^{photo by Jeremy Farmer}

Day 2 of the KEXP broadcast from Engine Studios in Chicago brought another round of terrific and varied performances with elements of electronica, Americana, and indie-rock from Pretty Good Dance Moves, The Watson Twins, and Bottomless Pit, but when we learned that T-Model Ford would play a set, we knew it was bound to be a memorable experience. And the 86 year-old bluesman, backed by Seattle band GravelRoad, did not disappoint! From the first swig (literally), the “Taledragger” launched into a mix of old classics, like “Sallie Mae,” and originals, like “Ask Her For Water”.

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photos by Jeremy Farmer
review by Sheryl Witlen

Bottomless Pit are a band with deep roots and love within the fair city of Chicago. Two former members of the band Silkworm, (who had played together from 1987-2005) have picked up the pieces and started to heal through their music and live performances. After the tragic death of their friend and drummer, Michael Dahlquist, bassist Tim Midgett and guitarist Andy Cohen came to the conclusion that even though no one could ever replace Michael in their hearts or in that particular way that Silkworm came together, they would continue to make music for their city and their fans. Picking up two new members, bassist Brian Orchard (also a member of the band .22) and drummer Chris Manfrin, both former employees of Electrical Audio Studios. Tim and Michael have also played with Stephen Malkmus of Pavement with another side project, The Crust Brothers. Joining them for the last in-studio session during day two our broadcast are Matt and Bubba Kadane, formerly of the so-called “slo-core” Texas band Bedhead and now of The New Year, who tried a couple of new songs.

OK, I’ll admit it: This record jumped out at me because of the amazing/ridiculous outfits on the cover. Then I pulled it out and read the comments on the front (and the fascinating biographical info on the back, which I’m sorry isn’t included here), and realized something of which I had been woefully unaware: The Box Tops (most well known for the classic “The Letter,” which has been covered by everybody ever) were the band of the legendary, mysterious Alex Chilton before he went on to join the cult favorite Big Star! How did I miss this? And why are you even listening to an ignoramus such as myself? All good questions. Now let’s hear from some people who know what they’re talking about (and some who probably don’t):

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 by Afternoon Show host Kevin Cole is “It’s Summertime, Baby” by The Cute Lepers from their debut full-length album Can’t Stand Modern Music on Blackheart Records.

Steve E. Nix hit the Seattle punk scene as a guitarist/vocalist with the The Briefs, known for their old-school punk rock, and created quite a stir with his on-stage antics and attention-grabbing persona.  Whereas Mr. Nix shared vocal duties with others in The Briefs, there is no question he’s the frontman for the Lepers though all contribute vocals.   The band was created when The Briefs went on hiatus and was originally billed as Steve E. Nix and The Cute Lepers but is now known simply as The Cute Lepers.   

After releasing several 7” singles on different labels, the Lepers recently signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records (yes, THE Joan Jett, who incidentally was the first female performer to start her own record label) earlier this year.  The album, Can’t Stand Modern Music, is high energy punk/new wave/power pop featuring female back up vocals. The song “It’s Summertime, Baby” is relatively mellow with a 50’s beat and Beach Boy-esque harmonies, but it’s still rockin’ enough to kick-start your weekend.  The Cute Lepers can also be heard on the Funhouse compilation or you can catch them live at Hell’s Kitchen with Powercords, Avenue Rose, and the Freakouts on August 1st (all ages).  More US tour dates can be found on their website or MySpace page. 

Check out the video for the album’s first single, “Terminal Boredom,” shot in part at KEXP!

photos by Jeremy Farmer
review and interview by Sheryl Witlen

Black Swans. That was the band name Chandra and Leigh Watson chose for themselves before changing their minds and simply calling their outfit, The Watson Twins. Striking at six feet tall with black shoulder length hair these identical twins harmonize into a singular haunting melody. The two first entered into the world as singers in Louisville, Kentucky during their visits to church as members of their local choir.  Realizing their talents the two nurtured and decided to transport their roots to Los Angeles in 1997 after graduating from the University of Evansville. Settling into the Silverlake community which has helped artists such as Elliott Smith and Silversun Pickups the two started off as backup singers for a local band, Slydell. It was only a matter of time before they made an encounter that would change their lives forever. Jenny Lewis (lead singer of Rilo Kiley) was already a fervent female presence within the musical world and in 2006 the twins shared their vocal chords to Lewis’ first solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, released via Team Love Records fathered by melody maker Conor Oberst. I remember seeing the threesome on a bitter winter night at Angel Orensanz Foundation. I was immediately struck buy their delicate silhouettes and endearing nervous energy. From there the two picked up fellow band mates Matt Fitzell, Rob Douglas, Brian Lebarton, and Aram Arslanian. Heading into the studio their first EP, Southern Manners prepared them for a heavy touring schedule that included SXSW, Bumbershoot and PopMontreal. Aided by veteran producers Russell Polland and J. Soda tracks on their album were stripped to down to the roots and the versions you hear are ‘all analog recordings’ which showcase Chandra and Leigh’s bewitching and incredibly controlled musical brilliance. Growing from each venture within the business and making all the right moves these two ladies are not stopping anytime soon. Planning to tour for the next few weeks and hopefully heading for Europe in the fall in support of Fire Songs these sisters are loved and supported by legendary label, Vanguard records and rightfully have a home amongst some of the most prolific artists America has offered up to the world such as Levon Helm and Joan Baez. This is their second time stopping by KEXP and we could not be more excited to have such lovely ladies return. 

Sheryl: You grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and decided to move to L.A. in 1997. Why did you choose to move to L.A., out of all the music communities?

Chandra: It was kind of by choice, honestly. It wasn’t a specific decision. We had a friend who had called us up, and we had sort of been traveling around looking at different cities, and when our friend called us up and he was like, “Yeah, my roommates are moving out, and I’ve got some rooms open in my house, do you want to come out?” and we kind of had made a pact, my sister and I, that when a door opened, we weren’t going to ask questions, we were just going to go for it, and so the door was open, and I was like, “I guess we’re going.”

Leigh: We had originally thought we wanted to go to New York. We were just more attracted to that city, and we thought it was more “us” but we had sent in an application and everything and thought we got this apartment, and three days, or a week or something before we were moving they called and said somebody had paid a deposit in cash, and so we lost our place. So, at that point, we were like, “we just need to get out of the Midwest.”

Chandra: We needed to get the journey started.

Leigh: We had done six months of traveling around the United States, so we were antsy to get somewhere that we were going to be for a while. So later that week, a call comes in from L.A. and says, “Oh, there’s a space here that’s cheap and you can move in right away,” we were like, “We’ve gotta go.” It was like one door closed and another one opened.

Sheryl: And ever since you’ve been out in L.A.?

Leigh: We have.

Chandra: We have a lot of friends out there from the Midwest, strangely enough, that we went to college with, so we moved out there after a pretty large group of friends, and honestly traveling a lot and being on the road, it’s nice to go back and have nice weather and have your friends and a spot, but we do a lot of traveling. We go back home four or five times a year, so we’re traveling around a lot.

Leigh: It definitely can be a tough city, but I think it’s totally what you make of it, and we got lucky enough to meet a collective of people who were all making music and inspiring us to do so, and also getting involved in different projects kept us there. It was like, “oh, we can’t leave, we’re in this band now. We’ve got to give this a chance.” I think in our heart of hearts, we know we won’t be there forever, but for now it seems like the right place to be.

Sheryl: So you started off as background singers for the band called Slydell.

Leigh: We were in that band for five years. We made three records but we never kind of… just performed, and that was…

Chandra: Before MySpace.

Leigh: Yeah, MySpace. Not to date us, but it’s true. We had a hard time breaking out of L.A. We were a 7-8 piece band that could draw 300 people every night we played, but it was just not… none of us could leave our jobs and leave our security. Everybody had a reason why it wasn’t time for them to be on the road. I think that when the band broke up we kind of felt like in some ways shattered and in some ways giving us our freedom to go do something else, because were a little burned out with that, I think. So we started kind of dabbling playing our own music and just kind of messing around in the studio, not anything serious, and then we met… well, we already knew Jenny and connected with her musically. We’d been friends before but not through working together. And so at that point, it’s just interesting how it played out. I mean, our band breaks up, and six months later Lewis is calling us up saying, “do you guys want to sing backup vocals for me?” Uh, yeah…

Chandra: Oh, I guess so.

Leigh: It’s so casual. Rilo Kiley and our band, we were all playing gigs in the same clubs, sometimes the same nights, going to see each other’s shows. It was definitely like everybody was coming up together. And so I feel like at that point we already had some sort of rapport, and she said, “I’m gonna come over, and play you guys some songs, and if you’re into it, cool. If not, don’t worry about it.” And so we sat down, the three of us, and within minutes we were singing Rise Up With Fists!! exactly how you hear it recorded. It was so instinctual and natural for the three of us. She grew up singing with her sister and mom, and we’ve always sang with each other, and so it just felt comfortable for all of us.

Sheryl: Since the first two projects you were associated with as backup singers, during this time were you writing your own songs?

Chandra: We had always been playing. We were doing little coffee shop gigs and such, and I think, looking back, it was sort of a time where we were exploring writing, and being a backup singer is great if you’re a singer, because it’s like, you get to be on stage, and you get to be in film and music but you don’t have to take the weight of the lead singer, the pressure of “I have to entertain these people, and if someone screws up they’re going to know.” You don’t hear an “ooh” behind something, people think maybe you’re changing it up or something, but the pressure of knowing you missed a chord or you missed a lyric or you’re not emoting in a certain way, performing a certain way, can change how everyone is perceiving that project.

Leigh: During that time we were actually building our skills as singers and as performers and getting more comfortable on stage. Even though that was what we were doing at the time, it was more like studying in school, I felt like I was learning all these new skills, and I was sort of this apprentice under Jenny and other singers, and I would think, “I love the way she embraces that, or her spirit, and she has to get up in front of all these people.” All of these things you take note of help you develop your own skills. And so I think, timing-wise, we needed that time to grow as singers and performers and players.

Sheryl: And that was your first time touring, probably?

Chandra: We had our first gigs on the weekends and such, but we traveling so much as kids. I think for Leigh and I, we were 17 and we had a car and we got out.

Leigh: Every weekend, we were driving all over, wherever. Chicago, Pennsylvania, Florida, wherever we wanted.

Chandra: And our mom was always… we always drove, like we always went on trips and vacations together every year, to go see family who lived far away. So we kind of spent… it was familiar, my mom driving the van, and 16 hours on vacation.

Leigh: It was definitely kind of training for what we do now. It’s kind of in our blood to be nomadic wonders, and it feels at home, doing that. It’s something where the road definitely is harder, but it also becomes easier for some people than others, and I think for us, it’s kind of part of us.

Chandra: And we have each other.

Sheryl: Since you’re so comfortable on the road, do you do a lot of writing on the road?

Leigh: It depends. Some of the songs on the new record were written on the road, but sometimes you get home for a while and we get settled in, and all that stuff kind of is up inside.

Sheryl: So did you study music in school?

Leigh: She was a theater major, I was an art major.

Chandra: Creative types, though.

Leigh: We were in a musical. It was called Nine, it was a takeoff of Fellini’s 8½, a musical takeoff of that, and that was pretty insane. There were 22 women and one guy. We did dance numbers and singing, and it was really fun.

Chandra: You know Rabbit Fur Coat, that show was very theatrical, and we had a good time. It’s fun for us. We like making things interesting. I think for this record, for us, we kind of wanted to take a step away from it all and say, “This is who we are as real people.” We’re happy to play roles, and do different things, we love being part the creative projects like that, but we also wanted to give people a chance to see who we are, and what our music is, and all about getting to know us.

Sheryl: Your record label is such an amazing old beautiful establishment. Are you just happy about that?

Leigh: We were scared at first. Getting another party involved is scary, because you’re letting go, and we’re both control freaks.

Chandra: One of the charming things about our personalities.

Leigh: Yeah, I feel like, more than anything their history was something we were definitely drawn to, but just the people at the label, personality-wise just clicked with them. They are really some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Chandra: And they really care about the music, they care about our project and really trying to help us. And after doing it on your own for so long, finding people who are just as invested as you are is really refreshing and exciting. It’s definitely helped us a lot.

Sheryl: How much longer are you on tour?

Leigh: We’re just out until July 29, the rest of this month, and then we have a few shows in August, on the west coast.

Chandra: Hopefully, we’re planning to go back out in the fall, tour Europe and the UK.

Sheryl: Thank you so much.

photos by Jeremy Farmer
review by Sheryl Witlen

There is something to be said about spirit.  James Lewis Carter Ford, aka T Model Ford is a southern gentleman who has enough tales and more salt than most of the young musicians currently on the scene and he is 86 years young. Born in the town of Forrest within the small community of Scott County, Mississippi he has since fathered four albums and is currently touring with Seattle’s own Gravelroad in support of his latest release, Jack Daniel’s Time. But James did not always play the guitar, flirting with the ladies from his perch and chocking out whiskey soaked lyrics.  Here is a man who has weathered the southern wilds of our country working his family farm at the young age of 11 spending his days toiling behind a plow in the hot Mississippi sun. Rumor has it his father was an incredibly hard working man and as his keeper, rarely allowed James to ever leave the farm, not even for proper schooling until he was 17. From there he worked various handy man jobs at a sawmill, a logging camp and as a truck driver. He has stumbled upon hard times, serving two years of a ten year jail term and lived through 5 marriages. At the gentile age of 58 James received his first guitar and tested his hand at Howlin’ Wolf and went on to record four records Pee-Wee Get My Gun (1997), You Better Keep Still (1999), She Ain’t None of Your’n (2000), and Bad Man (2002) all of which were released via Fat Possum Records. His most recent album, Jack Daniels’ Time was released on Mudpuppy Records and features the classic T-Model Ford howling stylistics and rough ragged guitar rhythms. An old soul who should not and cannot be challenged or rushed it is clear he is in command and enjoying himself. Cat calling the ladies and making eyes the force of which would make even the most stodgy of ladies blush he is so talented you cannot help but let go and enjoy a sound that sets America and the Southern tradition of blues apart from anywhere else in the world. Gently rocking his guitar and grooving with closed eyes everyone witnessing his performance is the luckier for it. Gravel Road have the fortunate opportunity to tour with him for their combined upcoming fall schedule.  James is usually a minimalist, playing with his drummer Spam sometimes even on his local haunt, Nelson Street in Greenville, South Missouri, it is apparent he is a man who is enjoying his time as a contributor to the Delta based-music community. Stefan Z (on guitar and vocals), Martin R (on drums, vocals), Jon “Kirby” N (on bass, guitar) make up Gravelroad. Talented blues musicians in their own right they are in store for the time of their life keeping up with James and are enjoying every second of the adventure. Introduced during a festival Martin glows with the mention of working with such an incredible presence and within five seconds of meeting James you completely understand why. It is magical to know that some musicians truly are making music just like they used to in the good olden days. Rough, dry, sparse, volatile, hot and rare T-Model Ford and Gravelroad make such beautiful sounds together you feel honored that James was able to live through all he has to be reborn into a truly brilliant singer and songwriter. 

photos by Jeremy Farmer
review and interview by Sheryl Witlen

It is easy to see why Chicago loves Pretty Good Dance Moves. The threesome recently won a place among the Top 10 on FameCast, an online artist discovery site that tallies votes from it’s viewers, allowing them to voice their affection for their favorite performances which in turn garnered the band placement in Billboard magazine. The band is the baby of both Jimmy Giannopoulos and Aaron Allietta who spent many afternoons experimenting with different synthetic sounds and complicated electronic melodies all the while searching for that something special in the form of a female presence for their collaborations. Enter Genevieve Schatz, chanteuse extraordinaire. Jimmy and Genevieve  (also of Chicago’s Company of Thieves) are the voices of PGDM, flirting and playing off one another in a constant male/female contest of skill and strength. Where Genevieve sounds wispy and alluring Jimmy tosses his game right back with moody and mellow undertones keeping their atmospheric affects grounded.  Theirs is music that makes you gently sway and groove to the minimalistic sounds of the violin, xylophone and keyboard beats. Genevieve invites her audience to “come and dance with me… we’ll shed our demons dancing” with such sensuality and innocence one cannot help but want to join her for the journey. Aaron might seem like he is in the background since he is the only member of the band who does not have a vocal presence but without his adept performance on keyboard Pretty Good Dance Moves would be stranded on a stark dance floor searching for a beat to call their own. Here is a sound technician and musician in one, proudly boasting of discovering his talents with the help of a “closet of keyboards.” Most of their songs center around the age old traditional chase between males and females discovering and losing love. The circular repetition of this ritual translates into looping rhythms and repetitive lyrical passages. On their single that bares the same name as the band Genevieve confesses her frustrations and illusions calling out to the unknown, “I will never understand…” Taking advantage of residing in both Chicago and Brooklyn (Jimmy recently moved to Williamsburg), the band has been soaking up the best of both music communities and hopes to give back to woo their eagerly awaiting audiences with stellar, passionate performances. Their first EP, PGDM was released back in January and recently David Wolf (who has worked with the likes of Canada’s Crystal Castles) took their track, “Demons Dancing” for spiced up-remixed version which you can check out on the band’s MySpace page. As they’re planning to release a full album soon, Pretty Good Dance Moves are sure to be one of the most touted bands of 2008. 

Sheryl: So you just released your EP in January and you’ve been touring a lot in Chicago. Do you have plans for a national tour?

Aaron: Well actually, like I said [on the air], this was the first live show that we did. Originally it was a studio project that Jimmy and I started, and then once we met Genevieve the chemistry with all three of us clicked really well, and that kind of became the core trio, and, literally, like we were saying during our interview with John, we literally finished the album last night, five hours ago, so I think the plan is now to try and do some CMJ shows and then from there, just kind of get our name out and hopefully support another group, maybe, if there was a tour. We haven’t even talked about it, but we’d probably be talking about next spring.

Jimmy: We’d be opening for a band called Company of Thieves.

Sheryl: How convenient. (laughter) How did you all meet? You were with Company of Thieves (to Genevieve). Were you two with another band, or…

Jimmy: Yeah, it’s actually kind of interesting. We’ve known each other for a while. I recorded here in his studio years ago… when was that thing?

Genevieve: Maybe four years ago, I was seventeen at the time…

Jimmy: Like four years ago, yeah. So we were working with somebody that was working with her as well, in her old band, so we kind of, you know…

Aaron: Discovered this incestuousness in Chicago music community. Just to give you an example, the other day when I was talking to Genevieve, she said, “Oh, yeah, I was at a party at your house like three years ago.” It’s like we all know kind of each other and we hear each other’s bands and we heard her sing and then we both agreed we’d love to have her do some stuff on our album. That was the original idea, to just get some nice female vocals, and it just kind of clicked, and we thought we should just do this all the time.

Jimmy: We looked at a bunch of different female vocalists and, we just thought, “Nah.” At first we were like, oh, we don’t need one, but then it was like, yes we need someone-we definitely need it. I mean, it’s a HUGE part.

Aaron: It’s like a give and take, with his voice and the presence of the female vocals.

Sheryl: I think what you said is key, though. It’s like a community in Chicago. I’m from New York, actually, and Brooklyn is the same way, local bands support local bands, and take each other on tour, and it really helps.

Aaron: That would be ideal. We could do a Company of Thieves and Pretty Good Dance Moves tour thing.

Sheryl: So, Jimmy, you live in Brooklyn now?

Jimmy: Yeah.

Sheryl: How do you split the time?

Jimmy: I just come back a lot. I just got out of here because I needed to get out of here, so I just picked up and started from scratch. Met a bunch of people, i’ve really gotten into the music scene with all of these musicians out there, like you said. It’s a really tight — my friends and all these people and we all know each other, we all hang out, we all work together at bars, and I’ve really just gotten involved in that, which is great. I commute back and forth, and it’s great for us, because we can play out there now, and we’ve actually turned it into demand, because we’ve never played a show so everyone’s, “when are you gonna play, when are you gonna play, where’s the CD?” and now we can actually say we’re going to play, and hopefully they will come, instead of saying, “Hey, you’ve never heard my music, but here’s my CD, listen to it. Like it? Come tomorrow.”

Aaron: I’ve been playing in bands for about ten years, and I think after a while you learn that you can either take the approach of, we’re just going to play show after show after show, and throw the CD around, but I think the approach that we took is good, so many more people know about this band than any other band I’ve created, and now you can play a show. I mean, you can spend your energy in so many better ways, and focus on making the album sound good, and if you waste your time doing three or four shows a week, it just drains you.

Sheryl: There is something to be said about working from the grounds up: hitting the streets, getting everybody excited, shooting music videos, and just have a heavy presence on the web, but it has to be refreshing to have the demand already out there, looming. Is that how you were discovered by David Wolf, he is a pretty big deal having worked with Crystal Castles. Due to your presence on the blogs?

Jimmy: He does a couple of songs on their record, he does remixes for them, for Of Montreal, a bunch of bands we loved. I listened to his stuff, I said this guy’s great-shared it with Aaron and Genevieve.

Aaron: We did an opening DJ set for Crystal Castles, probably a month and a half ago. When we did that we were checking them out, and we heard, David’s Wolf remix stuff was great.

Jimmy: Yeah, we said, we have some songs, would you be interested, and he said, absolutely. We sent him the tracks.

Aaron: And he did an amazing job of it.

Sheryl: Which track was that again?

Aaron: The last song we played Demons Dancing, he did a remix of that, it’s this real club beat kind of thing.

Sheryl: So Aaron, you mentioned you have a closet full of keyboards.

Aaron: We have… my friend Tim and I, we co-run a recording studio up in Lincoln Square, at Montrose and Damen, and, like I said… I grew up playing classical piano, and I used to play jazz piano in college, and over the years with the different bands, I accumulated all these keyboards, and when Jimmy and I became friends, we were bartending together, his idea was that he wanted to do songs but not from that singer-songwriter — at least what I bring to the band is different arrangement ideas, using different kinds of instrumentation, and I thought we should do the keyboard-bass kind of thing. Every band I’ve ever played in has been that traditional drums-guitar-bass, and as a keyboardist you’re limited to how you’re structurally fitting that in and texturally to be able to go completely overboard with keyboards is my dream, it’s fun.

Sheryl: A lot of bands are experimenting more and more with not using the traditional instruments. Are there any ones that you guys particularly like, that you’re into now?

Aaron: All sorts of things

Jimmy: A lot of things. Of course, there’s a lot of newer bands that come out, like MGMT, which is pretty cool, and they’ve got a lot of interesting things-they sound like an actual band, but they do electronic. It’s really cool, what they do, and people are noticing them, so that’s fun to have.

Aaron: Keyboard-bass bands, like The Album Leaf, and Sigur Ros, those two bands. How it’s mixed, or volume-wise, I feel like they’re kind of like they are a good inspiration and starting block for us.

Sheryl: Well, thank you, you all sounded great, we were super excited to have you.

Aaron, Jimmy, & Genevieve: Thank you.

^{photo by Jeremy Farmer}

Yesterday at Engine Studios, we hosted four incredibly talented bands — Mahjongg, Sleep Out, Au, and The Chamber Strings — each very different from each other. The most unique group of all had to be Mahjongg, whose assault of electronic and organic beats was both weirdly experimental and groovingly familiar. Check it out now as your bonus Live Performances podcast. You’ll get two more of these this week, one for each day we’re broadcasting at Engine.

Subscribe to KEXP podcasting here.

• Whistler’s first music festival will begin at the Blackcomb Tube Park this Friday. Performers will include Broken Social Scene, The Roots, Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Thievery Corporation, and the Allen Toussaint Band. KEXP has been giving away tickets to the festival on air, and today is the last day for your chance to win! Tune in the the Morning and Midday shows.

• This upcoming Saturday The Saturday Knights will perform at its Second Annual TSK Doughnut Eating Contest at Seattle’s own Top Pot Donuts.

• Feist breaks onto the Sesame Street scene:

• Tonight VH1 airs its salute to The Who, with covers by Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Flaming Lips, Incubus and Tenacious D, topped by a performance by the band itself.  The concert took place last Saturday at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.

• Guns N’ Roses has announced that “Shackler’s Revenge,” the first track from GNR’s long-awaited Chinese Democracy, will premiere in the Harmonix Music Systems video game Rock Band II, due for release this September.  The game will also feature, among others, Bob Dylan, Modest Mouse, Nirvana, AC/DC, Talking Heads, Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth, Devo, Lush, and The Replacements.  Find the full track list — and some outraged commentary — here.

• Oasis has announced its seventh album, Dig Out Your Soul, will be released October 6th.  Recorded at London’s Abbey Road, the album follows 2005’s Don’t Believe the Truth.

Death. It hangs out patiently, or not so, beside us. I’ve come close to it three times. When I was 6, I got scarlet fever and chicken pox at the same time. My fever was so high that my mom (who was a nurse) and dad rushed me to the emergency room, where my dad refused to let any staff put me in an ice bath. To this day he says that’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done, frightening his scared kid even more — plunging her into the ice bath — to save her life.

After the ice bath, they put me in a hospital room by myself. They gave me penicillin, which I’m allergic to. So I had hives on top of everything else. Teams of doctors (with interns I guess) would come into the room. I was 6 but tiny and looked about 4, so they would talk in front of me about my slim chances of survival. My mom brought me lots of presents (this was very suspicious) and my evil older brother called and said he loved me. I knew I was going to die.

I remember distinctly one night in the dark hospital room pressing the call button. A very sweet nurse came in and talked me through my fears and gave me a popsicle. To this day I am touched by the kindness of people like this. If you think you don’t affect others with small deeds, it’s not true.

Anyway, one day I felt better. I remember jumping up and down on the hospital bed with my stuffed rabbit singing “I’m gon-na live, I’m gon-na live!”. I was changed forever.

More recently, in the past 12 years I’ve had 2 horrible car accidents. In one I hit a semi-truck head on in my tiny Honda hatchback (a Freightliner, I will never forget the logo or the squeak of its brakes) in the other a 20-year old kid in an SUV (I despise huge vehicles, they are so dangerous to other cars, and destructive to the environment, don’t get me started) hit me from behind, destroying my beat-up convertible and my life for about 2 years.

Every moment of my life I feel death with me. It is a very good thing. (I know this sounds weird, but it’s true.) It informs every moment. Inspires me to take chances and live fully. It scares me into being brave. I don’t waste time. I don’t have people close to me that I can’t trust. And I don’t truck with indirectness.

Once in a while there comes an album that gives me the feeling that I need. That rare fleeting taste of celebration and satisfaction. Cut Copy’s 2008 album In Ghost Colours is that album for me this summer. It’s everything I want in a summer record: it’s personal, individual, honest, emotional, upbeat and danceable. And it has these explosive rhythm hits that are the audio equivalent of the 4th of July. No song makes me happier right now that this song “Lights and Music”:

So this Friday at midnight, in the 4th hour of rockin (and enjoying with everything I’ve got) my show Nite Life (which starts at 9pm) I’ll play you this band from Melbourne, Australia. Tell my little story. And this Thursday at 3pm the first of my new KEXP Documentaries series “Death, Drugs and Rock n Roll” airs. Inspirational stories about death and rock n roll. Go figure.