"Helpless" - Neil Young

Over the last year, it seems like every time I come back home on my breaks from school this wave of nostalgia overtakes me. It's not really something I ever expected to happen, considering I so desperately wanted to escape the south when I was living here full time. I suppose the fact that I'll be graduating college at the end of the New Year has something to do with this. Pretty soon I'm going to have to make some big decisions about what I want to do with myself or whatever, and I really just don't want to. So as a consequence of that I guess I'm feeling a little wistful for more carefree times or something.

"Helpless" is a really simple Neil Young song that you might call the centerpiece of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's 1970 album Deja Vu. If you ask me, most of the material that resulted from the collaboration between these former members of the Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and The Hollies, is mostly bland, uninspired stuff, but the group did have its moments. "Helpless" is one of them. Notable among its surrounding tracks for it's sheer sparseness, it very much resembles a Neil Young solo cut. The song itself is overtly nostalgic, and in the wrong hands it might be just that, but Young's earnest delivery lends the song an overwhelming sense of loneliness and yearning that transports it to a much higher plain.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this song a lot lately. As I said before, it’s ludicrously simple, with basically one verse repeated twice with some slight variations now and then. It’s also basically just one set of three or four chords all the way through. The lyrics have got this real wounded tone, and are childlike in their attention to detail.

Blue blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the skies
Throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless.

“Helpless”– Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971

Buy it here: Amazon

Neil Young Bio: All Music

The Coolest Stuff I Came Across in 2007 (Off the Top of my Head)

The Orlando Magic – They are awesome now. I don’t care if they’re only third in the Eastern Conference: Howard, Turkoglu, and Keyon are gonna take it to tha Heece (as Prasad would say). If nothing else they’re going to go to town on the Knicks on Wednesday, and I’ll be in attendance to witness it first hand.

The New England Patriots – I really want the Celtics to crash and burn, but the Patriots are just really great. I kind of latched onto the whole New England sports bandwagon at the end of the Summer, since my two roommates are from Mass. and have been hardcore fans of the Sox and Pats since before it was cool. I’d love to see a perfect season in my lifetime, and you can’t hate them too much, since they still kind of have something to prove, having lost the Superbowl last year. Highlights of the season included a fantastic dropped lateral that miraculously resulted in a deep pass from T-Brad. In addition, Junior Seau is the perfect name for a linebacker.

In Rainbows by Radiohead – ‘Nuff said.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami – This is an old book, but I just read it a couple of months back. It’s basically just a really heartfelt adolescent coming-of-age story for introspective, slightly bitter college students like me. It’s a little romantic, sure, but everyone’s gotta feel sometime. If you’re interested, check the archives for my original review.

Live at Massey Hall 1971 by Neil Young – The second installment in the Neil Young Archives series, it’s an official bootleg that documents probably the most inspired phase of Neil Young’s artistic career. Sure, On the Beach, didn’t come around ‘til 1973 or ‘74, but in ’71 Neil Young’s entire body was twitchin’ with what Crazy Horse producer David Briggs would call “the Spook.” If you ever get a chance to listen to this, or better yet, pick it up for yourself, check out “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” “Love in Mind,” “On the Way Home,” and “Ohio.”

Rap – It’s actually pretty cool, if you look in the right places.

The Office (US) – I was a fan of the UK version, but over the last year and a bit (season three) I really got into the US version. Seasons two and three are basically perfect and ought to be watched on DVD with all the deleted scenes. Season four not so much. Dwangela? Jam? I liked it better when the tension was there, to be honest, and it’s probably for the best that the writer’s strike has probably ended the show for good.

I’m sure there were more cool things, but I want to maybe eat some cookies now.

A merry Christmas to all…I insist.

In the G'rage... (Part One of ?)

Yesterday I finished up a semester interning at a lit agency, and as a going-away present I was allowed to take a couple of promo copies of books they have in stock from publishers. One of those books is Rolling Stone’s now out-of-print Alt-Rock-A-Rama. So far, I’ve only read through a few of the pieces compiled in the book, but I was inspired by one of the features, “The Original Punks: The Greatest Garage Recordings of the Twentieth Century,” by Robot A. Hull (no joke, guy goes by Robot), to do a post on a great garage-rock group of whose history and musical output I know almost nothing. They’re called The Loved Ones, and they’re from Melbourne, Australia.

I got the following track, “Surprise, Surprise,” from a blog post over on Aquarium Drunkard, a cool blog based in LA, that was part of a series on rare garage rock from the 1960s. Dig the metalic fuzz of the song’s opening—it’s a bit like the Rolling Stones’ early singles, but it doesn’t have any of the big corporate rock connotations they’ve gained by being stars for almost half a century. The Loved Ones aren’t nearly as obscure as some of the stuff Robot Hull talks about in his piece, such as The Memphis Goons (who sound pretty awesome, considering they referred to themselves as “Xavier Tarpit, Jackass Thompson and Vanilla Frog”), The Godz, or the Shaggs, but their material also isn’t as widely known as their more successful contemporaries such as ? and the Mysterians (“96 Tears”), The Kingsmen (“Louie, Louie”), or the Troggs (“Wild Thing”).

For these reasons, I thought I’d post “Surprise, Surprise” for your listening enjoyment. It’s got elements of the Kingsmen, the Beatles’ early releases, and the Stones for sure, but ultimately it’s just a damn good nugget of garage rock greatness. It might not be as perfect as the Trashmen’s cacophonous “Surfin’ Bird,” (“B-b-b-bird bird bird, bird’s the word") but it’ll be stuck in your head for at least the rest of the day.

“Surprise, Surprise” – The Loved Ones

Check ‘em out on Amazon.

Catch a Cannonball

Sometime last Summer a couple of my friends and I were hanging out watching TV and on a whim I put on my friend’s copy of The Last Waltz to watch the above performance of “The Weight.”

Very few times has a piece of music or film sent real chills up and down my spine. It happened to me when I heard the cascading refrain to Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien” (uptiiiieeeettt) and it happened again when I watched The Band play this song at their farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day, 1976.

I didn’t really know very much about The Band until some car commercial used the song a coupla years back (kinda seems like this is the way a lot of people are introduced to music nowadays). Sure, I’d heard a little of Before the Flood, a live album capturing performances from a 70’s tour with Dylan, but ol’ Bobby sounds absolutely awful on that thing so I wasn’t exactly playing it to death. Anyway, I heard this song in a commercial, and suffice to say I found it a whole lot more interesting than buying anything with a hemi in it. Still, it wasn’t until some time later that I actually got wind of The Last Waltz.

Take a look at the video clip. Just listen to the way the Staple Singers, sing their hearts out on the chorus (one of the best in the history of rock ‘n’ roll) and watch the furrows flash over singer/drummer Levon Helm’s face as he belts the first verse. It’s so real and excruciatingly brilliant that it’s almost painful to watch. Spine tingling, as I mentioned earlier, it’s sensational in the most literal sense of the word. It’s incredible how well the whole ensemble pulls off such a stunning performance, considering that it was their last performance and tensions had been running high for a few years. Everyone’s in top gear here. Richard Manuel throws down a bed of Saloon-hall piano, Rick Danko’s all over the bassline, his high harmonies like the ghost of some long-gone vagabond, while Robbie Robertson’s glassy guitar twangs over the top of it all.

I can’t begin to express how thankful I am that footage of this unbelievable performance exists. You can watch the video on the link above, but I highly recommend Netflixin’ The Last Waltz for the full effect. Another personal favorite is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Make sure to watch Levon as he plays the living hell out of those drums, his shoulders twitching in time to each accented beat. You hear him singing about the defeat of Southern pride and the fall of the Confederacy and you’ll swear he was really there, sweating out on his front porch watching the haggard Yankees riding by.

Amen.

Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I first heard Nick Cave when I caught a live video of “The Mercy Seat,” a song from his 1988 album with the Bad Seeds called Tender Prey. I ended up buying the CD a couple years later and became really thrilled by its harsh, bluesy sound.

This post isn’t about that album, but rather about a single I chanced upon when the Tower Records on Broadway was having its going-out-of-business sale last year (it was a pretty gruesome thing, a bit like watching a beached whale carcass rot away or something).

Anyway, I was digging through a bin of assorted singles of mostly appalling quality—A little Avril Lavigne, some bad neo-soul, you know the stuff—when I came across a sort of creamy blue colored one with a little picture of a robin sitting in a tree on the front. Turns out it was a single for the song “Breathless,” from Cave’s last outing with the Seeds, 2004’s double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. It was ninety-nine cents or something so I grabbed it, not really having any expectations.

I should have had some. On the strength of this song I eventually bought Abattoir and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade. That said, “Breathless” is pretty much an anomaly in the Nick Cave catalog (or at least what I’ve heard of it). I still prefer the mix on the single to the version on the album, since it nixes an ear-splitting spaghetti of flute runs in the intro, but what makes the song stand out from the rest of Cave’s tunes is the fact that it’s just a really sweet, ambling pop song. It's got a great groove and some awesome, soulful backing vocals too (something far from uncommon when the Bad Seeds are involved). Nick Cave’s also a master lyricist, tempering themes ranging from the political to the personal with dark stories filled with violence and ribaldry that somehow end up having hilarious punch lines. On “Breathless,” however, he sticks to a more traditional approach, and you get a glimpse of Nick Cave the romantic poet, spinning idyllic lines like “it’s up in the morning, it’s on the downs, little white clouds just like gamboling lambs, and I am breathless over you.”

I’ll shut up now and you can listen, whoever you are:

Breathless (Alternative Mix)

Lived in Bars - Cat Power

Check out the previous posts for a cool live mp3 from Paris '05.

Caricatures by Ken Knafou

Ken's another great artist who works at Sea World Orlando. Sketches like the one above are really making me look forward to working back at the park this winter break. More good stuff on his blog at the link below.

ka-blaam! Ken Knafou's Blog

Dreams / Blue Moon - Cat Power

Just the other week I finally picked up The Greatest, and after a few spins I’ve become completely infatuated with all things Chan Marshall. Here are three reasons.

1. She's from the South and her voice is the sound of soul. If I had to describe it, I would say it sounds like she was born in the window booth of a Georgia roadside diner—the kind of place where you wash down a stack of syrupy pancakes with three or four cigarettes and five or six cups of black coffee. It’s a lot more romantic in my mind than it sounds, trust me.

2. She can do indie-bleak better than anyone who comes from a place where it snows.

3. She's absolutely gorgeous.

Cat Power’s second album of covers, the aptly entitled Jukebox, comes out on January 22nd of next year, and to celebrate, (the royal) we here at Anesthetic Hymns are posting a smoky little medley of tunes by the Everly Brothers and the Marcels, respectively, bootlegged way back in ’05.

Listen, if you will, to the way she says, “moon” as if it were “moan.” I almost can’t stand it.

Right here, guy:
Dreams/Blue Moon (Live at Le Cigale, Paris 2005)

Ell Es Two

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had a chance to rip a couple of CDs that I’d left back home, and among them was the Matador reissue of Pavement’s 1992 debut Slanted and Enchanted. What I love best about this album is its cohesion as a collection of songs. From the bone-dry delivery on “Summer Babe” through the scatterbrained hi-jinx of “Fame Throwa” to the drunken 6/8 drum pattern on “Our Singer,” the songs hold up all the way through. Even Spiral’s throwaway “Two States” is essential to the mix.

Anyway, one of my favorite songs from this album is “In the Mouth of a Desert.” The song displays the band’s incredible ability to blend really bleak, dissonant sounding guitar with effortless, off-hand pop hooks that you don’t really notice are there until it’s too late and you can’t make it through a single day without singing at least a line or three of Stephen Malkmus’ inimitable lyrics.

Here’s a live version of “Desert” from 1994 that features a cool introduction called “Heckler Spray.”

Yee-uh: Heckler Spray/In the Mouth of a Desert

Caricatures by Dan Hay

Last summer I was lucky enough to basically stumble into a job drawing caricatures of tourists at Sea World Orlando. While I was there I basically sat out under an umbrella drawing passable sketches and sometimes earning a nice healthy commission for myself. On slow days I got to shoot the breeze with some really awesome artists who really know what they're doing and have real gifts for likeness and exaggeration.

I'll post some cool links to their blogs in the coming weeks, but I'd like to start with one of my favorite's. Dan Hay's been doing caricatures for a few years and he's pretty great at it. The above sketch was done by him of someone in the park. You can check out more of his work at his blog:

Blubberlubber

He updates it pretty regularly, so keep checking back.

Circa '62

“Don’t waste your precious breath explaining that you are worthwhile.”

Pavement are the greatest garage band of all time. It's a bold statement to make, and it's probably not true, but I want to make it anyway.

Initially comprised of Steven Malkmus (SM) and his buddy Scott Kannberg (later known as Spiral Stairs) in the very, very late '80s, the band released early EP with titles like Slay Tracks (1933-1969) and Perfect Sound Forever. They were recorded by the basically incompetent and insane Gary Young, who "engineered" and "played drums" on the band's debut album, Slanted and Enchanted. Still, it was this ostensibly unbearable combination of obnoxious slackerdom and erratic hippie nonsense that sired a sound that would inspire a big pile of teenage rawk bands in the next decade-and-a-half.

A word on my decision to use the distinction "garage rock." Pavement is garage rock because it was recorded by suburban kids in a garage. It's about as simple as that, and any other labels, amusing as they may be, are basically irrelevant. Drawing on the scatterbrained, shambolic aesthetic of bands like The Fall and coupling it with the drama of Echo & the Bunnymen, Malkmus wrote the kind of unbelievably catchy songs that bounce around in your head like quarters in a washing machine.

Anyway, this is the first of what will invariably be a series of posts on Pavement, the best garage band ever. Say what you will about their musicianship, this is a band that could really play. You can argue about whether ol' Gary Young was a better drummer than Steve West (he wasn't), or whether Bob Nastanovich is really a necessary part of the band (he is), but at the end of the day, Pavement are just what they set out to be: a bunch of brainy loser-types playing gloriously rudimentary rock for a bunch of other brainy, if utterly useless, loser-types.

Okay, that's an exaggeration to some extent, but really, Pavement is all about exaggeration. It's the heart of garage rock, finding a little bit of humor or grasping for some meaning in the mundane pointlessness of suburban life. It's just a series of attempts, successful or unsuccessful, to make something out of nothing.

Or something like that, anyway.

Now listen here: "Stereo" - Live @ Shepherd's Bush, UK ('97)

Big Ideas

"Housewife's Favourite"


By this point I've probably read twenty reviews of Radiohead's In Rainbows, but if only to prove that I still exist, here's my little review.

Now that I've had a month to listen and re-listen (and re-listen) to the album, it seems to me that Radiohead's "LP7" is the band's most significant accomplishment since Kid A. Thinking back to some of the news stories that popped up on fan sites like Green Plastic Radiohead and AtEase in 2006, I’m pretty grateful that the band ultimately decided to stick with Nigel Godrich as their producer. After all, why dismantle a winning combination? Godrich has helmed some of the best-sounding records of the last decade, including OK Computer, Kid A, Travis’ masterpiece The Man Who, Pavement’s swan song Terror Twilight, and Beck’s gorgeous acoustic album, Sea Change.

I won’t do a track-by-track because it’s been done far too many times in the past four weeks, but I will say that my favorite track is “Jigsaw Falling into Place.” It’s definitely the album’s most accessible track, besides maybe “Bodysnatchers,” and it’s a superb performance bursting with an ineffable and irresistible energy. Like “Bodysnatchers,” “Jigsaw” marks a notable shift in style for the band. Compared with the cold calculation and meticulousness of the songs on 2003’s Hail to the Thief, the tunes on In Rainbows have much looser arrangements that seem to suggest a return to a more performance-driven dynamic. It remains to be seen what kind of form the band will be in during their next tour (which is rumored to begin in May of next year), but if the recent “Thumbs_Down” webcast this past weekend is any indication, I think we can expect a rejuvenated Radiohead who seem to have recaptured a sense of fun and onstage immediacy in the last year or two.

Here’s a cool live version of “Jigsaw Falling into Place” from last year when it still had the working title of “Open Pick.”

GO! Open Pick (Live in Montreal)

Grizzly Bear - Friend EP

That dog is in every picture!


I just went and saw Grizzly Bear for the fourth time tonight at the Society for Ethical Culture near Central Park. Those guys are just incredible musicians. It’s really inspiring to be able to watch such a dynamic, young band like them. They’re the first band I’ve ever really known that is constantly changing the way they approach their material. Pretty much every song gets a different reading in a live setting. Among the most impressive of these new arrangements is the live version of “Little Brother,” which benefits hugely from an added opening section that features singer/guitarist Daniel Rossen belting disconcertingly, “My God, that’s not the way,” and a jarring, juggernaut of a coda not included on the more restrained rendition found on 2006’s Yellow House (It is, however, available on the band's new EP, details follow). Other highlights from the show tonight included a rare, yet confident performance of “Marla,” and a stunning-as-usual “On a Neck, On a Spit.”

The band releases the Friend EP this Tuesday, which includes some new songs including “Alligator,” which features Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth and Amber Coffman on backing vocals. Other new material includes a surging, horn-laden untitled collaboration with Beirut’s Zach Condon tucked away after Rossen’s quiet and creepy version of the traditional folk song “Deep Blue Sea.”

On a side note, Tonight’s show was part of an ongoing series of really interesting performances coming up at both the Society for Ethical Culture and Good-Shepherd Faith Church in the mid-town area. It's called "The Wordless Music Series," and it's hosted by a sheepish (though thoroughly hip) guy named Ronen Givony. Scheduled for next weekend are two performances by Icelandic group Múm, and in mid-January, The Church of St. Paul the Apostle hosts the US premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver. Finally someone has realized that cathedrals are perfect music halls.

Friend EP tracklist:

1. Alligator (Choir Version)
2. He Hit Me
3. Little Brother (Electric)
4. Shift (Alternate Version)
5. Plans (Terrible vs. Nonhorse Sounds Edit)
6. Granny Diner
7. Knife covered by CSS
8. Plans covered by Band of Horses
9. Knife covered by Atlas Sound
10. Deep Blue Sea (Daniel Rossen home recording)

Pre-order Friend EP here:

Insound

Listen to Yellow House for free online here:

grizzly-bear.net

Check out the Wordless Music Series here:

wordlessmusic.org

Oh, Naoko! Murakami's Norwegian Wood

I finished this book a few days ago, and I've been trying to write about it, but I feel like I've only just stopped mourning the fact that I can't live in Haruki Murakami's Japan permanently.

In Norwegian Wood, Murakami spins a frightfully sympathetic and heart-rending coming-of-age tale set against the social tumult of 1960s. In the simplest terms, the novel strikes a perfect balance between unbearable sadness and dry humor that never lapses into the sentimental.

What I liked best about the novel's protagonist, Toru Watanabe, is the vain sincerity he displays in his struggle to find a foothold in a new world of compromise and hypocrisy: a quality that sets him apart from the usual bunch of mixed-up adolescents one tends to come across in the realm of post-modern literature, along with the likes of Holden Caulfield or Esther Greenwood.

To summarize the story briefly, Toru is a young college student from Kobe, putting up with the usual day-to-day jive while living a mostly solitary life in Japan's capital city, all the while suffering intensely (albeit often subconsciously) from the traumatic experience of his best friend Kizuki's suicide at seventeen. Adding to this is his passionate, yet weird and pseudo-vicarious relationship with Kizuki's beautiful, bereaved girlfriend Naoko. Naoko's mental illness further complicates the already messy situation. However, it's when Toru meets the seductively outlandish and temperamental Midori, that the novel really starts to pick up the scent of life in the real world, where our relationships so often seem to be forged in the most unlikely (not to mention unnatural) ways.

Anyway, it was a great read and I highly recommend it. On a side note, the prose can be a little strange at times, but I tend to chalk this up to the fact that it's a non-western text in translation. It's also a little heavy on the music and pop-culture references, but that's just a matter of taste I guess. At least Murakami seems to like good stuff.

Buy it here: Amazon

And here's a great interview with the author from just after Wind-up Bird Chronicle: Salon

"The Oats We Sow" - Gregory and the Hawk

This is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a while, and I mean, beautiful. As I've written previously, about a week ago I was lucky enough to open for Meredith Godreau (AKA Gregory and the Hawk), at a DIY show in Brooklyn, and was so impressed with her performance that I felt compelled to buy her debut album, In Your Dreams.

“The Oats We Sow” was one of the songs she played live, and it sounds even better on the album with the accompaniment of some rippling piano lines and heartbreaking viola. It’s got everything I love in a song. Finger-plucked guitar chords that unravel like ancient ribbons, a great set of lyrics, and a really honest vocal. It's a really evocative track, and it reminds me of being seventeen, back in 2004, looking out the window of the AVE traveling from Madrid to Sevilla and seeing all these absurdly picturesque orchards blurring by. Fantastic.

Go here to buy the album. Other stand-outs include “People Who Raised Me,” the gorgeous “Kill the Turkey” (one of the few things that’s ever made me feel uncomfortable with the omnivorous life), and the aching “The Bolder Thing to Do.”


"The Oats We Sow," live at The Fix

John Cooper Clarke

I've been meaning to post some poetry on here, and Mancunian punk poet John Cooper Clarke came to mind. Living in New York City, one gets the opportunity to observe all kinds of different people, whether it's just passing on the street or overhearing people's cell phone conversations at the local cafe. After a while you kind of start to compartmentalize these characters into little groups, and one 'type' that abounds (in certain areas) are the uber-motivated, 12-steps to success folks who you'll catch spilling out of various yoga joints or slurping up vitamin-enriched protein shakes outside of Crunch. What's fascinating to me about these kind of people is seeing how a certain type of personality can take up a whole culture based around something as seemingly culturally-irrelevant as diet and excercise.

Anyway, getting back to Cooper Clarke, I was introduced to his spoken word via an early 80's rock 'n' roll movie entitled Urgh! A Music War, which I caught on VH1 Classic or something this past Summer, in which he recites a brief, rhythmic jam called "Health Fanatic." He's got a great way with words, but you've really got to watch the performance to get the full effect. Clarke in the eighties resembled Dylan in the sixties, with more pronounced elfin ears, but don't write him off as a latter day clone, the man can rhyme...



"SHADOW BOXING - PUNCH THE WALL
ONE-A-SIDE FOOTBALL... WHAT'S THE SCORE... ONE-ALL

COULD HAVE BEEN A COPPER... TOO SMALL

COULD HAVE BEEN A JOCKEY... TOO TALL

KNEES UP, KNEES UP... HEAD THE BALL

NERVOUS ENERGY MAKES HIM TICK

HE'S A HEALTH FANATIC... HE MAKES YOU SICK"

-Cooper Clarke

Visit: http://www.johncooperclarke.com/ for more info.

Support Underground Shows

Above: Meredith Godreau AKA Gregory and the Hawk

This weekend I had the priveleged of playing a couple of underground-type shows in the City.

On Saturday I began my stint (stumbling more than a little) as a temporary guitarist in Ava Luna, at Rats of NIMH's "Fck CMJ" show in Cooper Park (Williamsburg, Brooklyn). Thankfully, the weather was great and there were some tremendously talented acts, including, but not limited to Fiasco (virtuosic indie metal with shades of Pavement, Trail of Dead, and older Modest Mouse) and Say Hello to Symphony (psychedelic prog rock with a lot of happy synths courtesy of the absurdly talented Vasu Panicker). It was fantastic to play out in the park amidst all the kids playing, old folks sitting on benches, and other passersby on a Saturday afternoon. The gig was free and entirely non-exclusive, basically the exact reverse of the CMJ fest going on in NYC’s established venues, which you can’t really enjoy unless you either a) buy a really expensive weekend pass, b) are a member of the press, or c) are well-connected. Essentially it’s a pretty misguided annual event that really ticks off everyone on the outside. Come to whatever conclusions you will. Personally, I think it sucks.

Today, I played perhaps the coolest gig I’ve ever been privileged to participate in since I started in the often frustrating and always unbalancing, game of playing live music. It was at Propensity, a quaint little venue/home in Brooklyn. I played a support set for Kyle Gilbride (a charming suburb folkie) and Gregory and the Hawk (think Emiliana Torrini, Ramona Cordova, and Isobel Campbell all rolled into one). It was outdoor again, this time in a backyard around sunset, complete with candles, cheap (but still gross) PBR’s, and the friendly sounds of a living neighborhood winding down at the end of a busy weekend.

Incidentally, I was supposed to play another show with KC Quilty and Ava Luna on Saturday night, which never happened because of an upsetting debacle regarding drinking laws. Apparently, the band isn’t even allowed to play certain places if some of the members are underage. It’s really depressing to see the way venues are forced to become completely lifeless holes at the hands of unreasonable laws that have the effect of stripping our live music culture of its once-famous for its vitality. I know it’s such a common complaint, but when are lawmakers going to come to their senses and lower the legal drinking age to eighteen? I’m not a rabid liberal by any stretch, but I cannot understand how you can be considered an adult (i.e. you’re not tried as a minor, you can go to war, you can vote) at eighteen years old, but you can’t drink until you’re twenty-one. It’s got to be understood that legalizing the use of alcohol over eighteen will not have the effect of causing rampant alcohol abuse. It already happens illegally. It will happen no matter what the laws. Better to let young people be full-fledged citizens with all the same rights than patronize an important age group with laws that really don’t make much sense.

Relevant links:

Sleep When Dead NYC a great blog by Joe Ahearn, who books awesome DIY shows in Brooklyn, with frequent posts about awesome, cheap concerts by up-and-coming independent artists.


Gregory and the Hawk’s Official Website Check out her new CD, In Your Dreams.

Also, check out the links for Ava Luna and KcQuilty on the left while you’re at it.

Download "Atom" Here

Since it's available for free officially on BSP's website. Here's "Atom."

British Sea Power - Atom - from the forthcoming album, Do You Like Rock Music? via Rough Trade Records

I promise this is the last post on British Sea Power until the album comes out, haha.

-ST

British Sea Power @ Maxwell's, NJ 10-15-07

I went to see BSP last night at Maxwell’s over in Hoboken. All in all it was a good show, though the band didn’t seem to be in top form and the sound wasn’t great. Blame it on the hype of pieces like this, I guess. In spite of that, I enjoyed myself, as I was lucky enough to be in the front row and even got a pat on the back and a kind word from Yan after I helped him figure out why he wasn’t getting any sound out of his guitar (it wasn’t plugged in).

“Stay there, man,” he intoned in a high, harsh coastal accent, and I obeyed (he was wearing a Nelson-esque naval officer’s greatcoat), very narrowly avoiding getting smashed in the face by his guitar’s machine heads at various points throughout the course of the set, which included an impassioned, whirlwind rendition of the early EP track “Spirit of St. Louis.” Other highlights included the new songs, “Atom,” “Lucifer,” and “Jet Lag Jimmy Jam,” which all had a real punk feel reminiscent of tunes like “Apologies to Insect Life” and “Favours in the Beetroot Fields” from their debut, Decline of British Sea Power.

I managed to snag the beer-drenched and trodden-on set list, which I’ve attempted to transcribe below:

Set List:
1. Apologies to Insect Life
2. Atom
3. Remember Me
4. Please Stand Up
5. Down on the Ground
6. Pelican
7. Spirit of St. Louis
8. A Wooden Horse
9. Fear of Drowning
10. Larsen B
11. Lucifer
12. How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?
13. Carrion
14. Lights Out F.D.S. (?)
15. Lately / Rock in A
16. Jet Lag Jimmy Jam

Opening act: Star Death from Oklahoma.

-ST

British Sea Power's "Atom"

I feel like over the last year or two I've become a lot more picky about the kind of music I buy. Buzz bands come and go and for whatever reason I just can't seem to tell this month's Cold War Kids from last month's Tapes 'n' Tapes. The creation of billions of blogs just like this one all over the world has created an entirely new way of introducing people to new sounds, but while this is all very well, I can't help but be a little overwhelmed by choice sometimes.

Still, every once in a while all the webcrawling pays off and you come across a band like British Sea Power. I learned about these four uber-literate rockers from Brighton, UK on the AtEase (a Radiohead fansite) message board when I was still in high school. The band's 2003 debut, The Decline of British Sea Power is one of the essential recordings of the decade (the aughts?), featuring a range of material from yelping post-punk ("Apologies to Insect Life") to anthemic histori-pop ("Carrion") that's glued together by a rich helping of effervescent guitar squall and warehouse-rave drumming culminating in a collosal 13-minute requiem for a by-gone era called "Lately."

In 2005 the band released Open Season, which pruned back the textures of the debut, but compensated by delivering up a perfect set of guitar pop in the tradition of bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and The Sound. Some of the standout tracks included "It Ended on an Oily Stage" (one of the best opening tracks I've heard in some time, with lyrics like "All across the eastern board / Languages were being lost / You look so elegantly bored now / Totally at ease with it all") and the single "Please Stand Up," which features a chorus hook that could make Bono weep.

As this year comes to a close, the band has released an online EP (which I believe comes out on CD in stores this November) entitled Krankenhaus?. It features the driving "Atom," which hearkens back to some of their earlier songs. You can download the song for free on British Sea Power's website, linked here.

I'm going to see the band play at Maxwell's in Hoboken tomorrow night, and I'm superexcited. Will be sure to report.

Tracklist for Krankenhaus? EP
1. Atom (4:40)
2. Down on the Ground (4:31)
3. Straight Down the Line (4:06)
4. Hearing Aid (1:56)
5. The Pelican (9:18)

10 Radiohead Songs that make everything all right with the world.

10. There There – Hail to the Thief
“There There” was the first song I ever saw Radiohead play live. It was at the dreary 2003 Field Day Music Festival in East Rutherford, NJ (Giants Stadium) that I got to see my favorite band for the first time and it was utter euphoria from start to finish. I remember being in awe of both Jonny and Ed bashing away on tom-toms as if they were being possessed by voodoo spirits. On record, the song is fantastic too, with it’s strange seventh chords and its references to the sirens and walking in pitch dark. The highlight comes at the end with the coda section, with Thom and Ed wailing, “We are accidents waiting to happen” above the crooked-tooth chomping din of Jonny’s jagged lead guitar.

9. Idioteque – Kid A
First of all, Idioteque is so great because it essentially invented (for me, and I know a lot of other people too) the crazy spasm dance move. Just watch any live footage of Radiohead performing this and you’ll witness Thom doing his headless chicken (reference!)/techno raver rain dance. Speaking as someone who cannot dance very well at all, I can’t be more thankful to him for creating a borderline acceptable dance for people who have absolutely no talent for it. As far as the song goes, just listen for yourself. It’s all jittery computer blips and kaoss-padded vox bouncing viciously over a bed of super funky synth drums and an idiotic (ahem) keyboard part.

8. Fake Plastic Trees – The Bends
The most moving ballad of the mid-90s. Thom turns in perhaps his most evocative performance on acoustic guitar and vocals, and the band ride in on a landslide on the third verse. Another great usage of an understated refrain too. Everything about this song is perfect, from the beautifully dramatic strings, to the crashing vainglory (ed: all glory is vain) of the distorted guitars, right on up to the impossibly high falsetto notes of the melody. This song also takes me back to my childhood in Hong Kong for some reason.

7. Karma Police – OK Computer
It sounds a little like Sexy Sadie, sure, but I didn’t know that when I first heard this song. I do know that it’s brilliantly understated chorus is one of the coolest musical tricks ever. I’m pretty sure the song made it onto one of those Now That’s What I Call Music comps, which is pretty absurd, and just goes to show how Radiohead seem to miraculously be able to appeal to just about everybody (except my Dad). What I really love about this song though is the kind of sinister subject of this guy sort of getting second thoughts about this uber-totalitarian society he lives in and then getting lobotomized right at the end during the coda. The best moment of the song is when the robo-phantom siren choir comes in right around 3:15, only to be drowned out by a horrendous maelstrom of drone-y feedback perpetrated by Ed (I believe).

6. You and Whose Army? – Amnesiac
Another of my all-time favorite vocal takes. On this track, Thom sounds like he’s either a) got a bad head cold or b) just got the snot beaten out of him and is lying in a dirty gutter in the middle of some random high street out of Conan Doyle. It also appeals to me as a musician, since it’s got a lot of these cool jazz chords, which are pretty dazzling coming outta Jonny’s Fender Starcaster semi-hollow guitar. The rousing coda at the end is one of those spine-tinglers for me. “We ride tonight!” I always get this image of maybe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or something.

5. Lurgee – Pablo Honey
It’s kind of a less remembered song, being from Radiohead’s first and, admittedly, flawed album Pablo Honey, but Lurgee is just one of those songs that I just got really attached to. Like so many Radiohead songs, its bittersweet and could be interpreted as a pretty sad song, but I just find it really inspiring and I used to listen to it before I had to do anything important as a kind of embarrassing fan-boy ritual. I have no regrets! Also, I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced Luhr – Gee (like a hard ‘g’ sound) and not Luhr-jee (as in jellyfish).

4. Cuttooth – Knives Out CD Single
Once I got really obsessed with Radiohead during freshman and sophomore year of high school I started buying all their singles and paying exorbitant amounts of money for Japanese imports, but the first B-side I ever heard was “Cuttooth.” It’s a piano-pounding little number with a snarling Thom vocal that mostly stays in the baritone register, with the occasional lilting howl occasionally thrown in just to make things too good to bear. I remember trying to figure out the lyrics and just loving the line that (I think) goes “I won’t lead your wallpaper life, I’m running away to the Foreign Legion.” I must’ve listened to the CD single it’s on dozens and dozens of times and it never gets old. It works really well as a follow-up track to “Knives Out” as well, and I often think that Amnesiac would’ve been better if some of the fantastic era B-Sides had been included.

3. Let Down – OK Computer
This song blows me away. Featuring guitars in weird time signatures I don’t understand, visceral imagery like “shell smashed, juices flowing, wings twitch” (disgusting!), and perhaps the most uplifting harmony line I’ve ever heard (at about 4:18 thru), this song dips you in a vat of liquid nitrogen, pulls you out again, and then smashes you to smithereens with a hammer swung in part by every person you’ve ever thought you’ve been in love with ever. It really does.

2. Climbing Up the Walls – OK Computer
The scariest rock song ever written. This song is anchored by a terrific growling bass synth line played by Colin, but it’s the vocal take that really thrills me. Thom Yorke starts out singing in this kind of slurry falsetto that makes him sound like he’s this rabid lunatic escaped from an asylum. Then it transitions to a more frantic delivery in the second verse and the more shrill notes start distorting and then the song really takes off. I just get this vision of scraping metal and hissing steam as it reaches its noisy climax and then it suddenly ends real violently with this horrific shriek. Unbeatable. What’s more, it’s followed immediately by No Surprises in the running order of OK Computer, so you feel like you’ve just witnessed some traumatic event and now you’re in therapy and someone’s playing Pet Sounds on the hi-fi.

1. Optimistic – Kid A
Optimistic was the first song I ever heard by Radiohead. I remember around 2001 I was in the eighth grade and still had a CD wallet full of M.O.R. excrement like Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other, and others I would name if they didn’t cause me to projectile vomit. It was also around this time that I kept seeing the Kid A blips (maybe it was 2000 then?) and I was really fascinated by the little minotaur cartoons. Then I saw the video for Optimistic, where the band was shown playing the song live in Dublin. I remember Thom introduced the song saying “This song is for Jubilee 2000” and I remember also not knowing what that meant.” What followed was five minutes and sixteen seconds of mind-invading psychedelic pop ecstasy that changed my entire life. Love that watery organ in the background, but it’s the wordless falsetto bits at the beginning and the end that just send me to another planet.

In Rainbows Oct. 10th / Back from the Dead

Oh no, Pop is dead! Long live Pop!

Greetings, beloved Friends and Enemies!

Just to let you know, my all-time favorite band, Little Thommy Yorke & The Fabulous Radioheads are releasing their (count 'em!)seventh album, entitled "In Rainbows" on Wednesday, October 10th, and the best part is, they're selling it themselves! Yes, that means no arms-dealin,' band killin,' payola dishin,' (don't quote me), and all-around jive-mongerin' record companies or a&r or anything. Just click here for more details.

Anyhow, as far as this writer currently understands, the album will be offered as a download on their website on October 10th and basically, you pay as much as you feel you oughta give, just as if you were visiting the Museum of Natural History or something. Needless to say, this is a revolutionary way of marketing music that I have only seen attempted before by the incredible Harvey Danger on their album Little by Little, (http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/) which was also offered for free when it was released back in '05. The difference this time is that Radiohead is a huge band and this is a really big deal considering the current state of the music industry. I guarantee this will have a widespread effect on the music community and I expect many albums will be released this way over the next year.

With this exciting news comes the rebirth of my blog, Anesthetic Hymns, which initially started as a writing project that I abandoned. From now on, this blog will be a regularly updated channel for updates on my projects and those of my close friends and family. In addition to this, I'll be posting the occasional music review, news article, or just a random tirade about something.

On the right you'll see a couple of links to my music projects, and I hope soon to have a separate blog with written shorts for you to have a look through.

Regards,

ST