I look forward to Two Mule Blues‘ Couch by Couch West set every year at least in part because I want to see what they are going to blow up/set on fire. Spoiler alert: it is usually a couch. But the method changes. This year they performed Old Vinyl and Innocence and I am not quite sure how they lit the couch on fire – blowtorch? – but they did.
True confession: I had regarded The Orwells with grumpy disdain for some time – possibly I listened to an off-track on a bad day, somewhere along the line – but recently I did a blind listen-test 1, and, readers, they passed.
Then yesterday I was poking around among Eddie O’Keefe’s videos and found this one, for Halloween All Year, which is a sentiment I can get behind:
The ORWELLS – Halloween All Year from Eddie O'KEEFE on Vimeo.
1 I dropped two of their tracks into the middle of a Soundcloud playlist, scrolled back to the beginning, pressed play and opened a new tab. Halfway through Who Needs You I thought Hold on, who is that, they’re pretty bad-ass, and clicked back to find out.
Against Me! has had a hot streak of startling and beautiful lyric videos lately; this one is for Black Me Out from Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Everything about it is perfect, from the font choice to the sharp angles of the cut-outs to the quick cuts to shots of Against Me! playing the song. It’s a roar of defiance combined with a bloody and toe-curling lantern slide show, and I love it.
One of the (very many) reasons I love Couch by CouchWest is it brings all sorts of awesome new-to-me bands my way, such as Ned Van Go, of Nashville. Here they are with Mountaintop Removal, proving it is totally possible to tear it up while also chilling on a couch, or keg, or speaker, as the case may be.
While we’re on the subject of notable covers, here are The Tonk Honkys of Los Angeles, CA, at CXCW, performing a version of Nine Inch Nails’ Closer that made me seal-clap with glee the first time I heard it.
I am, for the record, a long-time Nine Inch Nails fan, with a lot of feelings about that song. And this cover grows more glorious every time I listen to it.
http://youtu.be/ScO1W3Kb5m4
After that I of course had to know what they sound like when left to their own devices, so here they are with Nada Care:
http://youtu.be/1sb6sOlJC2s
Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go as sung by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Still one of my favorite songs of all time.
I cannot think of a better way to observe St. Patrick’s Day then cutting myself a slice of soda bread, making a large cup of tea, putting my feet up, and settling in with the CXCW’s second annual Irish Showcase.
You can find the whole thing here; below are a few videos to give you a taste of the excellence to be had:
First, the incomparable Tony Fitz, producer and front of house manager for Homebeat, who organized the first seven videos in the showcase, with The Murder, the first track from his upcoming record. Joining him are Gráinne Hunt and members of Red Sail.
I don’t know if there’s a CXCW record for “Most Dogs Per Video” but if not, Carriages may have set one, with four, count them, FOUR happily wagging tails in this video for Pale Face which they wrote special for CXCW:
Rónán Ó Snodaigh of KÃla and Kristina Aspeqvist, director of the Stockholm Vodou Orchestra met ten minutes before this video was recorded. The song is called Cara Liom:
Sleep Thieves, of Dublin, met on Twitter and bonded over synths and movie soundtracks. Here they are with French Kiss from their upcoming album You Want The Night, coming soon from Minty Fresh Records:
These next two videos are not Tony Fitz productions, but they are still great stuff.
Representing the West: Willow Sea (Will O’Connor), from Galway, with instrumental-in-progress Dying Starts:
And finally, last but never least, CXCW’s first participant from Northern Ireland, songwriter Rowena Cairns with You Could Break My Heart
http://youtu.be/DnRbDnqhFV4
i once took a train ride across Texas, which, as Texas is very large, took a very long time. I spent that ride with Infinite Jest in my lap and small group of ladies at my back. The book was a re-read, and still managed to teach me things about myself that I had not previously known; the ladies complained about how they couldn’t smoke on the train for several hundred miles. By the end I wasn’t sure if I wanted to thrown them out the window or join them for a smoke break. I was definitely more conscious of my own bad habits.
This is Drown With the Monster, by White Lung, because sometimes you have to look your vices in the eye before you drop them down a well attached to a heavy weight.
Glow is one of Elam McKnight‘s mellower, sweeter songs, and it is delightful.
Elam McKnight – Glow from Elam McKnight on Vimeo.
If you’d like to sample his regular sweet dirty blues fare, hop on over to his Soundcloud page.
The Coathangers are a from Atlanta, and their latest record Suck My Shirt is scheduled to be unleashed upon the world on March 18.
“Unleashed” is the key word there; The Coathangers specialize in fast, kind-of-bratty garage punk and the record has taken a little while to grow on me. My favorite song on the record is Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em, where they slow down a little bit, albeit only for the first minute.
This is the video for the first single, Follow Me, in which Mastodon employ some clever disguises while standing in for The Coathangers, and it’s a good time.
