Since Calexico recently unveiled “Two Silver Trees,” a track from their upcoming LP, we thought we’d post this 2003 show.
Soundboard
Continue reading ‘Hosted Live Download: Calexico; March 13, 2003′
Man Man Videos on Blogotheque - We really, really hate those Man Man jerks–for being so damn good.
Bon Iver DayTrotter Sessions (MP3s) - “Enough has been made out of the cool side of the pillow.”
New Calexico MP3: “Two Silver Trees” - “The song ‘Two Silver Trees’ is fairly indicative of what’s to come from Calexico throughout Carried to Dust, their new full-length album that features appearances by Sam Beam, Douglas McCombs, and Pieta Brown.
Saturday’s “Hipsters Revisited” at Bar Pink Elephant was a ‘60s themed event that promised music of the garage, psychedelic, and freakbeat varieties, all while making assurances that there would be “no weird shit or flutes”. They made good on these promises with some trippy mood-lighting and an assortment of DJs spinning appropriately obscure tracks from the period, but the real draw was a live performance by local retro-rock band The Loons.
Long blond hair hanging in his face, Loons lead singer Mike Stax commanded the stage with all the raw power of an anachronistic Iggy Pop as the band blazed through a set that recalled garage acts Love, The Sonics, and The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. After grabbing everyone’s attention with “Red Dissolving Rays”, Stax joked that, in honor of Gay Pride week, he was dedicating the song “My Time” to Texas, “the gayest state of all”.
Continue reading ‘Review: The Loons; July 19, 2008 at Bar Pink Elephant; San Diego’
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Lakewater/Parachutes - Califone
River Blues Pt.2 - Lowell Fulson
Jockey Full Of Bourbon - Tom Waits
Drops In The River (Live) - Fleet Foxes
Keep Your Water - School Of Language
Filthy Water - Fruit Bats
River Guard (Live) - Smog
Like the River - Sun Kil Moon
Black Saltwater - Peter and the Wolf
Expecting Rain - The Dreadful Yawns
Muddy Hymnal - Iron & Wine
Moses Smote The Water - John Lee Hooker
River Man - Nick Drake
The River Rise - Mark Lanegan
Grey Ice Water - Modest Mouse
This River Deep - The Album Leaf
2008, Columbia Records
The trumpets heralding the release of Black Kids’ debut began blowing a year ago, when the Jacksonville band made their demo EP, Wizard Of Ahhhs, available for free download.
The EP was a rollicking good time - the perfect soundtrack to every out-of-hand house party or ill-advised hookup you’re looking forward to regretting - and they instantly became one of indie rock’s greatest Internet success stories, but it remained to be seen whether Black Kids could maintain their danceable intensity for more than four songs at a time. How well the band’s scrappy energy would be conveyed in a professional recording was also unknown, so it is under no shortage of pressure that Partie Traumatic arrives, the rare case of a debut album trying to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump.
“I’m like a fucking race horse.”
–Tom Waits, Jacksonville
Tom Waits’ tours are fairly infrequent, so when I heard he was headed to Jacksonville two hours away from my house, I splurged. Jacksonville? Why Jacksonville? It’s not really the red dirt, bluesy part of the south Waits wanted to see. Jacksonville is South Beach’s conservative opposite, militarized vanilla beach Florida, which tolerates the small, local counterculture because it’s essentially irrelevant. Jacksonville is by some definitions lovely, but it’s not, well, cool. When, early in the concert, Waits mused about why he’d never been to this attractive city beside a sparkling river and the Atlantic Ocean, he said his friends had always told him, “You’re not old enough.” I don’t know whether he’s finally old enough now or if the prospect of hauling the tour bus and three semis ten hours south and back north was too much for his pocketbook or his carbon footprint, but he arrived with a copious supply of merchandise–including vinyls, a chapbook in which he interviews himself, and t-shirts with pictures of oil stains he thought were cool–as well as a sweet stage set that could evoke alley-cat twilight austerity, late-night honkytonk, or red-devil cartoon hell.
Continue reading ‘Review: Tom Waits; July 1, 2008; Jacksonville, FL’
The Hideout is a great place to see a show. I arrived about 7:30, just as a major storm was moving into the Chicago. Luckily, the Hideout is in an industrial part of the city and there were some good spaces right outside, which I found to be a good sign of things to come.
Continue reading ‘Review: Red Red Meat; July 10, 2008; Hideout, Chicago’
2008, Exit Stencil
Cleveland’s The Dreadful Yawns are back.
Take Shape, The Dreadful Yawns’ second album, has been described as more psychedelic than their first release; this might be a worry if the Dreadful Yawns hadn’t awed us last time.
They’ve always have a retro sound, and it’s sometimes more prevalent this time ’round, but it’s largely a relaxing affair. The album’s first track, “Like Song,” starts out as a stripped and countrified Jim O’Rourke rhyme and ends with full-on Loose Fur loveliness–the kind of thing that the Yawns do best. The next song, “The Queen and the Jokester” is a Kinks-style stomp.
2008, Thrill Jockey
Terrible Two by Thank You grabs the listener–but not gently: by the shirt collar.
At five songs and a cumulative 35 minutes, Terrible Two is a mishmash of noise, intense drumming, strange interludes, and howling vocals. It’s a prickly kind of record that is at times almost religious (title track) but rarely harmonious (any given track).
