The Long Cut ...we'll get there eventually

In the Clearing Stands a Boxer

WXPN is asking for year-end top tens again (by midnight tonight). I wish I had the time and/or energy to write up a little about each of my choices, but work has been crazy lately and home hasn't been all that sane either.

Expect light posting up until the new year.

Here's my shortlist for Best Albums, it wasn't easy picking just ten this year:

ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
BIRDIE BUSCH Penny Arcade
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
FEIST The Reminder
GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
IRON & WINE The Shepherd's Dog
JOSE GONZALEZ In Our Nature
JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
NELLIE MCKAY Obligatory Villagers
NICK LOWE At My Age
PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
SEA WOLF Leaves in the River
SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
TEGAN AND SARA The Con
THE A-SIDES Silver Storms
THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
THE NATIONAL Boxer
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Challengers
THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
WILCO Sky Blue Sky
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Magic
BAND OF HORSES Cease to Begin
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM Sound of Silver
MARY GAUTHIER Between Daylight and Dark
RONDERLIN The Great Investigation

So, what ended up at the top of your pile this year?

All the Same, I'm Not Sure How Smart It Was to Make Yahoo Serious Your Education Minister

Former Midnight Oil rocker named Australia's environment minister

Australia is so much cooler than us (no "global warming" pun intended, honest).

Cute and Paste

First off, I want to thank everyone who gave their opinion on the name-your-own-price Paste magazine offer. The consensus was that somewhere between $5 and $10 was pretty reasonable, so I went about halfway between those two numbers and sent in my an amount equal to my birth date (you'll have to figure that one out on your own).

These posts of mine about the 'XPN free-at-noon concerts have lately been falling into the "better-late-than-never" timespan, especially when I have more than a week between the concerts.

Not last Friday, but the Friday before that - October 26 - I went out to 'XPN to see Nellie McKay for free. I mentioned McKay's latest album, Obligatory Villagers, in my most recent "weekly" RIYL post (which - whoops - was over a month ago!) and the disc has only grown on me more since than.

McKay's songwriting is so sharp that it's easy to forget just how talented a musician she is. In concert, though, it's hard to miss - especially if you happen to be sitting about three feet from her like I was. She walks out on stage carrying a big stack of music books looking like some demure high schooler at a recital - and than goes and plays like a piano virtuoso, all the while singing those sharp lyrics of hers.

And speaking of lyrics, as sweet and innocent as she may look, McKay's latest release has a well-deserved "explicit lyrics" warning sticker on it, and it applies to most of the disc's songs. Somehow, though, so made it thought the broadcast-live-on-NPR show without needing to be beeped (not that those God-hating, youth-corrupting, amoral, commie-pinko public radio hippies would have censored her anyway) which was kind of a shame, since my favorite songs from the new disc are also some of the saltiest. Oh, well, it was still a fun (but way too short) show.

Some photos here, NPR archive there.

Throw in the Set of Steak Knives and I Am There

In the olden days, "how much would you pay?" was almost always followed by "... but wait, there's more." Now, with the kids and their kooky Internet thingie, it's more like, "pay what you would want to pay." Period. No free gifts, but no need for the four easy payments, either.

Here's the deal: Radiohead recently released its new disc, In Rainbows, on their website for the low, low price of: whatever you wanted to pay. They suggested a price, and offered more if you paid full price, but you could (and many did) get the album for free. Legally.

Now, I really don't get Radiohead (please, Radiohead fans, let's not go there right now), so their offer didn't have any impact on me. But now Paste Magazine has the same sort of offer: a year's subscription for whatever you think it's worth. There is a minimum price of $1 and people who pay more than the regular subscription price will be recognized in a future issue. Even current subscribers can take advantage of the offer and re-up for a year at the self-defined price.

Paste is an excellent music and culture magazine, and each issue comes with an always interesting sampler CD, but for budgetary reasons I can only subscribe to a limited number of magazines. Right now it's Consumer Reports - which I always subscribe to because I like their advocacy work (and, of course, their reviews) and Beer Advocate, because I like beer (and, of course, their reviews).

I would love to add Paste to that list (and have thought in the past of subscribing), but now the question is: how much do I pay? Do I pay the minimum with the knowledge that if enough people sign up, Paste would have many more readers and could theoretically cover the cheaper subscribers with higher advertising rates? Do I pay the suggested price ($19.95), which, as much as I would have liked to, I wouldn't have done if I hadn't heard of this offer? Or do I reward Paste for their hippie-dippie generosity by paying over the asking price (and get my name in a magazine as a bonus)?

What do you, both my readers, think? I'm leaning towards $5 or $10 bucks, but technically my magazine budget is already maxed out, so maybe just a buck?

Just like those old Ginsu knife offers, the Paste deal is only good for a limited time, so let me know what I should do, quick!

I Was Going to Title This Post "A Modest Mousterpiece," but I Like You People Too Much to Do That to You. Well, That and I Didn't Want Disney Suing My Ass.

It always amazed me that bands (or perhaps more accurately, their record companies) continued spending their money making music videos long after the big two music channels, MTV & VH1, pretty much completely stopped playing videos a few years ago (and long, long, long after they stopped playing anything by anyone outside the Top 40/Rap realm). But now, thanks to music blogs - biggies like AOL's Spinner and smaller ones like Indieblogheaven - people are actually getting to see music videos again. And some of them are really pretty good.

Check out this one for Modest Mouse's "Little Motel." The band's not exactly known for making what you would call "beautiful" music (they're a great band, but their vocals almost always involve screaming at some point). "Little Motel" is a beautiful song and the video is an even more beautiful story, told in reverse. It's cinematic, and very affecting.

[via the aforementioned Indieblogheaven.]

Spunky Kingston

I can't say that last Friday's WXPN Free-at-Noon artist was someone on my must-see-live list, or even an artist whose music I think about that much, but the instant I found out that Toots and the Maytals were playing, I knew I had to be there.

You might not know it from how I look and dress, but I'm not a huge reggae fan. I've never fully got the whole Bob Marley adoration thing. I've tried. I've even tried Ziggy Marley. Nothing. I just don't think that reggae by itself is very interesting.

But mix it up with a little ska and rock and rhythm & blues and whatever else and now you've got my interest. This might sound lame, but my education in Jamaican music started with the Clash's punk-flavored interpretations and has worked backward from there, so I expect a little more than just the laid-back beats. Toots Hibbert and his band deliver much more than laid-back beats.

I can't say that Toots sounded great in concert, since the sound system seemed a bit weak down at the World Cafe Live (or at least from where I was standing), but he did put on quite a show. You would never guess that Mr. Hibbert is almost 62(!) years old. The guy moves around the stage like he's still in his twenties. He reminded me of a Jamaican (and, you know, still alive) James Brown, without the big ego. Without any ego at all, really.

Toots has a new disc out, but he played plenty of older hits - like "Funky Kingston" and "54-46, That's My Number." And he and the band played for a relatively long time for a free noontime concert - almost an hour.

My spot right next to the stage was great when I got to be one of the lucky few to shake Toots' hand as he wrapped up his set, but it wasn't that great a spot for taking pictures. For most of the concert Toots was blocked from my view by his backup singers (who were, oddly enough, placed up front) but he did come to the edge of the stage every once in a while so I did get a few shots, which I've posted over at Flickr. I just can't say I'm real happy with how they came out. As always, NPR has archived their broadcast of the show, which came out just fine.

Next week: Nellie McKay.

Just Because I'm Up To My Neck In Gravel Doesn't Mean I Should Be Taken For Granite

Hey there! Still here, still alive. The patio project is going well, if not a bit (a lot a bit) slower than expected. I keep meaning to post some in-process pictures (or - hold on the you hats - some video), but any photo post would have to include a few shots of the blood blisters the project has produced, and I don't think anyone wants to see that. Or at least I know the Missus never seems to want to see that.

So, no, I haven't been blogging lately. Or running. Or taking a lot of pictures. Or reading. Or attending free concerts.

Ah, but way back on September 21, before I missed two free-at-noon concerts (by some guys named Loudon Wainwright III and Steve Earle) I did get to see the A-Sides, pour libre.

I'm a big fan of the A-Sides, and not just because they're from Philly (though that's part of it, too). I like how the band takes the pure pop of the 60's and twists it into their own unique sound. Their new disc, Silver Storms, has a stronger, more trippy sound than their debut, and shows off both their musical knowledge and their musical ability. All of the songs on the disc end up morphing into a mix of guitars and drums that never sounds tacked-on or show-offy (that is too a word). In fact, while not every song works perfectly, the album as a whole flows very nicely from song to song.

So I was real excited to see them live and real surprised to see a small crowd waiting to get into the concert, which was a real shame. 'XPN is good to local bands, but the A-Sides still don't get much airplay. The small crowd (and the fact that it was a mid-day concert) seemed to take some of the spark away from the band. But it was still a pretty good show. NPR has it archived here, and I've got some pictures from it here.

This Friday it's funky Kingston's own Toots and the Maytals. I don't know if Toots has a new disc coming out or what, but I can't pass up seeing him live.

RIYL71

Dang but there's a whole lot of cool new discs coming out this week!

Birdie Busch Penny Arcade It's a little strange having someone you often see down at your local farmers market show up on music blogs from all over the place, but local girl Birdie Busch's sophomore album certainly deserves the national attention. On Penny Arcade she's got a stronger voice singing in front of a much more complex sound than she did on her first album.

Birdie Busch - "Mystical" [mp3]

Erin McKeown Lafayette Remember last January, when I wrote about how great a show McKeown put on? No, of course you don't. But thanks to this new disc, now you can hear for yourself just how good she is live. The disc covers her entire young-but-already-much-varied musical career.

Iron & Wine The Shepherd's Dog Sam Beam - who pretty much is Iron & Wine - started out making the lowest of lo-fi music but he's always seemed willing to expand his reach by working with other artists, like the disc he made with Calexico a little while back for example. Calexico shows up on The Shephard's Dog and helps make it the least lo-fi-est of Beam's albums so far, and the best since his debut.

José González In Our Nature The quiet vocals and guitar strumming that make up the backbone of González's sound always pulls me into his music way more than something so seemingly uncomplicated has any right doing. More of the same on the new disc, which is streaming this week at MSN.

Matt Pond PA Last Light You have to admire a band that mixes rock with some old-time (as in late-80's/early 90's) pop and does it well, without resorting to the goofy hipster irony of bands like Weezer. But something about Last Light just isn't clicking with me. Musically it sounds perfect and the songs sound catchy, but it's just not catching with me. Maybe I need to listen to it a few more times. It's streaming this week over at AOL's Spinner.

Joni Mitchell Shine For the longest time, I hated Joni Mitchell. Hated. Would not listen to her at all. All because of "Little Yellow Taxi." Then I heard Blue and I completely forgave her for that one annoying song (though I'll never forgive her for letting the Counting Crows cover it). "Taxi" shows up on Joni's new disc, made over a bit and sounding somewhat more tolerable. Luckily, the rest of the album sounds closer to Blue (no, not as good as Blue, but I doubt anything she - or anybody - puts out will ever be that great again.) It's streaming at MSN.

Nellie McKay Obligatory Villagers Nellie McKay is that girl from college who looked all sweet and innocent until you talked to her and found out she had a mouth like a sailor and was as funny as hell. (I'm speaking theoretically, of course, since no girls at my college would dare speak to me). Villagers sounds great, is funny as hell, and should not be played in front of your children. Samples are at her website.

Sea Wolf Leaves in the River The late, great Elliot Smith used to get compared to the even later, even greater Nick Drake, and it would drive me crazy. Smith was good, but he was no Nick Drake. Now here comes Sea Wolf (mostly made up of Alex Brown Church) out of L.A. with their dreamy pop and they're being compared to both Smith and Drake. I still think the Drake comparison is a bit too much, but Church does remind me a lot of Smith's more upbeat stuff. His new disc is streaming this week over at Spinner, and the first single from it, "You're a Wolf" is one of my favorite songs of the year so far.

Steve Earle Washington Square Serenade On his last few albums, Earle has moved away from his biggest strength - his storytelling - and started making Songs With Important Messages For All To Hear (his last studio disc was titled The Revolution Starts Now, for Christ's sake). I've only listened to the new disc a couple times so far, but if the storytelling has returned I'm not hearing it yet - especially on the first single, the Indigo Girl-ish (and I mean that in a bad way) "City of Immigrants." Try and guess what that one's about. I'm sure I'll give the disc more listens, but this ain't Guitartown, that's for sure.

This week's list:

1. IRON & WINE The Shepherd's Dog
2. BIRDIE BUSCH Penny Arcade
3. THE A-SIDES Silver Storms
4. JOSE GONZALEZ In Our Nature
5. JONI MITCHELL Shine
6. NELLIE MCKAY Obligatory Villagers
7. JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
8. SEA WOLF Leaves in the River
9. MATT POND PA Last Light
10. ERIN MCKEOWN Lafayette
11. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
12. LYLE LOVETT It's Not Big It's Large
13. MARK KNOPFLER Kill to Get Crimson
14. JOE HENRY Civilians
15. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
16. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
17. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Challengers
18. RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
19. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
20. STEVE EARLE Washington Square Serenade
21. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
22. THE GO! TEAM Proof of Youth
23. THE NATIONAL Boxer
24. FEIST The Reminder
25. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
26. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
27. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
28. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
29. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
30. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away

Dropping off the list this week:

• MICHELLE SHOCKED To Heaven U Ride
• NICK LOWE At My Age
• BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
• TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
• KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
• PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
• THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
• THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
• MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos

RIYL for the week beginning September 24, 2007. Backstory here.

Great Chicano Fire

My year-end top tens last December didn't include a "best concerts" category but there's no doubt that if they did, Alejandro Escovedo would have been pretty high on it. I saw him for the first time at an 'XPN free-at-noon back in June '06 and he just blew me, and the whole the room, away. Escovedo looks kind of meek and has written a whole bunch of beautiful, gentle songs, so it was kind of surprising to see him and his band rip into some serious rock and roll music.

Well, he was back in the area earlier this month to wrap up Camden County's free summer concert series at the Dell in nearby Haddon Heights, NJ. Even in a breezy and relaxed outdoor setting, Escovedo was still his usual intense self. Watching him move around the stage - sort of "visiting" (and jamming with) one of the band members any time he didn't need to be at the microphone - you got the idea that he wanted to pull the best performance possible from each of the people playing up there with him. And the musicians he tours with were up for the challenge. Even the violinist and cellist jammed pretty hard when they had to.

Escovedo played a bunch of songs he hadn't played back when I last saw him. One of his biggest songs, relatively speaking, is "Castanets." That song somehow ended up on Dubya's iPod, and for a while there Escovedo wouldn't play it live because of that. But now that Bush is on his way out (and the Austinite Escovedo isn't real happy about him coming back to Texas when he does finally leave the While House) the song is back on his playlist. He also dedicated the beautiful "Sensitive Boy" to his brother and did a couple of covers as an encore, ending with an incredible take on the Stone's "Beast of Burden" that you probably could have heard three towns over.

I had my camera with me and took some shots. Usually when I go to a free-at-noon concert I also link to the NPR archive of the show, but this show wasn't broadcast on 'XPN (though they were a sponsor). However, I did a little googling and found out that someone did indeed record the show and they've posted it to the live music section of the Internet Archive, and it sounds like it was recorded right off the soundboard. Go here to hear it - it's streaming and it's available for free download.

RIYL70

Quickies!

The A-Sides Silver Storms The Philly band with the Kinks-flavored debut are back with a bigger and more varied sound on their second disc. Their myspace has a few songs streaming, as does their website. Plus, they're playing the Free-at-Noon concert this Friday, for which I could not be more excited.

The A-Sides "Cinematic" [mp3]

Lyle Lovett It's Not Big It's Large The title refers not to Lyle's hair, but to his longtime "Large Band" and on about half of this album the spotlight definitely belongs to the boisterous backing band. The other half of the songs are more sedate but work just as well, thanks to Lovett's very large songwriting skills. Lyle's got samples of each song on his website, but none of them is very big at all.

Mark Knopfler Kill to Get Crimson And speaking of songwriting, Knopfler has always been an excellent storyteller, but his post-Dire Straits move towards more traditional (as in 100-year-old traditional) folk music has put his songwriting skills front-and-center, and they just get better and better with each album. Then, of course, there's also his guitar-playing, which I doubt could get any better than it already is. MSN is streaming the new disc all this week.

This week's list:

1. THE A-SIDES Silver Storms
2. JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
3. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
4. LYLE LOVETT It's Not Big It's Large
5. MARK KNOPFLER Kill to Get Crimson
6. JOE HENRY Civilians
7. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
9. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Challengers
10. RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
11. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
12. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
13. THE GO! TEAM Proof of Youth
14. THE NATIONAL Boxer
15. FEIST The Reminder
16. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
17. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
18. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
19. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
20. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
21. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
22. MICHELLE SHOCKED To Heaven U Ride
23. NICK LOWE At My Age
24. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
25. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
26. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
27. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
28. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
29. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
30. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos

Dropping off the list this week:

• GREG BROWN Yellow Dog
• LINDA THOMPSON Versatile Heart
• TRAVIS The Boy With No Name

RIYL for the week beginning September 17, 2007. Backstory here.

Sounds Like A Setlist For Question Mark And The Mysterians, Or Maybe Alex Trebek

Karen asked for "Eternal Questions in Popular Music" and boy have I got them! So that I could cheat by searching for "?" (and on the five Ws) in my iTunes library, I've only included questions that arise in song titles.

Here are the more eternal of the questions in my collection (minus all the good ones Karen and her readers already came up with):

• "Are We Ever Going to Have Sex Again?" - Amy Rigby [go read the lyrics, we'll wait]
• "Who Stole My Monkey?" - Boozoo Chavez
• "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?" - Bruce Springsteen
• "What You Gonna Do?" - Buckwheat Zydeco
• "Do You Realize?!?" - Flaming Lips [bonus points for the exclamation point!]
• "Is This All There Is?" - Los Lobos
• "Will the Wolf Survive?" - Los Lobos
• "Can You See The Hard Helmet On My Head?" - My Morning Jacket
• "Are You Passionate?" - Neil Young
• "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" - REM
• "Why Does the Sun Shine?" - They Might Be Giants
• "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight?" Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart [is that technically even a question?]
• "Can I Kick It?" - A Tribe Called Quest [-ion?]
• "Have I Told You Lately" - Van Morrison [the missus and my wedding song!]
• "Did You Get Healed?" - Van Morrison
• "Why Must I Always Explain?" Van Morrison [Van asks a lot of questions]
• "So What'cha Want" - Beastie Boys [no question mark, but still a question]
• "What's Going Ahn" - Big Star [I love the super-laid-back "Ahn"]
• "What's the Matter Here?" - 10,000 Maniacs
• "How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down?" - Silver Jews
• "How Soon Is Now" - The Smiths
• "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?" - The Kinks

Any questions?

RIYL69

Yeah, I'm cheating this week - but I totally agree with these reviewers, if that means anything.

Joe Henry Civilians

"Mr. Henry has been almost as artistically diverse and sophisticatedly ragged as Elvis Costello or Tom Waits, and Civilians is as populated with beautiful losers as his previous works. But it strives for straightforward clarity with deliberately understated musicianship. With help from players such as jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and pianist Van Dyke Parks, Mr. Henry gives the lounge-bar ballad 'I Will Write My Book,' the postmodern blues 'Time Is a Lion' and the polished anti-anthem 'Our Song' the honesty of a man whose heart and mind have finally negotiated a truce, however unsteady. A softly gorgeous disc that makes the name Joe Henry one to remember." - Dallas Morning News

Joe Henry - "Civilians" [mp3]
Joe Henry - "Time is a Lion" [mp3]
Joe Henry - "Our Song" [mp3]

The Go! Team Proof of Youth

"Proof of Youth not only picks up where their storied debut left off, it stocks even more happy-faced enthusiasm and body-moving exuberance than a dozen first-graders riding a serious sugar high. If tunes like 'Titanic Vandalism' and 'Universal Speech' don’t have you doing back-flips off of the top bunk, you might want to check your pulse." - Chicago Tribune

[Full album stream at AOL this week.]

This week's list:

1. JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
2. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
3. JOE HENRY Civilians
4. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
6. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Challengers
7. RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
8. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
9. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
10. THE GO! TEAM Proof of Youth
11. THE NATIONAL Boxer
12. FEIST The Reminder
13. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
14. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
15. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
16. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
17. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
18. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
19. MICHELLE SHOCKED To Heaven U Ride
20. GREG BROWN Yellow Dog
21. LINDA THOMPSON Versatile Heart
22. NICK LOWE At My Age
23. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
24. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
25. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
26. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
27. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
28. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
29. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
30. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos

Dropping off the list this week:

• AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
• THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele

RIYL for the week beginning September 10, 2007. Backstory here.

Can You Dig It? I Knew That You Could.

Oh, the digging, the digging... it just never stops.

Real quick though, I just wanted to point out that I've posted photos from both the August 24 Josh Ritter Free-at-Noon concert and the August 31 Uncle Earl Free-at-Noon concert over at my Flickr page.

I mentioned the Josh Ritter concert in a RIYL post a couple weeks ago, but I have to add that it was the best concert I've seen at 'XPN so far this year. Ritter's moved from folk troubadour to a more rocking sound and it's pretty obvious that he's having a ball with the new stuff (in a lot of my pictures it looks like his eyes are closed, but that was just from him smiling the whole friggin' concert). His songwriting skills are still as strong as they've ever been and the new songs sound fantastic.

Ritter mentioned during the concert that he played "The River" at a Carnegie Hall Springsteen tribute (and got to meet the Boss), so when he came back out on stage at our concert for a solo acoustic encore - while everyone else called for him to play "Kathleen" (his best-known song from his folk era) - I jokingly called out, "play the River!," which got a big laugh from the crowd. And then he actually played "The River!" How 'bout that? And just after Ritter solemnly sang the Springsteen line, "down to the river, my baby and I," a baby in the audience gave a perfectly-timed little cry. Damn kid showed me up.

NPR has the show (sans encore) archived here. My photos are here.

Uncle Earl is a four-piece (plus an extra touring member) bluegrass band. I have never heard them ever get air time on 'XPN (or anywhere else), but I'm always up for some good bluegrass. And this was good, authentic bluegrass music. It was old-timey, but it wasn't treated as some kind of dusty artifact. It was played with a lot of energy and made the place feel like some Kentucky honky-tonk bar (a honky-tonk bar filled with public-radio-loving yuppies, but still).

The four women who make up Uncle Earl all seem to come at bluegrass from different angles - Alison Krauss sweetness to good ol' boy girl rollickin' - but they all meshed together very well. An unexpected treat that was a lot of fun, and it'll probably be the only time I'll ever see clogs (as in "clog dancing") used as a musical instrument in concert.

Their myspace page is here, NPR's archive is here, my photos are here.

I still have some Alejandro Escovedo (who was 'XPN's best free show last year) concert photos to process from a Camden County park concert last week. He's still unbelievably good live. More on that concert when I get more time.

[Did you get the post title reference? I knew that you would.]

RIYL68

In keeping with my new "blog less, dig more" credo, this week I offer you three quickie mentions of new discs from artists too cool to not write about. And a bonus sneak preview from perhaps the coolest artist of them all. I mean, c'mon, he's from Jersey - you can't get any cooler than that.

Greg Brown Yellow Dog You can't find a more laid-back-sounding folk singer than Greg Brown, but he's pretty pissed about plans to open a metallic-sulfide mine (sounds perfectly safe to me) in the Yellow Dog Watershed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He did a benefit back in 2005 and has now released this recording of that concert, with all proceeds going to the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve. Pretty cool. No free downloads, but you can watch a video with him playing "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" live over a slideshow of the Yellow Dog area.

Michelle Shocked To Heaven U Ride For a former critics' darling, Michelle Shocked doesn't get much press these days. Still, I do remember her being on Fresh Air a few years ago talking about how into gospel music she had become. Well, someone recorded a bootleg of a concert of hers from around that time and Shocked has just now released it. The woman can pretty much sing in whatever genre she chooses (punk, swing, folk), but she sounds really, really good here. She's even offering a free download from the disc at her website.

Michelle Shocked "Quality of Mercy" [mp3]

The New Pornographers Challengers I've been listening to this one quite a bit (it came out a couple weeks ago) and it sounds like AC and the band have managed to somehow top their last disc, 2005's excellent Twin Cinema. They've stretched out in all kinds of new directions on the new disc but don't worry, they're still bringing the catchy pop songs - they're just bringing them in a whole bunch of different ways this time around. Oh, and Long Cut favorite Neko Case is highlighted on a few songs, which is always a good thing. Always. They too offer a free download from the disc.

The New Pornographers "My Rights, Versus Yours" [mp3]

This post is already much longer than planned, but here's the promised preview - Springsteen's new video from his upcoming Magic album. And yes, it does sound like he lifted the intro straight from Tommy Twotone's "867-5309."

This week's list:

1. THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS Challengers
2. JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
3. RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
4. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
5. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
6. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
7. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. MICHELLE SHOCKED To Heaven U Ride
9. GREG BROWN Yellow Dog
10. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
11. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
12. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
13. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
14. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
15. LINDA THOMPSON Versatile Heart
16. NICK LOWE At My Age
17. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
18. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
19. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
20. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
21. THE NATIONAL Boxer
22. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
23. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
24. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
25. FEIST The Reminder
26. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
27. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
28. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
29. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
30. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos

Dropping off the list this week:

• SON VOLT The Search
• G. LOVE A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce
• ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep

RIYL for the week beginning September 3, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL67

I skipped RIYL while I was down in DC last week, so I'm playing catch up with a couple discs that are already a week old. Of course, that means I'll still be catching up next week with the albums that came out this week.

Josh Ritter The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter Perhaps it's appropriate that Josh Ritter starts his new disc with a Dylanesque track. Dylan famously made waves when he went electric, and with this release Ritter has boldly made the move from troubadour to rocker. He hasn't grown a mullet or anything, but he's definitely shifted his music style (and by his ever-present smile at last week's free-at-noon concert - photos to come - I'd say he's very much enjoying the change). That first Dylan-like track is followed what sounds (for the most part) Rockpile-like to me (a lot of Nick Lowe, a little of Dave Edmunds). One of the best albums I've heard so far this year, and the best concert I've seen in a long time. [Myspace page]

Rilo Kiley Under the Blacklight Like Josh Ritter, Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis knows about changing styles, too. Last year she successfully dipped into Loretta Lynn territory on her first solo disc, and now she's back with her band on a new disc that dabbles in a bunch of different genres.  The power pop songs are strongest, but the albums got some soul on it, some folk, a little of that alt-country, and a whole lot of hand claps. It's even got a song ("Dejalo") that sounds a bit like Gloria-Estefan-does-indie-rock (with maybe a little Abba pseudo-salsa thrown in there) that somehow actually works. Maybe not one of the best of the year (the disc fades a bit towards the end) but still pretty darn good. [Myspace page]

This week's list:

1. JOSH RITTER The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
2. RILO KILEY Under the Blacklight
3. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
4. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
5. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
6. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
8. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
9. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
10. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
11. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
12. LINDA THOMPSON Versatile Heart
13. NICK LOWE At My Age
14. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
15. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
16. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
17. G. LOVE A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce
18. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
19. THE NATIONAL Boxer
20. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
21. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
22. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
23. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
24. FEIST The Reminder
25. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
26. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
27. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
28. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
29. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
30. SON VOLT The Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
• SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime

RIYL for the week beginning August 27, 2007. Backstory here.

Three For Free

Lots of free concerts lately!

A week ago Wednesday it was Kim Richey at the Dell in Haddon Heights, NJ. For some reason I was expecting a solo show but, as you can see from the photo, she brought a full band with her. For a hot and humid night Kim and the band played a pretty energetic show. Lots of new stuff from  Chinese Boxes  and a few older songs, too. Opening act Carsie Blanton was all smiles and girlish charm, a combination of sweet innocence and singsong vocals that fit her songwriting style perfectly. Carsie's got a myspace page (as does Kim Richey) and I've got some photos from the show at my flickr page.

Two days later, it was another Friday Free-at-Noon concert at WXPN, with Brooklyn's Joan as Policewoman opening up for Crowded House.

The nonsensically-named Joan as Policewoman (I'm pretty sure she's not a real policewoman) is singer-songwriter Joan Wasser backed by a drummer and bass player. Wasser sounds a bit like Cat Power with a punkier edge. She put on quite a show, with her gold lamé shirt and dramatic head flips. Not quite what the Crowded House crowd goes for, but I thought she sounded pretty good.

As is the custom during the two-act Free-at-Noon shows, the first act was interviewed while the roadies set the stage for the second act. This usually takes about three minutes, but for some reason Crowded House's guys took about ten. This caused a bit of confusion since the show was being broadcast live on NPR while the drawn-out interview with Joan Wasser was going in circles. When the band finally did come out they didn't seem like they were taking the show very seriously, but they were having a good time and soon enough the audience was laughing along with them and their slow set-up was pretty much forgotten (maybe not by the host of the show, who looked like she wanted to kill someone - probably someone from New Zealand). Neil Finn warned that he wasn't going to sing anything with high notes (so no "Don't Dream It's Over"), but the four songs they did play sounded just fine.

My Flickr set here, NPR archive here.

Today I was back at 'XPN for another two-fer free concert, this time it was Neko Case opening for Rufus Wainwright. I would have been happier with a full show of Neko, but Rufus was pretty good, too. Neko hasn't had a new album since last year's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and three of her four songs came from that disc, which was just fine by me. I just wish I got to hear her for more than than twelve minutes.

Rufus played three songs from his new disc, Release the Stars, and brought out his half-sister Lucy Roche (daughter of Suzzie Roche of the Roches) to help sing a pretty decent version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (I still don't think anyone does it better than Cohen himself). He came back out after the broadcast was over and played probably my favorite song of his, "California," as an encore.

Rufus and Neko had a strict no-photography rule in effect, so all I've got for you is the NPR archive of the show.

RIYL66

One I haven't had a chance to listen to very much and one that came out a couple months ago that I'm just getting into now.

Linda Thompson Versatile Heart I gave son Teddy and ex-husband Richard both the RIYL treatment this year, so why not Linda? While Richard has mostly moved away from his Fairport Convention-era English folk roots, Linda has stuck with them. On 2002's brilliant Fashionably Late, Linda somehow made very old-fashion-sounding music without sounding dated (I don't mean it no longer sounds "traditional," I mean it doesn't sound like it's been pulled out of a time capsule from 1972). From what I've heard of the new album, it sounds like she's done it again. AOL and MSN are both streaming it this week, and her myspace page has four of the new songs on it.

Nick Lowe At My Age I heard on WXPN that it was exactly 31 years ago today that Stiff Records had its first release - Nick Lowe's "And So It Goes" B/W "Heart of the City." That reminded me that I had neglected to add Mr. Lowe's new disc to the big list.

Lowe's voice sounds nothing like it did thirty-one years ago, and - like many other aging rockers (such as Steve Forbert) - as he gets older he seems to write more songs about getting older. While both his style (which has crept into the same Americana/country/blues sound that Mark Knopfler has adopted in his old age) and his song topics may have mellowed, his current sound fits the older him very well. And c'mon, he's still the Jesus of Cool - he just looks more like God than Jesus these days. Nick only has one new song streaming at his website, but NPR has an excellent interview that he did with Terry Gross archived here.

This week's list:

1. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
2. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
3. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
4. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
6. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
7. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
8. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
9. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
10. LINDA THOMPSON Versatile Heart
11. NICK LOWE At My Age
12. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
13. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
14. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
15. G. LOVE A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce
16. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
17. THE NATIONAL Boxer
18. SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime
19. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
20. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
21. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
22. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
23. FEIST The Reminder
24. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
25. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
26. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
27. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
28. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
29. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
30. SON VOLT The Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
• FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather

RIYL for the week beginning August 13, 2007. Backstory here.

I'm Not Sure What The Traditional Third Anniversary Present Is, But Forgiveness Is A Gift That Is Always Appreciated. And Cash, You Can Never Go Wrong With Cash.

Yesterday marked three years since my first blog post (yes, I did indeed misspell a word in my very first post - how was that for a harbinger of things to come?). In lieu of presents, this blogger would like to request amnesty for posts never written:

Posts about the books I've recently read:

• A Changed Man (so-so)
• Special Topics In Calamity Physics (pretty good)
• The Birthdays (not bad)
• Love Is a Mix Tape (very good)
• Mission to America (not as funny - or biting - as I thought it would be)
• October 1964 (excellent)
• Then We Came to the End (very funny)
• and some other books that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Posts about movies I've recently (and not so recently) watched:

• When We Were Kings (excellent)
• Billy Bragg and Wilco: Man in the Sand (very good)
• Transamerica (just okay)
• Word Wars (awful)
• Neil Young: Heart of Gold (sublime)
• From Here to Eternity (Sinatra - good, Monty Cliff - not so much)
• High Noon (perfect)
• Chinatown (close to perfect)
• Wordplay (very - four letter word for high quality? - g-o-o-d)
• Little Miss Sunshine (cute)
• A Slipping Down Life (disappointing)
• The Clash:Westway to the World (great)
• On the Waterfront (Brando's best)
• North by Northwest (good, but goofy)
• and some other films that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

I also never posted about:

• getting FiOS
• getting a DVR
• getting poison ivy for the first time
• that "eight facts" meme that two people tagged me to do
• coaching the five-year-old's soccer team this fall (more to come on that, I'm sure)
• the 25th anniversary of my first concert (06.19.82)
  
• this
• and a whole lot of other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Now that that's all off my chest, onward to the next three years.

Sisters, Oh Mercy

It's late, the Phillies just lost, I needed to get an emergency pulpotomy this afternoon (which should hold me over until I can get a pulpectomy next week), I got about four hours of sleep last night because I had an icepack plastered to my face, and I just found out today that Boston blogs harder than Philly - so I'm going to keep this short:

Last Friday's WXPN Free-at-Noon concert featured Tegan & Sara, the Canadian twin sisters whose new album The Con gets better with each listening. They played to a full house ('XPN always calls it a "sell-out crowd," but I don't see how a free concert can "sell" out) and rocked hard and loud.

They played a lot of their new stuff and a couple of old songs and had plenty of pretty funny (and often pretty flaky) banter. NPR has the concert archived (though their website doesn't list everything they played), and I've got some photos from the show.

Tomorrow's free concert, another "sell-out," is Crowded House, with Joan as Police Woman opening, which should be pretty good. But next week's show - Rufus Wainwright and Neko Case - should be pretty great. I would suggest you get your free tickets for that one now, before they sell out run out.

RIYL65

Nothing that came out today is really doing anything for me (not even the new Okkervil River disc, and I've been reading all kinds of good things about that one). Now would probably be a good time to go back and hit a couple albums that I missed when they first came out earlier this year. Especially since both of them might very well be on my year-end top ten.

Julie Doiron Woke Myself Up Julie Doiron lives way way way out in the boondocks of the Great White North and there's a total of maybe eleven web pages on the whole Internet that mention her and her own website is about three albums out of date and her myspace page has a grand total of one song on it. Maybe I'm wrong, but she strikes me as the type of person who isn't real concerned about any of that publicity nonsense, she just wants to make good music and live a quiet life with her kids.

But it does make it real hard for anyone to find out about her, so I'll try to help her out here: Doiron has that type of voice that is so emotional and so authentic that it instantly connects with me and I find myself searching out everything she's ever recorded and penciling her in on that year-end best of. Beth Orton has that same voice, as does (the Cowboy Junkies') Margo Timmins, Michelle Shocked, Neko Case and Cat Power. Joni Mitchell, of course, owns the patent on that voice.

Not that Doiron sounds exactly like any of those women. Fellow Canuck Timmins comes closest, but Doiron's music is a mix of kitchen-table folk with higher-end production. She comes from the indie music world and isn't afraid to dip into a more current and upbeat sound every once in a while. The new album's songs ofter the perfect mix of loss and sadness and happier songs about her family. The first single (if you can call it that), "No More" is a great song, but it isn't the best example of what the disc really sounds like. It is, however, the only thing her record company has put out on the web (Amazon doesn't even have the usual thirty second song samples for her new disc).

Julie Doiron - "No More" [mp3]

Goldrush The Heart is the Place This is my first and (so far) only taste of Goldrush, so I'm not sure how accurate past comparisons to Neil Young (they are, after all, named Goldrush) and the Byrds were, but this new one's got a definite Flaming Lips vibe to it. They're not as trippy as the Lip's Wayne Coyne (who is?) and they're from Oxfordshire, not Oklahoma, but between the beautiful (and appropriately named) opening, "Aperture," and the joyous final chapter (no, really, it's called "a Joyous Final Chapter"), there's a flow to the songs that give the disc an almost concept-album feel. Strong from start to finish. They've got four songs rolling at myspace, and have offered up a free download as well.

Goldrush - "Every One of Us" [mp3]

Also, I'm adding Rosie Thomas' These Friends of Mine back onto the RIYL 30 (after only being off of it one week). She's another one of those authentic-sounding female singers I go gaga for, and I've started listening to her disc a lot again. Really don't be surprised to see that one end up high on my top ten in December.

This week's list:

1. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
2. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
3. JULIE DOIRON Woke Myself Up
4. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
6. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
7. GOLDRUSH The Heart is the Place
8. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
9. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
10. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
11. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
12. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
13. G. LOVE A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce
14. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
15. THE NATIONAL Boxer
16. SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime
17. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
18. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
19. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
20. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
21. FEIST The Reminder
22. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
23. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
24. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
25. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
26. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
27. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
30. SON VOLT The Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
• VOXTROT Voxtrot
• RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars

RIYL for the week beginning August 6, 2007. Backstory here.

Guitar And Driver

Last Friday's WXPN Free-at-Noon concert's headliner was actress-turned-musician Minnie Driver, but the stars of the show were musicians-turned-actors Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová (who perform as "the Swell Season").

Hansard, of the Irish band the Frames, and Czech singer and pianist Irglová are the stars of the new independent movie Once. Driver, of course, has been in major motion pictures like Grosse Point Blank and Good Will Hunting (as well as several other movies where the title isn't a play on words). She also, um, sings.

I don't want to be too harsh on Ms. Driver. She can sing, and she's not too too bad at it - other than a monotonous stab at Stevie Wonder's "Master Blaster" she didn't embarrass herself. I just didn't leave the concert feeling like I just had to have her new disc. Judging by the long line at her table after the show, a lot of concert-goers did - though buying her disc also meant getting to meet a real-live Hollywood actress, so that could have had something to do with the unusually brisk sales. Driver was also quite charming during her mid-concert interview (though she needs to drop her totally-fake British accent).

Oddly enough, during Hansard and Irglová's interview they mentioned that the director of Once said he was looking for musicians who acted, not actors who sang (sorry, Minnie). If these two can act as well as they perform music, and it looks like they can, than the movie should do pretty well. Hansard wrote the film's songs (before being cast in the lead) and had already recorded an album with Irglová before doing the soundtrack. Irglová's soft harmonies nicely compliment Hansard's emotional, Cat Stevens-like vocals.

They also, apparently, have become a real-life couple since the playing a couple in their film - though that was kind of obvious in concert from the goo-goo eyes they were making at each other (actually, it was kind of sweet to see the way they were interacting - it's just that I'm a cynical old man, so I have to make fun of it).

I've got a bunch of pictures of the happy couple over at my Flickr page, but my view of Minnie was usually blocked by her band's equipment so I've only got a couple shots of her. NPR, as they do every week, has archived the concert at their website.

The Impossible Dream

Since the train I take to and from work drops me off in the same town that the pool we belong to is located, I sometimes take a short after-work drive and meet the missus and the boys for a little swimming and pool-side dining. That means both of are cars are there, which means that the boys have the choice of going home with either one of us. They usually end up coming home with me because they get bored with having Mom drive them all over the place. Of course, if the ten-year-old's Nintendo DS happens to be in the missus' car he'll go with her [(Mom +  DS) > Dad > (Mom - DS)].

That was the case last night, so it was just me and the five-year-old (that's him up there on the new blog header) in the van. I had Wilco's Sky Blue Sky on, but turned it down with the intention of talking to the boy. He was pretty wiped out, though, and ended up not saying much, just kind of contemplatively looking out the window the whole ride home.

So we get home, he gets a shower, and then I hear this coming from his bedroom while he's getting his PJs on (this is a reenactment I asked him to do, and it's only about 20 seconds long):

Fellow Wilco fans will surely recognize this as the bridge from the Sky Blue Sky song "Impossible Germany" (another 20 second sample):

So not only was the boy listening to Wilco on the way home without me noticing, evidentially he was liking Wilco, too! At least liking them enough to remember that riff almost perfectly. Just listen to the two clips put together:

I don't know if I've ever been prouder of the kid.

RIYL64

A couple new discs from a couple guys that were both born in 1972.

Josh Rouse Country Mouse City House Josh Rouse's vocals are understated. They're not 21st century understated - he's not mumbling or whispering - they're 1970's understated. Steely Dan's "Peg" or Jackson Browne's "These Days" understated.

Rouse is famous for wearing his seventies influences on his sleeve, but that's all they are - influences.  He can get away with this older sound because he's not mimicking it, he's updating and building upon it. That way his music avoids sounding stale or dated.

The music that backs Rouse's voice could also be called understated but it still manages some surprises, like the Herb Albert horn vibe that keep popping up throughout the album. If you want some good, unobtrusive dinnertime music, County Mouse fits the bill. But it's actual full of complex and catchy songs if you pay it some attention. Listening to it this morning with the headphones on, I counted four or five songs (out of the disc's nine songs) that could very easily become Adult Alternative radio favorites. There might even be one or two that gets some mainstream attention. Good pop music that sneaks up on you.

Rouse has songs from the album streaming on his myspace page and on Virb.com.

G. Love A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce Even after he shilled for Coke, and even after hearing his "Hot Cookin'" day and night on the Food Network, you've still got to love G. Love. Seriously, - here in Philadelphia you must love G. Love. That's the law. The man wrote a song that manages to praise both the 76er's and the Philly shortcut know as Route 676. Lately G's been eclipsed by his protege, surfer-turned-singer Jack Johnson, but if you want both laid-back coolness and some Fishtown funk, you've got to go back to the real thing. A Year and a Night is the companion disc to a live DVD, taped last year right here in the City of Brotherly Love. While I can't say that the former Garrett Dutton III has changed his style all that much since his first disc came out way back in 1994, he's still a lot of fun to listen to - and he sounds like he'd be a lot of fun to see in concert, too.

AOL is streaming G. Love's live disc all this week.

This week's list:

1. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
2. JOSH ROUSE Country Mouse City House
3. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
4. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
6. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
7. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
8. SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime
9. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
10. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
11. G. LOVE A Year and a Night with G. Love and Special Sauce
12. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
13. THE NATIONAL Boxer
14. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
15. VOXTROT Voxtrot
16. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
17. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
18. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
19. FEIST The Reminder
20. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
21. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
22. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
23. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
24. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
25. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
26. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
27. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
30. SON VOLT Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
• WARREN ZEVON Preludes

RIYL for the week beginning July 30, 2007. Backstory here.

He Shall Overcome?

I've talked about the "music community website" last.fm before, and how it gives recommendations by tracking what you're already listening to on your iPod or iTunes. They also spit out data on your listening habits - a real-time "just listened" list and lists of your most popular artists and songs.

Anyway, when I checked it today, I noticed that on the all-time (or at least all-time since joining last.fm back in February of last year) "most listened to artists" chart, Wilco could easily be overtaken by Bruce in the very near future.

Bruce's surge is most likely due to Springsteen's excellent Live in Dublin double-disc, which I'm kind of hooked on right now. Wilco's failure to keep pace with the Boss comes from me getting most of my Wilco fix by listening to Jeff Tweedy's Sunken Treasure, another excellent live double-disc.

Listening to Tweedy doesn't count towards Wilco's tally (solo Tweedy comes in at #37 with 172 listens). Nor does other Wilco side-projects, like Loose Fur (#94 with 95 plays), Golden Smog (#48 with 146 spins), or the Autumn Defense (#91 with exactly 100 go-rounds). And that doesn't even count the band that spawned Wilco, Uncle Tupelo (#5 with 392 drops of needle to the groove). Put that all together and Jeff and Company have no reason to doubt my loyalty.

Guh, that was a lot of words for a little something that caught my attention for a couple seconds.

There are a couple more neat last.fm-related things, if you still feel like reading. The technology behind last.fm is open source, allowing people who are much smarter than I to build more little toys for less-brainy geeks like me to play with.

Today I found out that, compared to other last.fm users, my collection ain't all that eclectic (and, man, did that hurt):

What saved the day was finding out that my collection, while maybe not eclectic (despite having well over a thousand different artists on my iTunes - I'm just saying, is all), it ain't all that mainstream, either. Or at least I think that's what this says:

So there you have it: my music collection is homogeneously hip.

[If you're on last.fm, let me know and I'll add you as a friend.]

RIYL63

A couple really good discs - one that's a couple weeks old and one that comes out today - from a few female artists who aren't afraid of trying something different.

Kelly Willis Translated from Love I first heard Kelly Willis on the Thelma & Louise soundtrack - doing an outstanding cover of Dave Alvin's "Little Honey" - and I've been a fan ever since, though it hasn't ever been easy following her career. Despite consistent critical praise, Willis has gotten very little airplay. She's yet another one of those artists who aren't mainstream enough for country radio and are too country for any other kind of radio (Dave Alvin knows a thing or two about that, too).

Since her last album came out four years ago, Willis has left Nashville for the more flexible music scene of Austin - and become a bit more flexible herself. Translated features songs written with (or by) Chuck Prophet (who also produced the album) and Jules Shear (poor Jules, he's one of the best songwriters around but his songs always sound better when they're sung by a woman). She's even thrown a David Bowie/Iggy Pop song in there.

The result is probably her most accessible disc ever - one that's built on rock (and/or rockabilly) and pop, but never tries to cover up Willis' authentic country music roots or the powerful country twang in her voice. A strong album, from start to finish. Willis has a few of her new songs streaming over at myspace.

Tegan and Sara The Con The first time I heard Tegan and Sara was when they were featured on the excellent mp3 blog 3hive a few years ago. 3hive had posted a few songs from their 2004 disc So Jealous, which has since gotten quite a bit of radio airplay - especially the stuck-in-your-head single "Walking with a Ghost." Back then, 3hive described Tegan and Sara as "mildly punky twin sisters."

I'd say that "mildly punky" is still an accurate description of the Quin sisters, but they also seem to have matured quite a bit since their last album. The Con features better songwriting, better production, and a more varied collection of songs. Their music is still catchy, it's just more interesting this time around. They too have put a bunch of new songs on myspace, plus their album is streaming all this week at AOL (which is also offering up the video below).

This week's list:

1. KELLY WILLIS Translated from Love
2. TEGAN AND SARA The Con
3. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
5. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
6. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
7. SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime
8. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
9. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
10. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
11. THE NATIONAL Boxer
12. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
13. VOXTROT Voxtrot
14. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
15. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
16. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
17. FEIST The Reminder
18. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
19. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
20. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
21. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
22. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
23. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
24. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
25. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
26. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
27. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
30. SON VOLT Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
• STEVE FORBERT Strange Names & New Sensations

RIYL for the week beginning July 23, 2007. Backstory here.

Even In A Perfect World Where Everyone Was Equal, I'd Still Own The Film Rights And Be Working On The Sequel

Meme-a-palooza continues!

This one's been all over the place already - Jim from The Velvet Blog (not to be confused with Some Velvet Blog) did it back on June 18, and TwoBusy over at TwoBusy jumped on it the very next day.

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every item, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new item, press the "next" button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

OPENING CREDITS

Loretta Lynn- "This Old House"

Oh, if this old house could talk
What a story it would tell
It would tell about the good times
And the bad times as well

In the beginning, there was This Old House. And it was good.

WAKING UP

The Good, The Bad & The Queen – "Herculean"

Call for prayer is common 'round here
In the morning
Wash our faces go to work
There is no warning

Getting out of bed a herculean task? It's like you're reading my mind.

FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL

The Arrogants – "The Distance Between Us" [mp3]

Do you love me, do you need me,
do you want me when I'm not there?
Do you miss me, are you ever thinking of me,
do you want me when I'm not there?

I'm pretty sure those were the questions I asked my mom when she came to pick me up that first day of school. It's possible that I was a wee bit of a momma's boy.

FALLING IN LOVE

Andy Partridge – "I Don't Want To Be Here"

And I don't want to find myself this way again
I don't want to pick the thorny rose
I don't want to let love spoil the day again
But it may again, who knows

Hmmm...

FIGHT SONG

Cat Power – "Where Is My Love" [watch the video]

Where is my love
Where is my love
Horses running free
Carrying you and me
Where is my love
Where is my love
Safe and warm
So close to me
In my arms
Finally

Seems more like a "make-up song" than a fight song.   

BREAKING UP

Big Star – "Daisy Glaze"

I'm driving alone
sad about you
not going home
what's to do

This one works, though the song ends with "You're going to die, gonna decease," which might be a little too over-the-top.

PROM

Liz Phair – "Girls! Girls! Girls!"

You been around enough to see
That if you think you’re it
You better check with me
Because I take full advantage
Of every man I meet

True story: my prom experience ended with my date (and best friend at the time - we never quite made it to boyfriend/girlfriend status) stating that she was a little sick of seeing me. Yeah.

MENTAL BREAKDOWN

David & the Citizens – "Let's Not Fall Apart" [mp3]

Some pretty concrete-sky was blackening my eyes
I stood here and I tried to scream, but what came out
Well, not much of the things I meant to do
With my life

Well, those lyrics certainly seem to work well with the whole "mental breakdown" idea.

DRIVING

Wilco – "Ashes of American Flags"

I shake like a toothache
every time I hear myself sing

I sing a lot while I'm driving, but that usually causes other people to experience a toothache-like pain, not me.

FLASHBACK

The Stills – "In The Beginning" [mp3]

How did this start?
And where did we begin
In a ball of fire
And stars and suns

And that's some flashback - all the way back to the Big Bang!

GETTING BACK TOGETHER

Sarah Shannon – "City Morning Song" [mp3]

You can take this any way you like
You've got to live, forgive your fellow man.

How all fights are resolved, with me begging for forgiveness.

WEDDING

Patty Griffin – "Heavenly Day" [mp3]

Tomorrow may rain with sorrow
Here's a little time we can borrow
Forget all our troubles in these moments so few
All we've got right now, the only thing that
All we really have to do
Is have ourselves a heavenly day

I'm assuming "tomorrow may rain with sorrow" refers to our car's brakes needing to be replaced (thus depleting most of the cash we received at the reception) on the way back from our honeymoon.

BIRTH OF A CHILD

The Replacements - "I'll Buy"

Anything you want, dear, is fine, fine, fine, fine, fine
Everything you say, dear, I'll buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy

All right, so maybe we spoiled the kid a little.

BIRTH OF A (SECOND) CHILD

Cary Brothers – "Blue Eyes" [watch the video]

Cause Blue Eyes
You are all that I need
Cause Blue Eyes
You’re the sweet to my mean

The original meme didn't have a spot for a "birth of a second child" song, but this fits the five-year-old perfectly - a happy, lovable, blue-eyed goofball.

FINAL BATTLE

Neil Young – "Without Rings"

Electrical energy,
Fighting drugs with pain,
There's a war inside.
Pictures in my brain.
I'm looking for a job,
I don't know what I'm doing,
My software's
not compatible with you.

Uh, Neil... "my software's not compatible with you"? I guess it makes for a good "final battle" soundtrack, especially if my final battle is with the head of our IT department (which very well may end up happening).

DEATH SCENE

The National – "Looking for Astronauts"

Are we gone
Come on yeah, we know we're gone
Bye bye bye
Bye bye bye we know we're gone

Bye bye bye. Remember to leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub.

END CREDITS

Michelle Shocked – "Memories of East Texas"

Looking back and asking myself
What the hell'd you let them break your spirit for?

Ah, yes, memories of my early days living in East Texas. Wait a minute, I've never even been to Texas. I must be thinking of this.

THE END

You're still here? It's over! Go home. Go!

RIYL62

Just a couple quick notes. Work today was spent doing one of my least favorite chores - employee evaluations (our fiscal year ended June 30). I spent all day trying to come up with different ways to say "efficiently."

Suzanne Vega Beauty & Crime I've had a few chances to hear this disc already and while it's got Vega's trademark sultry whisper, nothing from it has really caught my attention just yet. Then again, Vega's music tends to sneak up on you rather than hit you over the head. It's been six years since she released her last album, the very strong Songs in Red and Gray and, vibe-wise at least, Beauty seems to pick up right where that disc left off. Hopefully the new one will grow on me like that disc did. You can hear the the new album for yourself over at MSN all this week.

Teddy Thompson Up Front and Down Low The son of Richard & Linda Thompson has put out two discs before this new one and is still less known for his music than for his being the son of Richard & Linda Thompson. For his third album he's dropped his own stuff (or at least most of it - one of his songs did make it) and has released a disc of cry-in-your-beer country standards that puts his voice front-and-center, and he nails that old-time Nashville sound. It helps that he's picked some really good old artists to cover (Ernest Tubb, George Jones) and some really good musicians to help him out (Tiff Merritt, Iris DeMent, his dad). It might not be the disc that finally gets him recognition (it's a little too county for alt radio, way too country for country radio), but it sure does sound real purty. He's got a few songs streaming over at myspace.

This week's list:

1. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
3. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
4. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
5. SUZANNE VEGA Beauty & Crime
6. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
7. TEDDY THOMPSON Up Front and Down Low
8. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
9. THE NATIONAL Boxer
10. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
11. VOXTROT Voxtrot
12. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
13. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
14. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
15. FEIST The Reminder
16. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
17. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
18. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
19. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
20. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
21. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
22. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
23. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
24. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
25. STEVE FORBERT Strange Names & New Sensations
26. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
27. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
30. SON VOLT Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
• WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square

RIYL for the week beginning July 16, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL61

Alright, this is going to be quick. The All-Star Game is on right now and if I spend too much time here I might miss hearing something important about Barry Bonds. Though I believe the only person they haven't asked about Bonds yet is the ballpark's head janitor. At least Joe Buck is asking everyone the important question - is Barry Bonds great, really great, or super-duper great?

On to the new music:

Spoon Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga I have to admit that I'm a recent passenger on the Spoon bandwagon. The biggest song from their last album was "Sister Jack," and 'XPN here in Philly felt the need to play it over and over and over again. I never much liked it to start with and after hearing it so often I just assumed that Spoon was some one-note pretty boy indie pop band. Once I gave their music a chance (after hearing the catchy and offbeat "I Turn My Camera On"), I quickly changed my tune, so to speak. Turns out that Spoon is a willing-to-take-chances pretty boy indie pop band. That willingness carries right over to Ga Ga. The band has a reputation of over-thinking their sound, but never to the point of weighing down their songs - if you wanted to, you could dissect every cool little quirk on the album (Ga Ga gives you plenty of opportunities to), but you're more likely to just bop along to it (well, most of it - "the Ghost In You Lingers" doesn't have much of a dance beat, but it's still a good song and is the source of the album's babblesque title). One of the best discs I've heard so far this year.

Spoon - "The Underdog" [mp3]
Spoon - "The Ghost In You Lingers" [mp3]

Kim Richey Chinese Boxes It's a pleasant surprise whenever a Kim Richey song pops up during an iTunes shuffle, and it was an even more pleasant surprise to find out that she was releasing her first album since 2002's Rise. With her country-tinged pop-folk sound, it's easy to lump Richey in with other singer-songwriters like Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter, but Richey's music has always had a little more bite and been a little more daring than most other female folkies. On Chinese Boxes she moves further away from the country sound and receives a little help with the writing of most of the songs. The result is a bit uneven, but the majority of the songs show a shift to a less forceful sound that reminds me a lot of Aimee Mann. Richey is streaming a couple of the new songs over at her website.

This week's list:

1. SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
2. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
3. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
4. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
5. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
6. KIM RICHEY Chinese Boxes
7. THE NATIONAL Boxer
8. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
9. VOXTROT Voxtrot
10. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
11. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
12. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
13. FEIST The Reminder
14. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
15. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
16. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
17. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
18. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
19. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
20. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
21. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
22. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
23. STEVE FORBERT Strange Names & New Sensations
24. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
25. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
26. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
27. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
28. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
29. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
30. SON VOLT Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
• ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha

RIYL for the week beginning July 09, 2007. Backstory here.

Whopping Spree

I feel like the Long Cut's becoming all-concert-photos-all-the-time, but there was no way that I was going to leave my camera home for the Polyphonic Spree Free-at-Noon concert I saw a couple of Fridays ago. Usually these concerts give you three or four subjects to shoot, but the Spree provided twenty-four of them (twenty-five if you count opening act Mark Olson - twenty-six if you count Megan Hickey of the Last Town Chorus, who accompanied Olson).

When I wrote about the Polyphonic Spree's newest album, The Fragile Army, a few weeks ago, I referred to their "strange cult-like choir shtick" and mentioned how their songs have a tendency to all start sounding the same after while, but in concert it all works. The band comes across as genuine - more theater than shtick (if that makes any sense - yes, it's an act, but that doesn't mean that they're not into what they're playing) - and their constant enthusiasm on stage keeps you interested in their songs longer than you might have been just listening to them on your CD player. The Spree were obviously made for live shows, and their always-smiling and appropriately-named leader Tim DeLaughter drove that home with a few pleas to buy the new disc so that the band could continue to stay on the road (I can't imagine just how much it must cost to keep this band touring).

The concert was a lot of fun - half Electric Light Orchestra, half Up With People - and I would recommend it to anyone, even if you're not all that crazy about the music.

The mild Olson, formerly of the Jayhawks, was an odd choice to have open for such a dynamic group (I have a feeling he just happened to be available to stop into 'XPN that day), and he only played four songs (including one oldie from his former band). It would have been great for him to have his own Free-at-Noon concert, but he did a good job filling the little time he was given.

NPR's stream of the concert is here, my photo set is here. About half the Polyphonic Spree pictures were taken while the band was setting up which, as you can imagine, took quite a while.

Solid Wood

Always on the lookout for concert tickets that are in my price range (i.e. free), I'm try to take full advantage of my county's free summer concert series. Actually, they have a few free summer series going at once, but the one in the town one over from me features mostly folk and folk-rock artists. They often get some really good artists on their way up and sometimes even get some (relatively) bigger names to come into town (last year I saw Graham Parker there, and the year before that they got Marshall Crenshaw to come down to play). And the concerts are on a little outside stage carved into a dell, complete with a little stream running behind it.

Last Wednesday night, the nine-year-old and I went out to see the Wood Brothers. About a year ago a coworker of mine gave me the brothers' debut album, Ways Not to Lose, to listen to. This year he pretty much demanded that I go see them when they came to town (I was already planning on going anyway).

Oliver Wood does most of the singing and most of the songwriting. He also plays a mean guitar, despite his mild-mannered disposition (he was very kind to a little girl who decided she would watch the show from right on the stage). Christopher Wood (he of Medeski Martin & Wood) plays stand up bass and a little harmonica and provides the back up vocals. It's a pretty bare-bones little operation they run, but they make the most of it. Their sound is rooted in the blues but there's a lot more going on there, too. Someone said it pretty well over at Wikipedia (no, seriously, someone actually wrote an accurate wiki for once):

[T]he songs... possess a timeless quality: Their bedrock melodies and astutely observed stories sound instantly archetypal. There are echoes of country blues, Appalachian bluegrass, and New Orleans R&B. Oliver’s inimitable vocals—yearning, rueful, jubilant—are set within expressive yet economical arrangements created by his own impressionistic (electric and National steel-bodied) guitar riffs [and] Chris’ nimble, note-bending bass lines.

Great stuff, and their album is just as impressive. You can download a bunch of songs from their website, but you can download the disc's single right here: "One More Day" [mp3]. And the Free-at-Noon concert they did last year (how'd I miss that?) is archived over at NPR.

And, of course, I took some photos while I was there (they're not the greatest shots - outdoor nighttime concerts aren't the easiest things in the world to shoot).

RIYL60

The record industry continues its slow march towards the July 4th holiday (a week where nothing notable is scheduled to be released - good thing I'll be on vacation that week). For now we have two artists who recently preformed at WXPN Free-at-Noon concerts.

Ryan Adams Easy Tiger When I saw Adams and the Cardinals in concert last week, I still wasn't all that impressed with his new release, but I thought it had the potential to grow on me. Sure 'nuff, with each listening (Adams and Albert Hammonds Jr. are on heavy rotation in the minivan right now) a new song or two distinguishes itself from the disc's other songs.

While every other indie singer right now seems to want to sound like a young Neil Young (except those that strive to emulate Brian Wilson, that is) give Adams credit for going for that other early-seventies alt-country rocker, Gram Parsons - a little more country and a less rough than Neil's sound. Not that he's as good as Parsons was (where Parsons had Emmylou Harris backing him up - and Neil did quite all right with Nicolette Larson behind him - Adams has... Sheryl Crow?), but Parson's style is a good fit for Adams' singing and storytelling talents.

MuchMusic is still streaming Easy Tiger on their site. And so is his label, the outstanding Lost Highway Records.

Steve Forbert Strange Names and New Sensations I have to admit, when I saw Forbert in concert a couple of weeks ago I was more impressed with his older stuff than the songs from this new disc, but that had more to do with the subject matter (a lot of tunes about facing middle age) than the quality of the music itself.

Forbert seems to be one of those old school folkies who still doesn't trust the Internet enough to put up a couple of free downloads or stream a song or two. His site does have the video for the goofy "Strange Names (North Jersey's Got Them)," but it's not exactly the strongest song from the disc. Plus, even though he gets it right in the song's title, in the lyrics he refers to "North New Jersey" which - like "Southern New Jersey" - no one from Jersey ever says.

This week's list:

1. RYAN ADAMS Easy Tiger
2. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
3. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
4. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
5. THE NATIONAL Boxer
6. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
7. VOXTROT Voxtrot
8. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
9. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
10. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
11. FEIST The Reminder
12. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
13. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
14. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
15. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
16. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
17. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
18. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
19. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
20. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
21. STEVE FORBERT Strange Names & New Sensations
22. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
23. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
24. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
25. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
26. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
27. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
28. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
29. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
30. SON VOLT Search

Dropping off the list this week:

• THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
• THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense

RIYL for the week beginning June 25, 2007. Backstory here.

Tiger Beat

Earlier this week, I read a shot-by-shot analysis of the last five minutes of the Sopranos final episode. One of the less-popular post-blackout theories - that it was the show's viewers who got whacked - was dismissed by the post's author with a quick, "That’s cute. But the show was about Tony, not us."

I would say the same thing to anyone who thought that Ryan Adams performed for them at last Friday's WXPN Free-at-Noon concert. Cute, but the show was about Ryan, not us.

The stage was lit only from the back, so that for most of the show all the audience saw was Ryan's silhouette (in fact, the entire room was kept in the dark from the time we stumbled in until the time we stumbled out). Ryan and his band, the Cardinals, were set up not in an arc but in a semi-circle, so that they were practically playing for each other. The crowd laughed at all of Ryan's jokes, but most seemed to be told for the band's benefit. And I think Ryan spent more time talking to a stagehand while trying to get a proper can of Coke (the first wasn't cold enough, the second was in a cup and not the requested can) than he did talking to the audience.

So yeah, Ryan Adams can be a jerk. But he's a funny and charming jerk. And a seriously talented musician. Ryan puts out a lot of music - sometimes two or three albums a year - and isn't afraid to try different styles. He sometimes seems to just throw everything out there to see what sticks, but a good amount of it does indeed stick. He first hit the scene fronting Whiskeytown, which was often derided as a weak Uncle Tupelo wannabe, then went solo and put out his own alt-country work as well as some rock, pop, honky-tonk, and even some mope-rock (he does a version of Oasis's "Wonderwall" that might just be better than the original).

His upcoming disc, Easy Tiger seems to go back to his country-tinged roots, though slower, more somber, and more radio friendly (Sheryl Crow - ugh - even appears on its first single). For me, not many of the album's songs have much staying power, but the disc also strikes me as something that might grow on me - like the two years it took for me (and perhaps a handful of other fans) to appreciate his Love is Hell EPs.

While the Cardinals went for the classic rock-tour-casual look, Ryan went for a nightclub vibe with the coat, the loosened necktie, and the Ray Bans. Between his get-up, the soft lights, and the mournful piano that accompanied him, Ryan was very much reminding me of a slightly-countrified Rufus Wainwright. But he sounded great, pleased the crowd (intentionally or not) by playing some of his older stuff, and was kind enough to stick around for a few more songs after the radio feed signed off. So maybe he isn't too much of a jerk after all. Though you might not want to ask the guy who had to keep bringing him sodas (of which Ryan ended up taking a total of about three sips) what he thought of him.

This week's free show is former Mott The Hoople frontman Ian Hunter. I'm going to take a pass on that one, but I've already got my ticket for next week's free Polyphonic Spree show. How could I possibly turn down a chance to see a spectacle like that? I can't wait to see how they fit everyone on the World Cafe Live's relatively tiny stage.

By the way, that grainy photo up there is the only one I could salvage from the show, due to the darkness (and it took about an hour of photoshopping just to make that one somewhat presentable). I found pictures of the show from fellow South Jerseyian Serena - who must have been standing right next to me but still somehow managed to get plenty of great shots - on her flickr page.

NPR, as always, has achieved a stream of the concert at their website.

Update: MuchMusic is streaming Mr. Adams' new disc at their website. [Muchmusic, by the way is the Canadian equivalent to the MTV - back when MTV played music. When the (future) missus was going to college up in North Jersey (back in the early 90's) her college's cable system was about 90% Canadian channels for some reason (I would guess that it was much cheaper than regular cable). Anyway, we spent a lot of time watching MuchMusic which, in accordance with the Canadian Content rules, made sure that 35% of the videos they played were by Canadian artist and, boy howdy, you had better have loved Sarah McLachlan and Bryan Adams (and yes, I'm pretty sure Ryan Adams hates that Bryan Adams ever went into the music business - even more than most of us do). Watching Canadian cable was cool during the Winter Olympics, though. You know, I'm thinking this little addendum probably should have been it's own post.]

RIYL59

This week's new releases feature a battle between two bands most folks either love or really, really, hate.

The White Stripes Icky Thump In anticipation of this new release from Jack & Meg, I've been listening to their last disc,  Get Behind Me Satan, on the old (and I do mean old) iPod shuffle. I doubt I'm the first to think of this, but as I listened to that disc I kept being reminded of Led Zeppelin. Despite their current reputation as a stoner classic rock band, Zeppelin's sound was all over the place. The band got away with playing in whatever style they wanted to - hard rock, slow blues, ballads, goofy songs - they were talented enough that their fans were willing to go along with pretty much anything. I don't know if Jack White grew up a Led Zeppelin fan (his band's website does have Zep-like symbols for its navigation), but he's using Robert Plant's formula and proving that it can still work. Its eclectic sound makes Icky Thump hard to describe (other than the Stripe's usual "unusual"), but it's a lot of fun to listen to and shows that the White Stripes continue to successfully find new directions to take their music in (like, say, bagpipes and Mariachi trumpet). No downloads, but he's the pretty creepy video for the title song:

[Nuts, all the embeddable clips seem to have been removed. You can still see the video here and here. For now at least.]

The Polyphonic Spree The Fragile Army If you only know the Polyphonic Spree from the appearance of their song "Light & Day" on the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack, well, that's probably a good thing. That means you like their music without ever seeing the strange cult-like choir shtick that accompanied their previous discs. Their new disc has the seemingly-hundred-member-strong band in black jumpsuits instead of white robes, but the sound is pretty much the same - nasal (but uplifting) vocals over spacey choral harmonies over soaring symphonies. The music on the new disc has a much stronger and more structured sound to it than the band usually has but it still should only be taken in small doses since, like most of their stuff, it all starts to sound the same after a while. Here's the pretty cool video for the new album's first single, "Running Away":

This week's list:

1. THE WHITE STRIPES Icky Thump
2. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
3. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
4. THE NATIONAL Boxer
5. VOXTROT Voxtrot
6. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
7. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
8. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
9. FEIST The Reminder
10. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
11. THE POLYPHONIC SPREE The Fragile Army
12. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
13. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
14. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
15. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
16. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
17. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
18. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
19. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
20. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
21. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
22. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
23. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
24. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
25. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
26. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
27. SON VOLT Search
28. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
29. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
• BJORK Volta

RIYL for the week beginning June 18, 2007. Backstory here.

A Superior Show

I'm still crazy busy at work, but WXPN's keeps having some pretty hard-to-resist acts at their Friday Free-at-Noon shows lately, so I keep going.

Two Fridays ago it was the Great Lake Swimmers. This Canadian band's latest album,  Ongiara, is definitely what some folks would call a "grower" - it might not do much for you at first, but it grows on you after a while. Luckily, that's not the case in when they're in concert (especially since they only played for 35 minutes), where their sound instantly grabs your attention.

Singer Tony Dekker is the low-key leader of a low-key band, but that doesn't mean that their music is restrained - he's backed by some pretty talented musicians playing some very interesting music. The music's just a bit quieter is all. And that just serves to highlight Dekker's crisp vocals and strong lyrics.

I was surprised that the relatively-unknown band drew a pretty respectable-sized crowd for the lunchtime concert. I'm sure that for a lot of the folks there it was their first time hearing the Great Lake Swimmers, but from the way that the band kept the audience's attention I'd be willing to bet that quite a few of them came away impressed. I was already impressed with the band before I got there, so I was just happy that they played a good mix of old and new songs.

As always, NPR has posted the concert at their site, and I've got a few photos at my flickr page.

RIYL58

The record companies continue their slow pre-summer period, so yet another week of very few notable new releases. And by "very few" I mean "one."

Immaculate Machine Fables Just a couple weeks ago I noted that now would be the perfect time for a band to sneak in their take on the Song of the Summer. It might already be too late - I'm betting on Feist's "1-2-3-4" and/or Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks" to be blaring on all the hipsters' car radios downtheshore this year. Canada's Immaculate Machine doesn't get the press that Feist and PB&J get, but they do have a great summer song of their own on their new disc. "Dear Confessor" does a nice job of showing off the trio's strengths - the boy-girl interaction, the harmonies, the driving drumbeat, the chiming 80's keyboard, and the urgency that comes from three very talented musicians trying to cram as much music as possible into a three-minute rock song.

Interspersed between the album's more energenic songs are a few slower, softer, and more experimental numbers that sometimes work well with the other tunes and sometimes do not. But overall, a great disc to have in the car for that long drive down the A.C. Expressway this summer.

Immaculate Machine - "Dear Confessor" [mp3]

This week's list:

1. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
2. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
3. THE NATIONAL Boxer
4. VOXTROT Voxtrot
5. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
6. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
7. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
8. FEIST The Reminder
9. IMMACULATE MACHINE Fables
10. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
11. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
12. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
13. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
14. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
15. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
16. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
17. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
18. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
19. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
20. BJORK Volta
21. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
22. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
23. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
24. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
25. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
26. SON VOLT Search
27. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
28. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
29. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• PATTI SMITH Twelve

RIYL for the week beginning June 11, 2007. Backstory here.

Meet Me In The Middle Of The Day

Last Friday I went to my first WXPN Free-at-Noon concert since, let me think, February. Wow. Since seeing Son Volt back then, either I've been too busy to go or the free act hasn't interested me that much. To 'XPN's credit, it's been more the former than the latter.

Anyway, last Friday it was folk troubadour Steve Forbert. Forbert was one of those guys, along with Springsteen and John Prine, tagged in the early 70's as being "the Next Dylan." Springsteen, of course, went on to be so successful that a few young singers have now been saddled with the "Next Springsteen" tag, and Prine has been doing quite alright since rejuvenating his career with a couple brilliant discs during the 90's. Forbert, however, doesn't get the attention these other guys get. He's one of those singers who are almost always described as "you know, that guy who sang that song..."

Well, way back when, Forbert was that guy who sang those songs "Goin' Down to Laurel" and "Romeo's Tune" (you'd know it if you heard it, goes like this - "Meet me in the middle of the day, let me hear you say everything's okay, bring me southern kisses from your room..."). He's had a couple other minor hits ("What Kinda Guy am I", "You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play"), but mostly you don't hear much of him anymore.

That's a shame, because the guy puts on a really good live show. You don't realize the intensity of his songs until you hear them live. On the radio they're all sweetness and folk, but the verses are usually broken up by heavier guitar and harmonica sound. He just kind of sneaks those parts in there. They're harder to miss when he's playing live since he puts on a pretty intense show, even for a free noontime crowd (which explains why all the pictures I took of him are a little shaky).

He and his band (who all look their age, while Forbert still looks about thirty) played a few of the old crowd-pleasers, but he also played a few songs from his new disc and they sounded pretty strong. The guy doesn't deviate much from the style that first got him noticed back in the 70's, but he doesn't sound dated, either.

NPR is streaming the Forbert show here, and my small Flickr photo set is here.

This week the Free at Noon show is the Great Lake Swimmers, whose new album I talked up here a few weeks ago. The disc's quietness made it a little tough to get into at first, but since then I've listened to it quite a bit and it has really grown on me. I'm looking forward to seeing them live.

RIYL57

Hey, did anyone else's ears start bleeding as soon as they walked into Starbucks today? How about we get to some much different new music from a much different old guy?

Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band Live in Dublin Woo! Yeah! Springsteen live! The Boss! Brooooooce!

Well, not quite. Following the release of his Pete Seeger-inspired romp through American folk history, We Shall Overcome: the Seeger Sessions, the Boss took the show on the road. Folks were warned not to expect the usual Bruce concert - instead of Clarence and Little Stevie there would be banjos and fiddles.

Since the Seeger Sessions disc already sounded like a one-take hootenanny, you had to wonder if hearing it live was even necessary. But as much fun as Springsteen sounded like he was having on the studio album, he sounds like he's having even more fun here. And as good as the old folk songs sound live, I have to admit that what I like most about this live disc are Springsteen's own old songs.

Bruce has always seemed to try take at least a few of his songs into new directions in concert, but I doubt he's ever gotten this far away from the originals. "Atlantic City" drops the original's despondent mood and replaces it with a lively, matter-of-fact, Johnny Cash-like freight train beat. Rather than remaining a rebellious anthem, "Growing Up" has a much older Springsteen sounding like he had a lot of fun sticking it to the man all those years ago.

The disc is full of transformations like these. Springsteen even updates the Depression-era "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live" and turns it into Katrina-era blues.

A companion DVD is also being released today, and Amazon has full clips of both "Atlantic City" and "Growing Up." They don't make the clip embeddable like youtube does, but if you click on the image below you should be taken to video's page.

This week's list:

1. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
2. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Live in Dublin
3. THE NATIONAL Boxer
4. VOXTROT Voxtrot
5. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
6. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
7. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
8. FEIST The Reminder
9. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
10. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
11. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
12. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
13. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
14. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
15. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
16. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
17. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
18. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
19. BJORK Volta
20. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
21. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
22. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
23. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
24. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
25. PATTI SMITH Twelve
26. SON VOLT Search
27. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
28. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
29. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners

RIYL for the week beginning June 4, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL56

Despite sagging album sales, record company executives evidentially can still afford to take long Memorial Day vacations. How else do explain the dearth of new releases this week, right when every artists should be putting out the song of the summer?

Richard Thompson Sweet Warrior It seems fitting that guitar genius Richard Thompson puts his new disc out around Memorial Day, since the first single from it is the anti-war "Dad's Gonna to Kill Me" ("Dad" being shorthand for "Baghdad"). Warrior is being advertised as Thompson's return from his recent acoustic work to the electric guitar of the '90s that brought so many fans (including me) to the former Fairport Convention folky. Thompson's old-school stingy with the free samples, with "Dad's Gonna" being the only mp3 being offered up on his website (and even that doesn't seem to be available anymore). That song isn't doing much for me, though, and while it's always nice to hear an anti-war anything, Thompson's entry comes so late that it already feels dated (which only goes to show how just how long this ridiculous war has dragged on). The 30-second samples at Amazon do sound like Thompson may have returned to his successful Rumor and Sigh/Mirror Blue/Mock Tutor style, but without longer listenings available it's hard to tell if he's using it to move forward to a new stage or to return to where he's already been.

Voxtrot Voxtrot What's it with new discs from American bands that sound like they're from England? Last week it was Boston's Wheat and this week it's Austin's Voxtrot. Voxtrot has been around for a few years without releasing anything longer than an EP, so this disc marks their initiation into the world of long plays and it sounds pretty darn good. In the past Voxtrot has put out some bouncy Belle & Sebastian-style pop - and the new album's "Steven" follows that form - but for the most part on Voxtrot the band uses louder guitars and heavier drums to create a backbeat strong enough to get you hooked on the entire disc. You can hear a bunch of new songs at the band's myspace page.

Voxtrot - "Kid Gloves" [mp3]

This week's list:

1. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
2. THE NATIONAL Boxer
3. VOXTROT Voxtrot
4. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
5. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
6. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
7. FEIST The Reminder
8. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
9. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
10. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
11. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
12. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
13. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
14. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
15. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
16. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
17. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
18. BJORK Volta
19. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
20. RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
21. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
22. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
23. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
24. PATTI SMITH Twelve
25. SON VOLT Search
26. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
27. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
28. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
29. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• ARCTIC MONKEYS Favourite Worst Nightmare
• KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills

RIYL for the week beginning May 28, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL55

Two weeks worth of new music to document, so let's get right to it.

Wilco Sky Blue Sky Perhaps you've heard me mention this one before? I might do a separate post just about this disc someday, but for now I'll just say that I'm really digging it. Since the disc has more of the pop sound of mid-career Wilco discs (and a whole lot less of the feedback and loops of recent Wilco discs), a lot of reviewers (and quite a few Wilco fans) see it as a step backward from the expansiveness of Wilco's last two studio albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born. But I see the album as a nice combination of Wilco's older sound and a few of their newer tricks. No, it's not as strong an album as YHF or Ghost, but it is the band's most approachable disc since Summerteeth, so if you haven't given Wilco a chance before, you might want to try them this time. Wilco had streamed this on their website for the last two months, but I'm not sure that "listen" button is still working.

The National Boxer The soundtrack to Pretty in Pink (stay with me here, I promise this has something to do with this album) is a mostly upbeat collection of songs, but it saves the best for last with two deeper but still singalongable (it is too a word) tracks from Echo & the Bunnymen and the Smiths. The National's Boxer reminds me of those final Pretty in Pink cuts, all smooched together. (That's a good thing.) A mix of baritone vocals, smart lyrics and elaborate (yet catchy) music, I think it's one of the top five discs to come out so far this year. You can hear the whole album over at AOL where they're streaming it all this week.  

Loudon Wainwright III Strange Weirdos: Music from and Inspired by the Film Knocked Up and Rufus Wainwright Release the Stars Let's get the son out (no pun intended) of the way first: Rufus has dropped yet another disc of soaring vocals and orchestral sounds and just like all his other discs, it's the kind of music that I can't see myself buying but somehow always like listening to. I burned this one off a coworker and it's currently in heavy rotation at Long Cut headquarters (aka "my cubical").

Rufus's pop isn't quite as consistent as his son's been, but he still hits the mark more often than not. Loudon writes and sings the type of songs that Randy Newman used to do before he started doing all those Disney soundtracks. And now Loudon has his own movie soundtrack out. Oddly enough, it's first cut "Grey in L.A." is like Newman's "I Love L.A.," only in reverse - Newman wrote what many thought was tribute to the SoCal lifestyle but was actually a put down, and here Loudon sings what sounds like a slam but is actually a love song to the city. It's a great tune, as is "Daughter," the only other song I've heard from this disc. Sadly, I can't find anything more than Amazon's short samples for the rest of the album.

Wheat Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square All I know of this album - from the band who brought the world the uber-catchy "I Met a Girl" a few years back - is what I heard/saw in its first video. Supposedly, this is the brit-pop-by-way-of-Cambridge-Mass-not-Cambridge-England (a description almost as long as their album title) band's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - an ambitious and noisy move away from their previous sound. Myspace page here.

Au Revoir Simone The Bird of Music I was going to describe this Brooklyn trio as the female equivalent of Sweden's Peter Bjorg and John, so it didn't surprise me to see that the two bands will be touring together this summer. Impressively strong for an album made up mainly of bouncy keyboards and pretty voices. Plus I like this picture of them. A lot. There's a video available here, and their myspace page here.

Joe Strummer The Future Is Unwritten I rented the Clash documentary Westway to the World not too long ago (another item I meant to write a post about), and was happy to see that it was made early enough to include interviews with lead singer Joe Strummer before his death. Watching the video, it's pretty easy to see that Strummer was the brains of the operation - and he would be the first to say so. He knew about all kinds of music and was always willing to try different styles (see: Calling, London). This disc serves as the soundtrack to another documentary, this one focusing solely on Strummer. There are some Clash and post-Clash Strummer works here, but it's mostly made up of the music that influenced Strummer the most - the MC5, Eddie Cochran, Woodie Guthrie, Nina Simone - and offers yet another chance to see what went into making the Clash such a great band.

This week's list:

1. WILCO Sky Blue Sky
2. THE NATIONAL Boxer
3. AU REVOIR SIMONE The Bird of Music
4. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
5. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
6. FEIST The Reminder
7. RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Release the Stars
8. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
9. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
10. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
11. LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Strange Weirdos
12. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
13. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
14. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
15. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
16. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
17. BJORK Volta
18. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
19. WHEAT Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
20. JOE STRUMMER The Future Is Unwritten
21. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
22. PATTI SMITH Twelve
23. SON VOLT Search
24. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
25. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
26. ARCTIC MONKEYS Favourite Worst Nightmare
27. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
28. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
29. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
• THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
• PAGE FRANCE ...And the Family Telephone
• COWBOY JUNKIES At the End of Paths Taken
• KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
• GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
• TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods

RIYL for the week beginning May 21, 2007. Backstory here.

Will Comply

I'm sure not all of you are as into Wilco as I am, but I've been putting up a post every time the band announced that they were streaming their upcoming disc, Sky Blue Sky - which at first was only for a few hours, than for a full day at a time, until finally what they've been doing for a while now, streaming it 24/7, which will continue until the albums released on Tuesday.

I've posted about these streams mainly because I'm excited about any new Wilco, but also because I think what the band doing is pretty cool. More and more indie artists are streaming their albums either on their website or on myspace, but Wilco's got a big enough fanbase that they no longer need to put their stuff out there early. I'd like to think that they do it because they are just as excited about their new songs as their fans are and they can't wait for you to hear them. Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy did an interview with Pitchfork and touched on the topic:

I guess the simplest way of saying it is that I don't think that artists should expend any energy keeping people from listening or seeing or hearing or reading their art. I think that's antithetical to the whole principle of being an artist.

At the same time, streams can be lifted and turned into mp3s pretty easily, and you have to wonder how many people are willing to just stick with these homemade downloads. In the interview, Tweedy doesn't seem to think that, once the disc comes out, fans will no longer be satisfied with the lo-fi copies. The email I got from Wilco headquarters recently doesn't sound quite as sure of that as Tweedy does.

What we're getting at here is that right now we need you to participate in a way that is part of what has made this nice little story work. We're actually asking you to please go out next week and do the right thing for Wilco. That is, vote with your feet and prove the band's faith well-placed and buy the record. It's available from Tuesday at all kinds of retailers everywhere. Ask for it by name.

I thought it was an interesting email to send out, especially after reading what Tweedy thought of having the free stuff out there. But I don't think they're asking for a lot (by titling the email "A Modest Proposal," I'm assuming they don't think so either). The band puts the album out there for free knowing that it will be copied and posted all over the internet, and all they ask is that, come release day, you return the favor by supporting the band.

With the record industry getting more impersonal every day, it's cool to see a band put so much trust in their fans. They might have to send you an email reminding you of that trust, but at least it's there.

RIYL54

Work's been a bear, so let's cut the chit chat, shall we?

Travis The Boy With No Name It's been over seven years since Travis hit the big time with "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" They haven't gotten much attention since then, but there's been plenty of other bands - like Starsailor and Snow Patrol - who have been more than willing to satisfy those brit-pop cravings of ours. Now Travis is back with an album that doesn't quite hit the high points that 2000's The Man Who hit, but is still a pleasant enough disc to have on in the background while you're stuck in your cubical and you think you might finally be able to cross a few things off your to-do list but no, here comes two other people dropping last-minute needed-yesterday projects on your desk. Sorry - did I mention work's been killer lately? Anyway, the band's streaming their whole new disc on their myspace page.

Björk Volta What's can I say about Ms. Guðmundsdóttir? She's the kind of artist that you either get and love, don't get and hate, or sort of get and kind of like. You can stick me in that last group. Sure, that little voice-cracking thing Bjork (it's too hard to keep putting that umlaut over the o in her name so I'm just going to stop doing it) always does can get annoying at times, but she usually provides a nice mix of catchy beats and affecting vocals that have you singing right along with her, cracking voice and all. Bjork's got one new song and a few samples on her extremely vivid myspace page.

The Clientele God Save the Clientele I guess you could try to use the Clientele's soft and melodic songs as background music at work, too, but it's kind of tough to get things done when so many of the songs are so good that you end up concentrating on them instead of your work (this might explain why I've been so far behind at the office lately). This London band writes some really great lyrics, but even more impressive than that is the way they put out music that's quiet and lush and seemingly unimposing but ends up pulling you in. The new disc is full of songs like that and has already become one of my favorite albums so far for 2007. They've got a couple new songs on their myspace page (as well an older song that I think is still their best, "Since K Got Over Me") or you could head over to their website and hear the whole disc, which I would highly recommend you do.

The Clientele - "Bedroom Casanova" [mp3]

Page France ...And the Family Telephone Last year I described this Baltimore band's last album as "Indie-folk that's cheery without being twee." I have no idea what I meant by that, but it fits this album as well. Maybe even more so. This band doesn't seem to take itself too seriously and likes to use a whole bunch of goofy instruments and offbeat beats, but they're also sounding a lot more cohesive on this disc than they did on their last. Only one song from their new album is on their myspace page, but I was able to find a couple free downloads.

Page France - "Hat and Rabbit" [mp3]
Page France - "Here's a Telephone" [mp3]

Great Lake Swimmers Ongiara Great Lake Swimmers first caught my attention with their self-titled 2005 debut and the song "I Will Never See the Sun," which, like much of My Morning Jacket's stuff back then, had a strong Neil Young vibe to it. But while MMJ's Jim James howled, GLS's Tony Dekker's take on Young was more understated. Ongiara is even quieter than that debut disc (the comparisons the new disc is getting to Iron and Wine's sound are pretty dead-on), and while nothing from it has stood out for me like "I Will Never See the Sun" did, overall it's still a pretty solid album.

Great Lake Swimmers - "Your Rocky Spine" [mp3]

This week's list:

1. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
2. THE CLIENTELE God Save the Clientele
3. FEIST The Reminder
4. GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS Ongiara
5. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
6. TRAVIS The Boy With No Name
7. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
8. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
9. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
10. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
11. BJORK Volta
12. PAGE FRANCE ...And the Family Telephone
13. COWBOY JUNKIES At the End of Paths Taken
14. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
15. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
16. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
17. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
18. PATTI SMITH Twelve
19. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
20. SON VOLT Search
21. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
22. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
23. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
24. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
25. ARCTIC MONKEYS Favourite Worst Nightmare
26. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
27. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
28. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
29. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
30. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife

Dropping off the list this week:

• MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
• OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
• JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
• MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
• THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

RIYL for the week beginning May 7, 2007. Backstory here.

Blue Streak

Since I've kept you informed every other time they've done something like this, I'm going to do it one last time: Wilco is once again streaming their upcoming album, Sky Blue Sky, over at their website. This time, however, instead of the free stream being available for one day, it will be available all day, every day - right up until the disc drops on May 15.

And it sounds really great, so if you haven't heard it yet I suggest you head on over there.

While I'm at it, I might as well remind everyone that the soon-to-be-huge local band the Swimmers have been streaming their upcoming disc at their website for a while now. As far as I know, there hasn't been a release date set for that one just yet.

[You can pre-order those Wilco action figures here. I'm not sure that even I am a big enough fan to do something like that.]

RIYL53

Now with visuals! At least for this week.

Feist The Reminder I would hope that Leslie Feist's new disc would still be getting a lot of press even if this wasn't a slow week for new releases (as I write this, Google tells me that there were about 207 news articles in the last week that mentioned Feist). She had a pretty big hit (at least in the indie-music world) a few years ago with her debut, Let It Die, and its catchy little single "Mushaboom." Feist has a quiet but strong voice that sounds great on her softer songs, but she just as often uses that same voice on toe-tapping numbers, somehow without having it overpowered by the busy beats behind her.

The Reminder is being touted as the disc that brings Feist mainstream attention. If it does, it will start with the bouncy "1234." The video for that song is below, and while it might not be the best representation of what a lot of Feist's music sounds like, it's still a pretty cool video. If you really want to hear exactly what Feist can do, head over to her myspace page, where she's streaming the new disc in its entirety.

Warren Zevon Preludes Just this Sunday I read about a new Warren Zevon biography that was written, at his request, by his ex-wife. Even though most of the stories in it came straight from Zevon before he died of cancer, it supposedly isn't all that flattering. In addition to tales of "gun-toting rages, heavy substance abuse, iffy parenting and unflagging ability to chase new women," there's said to be a lot about Zevon's jealousy of his more-recognized So-Cal peers (and friends) like Jackson Browne and the Eagles. I'm not all that crazy about the gun-toting and substance abuse, but I can't blame him for thinking that he should have been more successful, because I think so, too. No matter how he comes out looking, I really want to read this book, if only to understand what was going on in his life while he was writing so many amazing (and often dark) songs.

Another peek into Zevon's life might come from the demos and one-offs collection Preludes. Most of its content comes from tapes from 1976 that were discovered after Zevon's 2003 death. Lots of solo piano and solo guitar and a bunch of early versions of later semi-hits like "Werewolves of London." I couldn't find any full-length samples from this double disc, but Amazon has a low-tech, often extremely pixelized, and completely un-embeddable little home-movie video for "Werewolves" that's got a slightly different beat than the one everyone knows.

This week's list:

1. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
2. FEIST The Reminder
3. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
4. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
5. WARREN ZEVON Preludes
6. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
7. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
8. COWBOY JUNKIES At the End of Paths Taken
9. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
10. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
11. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
12. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
13. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
14. PATTI SMITH Twelve
15. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
16. SON VOLT Search
17. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
18. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
19. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
20. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
21. ARCTIC MONKEYS Favourite Worst Nightmare
22. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
23. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
24. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
25. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
26. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
27. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
28. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
29. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
30. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

Dropping off the list this week:

1. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
2. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim

RIYL for the week beginning April 30, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL52

Let's make this quick, we've got had T-ball tonight!

Cowboy Junkies At the End of Paths Taken Hey, somebody woke up the Cowboy Junkies! I love Margo Timmins' voice as much as the next guy, but her band's sound has been suffering from some serious sameness for the last, what, nine years? I don't think there's been much to get excited about since Miles From Our Home came out in 1998. But the few songs from this new disc the Junkies are sampling at their myspace page sound really good. Crashing cymbals, grinding guitars, a little distortion, and Margo's sweet, sweet, voice sounding very strong.

Golden Smog Blood on the Slacks Just last July this supergroup side project ended an eight-year absence with the uneven Another Fine Day. Now - just nine months later - they're already back with another disc (this one's just an EP, but it's an eight-song EP). Golden Smog has always had a somewhat flexible lineup, but it usually included some Jayhawks, some Soul Asylum, and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy wasn't on much of Another Fine Day and isn't on this EP at all. And Golden Smog without Tweedy sounds exactly like you would think it would sound, like a mashup of Soul Asylum and the Jayhawks. Frankly, I'd rather just have another Jayhawks disc, but since that hasn't happened for a while I guess I'll have to settle for this. See what you think over at their myspace page.

Patti Smith Twelve The only song from this disc of covers that's getting any kind of radio play is her take on the Stone's "Gimme Shelter," but some of Smith's other choices are look too interesting not to hear at least once. Neil Young's "Helpless"? "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"? "The Boy In the Bubble"? "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?!?! Calling Smith an acquired taste might be an understatement, but if any of these songs hits the mark like her cover of "Gloria" did, it'll be worth sitting through the one's that don't. Unfortunately, "Gimme Shelter" is in the latter group, and it's the only new song playing on her myspace page.

Arctic Monkeys Favourite Worse Nightmare I never bought the buzz that the Arctic Monkey's debut was the best album of 2006 (or the new century, or of all time). I might have been turned off by the hype, but I just never got into their first album. I think this one, which is being streamed this week over at AOL, sounds much better - more focused and less annoying. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this album solidifies the band's position as the greatest musical artists since the beginning of time, if not earlier.

This week's list:

1. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
2. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
3. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
4. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
5. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
6. COWBOY JUNKIES At the End of Paths Taken
7. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
8. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
9. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
10. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
11. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
12. PATTI SMITH Twelve
13. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
14. SON VOLT Search
15. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
16. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
17. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
18. GOLDEN SMOG Blood on the Slacks
19. ARCTIC MONKEYS Favourite Worst Nightmare
20. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
21. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
22. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
23. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
24. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
25. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
26. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
27. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
28. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
29. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
30. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

Dropping off the list this week:

• VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
• BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
• AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
• CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder

RIYL for the week beginning April 23, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL51

I can't find anything coming out today to write about, so I'll use this week's post for four older albums I picked up recently. At the encouragement of Smedley Log proprietor Howard, I finally used one of those eMusic free trial offers that seem to pop up everywhere. Nowadays they usually only offer 25 free songs, but I had an old email that linked to a 50 song offer.

eMusic offers real mp3s, without all that protection and authorization crap that makes iTunes so frustrating to deal with. How eMusic works is that you subscribe to one of three levels, each with it's own number of downloads each month. The more you pay, the more songs you get each month, with the smallest package allowing thirty downloads a month for ten bucks. They don't have everything that iTunes has and if you don't use all your download during the month, you lose them. But they do have cool things, like once you buy a song you can download it again as often as you like (as long as you're still a paying member).

Personally, I've got too much music to listen to already, so I took my 50 songs and quickly (and without any hassle) left. Here's what I got:

Matthew Sweet Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu Originally made only for his Japanese fans, Sweet reunited his backing band from his breakout Girlfriend for this disc. For those who felt that Sweet had drifted from the hookiness of Girlfriend, this would seem like a return to form. To someone like me - who's always felt that Sweet has only gotten better since Girlfriend (especially with the quieter In Reverse) - this would seem like a step back. In reality it's a combination of both. There's definitely a lot of the pop that's been missing from Sweet's post-Girlfriend rockers and his post-post-Girlfriend introspective works, but  thankfully he doesn't completely abandon either of those styles for this album. Unfortunately, the combination platter feel of this  disc takes away the almost concept-album-strong singular vibe that usually accompanies his CDs. Still, even at his less-than-best, it's always great to hear some previously unheard (by me) Sweet.

Over The Rhine Live from Nowhere, Volume One This band is the reason Howard had been pestering me to try eMusic. OtR had a beautiful song ("Born") on a Paste sampler a few years ago and I was instantly hooked. In the past year they have released both a best of and this live disc, both of which I figured would be a good starting point for a relative newbie like me. The live disc promised some interesting covers the opportunity to hear "Born" live, so that's the disc I downloaded. Live, Karin Bergquist's vocal style is a bit different than the Margo Timmins/Maria McKee sound I've heard on the OtR songs I had previously downloaded from their website. It's more jazzy and smooth, which works fine for the standards that end the album but takes some getting used to when hearing it applied to band's originals. Ever since I stopped comparing the disc to what I expected to be, it's grown on me quite a bit. Not the album I expected, but Bergquist's voice (however she choices to use it) makes it a quality disc. Below are a couple mp3s from the disc that the band has put on it's website.

Over the Rhine - "Lookin' Forward" [mp3]
Over the Rhine - "Moondance" [mp3]

Laura Cantrell Not The Tremblin' Kind Laura Cantrell does the same city-girl-playing-country thing that Gillian Welsh does (though Cantrell plies the peppier side of Nashville), and like Welsh you can't help but feel the respect and love Cantrell has for that old-timey music - while at the same time not being afraid to put her own mark on it. Cantrell at times can sound like Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and kd lang (and older influences, too, I'm sure), but she's also a fresh voice - more a peer to these artists than an imitator of them. And even if you don't care about all that history and respect, the disc is just a lot of fun to listen to. Below are two downloads from the album, plus I've thrown in what is perhaps my favorite song of hers (definitely the best titled), recorded live at a John Peel Christmas special.

Laura Cantrell - "Not The Tremblin' Kind" [mp3]
Laura Cantrell - "Churches Off the Interstate" [mp3]
Laura Cantrell - "I Lost You (but I Found Country Music)" [mp3]

Pernice Brothers The World Won't End Big thanks to TwoBusy over at TwoBusy for introducing me to these guys, and for recommending I download this album. It's not like I would have discovered them myself, since they seem to be completely ignored by alternative radio. That's a crime, because Joe Pernice and Company write and perform wistful pop music in the fine tradition of public radio favorites like Big Star and Wilco. This 2001 album is full of catchy songs that are so beautiful that you couldn't be blamed for missing the subtle humor that pops up all over the disc (though it's hard to miss a song titled "The Ballad Of Bjorn Borg"). I don't have any samples to offer from this disc, but the band does have streams of some later albums on their website. Give them a listen and just try to get them out of your head.

This week's list (same as last week):

1. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
2. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
3. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
4. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
5. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
6. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
7. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
8. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
9. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
10. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
11. SON VOLT Search
12. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
13. AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
14. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder
15. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
16. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
17. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
18. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
19. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
20. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
21. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
22. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
23. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
24. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
25. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
26. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
27. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
28. VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
29. BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
30. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

RIYL for the week beginning April 16, 2007. Backstory here.

Keepon Keeping On

It took MTV about eight years before they were airing videos this good.

[More info about Keepon here (it's a pretty cool project). Music by Spoon.]

RIYL50

Just back from DC and jumping right back into the new releases (or at least a couple of them):

The Rosebuds Night of the Furies This album's release isn't getting as much press as I was expecting to get it, but I know I've been looking forward to it quite a bit. The Rosebuds are yet another husband/wife team who make catchy pop tunes. But where their music was once just bouncy and fun (not that there's anything wrong with that), their sound has now matured and their songwriting has become more substantial, without sacrificing any of the catchiness. This new one full of eighties-era synth-rock-sounding (but not dated-sounding) songs that would fit in quite nicely on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack. And yes, I do consider that a good thing. They've put three new songs on their myspace page, and you can even download "Get Up Get Out" while you're there.

Bright Eyes Cassadaga For those who don't already know, Bright Eyes is pretty much the Conor Oberst show. I first heard Oberst when he opened REM and Springsteen at the Philly Move On concert back in '04 and I was impressed by his intensity. He yelped out most of his songs that night, but there was no denying the kid's conviction. I came away thinking that he may be this generation's Dylan and I burned a few of his disc off of a coworker. Since then, however, I've noticed that I can only take him in very small doses, after that it's "alright already, quit yer whining."

Well, I've heard quite a bit from the new album and very little of it makes me feel that way. Oberst's has moved away from having his songs center on his voice so much, and that makes this album his most (his only?) listenable disc yet. It also doesn't hurt that artists like Gillian Welsh and M Ward show up on it. Both MSN and AOL are streaming the whole album this week, but only MSN is offering a free download of the first single, "Four Winds."

This week's list:

1. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
2. THE ROSEBUDS Night of the Furies
3. BRIGHT EYES Cassadaga
4. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
5. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
6. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
7. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
8. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
9. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
10. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
11. SON VOLT Search
12. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
13. AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
14. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder
15. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
16. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
17. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
18. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
19. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
20. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
21. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
22. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
23. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
24. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
25. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
26. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
27. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
28. VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
29. BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
30. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little

Dropping off the list this week:

• RICKIE LEE JONES The Sermon on Exposition Blvd.
• BILL RICCHINI Tonight I Burn Brightly

RIYL for the week beginning April 9, 2007. Backstory here.

RIYL49

On a week that brings us an end-of-contract demo dump, Spanglish versions of your favorite oldies, one-half-posthumous blues duets and two discs worth of ambient improvisation from the man responsible for creating XTC, one new release stands out. Which is good, because that's all I have time for this week.

Fountains of Wayne Traffic and Weather Sometimes you can judge just how successful a band is by how much free stuff they put out on the web. The bigger the fan base, the less you have to give away. For their first album of new material in four years, the Fountains of Wayne are giving us thirty-second samples of their new songs. I'm not sure even those short clips are necessary for this disc to be a huge hit.

Does anyone not know what this disc will sound like? There's no doubt that it will be filled with the same self-depreciating get-stuck-in-your-head-forever pop that the boys from North Jersey have been giving us for years. The only question is if they continue to get better or if success has made them complacent. Their past history (and the first single, which has already been getting plenty of airplay around here) tells me the former is the more likely scenario.

This week's list:

1. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE Traffic and Weather
2. ANDREW BIRD Armchair Apocrypha
3. MODEST MOUSE We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
4. KAISER CHIEFS Yours Truly, Angry Mob
5. GRANT LEE PHILLIPS Strangelet
6. TRACEY THORN Out of the Woods
7. ROSIE THOMAS These Friends of Mine
8. SON VOLT Search
9. THE SHINS Wincing the Night Away
10. AMY WINEHOUSE Back in Black
11. RICKIE LEE JONES The Sermon on Exposition Blvd.
12. CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH Some Loud Thunder
13. PETER BJORN AND JOHN Writer's Block
14. THE POSTMARKS The Postmarks
15. KRISTOFFER RAGNSTAM Sweet Bills
16. THE AUTUMN DEFENSE The Autumn Defense
17. ERIN McKEOWN Sing You Sinners
18. ALBERT HAMMOND, JR. Yours To Keep
19. JILL CUNNIFF City Beach
20. PATTY GRIFFIN Children Running Through
21. MARK KNOPFLER & EMMYLOU HARRIS Real Live Roadrunning
22. OVER THE RHINE Discount Fireworks
23. THE DECEMBERISTS The Crane Wife
24. BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque
25. MATT & KIM Matt & Kim
26. VARIOUS ARTISTS Endless Highway: the Music of the Band
27. BAND OF HORSES Everything All the Time
28. MY MORNING JACKET Okonokos
29. THE PERNICE BROTHERS Live a Little
30. BILL RICCHINI Tonight I Burn Brightly

Dropping off the list this week:

• GRAHAM PARKER - Don't Tell Columbus

RIYL for the week beginning April 2, 2007. Backstory here.

I Don't Believe That Anybody Feels The Way I Do About You Now

This weekend, with the missus (keep in mind that she was suffering from a stomach bug):

The Missus (having heard Nickelback one too many times): Have you thought of getting [the nine-year-old] into some different bands?
Me (gladly open to any [logical] suggestion): Like who?
The Missus (pulling a band name from god-knows-where): I don't know... Oasis?
Me: [???!???]

and

The Missus (stuck watching DVD's with the [also-suffering-from-a-stomach-bug] four-year-old all week): Let me tell you, in Happy Feet, Robin Williams plays about two too many characters.
Me (just happy I haven't had to watch the movie yet): Oh, yeah? How many characters does he play?
The Missus: Uh, two.
Me: [Rimshot FX]

That second one tells me she's ready to go back to work.

It's Like Friday Random Ten, Without All That Messy Randomness

Despite pretty much giving up on the whole Friday Random Ten thing (as well as no longer trusting the randomness of the iTunes shuffler), Friday still seems like a good day for blogging about music. So this is a perfect time to mention the recent rediscovery of my last.fm account.

Last.fm is one of a growing number of services that streams music on your computer and promises to use what you're currently listening to to introduce you to music you might not currently be listening to. [Way too many to's in that last sentence.]

I originally signed up for last.fm back in February '06 and was pretty happy with the music they were serving up. But I download so much music right now that I don't have much use for a music player (not to mention that we're really not supposed to be streaming music at work), so I pretty much stopped using the last.fm player a while back.

Now here's the cool thing about last.fm - even if you're not using their player, you can still have it track what you're playing on your iTunes, then log into your last.fm account and see what new music they suggest from analyzing your playlist. And then they show you other members that have similar tastes, and you can see what they are listening to. And then you can join groups that are based on certain artists or styles and see what they are listening to. Then you can link up with friends of yours and see what they are listening to. I believe it's what the people who run the Internet call "social networking."

Recently [as in just this week] I've made an effort to get back into last.fm and really try using it to hear different music, or just to see what what my friends think is worth listening to right now. So if you have a last.fm account and you want to be my friend [and God, just how 2nd grade did that sound?], my user name is ManilowLover23, er, you know what, just go here and add me.

For those of you who still insist on seeing a list of ten on a Friday music post, last.fm's playlist tracking also lets you serve up your listening habits right onto your blog. Like, say, your ten most listened to artists for the past week: