Onefinemess » audio

Girl in a Coma

onefinemess — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:09:13 +0000

Has anyone else checked them out?

Not sure how I stumbled onto them (mention in RS? Pandora?) but the covers album is worth every $. The other 3 are fairly straight rock/punk/post/-ish/whatever, pretty solid. But the covers album really gives Nina’s voice a chance to shine (imho).

Observe:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VfN6UmQlfI

Exhibit 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQf95dRgK4

Anyway, check ‘em out. Prowl youtube and such. Back to you regularly scheduled non-updates.

Album Review: Airborne Toxic Event – All At Once

onefinemess — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:00:11 +0000

This was one of two albums that I was actively looking forward to this year – the other being TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light which, while good, was not what I was hoping for. So far, I’m finding this album more satisfying (blasphemy, I know). I’m still not sure if it’s as crazy awesome as their first album (which I’d now rank at least a 9), but it is solidly good. Good like “in the running for best album of the year” good.

The opening single, Changing, I love:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=59bLUwYONEI

I really dig the scene & the dancing in the video – the first version I saw of the video was this one, and the whole time I was like “Come on, director, pan back to the dancing dudes!” So, when I found the official one (just now) I was/am/are/will be pleased.

Also, bits of the herky-jerky pace always remind me of Ted Leo’s Bottled in Cork (skip to 1:45ish to start the music)… /tangent …back to ATE. Anyway, one thing that kind of bums me out about the album is that it seems to have more mellow material than the previous, but I’m not sure how valid of a complaint that is when the mellow stuff is solid.

Here’s a track, Half of Something Else, that’s pretty similar in feel to their earlier stuff:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=baUx1yjbGR0

It’s crazy for me to actually be watching videos again. I usually I just hit play and listen to it and tab out and continue working on whatever, but these “bombastic” videos are fucking great. Seriously, search them up on youtube – you can hear the entire album (albeit, not the same versions, but it will give you a good idea how awesome it is) – and watch them all. They are semi-acoustic versions, sometimes with others – like the string quartet above – and they shot one for every song on the album, and included high quality versions with the extended version of the album. So, the sound in these videos is not exactly like the album, it’s a completely different cut. Totally awesome, and a great example of a band going the extra mile.

Check out the singer’s face when he turns to listen to the quartet… I don’t know why he’s smiling, but my guess would be because he realizes how fucking awesome it is to be shooting a video on a carousel with a string quartet.

Here’s the bombastic/acoustic version of one of my favorites, The Graveyard Near the House:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBMnE3sWaFA

Check out the lyrics (googled, seem fairly accurate):

The other day, when we were walking by the graveyard near the house, you asked me if you thought we would ever die. And if life and love both fade so predictably, we’ve made ourselves a kind of predictable life.

And so I pictured us like corpses, lying side by side in pieces, in some dark and lonely blood under a bow. We looked so silly there, all decomposed, half turned to dust, in tattered clothes, but we probably look just as silly now.

Bye bye bye bye, bye bye to all this dogged innocence. I cant pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next, or how to be. But you have no idea about me, do you?

And it left me to wonder if people will ever know each other by just stumbling around like strangers in the dark. ‘Cause sometimes you seem so strange to me, I must seem strange to you. We’re like two actors playing our parts. Did you memorize your lines? ‘Cause I did. Here’s the part where I get so mad, I tell you I cant forget the past. You get so quiet now, and you seem, somehow, like a lost and lonely child. And you just hope that the moment wont last.

Bye bye bye bye, bye bye all the dogged innocence. I cant pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next, or how to be. But you have no idea about me. You have no idea about me, do you?

So there’s always a way around. There’s something tying our feet to the ground. A moment passed, we hate how it sounds.

And it seems a little less profound. Like we’re all going the same way down. Yeah we’re all going the same way down. I’m just trying to write it all down.

‘Cause I write songs, and you write letters. We are tied like two, in tethers. And we talk and read, and laugh and sleep, at night in bed, together. And you wake in tears sometimes, I can see the thoughts flash across your eyes. They say “Darling, will you be kind? Will you be a good man, and stay behind if I get old?”

And then the letters all pass through my head, with the words that I was told. About the fading flesh of life and love, the failures of the bold. I can list each crippling fear like I’m reading from a will.

And I’ll defy everyone and love you still. I will carry you with me up every hill. If you die before I die, I’ll carve your name out of the sky. I’ll fall asleep with your memory and dream of where you lie.

It maybe better to move on, and to let life just carry on. And I may be wrong.

But still, I’ll try.

‘Cause it’s better to love whether you win or lose or die. Yeah, It’s better to love whether you win or lose or die. It’s better to love, and I will love you ’til I die.

Shivers.

The album plays like a really smart mix tape; styles vary between tracks, and it’s nowhere near as stylistically consistent as the previous one – but that obviously wasn’t their intent. There are faint echoes of Nebraska and Joshua Tree and maybe bits of Pulp and some other stuff I haven’t quite put my fat fingers on yet stacked on top of the “modern/indie rock” vibe that just is.

The album as a whole, I’ll give at least an

8.8+

I want to give it much higher, but there is one track that has a chorus I’m not particularly fond of (yet? – but I like it better in the acoustic version), but I don’t want to taint your opinion so I won’t say which. Plus, I’ve only had it for a week, we’ll so how it ages. After a couple years, if I still love an album, the numbers goes up…. and up :).

If this sounds like your thing… pick up the album. These guys work for the money they are asking you to shell out for their sounds. Yes, I linked to the special version (the one I grabbed), because it comes with a bonus track and all the bombastic videos… which you can then rip the audio out of for a second, acoustic-ish version of the album.

[update: It looks like you can stream the entire album from their site here.]

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

onefinemess — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 01:13:18 +0000

(The Band).

What, you thought this was going to be some soul-wrenching post about purity? Perish the thought; I’d have to stop sinning first!

My first sin was dangerous punctuation.

The second, was surely sloth for not posting this yesterday.

I have their first album, self-titled, from 2009. And it is good. BUT. It didn’t/doesn’t blow me away. It’s great background music, but nothing really jumped out at me and made me want to jump or sing or change my clothes into a season to the left. Something was *slightly* off, for me. Lots of great music but not quite awesome. Worth picking up, but I don’t go back to replay it nearly as often as the new one. Nuanced commentary there, I know.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=430oJ0dGMC0

On the first listen through of the new album, “Belong”, however, multiple tracks jumped out at me. This being one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewhQrteR9OQ

“She was the heart in your heartbreak/she was the miss in your mistake”. Gold! OK, it wouldn’t be if it didn’t sound good, then it would just be cheesy. But in this case: gold!

Another:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaLaZaFJhQI

OK, I suppose I would just wind up posting the entire album, so I’ll just stop. If you like either of those tracks, I highly recommend checking out or picking up the album.

Their (slightly updated, more energetic than before) sound reminds me of the expected MBV as well as Starflyer & Bon Voyage – actually it reminds me of what Bon Voyage might sound like with Ronnie Martin doing the vocals. There’s another group that “Even In Dreams” reminds me of, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Everytime I hear the song it’s on the tip of my brain… then gone.

Woah, I just noticed that they are playing in Portland next Thursday. HMMM.

Bonus song from Bon Voyage (my kids love this on, and we heard it randomly in the movie Dare (which my wife notes “should never have been made”- but it’s not listed on the soundtrack.]:

Who needs new music when there’s new old music?

onefinemess — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:47:58 +0000

Seriously.

I find almost as much, if not more “new” old music of quality than I do new new music of quality these days.

Some of it is just cases of “finally” getting around to listening to classic albums – like Derek & the Dominoes/Layla & Other Love Songs, which I’ve been playing as the last album of the night lately. I really like this track, especially the chorus:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgNYXZL2fB4

Some of it is finding a defunct or current project from a member of a band I already like – such as Dear Leader, which was The Sheila Divine frontman Adam Perrino’s project for the last few years – and whose wiki page was deleted? WTF wiki, W T F. Wow, check out the deletion notes page… I guess wiki is getting as bad as I’ve heard. Dicks! That bit of snideness on Wikipedia about the deletions really pisses me off. I mean, it’s not like the space for text is limited. Hell, high school bands should have wiki pages! But really good bands being booted off for not being “important” enough? How the hell do you know whether a band will be “important” in the long run or not? Sure, maybe they suck, but maybe not. Any music lover can probably pick out a dozen artists who were not well known/loved/thought highly off but that rank as “important” (perhaps decades later) anyway. Is it really worth saving .06k of storage space? Christ, people.

/end wiki rant

Here’s a vid of them doing “Radar” live, with some wacky dancing guy. Maybe this will cheer me/you up after the wiki idiocy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1stYBB7uRE

Some of it is current bands who have been putting out albums that I just plain missed – like The Felice Brothers, whom I just posted about last week.

And some of it is finally having music that I’ve had laying around, or been referred to before, just “hit” me. You know like you finally hear that track that just works for you? This happened for me a few months ago with Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. I love “Bottled in Cork” (below, official video, skip to 1:45 or so if you just want the music), and it was just what I needed to get the rest of the album (which, stylistically, isn’t much like this song) into my head.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w248uwpAX14

So, this whole Unofficial Month of Blogging thing was supposed to help get my head right for writing, but so far it’s just making me think a lot about music. This is not an unwelcome outcome, as I’ve been kind of … spacey when it comes to music for the last year or so.

“bagkgon train”

onefinemess — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 01:11:54 +0000

Just recently my boys (2 & 3.5) decided that they liked Downbound Train [not embedded because I couldn't find the album version] – the title above is an attempt to transfer into letters the sounds that are produced by my oldest when he names the song. Yes, it IS adorable. Maybe they just like it because it has the word “train” that they can clearly pick out from the lyrics but hey – I’ll take it! When they decide they like a song (I think, so far, they have mostly liked all the same songs), they let you know that they like it by saying “Again!” every time it ends and getting upset when you finally move on to a new song.

Them liking songs is nothing new, but it is rare that they choose a song I’m playing. My wife does the vast majority of the trucking the kids around, so they hear mostly music she’s playing (which also happens to be music I like – but it’s not quite the same). This is probably for the best – because my wife is much, much better with song lyrics than me. I can sing along when a song is playing but, unless I go out of my way to memorize something, the lyrics don’t stick with me. Even songs I’ve known for decades!

My boys do have good taste: Modern Man/Arcade Fire, Heads Will Roll/YeahYeahYeahs, Frank Sinatra/Cake (“Franken Otra daddy!), The Cave/Mumford and Sons, Story of My Life/Social Distortian, Lisztomania/Phoenix. It helps that they don’t have much (any?) exposure to music we don’t like ;)… yet.

I try and find a common thread behind the songs they like and I haven’t yet. Having lyrics they can identify and sing seems to help, as does mentioning trains or cars.

Bonus! I found two cool covers of Downbound Train while digging for a youtube link:

Raul Malo (of the Mavericks):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Sr6EeIr-4

The Cardigans:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfAzBtOHTU

Let’s take a look at the lyrics (because I LOVE lyrics, even if I can’t remember them to save my life).

I had a job, I had a girl
I had something going mister in this world
I got laid off down at the lumber yard
Our love went bad, times got hard
Now I work down at the carwash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train

She just said “Joe I gotta go
We had it once we ain’t got it any more”
She packed her bags left me behind
She bought a ticket on the Central Line
Nights as I sleep, I hear that whistle whining
I feel her kiss in the misty rain
And I feel like I’m a rider on a downbound train

Last night I heard your voice
You were crying, crying, you were so alone
You said your love had never died
You were waiting for me at home
Put on my jacket, I ran through the woods
I ran till I thought my chest would explode
There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried

Now I swing a sledge hammer on a railroad gang
Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain
Now don’t it feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train

Solid, right? I’ve recently started trying to play it on guitar for the kids, and it gives me chills when I really sink into the words. Especially as they come full circle…

I have an admission to make. *looks around*

I learned something from a youtube comment today.

I know, “the shame!?”, right?

I never connected the fact that the speaker’s lover left him on a train to the fact that he winds up working on train tracks – presumably for the same line. I mean, I was aware of both points… I just never connected them for the irony.

Bonus! How many knew that this song was originally recorded in the Nebraska sessions?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_YlOD292Jc

I think it would have fit right in there, but I’m much happier with it on Born in the USA… Nebraska I don’t listen to so often, not unless I want to be depressed. USA has enough of everything that I can enjoy it in just about any mood.

New (to me) music: The Felice Brothers

onefinemess — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:41:20 +0000

I found these guys via a helpful suggestion from a TNC commenter. I wish I could remember who it was, and give them props, but I can’t – so whoever you are, know that you are awesome. I love finding stuff from bands with multiple awesome albums. It’s like Christmas jammed into Christmas with free cake AND pie.

Here’s a couple tracks.

The Ballad of Lou the Welterweight

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVhmCoPn6k

What an opening lyric eh? I admit, I’m sill not sure how the chorus ties into the verses about the boxers yet – so if anyone has any ideas…

Run Chicken Run

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8-7n0HfdBQ

First off: Do these guys sound like someone else to you? Someone in very, very particular?

I don’t mean that as a negative at all – because I love their stuff – but WOW. Imitation is sincere I guess, or crazy coincidence. But, it just seems like too much to be coincidence, you know?

Anyway, I really dig these guys. The albums I’ve heard (Tonight at the Arizona, The Felice Brothers, Yonder is the Clock) are all solid. If you dig this style, you should check them out.

Here’s a live one to close us out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxv6en1GqaA

This album is really growing on me

onefinemess — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:23:56 +0000

Dear Leader : All I Ever Wanted was Tonight (2004).

I tracked this down because Dear Leader is the band Adam Perrino (singer/songwriter of the late, awesomely great The Sheila Divine (seriously, check them out)) moved on to after The Sheila Divine broke up. This is their second album, I think.

I picked the first one (The Good Times are Killing Me, 2003) up a couple weeks ago – I think it was my first purchase from Amazon MP3. Yeah, I finally broke down and went there. I guess somewhere between a year or two ago and now I suddenly lost my aversion to not having something to file. Crazy, I know (trust me, for me it is). So I picked that one up and was a little bummed. It’s solid, but not moving me (yet). So I wait about a week for that to percolate, then I grabbed this one. First couple of listens I thought “Well, this is better…. but not special.” Then on the way home from work last week I had it cranked in the car and, and then on my headphones in the grocery store, and it finally reached out and punched me. I dig it. Playing it loud helps. Headphones. While cooking. Whatever.

Then, last night I had it up while I was playing through a task force in City of Heroes with my steam powered robot samurai and somehow it was just the perfect music to be slashing up evil Romans and their time traveling ex-Nazi allies.

I think it works better as a full album than in individual bites, but it’s not available for free so I have no where to point you. So here are a few tracks to check out out of context:

Raging Red (live, but I think with the album audio dubbed over?):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=441KXyUrIAA

annnnnd wow, that’s all I could find of the tracks I wanted to share with you guys on youtube. Bummer. The band site doesn’t have the particular ones I’m looking for either.

So… I mucked around with youtube a bit and uploaded this song (Culture Vultures)… it’s actually on the first album as well. I admit, it kind of grated on me when I first heard it. Just because he mentions TV I think, and that’s so jarring for me to hear referenced in music (dunno why, it just is). But, like the rest of the album, it really grew on me. I think I prefer the version on this album, but it could just be the context.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSCFo2Ou3vY

Also, you can preview the whole thing to whatever degree Amazon allows via the link above.

[Note: I just found a huge archive of The Sheila Divine bootlegs! I know what I'm listening to tonight... and probably for the next month :P.]

Songs that did not age well: Social Distortion/99 to Life

onefinemess — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 07:31:28 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Social Distortion for quite a while now, and seen them live a few times but, beyond acknowledging it as one of their weaker songs (and they have many), never gave it much thought. Until I listened to this in the car home the other day, probably for the first time in years – at least the first time I heard it in a situation where I could hear/process the lyrics.

song:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-VvF8-5dg

lyrics:

I’m broken hearted, I’m a broken man
Driven by anger on that night I ran
I had me a woman, I thought that she’d be true
Now she’s gone and left me,
you know her life is through.

chorus:
Lonely weekends, baby lonely nights
The judge he gave me,
Ninety nine to life.

I wish she could be here,
Lord if she only could,
Instead she’s layin’ in a puddle of blood.
She was my baby, thought she’d be my wife
I killed my baby, I killed her with my knife.

[chorus]

So alone I’m sittin’ in my prison cell
Lord only knows now, I’m in a living hell
The rest of my life in this penitentiary,
the good Lord above now, please have mercy on me.

And what jumped out at me is what a bad song it was. The music is uninspired and the lyrics are completely lacking in pretty much every way. No complexity. No nuance. Not that Social Distortion is known for their complexity or nuance – but they have plenty of good, simple songs. Solid music, tempo, energy… all those things can make mediocre lyrics fun, even awesome.

There’s nothing at all to the song’s protagonist (contrast this with the song immediately following, “King of Fools” which at least has a character with something to say) … other than a reason to dislike him than itself is not interesting so much as it is shallow. I mean, I guess that we are supposed to identify with his violent rage upon discovering that his girlfriend left him (something every human being has a right to do!)… but there’s no build up or scene setting or anything – she’s just dead. There are good revenge songs out there (I’m sure, someone, link me one… I’m not getting any off the top of my head) – this is not one. I kind of get the sense that they were going for the Cash “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” sense of badassery…but, I mean, he doesn’t appear to have any remorse about killing her. The redemption or desire for such is just lacking here.

He says “I wish she could be here”, but doesn’t seem to recognize his personal agency in rendering her “not” here. Sure, he killed her with his knife, but the “he” in question there just doesn’t seem connected to the speaker’s voice. A more nuanced song might have something to it about his distancing himself to and denial of the action… Also, I’m sure there’s an interesting song to be written about the loss of control and/or the downward spiral of rage that leads to violence… but this is not it.

The fact that the victim here is a “her” is probably a big part of it my annoyance. The song is about some random dude who killed his girlfriend for leaving him. That’s the core of it. Hell, that is ALL of it (we don’t know if maybe she cheated on him with his dad or second cousin, stole his rims on the way out, shot the dog, nothing). There is no core when you’ve got no skin.

Sure, maybe you (as a listener) are really hurt or angry or whatever about someone leaving you, and you might maybe fantasize about killing them… so maybe this is letting you play out that fantasy. BUT. Your fantasy is dumb. Sorry. At least within the context given by this song. Which is to say: NONE. We are given absolutely no reason to think that there was anything particularly malicious about this woman, nor anything to show us that the speaker isn’t just some batshit crazy motherfucker who would kill someone else given the chance.

So why bring up a bad (and old) song and go on about it? I guess it was just the sort of nonchalant way it talks about violence against women that set me off. Kind of surprised that I wrote that much.

both of your racist friends

onefinemess — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:16:53 +0000

So, both of these songs came up on my player in the last week, and I haven’t listened to either in ages. In fact, I’d forgotten that both bands had songs on the subject matter.

The older track (The Specials/The Special AKA, 1983), :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqH_0LPVoho

And, of course, They Might Be Giants (which sounds EXACTLY like something my 3yr old would say, so it’s fitting that they recorded a kids record or two) – rocking Letterman like it was 1990 (because it was!):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4_COOh4VXw

No idea if the writers of the second were inspired by the first or what.

and just in case that wasn’t enough… a 5th grade choir in Thailand feels the same way: ??

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Pn3oTZD4

Oh, and here’s The Selecter covering The Specials (in 2008). For those outside that loop, note that the Selecter are contemporaries of the same scene as The Specials (and that both bands have reformed and/or toured in the last couple years).

[edit: I realized later last night that, based on the post title, you may have been misled into thinking I was going to say something deep.]

Great bands you might not have heard of #6: The Sheila Divine

onefinemess — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:44:06 +0000

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so here we go. The Sheila Divine is a band we first heard while waiting in a club for a Frank Black show. We heard the track Hum (below) and it was so awesome I had to find out who it was. I asked around and I think… shoot I don’t remember who it was, someone working the door had made a mixtape or something, and they told us the name of the band.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TRD-Vc9vU

Of course I went out and tracked down the album asap. It (New Parade) was (and is) an awesome disc. They put out one more album after that, which was also killer, and had EPs as well (Secret Society & The Sheila Divine). Annnnd that was it. Hum alone really should have carried them over into some kind of radio presence, but I guess the right people just never pushed for it. Bleh. Go music industry.

Here’s Sideways from their last album (Where Have all my Countrymen Gone):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSDNr8qayEU

Bonus: The lead singer, Aaron Perrino, has a new (er than SD, but not “new” per se) band called Dear Leader that I quite like. It’s not The Sheila Divine, but that’s not how these things work. Here’s a video of them doing Radar live. Quality is not so hot. More people need to carry around really expensive HD recorders. Duh.