This is the video for The River and the Willow, the title song from the latest release by the Dinner Belles of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The barn in the background doubles as their practice space and sometimes also their living space. The song is delightful, but really what I liked about this video is how cozy it feels, like you’re sitting on a porch (or, okay, river bank) with them.
DINNER BELLES – The River and the Willow from Southern Souls on Vimeo.
This year Mac McCaughan kept the Superchunk tradition of Halloween cover songs alive by taking on First and Last and Always by the Sisters of Mercy. The result is a mellow, reflective take on a classic.
Blooming, the new compilation from Fleeting Youth Records, is 33 songs/90+ minutes of occasionally fuzzy goodness. There really is something in there for everyone. Here are a couple tunes to whet your appetites:
Simple Syrup by Lurve: deceptively sweet, surprisingly heavy on the bottom end.
Sloppy Joes by Vomitface (nice name, guys): perfect for if you enjoy a good heavy metal headbang two-step but cannot be having with ogre roar. I’m swaying slowly in my chair as I type.
Philadelphia by Mumblr: Because they are my faaaaavorite, okay, and I’m more fond of this song than the city it’s about. They’ve written an anthem for one complex, gritty, sometimes ugly place but it’s universally applicable: your place might be a hot mess but it is your place, where-ever it is.
Tidal Grave by Assault Shaker: This one has, I think, I little bit more of a pop-industrial edge, what with the opening sample and droning vocals. But it’s good stuff.
And now, all the way from Italy, international man of mystery El Xicano, with a deceptively idyllic video for “La Grande Paura” (The Great Fear), the first and most mellow tune from his self-titled but as yet unreleased EP.
Even on sunny days at the beach, there are flickers of darker things . . .
(I’ve watched this video three times and I’m still not sure if that sunny beach is just random found home video footage, or footage from Jonestown. So there’s an extra layer of creepy-crawly uncertainty.)
“NaBloPoMo” stands for National Blog Posting Month. The idea is to post every day, which – TAH-DAH – I (Jennifer) did. Below is a final list, in case you missed any of them as they went by.
Pt. 1: Nov. 1-9
A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: ALX, Love Crushed Velvet
SWF, Let It Be Told
Le Trouble, Reality Strikes
Zero Zero, DannyTheStreet (Gerard Way)
Poeticat, Centre of the Concrete Square (video)
Colornoise, Polychronic
Fé,Time (video)
A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Chris Jones, Ghost Twins
Name That Face: Happy Flowers vs Happy Mondays
Pt. 2: Nov. 10-16
Natti Vogel, Cannibal (video)
Villebillies, Love is Kind of Crazy (video)
Gary Numan, Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)
Jus Post Bellum, Oh July
The Architects, Border Wars, Vol. 1
A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: John Moen, Perhapst
Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, Long Time Gone
Pt. 3: Nov. 17 – 23
Greenhouse, The Last Shred of Night
MGMT, MGMT
Shelf-reading at bandcamp: Co. Armagh edition
Introducing: Blitz//Berlin
The HARTEBEEST, Death. (video)
A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Ms. Charm Taylor, The Honorable South
Postcards from the Pit: The Architects / Death Spells / The Scandals, at the Knitting Factory, Brooklyn, 11/19/13
Pt. 4: Nov. 24-30
Mumblr, White Jesus/Black God
Three Songs From: Wax Fang
Mike Doughty, Super Bon Bon (2013) (video)
Introducing: Grounds For Invasion
Fall Out Boy, Alone Together (video)
Röyksopp feat. Susanne Sundfør, Running to the Sea (video)
Milan Jay, How Well Do You Remember Dying
Milan Jay (John Millane and Joseph Kenny) have spent the better part of the last year and a half (or so) holed up in a small town in the west of Ireland working on a new record. How Well Do You Remember Dying is the first single; the full record is expected in 2014.
Despite the name, the song is not about literal death or actual resurrection; rather, it is a hard-edged meditation on burning your life down and starting over. It might not be the life you expected, or the life you had planned. It is the life you chose.
All y’all know how much I love a good lyric video. This one, for Running to the Sea by Röyksopp featuring Susanne Sundfør, is particularly clever and lovely. And the song is pretty great, too.
For some of you, today is just Thursday. For others, and for me, it’s Thanksgiving.
One of the very many things I’m thankful for this year is Fall Out Boy, who came back, after a long time away. Here they are with Alone Together, one of my favorite songs from Save Rock and Roll.
http://youtu.be/Z79fveRw7LQ
Grounds for Invasion is a collaboration between Willow Sea (Willy O’Connor; music) and newcomer Tracy Friel (lyrics, vocals), of Galway, Ireland.
They initially met through college radio – he was helping her record live sessions – but their musical partnership didn’t really blossom until he heard her sing a Bo Diddley song at an open mic night, and thought it might be fun to have her add some vocals to some tracks he had been working on.
The results of that experiment are the five songs on Grounds for Invasion’s self-titled EP.
Willow Sea, left to his own devices, makes mellow, contemplative music. Grounds For Invasion, while still pretty chill, falls further down both the darker and poppier ends of the musical spectrum.
For example: Dance Alone, which is a wistful memoir of clubbing that you could do a swirly-girly-gothy interpretive dance to, if you wanted.
And also True Romance, which I am posting because it is my favorite. It’s poetry – bold, hilarious, profane poetry – recited over a hypnotic beat. Sample line: You appeared like a drunken Gabriel, all talk and Buckfast and legs that just went on and on.
Last year, Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing published a memoir called The Book Of Drugs, because he took a lot of them, and had a lot of drug stories, many of which he told in the book. He also told a lot of stories about screwing and being screwed in both the biblical and music industry sense. I think I read it in one sitting, wincing and laughing by turns. Favorite revelation: He was the author of the New York Press’s Dirty Sanchez column, which I used to read every week.
And then, of course, he had to go on a book tour, and read his stories out loud. That, in turn, led to him first revisiting the songs at the center of the narrative – the work he did with Soul Coughing – and then, eventually, to him completely reworking and re-imagining some of the tunes.
He has just released the product of that work as a record entitled Circles Super Bon Bon Sleepless How Many Cans? True Dreams of Wichita Monster Man Mr. Bitterness Maybe I’ll Come Down St. Louise Is Listening I Miss the Girl Unmarked Helicopters The Idiot Kings So Far I Have Not Found the Science.
He’s also made a new video for Super Bon Bon, which originally appeared on Irresistible Bliss (1996) and I’m pretty sure was played at every single frat party I attended for at least a year afterwards. This is the original official video, made at a time when raves were a big thing, and people wore goggles when they to a rave, to protect their eyes from whatever was in the smoke and/or foam.
