All lights off. Salem's coming.
The Pendu Organization presents Salem at Glasslands, Jan 5 in New York. Yes, we will be there. No, we may not survive to report back.
SALEM - DIRT from ACEPHALE on Vimeo.
salem The Big Pink
Bowery Ballroom NYC
12/3/2009
Here's the problem for The Big Pink: they know a couple of songs, and they know them well. And they have an album, A Brief History Of Love, that's pretty fucking good. Then they go and sell out two nights in New York and suddenly have to reproduce the giant bombast of the album live, while maintaining the frosty intimacy.
like dominos, live reviews, live shows, the big pink It's getting to be that time of year where solicitations for "best-of" lists, from both the past 12 months and the past decade (oh god oh god oh god) are slicing through my email. Books are always easier for me than music, because, generally, I read so much that only the really really good stuff stays with me and the chaff falls away. With music..it depends. A breakup, a breakdown, a break-through-anything can cause me to get stuck on repeat like Little Boots (but never stuck on repeat with Little Boots, god no), listening to stuff, like, oh, Tegan And Sara incessantly until my heart breaks (again). As such, sometimes music ends up bumrushing the show and I am left, with minutes remaining in a calendar year, rescribbling my "favorites" lists as things suddenly stake out reality in my conscious.
(Truth be told, if you held my ass to the fire now, right now, right this very minute, my 2009 best list would be three records, and yes one of them would be the Lady GaGa reissue. Shut up.)
Last year, that last-minute dark horse was Now, Now Every Children's incredible Cars: an album that was front-loaded with the emotional baggage of Mineral but with the multi-layered brilliance of old Arcade Fire. The fact it became such a part of my life, fusing with the dissolution of a relationship and a hard, lonely winter is fresh in my mind as I try to put this year's list together-Handsome Furs, for instance, were a major-league part of my Jan and Feb, but now it's the hidden melancholy behind the eyes of The Bloodsugars that wants a run for the list. I dunno, man...
Here's Now, Now Every Children performing "Cars" at their album release party last year. Fall in love now if you didn't then.
best-of lists, lists, now now every children One of the first independent NY bands I fell in love with upon moving here was The Ropes. The first time I saw them they were battling through a club's sound issues but made it work, and the second time I was catching them in the lower room of Webster Hall and I arrived 2 songs 'til the end and I was all janky on a pre-Fever Ray high, but both times they made their nervous, pop-flecked rub of the ADULT. coin work for the crowd and the space. On record, they take the sound steps further than their two-person all-hands-multitasking live show, and add incredible, hypnotizing droning elements that have me completely addicted.
Their entire web site is worth checking out because all of their recorded output is available in a pay-what-you-want format (though, believe me, this stuff is worth way more than whatever you bought at the record store on Tuesday, kid), but I'm especially drawn to their tongue-in-cheek take on attaching filmed images to their songs-especially this, an incredibly literal take on one of my favorites of theirs, "Professional Outsiders". The song's great, the lyrics are tattoo-worthy ("never trust a loner who’d rather be in love. don’t believe a rebel who's friends with everyone"), and The Ropes should be your new favorite band if they aren't your current favorite band.
the ropes New soldout writer Liz is on a freaking roll. First, she proves herself right about The Con. Then, she somehow uncovers the fact that I've never heard Imogen Heap's "Hide And Seek" on a night that I needed a good, gut-wrenching, life-ending cry. And, as though she needed to make it a total coup, she introduced me to my new favorite band-Brooklyn's The Bloodsugars.
The Bloodsugars debut album I Can't Go On, I'll Go On is, for lack of any better words (and believe me, I've tried to think of them) a complete rush of blood to the head. It's a charming, witty pop record that shapeshifts as it rocks and moves. The jerky, warm album opener "Light At The End Of The Tunnel", is a car commercial or Scrubs intro waiting to happen (quick, someone ring Alex Patsavas now), and is the song on the album I've seen most gravitate towards. In my repeated listenings, though, I can't get over I Can't Go On, I'll Go On's second song, "The Pedestrian Boogie".
The Bloodsugars: The Pedestrian Boogie
What I get from this song is the feeling of the warm embrace of US-era Peter Gabriel-electric lamps and rain-slick streets and a little love caught in the throat. You know, the stuff those Vampire Weekend boys can't quite muster when they tap the same well. In an email with Liz, she mentioned "The Pedestrian Boogie" conjuring, for her, Passion Pit calmed the fuck down and grown up a bit. It's not just that, though, because there's a slightly tethered guitar solo in there that pulls on the heavy clouds of longing that drift through the whole song-and that guitar, as well as the handclaps (god I'm a sucker for those handclaps), made "The Pedestrian Boogie" a stand out moment of the I Can't Go On, I'll Go On album release party this past weekend.
I'm obsessed with this one song now, but the whole album is a grower, though-I mean, I'm already rewinding back and forth to hear the end of the closing song "Before The Accident", so who knows where my head will be in another month. Or in a week. Or tomorrow.
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