The Audiozine

Crazy weekend. Saw Superchunk, then Birdlips, then The Very Best, and now about to go see Dirty Projectors and possibly Crystal Antlers and Magnolia Electric Co. After a lot of hard work over the last few weeks, it's been a nice payoff.

Speaking of nice payoff, everybody already knows that one of the year's best albums is Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear. I saw them live a few years ago at Satellite Ballroom when they were opening for the Books and remember thinking that this then-unsung band was boring in the extreme, creating a thick ambient soup that was too passive to bother with such niceties as, y'know, compelling me to feel something.

Well, these guys have come a long long long way and I am glad to take back my original assessment. They've had a run of great radio/TV/internet appearances lately, but this performance of "Ready, Able" on Letterman is a real treat. The album version has a languid, spectral quality that they ditch here for a strong backbone of bass and drums, a confident vocal, and an alternately tense and lush string arrangement. And what attention to the dynamics, such control over volume and timbre.

Another post that amounts to me saying "If you live in Charlottesville, then you should..."

Check it:
07/13 -- The Great White Jenkins et al @ The Box -- possibly my fav band in the state of Virginia. Country, folk, free jazz, gospel, and some kind of slow rock swampy crawl blues dread thing. Put it another way: Andy Jenkins et al write hummable tunes for voice + guitar + everything else but also can talk to you at length about Albert Ayler and Ken Vandermark...and if you listen carefully, you might even come to think that those latter skronk-heroes are the real influences at work here.

07/14 -- Nelly Kate et al @ Tea Bazaar -- Nelly is a super nice person and a really fascinating musician. I played with her and our friend Evan in Purest Purists for a single gig that doubled as a big art show in the Masonic Building in Staunton. The most recent stuff of hers I have is an EP called "Autumn on My Heels" which is a collection of really short synthesizer + voice songs that boil the pop songform down into such melodic and compact forms that you'd think she's writing avant-garde lullabies and nursery rhymes. Which she is.

07/15 -- Adam Smith + Thomas Dean Play Records @ The Box -- You will dance. You will like it. You will love thy neighbor. Who will sweat on you. And move. And you'll reciprocate. And if you're lucky, you'll fall asleep at the end of the night at the bar. Yes, Liquid Liquid. Yes, David Bowie. Yes, yes, heaps of yes.

Short update btw: Aside from checking Nailgun and telling you which shows I'd be peeping if I were still in Cville, I do actually check out great things in this new city that's my home. I'm also incredibly busy now that work has started. Trying to figure out a good daily/weekly/monthly routine so that I can maintain this site, continue to create music in some capacity, and access all the culture that is surrounding me right now, without losing ground on what I originally came here to do. Thanks for yr patience, more soon.

This mix is really really really good. Curated by Beck, who has also been putting up some great vids of reinterpretations of the VU + Nico album.

Major Key Life Affirmation:

Oh man, I'm reeling. A little video action:

First, the man at his peak.

Then, the man around the time I discovered him.

Like so many other fans, I'll never be able to reconcile the man, the music, the eccentricities, and the likely true accusations of utterly inappropriate behavior. None of which changes the fact that in the last 30 years there hasn't been a single performer who has come anywhere close to MJ's level of finesse, stage presence, vocal chops, and mass appeal.

Neda. (warning: graphic content).

Beggar's Bowl. Guitar Lexicon.

I don't live in Cville anymore, which means there is an excellent show this Thursday that I'll sadly be missing. Check it:

Thurs 06/18/09
Tea Bazaar
cover = a few bucks???
St. God's Hospital
Tereu Tereu (or official website, if you prefer)
Oblio

St. God's Hospital seemed to be on the up-and-up right before my departure from Cville. Oblio's songs are tuneful, with a massive guitar sound and an anthemic pop quality. The band that I'll really vouch for, though, is Tereu Tereu. I've caught them in Cville on a few occasions and, apart from being nice guys, they play songs that manage to be melodic, catchy, and rhythmically off-kilter. They reminded me of some of the later Dischord Records bands and a thus far cursory listen to their new album seems to see them deepening and extending those sonic kinships. Still ultra-underrated in Charlottesville as far as I can tell -- give em a shot!

I live in a new place now, so far so good. Stuff like this supposedly happens here: