Pitchfork Music Festival Preview: The New Pornographers

Ok, one last super quick post in between packing for Chicago.



The one band I’m looking forward to seeing above all else at this show is The New Pornographers. They gave one of my favorite sets at last year’s Lollapalooza, and are generally a blast to see live. This appearance comes right before the release of their fourth album, Challengers, which is currently streaming online for those who pre-order (check out this site for details, as well as the nifty “do it yourself” box set Executive Edition they’re offering, which may be the first time a band has ever offered to literally sell you songs from the future). After giving the album a listen, I have to say its hands down their most complex and (dare I say) breathtaking work yet… a bit slower and less frantic than earlier efforts, but at the same time more subtle and exciting, fully utilizing the varied talents of bandmates Carl Newman, Neko Case, Dan Bejar, and (for the first time as a full member) Kathryn Calder. Take a chance and put in your pre-order for this, I can guarantee you will not be disappointed.

To wet your appetite, here’s the opening track that’s been making its way on the internet for a few months now, which serves as a pretty good indicator of what’s to come on Challengers… of all the quirky lyrical turns of phrase Carl Newman has employed over the years, there may well be none better than “you left your sorrow dangling, it hangs in the air like a school cheer”.

The New Pornographers- My Rights Versus Yours

All right kids, off to Chicago… I’ll be back sometime next week with a full report on the festival!

Pitchfork Music Festival Preview: Jamie Lidell

One of the things I like best about Pitchfork Festival is the sheer obscurity of some of the acts, yet at the same time their assured quality—it’s a fantastic way to find stuff a bit off the beaten path that you get psyched about pretty quickly.

Such was the case for me with Jamie Lidell. The guy isn’t exactly unknown, having worked with Canadian indie queen Leslie Feist and even having had songs featured on Grey’s Anatomy and in Target commercials, but I doubt many people out there could really pick him out of a lineup. In part, this is probably because his act is so unusual—a lanky, bearded, British electronic artist who one day realized he had a voice on par with Marvin Gaye and should really put out a soul album with ridiculously complex beats underneath it. The result on CD is pretty stunning, and word is its even better live, with Lidell recording and looping his own samples on top of one another right in front of everyone.

Here’s one of the better cuts off of his one album (or at least his one album that sounds like this), “Multiply”:

Jamie Lidell- When I Come Back Around

Pitchfork Music Festival Preview: Voxtrot

Not to get overly personal here (I have other forums for that after all), but I feel like I’m hitting a midsummer slump. After a month or so of rolling along with my new job, enjoying the gorgeous weather and good company an East Lansing summer has to offer, and generally feeling pretty good, a heat wave has set in and brought with it a general air of oppression—days drag along, my hair drips on my morning paper when I take my bike helmet off on my way into work, and I don’t feel motivated to do much of anything.

In other words, it’s the perfect time for a summer music festival to lift my spirits, and this weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago can’t come soon enough. To pass the time while I count down the hours until Friday, I’ll be covering some of my most anticipated acts this year, starting with Voxtrot, another band from the creative mecca of Austin, TX.
For about the past year, Voxtrot has been a red-hot indie music sensation that I have more or less been oblivious to. After a string of critically acclaimed EPs (including raves by “the ‘fork”), the band managed to get itself a label deal and a self-titled debut album, which despite failing to meet lofty expectations set by many an indie snob has done quite well as the band continues to gain momentum.

But enough about that. My introduction to Voxtrot came one rainy Saturday as I drove to the grocery store, my radio tuned to MSU’s quality student radio station, The Impact. Its not often I’ll hear a song on the radio that immediately captures my attention (due in part to the fact that truly good radio is diminishing at a truly sad rate just about everywhere), but I’m pretty sure this was love at first listen. It was a little twee (okay, a lot twee… I thought it was Belle and Sebastian at first), a little bit emo (but in a good way), with soulful vocals and a solid indie rock groove to it. The lyrics managed to be sad and wistful while also being strong and angsty, not to mention absurdly witty. Naturally, I went right to work tracking the song down when I got home, and before long, I’d found it… the title track to their “Your Biggest Fan” EP (packaged with two other superb tracks by the way... a great use of that leftover iTunes gift money you no doubt have lying around).

I’ve heard most of the rest of their work at this point (its very good if you don’t mind overblown lyrics like “cheer me up, cheer me up, I’m a miserable fuck”), and am looking forward to their live act come Saturday, but I know there’s still one song I’ll be shouting requests for the entire time—easily one of my favorite tracks of 2007.

Voxtrot—Your Biggest Fan

As American As... Spoon

So I had the pleasure of spending my Independence Day in downtown Detroit at Comerica CityFest, complete with a free headlining concert in the evening by Austin, TX indie-rockers Spoon. While the show was pretty decent (despite their omission of “The Underdog”—I kept waiting for a horn section to emerge from backstage to no avail), there was really only one nagging thought that stayed in my mind the whole time:

Spoon frontman Britt Daniel

Wilco Guitar God Nels Cline
Now tell me the former doesn’t look like the overly cocky bastard son of the latter.

Anyhow, here’s the studio version of what I thought was one of the more solid numbers from their live set, off the upcoming "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" (which doubles as a ridiculously fun concert chant).

Spoon—Black Like Me

And up at MySpace, the pretty awesome video for the previously posted Jon Brion produced masterpiece “The Underdog”:

As American As... "Sky Blue Sky"

Once again, this is a post that’s been in the works for a while now—shortly after “Sky Blue Sky”, the latest effort from indie-rock legends Wilco was released, I received a message from a friend and fellow fan expressing a great deal of disappointment with the album. Looking around at the reviews, she wasn’t alone in her opinion that it was a bland, boring departure from their past two cutting edge works—Pitchfork went so far as to slap it with a measly 5.2 rating and label it “dad-rock”. Having already had the leak of the album for a month or so (naturally), I could certainly understand where she was coming from, as I felt the same dread upon my first listen that this might just be a Wilco album that I wasn’t in love with. However, in time it had grown on me, and though I couldn’t explain why at the time, I promised I would eventually post a thought out defense of “Sky Blue Sky,” and since I can think of few bands more uniquely American these days than Wilco, this loosely constructed theme week seems like a good time to put pen to paper on it.

Let’s start with the basics—yes, “Sky Blue Sky” is slower, mellower, and safer sounding work than the jarring noise rock of “A Ghost Is Born” or the static beeps and bloops of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. And yes, this is the first album which Jeff Tweedy composed since his time in rehab for a longtime addiction to prescription painkillers. It’s a different album, no doubt about that. But at the same time, “Sky Blue Sky continues in the tradition of Wilco focusing in on the small dark corners of American life and blowing them up to cinematic proportions: if “Yankee” and “Ghost” were portraits of the disintegration of and intangible frustration with oneself and the surrounding world, “Sky Blue Sky” is what comes afterwards—the slow, placid, melancholic first steps back into the light as we come to terms with ourselves and put things back together again.

From the opening lines of “Either Way”—“maybe the sun will shine today/the clouds will roll away/maybe I won’t be so afraid”—the album takes on a tone of cautious optimism and tranquil acceptance of the future in all its ambiguity (and yes, I will grant Pitchfork’s comment that the Nels Cline guitar solo sounds sadly like something off the Weather Channel, but it somehow works in this song, gliding along in contrast to Tweedy’s longing vocals at the end). Throughout the album in songs like “You Are My Face” and “Shake It Off”, we hear echoed the themes of loss and upheaval, painful indications of that which has changed and the consequences of actions, yet still accompanied by a sense of determination to overcome it and push onward. Finally, in its most optimistic moments, “Sky Blue Sky” works to remind us of what is really most meaningful and important in life—the one-two punch of “Walken” and “What Light”, followed by the achingly gorgeous “On and On and On” (written for Tweedy’s father as they both came to terms with his mother’s impending death last year) serve as a closing tribute to love for oneself and one’s family that may be the most optimistic music Tweedy has ever penned.

So is Sky Blue Sky a “rehab album”? You bet it is. I don’t, however, think there’s too much wrong with that, as it resonates with anyone who’s ever lost their way in the world and had to take a good long look in the mirror before coming back. One could even go so far as to argue that it serves as a reflection of where we are nationally, trying to figure out where to go after seven years of politics and policies that have grown increasingly distant from our core values… but I’ll leave that for someone else to sort out. To me, “Sky Blue Sky” hit home the most when watching the accompanying short documentary and hearing Jeff Tweedy talk about how he wanted to write an album to his wife, who did so much to keep the family together as he struggled. As he proceeds to sit in the family living room in Chicago and sing the simple, quiet solo ballad “Please Be Patient With Me”, its hard not to see the heart and soul of what is yet another brilliant exploration of the personal from Wilco.

Wilco- Please Be Patient With Me

As American as… Ted Leo.

In honor of Independence Day this week, I’ve cooked up a flimsy little premise by which to tie this week’s entries together—focusing on artists and songs whose work in one way or another feels distinctively American to me.

Admittedly, I’m kicking things off with an unconventional pick—hence the flimsy nature of the premise—but I’ve been meaning to do a good write up of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists on here for a long while, and actually see them as fitting the bill in a lot of ways, as you’ll see later.

Sadly, up until this past spring the most I really knew of Ted Leo was his inexplicably brilliant cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”, which I posted up here way back in the day. I knew he was supposed to be pretty good, and very political, but just managed to overlook him over and over— a fact which angers me a good deal in retrospect. Fortunately, I had some good friends show me the light this year, basically by burning me his entire catalog, and I can’t remember someone attaining a spot on my list of musical heroes so quickly before. The energy, intelligence, and heart this man puts into his songs is incredible and (this sound like hyperbole but isn’t) ultimately life-affirming, leading the listener to look for the potential in him/herself and the world around them. And I haven’t even began talking about his live show, which I had the pleasure of attending two hours away in Detroit the night before my Religious Politics midterm this spring (I aced it, by the way), which is easily one of the most intense, high energy, flat out loud shows I’ve seen in a while (my ears rang for at least a day afterwards). Even walking away from what I knew was a too short set complete with technical difficulties and the omission of several of my favorites (including “Walking to Do”, which never fails to put me in a great mood), I was more than pleased with what I had seen, and couldn’t wait until the next time I had an opportunity to catch him live.

As for the politics, which obviously is the key tie-in to the theme here… yes, Ted Leo is unabashedly liberal, and in particular anti-war. However, there’s a certain humanity to his ideology that makes it so much more than an anti-Bush tirade… his songs cover the battlefield, but also the personal and internal conflicts, discussing the nature of friendship, compassion, inequality, and illness in such a way that the lines become blurred almost entirely. While listening to a Ted Leo concert online (there’s a ton of them, free and legal, over at the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive), he introduced the song CIA off his latest album “Living With the Living” (for the first time, actually) with a dedication to a high school history teacher who happened to be in the audience, saying that this teacher helped him to think for himself and develop a lot of his political ideas later on. As he said this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own influential history teacher, Ron Weitzel of the House Page School, who passed away last year and did a lot of the same for me… in the end, I don’t think there’s much that’s more American than that.

So enjoy the track, taken from the 2006 South Street Seaport show… it’s actually a lot better than the studio version that resulted, in my opinion… much more up-tempo and urgent, and without the absurd sounding overlapping vocals at the end. (Actually, while you’re at it, head over and check out his entire set from that day... an excellent Ted Leo/Rx primer, and some stunning early renditions of tracks from Living With the Living.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists- CIA (Live at South Street Seaport 2006)