If Death To Palaces, the 2007 full-length by Seattle powerpoppers Young Sportsmen, was a gas guzzling muscle car, then their newest release, titled If You Want It, is a high-end European sportster. While both can get your heart pumping, the latter is equally likely to impress you with its detail and handling.
That’s not to say they’ve lost their oomph. Indeed, tracks like “The Deadenders” and “Sesame Street Fightin’ Man” are prototypical YS with drums-a-bashing, bass-a-churning and guitars-a-grinding. But, under the guidance of producer Johnny Sangster, they’ve taken their trademark power and added more depth, more shading and more texture. The results are completely effective at both the highest highs and the slowest burns.
The opening salvo, “Girl Pants” begins with pounding toms and bass. But, in place of the expected crashing guitars, you instead get melodic interplay that is reminiscent of something Bloc Party or even XTC might bring to the table. A triumvirate of indierock “super” bands (Supergrass, Superdrag, Superchunk) are good reference points across other tracks like “Marion’s Nova” and “Summer Ace.”
Also of note here are the evocative lyrics. I’ll admit to mostly not understanding exactly what Wesley is singing about. But, he is a master of setting a mood and evoking a feeling without beating you over the head with his intended meaning. Whether it’s the hypnotic chant of “through the eye we’ll go” at the end of “Metropolitan” or the refrain of “everything we have today is resting on the shoulders of a maybe” in “Tomorrow Disappears,” it seems providing the ability to apply your own experience to his phrasing is exactly what he’s going for.
The true success of this record is the perfect balance between a clobbering energy and a nimble melody. In short, this album soars. If this record doesn’t show up on numerous 2008 best-of lists, I’ll eat my hat.
According to weather forecasts, we may be seeing temperatures reaching somewhere in the 90s. Like every week since I started writing this column, there’s no shortage of fun things to do both indoors and out.
Seattle Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market, May 16 through 18
One of my favorite events every year is the Seattle Cheese Festival in Pike Place Market. The finest purveyors of cheese and a few thousand of their most devoted fans flock to the market to sample (and buy) their wares. I’ve gone the past few years and always found myself spending way too much money on cheese (and wine) and then the following weeks wishing I spent more.
Discs of Fury at Lo-Fi Performance Art Gallery, Friday May 16
I really cannot even think of adding anything to what my friend and TIG colleague Imaginary Dana writes of this show:
Know what the Seattle music scene has been missing…? The perfect 70s glam-rock band. At least, we were. Imaginary ladies and gentleman, I give you… DISCS OF FURY.
Discs of Fury, which features members of M. Bison and Bad Dream Good Breakfast, will annihilate your senses with their high soprano wails, blazing over-the-top arena rock guitar rifts, fancy costumes, and basically everything you could ever hope for in your favorite glam band. Their debut record is a two-act rock opera (obvs, what else could it be?) called The Chroncles of Lazer: Vol 1 and to celebrate its release, the band has an AMAZING event planned for tomorrow (Friday May 16th) at the Lo-Fi Performance Gallery (429 Eastlake)
So I won’t.
Someone Still Love You Boris Yeltsin at the Vera Project, Saturday, May 17
I have yet to see SSLYBY play (and am only casually familiar with their music) but I can say with 100% certainty that they really bring it live. How do I know? Because the last time SSLYBY played in Seattle, the actual Boris Yeltsin dropped dead the very next day.
Michael Vermillion at the Tractor, Wednesday, May 21
The former member of Vendetta Red is a singer-songwriter in the vein of Johnny Cash or Hank Williams. Like the best country musicians, Vermillion is an accomplished, empathetic storyteller and has a wide-ranging voice. Tonight he celebrates his brand new, self-released record Last Night on Earth at the Tractor with Lonesome Rhodes & The Good Company and Mario Matteoli.
See you out and about,
Chris Burlingame
*Three Imaginary Girls*
As we were scheduling this week’s round of Sasquatch-related podcasts, we asked the guys in Pela if they had anything that we hadn’t yet heard before. Turns out, they did! This song, entitled “Good Foot on a Bad Doorstep,” has been available in “banjo” form on the the World’s Fair website for some time, but the unmastered yet full-band version that you’ll hear as your bonus Song of the Day podcast hasn’t yet been released to the world.
Says singer Billy McCarthy, who earlier called the song “a sordid love tale of NYC late night bar trolls”:
The song is about good old fashion infidelity and it folding back on the infidel. It was originally on banjo and didn’t make Anytown [Graffiti]. But we knew we’d release it some day. It was recorded on a cheap Kimball organ… like the kind that Hare Krishna’s use. The violin player was this old Cuban guy that hung at my bar. And he was so drunk during the session that his breathing was bleeding through the microphone… we thought he’d pass out but he never did… he just sat there smelling of alcohol and cologne.
In the Northwest, you can catch Pela at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle on 5/25, at Sasquatch! Music Festival (in front of huge audiences, the way the band is meant to be heard) on 5/26, and at the Doug Fir in Portland on 5/27 — whew! when they say they’re back on tour, they aren’t kidding! The rest of the States can check out the Pela Blog or the band’s MySpace page for dates closer to home. Enjoy this very special release from one of the best live bands you’ll ever hear.
Throw Me the Statue live on Ballard Day! photo by Krissi Pearson
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Every Friday, the Song of the Day podcast spotlights local musicians. Today’s featured selection, chosen in anticipation of Memorial Day Weekend’s Sasquatch! Music Festival, is Lolita by Throw Me the Statue from the 2008 album Moonbeams on Secretly Canadian.
The last time we featured Throw Me the Statue, Moonbeams was picking up steam on the blogosphere ahead of its rerelease on Secretly Canadian. It’s three months later and Scott Reitherman’s cohort have racked up plenty of glowing reviews from the most respected of sources. Last weekend, the band treated the Seattle community to a special in-store performance at Sonic Boom Records as part of KEXP’s Ballard Day. Their short performance highlighted what anyone who’s heard the album already knows: this band is immediately likable. In drafting Moonbeams, Reitherman found a perfect balance between live instrumentation and drum machines while crafting one genre-defying gem after another. The lyrics range from the playful to the overtly sexual and are often delivered in an almost desensitized manner, adding another great layer to the already heady mix. In addition to the Sasquatch! Music Festival, TMtS will be performing at this year’s Capitol Hill Block Party and Bumbershoot.
If the band’s immediate likability hasn’t sunk in yet, here’s a cute story involving the band and a lost dog:
Throw Me the Statue was on tour driving from Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama. They stopped in a rest stop at the Alabama border, and while they were sitting around relaxing, this dog came up to them. It was a black pit bull puppy, and they played with it for a while and fell in love with it instantly. The woman who ran the rest stop told them that someone had abandoned the puppy about a week earlier and that it had been wandering around the whole time. The area was without an animal shelter or animal control, so the woman didn’t know what to do about the puppy.
The band decided to take the puppy with them to Birmingham and try to get it adopted. In the car, they got more and more attached to the dog. When they got to the Bottle Tree venue, they met up with one of their bandmates who was re-joining them on the tour. He was unfortunately very afraid of dogs, so they couldn’t take the dog with them for the rest of the tour. They decided to leave the dog with the woman who owns the Bottle Tree, who would wait for them to finish the tour and return to Seattle. Once they were in Seattle, they had the woman from the Bottle Tree send the dog as cargo on a plane to Jarred, the drummer, who was the most invested in the dog.
Sons & Daughters are among the bands to play Bumbershoot photo by Jim Bennet
The lineup for the 38th Annual Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival has just grown a bit (and shrunk a little). Band of Horses, Sons & Daughters, and The Black Keys are among the bands newly announced. Ludacris, though, had to bow out. Keep your eyes open for the full lineup, which will be released in July. But don’t wait until then — you can buy 3-day passes for $80 (a savings of 20%) right now. Got to bumbershoot.org for more details.
Mia Zapata of Seattle band The Gits was brutally raped and murdered on July 7, 1993. On July 4th of this year, fifteen years later almost to the day, a feature-length documentary titled The Gits opens at the Northwest Film Forum; the documentary chronicles the tragedy and its aftermath. View the trailer.
Vampire Weekend, you have arrived; you’ve been name-checked in the comic strip Sally Forth. Pitchfork has the comic as well as slew of newly announced Vampire Weekend tourdates. How come nobody cares that the characters in this comic are pirating copyrighted material — and flaunting it? Maybe the laws don’t extend to people that… you know… don’t really exist.
Thomas Dolby has a new live CD/DVD coming out, and from the looks of it, his stage attire is now a pair of swimming googles and a flashlight taped to his ear. Ah, those budgets were bigger in the 80’s…
The annual Noise For The Needy festival is almost upon us, Seattle! It takes place June 11-15, and loads of performers are donating their time to help raise money for this year’s beneficiary, Urban Rest Stop. Urban Rest Stop is a non-profit that provides clean, safe and welcoming facilities where individuals and families can use restrooms, showers and laundry facilities. Among the many highlights of the festival schedule are The Black Angels with the Warlocks (Nuemo’s), Two Gallants (The Tractor), and Talib Kweli & Common Market (the Showbox). Check the NFTN website for the full schedule, listing all participating bands and venues.
The Moldy Peaches have rewritten one of their songs for a high-end resort in the Bahamas. The new version of “Anyone Else But You” touts the virtues of a good game of tennis and a lovely round of golf. Juno - it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Here’s the ad clip, via Rolling Stone. Hmm.
Scarlett Johansson’s new CD of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, comes out next week. It’s hard to recall an “actress turns singer” event that generated this much hoopla, and it seems largely to be as a result of her chutzpah at taking on music by the iconic Waits. Over at Imeem, you can now preview all the songs. Chances are you have an opinion about it already (heck, we all do); now we can actually hear it, and see if we were right or wrong!
In this week’s Review Revue, we shall revel in the obscure. Have you ever heard of Viv Akauldren? I hadn’t either, until I stumbled upon their records while flipping through the V’s yesterday at KEXP. Seems this psychedelic Detroit outfit put out a few records and were quite well-regarded around these parts, at least for a while (unlike previous entry Lime Spiders, even Jim hadn’t heard of these guys). According to this brief history I found, Viv Akauldren (originally called Trancegland) were “one of the unsung heroes of psychedelic music.” KCMU folks certainly seemed to agree, as these comments on their second album show. This is also the first time we’ve gotten to see accounts of two different live shows on one record.
“This LP is no less than brilliant. Excellent mix of styles and sounds. What do you think?”
“There is a skip at the start of ‘The Maker of the Sun and the Moon.’”
“Viva Viv!”
“Peachey keen.”
“What’s happening to me? I think I like this.”
“This is it!”
“At Backstage on Sat. Oct. 10th.”
“See you there!”
“They died at the Backstage.”
“KCMU welcomes to the Vogue w/Electric Love Muffin on 6/20, Tues (21+)”
“6/20/89 They died at the Vogue too. Actually, they sounded good, but no one stayed to hear them.”
And this is where we leave the tale of Viv Akauldren for now, on somewhat of a sad note. But who knows, maybe they will be back to triumphantly rock Seattle! They do have two other records in our library…
Tom Waits tickets for the announced U.S. dates go on sale tomorrow. It’ll be “paperless,” as they say in the ticket biz — your tickets will be available for pickup at the venue night of show; you’ll need both the credit card you used to buy them and a photo ID to get in. Whoah, another sucker punch to the scalpers! Of course, if you live in one of the following handful of cities (shoutout to El Paso KEXP fans!), you don’t even need to use those FF miles.
The dates, reposted for your convenience and travel planning:
Orpheum, Phoenix
Tuesday, June 17 and 18, 2008
The Plaza Theatre, El Paso
Friday, June 20, 2008
Jones Hall, Houston
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Palladium, Dallas
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Brady Theatre, Tulsa
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Fox Theatre, St. Louis
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Ohio Theatre, Columbus
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Civic Theatre, Knoxville
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The Moran Theatre, Jacksonville
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Saenger Theatre, Mobile
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Alabama Theatre, Birmingham
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen in anticipation of Memorial Day Weekend’s Sasquatch! Music Festival, is “My Only Offer” by Mates of State on their forthcoming album Re-Arrange Us out May 20th on Barsuk.
Spouses Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel have been making quirky, joyous music together as Mates of State for over ten years. Based earlier in San Francisco and now out of New York, the duo split instrumentation between melody (Gardner on electric organ) and rhythm (Hammel behind the kit), and share vocals with their unique harmonies. Re-Arrange Us, their fifth full-length, isn’t in Radiohead/NIN-style a request for fans to mix up their songs (though the band has in the past asked fans to contribute videos), nor does it represent a complete restructuring of their trademark dynamic — but what it does reveal is a growing complexity in what could have easily been a one-trick-pony band. Listen for more varied instrumentation on this album, like piano and synth and… wait, is that a guitar?… and for Gardner and Hammel to take more traditional lead vocal roles.
Mates of State toured this summer with NPR’s This American Life Tour this summer with Kori on a baby grand and Jason playing with brushes. They were also accompanied by a cello and back-up vocalists at a few gigs so it’ll be interesting to see what arrangements they use at the Gorge on May 25th. For more tour dates including appearances at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, visit the band’s MySpace page or website.
Check out this new video for “Get Better,” also off their new album Re-Arrange Us:
Greetings. Michele Myers here. I DJ every Friday night at 9pm on KEXP. And every week at 12, I choose one of my favorite records and bring you tracks and stories on it. I call this the Midnight Album Spotlight.
This Friday it’s Verve Remixed, Volume 1. Verve Remixed is a series of releases where vintage and newer jazz recordings are remixed by today’s electronic DJs and producers. The whole series is dope. But Volume 1 continues to be my favorite.
My favorite track of the album (and the series) is “Wait ‘Till You See Him” — where German lounge-jazz-electronic artist De-Phazz re-interprets the velvety voice and straight-to-the-heart delivery of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald. This song is like walking into a futuristic space lounge where a hologram of Ella sings to you, looking straight into your eyes.
Another favorite is the Shirley Horn track remixed by UK electronics wizards Rae and Christian. It has more of a saucy feel. And there’s this cool animated video to go with it:
The original of Nina Simone’s song “See-Line Woman” is so funky and simple that it feels really current and it’s a natural for re-mix. So when New York City club, disco and underground team Masters of Work re-mixed it, they just layer on the warmth and beats. Here’s a vid of the original song. Sassy Nina Simone directs her band and the audience while she sings like the royalty she is:
Verve Remixed, Volume 1 also has Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Horn and Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto on the vocals and these songs hit the mix by producers like Thievery Corporation, Tricky, and Richard Dorfmeister (of Kruder & Dorfmeister). All of the Verve Remixed collections are a gorgeous mix of the cinematic and organic. But Volume 1 flows the best from start to end. The flow is something I look for in a release, since I pick out songs for my show and the documentaries all week — I want to just put a record on and let it take me away.
Join Michele Myers for Nite Life every Friday night at 9pm. She also produces KEXP Documentaries, short radio features on KEXP-type musical subjects.
Many of you are probably familiar with Boom Bip, aka Bryan Hollon, either as a producer or a remixer. Many of you are probably familiar with Gruff Rhys, either through Super Furry Animals or his solo work. Some of you may even be familiar with John Delorean, the auto executive responsible for the DMC-12, the car made famous in the Back to the Future series. But nobody could have guessed that these three individuals would converge on a rampant musical joyride going by the name Neon Neon. The resulting album from the collaboration of Hollon and Rhys, the heavily 80’s influenced Stainless Style, grows from Delorean’s exploits — his successes, failures, and sexual liaisons… lots of them. Regarding this intriguing and unusual project, Bryan Hollon graciously and safely spoke to me from his car.
KEXP: It seems like the relationship between you and Gruff Rhys goes further back than most people realize. Can you tell me when and how that relationship got started?
Bryan: Yeah, I met Gruff on the Rings Around the World Tour. The Super Furry Animals had asked me to open up for them on some Canadian and East Coast US dates. So, the first time we met was me going in to sound check in Detroit. I remember not knowing too much about Super Furry Animals at the time other than seeing them in magazines and what not. I was sort of shocked at the size of production they had. They were doing that tour in 5.1 surround sound. As I walked into the room they were testing out the surround sound. I mean, for me at that time, it was the biggest thing I had ever done. So we met there and continued to be friends. The video guys I was touring with along with myself were able to join the band on the tour bus instead of having our own van, which allowed us to get to know each other pretty well.
Looking forward now, is Neon Neon a one-off project or do you and Rhys intend to work together in the future?
Yeah, we have plans to work together in the future. In fact, we’ve discussed how we’re going to approach the next album. I think we have another biographical album up our sleeves at the moment. Whether it will be called Neon Neon or not we don’t know. This was all very themed around the Delorean story with the name of the band and the aesthetic of the band. So I think the idea is to do another biographical record, but it will be completely different with an entirely different sound and inspiration — you know, a whole different era to explore.
To follow up on that, why John Delorean and where did the idea come from?
We don’t know really. It’s all kind of a haze. Well, I guess I had some tracks that were very Italian disco inspired and other more psychedelic disco stuff with really simple structures and kind of dance-y rhythms, and I wanted to have a vocalist on those tracks so I sent ‘em to Gruff to see what he thought of the demos. Gruff loved them and had some ideas for what he wanted to do vocally with those tracks. So when we got together in London to start recording this thing, the Delorean concept was not there yet. It wasn’t until we sat down and were writing and referencing these things from the late ’70s/early ’80s. In Gruff’s words, all creative paths sort of led to John Delorean. We were looking at a book of conceptual cars of the ’80s and we came across the Delorean, and then we started reading about the story of Delorean. Initially Gruff was just going to write one song about the guy and then he came back days later with pages upon pages about the Delorean story. There were just so many stories within the story and Gruff thought it kind of read like a Greek tragedy and that it would be great to base an entire record on this man’s life. And I really couldn’t agree more. Once we got into it, it was really fascinating. So, it was all more influenced by these demos that I had initially done and that sort of put us in an era and a sound.
OK, now I’d like to touch on your broader influences. Due to technology in modern music and the pool of ’80s youth making music right now, there’s a serious reintroduction of that era going on (in music) right now. Do you consider trends like this when you create your music or is everything more of the moment?
It’s hard to say because we’re so surrounded by media. You know, it’s hard to say which comes first. I think everything moves in cycles, and I know for the past five years I’ve been revisiting and have been entertained by a lot of things that were in my childhood — things that are kind of resurfacing, things that you kind of forget about. And I think a lot of kids, a lot of teenagers are fascinated by that era as well — you know early arcade games and the early electro and the style, everything. This is all stuff that, when I was a kid, was going on so it takes you back to a place, and it reminds you of a record so you dig out that one record, which starts influencing you again. So, it’s really hard to say, but it’s definitely due in part to a resurgence of post punk/disco stuff.
What I find amazing is how many people rip on the ’80s for its styles and music, but it is definitely coming back.
You know, it’s hard to generalize an entire era. And part of what’s horrendous is what makes it great. The fact that is was sort of a ridiculous era, and one thing that we focused on, on this record was that idea and obsession with the future that people seemed to have in the ’80s. I mean, a lot of television programs, cars, music, everything was designed and themed around the idea of the future. And I think that might have been in anticipation of the year 2000. There was just this very futuristic theme that got swept through the media at that time. And that served as a huge inspiration for us — we focused on that idea of the future.
In addition to the ’80s tracks on the album, you’ve got the more modern numbers featuring artists like Fatlip, Spankrock and Yo Majesty. What prompted the inclusion of those tracks on the record?
I think it’s important for people to realize that when we were making this record, we didn’t set out to make an ’80s record. We didn’t want it to be an ’80s-themed record. We didn’t want it to just be some throwback piece of work. So, when you listen to the record, it’s sort of looking at 30 years of music for the most part. We start off with a late ’70s nod to the early Italian stuff that we were influenced by and then there’s some big pop stuff that’s referencing mid-’80s stuff and then there’s more modern stuff like the Spankrock track. We wanted it to sound modern, but have all sorts of references to like ’80s synth-pop. So it’s essentially 30 years of music that we drew inspiration from, and we wanted the balance of those grimy hip-hop tracks to act as a palette cleanser for the overly synth-pop stuff we had going on.
Did you guys have to do any digging to come up with the references you make on the record?
We did quite a bit of research on Delorean, and every single song ties into the Delorean theme in some way. So, the Raquel Welch song for example — he was supposedly dating Raquel Welch for a while, and he was obsessed with Raquel before he was dating her. It was kind of like his ultimate trophy. There’s a lyric that goes Raquel, you fill me with intertia, and Inertia was a film that Raquel was in. So there are a lot of references, and we did a lot of research in that three-week period that we were in London. There’s a lot to be picked up lyrically. You’ll find little things that bring you back to the Delorean story, if people actually cared to do the research. I don’t know why anyone would want to but maybe they will.
I must say it’s been a very informative record for me. Now you guys have a European tour coming up, correct?
Yes
Is there any plan to come back through the states in support of this record?
Yes, we’re discussing that now. Ideally, we’d love to be on tour right now, but as life would have it, Gruff is having a child right now. So, for the next couple months, he’s pretty consumed by that. We’re going to be doing European dates, UK festivals and a festival in Japan. I believe we’re doing Australia and then we’re going to make our way back to the states a little bit later this year, but definitely, definitely making it back to the states at some point. And I think we’re planning some singles and some remixes to come out around that time to support the tours.
You’ve had a number of folks remix songs off the Neon Neon record. Was all of that coordinated by you and Gruff?
It’s all friends. We wanted to involve the Hot Chip guys, and a New York DJ, Eli Escobar, just did a remix. Richard X is doing one now. Yeah, it’s all friends and we’re big fans of their music, so it’s a really lazy way of collaborating with someone — to just throw some stems and have them do a remix. But it’s really nice to include these people and to work with them in some capacity.
Well, Bryan, that’s all the questions I have for you. Thank you for your time, and I can’t wait to hear what you and Gruff come up with next.
