Archive for August, 2007



"That year I had a policy where I would read any book that anyone recommended to me."

by michelle

I finally got the new Okkervil River, The Stage Names. It’s everything they do sublimely: tortured confessions, despair verging on exuberance, evocative lyrics. It’s even got a sorta cover of one of my favorite Beach Boys songs, “Sloop John B.”

Okkervil River – Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
Okkervil River – John Allyn Smith Sails. Listen to the end to hear the Beach Boys riff.

As usual when I become besotted with a new album, I started my internet sleuthing, which is how I came across their intelligent Pitchfork interview. I learned they took their name from a Russian short story by Tatyana Tolstaya. Shameful that I didn’t know that, since I’m a sucker for well-considered literary references.

For more music & literature crossover, Largehearted Boy has a great series he calls “Book Notes,” where he asks authors to give an annotated list of the music that is somehow related to their book. I think this is one of my favorite ways to get recommendations for new music: people I admire for one thing or another telling me what music they love.


Hip hop tourism: LDN – Chicago – Tokyo – Beijing

by ian

Common is one of my favourite artists of all time. I remember being 17, hearing that last line to I Used to Love H.E.R. and being so hungry to go to America and hear hip hop up close.

I Used to Love H.E.R. (MP3)

I finally tracked down a copy of Resurrection the other side of the world in a Shibuya record store 5 years later. Resurrection, Like Water for Chocolate and Be are all amazing albums. For me, Common is one of those artists who waits a year or two between records, gets you sadly reminiscing about his glory days and then brap! Smacks you with a sick new tune:

I’ve reloaded this one at least 10 times since Michelle forwarded me the Stereogum post an hour ago.

Here’s my favourite Common track. Classic Primo beat:
The 6th Sense (MP3)

I’ve seen Common play 3 times, most memorably in Beijing. My mate DJ Wordy (China DMC represent) snuck me into the performers area so i got to meet him in person. As Kweli said on the Black Star liner notes, he’s a very gracious guy. I’d just come from playing downtown and he was kind enough to sign a few records and have a chat. Here’s Wordy cutting it up, I love how percussive his scratching is:

Like many of my mates back in the UK, Wordy grew up spinning US hip hop, a genre we were all trying to figure out at the same time as falling in love with it. For him growing up in China it was much harder — especially to get hold of vinyl. The first night we played together he dropped some incredible old UK hip hop tracks into his set and for the first time I was totally stunned by how much the internet had helped music to cross borders.

I rate Lily Allen on Drivin Me Wild too. Me and my mate Mustill hit her first ever show in Notting Hill last spring. It wasn’t a bad performance: tentative, a little more Little Things than Nan You’re a Windowshopper. She looks good in that spacesuit.

If you’ve ever been a hip hop tourist Patrick Neate’s book Where You’re At is an interesting read. White boy from the UK tries to connect the dots between hip hop in Rio, Jo’burg, Capetown, Tokyo and NYC. How many of us are there?

I’m not a hip hop tourist any more. But I am a bass tourist. More on that soon.


Not Your Mamma’s ABBA.

by michelle

It seems I’ve succumbed to the marketing machinery that is Swedish music. I remember reading a New York Times article last year about musicians getting government subsidies and support in an effort to market the country, raise its visibility, and spread its cultural exports. Sweden is one of these countries. They’ve got a music industry consortium devoted to exporting Swedish Music.

So it’s no accident that all these great bands are coming out of Sweden right now. All the better for me! And I’m not the only one. Swedes Please is a blog devoted to the country, which Ian found. I government guess the tactic worked because next month I’m going to Stockholm! Woohoo!

So, in honor of my coming sojourn, here’s a handful of my favorites, including a cover, in true Songkick fashion. There are a kabillion more where these came from.

Jens Lekman – Black Cab
Peter Bjorn & John – Let’s Call It Off (no I did not post the whistling song)
Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It
Concretes – You Can’t Hurry Love
The Knife – Heartbeats
Jose Gonzalez – Heartbeats (cover)


Soul on Stage

by michelle

Last night I went to see the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Six members of this crazy marching band with hip-hop spirit are all sons of Sun Ra Arkestra trumpeter Kelan Phil Cochran. The seventh is the drummer.

I know nothing about jazz, barely more about hip-hop, but the exuberance and charm of the band reeled me in. The energy in the room was unstoppable! When’s the last time you saw a tuba player live? Thanks to Pearl and Knox for a great night.

Here’s a video of a past performance (with the one and only Mos Def). The song’s called “Baliky Bone” and it was my favorite of the night.

Their MySpace.
Their blog.


Found Americana

by michelle

I run into a certain type of small band from time to time. They’ve been around for ages, but for some reason or another they’ve never crossed my radar. Not subject to the blog storm or hype fury, they quietly do their thing until I read about them by chance. And when I hear their music, it’s a wonder to me that I’ve never heard of them before. It might be my own vain attempt to put form upon my accidents, but the bands that fall under this rubric all seem to have a similar sound. Not flashy and always very American: a little bit country, with a sort of plain forlornness in their storytelling.

Anyway, the occasion of this post is a band I just discovered on the latest Aquarium Drunkard podcast. They’re Richmond Fontaine, a band that’s been around since the mid-nineties in Oregon.

Richmond Fontaine – “Moving Back Home #2″ from Thirteen Cities

The musician that immediately came to mind when I heard Richmond Fontaine is Richard Buckner, another I discovered without any hype paving the way. The Paste magazine podcast played him about a year ago. Hope you can hear what I mean.

Richard Buckner – “Town” from Meadow

Last but not least, another band that falls in this category. But in Songkick style, I’ll give you a cover they did of a great fucking song.

Calexico – “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (cover)


Indie films and indie rock

by michelle

Last week I picked up Ola Podrida’s self-titled album at my trusty neighborhood record store, Etherea. Yes folks, I still buy CDs. When I first read about Ola Podrida, which is David Wingo’s outfit, the reverse career direction is what first made me go seek it out. David Wingo is the film scorer for David Gordon Green’s movies. I’m a huge fan of All the Real Girls and its soundtrack was memorable to me because it plays Mogwai in an absolutely pivotal scene that does Mogwai’s expansive sound complete justice. I can still remember watching it in my tiny twin-sized bed in an upstairs garret in Cambridge, UK and falling in love with Zooey Deschanel. Anyway, David Wingo began the band as a side project, but his demo fell into the right hands and his album was signed. Here’s one of my favorites. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have a pathological soft spot for this this kind of quiet, acoustic guitar-ridden folk rock. You can read an interview with him at Lunapark6.

Ola Podrida – “Run Off the Road” from Ola Podrida

In another bit of nerdy indie rock trivia, did you know Broken Social Scene provided tracks from their albums for the great, great film Half Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling? I loved Half Nelson; the subtlety of his acting was simply beyond words, and of course I felt smug when I recognized the songs. Ha.

Broken Social Scene – “Stars and Sons” from You Forgot it in People

But wait! I can go one more! Emily Haines, oft-member of the sprawling mega-indie-collective Broken Social Scene, and her band Metric had a part in the Oliver Assayas movie, Clean, starring my #1 girl crush Maggie Cheung.

Metric – “Empty” from Live It Out

Of course, there’s also the time my girl crush #2 Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth had a cameo in Gus Van Sant’s utterly moving Last Days. I suppose you can expect as much, given a film that’s about Kurt Cobain, but I was still pleasantly surprised. I hear the star, Michael Pitt has a band. He sure was convincing in the film’s cathartic height, playing that battered guitar and singing his heart out after hours of silence. Anyway, if you don’t download anything else from this post, download the following. It is titanic.

Sonic Youth – “Teen Age Riot” from Daydream Nation.

Anyone got any more indie rock/indie movie trivia for me?


The youth of New York

by michelle

On Tuesday I stopped by Mercury Lounge to see Lissy Trullie & the Fibs open for The Virgins. It’s always such a special pleasure to see bands I’m unfamiliar with and be bowled over by the experience. It almost never happens, maybe because I’m too lazy to take chances on unheard of acts, maybe because I have bad luck with unknown bands and only happen to catch bad ones, but Tuesday was a glorious evening. Mercury Lounge fully demonstrated why it’s one of the best places to hear really small acts. Somehow the proportion between the stage and where the audience stands always makes for a really intimate, laid-back evening. You feel like you’re all part of the same experience. Downtown New York was in full effect, but somehow it was the best of that scene: the young and creative out enjoying their friends play some damned good music on a warm New York City summer evening. Did I spot Agness Deyn there? Maybe you can tell me. I definitely saw Cynthia Rowley and Bill Powers there. I’m such a celebrity junkie.

Lissy is irresistible in an androgynous Patti Smith-meets-Edie Sedgwick kind of way, and her low, boyish voice is honest and direct. She’s a born star, you can see it in the way she sings. There is no affectation. Her band is absolutely charming too. It’s so nice to see girls on stage! I can’t find mp3s anywhere, so their MySpace will unfortunately have to do. I’m looking forward to seeing them grow.

After the show, during my compulsive cyberstalking, I found that The Virgins get compared to the Strokes all the time, and it’s precisely the comparison that sprung to mind when I watched them. Maybe a sort of glam Strokes. They’re getting a lot of buzz, what with the power of the mighty aNYthing behind them. But they deserve it. They totally pull off the gangly young boy singing about being young thing with total conviction.

The Virgins – Rich Girls, but check out the other songs on their MySpace.

Thanks for a great evening, Julia.


LCD Soundsystem

by michelle

It’s rare for a piece of music criticism actually to strike a chord with me–make me return to the song and listen to it again with new ears. Perhaps it’s Elvis Costello’s lament, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” or perhaps it’s because music is so personal that it’s rare for another human being to appreciate it in precisely the same way. But Hua Hsu’s Slate article about LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” is so beautifully written and emotionally sensitive, I had to go back to the track. Here it is. If you’ve ever walked home as the sun came up, got a little dirty just to see what it’s like, wondered where the time went, this song is for you.

LCD Soundsytem – “All My Friends” from Sound of Silver

And in true Songkick style, here is the cover mentioned in Hua’s article. (We’re a fan of covers, if you didn’t already know.)

John Cale – “All My Friends” (LCD Soundsystem cover)

I heard he’s going on tour with Arcade Fire. Can you imagine?