Andrew Bird in Prospect Park 6/10/11 (Photo By A. Lowden)
Andrew Bird opened the new season of Celebrate Brooklyn! last night in Prospect Park. At the show he played many old favorites, and at least 3 new songs from the upcoming album he is working on with his band. Check out the first performance of his new song, “Give It Away”, as well as some photos after the jump. Continue reading
JEFF The Brotherhood at The Cliffhanger, Oct. 2010 (Photo By A. Lowden)
“Bring it in for this one” Jake Orrall shouts at the audience before they tear into this beast of a tune. “Shredder” is meant to be played loud, perfect for a live show, and intended for you to get lost in the moment as it starts to hit your brain. These killer riffs will be properly released on JEFF’s forthcoming album, “We Are The Champions”, set to come out early in 2011. But! Last October, JEFF did a live set for Jack White’s Third Man Records, and that recording has just come out on vinyl. There, they tease a few tracks on the new album, including the song this post is dedicated to. I’ve ripped this record from vinyl, and I want to share this incredible song with you. It was recorded directly to tape, and mixed/mastered for vinyl. The sound is rich, and gives you everything you want out of a truly analog sound. Third Man Records knows how to do it the right way.
-A. Lowden
Stream “Shredder” here!
Purchase JEFF The Brotherhood Live At Third Man Records here!
A few weeks ago I dropped snowdaze, a little EP I recorded based on College Park’s first snow of the season. Today, I bring you Quarry / Harbor a six-song release that is essentially everything decent I recorded in 2010. It’s available for download by clicking through above to the Wapinitia bandcamp or here. It’s name your own price, so it’s basically free unless you’re feeling generous, like Jorge did with snowdaze. Jorge, I treasure that dollar forever.
Stay tuned for more Fresh Heirs releases, as I look forward to Goodbye Canterbury from Kevin’s The Dalles project and January just seems ripe with free time for more releases from many areas. Stay tuned and download Quarry / Harbor and support local music.
–Daniel
Here it is, my list of my favorite albums. These are all really solid records, so check them out if you haven’t listened! Or if you have forgotten them, give them another spin. List after the jump!
Continue reading
For a pleasant holiday treat, we’re bringing you a new EP from Wapinitia entitled snowdaze. Recorded Friday afternoon and evening after the morning had the first snowfall of the season, this three-song release is inspired by the winter season. While different in style from the Mount Rainier vs. Mount Hood split with Ebright Azimuth, snowdaze is a collage of ideas all put down into one place.
Click through the picture above or click here to go to Wapinitia’s bandcamp. Name your price (which is assumed to be free).
–Daniel
Filed under Bands
I fell in love with singles this year, more so then most full-lengths. These are all incredible songs that I hope you will love as much as I do.
10. Daniel Pujol – Too Safe
I fell in love with the B-side of Daniel’s single from Third Man Records. A mainstay in the Nashville music scene, he continues the garage punk void that Jay Reatard left behind. Look for him to get more attention next year.
9. Ghost Solo – Screaming Females
Screaming Females saved the best track on their album for last with this incredible track of their album Castle Talk. With the thumping beat of the rhythm section over the sick guitar lines of Marissa Paternoster, they write a song that not only is catchy, but still punk-as-fuck.
8. Belinda – Ben Folds and Nick Hornby
I love the concept and destruction behind this song. As I wrote in a previous post, Ben had to write two songs in order to get this track done: A “classic” sounding song, and then a second-bastardized version to tie it all together. I also can’t help but laugh when Ben sings about her physical attributes so matter of factly.
7. Learned To Surf – Superchunk
How the hell have I gone though life without listening to Superchunk until this year? Better late than never, as they released an incredible comeback(?) record towards the end of this year. Pure pop-punk bliss, and perfect for radio as I played it nearly every show this semester on WONY. Stop sinking and listen to Superchunk.
6. Claws Off – Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s
Certain songs get you through tough times in your life, and this one did that at the beginning of the fall semester. It nearly became my theme song for a few weeks. But as life moves on, this song remains in my life, as I look at it as something that helped me through a rough patch.
Ever since this record came out, I have loved this song by newcomers, Happy Birthday. I always thought that they were a forgotten band from this year, but after seeing their underwhelming live set, I can understand why they faded away. Still, they wrote one of the year’s catchiest, and strangest tunes of the year. I wonder if Girls FM streams online too?
My sister said something very interesting to me over break when I overheard her listening to this song. I walked in and declared my love for this great tune, and she reacted saying “But you hate everything everyone else likes!” Granted, I don’t care for any of the songs that are popular on Billboard’s Hot 100 charts, but it makes me happy that the same people who love those songs, also think that this song is a great track. Who couldn’t love this incredible pop song? Classic soul hooks, great lyrics, fantastic videos, and Cee-Lo effing Green! In a world where crossover appeal is rare, I’m glad we can all agree on this song.
3. Dance Yrself Clean – LCD Soundsystem
I don’t think there was a better opening track on any other album that came out this year. Like the best LCD songs, the track takes a little bit to build up, but when it finally pulls out of the driveway, your life pauses for 5 minutes, and you dance until you collapse. One cool experience I had with this song was DJ’ing Oneonta’s biggest street fair with some great friends, and playing this song. Over 50 people from all over took over our corner of Main Street with a large dance party. Surreal.
This was easily my song of the summer. It was perfect for rolling down the windows and blasting it as I escaped/survived another day of my summer job. Even though I think it was intended as a summer jam, it made miss the reckless abandon I had during the colder months. I know, it was sad to have it backwards. It also helps that this arguably the best song Japandroids has ever recorded.
1. Bottled In Cork – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
This is seriously one of the best songs in Ted’s extensive catalog. Not only does it keep the punk vibe that he is known for, but it is probably the catchiest tune he has written. It’s featured on arguably one of his finest albums, and has unfortunately been ignored the attention that it deserves from the record-buying public. Let 2010 be remembered as the year that “Tell the bartender/I think I’m falling in love” wouldn’t leave my skull. Props, Pharmacists.
-A. Lowden
Nick Cave of Grinderman in Boston, MA (Photo by A. Lowden)
I have a strange history with this band. I have told this story to a few people recently, and nearly all of them have been upset, bewildered, and frustrated at me. My first introduction to Grinderman, hell, to Nick Cave in general was in 2007. That summer I attended the White Stripes concert at Madison Square Garden. To this day, it is still one of my favorite concerts, but until recently it had this weird caveat in the story of the gig. The openers to this show were country legend Porter Wagoner (who coined the Nudie suit, and died only a few months later), and Grinderman. This was Grinderman’s first US show, and of all places it was at the “World’s Most Famous Arena”. Before they went on, this woman turns to my friend and I and asks, “Will you please not talk during Nick Cave?” The two of us were extremely confused, as we had no idea who this “Nick Cave” was. We told her we would refrain from opening our mouths, but we thought this was strange. Grinderman takes the stage, and starts creating quite the ruckus on the large stage. Nick Cave is running around the stage like a crazed animal, shouting at the crowd, Warren Ellis and his crazy hair is playing miniature guitars, and making them screech and sound like a tornado. We were confused as to what we were watching, as is everyone else surrounding us, except for the Nick Cave fan, sitting in her seat, smiling. During the first song, Nick Cave slips onstage and falls down. After the song he announces “I can tell my children that my fell on my ass at Madison Square Garden”. Essentially that sums up what I thought about their set, a band falling on it’s ass on it’s big chance to break to a large audience.
As years went on, my friend and I would joke about the Grinderman show, occasionally texting pictures of Nick Cave with his 70′s porn mustache to each other, with captions of “I’VE GOT THE NO PUSSY BLUES!!!!!!” This prejudice for Grinderman, and all things Nick Cave (who I later learned was considered a legend in the eyes of many music lovers like minded to myself), continued until August 2010. One day I was watching a documentary on the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, when suddenly footage of Grinderman’s first public performance came on the screen. They were playing none other than “No Pussy Blues”, the very song I had joked about for so long. As I watched Nick Cave shout as loud as he could, and Warren Ellis look like he was having an seizure on stage, I realized how wrong I had been for all these years. The timing of changing my mind was impeccable, as a new album from Grinderman came out in September, and of course, I loved it. A few weeks later I realized that a full tour of the US was coming, and I had to rectify my previous sins towards them.
My friends here at the radio station (who are HUGE Nick Cave fans), and myself decided that we should take the roadtrip to Boston to see the concert. We would have gone to the NY show, but Boston was on a Saturday. We took the 4+ hour drive across NY & Massachusetts to the House of Blues, a venue conveniently located next to Fenway Park. The opener was a theramin player, Armen Ra. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s one of the first electronic instruments ever created. It is played by the placements of your hands in the air. It was a strange opener for such a loud band to follow.
Grinderman in Boston, MA (Photo by A. Lowden)
Finally, the house lights go down and Grinderman takes the stage. Nick Cave is a wild animal, running across the stage shouting nonsensical words at the crowd, playing his guitar and keyboard with a crazy intensity. Warren Ellis plays a variety of guitars and percussion, and looks like he hasn’t had a haircut in about 20 years. He even rolls around on the floor with his microphone and shouts background vocals during one of the show’s best songs, “Evil”. Everyone in the crowd eats it up as the band slays through material from their first two albums. The sound an organized chaos, something that professionals like Grinderman can easily handle. The energy of the band was always at a peak, but it reached its highest on “No Pussy Blues.”
Grinderman performed an 80 minute set on the 3rd night of their tour. Actually, it was the first night of their US shows. Somehow I always catch their first US shows…
-A. Lowden
This is the first in a 5 part installment about my CMJ experience! Armed with my ears, earplugs, camera, and notebook, I saw 30 bands in 5 days.
My CMJ 2010 Badge!
Stream: Glass Vaults, “Forget Me Now”
New Zealand. Typically not a place you think of when you look for hot bed indie meccas (Flight of the Conchords?). But we just got hold of the Glass EP from Wellington based two-piece band Glass Vaults. Opening with a sort of tribal vibe, not too far removed from Baltimore’s INEVERYROOM, the song soon calms down into a fairly ambient piece filled with the lots of aspects you expect from a two piece, lots of loops, programmed drums, but they add onto the usual. Vocally, Grizzly Bear comes to mind, with wonderful harmonies and cathedral like reverb, its a release that I’m looking forward to get more listens to.
More information on Glass Vaults are available from JUKBOXR, where their Glass EP is up for sale, and streaming.
-Kevin
Filed under Bands
Sure, Kid A has been scrutinized, parodied, and backlashed against in every way possible, but when it comes down to it, it is still one of the greatest and most influential albums of the generation. From the jumbled opening vocals of “Everything in its Right Place” to the haunting silence at the end of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” it is simply beautiful. But lets take a look back on what it meant for music at the time, so we can perhaps delve into what it still means for music.
It was 2000. Radiohead was three years removed from OK Computer, the album that had set Radiohead into alternative rock (if that still means anything) stardom. We hadn’t heard anything from the band in over a year except for Ed O’Brien’s diary on the recording process that started back in 1999. The album was clearly from a dark place (such darkness that we saw in the tour-film Meeting People is Easy).
“shit happens” as keef once famously said. and so it does. well it did today………..it’s difficult to say whether we’ve been here before, possibly not. and of course i m being deliberately vague about the whole thing ……but sometimes you have to be. anyway before one kneejerks and starts saying all manner of things you have to let the proverbial dust settle. sorry but you can only be so open.
Yet, that summer, via Napster and dial-up internet, the album leaked to the internet, one long download at a time. It was a curve ball to people. The band that had released an alternative staple 3 years prior, now dropping their guitars and picking up synthesizers, samplers and whatever the hell an ondes Martenot was.
Additionally, the advertising for it was unheard of at the time, yet makes complete sense in today’s mediafire world. No singles, no videos. Only online videos (blips) released to the internet, that fans could put on sites and blogs. The press called in suicide, and yet the album charted (back when it still meant something) number one in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, New Zealand and Ireland. It was nominated for Album of the Year by the Grammys, won Alternative Album of the Year, and in 2009, made the rounds of many best-of-the-decades lists.
More personally, I wasn’t around for any of this. I was a seven year old kid, unaware of Radiohead, alternative rock, or essentially music in general. It wasn’t until In Rainbows, released when I was becoming musically aware, that Radiohead made the distinct impact in my life. So as I listened to every one of the Oxford 5-somes albums, Kid A struck me as something phenomenal. Sure, I had listened to In Rainbows, so the album wasn’t a complete oddity to me, but just the way that they combined experimentation with traditional song structure was something I couldn’t ignore. This truly was the greatest album of all time. Something I still hold true to this day.
-Kevin
Filed under Bands
