The Bells!
Spittin’ Superlatives Again
Awright, I guess I should stop beating around the bush and just say that in my humble opines Pavement is the best band there is. I think indie labels feel too self-conscious to make greatest hits packages, feeling that songs need to be heard in the context of their albums, or that such compilations are the province of K-Tel, et cetera. This forces me into the awkward position of trying to sequence all-Pavement mixtapes that NO ONE wants to hear, least of all my wife (tho she prefers these to the all-Destroyer mixes, which even I can’t listen to). “So, mix it up” you say. OK, I will: Here are five wonderful B-sides, EP and Lost tracks by the aforementioned. Five songs that were very difficult to get my hands on prior to the Matador reissues of the past few years.
So, to the guy who sent me the Pacific Trim 7″ in the early days of eBay, only I didn’t get it in Chicago and my dad didn’t tell me he’d received it in Denver and so I gave the guy a bad seller rating; and to the guy who made me a mix of all the Pavement singles on one red unmarked 90 minute cassette, which got me through two winters before unraveling at a house party at the home formerly known as “The Lesbian Meditation Center”; and to my children, my poor poor children, who have to deal with me incessantly quoting Stephen Malkmus whenever provoked by even the slightest proper noun (“There’s No Coast of Nebraska) I do dedicate these five songs by Pavement.
buy some pavement albums, for goodness sakes!
Gold Jamz
Hadda weekend so rad, I couldn’t write about it until Tuesday!
Taken By Trees – Sweet Child O’ Mine
The Last Town Chorus – Modern Love
The Watson Twins – Just Like Heaven
Rob Described Eternity
Guest posting tonight is Rob Booher, the only guy I ever met who could pull off zipping his coat up all the way and still look cool. Its Rob who I have to thank for dropping The Lonesome Crowded West on me when I was 18 and thus created the saddest lil’ fanboy of the 1990′s. He now makes his home in the L.A. and thankfully hasn’t kept all of his secrets to himself...
joey chernila, in his infinite wisdom, asked me to write something about music. i, in my infinite laziness, kept putting it off, thinking i would discover something so brilliant and obscure it would catapult me to the top of the critical heap. well, i’ve given up on that aspiration for now, and have decided to call attention to local dudes tweak bird, whose brilliance is unquestionable, but may have been featured throughout the hype machine farm. know what though? i guess i was wrong. a search revealed only one track on hype machine, so perhaps i fulfilled my destiny. anyhow, this two piece takes us to the shores of a river styx that somehow (flap of butterfly wings in hell?) is kicking up some raging tsunamis. that and something about aliens or indians…
oh, and more importantly, they cite ozzie smith instead of ozzy osbourne as an influence. and tony gwynn, pedro guerrero and lee smith.
perhaps to balance out the heavy rippage of tweak bird, the other LA dude that should be considered for your fantasy jams team is devon williams. tweak bird’s got a blazing fastball but leads the league in wild pitches. devon might have lost his velocity, but he thinks about every pitch and places it precisely where it should be.
devon will hopefully be getting more attention soon due to his touring the west coast with destroyer, but i figure this whole blogging game is about beating people to the punch, so listen to and love this and know that in a world without joey chernila you would have had like two weeks less with devon williams.
so i guess devon plays with lavender diamond, whom i haven’t really dug on yet, although i enjoy the comics that accompany their presence. i’ve listened to the devon stuff a ton, each time thinking i should lay off it so i don’t get sick of it and not want to hear it again for a few years (remember when built to spill’s keep it like a secret came out? i really should have kept that secret from myself). but that never happens. i only want to listen to it again. why? devon seems to be doing something that no one else is, something that i really can’t put my finger on. so perhaps he’s created a need in me to hear things that sound like him, but since there aren’t, i listen again. there’s definitely a pretty significant replacements influence. that’s borne out by devon’s earlier band, osker, which was epitaph punk pop. not really my thing. this solo shit is for sure.
elevator was the first song of devon’s i heard, so i’ll go with that one. the full length is coming out in may on ba da bing and i guarantee it will not disappoint.
Radiohead – Nude (Boo Radley Original Rap Remix)
Alright, first off, he ain’t heavy. Boo Radley is skinny as a muhfucker. Second off, my good friend here has released a remix for the old Radiohead “Nude” remixo contest, and let me tell you: it is a worthy thing.
You want to vote for this track? Do That.
You want to have this track? You could have that.
Radiohead – Nude (Boo Radley Original Rap Remix)
aaaaaaaaand… here that myspace: nuh!
She & Him
Unabashed biters. I’ve always favored them. From Vanilla Ice to Nick Lowe to Jens Lekman, they see this big burger of melodies from the past and they just take that chomp. They do it from love and admiration: Lowe is quoted in the liner notes for his recently re-issued “Jesus Of Cool” as saying “I felt…’I'm a fan, I’ll write songs about pop music.’ I thought I would comment on it, steal a bit here and there and if anyone pulls me up, I’ll say ‘sure…’ It was a sort of forerunner to sampling.”
On “Volume One,” the way retro album from She & Him, M. Ward has constructed a cozy nest from pop songs of the 60′s and early 70′s for Zooey Deschanel’s multi-layered vocals. When she’s crooney and sings like Patsy Cline, he makes like Norman Granz and fills the room with strings. When she’s her own set of backup singers, he breaks out the big beat just so you know where you’re at. “This Is Not A Test” uses the most wonderful biter song of all time, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” and returns it to it’s more modest girl group origins, but not before doing a melodic and instrumental retread of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May.”
Guess what? It works. She possesses a voice you can’t help but sympathize with (see “Sentimental Heart”) and he’s used every trick he’s picked up on his two excellent recent albums “Transistor Radio” and “Post War” to fill the space with warmth. I think it’s fair to compare She & Him to a pair of lovebirds who’ve just moved into their new digs. The album plays like the happy-home montage–cake on faces, Formica glistening–that you might see in a biopic about a real live, up-and-coming group from the past and not just the people who play them on indie rock. Not that you have to screw your eyes up real tight to imagine the tone that this album tries to evoke. “Volume One” plays magnificently in my kitchen and will for many rounds of dishes to come.
She & Him – This Is Not A Test mp3
Gnarls Barkley – Going On Video