So I have had the forthcoming new Low record for several weeks now, but have been holding out on posting anything because I like this blog the way it is... you know, online, as opposed to shut down by the wrath of Sub Pop. For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised to see that an mp3 from the new record has finally made its way out officially. Unfortunately, it is "Breaker", a song that was better on the Retribution Gospel Choir EP. It's not that it sucks, its just that if you've heard the RGC version, you'll know what I mean. Let's just say I eagerly await the day I can post "Murderer" or "Dragonfly" or "Violent Past" here. Anyway, without further ado, here is the track. Definitely pick up the album when it comes out, or pre-order it now.
Low - Breaker
2.22.2007
2.18.2007
Jesu
That Bazan / Iron and Wine post is coming, one of these days. I swear. Today, however, is not that day. I need my roommate to hook me up with his microSD card so I can get my pictures off my phone, and then it will happen.
Today's post will be about something completely different, namely, Jesu. If you don't know much about them, that isn't terribly surprising. Apart from a pretty favorable review on Pitchfork every now and again, they aren't too widely known. Currently, they're on tour with Isis, a combo I may go see in DC next month if I remember and have the money.
Isis actually isn't a terrible point of comparison. Both are a little metal, a little hardcore, a little ambient, but ultimately, not quite any of those things. Tool (for whom Isis have opened) is a band to which both Isis and Jesu clearly owe a great musical debt.
You wouldn't necessarily know it from hearing frontman Justin Broadrick (who, by the way, played in both Napalm Death and Godflesh, not that there is any similarity whatsoever between those bands and Jesu) talk about them, though. He is fond of comparing the tone of his work to Red House Painters (who are perhaps my favorite band of all time). I don't really see the parallel, honestly, other than perhaps in tempo. Jesu writes mostly sludgy, heavy songs in major keys. RHP are... well, not that. I will post about them one of these days when I have the time to put something worthwhile together.
I seem to be a little all over the place, so I'll get to the point. The new Jesu album, Conqueror, which is due out Tuesday, is something you should listen to. The entire thing is available as a stream here. Alternately, I am putting the title track up in mp3 form here since it's available from the band's MySpace. I can't really say it's my favorite of the songs on the album, but you have to take what's available, I suppose.
Jesu - Conqueror
Today's post will be about something completely different, namely, Jesu. If you don't know much about them, that isn't terribly surprising. Apart from a pretty favorable review on Pitchfork every now and again, they aren't too widely known. Currently, they're on tour with Isis, a combo I may go see in DC next month if I remember and have the money.
Isis actually isn't a terrible point of comparison. Both are a little metal, a little hardcore, a little ambient, but ultimately, not quite any of those things. Tool (for whom Isis have opened) is a band to which both Isis and Jesu clearly owe a great musical debt.
You wouldn't necessarily know it from hearing frontman Justin Broadrick (who, by the way, played in both Napalm Death and Godflesh, not that there is any similarity whatsoever between those bands and Jesu) talk about them, though. He is fond of comparing the tone of his work to Red House Painters (who are perhaps my favorite band of all time). I don't really see the parallel, honestly, other than perhaps in tempo. Jesu writes mostly sludgy, heavy songs in major keys. RHP are... well, not that. I will post about them one of these days when I have the time to put something worthwhile together.
I seem to be a little all over the place, so I'll get to the point. The new Jesu album, Conqueror, which is due out Tuesday, is something you should listen to. The entire thing is available as a stream here. Alternately, I am putting the title track up in mp3 form here since it's available from the band's MySpace. I can't really say it's my favorite of the songs on the album, but you have to take what's available, I suppose.
Jesu - Conqueror
2.14.2007
Sorry
This has been a pretty lame week. I will try to get a post up about the Bazan/Beam show tomorrow.
2.09.2007
Drunk
Drunk was a Jagjaguwar band fronted by Rick Alverson (now of Spokane, who are also signed to Jagjaguwar). They were probably the first "indie folk" band I had ever heard, dating back to my high school days of browsing Epitonic for random bands that seemed interesting. To say information about them is hard to turn up would be a pretty huge understatement. They sort of petered out right around when the internet was really taking off (their last release was 2000's Tableside Manners), and as such, there isn't much in the way of web history surrounding them.
In an interview with Alverson from 2002, he describes a number of reasons that he chose to stop recording as Drunk. Former collaborators were gone, he no longer liked the name, and decided that a fresh start with a new name was the best course of action.
The music is fairly typically Jagjaguwar: quiet, folk-inspired, slightly out of tune, and very sad. It was one of my first glimpses into a world of music like it, and though I wouldn't say it influenced my own songwriting directly, it certainly influenced the way I think about arrangement and mood. Both tracks here come from 1998's Raised Toward. Enjoy.
Drunk - A Mere Passerby
Drunk - Chatter
In an interview with Alverson from 2002, he describes a number of reasons that he chose to stop recording as Drunk. Former collaborators were gone, he no longer liked the name, and decided that a fresh start with a new name was the best course of action.
The music is fairly typically Jagjaguwar: quiet, folk-inspired, slightly out of tune, and very sad. It was one of my first glimpses into a world of music like it, and though I wouldn't say it influenced my own songwriting directly, it certainly influenced the way I think about arrangement and mood. Both tracks here come from 1998's Raised Toward. Enjoy.
Drunk - A Mere Passerby
Drunk - Chatter
2.03.2007
Slint
I have a feeling that for half my audience, a bio of who Slint are/were is going to be insulting, and for the other half, pretty necessary. In a nutshell, Slint pretty much invented post-rock, the dynamic-focused largely instrumental brand of music best exemplified today by Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Tortoise. The band formed in 1985, releasing a debut, Tweez, in 1987, and their landmark Spiderland for Touch and Go in 1990. Not long after that, they broke up. Of the founding members, only David Pajo has had any significant degree of success in subsequent years, playing in Tortoise, Papa M, and Zwan (though it's probably worth noting that Brian McMahon played in Palace briefly, as well).
The band reunited for a brief tour in 2005, which I was fortunate enough to get to see at the TLA in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, after the tour, it seemed like they were done again for good, as news broke that they sold a significant portion of their gear. However, on the heels of the relatively recent news that Slint will be playing Spiderland in its entirety at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona in a few months, it seemed like a good time to post about them.
In some sense, they are much more conventional than what post-rock has become today. You won't find any Tortoise-esque jazz influence or any Mogwai-style programming on a Slint record. The basic elements of the genre are there though: long tracks, few vocals (and mostly spoken vocals, at that), and a strong sense of dynamics and tension.
The two tracks that accompany this post come from a recording of the band's March 2005 performance at London's Kentish Town Forum. Though I didn't intentionally choose them this way (in fact, they are the set opener and set closer, respectively), they also have happen to be the fifth and sixth tracks on Spiderland. The first is the slow, brooding "For Dinner...", and the second is the band's best known track (which, strangely enough, appeared on the soundtrack to Kids), "Good Morning Captain." Enjoy.
Slint - For Dinner... (live 2005)
Slint - Good Morning Captain (live 2005)
The band reunited for a brief tour in 2005, which I was fortunate enough to get to see at the TLA in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, after the tour, it seemed like they were done again for good, as news broke that they sold a significant portion of their gear. However, on the heels of the relatively recent news that Slint will be playing Spiderland in its entirety at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona in a few months, it seemed like a good time to post about them.
In some sense, they are much more conventional than what post-rock has become today. You won't find any Tortoise-esque jazz influence or any Mogwai-style programming on a Slint record. The basic elements of the genre are there though: long tracks, few vocals (and mostly spoken vocals, at that), and a strong sense of dynamics and tension.
The two tracks that accompany this post come from a recording of the band's March 2005 performance at London's Kentish Town Forum. Though I didn't intentionally choose them this way (in fact, they are the set opener and set closer, respectively), they also have happen to be the fifth and sixth tracks on Spiderland. The first is the slow, brooding "For Dinner...", and the second is the band's best known track (which, strangely enough, appeared on the soundtrack to Kids), "Good Morning Captain." Enjoy.
Slint - For Dinner... (live 2005)
Slint - Good Morning Captain (live 2005)
1.31.2007
Fade Into You
It's a little bit of a shame about Mazzy Star, in that by the time I got around to appreciating them, they hadn't played in years. For the uninitiated, Mazzy Star was largely a collaboration between Hope Sandoval, vocalist and David Roback, guitarist. Typically classified as dreampop, if such classifications matter to you, they were perhaps the most successful band of that genre, owing largely to the song this post is about, "Fade into You."
Whether you know it or not, you know this song. Maybe I am insulting your intellect by telling you that, but I couldn't tell you the number of people who don't know it by name when I ask them. It was featured in the movies Angus and Starship Troopers, and on the tv shows Alias and Gilmore Girls, among other things I am probably missing. It was a ubiquitous staple of alt-rock radio, as well.
As I said though, I was a bit young when it came out to really get into it. I sort of forgot about it altogether until I accidentally stumbled across this live version of David Bazan (playing as Paperback, I believe) doing it. Since Mazzy Star predate the era of readily available mp3 by quite a bit, I can't even post an mp3 of the original version. Here is a YouTube, however:
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (video)
And a live acoustic version for MTV Europe:
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (live acoustic video)
And finally, here's an mp3 of the Bazan version, courtesy of pedro-the-lion.com (no I'm not hot-linking to their bandwidth, since it's an unofficial site).
David Bazan - Fade Into You
Whether you know it or not, you know this song. Maybe I am insulting your intellect by telling you that, but I couldn't tell you the number of people who don't know it by name when I ask them. It was featured in the movies Angus and Starship Troopers, and on the tv shows Alias and Gilmore Girls, among other things I am probably missing. It was a ubiquitous staple of alt-rock radio, as well.
As I said though, I was a bit young when it came out to really get into it. I sort of forgot about it altogether until I accidentally stumbled across this live version of David Bazan (playing as Paperback, I believe) doing it. Since Mazzy Star predate the era of readily available mp3 by quite a bit, I can't even post an mp3 of the original version. Here is a YouTube, however:
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (video)
And a live acoustic version for MTV Europe:
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (live acoustic video)
And finally, here's an mp3 of the Bazan version, courtesy of pedro-the-lion.com (no I'm not hot-linking to their bandwidth, since it's an unofficial site).
David Bazan - Fade Into You
1.29.2007
Palo Santo
Shearwater got awesome all of a sudden in 2006 with the release of Palo Santo. It's not that they were bad before that or anything, but sounded more like the Okkervil River side project they were (and are). On Palo Santo, it's exclusively Jon Meiburg's vocals and songwriting, and no offense to Will Sheff, but I like the former's songs better.
From that first paragraph, one might be inclined to believe that I was into Shearwater all along and heard about them before you did because I'm just that cool. Actually though, no. Those are my impressions working backward chronologically from Palo Santo. I first heard Shearwater just last year opening for Magnolia Electric Co in DC, and was thoroughly impressed. It's not that their sound is exactly 100% unique, it's just that it's really good. Meiburg's vocals are fantastic. I wish I could put "La Dame et la Licorne" up here so you could get a full grasp of his range, but that one is not and never has been available for free, so not so much.
Instead, I have two other tracks from Palo Santo. Or more accurately, the band does, as this way I don't have to upload them. The first is "White Waves," which has an almost Stones-y riff to most of it that I promise you will find memorable, even if you end up not liking the song.
Shearwater - White Waves
The second is "Seventy-four, Seventy-five", which the band's website suggests "recalls early John Cale." It's basically an enjoyable piano-based number with a very pentatonic sort of sound to it.
Shearwater - Seventy-four, Seventy-five
From that first paragraph, one might be inclined to believe that I was into Shearwater all along and heard about them before you did because I'm just that cool. Actually though, no. Those are my impressions working backward chronologically from Palo Santo. I first heard Shearwater just last year opening for Magnolia Electric Co in DC, and was thoroughly impressed. It's not that their sound is exactly 100% unique, it's just that it's really good. Meiburg's vocals are fantastic. I wish I could put "La Dame et la Licorne" up here so you could get a full grasp of his range, but that one is not and never has been available for free, so not so much.
Instead, I have two other tracks from Palo Santo. Or more accurately, the band does, as this way I don't have to upload them. The first is "White Waves," which has an almost Stones-y riff to most of it that I promise you will find memorable, even if you end up not liking the song.
Shearwater - White Waves
The second is "Seventy-four, Seventy-five", which the band's website suggests "recalls early John Cale." It's basically an enjoyable piano-based number with a very pentatonic sort of sound to it.
Shearwater - Seventy-four, Seventy-five
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