Barlowgirl - Another Journal Entry

Sure, I have an open mind. I’m willing to give something a listen even if it’s considered Christian rock. I mean, there was some really enjoyable God-loving emo coming out for a while, and there was Joy Electric. Loved that. So I gave this a listen. The first track surprised me. “Grey is my favorite color” is not the predictable Jesus message, in my limited, doomed-to-hell-if-it’s-like-they-say experience. Let Go is uplifting and hopeful. Take Me Away… Is that about the Rapture? I hate the Rapture. yeah, I listened to most of it. Had enough. Musically, it’s just not that exciting to me. And in the end, that’s what this site is about.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Bat For Lashes - Fur and Gold

Wow. You had me at hello. This deliciously dark release evokes everyone I love, from Bjork to Denali to Siouxsie. My favorite tracks are Trophy, a reminder of the best goth of the 80s, and Sarah, which is just plain twisted. I sincerely hope to see future releases by this artist. I also like Sad Eyes, and What’s a Girl to Do? Dark, subdued, 80s-influenced, smart, and modern.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Portugal. The man - Church Mouth

I had trouble putting this somewhere. Maybe vocally kind of a far less frenetic Mars Volta. Musically raw and rocking, not sounding like anything else I’ve heard. Starts with loud stuff then rolls into some slower, quieter tracks that don’t take any nuance out of their schtick. I like it. If you like the harder stuff you might too.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Hanson - The Walk

I’m listening to this for you, the reading public. Some of you are too young to remember Mmm-Bop. T-Shirt Hell is not. They sell a shirt that simply states, “I fucked the girl in Hanson.” For you young folks, Hanson is three brothers. The joke is about how girly and precious they were during their first incarnation. Nothing personal, Hanson, it had more to do with puberty than with you.

Anyhow I still don’t like them. Sure, they’ve matured. So what? Give them ten or twenty years, some unrequited love, the death of a loved one and a stint in rehab, and maybe they’ll put out something I can relate to. Again, nothing personal. I’m sure you’re nice guys and all.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Beta Band - The Three EPs

Like most of you, I’m guessing, my exposure to The Beta Band began in High Fidelity when Rob declared, “Watch me sell five copies of the new Beta Band EP” and proceeded to play “Dry The Rain.” The second half of that song is inspired pop gold. It does what pop music is supposed to do. It simply makes you feel good. The goal of this review is to find out if the rest of Three EPs lives up to that standard. “I Know” is a backbeat-heavy lo-fi rocker with understated, nearly whispered vocals. “B+A” is a sweet driving instrumental, jamming out in its second half until finally throwing some drowned out vocals in during the last minute (of over six). “Dog’s Got a Bone” continues in the vein of startting with lo-fi garage and degenerating into ecstatic choruses. The trend continues with a couple of very long jams until “Dr. Baker,” a short piece of insanity. Overall it’s mostly sleepy and forgettable but it beats the old familiar.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts

This is not their most recent release by far, but if you grok the theme of this site, you’ll understand why I reviewed this one instead of, say, Picaresque or The Tain or The Crane Wife. It has that quality that draws me in. That “bleak mystique,” to borrow a phrase from my distant past. I challenge you to listen straight through in headphones and not be moved. This may be the most perfect album by the most perfect band. The instrumentation, sometimes delightfully accented with accordian and pedal steel, all combine with the most perfect vocal expression of longing I have ever heard. His tonal qualities and unique inflection, just… Wow. My personal melting points are “Leslie Anne Levine,” “Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect,” “A Cautionary Song,” “Odalisque,” “Cocoon,” “Grace Cathedral Hill,” and the closing masterpiece, “California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade.” I just realized there are 10 tracks on the album and seven are my favorites. What does that say?

“I’ve heard of ghosts - good ghosts who wander the battlefields at night, guiding soldiers out of danger. You can see them almost anywhere, always warning of stray bullets and lurking enemies. If I were such a ghost … I would stay so close to you, you could feel my breath on your cheek.” - From the bridge of California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People

I don’t know how to describe this album. The first song that ‘hit’ me was “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” I can’t even explain why. It’s hypnotic, and longing, and perhaps reminds me of that age myself. Who can argue with lines like “park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me”? On the whole this album has some stellar mellow moments, specifically in “Looks Just Like the Sun,” “I’m Still Your Fag” and “Pitter Patter Goes My Heart, a soft, string-soaked reprise of Anthems. There are some discordant distortion-based beauties here as well. Then there’s Lover’s Spit. “all these people drinking lover’s spit, they sit around and clean their face with it”… I’ll leave it to your interpretation.

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

The Postal Service - Give Up

You’ve heard some of this even if you don’t recognize the title. It’s a blissful marriage of electropop and indie, a brilliant dichotomy, at times, between the medium, light, upbeat dance-pop and the message, sharp realism, sad acceptance rather than despair. A recognition of one’s own duende, so to speak. There is hope in here as well. “Natural Anthem” approaches that hope, and also rocks harder than the rest of the album. “Nothing Better” is a modernized take on the man/woman dialogue song. Think “Don’t You Want Me” or even farther back, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” even though it’s less on target. “Recycled Air” is a delicious meditation on flying, with some hidden subtext that my body understands but my mind still doesn’t. Is he flying TO something or away from it? He lightens up a bit with “Sleeping In,” following that with probably the best-known track, “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” The next track is probably the darkest. “This Place is a Prison.” Next is “We Will Become Silhouettes,” which I swear could have been written by Vonnegut, our laughing prophet of doom, and “Brand New Colony.”

Author: listener | Category: Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007

Rob Gordon on Pop Music

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Rob Gordon (John Cusack) in High Fidelity

Author: listener | Category: Notes | Comments(0) July 2007

Dayna Kurtz

My exposure to Dayna Kurtz was one of those delightful, miraculous, unscripted and unexpected results of chance. My wife had heard that Richie Havens was playing at a lovely little venue in Harrisonburg, Virginia where her (that is, my wife’s) family lives, so we scooped up tickets immediately and brought friends. This is because nobody should die without having seen Richie Havens live. We’d seen him a couple times before, and you always leave his show positive and inspired. It turned out that he had Dayna opening for him during that tour. I’ll be frank, Dayna blew me away that night. Her deep, smoky voice, her emotionally-charged lyrics, and her cathartic, passionate delivery combine to get inside your head, and once you hear it, especially if you see her performing live, you’ll wonder why you haven’t heard of her before. Dayna’s website is http://www.daynakurtz.com and she’s also on MySpace.

Otherwise Luscious Life was released in 1997, went out of print, and then was reissued in 2002. This is a live album which contains some of the same songs as Postcards, in sparse arrangements, just Dayna and her guitar and voice. I really like this version of Miss Liberty. Hell, I really like it all. Something about taking away the instrumentation and production brings her soul to the surface.

Postcards from Downtown is from 2002. Standouts include Miss Liberty (”Go plant your flags and make your promise to my promised land, and we’ll make love to the new frontier in the hot beach sand, you’ll hold me like a drowning man, you’ll come at me too human and then drag me down again…”), Postcards from Downtown (”Red light, green light, one two three, have you come to conquer me?”), Love Gets In The Way (”So come on and make a mess of me, I won’t walk away”), and Somebody Leave a Light On (with Richie Havens).

Beautiful Yesterday was released in 2004. I bought it because I saw her again at Iota in Arlington, Virginia. I thought, well, she blew me away the first time, I expect a great show, but how could it possibly match that first one? Boy was I wrong. She did the amazing cover of Prince’s somewhat obscure “Joy in Repetition” heard on this album. I was about fifteen feet from her, and I experienced an amplification of the original feeling. Prince is a god. This might be the sexiest song ever written, and boy, she does it justice! It probably helped that I had never heard the original. I went back later and listened to the original, and I have to confess, I like Dayna’s version better. There’s also a nice version of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” here.

Another Black Feather is her most recent release, from 2006. The standout cuts here are Venezuela, a delicious romantic portrait of a love that could never be, and Nola, a love song about New Orleans. This release is lyrically mature, and leaves you longing for the next one. It’s obvious that Dayna has a lot of beautiful life experiences to draw on as she paints these rich, aural portraits for you. My personal recommendation is that you pick up ALL of these releases, and go see her live. She might even still be doing house concerts. If you’re the house concert kind, grab her up when she’s in your region, and tell all your music-lover friends. Nobody will leave disappointed.

Author: listener | Category: Folk, Indie, Music Reviews | Comments(0) July 2007