third screaming stars record is finished (ironically while the second record hangs awkwardly in limbo) and posted on soundcloud. highly recommended if you're ever having trouble sleeping. this record was meant to document the weird transition from winter to spring this year.
Diary 5.17.14- havin' a hellride by Shalloboi on Mixcloud
song- artist- album
1. linda's gone- the black angels- 'clear lake forest' 10"
2. baby's going underground- helium- 'the dirt of luck'
3. something goes wrong- medicine- 'part time punks'
4. imaginary person- ty segall- 'melted'
5. fifth in line to the throne- camera obscura- '4ad sessions'
6. calendar- alison's halo- 'dozen' 7"
7. love is to die- warpaint- s/t
8. red eyes- the war on drugs- 'lost in the dream'
9. night still comes- neko case- 'the worse things get, the harder i fight, the harder i fight, the more that i love you'
10. dreaming my dreams with you- cowboy junkies- 'the trinity session'
11. saturn song- beach house- 'the space project'
12. the lens- thee oh sees- 'drop'
13. undone- the stargazer lilies- 'we are the dreamers'
14. be above it- tame impala- 'live versions'
15. just a little boy- swans- 'to be kind'
I can’t review a Neko Case show—to review something implies impartiality, which I’m just not capable of with Case’s music. It was the perfect ending to a joyfully surreal day that started with me heading to Reckless to pick up the new Swans record, which I then listened to in its entirety before heading to a friend’s house to drink a bunch of awesome homebrewed beer and then on to the show. Between this show and the new Swans record was the knock-out punch to lift me out of a recurring funk that I’ve been falling in and out of over the past few months.
Her new record’s release last year saw me feeling a bit ambivalent initially—my first listen wasn’t necessarily a delirious one and I was completely confused and underwhelmed by the single ‘Man.’ I ended up buying the record digitally and then falling in love with it right before the holiday season and can now honestly say, without any stars in my eyes, that ‘The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, The More That I Love You’ is her best record since ‘Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.’ When her set started off at the Chicago Theater it sounded a bit rickety to me, until Kelly Hogan announced ‘We’re going to play a make-out song now,’ before the band launched into ‘Lion’s Jaws’ which has been a favorite of mine since I first heard ‘Fox Confessor…’ (it’s those heavenly backing vocals) and it was the moment right near the beginning of every Neko Case show that I’ve been to where I end up thinking, ‘Well, there’s your money’s worth right there—three songs in.’ She remains one of the only artists I’ve been listening to for as long where this is true—in 2007 it happened three songs in when she played ‘Favorite,’ in 2009 it was after ‘Middle Cyclone’ and this time it was ‘Lion’s Jaws,’ which I’ve always wanted to hear live and it was absolutely flawless.
Her current live band has swapped in Eric Bachman of Crooked Fingers for long time live guitarist Paul Rigby and the band has more of a minimalist sound than it did before, which suits the new material perfectly. Bachman is also able to switch between keyboards and formidable backing vocal duties as well. They played all of the new record apart from only a couple of songs, a good chunk of ‘Fox Confessor…’ as well as several from 2009’s ‘Middle Cyclone.’ ‘Deep Red Bells’ from ‘Blacklisted’ and ‘Set Out Running’ from ‘Furnace Room Lullabye’ made an appearance as well. To call this set ‘generous’ is a bit of an understatement—by the end of the night the band had played for more than an hour-and-a-half and with plenty of surprises—I had no idea that Case had a song on ‘The Hunger Games’ soundtrack. Her first of two encores featured a duet with Bachman on Crooked Fingers track ‘Sleep All Summer.’ Starkness was the name of the game and it worked beautifully.
This show brings me to another rather surreal phenomena—people bringing their children to concerts. It seems like I can’t go anywhere I used to without being in the presence of tons of children, which I suppose reflects my age group more than anything else. I was in a lone seat up in the box section of the lower balcony—very comfortable and roomy—in the booth behind me was a family of four. In the end it wasn’t any more annoying than I usually find general crowd behavior, there are always people at shows to talk loudly and obliviously during quiet sections of songs to interrupt the trance you’ve been blissfully falling into. At least these were kids and their parents were trying to keep them quiet during the show—perhaps they were trying to teach their kids this type of etiquette at a young age. It was hilarious to hear Neko deliver so much profanity-laced onstage banter while hearing these tiny voices behind me asking their mother to explain what was being said. Then there was the fact that Case performed ‘Nearly Midnight, Honolulu’ after which someone yelled out ‘THAT WAS FUCKING AMAZING!’ ‘Yeah,’ Neko replied, ‘Chicago Tribune—one line—Neko Case at the Chicago Theater—“That was fucking amazing!”’ My favorite moment in this regard remains when Case declared into the microphone, ‘Now I’ve got a camel toe to go with these awesome pants,’ and once the gales of laughter died down I enjoyed the delight of hearing the mother of a seven-year-old girl trying to innocently explain what a camel toe was. They also left at the beginning of the first encore, ‘It’s time for bed,’ the mother cooed to her children.
I can’t help feeling that tonight was one of those nights where nearly everything went wrong. I’m going to do my best not to let that colour my experience seeing Angel Olsen at Lincoln Hall tonight, but the fact of the matter is that this was one of those nights I wouldn’t have minded staying in and doing not much of anything. First of all Lincoln Hall was completely oversold tonight and more packed than I have ever seen it before (the previous holder of that title was Stars of the Lid in December). The bouncers even gave up on keeping the stairways clear—they settled on keeping one side of each stairway clear instead. It was so packed in there I had my first moment of legit claustrophobic panic in my life—during ‘White Fire’ the woman in front of me kept backing up into me and I was already cornered by a column and the ramp and railing on the left side of the room. I started to see stars, had trouble breathing and spent the entire song worried I might pass out. There were a lot of barriers to my enjoyment of the show—which happens sometimes when you go out in a giant crowd of people. Sometimes the rabble of nitwits you’re stuck in a space with can make it real hard to get your purpose accomplished, even if that purpose is something as simple as taking in some live music.
The opening band was deliberately chosen as a statement of intent it seemed—Promised Land Sound from Nashville, Tennessee did a great job of playing some very well-tread-territory type of music. There were flashes of the passion that Neil Young’s best songs exude, but they were only flashes. The lead guitarist did some impressive wah-wah work and had a lively, fresh approach. Everything else sounded rather generic. The only exceptions were when the band slowed things down and played something yearning and beautiful—again, a forecast for what was the follow.
Much has been made about the heavier, more rock-based sound of ‘Burn Your Fire for No Witness,’ which Olsen made with a full band. Where her previous work dabbles in country and Patsy Cline-esque 60s pop as well as some beautiful, plaintive starkness, ‘Burn Your Fire for No Witness’ features the sludgy pop rock of ‘Forgiven/Forgotten’ and ‘Hi-Five.’ Wearing a baseball cap that covered her face and chugging down beers for most of the set, Olsen was standing behind the more rocking material, but it was always the emotionally arresting beauty of songs that she performed from 2012’s ‘Halfway Home’ and 2010’s stark ‘Strange Cacti’ that held the crowd’s attention. Basically, it was the opposite of every other show I’ve ever been to—at this show people were heading to the bar to get another beer during the louder songs and everyone sat at rapt attention during the quiet songs. Considering what an anomaly this is I begin to struggle with the necessity of the rockier material—her best-written songs on the new album are the more emotionally bare pieces like the solo ‘White Fire’ and the cathartic closer ‘Windows’—those two tracks were the clear standouts of the evening from the new record. The band she’s assembled is nice and heavy and the songs sound fully fleshed-out and vivid (props to her for taking Implodes bassist Emily Elhaj along on this tour), it’s just that those tracks seem a little forced to me. Olsen is in her element most when she’s commanding a crowd on her own, which was true the first time I saw her at the Empty Bottle back in 2010—she’s one of the only performers I’ve seen bring the din of conversation at the Bottle to a deafening silence by playing ‘Some Things Cosmic’ by herself (which she ended with tonight as well). The full-band versions of older songs like ‘Free,’ ‘Miranda’ and ‘Drunk and With Dreams’ were magnificent as well. While I say that the more rocking songs on ‘Burn Your Fire…’ seem forced, it’s at least nice to hear that Olsen has a strong desire to push her sound in a different direction. One thing that ‘Burn Your Fire…’ has that her older records don’t is her fullest and richest-sounding vocals to date.
Diary 4.12.14- time goes slowly by by Shalloboi on Mixcloud
So winter is over... well, kind of.
Either way, this is a mix heavy on the psych and garage. It's also all vinyl rips except for the last track. The more typically eclectic type of mix that I normally make with return for my birthday diary version in a little over a month.
song- artist- album
1. endless life- the verve- s/t EP
2. rhymes of an hour- mazzy star- 'among my swan'
3. b & e- nothing- 'guilty of everything'
4. endurance- bardo pond- 'ticket crystals'
5. chameleon- the warlocks- 'skull worship'
6. slide thru my fingers- tame impala- s/t EP
7. lux- disappears- 'lux'
8. high frontier- lumerians- 'high frontier'
9. tired of wasting my time- coachwhips- 'hands on the controls'
10. the hardest walk- the jesus & mary chain- 'psychocandy'
11. widowmaker- the heads- 'relaxing with...'
12. indian bones- dead meadow- s/t
13. baxter corner- white fence- 'live in san francisco'
14. hare tarot lies- no joy- 'wait to pleasure'
15. in another way- my bloody valentine- 'm b v'
16. spread your wings- spiritualized- ace theater los angeles bootleg
One of the great curiosities to me out of all of the music I listen to are those albums that I come back to again and again after lengthy breaks. Last week on a night when I was scanning my ipod for something to suit my solitary, wistful, reflective kind of mood I landed on ‘The Trinity Session’ by the Cowboy Junkies, which I hadn’t listened to probably since 2010. Since that was such a difficult year I’ve come to realize that I ended up purging most of the music I was listening to back then from my awareness. I always thought that that whole ‘bad associations’ talk was just bullshit. Great music is great music regardless of your associations with it, but then that crap-storm of a year steam-rolled me and I found that I was only able to hold on to a few albums by simple virtue that I never stopped listening to them so the bad memories never stuck to them. ‘The Trinity Session’ is one where they stuck.
I was introduced to this album the way everyone was, through the Cowboy Junkies’ cover version of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sweet Jane.’ My girlfriend in high school and I used to argue that whole cover version vs. original point because of that song. She was always on the ‘I like it better because it’s the first one I heard’ side. ‘I like it,’ I’d said, because I did, ‘but it’s impossible for it to be better than the original. Nothing can top the original! Plus, she changed all of the lyrics—what the hell is up with that?!’ I’d never listened to it closely enough to realize that husky-voiced singer Margo Timmins had used the lyrics from the ‘Live With Lou Reed’ version, which, in fact, are better than the lyrics on the ‘Loaded’ version. The band also took that stripped-down, half-asleep feel from the live version as well. What’s most interesting about this cover is that due to the fact that it’s a cover version of an alternate version of a classic song it’s completely faithful to its source material while sounding completely different from the version most people are familiar with. So it kind of puts that whole respect-the-original vs. make-it-your-own argument to bed. Regardless I bought a live album by the band on cassette that I’ve long since forgotten as I’ve never seen it anywhere and certainly don’t have it anymore. I listened to it a few times, was annoyed by how many other cover versions were on it (I claimed to loathe Bruce Springsteen around then—kind of stupid as now I really wish I could hear that live version of ‘Nebraska’ Suicide-nod ‘State Trooper’) and lost track of it by the time I left for college.
In 2008 or 2009 Stefanie and I used to housesit for two poster-artist friends in Evanston—they had a greyhound named Seth and two cats named Ocho and Akiko. We used to housesit for them several times a year and one thing I used to do while I was there was look through their CD shelves for music I hadn’t heard and that’s where I finally found ‘The Trinity Session.’ I ripped the audio, loaded it onto my ipod and one of those mornings when I was riding the Purple line to work ‘Blue Moon Revisited’ came on while passing over Calvary Cemetary into Howard when we stopped before pulling into the station and I watched the sun rise while it played and that’s one of those rare moments where I remember the exact moment that an album first got its hooks into me. The route between Belmont and Evanston was one I made a lot while I was at Columbia, too. Since it runs over three different beautiful cemeteries it would always lend a lot of weight to whatever music I was soundtracking my angsty existential thoughts to that day and this album was transporting me back to those days. As depressed as I was at Columbia I really loved riding the train all the way up to Evanston, which I find more than a little ironic now.
‘The Trinity Session’ was recorded in a church in Toronto using a single mic (an ambisonic mic to be exact) giving it a contradictory sound—the instruments seem distant and dripping with the wet ambience of the church and simultaneously unadorned, raw and very intimate. There’s an immediacy mixed with the electricity of a captured moment, but the album’s so rich in tone and imagery that it takes dozens of listens to soak everything in that’s going on. It has a surface starkness that’s incredibly deceptive. There are hints of jazz, blues, folk and country but it sounds unmistakably timeless and distinctive. It’s an album that if you close your eyes while listening to it you are inside that church with the band set up around you, Margo singing softly in your ear.
The songs are incredibly restrained, but emotionally vivid—there’s some startling loneliness in guitarist Michael Timmins’ reading of an iconic melody on ‘Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)’ that is only intensified by the extra notes and passages that he adds. Extra notes and all it’s surrounded by yawning gaps of empty space. A similar effect occurs on ‘Dreaming my Dreams with you’—which is built over a meaty bassline dense with room reverb (you can even hear the bass causing the snare to rattle a bit during the intro if you’re listening on headphones). Other than the base elements of drums, bass and guitar (which are so locked-in that it’s easy to hear them as different parts of the same instrument) harmonica, accordion and the occasional stringed instrument drift in and out of the mix. America has Mazzy Star, which is the perfect music for driving while stoned through an endless desert with the windows down, England has the Sundays who take pastoral imagery, bright, shimmering tones and pair them with sad lyrics and then Canada has Cowboy Junkies representing a wintery desolation that doesn’t quite translate down here in America. One thing I forgot to mention—this magical commute where I first fell in love with the Cowboy Junkies was during the winter.
Sometimes the season that a record arrives can have as much of an impact as the music itself and the new War on Drugs is the perfect record to come out during the first stages of spring after a long, cold winter. ‘Lost in the Dream’ builds on 2011’s ‘Slave Ambient’ by piling on the wistfulness and longing. The production has been smoothed out even more this time out at the expense of the warmth at the core of ‘Slave Ambient’ (perhaps it’s a better record to listen to on vinyl). Nevertheless the songs on this record fall into that category of impressionistic songwriting that aims to take the essence of the tiniest, most subtle moments and magnify them in vivid detail. There were only hint’s of singer-songwriter Adam Granduciel’s ability to do this on ‘Slave Ambient.’
Stylistically it’s a more laid-back affair than ‘Slave Ambient’ with the emphasis turned to more reflective material. The songs are also incredibly expansive, especially during the album’s second half—which starts with the gracefully slow-burning ‘Disappearing.’ Sounding like the type of dreamy, shimmering wistfulness that Wild Nothing specialized on ‘Gemini’ it takes its time winding down—the ending instrumental section is practically half of the song’s running time. This un-rushed energy has a similar effect to the pop epic sound of something the Cure are known for doing on songs like ‘Pictures of You’ off of ‘Disintegration.’ It’s something of an ensemble approach to songwriting that highlights the intricacies of the overlapping instrumental parts just as much as the vocal melody and the chord progression. In such extended instrumental sections you’re able to immerse yourself in the layers and focus on them individually and draw more out of them—the bounce of the delayed drum sound on ‘Disappearing,’ the carefully overlapped sparseness of each part of the title track, the fact that ‘In Reverse’ builds and closes so carefully. Considering how often the Cure have been name-checked as an influence by countless bands it’s always been interesting to me that so few have really taken the time to build songs and highlight the pure instrumental beauty of their songs like the Cure did during their late 80s heyday. That, to me, is ‘Lost in the Dream’s greatest strength—that it’s successfully taken this approach and applied it to some really great songwriting by a band that has already established their own lush and immersive sound.
