Second Wind
Posted: October 31, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Got a few guest posts to help share the load… Let’s try this again.
Sondre Lerche – Dead Passengers
Posted: September 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dead passengers, faces down, garage, hill and wood, music, sam bush, sondre lerche, song review Leave a comment »
Guest Post by Charlottesville’s own Sam Bush, curator/manager of local DIY venue The Garage and man behind the curtain for local band The Hill and Wood.
“When there is trouble on the road / Dead passengers will guide you home”
From my perspective, choosing one song to write about feels a bit like inviting one friend to my wedding. That said, hopefully I’ll be accepted as a regular contributor to Jams All Year and therefore be allowed to dive into a bottomless chasm of music reviews (unlike the other contributers here, I have plentyof time on my hands).
“Dead Passengers” is hardly my favorite Sondre Lerche song – it might even be my least favorite song on Faces Down; but, after careful examination, it’s the song that best captures everything I love about the Norwegian songwriter. It’s moody yet playful; mellow yet sophisticated; and it all fits so well together that every moment is indispensable.
As the opening track to Faces Down, “Dead Passengers” hardly comes off strong – on the contrary, it is about as low key as the lobby soundtrack of a Hampton Inn. Each chord is jazzy, each instrument performs with utmost swagger and, two-minutes into the song, you feel like you may have purchased this record thirty years too soon. Granted, upon first listen, one will likely miss Lerche’s whimsical lyrics and the playful violins in the background because everything else is so incredibly mellow and French. Luckily, at just the right moment, the bridge kicks in. An edgy electric guitar enters the picture and, soon to follow, a psychedelic lead-guitar joins forces – both of them working together to reassure you that Norway has indeed heard of rock ‘n roll but that they just like to put their special spin on it (namely, with spacey, ghost-like guitar solos and soft/sweet backup singers). Just when you’re ready to cheer, when the climax of the song takes you to a point of clarity, the moment vanishes and you suddenly find yourself back at the receptionist’s desk getting your room number and hearing about tomorrow morning’s breakfast specials. Not to worry, however – the song has served its purpose. By now, the seed of intrigue has been planted and you’re convinced that it’s worth finding out if another stroke of brilliance is hiding somewhere in the next song.
The sense of allure that Lerche emits from his songs is exactly what makes Faces Down such a brilliant album. When I first heard this song as a senior in high school I thought it was downright weird and now, seven years later, I feel completely different about it. Lerche clearly understands that if the songwriting can hold its own, the listener will end up growing to love the parts that feel so wrong at first. While Lerche’s main gift is in his writing, the mature sound of his music relies on his ability to dangle the carrot and this is what took him light years ahead of his age group at the time Faces Down was recorded.
Of the many other impressive things about this record – 1. Lerche was 18 at the time; 2. It’s influences reference everything from Brazilian music to 80′s pop to psychedelia - the most impressive by far is how natural it feels. A still adolescent Lerche sounds like he’s been singing these songs for hundreds of years. Although he’s put out some questionable albums since, he is the type of songwriter I’ll be interested in following for years to come.
-Sam Bush
(Can’t find a video of this one… follow the link to grooveshark)
http://grooveshark.com/s/Dead+Passengers/2wxQyJ?src=5
The Weeknd – The Birds Part 1
Posted: September 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Elvis, House of Balloons, music, sealgulls, The Birds Part 1, The Weeknd, Thursday, Zeppelin Leave a comment »
“So watch out / If you try to play your luck / Ain’t nobody gonna care enough / To catch your fall”
I have a complicated relationship with The Weeknd. If you believe yourself to be any decent sort of human, you kind of have to. Not that anyone is questioning whether Abel Tesfaye, mastermind of post-apocalyptic R&B project The Weeknd, has a soul. I mean, just listen to that voice. All of the red-blooded intimacy and sensuality the genre has ever put forth is there, augmented by the earnestness of youth.
It’s no secret that R&B brings a more direct, unapologetic espousal of hedonism and pleasure-seeking to a wider audience than just about any other genre in pop music history. However you might feel about that, the content of the “party song” form tends to be all about good times and positive vibes, focusing the lens on the climax of hedonistic pursuits, cutting out before the coming down, or the hangover, and you especially better not mention a sense of philosophical emptiness. Exceptions? Well, Afroman comes to mind… you see where I’m going with this. If you want to be taken seriously in the R&B sub-genre of party music, you better not break the illusion.
So, back to The Weeknd. On the one hand, I want to praise this guy for telling it like it is. If we are to believe that his songs speak from experience (not necessarily a given), he’s got a serious drug problem. In fact, he might have a bakers dozen of them. And he’s severely depressed. Lyrically, there’s nothing special on the surface – the songs still revolve around sex, drugs, and fame. But dig deeper, past the “Louis V Bags” and “look at all this cash” -type genre signifiers, and you find lines like “Bring your love, baby, I can bring my shame / bring the drugs baby, I can bring my pain,” a girlfriend who’ll “probably O.D. before I show her to mamma,” a character who “always comes to the party on [his] knees” and is “living for the present and the future don’t exist.” This isn’t just hedonism, it’s nihilistic hedonism, and it’s terrifying.
So two points to The Weeknd for giving a more holistic perspective on fast living. And for doing it over some pretty unforgettable hooks and beats. Let’s remember though, that this kid is just 21 years old. That’s really young to be thinking this existentially and morbidly at a party. It’s not like he’s a Russian novelist or something – he’s from Toronto.
The Weeknd, to me, is every bit as fascinating as it is arguably reprehensible. So while I find it exhilarating and entrancing music and think there’s a lot to be learned about the human condition in these songs, the real milestone here for me personally is that it’s the first time I’ve identified a music I will want to protect my future children from. The Weeknd is my Elvis, my Zeppelin, my N.W.A. And that makes me feel old.
So, all caveats aside, let’s look at a song. The Birds Part 1, from The Weeknd’s new mixtape, Thursday, takes off with a rather of-the-times martial beat, cued in by an also predictable R&B wail “Ayyyy,” but hey, he nails it. Besides, it’s the last time you’re going to feel in comfortable territory for the rest of the song. Who gets to say things as egotistical as “Don’t make me make you fall in love” while simultaneously making us feel the urgency of what is really a very earnest, damaged warning? It’s this kind of nuance that keeps his music ever sober as it reaches for the heights of pop entertainment. If you pay any attention to these songs, you’re going to end up feeling a lot more than you signed up for, but hey, that’s what art is supposed to do. If you want the coming down part (and the most horrifying sealgulls [that is, seagulls... 1000 points to the person who can draw me a convincing sealgull] on tape, ostensibly sampled from Hitchcock’s film), proceed logically to The Birds Part 2. Alternatively, turn on, tune in, you know the rest….
-Guion
Jams All Year, Maybe Not Every Day
Posted: September 5, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »So, maybe we’ve been a little too hard on ourselves. Turns out teaching, writing, brewing beer, being a husband, playing my own music and keeping up with my own classes is a lot to handle while also trying to keep up a daily blog. Caleb’s biostat program is proving pretty taxing as well. With all that going on, we feel like it’s fun to write these, it’s just not fun feeling like I have to. So posts may come a little less frequently (still at least one a week, likely 2-3), but we’re gonna drop the “every weekday” regimen. Maybe when we’re both retired. We’ll also be featuring more guest posts, which should switch things up some.
Until next time,
Guion and Caleb, makers of empty promises.
Spoon – Black Like Me
Posted: August 31, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: black like me, britt daniel, caleb, ga ga ga ga ga, indie rock, pop/rock, song of the day, spoon, track reviews Leave a comment »
“I’m in need of someone to take care of me tonight”
“Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” is a marvelous album composed of great, straight-up-indie-rock tunes, but my favorite has got to be the more serious, emotionally resonating closer, Black Like Me. Britt Daniel is a beat-down man on this track, and there’s just the right amount of rasp to his voice to let you know it. It’s sort of a half-sad-bastard/half-pop song, but it’s nuanced enough throughout that it neither navel-gazes nor needlessly changes disposition.
The front half sounds almost haunted. Instruments gradually float in and out like specters, and I don’t know whether it’s a studio effect or if it’s just pedaled that well (been quite a while since I’ve played), but the reverb on the piano personifies the loneliness of an empty room fantastically.
The song congeals at its middle, fully fleshing itself out, and adopting a sort of pop-rock veneer. Indeed, it has all the hallmarks of a pop song right down to the “yeah, aw yeah”s, but they don’t let the whole point of the song get away from them. The tone is so consistent throughout, that it might even be possible to miss the transition altogether. Britt’s fractured state remains at the center to the very end, which of course occurs the way any great album ending should — completely unannounced, and leaving you wanting more.
-Caleb
Smog – The Well
Posted: August 30, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A River Ain't Too Much To Love, bill callahan, music, review, Smog, song of the day, The Well Leave a comment »
Sorry I’m late. If you can’t tell, school’s gearing up for both Caleb and myself and we’re trying to keep this blog up as well as we can while attempting to also be responsible adults. Hopefully the dust will settle soon and the pacing will return to normal. Anyway, here’s Monday’s review, a day late:
“I guess everybody has their own thing / that they yell into a well”
The first thing you need to know if you don’t already is that the whole A River Ain’t Too Much Too Love record is relatively perfect. Half of the songs are waltzes with the same slow tempo, most of the songs only have two or three chords, but all tell these terrific stories that are every bit as engaging on a literal level as they are on an metaphorical one.
Take “The Well,” for instance. Like any good piece of writing, it doesn’t simply mean one thing, and really begs multiple reads (listens) to really draw some meaning out of the idiosyncratic story at hand. And yes, like much of his music, there’s meditation on the relationship between human and nature. The album title already promises that an evaluation of this relationship is part of what you’re signing up for when you put the record on. And nowhere on the album is that process so wholly contained in a sustained allegory than “The Well.”
I’m fighting the urge to turn this entirely into a lyrical analysis essay (yikes), and besides, the song says what it says better than I could (though I’d love to hear your thoughts and interpretations in comments). Musically, the song operates around some kind of really drawn out blues progression that follows the natural turns in the free verse lyrics Bill Callahan is famous for rather than trying to fit them into an actual 12-bar blues form. This allows every thought to have its space, the chords only changing when action demands it. Which is, I think, what “The Well” is about in part (here I go): the restlessness of human nature at odds with the merits of patiently sitting with nature and letting it take its time. There’s an urgency in the narrator’s voice that needs change, but the song holds on as long as possible to each moment, setting up a tension that feels natural and believable. And, let’s face it, pretty funny most of the time (see the tempo change and indicting “F.A.Y.” that almost feels more directed at the listener than the bottom of the well he’s shouting into). Plenty to dig your heels into, and as good an introduction as any to a man with a career of some of the most consistent and intriguing songwriting of the last decade plus.
-Guion
James Taylor – Your Smiling Face
Posted: August 25, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
“No one can tell me that I’m doing wrong today / Whenever I see your smiling face my way”
It’s a James Taylor double feature snitcheeees!!
Sup y’all, sorry about Tuesday. I had to give a presentation today on my research this summer, so I was hella busy getting my ducks in a row for that. If you couldn’t tell from my casual demeanor, I’m in a pretty great mood right now. Whether that’s a product of having my presentation behind me or from listening to “Your Smiling Face” is hard to say. Maybe it’s like a synergistic effect where they both augment one another.
Either way, it feels like a Friday right now, and this song feels like the perfect Friday song. Back in undergrad, I used to always have a song that I would listen to on my way home from my last class of the week. The only requirements were that it had to be celebratory and crazy fun. I don’t know if I ever used this song, but I sure should have, and it sure feels perfect on a day like today. In fact, it might just be the Friday song to end them all.
I think probably 90% of the joy in this song is packed into that bass-line. I mean, this thing is legendary. It somehow out-funks I Want You Back. And when that geniusly placed key change lifts the song right up off the ground, only for the whole thing to fall out from under it, leaving that bass suspended in the sky? Aural bliss. Girl Talk played with fire when he mashed up this bridge with that Ludacris Austin Powers song, but it was so hot it couldn’t help but set the track on fire.
Another delightful thing about this song is that you can hear the smile on JT’s face. By the time he sings, “no one can tell me that I’m doing wrong today,” you’ve already sensed his invincibility loud and clear. Maybe you’ve even begun to feel it a little yourself. This song does seem to possess some sort of transitive property of elation after all. No James, whenever I hear Your smiling face, I have to smile myself.
-Caleb
James Blake and Bon Iver – Fall Creek Boys Choir
Posted: August 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bon Iver, Fall Creek Boys Choir, For Emma, Forever Ago, James Blake, Justin Vernon 1 Comment »
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Seriously, even though this song just came out today (look at us being current!), I already feel pretty confident nobody’s ever going to figure out what the words are. I also don’t think I care.
This collaboration isn’t exactly surprising, but that’s why it works so well. I’ve avoided writing about either of these guys, mainly because I felt like the rest of the internet pretty much has them covered, and most of my friends are already acquainted, so the urgency to share my excitement for their work just felt even more indulgent and pointless than I already feel when blogging anyway. I mean, Bon Iver’s latest record debuted at #2, and James Blake seems to have been on late-night shows just about every other week for the past year. There’s not much for me to add for the ten or so of you who read this blog regularly.
But here I go anyway. This song is too great to pass up. And back to that collaboration – James Blake has often (even in a press release regarding this song) been pretty open about Justin Vernon’s influence on his work. It’s not just the isolated autotune-yet-somehow-more-human-than-human vocal processing on “Lindesfarne” pulled straight from “Woods.” There’s also something in the soulful vocal phrasings, even the melodic choices themselves on his eponymous debut LP that echo Vernon’s solemn lines on For Emma, Forever Ago.
But I’d be willing to wager that the admiration goes both ways… I seem to remember Justin Vernon tweeting a link to a James Blake performance on some in-studio show back when James Blake dropped. And there are a number of subtle layers on the new Bon Iver, Bon Iver that seem co-informed by the glitchier work of Blake, particularly on the earlier EPs from last year. Let’s not forget, after all – Justin Vernon is also pretty handy behind the knobs as well as in front of the microphone.
So all the love is there. And in a mere four minutes and thirty-four seconds composed via email over the last few months, all of the aspects of each’s work that hasn’t found space to work out in the other’s songs gets a chance, like parents bringing their kids to a play-date. A very soulful, cathartic play-date. There’s the deep hitting dub bass from Blake’s world, but it’s working more with the palate of “Beth/Rest,” ala cracking, untamed 80s electronic snare hits and tom rolls that could daggum well be samples from that moment in ”In The Air Tonight.” Blake’s tool of strange, dissonant synth intervals [see: "Postpone" from the CMYK EP] being applied to Vernon’s gospel choir inclinations. And, as Abby pointed out tonight, there’s a bark or two in there that sounds like Vernon’s whole maimed-wolf thing, but it gets the punchy EQ treatment by Blake.
Did I mention the whole thing is extremely heart-wrenching at the same time? Most exciting, the ending doesn’t really feel like an ending. It’s a pretty unsatisfying and quick fade away that makes me feel this isn’t the whole story behind this collaboration, and maybe the entire music blogging world is going to have plenty to talk about in the next few months. Then again, maybe not. Here’s hoping…
Optimal Jamming Conditions: Get them headphones on. These guys pull everything to the left and the right, and sometimes in even more directions, so you’re gonna want to put yourself right in the middle of it (true for getting the most from any of their respective records, by the way).
James Taylor – Copperline
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
“Tried to go back as if I could / All spec house and plywood / Tore up, tore up good / Down on Copperline”
Preparing a presentation at the moment. Review to follow eventually, maybe.
-Caleb
Nina Simone – Be My Husband
Posted: August 22, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: be my husband, guion, nina simone, pastel blues, song of the day 1 Comment »
“Stick the promise man you made me /
That you stay away from Rosalie”
Tomorrow is my first day of teaching poetry writing at the college, and in typical fashion, have a few things left to prepare, so I’ll be keeping this short. You can either view that as a cop-out, or an opportunity to write this one yourself in the comments. I’ll be back Wednesday with some more typically indulgent prose.
I don’t feel too bad about it either way, because there isn’t much I could say about Nina Simone (or this unstoppable song) that hasn’t already been said, not to mention everyone and their cousin has covered it. Still, all of the attention this song has gotten doesn’t make her version any less likely to make me want to grab the nearest object and light it on fire. You know what I’m talking about – it’s only natural, because that’s what she’s doing. This song would be strong on its own as a blues number, and yet, something about….well….that thing her voice does, or is, or whatever – seems to inspire all the elements of the track to either keep up the pace with her explorations of the boundaries of the human instrument, or else be blown to pieces. It’s true of the majority of her songs, as if there was just too much energy in her voice to possibly contain with a tight arrangement or accompaniment. Not that her band is sloppy, (I mean, they don’t do much here, which is the point), but if there were anything more than this sparse percussion and claps it would just sound like they weren’t listening. Which, of course, isn’t an option.
-Guion
