Kai Altair: Howl

Kai Altair: Howl mp3

I’ve heard Brooklyn’s Kai Altair described, recently, as being a “neo hippie pagan witch doctor goddess with a trip hop fetish”. Listening to “Howl”, from her forthcoming debut E.P. (dropping with an insane fantasmagorical launch party Nov 13th at House Of Yes, watch this space for more details), it’s possible to say that fits about 1/3 of what the song is. The rest is a twisted, dark, moody & atmospheric song that goes down like a love song but pricks and stings like a ballad of things lost. It reminds me, really, of the feeling I got the first time I heard the new Editors song and its sweeping chorus of “pour salt water on these wounds”, also begging and lost. It’s very possible you could play these two songs back-to-back, one after another, and get an entire story that happened sometime after midnight in a land that we mortals aren’t privvy to. It’s getting darker earlier, and colder more often, and is, in fact, a perfect time to howl.

Click to read more ...

Talking Books with Rockers: The Swear

I love music and literature with an equal passion. That’s why I value blogs like Largehearted Boy and BabyGotBooks, blogs that do more than approach both-they acknowledge and work within where the two intersect.

(Disclosure: I also write for BabyGotBooks. I am only saying this to keep the Feds from coming after me with their blogger-bashing sticks. Truncheons? Whatever.)

The Swear has long been one of my favorite Atlanta bands, and by far one with an incredible, dark literary underpinning.  The very first time I ever met front-woman and songwriter Elizabeth Elkins, our talk quickly turned to two things: literature and Tori Amos. So, when The Swear came to NY recently to play a show in Brooklyn at Matchless (the show that, unfortunately, Tealights’ van problems prohibited them from making), I sat down with Elizabeth Elkins at Word in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (my favorite bookstore) to talk books and songwriting.

And then I thought we were done. But, in true hard-core rocker fashion, Elizabeth knocked a bookshelf over and demanded to have the final say.

Thanks to Word Brooklyn and Kristina Weise for help.

Click to read more ...

Map of the world...

Tealights plugged back in and live at The Tank in NYC on Oct 11.

This is “Passport” in its full glory (which you may remember totally stripped, spare and possibly even lovelier from the Apartment Stories session)

And “Wait”-which I think comes across as even more fierce live.

Both songs are on Tealights debut E.P., Take Us By Sea. It’s available now. It’s essential. Get it.

Click to read more ...

Bernard Sumner, poet

I think the world is a beautiful place/mountains, lakes and the human race

Bernard Sumner, poet

Click to read more ...

Tealights Apartment Stories

Atlanta’s Tealights recently self-released their first E.P., Take Us By Sea, and it is hands and feet and heads and tails and faces and arms and all that, too, above and beyond the best, most forward-thinking thing I’ve heard in 2009. Glistening pop melodies and gorgeous boy/girl vocal-interplay combined with clued-in stuttering electronics and classical instrumentation-I swear if there was a Tigerbeat for electropop Tealights would be cover stars.

When they were in NY over the past weekend for two shows-one at Matchless in Brooklyn which sadly couldn’t happen because of van issues (“take us by sea”, indeed!) and one at The Tank in Manhattan, Tealights filmed their first-ever acoustic take on my favorite of their songs, “Passport”…on a couch in a Manhattan apartment.

Thus is born soldout’s “Apartment Stories”-one great band, one great song stripped down to its essence, in an apartment, nothing plugged in instrument-wise. And, kicking it off? Tealights, with “Passport”

Tealights: Passport (Apartment Stories session)

Photos from the Apartment Stories Session:

Mary Tealight

Brett Tealight

Nancy Tealight

Mikey Tealight

Yes, all of their last names are “Tealight”.

Visit Tealights’ website and online store for spiffy shirts, EPs (produced by Snowden’s Jordan Jeffares) and other Tealight love, and watch soldout for more live Tealights film.