CarbonStated

I remember flying back from Chicago in 1999 to Oklahoma City, listening to Jimmy Eat World's record Clarity, and being utterly caught by its beauty and innovation. Reading the lyric from "For Me This Is Heaven" emblazoned on the disc (we still used discs to listen to music, and portable disc players kids), and being a bit befuddled by it, but coming to understand it later on: "Can you still feel the butterflies?" Oddly, the total runtime of the record was listed next to it, and that was it.

So when JEW announced the 10x10 tour, to celebrate the 10 years (!) since the record was released (and subsequently, foolishly ignored) by Capitol Records, I bought the nearest ticket as soon as it became available. There was no negotiation about it. I was attending.

Clarity is, for many people in their twenties and thirties, a zenith in the period's indie rock, or as it was less PC-called then, emocore. This is a time when Fall Out Boy would have been mocked, and not referred to as "emo," somewhere along the way the plot was lost. Yet when Clarity came out, it was an innovator in the mix of music streaming from the roots of Fugazi, Rites Of Spring, Christie Front Drive, Cap N' Jazz, Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox, and the like, a diverse group of music ranging from catchy to angular, all roughly related by the scene they were in, and by most being a movement in "post-punk," where punk aesthetic was stretched into melody and dynamics, both often understated in punk rock at the time.

The record pushed at the boundaries mostly in its epic scale (some longer songs), and in the use of electronic and orchestral layers, something definitely not done at the time in any coherent sense. Rocket From The Crypt had some horns, but this was another monster entirely. Radiohead was pushing these boundaries in a little more mainstream scene, but the use of samplers was pretty anathema among indie rock at the time. Clarity changed this for good. Like wise, "A Sunday" used the now ridiculous Auto-Tune for a BGV, way before Cher ever did, in a tasteful, vocoder way, more Daft Punk than T-Pain.

Yet the album's emotional depth and quality of composition is what lodged it in the hearts of so many young people of the turn of the century. It is the soundtrack to the times, deeply personal and reflective on social themes, leaning towards mysterious lyrics that helped to keep it from being solely based on relationship woes or railing against the consumer culture. "Lead my skeptic sight" was coupled with "Turn off your radio!" For me personally, no record is as complete since this one, in theme, imagery, soulfulness, earnestness, and musical experimenting with pop craftsmanship.

So the live show.

The Ogden Theater in Denver was a great venue of a couple of thousand people, a wraparound balcony (where I stood), and decent sound. The band came out after the excellent Reuben's Accomplice, and played right down the album, just as advertised.

The mellow start to Clarity, "Table For Glasses," was fitting to slow burn the utter thrill for so many of hearing this album in this way. The final arching chorus was sung along with by everyone, including me, and I never do that crap.

The next few songs blistered by, "Lucky Denver Mint" obviously landing well, and inspiring some good movement among the older folks there, right on through "Your New Aesthetic," the dissonant rant against corporate radio, "Believe In What You Want," the dancey anthem that always sounds good live, to "A Sunday," which inspired the most singing thus far into the night, even in its mid-tempo romp, a sobering and fairly mature tale of rudely waking up to Saturday's excess.

Then came "Crush," the song most like Jimmy Eat World's talent for catchy punk that permeated Static Prevails and the 7" work, and would go on to be refined for the years of success following the rise of "The Middle." "Crush" has a great energy boost in the middle of the record, and was so for the evening as well.

"12.23.95" was an odd enough interlude in the record, though it is so simple and lovely that many folks have had it as a favorite, and it was the case that evening, as it effectively chilled things before leading into one of the best songs of the record.

"Just Watch The Fireworks" began with Jim Adkins grabbing a bow and looping a quick Sigur Ros moment of bowed Telecaster, and then launching into the epic song. This tune is one of the best examples of the face-front emotional earnestness that the record is loved for, though in today's indie rock, the lack of ironic detachment would gain criticism. The song effectively simmers at a medium pace until the long outro, growing to a whisper and electric guitar, then launching into the soaring jam underneath the high notes Jim effectively and tightly sang: "I'll stay up as late as it takes."

Then came what most folks consider the finest song on the record, and what is probably my favorite song that anyone has written: "For Me This Is Heaven," a fairly delicate tune built around the aforementioned line: "can you still feel the butterflies/can you still hear the last goodnight?"

This song shows the band at their subtle best, with the bass/drum groove defining the last chorus of the song from the rest of the song simply by opening up their notes to longer ones, from the bouncy groove of the rest of the song. The well-layered vocals, and the simple arrangement give an immense emotional weight to the end of the bridge into the last chorus-the high point of the entire album, cleverly wedged into the end of the middle, so time is left to come down from the experience without leaving it.

The whole night the band seemed happy to be there, and simply enjoying the time, rather than being uber-hyped or mellow, and before "For Me This Is Heaven" Jim announced this was one of his "favorite songs to play for you guys," and no one there could deny its special craft.

From there, the two rock songs following, "Blister" and "Clarity" were highly charged by the crowd and the band, clearly caught up in both release from the previous tune and expectation of the final piece. "Blister" showed the band still able to play rock music, and I mean Rock Music, aggressive, intelligent, and full of great hooks and energy.

So the night came to the end with the much-anticipated "Goodbye Sky Harbor," a melancholy and 17 minute long rumination on both personal thoughts and A Prayer For Owen Meany.

"Goodbye Sky Harbor" featured many things out of the normal for this scene of music, including a very patient and looping coda, growing incrementally with Jim's vocals, little notes here and there of "nah nah nah," and "do do do." Live, he did all of this with a loop station on the ground, ditching the acoustic guitar and dancing around half-nervously, half-caught up in the music, looping bit by bit as the section grew and grew under the band's patient playing. Tom turned to play organ and bell samples, putting away his looped guitar, and Zach played the repetitive drum section on a small snare, mimicking the sounds of the actual record.

As a piece of rock music, it was hard to surpass, utterly lovely and sublime, all in the humble setting of a rock band, as the band cut out for the vocal layers to linger before launching into an amazingly moving recreation of the House-y disintegration of the song that occurs on the record. They played it all, with Zach's fiery Drum & Bass fills, Jim dancing all about the stage, playing the descending Glockenspiel line and singing "I am but one small instrument" over the climaxing jam.

As you can hopefully tell, this was a once-in-a-lifetime event for fans of this record and this band, regardless of how one feels about the music that followed Clarity. The ability of a now middle aged band to bring this much maturity and energy to a ten year old record was inspiring and completely a gift to all who came. I urge you to listen to this album if you have yet to, and if you have, listen again, in its entire length, savoring the astounding piece of music that it is.

So recently I noticed the fact that Sean Astin might be the actor of our times. I was moved to this by randomly, not on purpose, taking in several of his films over the past few weeks, and noticing the actual breadth of what our neurotic little Samwise Gamgee has done.

Let's take Goonies, this first example.



Sean Astin plays Mikey, an inhaler-wielding visionary, who is both fearless and always a bit overexcited. He seems more aware of the Gooines spot in the social ladder than some (Data seems clueless, but genius), but he also does not let that keep him down. He is consumed with the quest for One-Eyed Willy's gold, and knows how to surround himself with useful folks. His relentless optimism and drive inspired an entire generation, and it is hard to reach the end of the movie and not feel just a bit driven to spend some more time pursuing one's seemingly impossible, or childish, but ultimately real, and worthwhile, dreams.

Then there is Rascal Moore, from Memphis Belle.



This is Sean Astin as the still-to-come breakout role, whose spicy personality lends some noob quotes and innocence for us to remark at as the tragic and heroic are wrapped up in the historic bombing run captured in this film. His role as the thankless ball-turret gunner is a placement for all of us in a frightening and claustrophobic experience, and his quick wit and backtalking presage the smart ass he is to become in the following films.

Now let's go to Toy Soldiers.



This movie flew under a lot of a radars, though it is a decently wrought action film, and has Louis Gossett, Jr. in it. Here Astin plays Billy Tepper, another "reject" like a Goonie, but this time a spoiled kid at a private school who is always up to pranks, and is at loggerheads with the headmaster. Yet when terrorists take over the school for ransom, Tepper shows his smarts and bravery by concocting a pretty genius plan, using the avenues and secret passages he found as a delinquent. This presages Harry Potter doing the same thing by a couple of decades. This is Astin as his crassest (like hacking into a phone line for a 900 number), but also his most heroic, until Lord Of The Rings.

Of course, my favorite of the Astin films is the following:


This is the fun side of Astin, sort of like the Ocean's Eleven movies, where actors in normally more taxing roles just kind of have fun around one another. What else will you do with Pauly Shore at his apex? Just let the fun happen and be your normal, neurotic self, playing the square, while those around you show you how to party for real.

Of course, everyone's hero is still:



This is a surprise for those who had not known Astin since Goonies, but for folks who know Toy Soldiers, they are aware that Astin really does have acting chops, and can carry an underdog, or sidekick, into truly great territory. Often it is Astin as an opposing character, such as Dave in Encino Man or Samwise in LOTR, but this time it is Astin against Notre Dame football, a character in its own right, that needs to be overcome for the length of the film.

Finally, the full-circle character of Astin's, that cements him in the pantheon of great films and supporting actors:



The quality of the series helps every actor involved, even Elijah Wood induced skepticism until these films came out, and suddenly he is in a myriad art films like Everything Is Illuminated and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Samwise is often the true hero in the whiny and even more neurotic Frodo's shadow. He is basically the one who triumphs over the ring's power at Mt. Doom, and is all along a stubborn and curious foil to the schemes of everyone around Frodo, including the Ring, and Gollum. Astin brings the innocent, boyish character here, as in all of his work, but he also imbues a sadness and melancholy that fit with the surprising darkness of the stories, wisely kept in the films.

So. I encourage everyone to head out and rent your favorite Astin film, and pay honor to the surprising film hero of our time.

Back when "Armageddon It" was a highlight of a live show, performed by long-permed British rock gods, with big-haired women of the 1980s drooling over very average-looking men, one could expect the magic of the live concert to transcend all boundaries, classes, races, or even to save those in need. This sense of camaraderie created the Live Aid shows and all manner of good-hearted live music sharing. To go see a concert was a big freaking deal, and worthy of an all-day celebration.



Even recently, live music as a special, a seriously sacred time shared between performers and participating songwriters, where something that could only happen once happened, has been replaced by the ticketed party atmosphere with a band playing behind your stupid club dancing or pub-crawling. Jeff Tweedy sums it up in the most perfect way possible:



Yet this week marked a new low point for the recording music industry and the live music industry. Live Nation and Ticketmaster, two of the most corpulent concert ticketing and festival creating forces in the US have merged, pending antitrust approval.

While the purchase may or may not happen, it is a good time to look briefly at the way concerts are done anymore, and to guess at how the moment of musical transcendence that Jeff described above could survive, if it can.

Ticketmaster and/or Live Nation will, up to this point, only be involved if there is a semi-to hugely popular artist or tour involved. If you are going to your local arena, probably Ticketmaster. I even had to buy from them, with their ridiculously inflated and feed-up prices for a small theater show in Denver, of Jimmy Eat World. The world of paying 100 bucks or more to see Madonna or Miley Cyrus might not interact much with music lovers, but to pay for mid-size theater shows or even largeish events like the Foo Fighters or Death Cab For Cutie will put you in their claws.

However, you can keep your local theaters alive and thriving by buying from the box office, or supporting local ticketing online, and going to smaller shows from up-and-coming artists, keeping that level of touring alive and moving. Artists make most of their scratch from this kind of show, where merch is sold direct, and tickets are handled through a booking company or label. This helps immensely, and the concert-goer is a participant in the art, an executive producer, in these cases.

All over the US, independent venues promote quality music, from Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, OK, to Studio B in Brooklyn, to the Metro in Chicago. Keep your support for these places intact.

And when you do go to a show, be mindful of the people around you. Be polite in crowded spaces, be quiet in quiet shows. If you want to do any of the following:

1. pick up a guy/girl
2. get faded
3. dance up on a guy/girl (dance bands excluded from this)
4. hear your favorite songs
5. hear another band's favorite songs
6. talk
7. play pool
8. play guitar hero

Go to Henry Hudson's or your local misspelled on purpose club named Spyce or something. Don't go to a concert.

Remember, the man doesn't own you, he just owns most of the music markets. Enjoy music.

Dustin

The Welcome Wagon
Welcome To The Welcome Wagon
2009 Asthmatic Kitty



Music by couples can be immediately discarded by critics and listeners for its immediate preciousness, but this is based in some sort of macho or bohemian assumption that marriage or commitment is anathema to creative freedom, and posited by folks who probably don't know what kind of intense dynamic intense commitment is. If there is was ever a source of creative tension, there is one in relationship.


The Welcome Wagon is a husband and wife (Vito and Monique) pastor team in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and though one cannot first find the tension located in their tunes, it turns out to be located in terms of spiritual tension, between what we assume to be the divide between heave and earth, often enhanced by spiritual music.

With the Welcome Wagon we find that tension erupting in the warm glow of these rooted in daily life and work tunes colliding with a sense of traditional hymn modes and provincial spiritual folk songs. The music is very innocent in its simplicity and happiness, and can tend to feel bubbly in the front half of the record a bit. This brightness is well balanced by the second half, where "I Am A Stranger" marks the albums strongest point, finding a strong, dark musical backing to a heavy story of finding the divine in the shattered earth's milieu. The manic guitar solos under the aching choir feels like a Southern dirge and moonshine-jam filling a Brooklyn meeting hall, full of fear and trembling, cascading into a chaos-jam under the words "everything's alright, yes, everything's alright..."

The album's production by Sufjan Stevens certainly feels akin to his own work at times, more than others ("Hail To The Lord's Anointed" could be a Seven Swans outtake, and that is a good thing), the record still develops a folky sense that sets it apart from the more chamber-worthy Glassisms of Sufjan's work. However, Vito's quiet tenor is a dead-ringer for Sufjan's (who sings at times also).

When much liturgical music is either aping U2 endlessly in energetic, but mega-hyped anthems, or retreating into lovely but inscrutable ancientness, The Welcome Wagon offer a pretty compelling branch of style, with well thought lyrics that do not speak down to a congregation's intelligence, but still enact a very humble interaction with the Holy, lacking pretense, and full of joy with sorrow, how the Gospel appears.

Andrew Bird
Noble Beast
2009 Fat Possum

In "Anonanimal," my favorite track so far from Andrew Bird's awaited and satisfying new record, he manages to compress all of the exciting elements of his music and wordplay into one tune very well. Let's look at those layers briefly: The title suggests anonymity, a disappearing human like one worker bee in New York City or something like that. Yet in the song he sets himself apart from nature "red in tooth and claw" by calling out a "sea anemone, and that'll be the death of me," and he turns later to saying he will "become this animal/perfectly adapted to music halls...a non-animal," and this turn of phrase seems to decry now the losing touch with our natural sides for the sake of high-class ideas. Yet in the midst of all of this zoology, he launches us back to a small moment with the moment of radio surfing in the car: "hold on just a second/I know this one..."

The haunting, dark flow of the filtered violins and acoustic guitar lends a sense of foreboding to the entire tune, even when the pops of the snappy percussion come in midway through the song. Something is amiss with even being human, or something is amiss with the world around us, and who knows what it actually is, buried in all of this whimsy.

The key to fully absorbing Andrew Bird is to take the whole picture in, and let it confuse when it does, let it make sense when it does, whether lyrically or musically, in his wild blend of chamber pop and semi-throwback rock and folk. He understands that language has a sound itself, that words are valuable for their signifiers and also their sounds in themselves. Glottals are toms and bass drums, sibilance is a cymbal crashing, and palatals are snare drums.

Which brings us to the new record, Noble Beast. As I have not had too much time to soak with it, who knows how it will shape the rest of the year, but I do have to say the immediate picture I get from it is one of a whole "sound," or "style" within the confines of the one album, rather than the long distance changes of temperature and timbre from Armchair Apocrypha, which I loved.

So it lends Noble Beast both a warm, round sound, full of classic sounds, much less of Dosh's more electronic layers, and more of the washes of percussion. The violin still holds a prominent place, even more so on this record than the last, but there is also more of a sense of rock and roll happening, in a vintage sense. Less melodic guitar shows up, like the odd runs from older songs like "Skin Is, My," and "Plasticities," and more rhythm guitar abounds.

I cannot decide yet if this then makes Noble Best feel more like a monochromatic album than one with simply a coherent style within its own borders. Whatever the case, Noble Beast is well worth the listen, and for fans it will be an exciting and valuable journey along some of the most mature and complete feeling tunes Andrew has written yet.

Lykke Li
Youth Novels
2008
LL Recordings
www.lykkeli.com

I stumbled onto the music of Lykke Li through a YouTube video featuring the members of her band and Bon Iver performing her tune "Dance Dance Dance" in Los Angeles near a fountain, with various La Blogotheque-style percussion bits an her odd dancing over a sweetly naive tune about expressing oneself through dance. It was the moment when her melody as she sang "words can never make up for what you do" took a soulful dive, unexpected and brilliant, that I began to be intruiged by the Swedish indie popper.

As I dived into her debut album, I was both caught by and pleased with the oddly organic production by Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn, and John, Kanye's favorite Swedes. The vintage engineering on their most recent collection is present somewhat, yet the open and live feel of Youth Novels lends a folk glow to the firmly pop tunes. "Little Bit," with its sly declarations of obsession and faithfulness to a lover, ending with the clever understatement "I'm a little bit in love with you..." illustrates Lykke's skill in blending Feist-like sugary melody with an edge of 60s or 70s American soul and doo-wop.

Lykke's unbeguiling lilt of a voice is still the centerpiece of the album, weaving hooks all around the simple and dancey arrangements. It is an easy listen, but the depth of the style saves it from too much kitsch, while also embracing the simple joys of light, unironic pop music. She falls on the indier side of a new wave of intelligent and stylish female front-women, with great producers and smart tunes, like Feist, El Perro Del Mar, St. Vincent, and even more pop folks like Estelle and the like.

A "major" artist, and an "indie" artist. Considered.


Gemma Hayes
The Hollow Of Morning
2007 Second Motion
myspace.com/gemmahayes2006


Mercury Prize nominee and Meteor Award winning songstress Gemma Hayes' first two albums swung her well-layered tunes from one end of the spectrum to the other, well, the spectrum of Irish songwriter folk rock, that is.
Night On My Side (which I first heard while driving in Northern Ireland along a beach) was loose and noisy, but full of Hayes' whispery melody over a bed of spacious guitars.

Her second work, The Roads Don't Love You was a great blend of cleaner production (from Beck's often-drummer Joey Waronker), and aching songs, weary of early adulthood.

Which brings us to The Hollow Of Morning, her most balanced work yet. With guitar help from My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, this collection of songs still draws deep from the well of songwriter folk, but Hayes' silver bullets have always been her haunting, carelessly smooth voice, and her proclivity to take the band underneath it all to real places of ambient rock, lo-fi pop, with a real sense of indie production. The depth of the production helps her to avoid too-maudlin territory well-handled by Damien Rice and The Swell Season, but keeps her in a little more wide-angled place.



The album kicks off with the little girl sing-song vocals of "This Is What You Do," a folky shuffle dotted with ambient guitars and random synth flourishes, all unhurried and thoughtful. From there the songs cycle back and forth from quiet and roomy folk ("Chasing Dragons," "January 14th") to poppy indie rock, culminating in the arching expanse of "Home," with its simple, yearning chorus of "this is home..."

The record ends with the patient, well-layered "At Constant Speed," a great closing with its assurance of moving on from a painful place: "I'm beginning to forget you/ I just see an outline..." Its quiet electronics are warm and wide, and slowly build into an almost M83-like crescendo of synths and electronic piano.

Hayes has always flown a little under the radar in the States, despite being featured on Grey's Anatomy, and mentioned in a Counting Crows tune (she's the "songbird of Ballyporeal (her hometown) in "Washington Square"). Yet this record deserves attention from both the main thrust of pop music and the indie world, as her quality and aesthetic straddle both streams well, and by now she has amassed a great collection of songs, unpretentious, and always interesting.

-----




Dosh
Wolves And Wishes
2008 Anticon

Martin Dosh, rhythmic powerman behind Andrew Bird, as he is usually known, released a small brilliance in 2008, and the sad thing is, many would not notice unless they paid particular attention to Andrew Bird, or saw Dosh open for the crazy/amazing Anathallo this past year.

Wolves and Wishes is a colleciton of almost entirely instrumental jams featuring Dosh's imaginative drumming layered under and over a cornucopia of instruments acoustic and electronic. While Anticon is known as a label of indie-minded hip hop and electronic music, Dosh doesn't fit easily into that sort of category. Indeed, two external considerations both enhance and change the reception of this music into your ears.

The first is that of Anticon and the electronic label itself. The great value of these tunes is found in the tension between the delicate acoustic instruments (such as Andrew Bird's violin in the manic "If You Want To, You Have To"), and the raucous electric guitars, percussion, banged-on Rhodes, swathes of noise, and chiming bells that dot the entire record. It doesn't feel particularly "electronic," like anything of an 80's throwback, or a proper dance band. It also doesn't feel like hip-hop in almost any sense, save for the emphasis on drums, and it feels more like what Allmusic describes as "the hip-hop equivalent of post-rock."

The second thing to consider the music with is the startling live-ness of the whole creation process for Martin Dosh. This video shows him at work on one tune from the record, "Capture The Flag." To picture this music being performed in all of its complexity and blend of live and pre-made, samplers and drum kit, guitars and violins...well, it is impressive and impossible all at once.



The reward and cost of the music is that being both instrumental, and lacking the traditional hooks and melodies, it is often a difficult listen. The danger of appreciating this as visceral and not particularly emotive is always present, and I would love to see Dosh balance these forms in the future. Yet for now, it is a reward indeed to mine the moments of loveliness and breath from the deep channels of groove and noise embedded in Wolves and Wishes.