Bon Iver - For Emma

Death is sitting, smoking on the corner. The street is his ash tray
and the city is his bedside lamp, only he can never completely turn
the electricity off. Lights flicker like a seizure.

Death sings under his breath in a voice indistinct
from the passing of time, in a whishing sound. Every strum
of someone else’s guitar is a day and every time a trumpet plays, a century.

Death believes in eventuality, lulls each living thing
into an eternal dream. He leaves: the smell of cigarette butts
on his breath, a soft puff of smoke in the air.

(Bon Iver, otherwise known as Justin Vernon, released For Emma, Forever Ago in the U.S. this past February. He'll be playing at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival)

Bon Iver - Skinny Love

Buy For Emma, Forever Ago from JagJaguwar
Bon Iver's website/myspace

Labels: bon iver, song piece

The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses [highly rec'd!]
Buy Toothpaste Kisses EP (released Oct. 22) from Sister Ray

I am addicted to lies, smiling sweetly back across the table, catching your eye. It could be worse; at least I don't do it with words. November came and made me cold, raw skinned and forlorn, but I'm keeping it quiet, hoping you'll see through me and unfog the glass in my window with a swipe of your hand. I live in fear of the light falling out of your eyes, but I can't tell you that.

One great thing about this song: the whistling. And by the way - most of the time, the Maccabees sound like a love-struck British pop punk band.

The Maccabees - About Your Dress
Buy Colour It In from Amazon.com
The Maccabees' Website/Myspace

Labels: artist profile, maccabees, song piece

The Alarmists - Light A Smoke [highly rec'd!]

Let's run down dark alleys holding hands, through the smell that lingers around restaurant kitchen doors, through the steam arising from the sewers. The night is ours, we're ignorant and unafraid.

Tomorrow morning the daylight will return to these streets, the wet asphalt will sparkle with rain to replace the winking stars. We'll be free of this city, riding in cars, on airplanes and trains. We'll have escaped, and the smoke will trail behind us like a cloak.

...And we'll celebrate with power chords. Fans of Bloc Party, watch out.

The Alarmists - Hired Gun
Buy the Ghost and the Hired Gun at Amazon.com (also iTunes)
The Alarmists' Website/Myspace

Labels: artist profile, song piece, the alarmists

Thank you, Ryan Adams. I can't count the nights that I've been comforted by the rough edges in your voice, by the terseness of your words. You turned 33 two weeks ago, so this is my way of saying happy birthday.

Ryan Adams - Wish You Were Here

Yes, Rock N Roll was released in 2003, and yes, I've been listening to this song on repeat for the past two weeks. Some of you who have been with me longer will know that I think you can listen to a song time and time again and never really hear it, that sometimes you have to wake up to a piece of music. For me, it's always unexpected.

There's a certain tension between knowing exactly what you dislike about someone, hating what their flaws do to them, but realizing that the whole package is something you'd ache for if you didn't have it. "Wish you were here" plays on this notion, beginning with a vindictive tone of "Cotton candy and a rotten mouth / You know you're so fucked up" and sliding unexpectedly into "You know I couldn't help but have it for you." The ending is perfect in much the same way:

And if I could have my way
We'd take some drugs
And we'd...smile.

The word smile becomes a declaration, a biting rebellion against uncertainty. It's what I'm planning on doing while things remain unresolved.

Ryan Adams - Nobody Girl

There's chill that comes each November and creeps into your bones; it's not the cold. It's the loneliness: of the bare trees and the wind blowing at your skin in through your clothes, exposing the weakness in your coat of winter armor. No matter how much time you spend drinking steaming liquids at kitchen tables and in cafes, the chill will be waiting for you when you step out the door. Whether you share someone else's warmth or sleep on your own, there's a certain implicit denial: nothing can protect you from tomorrow.

Well, the night makes moves
And it shatters like broken glass
Better play it cool... better let it pass
Have you been screening your smokes?
And whispers in an all night bar
Better off as the fool
Than the owner of that kind of heart
They don't know you anyway
They don't know you and they don't watch you walk away

What makes "Nobody Girl" perfect is a small twist of logic: Yes, you're fragile. You'll be hurt, you'll be lonely, but it's okay: no one ever knew you anyway.
Sometimes, it's heart-breakingly comforting.

Ryan Adams - Halloweenhead
Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up

Ryan Adams' Website/Myspace

Labels: Ryan Adams, song piece

I reach over to deal with an unruly eyelash. Oh shit. Out falls my contact. I can sense it more than see it, the vision in my right eye blurred.

The song begins warmly, an invitation to sit in the corner and rest your tired feet, close your blinking eyes. Justin Jones' voice never tells you what to think, but by the end you'll know how to feel. It's - I won't hesitate to say - beautiful, and tense, standing on the edge of something so terrifying you can't help but ache for it.

Passing through Mississippi
Swerving like a whirling gypsy
The calm in me I have not felt before

There was something on that summer breeze
It held me close and kissed the trees
Tell you I will never know for sure

Justin Jones is a fellow Virginian, hailing from the Shenandoah Valley; currently, he's based out of DC. He'll be floating around Virginia through November and December, playing at JMU on November 14th. More dates here. Fans of Ryan Adams will find solace in Justin Jones' music.

Justin Jones & the Driving Rain - Let's Stay Together [download or die]
Justin Jones & the Driving Rain - Long way down
Buy ...and I am the song of the drunkards
Justin Jones' Website/Myspace

Labels: artist profile, justin jones, song piece

Josh Ritter - Open Doors [download or die]

Come back. You make proclamations to the moonlight, you tell the rain - it's an order, you see. The autumn leaves gather at your feet while you stare,

and stare. You laugh at the absurdity of it all, the kind of chuckle that begins in your throat and echoes upwards till nothing's funny anymore. The leaves blow in through the open door, yes? Wet, moldy, in with the chill running up your back. I never notice my hands are cold until someone tells me so. Of course, the person to tell me would be

It's too bad that trains of thought don't run on railroad tracks.

Buy the Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter's Website/Myspace

Labels: josh ritter, song piece

Strange, the aquatic trends at TGH over the past month: Sea Wolf (Leaves in the River is being released on Tuesday); Right Away, Great Captain; Noah & the Whale...there are others I'm forgetting.

Seabear - I Sing I Swim [download or die]
I've been lured into the sparkling net of Seabear, a pretty fish for the catching. But the song aims to mourn and throws me overboard, and so I'm saved.

The first snow of the winter won't come for another 2 months or so, and I'm left to imagine its arrival. Leaves, windblown, circle in a soft vortex, coated with white dust. I try to taste snow flakes, they melt with human contact. I take a long walk after the sun sets, the moon is bright and my toes are cold. I remember I won't tell you what, except that it's cause for a sad smile, not nearly a grimace. Such is the end of the fall.

Somewhere in here I should mention the fluttering piano, the understated guitar, the dainty xylophone, and Sindri Sigfœsson's hushed, understated vocals. Seabear hails from Iceland, and The Ghost that Carried Us Away was released in August.

When the birds are sleeping that’s when the trees sing
You left your winter clothes in the deep marks in my skin
So shake the leaves off the trees, watching them fall down on the street
Your son, your daughter, swimming in the water

Seabear - Libraries
Seabear's Website/Myspace/Label
Buy The Ghost that Carried Us Away from Boomkat/Amazon.de

Bonus: Iron & Wine - Communion Cups and Someone's Coat [highly rec'd!]
(see previous post: The Shepherd's Dog preview)

Labels: artist profile, seabear, song piece

It’s a strange state of mind I find myself in. No matter how I try to push forward - living in the now, planning for the future – I’m always mentally looking on my shoulder to see how far I’ve come, and what I’ve left behind. A little like Orpheus, but the stakes are nonexistent.

I’ve been listening to “Vice Rag” on repeat for a couple of days now; since the first time I heard it I knew I had to post on it. But tonight I found myself listening to another AA Bondy song, “There’s A Reason,” which reminds me of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” for inexplicable reasons.

And I gave my hand to the fates
and they took me around
and they showed me the seven wonders
the sights and the sounds
There was a man with cinders for eyes
There was a girl with a dress made of flies
And there’s a reason…

And the feeling I’ve had lately of looking over my shoulder is suddenly illuminated. Behind I can see where I’ve been, and I know not where I go. A strange state of mind indeed.

AA Bondy - There's A Reason [highly rec'd!]
AA Bondy - Vice Rag
Buy American Hearts (released September 18th)
AA Bondy's Myspace/Label page

Labels: aa bondy, artist profile, song piece

I arrived at Finney Chapel last night feeling expectant and somewhat strange. Lucy Wainwright Roche opened, and her set came as a pleasant surprise. Between sets I made a discovery that compounded strangeness with sorrow; so often do I find myself in hatred of change these days. As Dar Williams began to sing I tried my best to contain my personal wreckage, seal it in a box so I could empty out its contents in private. Deliverance came unexpectedly: after some self-deprecating storytelling, Williams played a song that made me feel as though a terrible weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Dar Williams – After All [download or die]

As such stories often go, things got worse before they got better. I’ll do myself a favor and spare you all the details. I've never been a huge Dar Williams fan, but I'm thinking last night's performance may have changed that.

Dar Williams - I Had No Right

Labels: Dar Williams, review, song piece

In the past few months I’ve spent a lot of time talking to songwriters and keep finding myself running into a common aspect of their stories: the odds you face trying to be a successful musician are overwhelming. Even as an mp3 blogger, to find the unknown gems you first have to sort through massive quantities of mediocre music. For artists, if you manage to gain even some local name recognition within 5 years or so as anything but a radio-friendly rock band (for example, No Second Troy), it’s quite an accomplishment. It’s something I knew in theory years ago, but only recently have I fully come to appreciate it.

Red Collar - Used Guitars [highly rec'd!]

The song is a solid rock number, but I’ve been listening to it the way some of my friends read Tarot cards. Each meaning of every card is enumerated, its implications discussed in detail, thought about for days afterwards until what overwhelms you is no longer the singular combination of cards, but the full meaning of the message they convey.

The first line of “Used Guitars” comes as though casually dropped in a conversation, when you’ve suffered enough setbacks to learn that the best kind of expectations are no expectations, you have to be careful about getting to excited about anything with promise. Fortune doesn’t keep her promises. Jason Kutchma’s voice is weathered, and when he sings “we were made / to fail every day” there’s no bitterness, no anguish, just dark acceptance. And more importantly, kindness: “And I wish you all the luck / that I never had.”

Buy The Hands Up EP
Red Collar's Website/Myspace

Labels: artist profile, red collar, song piece

It's Kate, and I'm back.

I know I've mentioned it before, but ever since last spring a year-and-a-half ago I've had something of an identity crisis. My parents had moved three times and I had moved five times in by the beginning of last fall, all in a period of about 7 months, and somewhere in the change I found that there was no place I felt I could call home. It wasn't really something I talked about much, but the perceived loss became something of self-constructed parasite.

Anyway, I've been looking forward to returning to Oberlin because last spring, and more so this summer, I realized that at least for the next 3 years, this is Home. There's something incredibly comforting about that.

Oh No! Oh My! - Finally Found A Home [download or die]
Oh No! Oh My's Website/Myspace

Labels: oh no oh my, song piece

If it isn't obvious already, both of these songs are download or die.

Right Away, Great Captain - Night, Marry You

The only ocean I’ve ever lived on is hot in the summertime, painfully hard, full of steel and glass and rubber, those strange machines that live at sixty miles an hour. For the past few weeks I’ve lived on an island on the 81 coast, the shores are green but the sprawl is ugly. There are bays and harbors everywhere, with white lines for buoys. It makes DC look like Venice. And Venice is sinking.

Before you listen to this song, try this: imagine you’re on a ship, your crew mates at close quarters, friends by the force of proximity, and the person you care about the most lives entirely in your imagination for months on end. You tell yourself stories, you write songs because to utter the words out loud would force you to confront the part of yourself you had to cut off and put away to live. The alternative is to stay in bed all day. The Bitter End lives in this imagined world, and the resulting music is brilliant.

Right Away, Great Captain's Myspace

Josh Ritter - The Last Temptation of Adam

Ever since my little sister heard of someone getting stuck in an elevator she's avoided them as much as she can. I've always thought getting stuck with someone for long enough without hope for an end - in an elevator, on a desert island, in a car on a road trip - would forge an interesting friendship, the kind that most commonly occurs when you've grown up with someone.

"The Last Temptation of Adam" takes this idea and places it in the Cold War in the wake of the Atomic bomb. I think I understand the title, being one of the last two people on earth would be a little like being one of the first two people on earth, and therein lies the temptation. When Josh Ritter sings "Our love would live a half-life on the surface"...well, don't we all have some memorable half-life's of our own? I'm sure I still have some of the resulting radiation poisoning.

Buy the Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter from Amazon.com (released August 21)
Josh Ritter's Website/Myspace

Labels: josh ritter, right away great captain, song piece

Remember when you fell in love with John Vanderslice or the National? You'll be seduced by Sea Wolf too.

"Black Dirt" begins as a folk song sang to on a stormy night, transforming halfway through into rock number performed from death (I know this sounds sappy, stick with me). The song documents an imagined murder committed over broken promises and lies, but the song makes a promise of its own:

"But my heart no longer beats
My blood makes black dirt under your feet
Black dirt will stain your feet
And when you walk you’ll leave black dirt in the street"

"You're a Wolf", which has become popular amongst bloggers, is, like "Black Dirt", a love story gone wrong. If this is any indication of Leaves in the River (to be released September 25), I'm going to love it.

Sea Wolf - Black Dirt [download or die]
Sea Wolf - You're A Wolf (alt link) [highly rec'd]
Pre-order Leaves in the River from Amazon.com
Sea Wolf's Website/Myspace

Irving - I Can't Fall In Love
Sea Wolf is a side project of Irving's Alex Church. I've only recently discovered Irving's 2006 album Death in the Garden, Blood on the Flowers (their 2nd), and have been enjoying it a great deal. Irving's myspace.

Labels: artist profile, sea wolf, song piece, upcoming

Closing shifts are the worst - you kick out customers, flip the open sign around, and find yourself ultimately alone. You mop the floor, clean the counter, put your time card through the machine an hour before you actually leave, wash the dishes, wonder if the paycheck is worth it. I wish I'd had "Restaurant" with me when I had to work closing shifts alone last summer, walking home in the dark with a paper bag in my hand and my headphones on: watching beautiful bar-hoppers, sleek-haired and slim, on nighttime vacations filled with bright lights and loud music. Even striding right past them, they always seemed so incredibly far away.

But I do remember something the Thrills seem to know: you work hard for your boss, who's never around and whose approval you never really cared about anyway. Your job is never your true vocation. I hope to avoid that in the future, and feel that this hope of mine is a luxury others often don't have. It's part of being young. I'm too old to be a Teenager (released July 30th), though.

The Thrills - Restaurant (Teenager)
The Thrills - Big Sur (So Much For the City)
Buy Teenager on Amazon.com
The Thrills' Website/Myspace

A little recollection: my dear friend and mentor Ben, a Belfast native, introduced me to the Thrills three years ago. Ben never let me take myself too seriously, but always managed to let me know he did. He got married recently, and I wish him only the best.

BONUS: Ben Kweller - Falling

Labels: song piece, the thrills

Two Hours Traffic - Heroes of the Sidewalk [download or die]

I’ve felt out of place all summer, my roots torn out from underneath me, wandering aimlessly through city after city, town after town. I’d been staying with some friends in Maryland these past few days, and today I packed up my suitcase and went to Arlington. The moment I came up the escalator at Clarendon I couldn’t help but smile, this was home. Or as close as it gets.

I've been listening to "Heroes of the Sidewalk" and the song feels achingly familiar, like it was written by a friend who's been through the same types of situations, albeit a Canadian one (I love Canadian bands!). Little Jabs was released on July 24, bringing more easily digestible pop into the world with a wink and a smile.

Buy Little Jabs from MapleMusic
Two Hours Traffic's Website/Myspace

You can download "Stuck for the Summer," also from Little Jabs, at their myspace.

Meanwhile, a note to the regulars here (not very many of them, I know) who are probably starting to get fed up with the inconsistent posting lately: "The List" is huge right now, and things will be back to normal after Tuesday. At least for a few weeks.
Bonus: M. Ward - To Go Home

Labels: pop, rock, song piece, two hours traffic

Emotionalism was released in May, and the Avett Brothers have released a number of records since 2000, so I'm very distraught realizing I'd never heard their music before. I was listening through my recent musical acquisitions and one song stuck out in its simplicity, "The Ballad of Love and Hate."

In the song, Love and Hate are not abstract ideas but two people caught in a relationship that exists in despite of their opposing natures. What these natures are should be obvious. The song works because Love's name could be Lily and Hate's name could be Severus (the same goes with Sally and Harry, Hero and Claudio, the list goes on) and it would still make perfect sense. I've been doing a lot of HP re-reading lately, sorry. I'm not suggesting anything, I promise. Genre-wise, The Avett Brothers is low-key folk with bluegrass instrumentation.

"Hate keeps his head up and walks through the street.
Every stranger and drifter he greets.
And shakes hands with every loner he meets
with a serious look on his face."

The Avett Brothers - The Ballad of Love and Hate [download or die]
The Avett Brothers - Die Die Die

Buy Emotionalism from Amazon.com
The Avett Brothers' Website/Myspace

You can catch the Pretty Girl EP over at the Late Greats (which is a joke, by the way, because so many of the Avett Brothers' songs have "Pretty Girl" in the title). It actually introduced me to this song, which I like because it reminds me of the 9-hour drive to from Virginia to Ohio and vice versa I often have the pleasure of taking:

"We drive for miles
Through corporate Ohio
Rest stops in West Virginia
Traffic in Washington DC'

The Avett Brothers - Letter to a Pretty Girl

Personal Update: My best friend from high school is visiting for the next few days, so posting will be sketchy, but it will probably still happen. Afterwards I'll be in DC for a week visiting friends, I'm hoping to catch a few concerts while I'm there.

Bonus: Jack Johnson - We Are Going To Be Friends (White Stripes cover)

Labels: artist profile, Avett Brothers, Country, folk, song piece

Earlier today Dave at The Rawking Refuses to Stop posted his top 10 best break-up albums. My answer back? This song.

Eve 6 - Anytime
When Eve 6 broke up in 2004 (no pun intended) I was devastated; "Inside Out" was possibly my favorite song of all time until I was 13 or 14. I didn't include Eve 6 in the "Celebrating 19 years of bad music" post because I never stopped loving Eve 6. Never.
"Anytime" is THE perfect break-up song because Max Collins, Eve 6's lead singer, doesn't deal with breaking-up by crying in his room, walking city streets in the middle of the night, or thinking about the girl he broke up with while he's making out with some other chick (all break-up cliches of pop music).
No, he gets in his car, blasts the radio, and leaves town - as in, he basically just rocks hard and kicks ass. Which is really how it should be. Does he try and forget her? Sure. Does it work? No. Would he take her back? Probably.

Labels: eve 6, song piece

I was a little disappointed the first time I listened to the Broken String, the second time, the third time. The preview I wrote in June was after the fourth time I'd listened to it straight through. It was around the sixth time that I stopped judging the album and began to simply enjoy it (I'm actually embarrassed to be admitting this, but I do this type of intense listening with virtually all the music I post on). Recently I listened Charm School a few times again, then all of 2006's EPs in order. I don't know quite what it is that I've decided, but this is a try.

Bishop Allen's March EP included a track called the "the Monitor" about an old battleship, where Justin Rice (or his "narrator") imagines the battles fought by the ship and considers his isolation from the men at the ironworks, who work on and don't care. June's EP featured a song about the same Ironworks burning down called "The Same Fire." And neither song was really about an Ironworks.

"The Monitor" became the source of the album title the Broken String:

"It’s stunning to know I’ve survived
But I’m not sure what I’m fighting for anymore
And when I break another string
And continue to sing
Is that courage? I’m not sure."

Charm School has been described by its creators as an album about lonely insomniacs who wander around New York City at night. In interviews Justice Rice, Bishop Allen's lyricist, has talked about Charm School as having a narrator; if this is the case, then before 2006's EP series there was never a chance to really get into the narrator's head, to see the world through his eyes. Something changed in January, and I don't know what it was. If there's anything I can say for certain about the Broken String it's that its attempt to condense 12 months' worth of songs into a single album feels shallow, like skipping rocks over the surface of a deep body of water. But some of those rocks are going to sink, damn it. Christian Rudder and Justin Rice's work deserves more fans.

Bishop Allen - The Monitor (March EP)
Bishop Allen - The Same Fire (June EP)
Bishop Allen - Middle Management (The Broken String)
Buy the Broken String and 2006's EPs

Labels: Bishop Allen, song piece

Let me explain how my blogging methodology works: I keep a list of bands I need to post on. It grows, it shrinks, it actually has a mind of its own (As Mrs. Weasley would say, "if you can't see where it keeps its brain..."). Mostly I just use it to remind myself of all the other great bands I could be posting on when I've, for example, been listening almost exclusively to Maritime over and over and over again for an entire week.
It's a rare occasion when a something forces me to let a band jump the list.

This time it's Phosphorescent (though the post title might have given that away). Matthew Houck's songs are reminiscent of the 60's New York folk scene, with what could be silverware clicking and clacking in the background as though it just happened to be hanging from the ceiling in place of chimes. "I am a full grown man (I will lay in the grass all day)" is a fitting song for a man who purposefully dropped out of college at age 18 to pursue music. Sometimes we're favored with a horn section or drum beat, but there's a sense they're simply thrown in for our listening pleasure.

"i can sing through my fingers
though the worth of a singer
is nothing i'm told."

Why did Phosphorescent jump the list? Matthew Houck's label announced that he has a new album coming out this fall, and we know absolutely nothing about it. I've been listening to his last release, Aw Come Aw Wry (2005) since last November and love it to death. Fans of Neutral Milk Hotel, this is for you.

Phosphorescent - I am a full grown man (I will lay in the grass all day)
Phosphorescent - When we fall
Buy Aw Come Aw Wry (eMusic also has it)
Phosphorescent's Myspace / Daytrotter Session

Labels: artist profile, folk, Phosphorescent, song piece

The picture is my little sister's depiction of what I'm like in the morning; she was nice enough to draw it and leave it for me on Tuesday so that I would discover it when I went to make myself coffee. After I finally noticed it, I couldn't stop laughing.

Catherine Feeny - Mr. Blue (download or die)
Catherine Feeny - I Still Don't Believe You
Hurricane Glass is one of those great albums I didn't discover until months after its release, though a remastered version was released in June.
In "Mr. Blue" a cheery piano and Feeny's sweet alto shed a little sunlight into a dark room, joined by a friendly acoustic guitar and a harmonica. The universe has conspired to cheer up our "Mr. Blue" and with Catherine Feeny involved it's sure to succeed. Some days I'm my own Ms. Blue, "And I can see it in your face / You’ve been waiting to break / Since you woke up this morning." This is what friends are really good for, picking up the pieces and putting them back together with blue duct tape.
Buy Hurricane Glass from eMusic / Amazon (remastered)
Catherine Feeny's Website/Myspace
UK Tour Dates - she's touring starting in August

Jaymay - Gray or Blue (download or die)
Jaymay - Sea Green, See Blue
I got Jaymay's EP Sea Green, See Blue from the radio station last year while I was on blog leave and have posted a few tracks randomly since them.
With "Gray or Blue" the details are so close but the situation so distant from my own experience that listening to it creates an ache for things to be different. And the approach is beautiful, aware of its own limitations: " I feel so helpless now, my guitar is not around / And I'm strugglin with the xylophone / To make these feelings sound." Listening to Jaymay feels like acceptance.
Buy Sea Green, See Blue EP from Insound
Jaymay's Website/Myspace
UK Tour Dates, most supporting Laura Veirs or Isobel Campbell

I'm done the hyping I needed to, so let's make it a mixtape:
Bright Eyes -True Blue
Gary Nock - Troubled Blue Eyes
Ryan Adams - When the Stars Go Blue
Something Corporate - She Paints Me Blue
Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes
Wilco - Blue-eyed Soul
Repost: Josh Ritter - Thin Blue Flame

Labels: catherine feeny, jaymay, mixtape, song piece