Category: Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog

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Y’all Need to Listen To This: Father John Misty, Fear Fun

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Fear Fun, by Father John Misty (aka J. Tillman) is: the soundtrack for an adventure. Not the twee hipster kind either; to paraphrase NTSIB-friend Cam Rogers, this is music for the bad ideas that will end in bruises.

Or possibly with In-and-Out fries, consumed slowly while perched on the hood of a van, watching the sun rise at Venice Beach.

Or maybe with bruises and fries.

 
I’m Writing A Novel by subpop
 

Fear Fun is also: a record I want to share with everyone, because, seriously, y’all need to listen to this, and a novel that I find myself circling back to, just to see how the characters are doing.

If it actually was a book, it would be one that I would I know if I lent it out I’d never get it back. It would also be one that I would deliberately lend to people who needed it. And then once they had finished it we could go down to the beach and eat our fries, drink fizzy drinks, wash our cuts and scrapes out in the sea, and watch the skateboarders zoom around the skate-park together.

 
Now I’m Learning to Love the War by subpop

 

It’s possible to get lost in this song – to get distracted by the interaction between his voice and the beat and come up for air halfway through a verse thinking Rome is burning, you go on and keep fiddling, I’m going to dance – and then also realize you are Alice standing athwart the Ironic Looking-glass and he probably means every word sincerely.

This happens every time I listen to this song.

 
Only Son of the Ladiesman by subpop
 

For good or for ill this one is my favorite.

 
Tee Pees 1-12 by subpop
 

This is the one I have listened to the most often, because it came out first. Also because it has steady thump-sway beat which I particularly enjoy.

 
Everyman Needs a Companion by subpop
 

Joseph Campbell and the Rolling Stones / couldn’t give me a myth / so I had to write my own: I don’t think I want to tattoo this lyric on myself.

I think I’d rather write it on the back of a postcard and mail it off, and hope whomever I was mailing it to would read it and know it meant come meet me where-ever I am, I want to mis-spend an afternoon (or a lifetime) with you.

 
Tee Pees 1-12 by subpop
 

J. Tillman will be taking his show on the road (scroll down for dates) this spring/summer. I won’t be able to see him when he stops through New York, so I’m hoping he’ll be back again in the fall. But the rest of you, if he’s visiting your town: go and see him.

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Shana Falana: In the Light

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I have a mix I call “Chill Out Drown Out” for when I need to, well, chill out, and also drown out extraneous noise around me. Its music that enables me to calm down and concentrate on important tasks like memorizing the finer points of real property law, or, you know, just provides a chunk of peaceful time in a hurricane of a day.

One of the artists in the mix is Shana Falana, formerly of San Francisco but now living in upstate New York, who, with drummer Michael Amari makes heavy, sweet, dreamy tunes that I find particularly soothing.

Here are four from In the Light, which she released in January:

http://youtu.be/_M7oGHXpY3g
 

Light The Fire - Shana Falana (In the Light EP)

 
DIZZY CHANT VIDEO by Shana Falana "In the Light" EP out now

 
TRAGIC by Shana Falana "In The Light" EP out now

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Band I Really Love: The Magnetic Fields

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The Magnetic Fields: because nobody else does hilarious, cranky, sweet, biting, romantic songs like Stephin Merritt (vocals/ukelele/harmonioum/keyboard) and his merry crew, aka Claudia Gonson (vocals/percussion/piano), Sam Davol (cello/flute), John Woo (banjo/guitar) and Shirley Simms (vocals/autoharp/ukelele).

For example, Andrew in Drag, from their latest record, Love at the Bottom of the Sea. It’s been stuck in my head for weeks and so now I’m going to share it with you, so I won’t be the only one singing the chorus under my breath at random and inappropriate times. (Note: contains nudity, may be unsafe for work!)
 

The Magnetic Fields - Andrew in Drag

 
This one is called With Whom To Dance and every time I listen to it, I observe, wistfully, that really as far as I’m concerned the only wretched part of being single is not having anyone to slow dance with at weddings. You know? Everyone else gets up to sway and spin and there I am perched on the edge of my chair feeling kind of lonely and awkward about everything. Thank you for capturing that emotion in song, Mr. Merritt!
 
The Magnetic Fields - With Whom to Dance?

 
Dipping into their back catalog a little bit, here’s a live version of Drive on Driver from Distortion, the record I had on repeat for basically the four months of 2008:
 
Magnetic Fields "Drive On Driver" 10/18/08 Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh, NC

 
If I ever get a tattoo, it will probably include the phrase characters bold complex and shady will write my memoirs across my heart, which is a lyric from this song, which is The Nun’s Litany, also from Distortion, here performed live in Oslo in 2008:
 
The Magnetic Fields - The Nuns Litany

 
In the category of The Best Kiss-off to an Ex Ever, there’s You Must Be Out Of Your Mind from Realism, live in St. Louis in 2010. Ideal to leave on the answering machine of someone you really, really don’t ever want to go out with again.
 
The Magnetic Fields - You Must Be Out Of Your Mind - Live at The Pageant in St. Louis - 3/6/10

 
And from 69 Love Songs, their three volume concept about love songs, here is All My Little Words, a song about being wordy but still powerless, performed live in North Carolina, in 2008:
 
Magnetic Fields "All My Little Words" 10/18/08 Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh, NC

 
Also from 69 Love Songs: The Book of Love, which has been covered by acts as diverse as The Airborne Toxic Event and Peter Gabriel. Seriously, click on those links and watch those videos. Y’all have not lived until you have heard Airborne Toxic Event perform a delicate chamber-pop song and Peter Gabriel aim himself, his voice and an entire orchestra at Stephin Merritt’s wry, reflective lyrics. Here is Mr. Merritt himself singing it in Los Angeles in 2008:
 
http://youtu.be/qzd9zEx6Wis
 
And then, I bring you back to the present with Quick, also from Love at the Bottom of the Sea, live in Chicago during their most recent tour:
 
The Magnetic Fields "Quick" Live

 
In conclusion: some photographs from their show that I went to a few weeks ago, here in New York, at the Beacon Theater.

The Magnetic Fields were as delightful as ever – at one point Stephin Merritt did an amazing dramatic reading of a stray gum wrapper that had made its way to the stage, and I decided that “I would listen to him/her/them read me a gum wrapper” is going to replace “sing me the phonebook” as my personal term of ridiculous fannish devotion – and DeVotchKa, who opened for them, did an exquisite acoustic set.

DeVotchKa
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The Magnetic Fields
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Y’all Need to Listen to This: JJAMZ

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First, an introduction.

Some of you may recognize those faces, but, for those of you that don’t, they are, from left to right: James B. Valentine (Maroon 5), Alex Greenwald (Phantom Planet, Mark Ronson & The Business INTL), Z Berg (The Like), Michael Runion (solo artist, The Chances) and Jason Boesel (solo artist, Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes), and together they are JJAMZ.

Second, a brief meditation on the nature of film, and also of music and video. One of my friends recently noted that “the measure of a film may be how narratively clear and deeply moving it is even if you don’t have the language at all.”

I’d expand on that to say the measure if a music video is how narratively clear and deeply moving it is even if you’re watching it with the sound off.

I give you as an example the video below, for JJAMZ’s new song Never Enough, starring Z Berg and Brie Larson (21 Jump Street, United States of Tara) and directed by Eddie O’Keefe.

It is just exquisite. Beautifully shot, with delicate and precise use of color and light – both shimmery, golden Californian sunlight and harsher neon tones – it absolutely works as a silent film about a complex and passionate friendship between two girls.

That said, I definitely encourage you to watch it with the sound on, too, because the song is great.

Additional warning/enticement: contains tasteful semi-nudity, smoking, cute girls with guns, a glamorous party, and assorted alcohol-induced shenanigans. Bonus fun: spotting the musicians making cameo appearances in the party scene!
 

JJAMZ – Never Enough from Eddie O'KEEFE on Vimeo.

 

JJAMZ will be releasing their first record, Suicide Pact, on July 10, 2012, via Dangerbird Records.

To tide you over until then they have another song entitled Heartbeat available as a free download. I have listened to it several times now, and I can tell you that, as you might expect, they really know how to write a pop hook.

And, okay, NERD ALERT, but part of the reason I was playing it over and over again was to try and focus on the individual parts, specifically, the way the guitars are layered with the synthesizers, and then the way the guitar solo floats up through the hum and crash, like a ray of summer light breaking through dark clouds.

Get it here:

 
Finally, they will also be playing several shows around Los Angeles in the near future, and will be at The Satellite every Monday night in June. For late breaking news and updates, you can subscribe to their Facebook or Twitter feed.

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Markers: 2 Years

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Today is the second anniversary of me being part of this music blogging adventure, so: thanks, y’all, once again, for joining us, whether it’s once or all the time. Have some pretty spring flowers as an expression of my appreciation:

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I’m also declaring today Lurker Amnesty Day. Drop me a comment or an an email and say hi, y’all. Share a song or a video, ask a question, or just wave shyly, it’s all good.

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Ray Wylie Hubbard: Grifter’s Hymnal

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Photo credit: Todd Wolfson

1. Who is Ray Wylie Hubbard? He’s Gandalf, if The Lord of The Rings had been written as a team effort by Warren Ellis and Charles Portis.

2. Once, very long ago, when I had only just begun to wander, I fetched up in a church in the center of London. There was music playing when I walked through the door, organ music, swelling and rolling and bouncing between the marble floors and pillars and filling up the soaring arches.

I drifted around, muddled by jet-lag, enjoying the music and only vaguely paying attention to the people who were with me. Eventually the music stopped, and a small, gray-haired man emerged from behind the organ, and I realized a) he had been playing the whole time and b) I had been walking quietly so I didn’t disturb the angels that I had thought were there and c) it had not seemed the tiniest bit irregular to me, that an off-duty angel should have stopped in to a random church in central London to keep the organ in good tune.

(I was really jet-lagged. About two hours later I would fall upon the only 7-11 in town like a hungry, homesick locust and eat the hot dogs of the lonesome and far from home.)

Dirty rock clubs are not (usually) churches, and Ray Wylie Hubbard is not an angel. But as the organ music contained within it the solemn peace and worn but still stately grandeur of that church, his music contains stages scratched by amps and dented by stomping boots and upright basses, mysterious unsavory puddles of liquor left by drinks gone astray, the shimmer-shine of rodeo buckles and lucite heels bathed in multi-colored neon lights, the rumble of truck engines out in the parking lot, and the sweet bite of whiskey against the back of your throat and smoke in your lungs in cold night air.

3. This is the video for Coricidin Bottle, from Grifter’s Hymnal, his most recent record:
 


 
4. And here he is at Couch by CouchWest, with Trainyard Blues, also from Grifter’s Hymnal:
 
Ray Wylie Hubbard @ CXCW

 
5. This one doesn’t come from the new record but I’m going to put it here for you to watch anyway because I like it. It is his cover of James McMurtry’s Choctaw Bingo, and appears on Delerium Tremolos:
 
Ray Wylie Hubbard // Choctaw Bingo

 

6. Other songs I’m fond of on Grifter’s Hymnal include: Lazarus, Henhouse, New Year’s Eve at the Gates of Hell and Mother Blues. They are, collectively and variously, bluesy and stompy and rambly and thoroughly delightful. Though really that describes the whole record.

7. Delightful and educational: Ray Wylie Hubbard’s Twitter feed. Young musicians, take note, there’s solid advice in there among the shenanigans.

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The Big Nowhere: Pull Down the Moon

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Good morning, NTSIBbers. Some of you may recognize today’s band from their recent appearance at Couch by CouchWest, but for those of you that don’t, please meet The Big Nowhere, from Glasgow, Scotland.

Their line-up is still evolving, but the music I’m bring you today is the work of Simon Sinclair (Vocals, Guitar, Slide Guitar, Organ, Percussion, Melodica, Saxophone), Billy Crowe (Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Harmonica, Banjolin, Lap Steel), Joe Keegan (Piano, Organ) and Peter Morgan (Drums).

Together they make music that sounds like it belongs somewhere (or some-when) a little bit wilder than now; some place and time where people are just starting to build dance-halls on the frontier.

The song that hooked my attention was, as it happened, the first song on the record: Some Kind of Sickness. Something about the tune was familiar, but I couldn’t quite work out what it was – something about the melody, maybe. I found myself humming it at odd moments, trying to figure it out. The penny finally dropped one afternoon when I was listening to it on the uptown 4 train, and both humming along and playing the drums on my knee.

See if you can work it out:

 

(The answer is: It’s built on the frame of an old Appalachian ballad called On Top Of Old Smok(e)y, the first recording of which is lost in the mists of time; the one the link uses the arrangement created by Pete Seegar in 1951. Burl Ives and Bing Crosby sang a duet version, and Hank Williams Sr. covered it as well. And that’s not even getting into the many parodies, starting with On Top Of Spaghetti, recorded by Tom Glazer in 1963.)
 
Also fun to sing along to is (Why Won’t You) Make My Telephone Ring:


 
and my personal favorite, Untitled Song Regarding the Dangers Of Making Faustian Pacts (short form: Untitled Satan Song):


 
Also worthy of note is the three-part super-creepy murder-ballad song series called “Hansen’s Trailer Park Suite”: Johnny Walker Red, My Name is Bob Willis and Song for Suzannah. This is one of the few times I will say this, but, be sure to listen to them all together and in order, or else the story doesn’t quite make sense. There’s a full explanation here, which I encourage you to read; meanwhile, I’ll start you off with the first one:
 

 

And now, on a somewhat lighter note, I give you two videos. The first one for a song called Junk Band, and is from their Christmas in the Gutter EP. I love it because it approximately what would happen if someone had made Twin Peaks as a silent movie.

It has many of my favorite things, for example: a moody black and white color scheme! title cards! a man in a bowler hat! Magic tricks! Shadow dinosaurs! I could say more but that is my allotment of exclamation points for this post!
 

The Big Nowhere - Junk Band (official video)

 
And finally their CXCW 2012 performance of No-one Here But Ghosts, new and as-yet-unreleased:

The Big Nowhere - No-one Here But Ghosts (Couch by Couchwest 2012)

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Y’all Need to Listen to This: Dead Queen and the River

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In their eponymous album Dead Queen and the River, international men of mystery with roots in Virginia, combine American folk music with a Serbian brass band – the Dejan Lazarevic Orkestar – to magnificent effect.

It’s bluegrass, but it’s bluegrass where fast-picking dances a fascinating, complex and delicate ballet with, among other things, the cheerful oompah-oompah of a tuba.

The following are some of my favorites from the record:


 


 
And then some video, so you can see them rocking out live:
 

Dead Queen and the River - Here and there LIVE

 

Dead Queen and the River : the port

 
Bonus video: Dejan Lazarevic Orkestar performing on their own:
 
Dejan Lazarević Orkestar Guča 2008. GAS-GAS

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Birthday Letter

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Dear 17,

Hey, girl.

I know you’re super busy right now, with school and swimming and whatever it is your doing there at the dining room table – you’ve just informed your mother you don’t have room in your schedule for a birthday this week, can it happen next Tuesday? – but there’s some things you should know.

1) You’re right to be worried about Kurt Cobain.

2) You’re also right to have faith in Axl Rose. He’ll put that record out. It will require a double dog dare from Dr. Pepper and it won’t be great, but it won’t be terrible, either.

3) You will get to see Whitesnake one day. It’ll be in a tiny club and it will be amazing.

4) And Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe, too. More than once! Not in tiny clubs, but the shows will still be pretty great.

5) You’ll love other bands. That first one you will fall for inexplicably – the first time you see them, they’ll be playing Beatles-y music, wearing a lot of beige and will have four tattoos between them, which is (still) SO not your thing – but somehow, you cannot resist.

6) By the way, that photography class you sulked through last semester? That really comes in handy later. You could maybe have done another semester of that, rather than taking weightlifting.

7) You are about to have tremendous adventures. Some good, some bad, several involving trains. But twenty years down the line, the regrets you have will not be for the path that you chose.

8) This song will resonate, too:
 

Gretchen Peters "Hello Cruel World" for Couch by Couchwest 2012

 
I’m not going to tell you anything else because it will ruin the surprise(s). Enjoy your cake next week, because it’s going to be delicious.

Love,

Thirty-Seven