Keeps Me Alive

It all starts with me making a bit of a pain in the ass of myself, bothering whomever I could think of who might be able to help me get my hands on a copy of the new CM & TM tour-only record, called The Sound of the Tone-Echoes from the Past. All of this because I had to miss her recent show close-ish to my house because of work (gah!), yet I dearly wanted to support these two fine artists. And then yesterday, guess what arrived in the mail! With an Air Carolyn sticker on it, and a hand-written (wine-stained) note from Carolyn herself! Oh yes!

You know, I like to think I know my way around the English language fairly well. But standing there in my porch, words failed me. Completely. The joy, it... damn. This is SO SWEET!!!

And the record itself? So awesome. A window into theis pair's genuine, funny and bright world. Trademark gigantic songs, with Carolyn's stunning vocals and Tolan's stellar guitar and so much more, intercut with hilarious answering machine excerpts. Oh yes. Any one of these songs is better than anything you've heard lately. Seriously.

My SINCERE thanks to everyone involved (you know who you are), and especially to you Carolyn (if you ever read this). You rock!

Yeah, so it's been a while. Again.

Fuck Your Pain Away

Our buddy Brian is the King of Mixes. He has a long history, going right back to the mix tapes of years and years ago. He spends hours on them, getting the mix just right. He always picks just enough bands I've heard of (but not always the usual tracks), and tons of bands I've never known existed. Where he finds all this stuff, I'll never know. These days, the internet must be helpful, but back in the day it must've been more difficult. Brian just attracts good music to him, somehow. And now he has computer technologies so he can even fade one song into the next, like a radio station, and he photoshops fancy covers to go with it all. It's very High Fidelity, and it's awesome because every so often I am privileged to receive a new mix from him.

During their recent visit here from the States, Brian brought several new mixes with him. Hooray! This first one is called Fuck Your Pain Away, after the first line of the first song, and it's a great mix. Rockin' indie-sounding mayhem that shifts into smooth reggae bliss and then back again. Loved it.

Track List:

Clicks - Complicated
Olympus Mons - Being God
Gossip - Fire With Fire
Against Me! - Don't Lose Touch
Eagles Of Death Metal - I Want You So Hard (Bad Boy News)
Magenta Lane - Daggers Out!
Tapes N' Tapes - Insistor
Kings Of Leon - Charmer
White Stripes - Little Cream Soda
Silver Sun Pickups - Lazy Eye
Clicks - Oh Yeah
Johnstones - No Time For The Moment
Zerolene - All Good
Aggrolites - Work It
Delroy Wilson - This Life Makes Me Wonder
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - Hold Tight
Detroit Cobras - Shout Bama Lama
Immaculate Machine - Jarhand
You Say Party! We Say Die! - You Dit It
Flogging Molly - If I Ever Leave This World Alive
Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah
Clicks - Cry Me A River
Noisettes - Don't Give Up
Chris Ligon - Crazy Daisy

That was awesome.

The Visit

Another mix from Brian, this one is very soulful, with tons of great tracks that groove and slide and gently hold your hand as it smoothly goes from song to song. Nice one in the car.

Track List:

Ray LaMontagne - You're The Best Thing
Rapheal Saddiq - Sure Hope You Meant It
John Legend - Slow Dance
Al Green - Take Your Time (f. Corinne Bailey Rae)
Emiliana Torrini - Heartstopper
Adele - First Love
Rocco DeLuca - Open Pages
Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky
Brett Dennen - Desert Sunrise
Coco Rosie - Noah's Ark
Nizlopi - Helen
Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
Ben Folds - You Don't Know Me (f. Regina Spektor)
Kooks - Naive
Pretenders - Breakin' The Concrete
Jill Sobule - Palm Springs
Decemberists - The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid
Loretta Lynn - Portland, Oregon (f. Jack White)
Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes
Bob Dylan - One More Cup Of Coffee
Madeline - I Left The Light on

Lovely!

Jowi Taylor - Six String Nation

Charting the adventures of a guitar named Voyageur, which was made from many chunks of our collective nation, this book is fascinating. It has warmth, humour, intelligence and creativity - just like us. Well done, and recommended.

Reinhard Kleist - Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness

I was quite impressed by this graphic novel. The artwork is stark yet full, and the choice of black and white is fitting. The story is the one we all know already, with a bonus bit that you might not know about, told by a prisoner at Fulsom. We all love Cash. Bet he'd love that someone made him into a comic book.

Jack Johnson - En Concert

I have this thing about Jack Johnson's music. Although there's a fundamental punker part of me that resists it on some level, ultimately I always get into the groove pretty easily. This live record is beautifully recorded and the track-to-track mixing (each track recorded in a different place on tour) is seamless. It's a showcase of the talented musicians on stage, pure and simple, and a love-fest with Johnson's ardent fans. I will play this many, many times.

After all these years, I still feel that giddy sense of occasion whenever Pearl Jam releases a new record. This one rules. Each track is focused, unapologetic and fully alive, as though they've finally rediscovered their joy at the sheer fun of just being in a band. Soaring and tender in all the right places, this is also stunning, mature work. Damn, this band is tight.

We have been fortunate to grow along with Pearl Jam as they've continually made a career's-worth of consistent, solid and entirely excellent records. Backspacer is definitely no exception. Independence suits them. Turn it UP!



PS With my two free concert downloads (included with the record), I chose Halifax, NS (09-22-05) and Santiago, Chile (11-22-05). And I downloaded the two free live tracks (Immortality and Last Exit) from the bonus card HMV gave me too. Sweet!

So yah, it's been a while. Good to see you.

Robert Pollard - Elephant Jokes

You'd think we'd get tired of this guy's constant output. After all, how much can one person create and not have it all sound the same? If you said 'not much,' then you've never really listened to Robert Pollard. This is intelligent jangly weirdo power pop that always hits the sweet spot. It's varied and creative and fun. This is reason to celebrate! I hope he makes a million more. He probably will.

Ford Pier - Adventurism

Perfect freak-out session of musical insouciance from Mr. Pier. Subtitled "Torture Is The New Anal," this record offers up so much time signature-twisting awesomeness that first listen doesn't come close to giving it all to you. Even the cover is upside down (or is it just my copy?). Along for the ride this time are Jason Tait, Michael Philip Wojewoda and Ryan Granville-Martin. And I'd really like to know why Martin Tielli is the man to see about schedules... Well, whatever. Folks, this record is another slice of unabashed, unapologetic brilliance. A snapshot of a rare talent, indeed. Loved it.

Les Paul

R.I.P. Les Paul.

Oasis

Yeah well, down the hatch. Good riddance.

Busted Flatt

First heard Rascal Flatt's atrocious cover of Tom Cochrane's 'Life Is A Highway' on country radio on my neighbour's crappy stereo in his garage. I couldn't believe my ears. So, of course, I went home and looked it up on YouTube. I was blown away by the absolute horror of this version. The life has been sucked right out of it. The vocals are slow, and the twangy good-ol'-boy schtick does not work at all. The backing track is perfunctory New Country to the point of making it faceless and unrecognizable from any of a million other songs on CMT. Holy shit, that was BAD. Bad bad bad bad bad!

Trivia! Carolyn Mark 'Slithers'

Bet you didn't know that Carolyn Mark and The New Best Friends are on the soundtrack for the movie Slither. Yep, there they are, doing '2 Days Smug And Sober' from the brilliant Pros And Cons Of Collaboration record. Neat!

Still gotta try making a Bourbon Decay one of these days...

The New Hotness

Part of what's been keeping me busy around here arrived the other day, in the form of a 40" television and a surround sound system to go with it. The TV's alright (as far as TVs go, I'm no expert), but the promise of a big sub with surround speakers sets my skin to tingling. Haven't got it hooked up yet, but just imagining Metallica cranked in there makes me really happy indeed. Oh baby.

Apple and iPod

So I announced a month ago that I'd awesomely got an iPod for my birthday. To this day, I still don't have any music on it! I know! The issue seems to be that iTunes only wants me to pull things from my laptop's hd, when all of my music is stored on my wireless external hd. So it means another step to move it all back to the lappy's hd and, frankly, there's not much room there, so it'd require several moves/deletions to get it all on the iPod... and even then that's only if I can figure out a way to be allowed to add things in chunks. Also, iTunes keeps wanting me to make libraries and playlists and all this other proprietary horseshit I care nothing about - man, I just want to drag folders onto the iPod and be done with it.

James has been a big help, but not having a Mac he's a bit out of depth in getting workarounds on that OS figured out. I'm thisclose to calling Mac themselves and having them hold my hand through the process. I'm also considering downloading some external freeware that seems to promise it'll let me do what I want. As it stands right now, iTunes is nothing but a humungous pain in the ass.

Tributes To The Vines and Godsmack

I got these at the dollar store, so you know they're high quality. And not really remembering any of the actual songs by either band will surely hinder these reviews completely. Released on Tributized Records (haha, that's classy), both records are fine, I suppose. Glowing, right? Right!

The Vines Tribute has eight cover tunes by bands you'll surely never hear again and, while they're passable, well, whatever. The disc improves when you get to Iggy Pop (live), Flamin' Groovies and Johnny Thunders tracks as the 'roots of the Vines,' and then the dude from Cinderella's new band's bonus original track. Yes, they went all out on this collection. At least it was only a buck.

As for the Godsmack disc, the Pagan Rock Allstars (oh baby) give us the "essence of Godsmack," which amounts to an exercise in nu-metal imitation. A couple of other bands whose names you'll never utter chip in too before we get the 'roots of Godsmack,' one track of which kinda rules. It's a cover of Metallica's 'Battery' by Eric A.K. (of Flotsam and Jetsam, which was Jason Newstead's band before joining Metallica), Robert Trujillo (haha he plays with them now), Dave Lombardo (SLAYER!!!) and Mike Clark (the producer?). Truly shows you how much that track needs Hetfield's vocals but the song is so awesome that your Grandma could rock it. Now there's an image. Anyway, There's also Venom and Paul Di'Anno and yet another track from the Cinderella dude's new band yada yada yada. Once through this thing was enough.

Hilarious, and not bad for two bucks. Will I play them again? Probably not.

Black Cross - Art Offensive

I also got this one at the dollar store, and actually it's pretty awesome. It's like old school punk, only better produced. Lots of aggression, searing guitars and a driving bottom end. Of course, like all good hardcore-sounding albums - by the end you're sure you've heard the same song 12 times in a row but who the hell cares? At high enough volume, even a couple of these tracks in a row can get your blood pumping and make you indignant as hell without knowing why. Fun.

K'NAAN - Troubadour

I bought this 'cos it was cheap, and I'd heard good things about it somewhere once, I think. Also, somehow I connected K-OS and K'NAAN in my brain. Maybe it was all the upper case letters. And if ever there was a good reason to buy a record, upper case letters is definitely it. Well, it has a duet with Kirk Hammett on it so I'd want to hear that, at any rate. And Mos Def and Damien Marley too, so why not?

And the disc? The music has great moments, with lots of world and soul influences and cool beats. The vocals, however, leave a lot to be desired. He's got flow at times but, seriously, he only every raps on one note. Fine, but after two or three tracks it's incredibly boring. Add to that an Eminem-sounding nasal sarcasm tone in places and it's, well, derivative. When he hits the more melodic tracks and sings, it's soft-pedalled and lovey-dovey. Not nearly as vocally interesting as K-OS. Should I even be comparing these two? Um, I dunno. This record has a whole lotta songs that'd make great mix-tape tracks. Don't think I could listen to the whole thing all the way through again, though. Chacun son gout.

Regina Spektor - Far

I like Regina Spektor, and this is a very strong album, indeed. This one feels like it has more energy, as though the band was in a great place when it was made. Nice. It's fun, thought-provoking, powerful and alive. By that report, then, it's more of the same from this talented musician. Highly recommended.

Wilco - (The Album)

Over time, I have found myself going back and forth in how I felt about Wilco. Given the day I'm listening to them, they are either the coolest or the most boring thing I've heard. I'm not a slobbering must-have-everything fan, but when they are hitting their high points, there are few bands that can reach their level. To this day, I still believe their record Being There was a masterpiece. Now, this latest record is a smattering of the band's best and weakest attributes. Take that to mean what you will. Their fans will scour its every note and word for meaning, of course. There's enough here for me to like, but I probably won't be playing it daily.

Art Of Time Ensemble - Black Flowers

OK, so opening (and closing) with Leonard Cohen covers is a great way to get my attention. Too bad there's only one person who can credibly do Leonard songs (and that's Leonard, folks, so get over it already). The rest of this record wants to be played late in a candle-lit night, over a nice glass of wine, maybe in the background of a good conversation where it won't be too intrusive.

Moby - Wait For Me

Man, I don't know why I bothered. I have never liked Moby. He had his hits, and even claims to have been a punk back in the day, but every song I ever heard of his was either a sacrilegious sample of some old blues song or a comparable waste of time, repetitive and trite, which didn't make me want to listen to any more. Trouble was, he was everywhere for a while, there. Sigh. This record failed to move me at all because it's just more of the same only quieter. It's like he was scared to make a sound at all, each song sort of tip-toes past and tries not to bother you. I wish it had succeeded.

Hank Williams, Jr. - 127 Rose Avenue

This has some verve. With just enough of a twang, here we have that New Country fascination with rawk that blurs the line and makes everything sound the same. That said, the highlights are the acoustic-driven slower tracks, when his clear, strong voice is in the center of things. The track 'Red, White & Pink-Slip Blues' is a damning look at American recession these days, and he even covers his daddy, too. For the offspring of a legend, this ain't bad.

Gin Blossoms - Outside Looking In: The Best Of The Gin Blossoms

I find myself listening to a lot of this band, and often, too. These are smart, tight songs, and on this one all the hits (of course), are here. The band is smokin', the lyrics and arrangements are perfect, and if you aren't tapping your feet and singing along by two songs in you probably don't have a pulse at all. This band should have been a lot bigger for a lot longer than they were/are. They totally deserve it. I wish I ran a record label. I'd sign 'em in a heartbeat and promote the hell out of 'em.

Covered - A Revolution In Sound

This is a 50th anniversary release for Warner Brothers, all incestuous cover songs. I've just gotta go through this one track by track...

Mastodon (f. Billy Gibbons) rip up ZZ Top's 'Just Got Paid' with the right amount of balls, the Black Keys fuzz-out on Captain Beefheart's 'Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles' although it kind of drags by the end, and then Michelle Branch does her Lite Fm wanker-thing to Joni Mitchell's classic 'A Case Of You.'

Against Me! break out the acoustic guitars and unfortunately take on the Replacements' 'Here Comes A Regular,' Missy Higgins does the same thing to Roxy Music's 'More Than This' (which was really, really disappointing and boring), and James Otto (who the hell IS James Otto, anyway?) give Van Morrison's 'Into The Mystic' the same treatment. Man, what a three-song energy-sucker.

Things get weird when Adam Sandler takes on Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane.' It doesn't even sound like him, and if it IS him, he's trying WAY too hard to put that Neil twist on the vocals. Yawn. Taking Back Sunday steps up next with their peppy spin on Tom Petty's 'You Wreck Me,' which works mostly, though it's pretty close to the original, so why bother? And then The Used fuck up the Talking Heads' 'Burning Down The House' in the way only that new wave of emo-whatever-label-they-give-themselves weirdo fucks could imagine it needs to be done. Yeesh. That was a bad song to begin with, you know, but this? Hahaha. Yuck.

The Disturbed give us Faith No More's 'Midlife Crisis' with a heavier edge and more of that 90's nu-metal thing than did the original. Then Avenged Sevenfold gives a straight-on (if a little faster) cover of Sabbath's 'Paranoid.' I mean, yet again - why bother? And lastly, improbably, the Flaming Lips break out their Casio keyboards and mess with Madonna's 'Borderline' as only they could do it. Imagine some plushophiles dancing in the background as the falsetto vocals wail and you'll be all good.

All in all, the originals are better, but the label must have felt they had to do something to mark the occasion and, truthfully, you totally could spend a worse hour of your life in many, many ways worse than this.

Black Snake Moan Soundtrack

This was a messed-up movie I wouldn't recommend. I liked Christina Ricci as a nympho (of course), but I have never liked Samuel L. Jackass. He just seems to be reprising his Pulp Fiction role ad nauseum (yawn). The music from the soundtrack, though, is entirely pleasing to the part of me that loves the blues very very much. There's all kinds of greatness here, even some talking from Son House and, of course, four Samuel L. tracks too, in case you yourself can't get enough of the man. Skip those tracks and there's some gems here.

Getting Ready For September 20

THIS makes me so entirely happy! I love this band. Oh man. James sent me this from somewhere on the 'Net and I've just pasted it verbatim. Imagine my glee!! ...

"Pearl Jam have revealed the track listing for Backspacer, their upcoming ninth studio album.

The 11-track follow-up to the band's 2006 self-titled album will be released on Sept. 20 (a Sunday) in the United States and will come out two days later in Canada. Singer/guitarist Eddie Vedder premiered three of the disc's tracks on his recent solo U.S. tour. A clip of first single "The Fixer" premiered during the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, according to Billboard.com.

You can pre-order Backspacer in CD and vinyl formats on Pearl Jam's website, and you can also order a seven-inch single for "The Fixer."

Pearl Jam will support Backspacer at these shows:

Aug. 8 Calgary, AB @ Canada Olympic Park (Virgin Festival Alberta)
Aug. 13 Rotterdam, Netherlands @ Sportspaleis Ahoy
Aug. 15 Berlin, Germany @ Wuhlheide
Aug. 17 Manchester, England @ Manchester Evening News Arena
Aug. 18 London, England @ O2 Arena
Aug. 21 Toronto, ON @ Molson Amphitheatre
Aug. 23-24 Chicago, IL @ United Center
Aug. 28 San Francisco, CA @ Golden Gate Park (Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival)
Sept. 21-22 Seattle, WA @ Key Arena at Seattle Center
Sept. 30-Oct. 1 Universal City, CA @ Gibson Amphitheater
Oct. 4 Austin, TX @ Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Music Festival)
Oct. 6-7 Universal City, CA @ Gibson Amphitheater
Oct. 9 San Diego, CA @ Viejas Arena
Oct. 28, 30 Philadelphia, CA @ First Union Spectrum Arena

Here are the tracks on Backspacer:

"Gonna See My Friend"
"Got Some"
"The Fixer"
"Johnny Guitar"
"Just Breathe"
"Amongst The Waves"
"Unthought Known"
"Supersonic"
"Speed Of Sound"
"Force Of Nature"
"The End"

Yeah baby!!! I can't wait!!!

Street Sweeper Social Club - Street Sweeper Social Club

Tom Morello knows how to fling riffs into your brain in a pummeling way. Sure, it still totally sounds like a master class in that template of 90's rap-rock of RatM, but that's because he was the spine of that sound and it's what he does best. Boots Riley keeps up with a voice way less nasal-sounding than Zach's, which is cool. This is a strong effort, and the only way to play it properly is at top volume. Call this the Rage album that should have been.