A Bird and her Bush

Last night I saw a band called Lilith Velkor. They were my first official non-ironic grunge band experience and I found it very positive. I wasn't the only one thrust forward the words "lost album between Bleach and Nevermind." Regardless of how uneasy that may make you feel, rest assured that I genuinely enjoyed the show and that as soon as I get some recordings, I'll post them.

I also genuinely enjoy this further proof that LA is the greatest city/suburb in the world:

Bushes - Animal Style

Bid for Birds

The Finches build simplistic music without the cold face of minimalism. Each song consists of pure tones assembled (linearly?) without the techniques of a modernist. More specifically: with little effort you could write a computer program to synthesize the tone of her voice. However, it could never synthesize her voice.

Their physical presence is as clean: upright, sensible and placed.

They are touring the coasts.

The Finches - Nightswimming, AR

Good Bye Baby

He said, "What the hell is this?" "Whispertown 2000!" I told him, "Why in god's name would you call your band Whispertown 2000?" He chuckled. I glanced down at my watch and thought about 2 weeks from now, I'm not sure why I would look to my watch when thinking about something 2 weeks ahead, I guess it is just that the watch is time, and time was my problem, seconds , minutes, days. I shrugged my shoulders, "I don't know, but it sure is dreamy" "Dreamy?" "Yeah, dreamy like someone is whispering a dream in your ear" "It's really good!" "I know." I said, thinking of seconds, minutes, days and weeks.

Whispertown 2000 - Good Bye Baby

myspace (buy album here)

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StG on Whispertown 2000

Orfeo ed Euridice

The pros and cons of the affected voice of Joanna Newsom have been playing out before me in a manner no more or less spectacular than the 1987 USSR vs. Canada Junior hockey fight (link). It's epic, unpleasant and occasionally somebody at the top makes the call to kill the lights in a desperate grasp for order.

Anni Rossi - Live in Portland

My underlying sentiment is praise and thankfulness. Anni Rossi is a wonderful song writer and performer and is part of a greater movement of good music - sometimes performed solo by girls who sometimes have a tinge of a strangely affected vocal style. In each case, they have managed to find their own voice seeded from a rich garden of great female singers. Furthermore, the use of instruments other than guitar within the female signer/song writer deserves to be directly credited to Newsom.

A few exceptions have cropped up, in particular a fairly bad performance by Casey Dienel, who managed to avoid translating her shot at a trendy vocal stab wound onto any recordings.

However, a recent trip to Pheonix, Arizona's amazing Trunk Space reveled how deep the river runs. 13 bands were on the bill and a significant amount twisted annunciation was brought to the stage.

Ash Reiter/Drunken Boat - Song 1

I was quite taken with a performance by Ash Reiter. The songs were quite simple in a perfect ex-Eric's Trip sort of way. I was also intrigued by what I thought was an Australian accent. Further investigation revealed that she was from the Bay area.

This intrigue and disgust, admiration and distrust and praise and dismissal took it's most violent form with a Riverside auteur Brother Mitya (see: flesh eaters). His set was a great mix of meticulous classical guitar and minimalist percussion. The Trunk Space was easily raptured. But the skew of his mouth and the utter forcefulness of vocal defocussing was just too much. I walked away satisfied, filled with great music but totally unable to buy his CD, hateful and unnecessarily bitter.

Ultimately, my emotions are dominated by 'start more bands'. I prefer 'steal freely' to 'ripping off'. I have even made the argument that a top 40 cover band is possibly the punkest band of all time (this argument is too shambly to be put to paper, but holds up quite well at parties). But a significant part of singing a song is finding your own voice. Erika Davies is a great San Diego singer/seamstress who can sing through the most predictable repertoire of all time with a lilt that makes it alright by me.

Erika Davies - Summertime

OOIOO

Rythmic and hypnotic, the click clack and boom boom brings you closer only to yell in your ear. OOIOO seem like a modern response to gamelan. This a very good thing, as gamelan performances have been some of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed. There is nothing like the thunder of many acoustic instruments, I highly recommend that you seek out a local performance--if you are lucky enough to be in a part of the world where this is possible. I digress, so we have noisy electric gamelan cacophonous and beautiful.

OOIOO - sai(edit)

Live and Real

Jon-Rae keeps getting better and better. While I was skeptical of his move to Toronto which I've previous lambasted as the home of terrible boring music, somehow the opposite thing happened for JR. He has found a group of musicians that work fantastically with him, and the audiences to appreciate it! Good on you Toronto! This is a live track I grabbed from B(oot)log [follow the link for the whole show]. This song starts as a Jon-Rae song used to start, then it explodes. Really Jon-Rae has managed to transcend his genre.


Jon-Rae And the River - Hard in the City Live at the Grad Club,Kingston 4-11-06

Black Black

Black Black have me thinking of the glory days of my youth when there was nothing better than seeing my friends bands play at the local hall/garage/rec center. Here we have one part youthful energy, a dash simplicity and a dollop of halloween. Naturally a charming combination.

They also seem to be fond of dressing up in costumes, which in my mind is always a plus. In addition the CD that arrived in the mail has a meticulously hand draw cover using various gel pens!


Black Black - Royal Dragon

(Pop up video like fact--Diva and Lola are Keven Haskins of Bauhaus' duaghters)

highhplacigheplacess

I hate to say "my new favorite band" because I went down that path only a few posts ago, but High Places took me by complete surprise on Saturday night. Laptop music had slipped away from me, fed by aggressive positivism and diva tendencies. The rich LA/PDX noise/fun scene and San Diego's industrial goths had collectively reared a six band ugly head. For the last three days the surf had been blown out. As a casual defeatist, I relaxed to Herman Dune in between sets - but nothing could have prepared me for the empty, mixed up sounds of High Places. I am certain that this meaningless blurb has not prepared you.


High Places - Head Spins

Lost in the Woods

I find that I am increasingly drawn to music with a cloak of disfunction, hiding catchy melodies and hooks. Woods' album At Rear House sounds like it was recorded in your basement. It is something quite different and beautiful marrying enough noise and experimentation to keep it interesting while still keeping you singing along in your best falsetto. I can almost imagine the moment they finally emerged from the basement, tape in hand--grinning.


Be Still by Woods

Robin-Thrush

More about Birdnames:

After the show I bought all of their records. The first one is just slightly abrasive enough to slip away from my personal canonization. The second, On Opaque Things is the most complete entry in the catalogue. It has a jewel case (although unconventionally packaged inside), song titles, credits, etc... I have previously featured a few great tracks from this CD and it has practically been played to death at my house and as 'in between bands music' at the Che Cafe. But there is also a third release. It's only a CD-R with silkscreened shanking but it was self described as their best and their latest in response to the classic post-show Which one should I buy? It is titled Enter Soundless Traceland the Great Hall and somehow, in the crazy days that followed that fateful Southern Californian good times, I lost it. I had been saving it. I had been waiting for the window of 'no bad days' to open and let the Birdnames in to the audience of my full attention. Strangely enough, before the most anticipated moment of my life, I lost it!!!

I wrecked the car, trashed my house and scrambled the Che but was unable to relocate possibly my new favorite record by my certainly new favorite band (it used to be the Beatles - yar har stage banter/heckle). Emails were written and web queries were performed and a relatively short time later, two copies of the said disc arrived wrapped in newspaper installation art and illegible liner notes, more minimalist and crisper than I could have imagined.

On Opaque Things was put to shame. Whatever this CD-R is (tour EP, demo, a proper record hardly released or backed by band that has finally come to terms with the dirty, despicable entity that is music promotion?), it's incredibly great. You should listen to it and start your own band in your own image. You should pledge never to give a birthday gift other than a disposable camera. You should record one song a day for a year, choose the best three and put out a 7".

Birdnames - The Tailor Song

Birdnames - Nature

Cooking up torillas is so much fun!

I celebrated the first day of the year by cooking up corn torillas and making a bowl of beans. I hummed along as I worked, and I had so much fun.


Michael Hurly and the Unholy modal rounders - Slurf Song from the album Have Moicy!