desperately tried to copy Ian’s haircut.

 

What was the first record/tape/etc that you bought? What was the last one?

Matthias: The first of any importance was Yazoos You and Me Both in 1983 and the last … I’m sorry, I’m from Sweden. We don’t really buy records. We subscribe to Spotify. But on that note, I listened to The Crystal Stilts new album just a minute ago and that is awsome!

Nicklas: I bought Tintin Red Rackham’s Treasure. Not much good music on that one. But almost immediately I traded it for Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity. The last one was a pretty lousy demo by a local band. I can’t mention the band name. I know the guitarist.

Jan: Donny Osmond – Puppy Love and The Maccabees – O.A.V.I.P


An example of their groove: Today, from their new record, Great Heat:

The Bell - Today

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Austin Lucas: Constant Sound of Thundering Rails

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As has likely become obvious to regular NTSIB readers, I’m a sucker for a good voice. A voice full of pathos and urgency – and especially one that has been roughened with whiskey and cigarettes – will get me every time. Austin Lucas has a classic bluegrass voice. “High lonesome” is a good phrase for it. And while this sort of voice would seem best paired with quiet instrumentation and pretty guitars, as Lucas has often used in the past, on his latest album A New Home in the Old World, Lucas shows that bringing up the intensity of the music to match the intensity of the voice benefits both the singer and the song. Check out a little of what I mean on my favorite song from the album, opening track “Run Around”.

 

Run Around by Austin Lucas

 

It’s a sharp smack in the face of an introduction to an album that pulls a taught thread of emotional intensity throughout. Later on in the album, such as on lead single “Thunder Rail”, electric guitar is pulled into the mix, recalling some of the best roots-minded alt.rock.

 

Thunder Rail by Austin Lucas

 

Lucas is an earnest songwriter, but New Home doesn’t fall into the usual singer/songwriter trap of using the music as nothing more than a bed of lettuce for the entrée of the lyrics. This is not a poetry reading. This is music flowing with blood, guts, yearning and hope.

You can purchase the album directly from Last Chance Records (my advice is to purchase directly from the label whenever possible – they’ll put much more care into your order than a megawarehouse would and often at a better price), where a live album from Lucas is also available. You can also catch him on Willie Nelson’s Country Throwdown 2011 Tour that starts up toward the end of this month.

 

Austin Lucas Official Website