Do you remember those English teachers that made you turn in the gigantic term papers at the end of the school year in a big yellow envelope filled with notecards, outlines and rough drafts? I’m that English teacher. The mention of my name this time of year is likely to spark a multitude of emotions, particularly a healthy mix of dread and outrage. If I were to go spy on the facebook pages of my students, I’d no doubt find a slew of insults, swearing, and outright threats streaming down their update threads. Sometimes I laugh because I’m in complete agreement with their frustration. On one hand, I understand kids need to know how to communicate in an organized way, but on the flip side, I have no freaking clue why I assign so much work at the end of the year.
As I sit down to write this post, I’ve got a stack of essays about knee-high sitting over in the corner of my den barking at me to grade them. I just don’t wanna. Who really enjoys sitting down to read seven pages of mildly intelligent babble about a topic that’s been rehashed and redone by at least one student in every high school in America annually?
I’m beginning to think I should have my students write their term papers as music critiques. You heard me, what if I slid each student an indie rock album based on their own particular interests. For my Zep kids, I’d hand them a Black Mountain CD, and for my already-hipster students I’d have to dig deep and throw something super obscure at them. I’d have them research bands and connect mainstream success versus independent musical freedom, all while honing in the basics of proper research and documentation. Shit yeah, this assignment is going to be big. What student is going to bitch and moan about an assignment where they get to ultimately do what they love (analyze and listen to tunes)?
Aside from being the coolest teacher in the history of mankind, I think I’d also be the orchestrator of an assignment bearing weight and value. Pop Culture media has our balls in the proverbial clenched fist, and the automated youth culture is in need of critical thinking. It’s my firm belief that some kids think everything they need to know has already been figured out and is available on wikipedia. What would Johnny do if I handed him a Blue Horns CD and told him to research the band? No wikipedia page? Sorry, Johnny, you’re going to have to come stronger than that. I want to turn my classroom into indie rock critics next year. That sounds like a plan…
All of this to explain that I’ve been busy as hell. It’s been tough to sit and listen to albums all the way through this week, as Brian alluded to in yesterday’s Lazy Saturday post. Email is a wonderful thing, however, and we’ve been putting our ears to plenty of upcoming music. As I’ve been driving around, attempting to keep some form of structure in my life during these harried days, I’ve been creating all sorts of interesting playlists to cruise around and jam to whilst I drive. Some are all inclusive, covering music I’ve been listening to all year and can’t get out of my head. Others look a bit more into what’s on tap, as emails have been pouring in with some excellent tracks. If you can manage to find me out there on the road, pull up alongside and tune your radios to 90.7. Here’s a taste of some of the tracks you’re likely to hear this week.
Handsome Furs – Radio Kalininbrad
Hermas Zopoula – Courez Courez
The Raconteurs – Stones Will Shout
Guns N’ Roses – My Michelle
Hoots & Hellmouth – Known for Possession
Magnolia Electric Co. – Josephine
Lissy Trullie – Self-Taught Learner
The Ramones – Blitzkreig Bop
We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices
First up on this (not at all) Lazy Saturday is another canonical act’s new record. I’ve been slowly warming up to reviewing material from living legends (that 
Casper & the Cookies are the Athens, Georgia based brainchild of Jason NeSmith. They started pumping out records in 1998 and have seen a rotating cast of musicians spend time with the band (in fact, NeSmith’s only constant companion has been Kay Stanton). NeSmith rang up some cred during his time with Of Montreal, but the Casper & the Cookies albums continue to be the vehicle for most of his mammoth creative output. Modern Silence is a rambling tour of a slew of musical genres, spanning eighteen tracks and more than an hour. It’s a bit of a jarring listen, in that there’s something different going on in nearly every track, resulting in a kind of whirlwindish feel to the record, but NeSmith, Stanton and company wear a lot of hats well; the record is ambitious in scope and there are more hits than misses, but at times, you kind of wish Casper & the Cookies would pick a musical space to work in and stick to it.
Last on the docket today is British Expeditionary Force, a collaboration between producing/song-writing whiz person Justin Lockey (I was going to go “whiz kid,” but I have no idea how old he is) and vocalist Aid Burrows (He’s a dude. I’m guessing it’s short for Aiden.). The record was constructed in an interesting manner, as Lockey crafted all of the musical parts of the songs and shipped them to Burrows, who then wrote lyrics and sang over the tracks. The two did not meet face-to-face at all during the recording process. This kind of trick is fascinating to me, in that I can barely make dinner reservations without having a face-to-face conversation with somebody. If I tried to record an instrumental track and mail it to someone else for vocals, I probably wouldn’t get past the first bar of the first song (ignoring, of course, the fact that I can’t play any instruments).
First up today is a track from another highly anticipated album that became available for streaming earlier this week, though this is one that I have been very much looking forward to for quite some time. As a pretty huge Mark Linkous fan, when I caught wind of a collaborative project between Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse earlier in the year, I was both skeptical and hopeful. Though I am not a huge fan of Danger Mouse based on my cursory knowledge of his work, I was aware that he is an incredibly creative and diverse musical genius. Though given the elusiveness of Linkous I couldn’t help but think that there was a good chance the project would never actually come to fruition, especially given the mysterious manner in which it was unveiled. I won’t go into the details on all of that because it is pretty well covered in the link to the stream at NPR below, but I will try to provide some Cliffs Notes for those who don’t feel like digging into the whole story. Basically some posters popped up at SXSW this year touting a project between Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse called Dark Night of the Soul with David Lynch’s name attached. Speculation was some sort of musical film, but we later found out that it would be a musical project featuring a host of guests such as Julian Casablancas, Frank Black, James Mercer, Wayne Coyne, and Iggy Pop. The project was to be released along with a book of photos taken by Lynch. As it stands now, the book will be released without music but packaged with a CD-R that you can use “as you will”, supposedly due to issues between the artists and EMI. In any event, the music has been recorded and is available for stream and download around the net and you can order the book from the project’s own website. I selfishly chose the Wayne Coyne track “Revenge” to post below because I have always been a big Flaming Lips fan, and without getting into too much detail I can tell you that it sounds pretty much the way you would expect a Sparklehorse/Flaming Lips collaboration to sound. Check it out and be sure to follow the link to NPR to hear the rest of the tracks from the project.
Today’s vault track actually came to me way back on Monday when I heard it in a movie that I had rented. I was bored and looking for something in the Redbox that sounded mildly interesting, and based on the mini-overview I read the film The Cake Eaters seemed to be just the flick I was pining for. When I popped it in the DVD player I was feeling mighty optimistic when the opening song playing during the intro was “Lay Me Down” by The Frames from their 2001 album For The Birds. Almost immediately I paused the movie, grabbed my laptop, found the song in my iTunes library, and listened to it in its entirety before continuing to watch. In retrospect I should have just spent the next hour and a half listening to the rest of the album a few times because the movie was absolutely awful. It was basically your run of the mill indie ensemble drama where nothing really happens. If you haven’t seen it, the most noteworthy performance is Kristen Stewart’s portrayal of a sexually curious teen that is afflicted with some sort of disease that makes her look like a retard. I was intrigued for a bit because I thought I might see her breasts, but then I realized that she was only 17 when the movie was filmed and then I just felt dirty. But regardless of the cinematic merits of The Cake Eaters (or lack thereof), it was worth the dollar I spent on the rental just to reintroduce myself to a great song from my younger days. “Lay Me Down” is a gorgeous, heartfelt song about being in love with a woman and wishing to one day be buried beside her, though it is often misinterpreted as a dark suicide note. Either way, its one of the most haunting tracks I have ever heard. Try not to cry while you give it a listen.
Andrew Kenny (American Analog Set) and his newest project, The Wooden Birds, just dropped Magnolia into the ether two days ago and even though not much has changed from much of his previous work, what we have is an incredibly controlled set of luminous folk numbers that sooth the soul and bring his vocals front and center. There’s a simplified warmth to the arrangement of each song on the record and it’s just simply a damn good spin. There isn’t a lot of variation stylistically, but the tempo shifts and dives into more brooding tracks keep it alive and full. Kenny’s return to Texas after his stint in Brooklyn and plenty of hefty-hyped sidework seems to have jarred something loose and the chilled out and mellow stance of the album is both pleasant and full of sharp taste.
Of the twelve tracks, nine of them are harmoniously consistent and thoroughly enjoyable; three tracks, however, make this album an intriguing 2009 release worthy of immediate acclaim. The Wooden Birds breaks from the sylistic consistency at periodic intervals throughout the record to bring a shivering sneer to the audience; these numbers are what make it sing. “Sugar” is the first shift at track two, with a badass vocal delivery and a more juicy blues and countrified sound. There’s an immediate nod to Neil Young classic folk balladry, and the mixture of the time-keeping bongos blends the track into dark and brooding . Several more tracks continue on the initial chilled out vibe until the record takes a soft left turn with the album’s best track, “Anna Paula,” where a mere two and a quarter minutes of whiskey drinkin bitter candy is vaulted away from the rest of the pack. It’s plucky and awesome. So young the words won’t come, or to burn your young lungs that you’re breathing out of. The lyrical qualities of many of the songs take a bit of gnawing on to grasp, but the underpinnings of yearning and isolation are everywhere. Regretfully, “Anna Paula” is not the leaked track, or I’d post it twelve times in a row just so you’d get the picture. The last major shift is with “Seven Seventeen,” which interestingly is a duet between Kenny and sidekick vocalist Leslie Sisson. When Kenny starts the song he ponders, She was seven when I was seventeen, and if that’s not enough to draw you into the song, just stop reading this review. Sisson chimes in during the second half of the track, belting out, You still see this fucked up kid, and the intelligent lyricism of this love journey gone haywire is briliantly done and spices up the overall atmosphere of the record.
