You might have seen the post on Pitchfork a bit ago announcing the collaboration between Danger Doom and Adult Swim. It seems that Adult Swim will be posting an as-yet-untitled free-for-the download nine-track EP. The first track was posted today titled “Korndogs” and the rest of the tracks will follow until May 30th. I’ll keep checking for tracks and post here when new ones arrive.
I’ve been following the Court & Spark since I heard an interview segment on NPR back in 2001 around the time of their Bless You release. What I heard at the time was a logical progression from some of the other artists I had been listening to at the time. I was a big Neil Young fan, I liked Son Volt, the Jayhawks, Joe Henry, Jack Logan, and other artists who would unfortunately get lumped into the category of alt.country, or Americana. People love convenient labels, I guess.
Admittedly, the earler records from The Court & Spark (Ventura Whites, and to an extent Bless You) have many influences from the same place as other artists that share that category. Just take a look at the Byrds– were they country, or were they rock? Take a look at Neil Young– is he country, or is he rock, or folk for that matter? Is Tom Petty rock? He certainly can pull in some twang when desired. What about the Eagles? Even Fleetwood Mac with Lindsey Buckingham at the helm recorded a couple of songs that could be called country– check out “That’s Alright” from Mirage. A lot of Clapton’s output in the Seventies sure sounds like country (“Lay Down Sally,” “Promises”). The point here being that good bands and artists get great by stretching their boundaries. The more influences that an artist can draw from, the richer the work.
And, so it is with the Court & Spark’s new album Hearts (released May 2nd). Hearts is the sound of a band that is stretching its boundaries by diving a little more away from their rootsy or folksy sound and more towards a rock sound. In fact, in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, singer, lyricist and guitarist M.C. Taylor said that they were “being painted into a corner” and that Hearts is a reaction to that.
Hearts is an album that is unique and familiar both at the same time. It has the typical laid-back, mid-tempo feel that all of the Court & Spark records have. There is this underlying darkness that beckons, too. This is the first full-length album recorded by the band at their recording studio The Alabama Street Station. As is typical with bands who finally get their own space– they can spend time on the record without fear of racking up expensive studio time. This extra effort shows in the sometimes subtle, and sometimes not-so subtle sound textures used in the album. The band employs everything from toy pianos on the stomping “Your Mother Was the Lightning” to dulcimers and typewriters. Even with the sound effects on the tracks the album still has a consistent feel. The production values and layers of sound effects are not blips and bloops of electronica, but more classic studio type effects that you’d hear from Smile-period Beach Boys or the Beatles. The whole album sounds like it could have been recorded in 1971– that precarious hangover time after the end of the Summer of Love and the beginning of the next party that would be disco.
The record starts off with “Let’s Get High,” which does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the record. A mellow, sexy affair with M.C. singing an invitation to “swim down, you’ve got beautiful fins.” This song reminds me of the best work of The The (what the hell happened to Matt Johnson anyway?). Lot’s of layered guitars and horns slathered over a sparce beat that firmly puts M.C.’s voice front and center. Most of this song sounds like it was processed through the spinning speaker of a Leslie. In fact, that effect is used all over the record.
The album transitions to the breezy “We Were All Uptown Rulers” which is included for your listening pleasure thanks to the permission of the band’s management. In typical fashion, it is nearly impossible to tell what this song is about. The only reference to “Uptown Rulers” I could find was a Meters album. The song seems sad and defeatist. Whomever this song is about, his other Uptown Ruler compatriots have been killed off, and he’s the last one. But, he’s standing his ground.
The accordion or melodeon along with the strings and whistling makes “Birmingham to Blackhorse Road We Wandered” sound distinctly Scottish folk. I have to say that M.C.’s lyrics, while obscure, do paint a picture. When he sings “Lay your diamond hand on me, lay your hands on me” I wonder if that means that the narrator’s love interest he “met at the change of the century” is married?
Hearts has four instrumental interludes spread throughout the album. They make for nice spacing between the tracks. The first one following “Birmingham” is “The Oyster Is A Wealthy Beast” takes advantage of bouncing strings under a solo lone violin. In the last 45 seconds it breaks down to the sounds of water lapping on the shore.
Clocking in at six minutes, the following track is the monumental centerpiece to the album, “Capaldi.” I can only assume that this is a tribute to the late Traffic member Jim Capaldi. It certainly sounds like a send-up of a Traffic song with its analog synth and arpeggiated guitar and bass guitar hook coated in fuzzy distortion.
“Capaldi” is followed by “A Milk White Flag”– the second of the four interludes. I notice that these tracks seem to fit together. They have a “music from another room” feel to them. Nice use of reverb. This is followed by “Berliners” which is a slow strumming ballad about what seems like a voyeuristic ghost pining for love of a living girl. Wandering tape noises under the guitars drive home the feeling of loss. We are greeted again by an instrumental called “Smoke Snigals” [s.i.c]. I guess appropriately titled considering the previous track begged for someone to “talk to me!”
When you listen to this with headphones you get to hear M.C. take a breath before starting the next track, “Mother Was the Lightning.” A slapping 2-step beat and tick-tock guitar propels this head-bobber. This song seems to be about a family doomed for disaster sung from the vantage point of a boyfriend. A universal theme, I think. The song winds out with toy piano and claps and Leslie tinged vocals.
“The High Life” starts out as slow waltz of a song that reminds me a bit of the classic “The Night Life.” Around 2:50 the song switches gears to a driving four-on-the-floor with layers of soaring guitars and keyboards that seems more like an early-Seventies progressive track by Yes. This is followed by the last of the instrumentals called “Gatesnakes.” This track is more of an exercise in layering sounds effects over a lone piano track reminding me a bit of Game Theory’s experimentation on Lolita Nation. After two minutes of that we move to the album closer called “The Ballad of Horselover Fat.” This is a spare vocals plus acoustic guitar that layers in other instruments as the song progresses to its chorus of “As a man I fade away.” Horselover Fat is the alter-ego of Sci-Fi writer Philip K. Dick that he used in one of his last novels VALIS, in 1981. I haven’t read this one, but I guess that it deals mostly with Dick’s search to understand God. A nice way to end this album, I feel.
In attempting to break the perception that they were a “country” act, the Court & Spark have recorded their most interesting and complete work to date. It’s time to catch the Spark of these high-heeled boys.
Download “We Were All Uptown Rulers”
Download a Live Version of “Capaldi”
Download a Live Version of “Your Mother was the Lightning”
Band photo by Peter Ellenby
Slashdot reports today that some Canadian musicians have joined to form the Canadian Music Creator Coalition which is speaking out for artists as it applies to the laws and policies that affect them. They feel that the record labels and legislators are representing their own interests and is not necessarily the artists’. Their three tenants are opposing the suing of fans under the Copyright Act, abolition of copy protection or digital locks, and the more localized interest of making sure that government funding of artists in Canada supports Canadian artists. The CMCC includes artists like Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan, Sum 41, and Broken Social Scene among others. Of course, the thing that everyone is latching on to with the CMCC is their implied stance on downloading music.
As reported in Pitchfork and Largehearted Boy, Minneapolis band Tapes ‘N Tapes have a record deal with XL Recordings. The Loon will be re-released on XL in July. There will be a sizeable tour kicked off in June. The seem to have lost their bass player in the process, but this isn’t the first lineup change for this band. They are an example of the incredible PR power of music blogs. In a Pioneer Press article, their band manager Keri Wiese is quoted saying, “It started pretty much right after the first blog wrote about the band in November. We got a call from Capitol Records the next day.” Even playbsides.com got caught up in the furvor– I reviewed the Loon back in March.
Rob Galgano reports in The Great Leap Forward that Neil Young’s new album Living With War is in the can and may come out this summer. Howie Kline, former label head for Reprise talks about having heard it. It will be interesting to hear this album as it sounds like Neil getting back to business. This is an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war album being described as “Metal Folk,” I guess.
Rob comments in his post that Neil’s work has been “spotty as of late.” I think that is a bit of an understatement. I was a rabid Neil fan for a while in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I remember seeing Neil play the first Farm Aid on Television and he did “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and “Heart of Gold” among other songs. Prior to seeing that performance, the only Neil Young I really knew was “Heart of Gold” and that was a song that I always loved. I went out and purchased Rust Never Sleeps on cassette and it was in constant rotation in my Firebird. [In retrospect, I am glad that Neil did a solo acoustic set instead of bringing out a band. He was in his “country” period with Old Ways at this time] When Freedom came out, I bought it and immediately wanted to start getting his back catalog. I subscribed to the Neil Young newsletter “Broken Arrow” and joined the Rust@Death mailing list. So, I was immersed in Neil for a while. He released some great albums: The Mirror Ball collaboration with Pearl Jam, Sleeps With Angels the tribute to Kurt Cobain, Harvest Moon, Ragged Glory, Unplugged… He released Broken Arrow in 1996 which was a pretty good record. I saw him play the Target Center in Minneapolis that tour. Then there was a long dry spell where Neil didn’t release anything until 2000, when he released Silver and Gold. I’m not sure what happened, really. I heard a track from it and wasn’t compelled to purchase it. It was almost like I had lost the momentum of fandom. In 2002 he released Are You Passionate? which had a couple of tracks that sounded pretty decent plus that “Let’s Roll” tribute to the 9/11 Hijacking of the United flight. Still, I wasn’t moved to purchase that. Then he released Greendale in 2003, which was the “rock opera/musical.” Again, I wasn’t moved to purchase it.
I imagine that I was feeling the same way Neil Young fans were feeling in the early-Eighties when he moved to Geffen and released the Everybody’s Rockin’/Trans/Old Ways/Landing on Water cycle. For those unfamiliar with these albums, Neil was trying out other music styles: Rockin’ was a Fifties styled record, Trans was done as an electronic type record with Neil’s vocals done through a vocoder, Old Ways was a country album, Landing on Water was a Crazy Horse record, but not in a typical garagy style– more synthesized sounds. This is the cycle of albums that would eventually prompt David Geffen to try and sue Neil for not sounding like himself and sabotaging the sales of those records. Neil Young is known as a guy who re-invents himself periodically, and then seems to slide into the Crazy Horse plus Old Black (his Les Paul) or into a Harvest/Harvest Moon mode.
So, Neil is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in early 2005 and decides he wants to do an album that may very well be his last. He records Prairie Wind, an album that seems to be refreshingly footed in the folk leanings Neil has. All of the songs appear to deal with mortality and looking back on his life. Prairie Wind might be the most directly personal work that Neil has created thus far. He survives the surgery and is all over television promoting this work, including an unheard of week stint on Conan O’Brien. This is the album I purchased with a sigh of relief.
It sounds like Neil might be re-inventing himself a bit for this next album, but really, I’m sure it will still be Neil Young.
As noted earlier CBS cancelled the show Love Monkey after only three episodes. VH1 has picked up the show [note: this link seems to work best with IE]– at least the eight episodes that were taped. No additional episodes have been ordered. Evidently, there was discussion of moving this show to UPN that yielded no results. The first of the un-aired episodes will show Tuesday night. So, for the next five weeks at least, I’ve got a new show to watch! This Tuesday night’s show is the one with Aimee Mann.
As stated earlier, I had been in Boston twice in three weeks. Unlike previous trips to Boston, I got some shopping in. I hit record stores and book stores.
Trip #1:
I managed to hit Newbury Comics while the group was waiting for our table at the fantastic Capital Grille, which was just down the street. Newbury is one of the great record stores and I would recommend hitting it if possible. Plus it is down the street from one of the best ice cream places I have been to. It seems this was my vinyl trip.
Cat Power : The Greatest on 180 Gram vinyl (!) Thank goodness for Matador Records and their devotion to the preservation of vinyl. This pressing allegedly has “an extra track not on the regular version of the CD.” That said, I can’t find a version of this on CD that has less tracks on it.
Cat Power : “The Greatest” b/w “Hate” 7″. Sticker says “Pay No More Than .99” and damned if I didn’t!
Stereolab : “Whisper Pitch” b/w “Widow Wierdo”
Stereolab : “Eye of the Volcano” b/w “Vodiak”
Stereolab : “Excursions into ‘oh, a-oh'” b/w “Get A Shot of The Refrigerator” These last three singles complete the set of singles released last year. All of these tracks are compiled on the economy-priced Fab Four Suture
A good run, but a pain in the arse to bring back on the airplane!
Trip #2
This is the LinuxWorld trip last week when I went to the Blackalicious show. Hit a number of stores this time.
Newbury Comics:
Athens, GA Inside-Out
I didn’t find anything else I was really interested in.
Virgin Records on Newbury:
(If) I’m A Ham, You’re A Sausage
Looney Toons:
Looney Toons is a great old record store with vinyl stacked to the ceilings in moving boxes! Next time I’m in Boston I plan to dedicate some serious time in here digging. They had Dark Side of the Moon on the original Harvest pressing with stickers and poster for $24. I just about bought it, but I didn’t like the cover condition. I think I’ll hold out. I did get some CDs:
Calexico : Convict Pool
Calexico : Even My Sure Things Fall Through
Calexico : Feast of Wire
Fargo Rock City
Radio Shack:
Sony MDR-NC11
Per Largehearted boy and The Great Leap Forward, a new Wiki has been started to track music blogs. I made an entry for Time To Play B-Sides. Ultimately, blogs and wikis will play together to make for better organization of the internet and aid searches.
I’m sure the blogs will pick this up pretty quickly, but I had to post this when I saw it. This should be the example to show when people doubt that turntablism is an art. Here is a blog entry about it.
Here is the YouTube version.
The best part about it is the facial expression on the guy standing next to him. He must have been the guy he was battling!
I was in Boston last week for LinuxWorld. This is the second time this year that I have been in Boston for work– and I will be in Boston again in June for Microsoft TechEd. Seems the tech conferences are all moving there this year. I really like Boston. From a music perspective there is quite a bit to do there.
While I was there I saw Blackalicious with Pigeon John and the Lifesavas at the Paradise Rock Club. They also had Pharcyde MC Fat Lip and Leftcoast up-and-comer Omni on the bill. I went to the show with a couple of guys that I work with.
We got to the venue for the door opening at 7PM. Unfortunately, it was raining on and off all day and in the 30’s for temps. We stood in the will-call line for a long time periodically hopping up and down to stir up some heat. Judging by the others in line, I was the oldest person there.
When we got inside I went over to the merch table to see what stuff they had for sale. Lots of nice Blackalicious stuff– tees, CD’s, and some vinyl. There was stuff from Pigeon John, too. Manning the table was a couple of guys one of which I would find out was Omni himself. I picked up a 12″ of breakbeats. Omni helpfully explained that what I had in my hands was used by DJ’s. I nodded, consumed by looking at the stuff. At that point he shoved a record in my face– his record and announced that it just dropped and indicated that I should buy it. When I showed no interest he said that “maybe it’s too hardcore for you.” I nodded ironically and said that maybe it was. I headed to the bar. We snagged a nice corner table that gave us a great vantage point the whole night.
Before the bands started we got to hear DJ See Brown. He ran through a set of funk and HipHop with a little disco mixed in. He seemed to be warming up. He would be the DJ for Pigeon John, Omni, and Fat Lip.
First up was Pigeon John. I knew that he was signed to Quannum and I knew there was a bit of chatter going on about him. I frankly didn’t know what to expect from him. What we got was a fun and energetic set from someone who genuinely wanted to be there. He interacted with the crowd a lot and ran through his catalog including a couple of tracks from his forthcoming Quannum release due in the fall. His lyrics were very tongue in cheek and self deprecating. His set hit a peak when he had the voice of “god” telling him that him that no one in the audience liked him. He fell to his knees to great crowd shouting. Funny! A very good set. I look forward to seeing him in the future. I guess he tours constantly.
Next up was Omni. He did a thankfully short set. That is about all I remember from him except that he was wearing a Lifesavas teeshirt that confused a number of people who wanted to know if he was in that group. Based on that set, I certainly wouldn’t be buying his record.
Next up was Fat Lip. I hadn’t heard him before. I was roughly familiar with the Pharcyde. Based on what I heard this was mostly a set of Pharcyde stuff plus a new track called “Writer’s Block.” He was pretty entertaining. He flows a bit off beat, reminding me of Biz Markie. The crowd was full of fans. By this time the floor was pretty much filled up.
Next up was the Lifesavas. I had heard them before on a couple of other Quannum records as a supporting artist. Their set was very energetic. It reminded me of the Latyrx show I saw a number of years ago in Minneapolis. They did tracks from their upcoming release Gutterfly which seems pretty promising.
After Lifesavas was done, there was a break. I went up to the merchandise table. Pigeon John was manning his area of the table. I congratulated him on a fun set. I told him I liked MC’s with a sense of humor. He agreed and said he did too. I signed up for his mailing list. I asked him which of his CD’s I should get. He handed me Pigeon John Is Dating Your Sister and said that this one was the one that Lyrics Born heard that made him sign John to Quannum. I also picked up a mixtape (are they mixtapes when they are on CD?) done by the Rev. Shines who is the turntablist for Lifesavas called Today’s Good News vol. 1. This was done as a tribute to the late JayDilla.
Finally, it was time for Blackalicious. I have seen DJ Shadow a couple of times, and Lyrics Born with Lateef as Latyrx, but I hadn’t seen the Gift of Gab with Chief Xcel. Now, I’ve seen the entire original Solesides/Quannum crew! Onstage with Gab and the Chief were two background singers– a guy and a girl. There was some concern voiced by some of the people I talked to in line as I guess that due to health issues, the Gift of Gab wasn’t able to make their last show in Boston, and evidently Lyrics Born filled in. No sign of that. While the Chief manned the turntables, the Gift of Gab prowled the stage like a bull in heat spitting out rhymes with precision and speed you just don’t hear from MC’s these days. They did all of the great tracks from Blazing Arrow and Nia, plus a handful of tracks from their new release The Craft. They also did “Puttin’ on the Ritz” off of the Gift of Gab’s solo record 4th Dimensional Rocket Ships Going Up. The crowd went nuts during the couple of freestyles that he delivered. I think that the Gift of Gab is still one of the best MC’s around. In fact, the MC’s on Quannum all set the bar for style and skill. High points of the night included “Chemical Calisthenics” and also “Deception.” On Deception Gab had the crowd singing along to the “La De Da Da Dee Dee Da” part. They wrapped up the night with an encore that included all the MC’s from the night.
It’s pretty clear to me watching all of the acts tonight that the years of working have added a certain polish to Blackalicious’s set. They approached the stage with the confidence that comes with the seasoning of years of work. They knew how to work the crowd and had the whole place rocking.
