You know it’s been a busy week when the announcement of a new album from that favourite band of mine draws no comment on this blog. I did, however, squeal in the staffroom.
Heaven Is Whenever, the fifth studio album from The Hold Steady, is set for release on 4th May (my dad’s birthday!) on Vagrant Records in the US and the day before over here – once again on Rough Trade. The album was produced by Dean Baltulonis, known for his work on Almost Killed Me and the sublime Separation Sunday, with a little help from the band’s own Tad Kubler – and sees piano and keys take a backseat to guitar following the departure of Franz Nikolay last month.
Singer Craig Finn says the album is about “embracing suffering and finding reward in our everyday lives,” which might sound like a downer to you – but I can hardly wait.
Tracklisting as follows:
1. The Sweet Part of the City
2. Soft in the Center
3. The Weekenders
4. The Smidge
5. Rock Problems
6. We Can Get Together
7. Hurricane J
8. Barely Breathing
9. Our Whole Lives
10. A Slight Discomfort
Tourdates? Well yes, there are a few – but none in Glasgow, as yet. Figuring this one out is going to be… interesting. See The Hold Steady on 22nd June at London’s HMV Forum, or on the 26th of the same month at Manchester’s Academy 2.
I’ve got a list of half-finished blog posts as long as my arm, so let’s make this brief and get it up before the end of the month. There’s a whole lot of loveliness going on in this latest playlist – more loveliness than I expected to find, actually.
Because Four Chords Won’t Do: last month’s mix, February 2010
1. Andrew Vincent: “Fooled Again”
2. Sam Amaidon: “How Come That Blood”
3. The Tallest Man on Earth: “King of Spain”
4. Lowlands: “Lately”
5. The Kills: “Kissy Kissy”
6. Shearwater: “Black Eyes”
7. The Unwinding Hours: “Knut”
8. Tyler Massey: “Dirty Little Secret Love”
9. Galleries: “+Danger”
10. Brown Bird: “Severed Soul”
11. The Cave Singers: “Seeds of Night”
12. Pedro the Lion: “Nothing”
13. Mumford & Sons: “Little Lion Man”
14. Barn Owl: “When Noone Is Around”
15. The Little Hands of Asphalt: “Oslo”
16. Withered Hand: “No Cigarettes”
17. Frank Turner: “The Road”
18. Frightened Rabbit: “Fun Stuff”
Hey, has anybody got their eye on anything at Aye Write!, Glasgow’s book festival, which is on next month? Because, as much as I adore live music, I’m trying to make an effort to expand my cultural horizons – even if I have only managed a book and a half since the start of the year.
There is no question that all media – newspapers and television especially – are going through great change with more to come: declining sales of newspapers and concerns about local coverage; the value of user-generated content; potential digital content charging; the decision on state contracts for regional television news; potential consolidation in the Scottish media industry following the Ofcom proposed loosening of media ownership restrictions.
Chaired by Herald columnist Ruth Wishart, speakers at the debate include managing director of the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times newspapers Tim Blott, Mark Wood, former chief executive of ITN and Ofcom content partner Stewart Purvis.
It’s at 7:30pm on Tuesday, 9th March and tickets are available from the link above. With Scotland’s first online-only newspaper, the Caledonian Mercury, launching recently the debate is more timely than ever.
Other distractions: today, my good friends at We Sink Ships launch the second online exhibition in their “Elements” series. “Elements: Fire” combines twelve photographic collaborations with a new piece of music from Neil Milton’s beneath us, the waves project along with a poem by Rhys Baker. It can be viewed until 11th April at wesinkships.co.uk.
I wasn’t going to write about Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s controversial Evelyn/Evelyn project, but I found myself making some notes in a new notebook on the bus back from Sarah’s this afternoon and got home to read the lady’s own response to the storm of criticism that has erupted over the past couple of days:
- Palmer’s music has always spoken to the disenfranchised, the “outsiders”. The frankness, bravery and humour with which she has addressed subjects such as rape, abortion, the “belly” campaign etc, has earned her many fans and admirers including women who have come through similar experiences. For these people – many of whom have been known to speak passionately and openly on their own marginalisation – to lend their tacit approval to a project which uses disability and child abuse as part of, if not some tasteless joke then at least some element of commercial gain, would be pretty distasteful if not downright hypocritical;
- As a concept album, I think the story of Evelyn and Evelyn is a pretty interesting one. I do not personally go in for taboos, and I do not believe that you necessarily need personal experience to explore a sensitive topic in the form of art or of fiction as long as you handle it well. However, of course I accept that I cannot possibly fully comprehend the experiences of others or walk a mile in his or her shoes so I will continue to stay out of such debates as fascinating as they may be;
- With regards to Palmer’s “removing the disabled feminists from her mental periphery” tweet – I actually have every sympathy for her here. You know, I’ve been known to make some extremely inappropriate/flippant comments at the end of a shitty day – I like to think that it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily a hateful person. The difference is that I tend to be aware of my audience, saving my less appropriate outbursts for close friends or my partner. Rightly or wrongly, Palmer’s approachability and the public nature of her Twitter feed means that her fans – and Neil Gaiman’s fans – feel able to get in contact with her informally through these methods and to vent their hurt/anger/disappointment in this way. A statement like Palmer made, whether intended to be inflammatory or not, was only ever going to add fuel to the hurt.
- Rhi pointed me in the direction of feminist blogger Tiger Beatdown who argues that when you consider the whole picture, despite the rape survivor awareness and the belly thing and everything else, these things are just part of the cartoon persona of Amanda Palmer and not grand feminist statements. That any good that has come from there was a mere by-product of something that was only ever all about her:
Because here is the deal: the armpits, the belly-awareness, the blog posts in defense of your right to do what you want with your body and your lyrical content, sure. I won’t say it means nothing, per se. It means something, insofar as your fans might take some inspiration from it, might assign their own meanings to it. But you? You don’t get to claim credit for that. You appear, with one fell Tweet, to have debunked the idea that this was about anything other than you.
- I confess that I had fallen for what I had heard of the EvelynEvelyn backstory, but that things being as they are right now I’d only really heard the briefest mention of it. Of course, reading it back now it sounds fantastical, but I guess I assumed that if anybody was going to discover some cojoined singing sensational twins too shy for publicity it would be Amanda Palmer. So I’m not hurt that it turned out to be nothing more than a story, but I’m confused and disappointed by the way it was handled;
- You know what nobody’s mentioned in all of this? The music… just isn’t very good. It’s that Ditty Bops style cutesy-cutesy stuff I’m so over.
I’m proving to be a terrible blogger at the moment, despite the usual promises I made to myself earlier in the year. I could half-heartedly defend myself by pointing out that as I am currently learning how better to understand my stress issues it’s a conscious decision not to worry about making time to post stuff on the internet, but as I seem to have spent most of this evening saying “yes” to all manner of exciting things it’s an argument that’s doomed to fail.
So here are a couple of snippets that have popped up in my inbox of late:
Although I was only able to make it to half of the thing I really enjoyed last year’s inaugural Hinterland Festival. It looks as though the organisers have learned from the mistakes of 2009, because the push is already underway for this year’s event on Saturday 3rd April. Now a leaner, tighter one-day affair, Hinterland still boasts the involvement of top Glasgow venues such as The Arches, Macsorleys, Pivo Pivo and the Admiral.
Big names on the bill include Jeffrey Lewis, British Sea Power and Wave Pictures, joining homegrown talent including The Kays Lavelle, French Wives and Ambulances.
Early bird tickets are available now for £10 – including access to all venues and sets – from thehinterlandfestival [dot] com.
Speaking of The Kays Lavelle – which I have done, before – the band’s debut album Be Still This Gentle Morning is out on 17th May and it’s probably one of my most hotly anticipated by a local band this year. Label Wiseblood Industries are offering lead single, “The Hours”, as a free download, and it’s the sort of jaw-dropping gorgeousness that makes you not want to listen to anything else for a good hour afterwards until you get the chance to clear your head.
For you Edinburgh folk, there’s a Wiseblood Industries showcase happening on 26th March at the Roxy Arts Centre featuring the Kays alongside author Alan Bissett, Adam Stafford of Y’All Is Fantasy Island, Burnt Island and Jamie Sturrock. That’s the sort of lineup that would coax me onto a train, were I not away that weekend.
What else… We’re Only Afraid of NYC, who I seem to have developed a minor thing for after seeing play somebody’s show at the Note recently, have a free download EP out on Friday. It’s all melodic, clattering, spunky guitar, and if you can’t wait you can get your hands on their first release right now at Bandcamp.
Oh, and it’s my first day without coffee, amongst other liquids for charity and I’m already absolutely shattered. Thrilled that I’m at £100 sponsorship money already though!
Despite our shared country of origin, Frightened Rabbit were one of those bands that snuck up on me at some point in 2008: the classic word-of-mouth band, near-ubiquitous in terms of blog love and presence on mix CDs from friends. The truth is that before I got my copy of third studio album The Winter of Mixed Drinks I didn’t own a single record by them, yet would happily count them as among my favourite of the bands hailing from these shores. And it’s strange, because it’s hard to put a finger on just what it is they do that is so special: they have the pretty indie melodies and clumsy, almost-teenaged lyrics of love and longing present in more long-term staples of my record collection such as Death Cab For Cutie, but then every so often some crude sexual reference might creep into an otherwise primetime teen-drama friendly verse and jar you to your senses. It makes that love and longing seem like more than just a sanitised, put-on act. It makes everything seem a little more real.
Right from the start, Winter seems a more sonically complex album than its predecessors. We open with “Things”, its heavy underpinnings sounding nothing quite like anything the band has done before. The beat seems like pounding through the sludge of instrumentation to reveal the beauty beneath – coming, as ever, from Scott Hutcheson’s heartfelt vocals.
You’ll know “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” already, probably, kicking about as it has been for a while: its simple melody and watery metaphor which carries on throughout much of the album both in lyrics (from this North Sea of my mind… right through to “Foot Shooter” and its dam bursting open) and overall sound. I have this scribbled margin note from first listen reminding me that much of the album sounds as if the band are playing it under the sea, which in a more sensible reviewer’s head would translate into a choppiness, a wildness, a sense of freedom and a whole lot of epic endings. Sometimes that’s just beautiful – such as “The Wrestle” – and sometimes it sounds more ominous, like through the opening act and claustrophobic piano and frantic vocals of “Skip The Youth”.
“Nothing Like You”, on the other hand, sounds like classic Frightened Rabbit: desperate, fast-paced, a bright melody and a singalong refrain. Funnily enough, it’s the next single.
After the single, “Man/Bag of Sand” seems like something of a shock – it’s “Swim Until You Can’t See Land”, the drowning edition, bookending the earlier song’s chorus with some chopped-up, indistinguishable movie clip. Odd as it is, its after this point that the album steps up a gear – battering the senses with uplifting songs. A title like “Not Miserable” makes it sound obvious of course, but “Foot Shooter” too with its swirling ooh-oohs creates a warmth in the pit of the stomach like the one you get holding hands with somebody you shouldn’t in the midst of the first buzz of alcohol on a cold winter night. “Living In Colour” is one of those sorta punch-the-air end-of-the-festival type anthems like, dare I say it, that five minutes when you got swept up in Snow Patrol, but if it’s closers you’re after “Yes I Would” is pretty special, and an anthem all of its own.
The band have a fun competition running as release date draws near: in keeping with the “mixed drinks” theme they want you to post a video or comment on their Muzu page of you making your favourite cocktail. There’s two tickets to an upcoming gig in the UK or US, and a drink with the band after the show, on offer if you do so before Monday.
The Winter of Mixed Drinks is out 1st March on FatCat.
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.
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.
at Amazon.co.uk
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