[last year's girl]

“i don’t like autobiographical songs”: the david bazan interview;

Published on February 8, 2010 in music. 3 Comments Tags: catholic school hangover, curse your branches, david bazan, interviews.

Curse Your Branches – technically the first solo full-length from one-time Pedro the Lion frontman David Bazan – was one of my favourite 2009 releases (you can read my review here). I got the chance to catch up with him before last week’s show at Stereo, marking the album’s release on UK soil, and we spent most of the time talking about religion and roadtrips.

BUY: Curse Your Branches at Amazon.co.uk

Is it different being on your own on the road, rather than with a band like Pedro the Lion?
The basic stuff is: you don’t move quite as much air when you’re playing the show… The camaraderie is different too. This time I’m actually with other musicians who aren’t actually in my band [support act POSTDATA], but we still hang out, so that’s nice. But yes, it’s different in the ways that you’d expect – especially if I’m in the United States, and a lot of times I’ll be driving around just… alone for five or six weeks. That has its own charm though – just driving around anywhere is really pleasant.

What’s your favourite thing about touring?
The only thing I don’t like is being away from my family. I do like driving – I’ve been on a bus tour, before, where all the driving happened at night and it was also fun, but I missed seeing the country: just looking out of the window and stopping at all of the gas stations. When you drive at night, you just sleep the whole time and wake up in the city. There’s even something about going to towns and not getting to see anything in the town itself that is okay with me – just because I feel as if I have a purpose.

In my head, your album will always be connected with driving through America because I bought it when I was over there. There’s something about “the road” in US culture that we just can’t replicate over here because everything’s on a much smaller scale.
Yeah, you can drive for hours and hours between… anything. I like driving over there. I’ve never driven myself here – I’ve always been driven by somebody else – and that’s fun too.

So stepping back a little to your previous work with Pedro the Lion – do you find that the writing process is different when you know that the songs will be going out with your name attached?
The writing process has evolved over the years, but not really with respect to what “brand name” I’m using – with the exception of Headphones; that was a specific project where everything was written on keyboards. It had already become something else when I was writing Achilles Heel, and then it has continued to change with the first two Bazan releases. I played everything on the records, and that’s how a lot of the Pedro the Lion records were done too. It was different with Achilles Heel because I had some other people around; [bandmate TW] Walsh played some drums, some guitar – and then with Curse Your Branches there was also a couple of other people around. But in general, it’s morphed on its own, independent of whether I’m playing the songs solo or with a band.

I first heard “Harmless Sparks” on a 2007 Daytrotter session. How long did the album, and its specific theme which I hope we can address later, take to come together?
I think I actually wrote the melody to “Bless This Mess” in 2005. I had some filler lyrics, but I had written them not thinking I would really be able to use them because it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I could finish. In that sense, I’ve had some of the songs floating around since then when I was trying to write the next Pedro the Lion record after the Headphones record came out. Curse Your Branches was basically finished towards the end of 2008, and it probably took the better part of two years to write and record everything in the midst of touring 250 days a year and moving my workspace four different times. There was a lot going on then, but I was writing and trying to record that whole time.

Did those early songs feel like Pedro the Lion songs, or did they feel like a part of something different?
I always wanted to make something different anyway. I’ve always pined to make slightly less conventional music – slightly weirder instrumental arrangements or things that weren’t based on me strumming cowboy chords and then adding drums and bass. They did feel different – at least “Bless This Mess” did – but to me that was exciting and not incompatible with any band name I was using.

Continue reading ‘“i don’t like autobiographical songs”: the david bazan interview;’

photo of the week // week 5;

Published on February 7, 2010 in photography. 0 Comments Tags: glasgow, photography.

water, water, everywhere;

Published on February 4, 2010 in campaigns & charities. 13 Comments Tags: forty days of water, fundraising, madness, rachelle renee, sciaf.

I seem to make a bit of a habit of making most of my decisions at midnight. But here’s a little bit of background:

Last year, my good friend Rachelle Renée completed blood:water mission’s Forty Days of Water challenge, raising money to help bring water to those areas of Africa where a substance which we take for granted is in scarce supply, and often contaminated. This year, she has inspired me to do the same.

For the forty days of Lent, from 17th February – 3rd April, I will drink only water – donating the money I would have spent on other beverages to SCIAF. This means no Starbucks, no ice cold Coca-Cola… and no gin. Given that Lent this year includes the birthdays of my best friend, my brother AND my sister it’s going to be a tough one, but I’m confident I can make it with the help and support of my friends and family – and hopefully raise a fair bit of money along the way!

Okay, I might take a little break during Julie’s hen weekend. I’m not COMPLETELY insane.

I’ve chosen SCIAF, the official aid and international development charity of the Catholic Church in Scotland, as the recipient of any funds I raise here and I encourage you to dig deep to help. SCIAF is a charity I have supported since school, through their “Lent boxes” and associated campaigns, and I raised a fair bit of money thanks to the generosity of my customers at the old Somerfield, Johnstone during their annual “24-Hour Sponsored Fast” (as supported by Tommy Burns and Ally McCoist!) several years ago.

SCIAF works in over 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America to help some of the poorest people in the world – regardless of religion – to work their way out of poverty, championing long-term aid and development projects helping people affected by conflict, hunger, HIV/AIDS, lack of healthcare and disability. SCIAF also provides emergency response to humanitarian disasters, most recently including helping the survivors of the Haitian earthquake. Here in Scotland, SCIAF campaigns to address the underlying causes of global poverty and injustice such as unfair trade and national debt by lobbying governments, businesses and international organisations to bring about long term and positive change.

With just under two weeks to go until I begin, I’ve actually drunk nothing but water this morning – but I don’t see that lasting, and I’m sure this blog will descend into moans a plenty by the time I get started. I really think this is something I ought to do though, and I would appreciate any support you are able to give – psychologically as well as monetary!

Please visit my JustGiving page to donate – and spread the word!

burning the bowery, and other stories;

Published on February 3, 2010 in music. 3 Comments Tags: jesse malin, joanna newsom, new albums, the gaslight anthem, the national.

This year is already shaping up to be a healthy one for albums from my favourites. I’ve been listening to The National on repeat a lot of late, and the as-yet-untitled follow-up to their blog-busting Boxer is scheduled for release in May. Says songwriter Matt Berninger:

We started out trying to make a fun pop record. I had the word HAPPINESS taped to my wall. We veered off that course immediately. We’ve narrowed it down to about 15 songs now and it’s going to be our best record (one song you can dance to) but it can’t be described as happy.

Cannot. Wait. Tour dates are already beginning to emerge, but there’s only one scheduled for the UK at present – 6th May at none other than the Royal Albert Hall, which I can’t see as being anything other than pretty freaking special indeed.

Details are also beginning to emerge for my man Malin’s next release. Jesse Malin and new band St Marks Social – perhaps a deliberate billing to mess up iTunes libraries everywhere, given the artist’s legendary contempt for the digital? – will release Love It To Life on Side One Dummy Records, 27th April 2010. And to celebrate? The band have an NYC residency at the Bowery Electric over February and March. Jealous? Me?

I’d list the dates, but I may as well just direct you to the website in a funk

Malin’s current labelmates The Gaslight Anthem are rumoured to have a new release later this year as well, and I’m also getting pretty excited for Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming triple album!!!!, Have One On Me.

What releases are you looking forward to in the next couple of months?

Coming up on LYG later this week, or as soon as I get around to it: an exclusive interview (!) with David Bazan, and a review of the new Frightened Rabbit album.

because four chords won’t do // and three chords won’t do;

Published on February 2, 2010 in music. 0 Comments Tags: album reviews, andrew vincent, live reviews, rotten pear, that one song.

Andrew Vincent on stage at Brel, 28th January

This is why I love music. The crazy coincidences. The way “that one song” can grab you and change your world. Like, the day some mailshot lands in your inbox, and you click through and the first song you hear is this pretty little acoustic song and it’s all about the day some guy heard some other song that you love on the radio, and it grabbed him and it changed his world. And it just so happens that that pretty little acoustic song was about Jay Reatard, this punk singer from Memphis and his “There Is No Sun”, and it just so happens that Reatard died last week and you didn’t realise how much it was going to affect you.

A pretty little acoustic song about some dead punk rock kid who was mad as all shit. I never saw that one coming.

Andrew Vincent was a punk rocker, once. You maybe wouldn’t guess on first listen to Rotten Pear, his most recent release under his own name, but the band were called Andrew Vincent and the Pirates and they kicked around Ottawa, Canada for much of the earlier part of the decade. I’m not sure about the details – that’s something I get to look into later, I guess – but the Jay Reatard song isn’t even on the album and it could have so easily not have been the first thing I heard. I could have liked it, but not loved it, and I could have stayed in on Thursday night instead of going to his show at Brel and heading home with a song in my heart and a smile that just about lasted me right through the weekend. I could have missed a top night courtesy of Instinctive Raccoon – the duelling guitars and delicate whimsy of Every Genius Delivers and Andrea Marini, with his voice like one of the old-time records and a music that is wild and black and red. “I can’t be subtle when I’m burning,” he sings, sweet-voiced violinist Eileen with her whispery voice like a young Isobel Campbell interlocking, sending shivers up the spine.

Rotten Pear sounds a bit like Jonathan Richman. Actually, that’s too simplistic. You know what it actually sounds like? It sounds as if Vincent wrote the whole thing in a bus shelter in an afternoon, piecing together pencil sketches of passers-by on acoustic guitar and accordion. You’d toss a coin in his guitar case almost as an afterthought, then stop half a minute up the road when a snatched line caught your attention. It might have been the one about the bums who make a living picking up tin cans in the street; it might have been the one which namedrops the Everley Brothers or that Wreckless Eric song you fell in love all over again to one night on the sofa. It might, in fact, be the one just called “Bus Stop” – the smears on the windows and the lights from the traffic jam, and those mixed-up teenage love affairs you always wonder about the endings to.

Rotten Pear is out in Canada through Kelp Records, a label with an ear for a quirky, charming singer-songwriter – it was Jim Bryson, sometime bandmate and tour-partner of Kathleen Edwards, that brought Jon Bartlett’s outfit to my attention and I have adored Kelp ever since. I wonder, is it something about the Canadian water that creates the kind of lyricists you fall hard for? Starting with the Weakerthans (who, incidentally, Bryson has recorded with recently), I seem to have more room in my heart for the country’s wordsmiths than any other. Maybe it’s that the weather is as temperamental as it is here – I don’t know. In Vincent’s case, it’s “Fooled Again” with its stripped down guitar and mischievous wordplay that hits me the hardest:

fooled myself again last month
thought I was some kind of punk
shaved my head and pretended
my youth had never ended
but then I saw myself reflected in that store window…

And “Canadian Dream”, from the album, was nominated as Most Canadian Song by the CBC, but Vincent prefers this other one he plays live, about looking down into Michigan and dreaming of sneaking over the border to the land of milk and honey and roadtrips and rock music. There are days I think I can sympathise.

DOWNLOAD: Andrew Vincent – Fooled Again
LISTEN: to Andrew Vincent at Myspace
BUY: Rotten Pear and more Andrew Vincent directly from Kelp Records

photo of the week // week 4;

Published on January 30, 2010 in blogging & pixlet and photography. 2 Comments Tags: photography, scotblogs awards.

Oh, and…

!!!!

i will melt the snow from your heart: last month’s mix, january 2010;

Published on January 28, 2010 in music. 6 Comments Tags: andrew vincent, gigs, monthly mix club, monthly most played.

This entry is part 22 of 22 in the series monthly mix club

There is something cosy about much of this first mix, as the world starts to thaw and we get our teeth into the year proper.

And I get my teeth into Dirty Projectors, eight months after the rest of the blogosphere.

Canadian singer-songwriter Andrew Vincent is my first great musical obsession of 2010, and as chance would have it he is playing at Brel tonight and Sneaky Pete’s tomorrow for you Edinburgh types. Maybe see you there?

If You Fall In Love, You Should Jump Right In: last month’s mix, January 2010
1. Tegan and Sara: “Sentimental Tune”
2. Kevin Devine: “The Burning City Smoking”
3. Mason Jennings: “New York City”
4. Norah Jones: “Jesus, Etc”
5. Vic Chesnutt: “Dodge”
6. The Second Hand Marching Band: “Grit and Determination”
7. Langhorne Slim: “I Love You, But Goodbye”
8. Jim White: “Ghost Town of My Brain”
9. Futurebirds: “Dirty D”
10. Dirty Projectors: “No Intention”
11. Burning Hearts: “I Lost My Colour Vision”
12. The Sandwitches: “No No”
13. Kristin Hersh: “Bliss”
14. Jeff Klein: “Everything Is Alright”
15. Andrew Vincent: “I Heard There Is No Sun”

[ZIPPED .MP3S, LEFT-CLICK AND SAVE]

Monthly Most Played after the jump.

Continue reading ‘i will melt the snow from your heart: last month’s mix, january 2010;’

we had some massive nights;

Published on January 24, 2010 in music. 3 Comments Tags: franz nicolay, mp3s, the hold steady.

Franz and Galen of The Hold Steady, SECC (supporting Counting Crows), May 2009

The Hold Steady’s website reports that Franz Nicolay – keys, red wine and flamboyance – has left the band to concentrate on what I can only assume are his solo projects.

As gutted as I am about this – Nicolay’s onstage persona and mischievous interplay with bassist Galen Polivka was one of the most enjoyable things about my favourite band’s live shtick – Jay has pointed out that it’s not as if he played on the earlier albums and this could see an exciting shift in sound away from what the Hold Steady totally nailed on their last two albums.

All the best, Franz – thanks for the ‘tache, the fun and the memories. This little blog will certainly be paying attention whatever you get up to next.

DOWNLOAD: Franz Nicolay – X-Games
DOWNLOAD: The Dresden Dolls (ft. Franz Nicolay) – Ballad of a Teenage Queen
BUY: Major General at Amazon.co.uk

an idea whose time has come;

Published on January 23, 2010 in catholic school hangover and current affairs. 5 Comments Tags: assisted suicide, catholic school hangover, debbie purdy, diane pretty, end of life choices (scotland) bill, legalese, margo macdonald.

MSP Margo Macdonald’s assisted suicide bill has was published on Thursday, ready for debate in the Scottish Parliament. Veteran politician MacDonald, who has Parkinson’s disease, has championed the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, which aims to make it legal for somebody suffering from a terminal illness to seek help to end his or her life from a registered medical professional.

Christmas 2008 feels like a past life in many ways, but having the opportunity to interview MacDonald as part of my then-role as editor of a legal magazine was, to date, the proudest moment of my journalistic career. The proposals were then at consultation stage, and her working party were clearly taking the time to analyse and respond to each submission – whether for or against, a formal report or a handwritten, passionate letter – in detail. Although clearly very ill, she spoke with eloquence and passion about what she saw as a question of private autonomy, not of some public moral standpoint:

“The reason why this is such a challenging piece of legislation is that it is absolutely at the interface of public policy and private morality,” she told me. “But if a society can consider that sort of thing calmly, and clearly, it’s good for them to grow.”

Six and a half years after my dissertation on the Diane Pretty case and the need for some kind of clarity or reform in the case of assisted suicide, I remain on the fence about the issue. My gut tells me that, never having been in the situation myself or having had a loved one reach that point, any argument I could put forward in the alternative would be philosophical at best; and that people that desperate will always find a way (the increasing media coverage of “suicide tourism” to countries such as Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal is testament to that). My brain tells me that, as a civilised society, public debate of this kind is necessary and healthy. And twelve years of Catholic education reminds me that all life is sacred, in whatever form – indeed, the Catholic Church has already vowed to take any and all steps in its power to block any resulting legislation in the courts, citing the right to life guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights (interestingly enough, the same argument that motor neurone disease sufferer and euthanasia rights campaigner Pretty used in favour of assisted suicide).

So what happens now? Well, in order for a bill to be passed as law it has to be scruitinised by the relevant Parliamentary committees, before facing several open votes. Proposed legislation is often voted for on a party basis using a system of “whips”, but due to the moral questions posed by the End of Life Choices Bill each MSP is to be allowed a free vote.

Public opinion on assisted suicide is changing, with a number of recent high profile cases – names like Daniel James and Debbie Purdy – making headlines. As a result of the latter’s legal battle for clarification of the law relating to assisted suicide, the English director of public prosecutions issued guidance last year indicating that he was unlikely to take legal action against those who assist the suicide of friends or relatives who have a settled and informed wish to die. No such guidance has as yet been issued in Scotland.

During our interview, I asked MacDonald why she thought so many cases had come to light at once. “I think more of us are living longer, and modern news coverage has made people more aware,” she replied.

“But perhaps there is a metaphysical reason – perhaps the time is now right. It’s possible that this is an idea that’s time has come.”

Regardless of your standpoint on what is undoubtedly an emotive issue, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.