Okay, so we still haven’t posted our thoughts on Bonnaroo 08. I know, I know.
Regardless, our thoughts on All Points West 2008 will be up in the next day or so (definitely before we’ve finished up our Roo Recaps), both here and within the pages of TRACER Magazine. For now, though, a tiny preview of what’s to come…
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Tagged: Alive!, All Points West, New York, Radiohead
The highlight of this year’s Bonnaroo Music + Arts Festival had to be the late night set by Sigur Rós. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and reflections on the show shortly, but here’s some promotional material on the band’s excellent new album for now.
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Tagged: Bonnaroo
Our thoughts on Bonnaroo 2008 will be published shortly, both here and within the pages of TRACER Magazine. For now, though, enjoy our spoils of war. We caught up with the band on Sunday and they were kind enough to provide us with some autographs and self-portraits!
More to come…
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The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.
Julie Doiron is no stranger to re-invention. She also knows a whole lot about how to take up a guitar and convey emotion through song. She does it so well, in fact, that this is virtually all she did to make people sit up and take notice on her second solo album, Loneliest In The Morning, in 1997. On July 22, Loneliest… is re-released, this time with three new tracks, on Jagjaguwar Records. There is no mystery as to why this album from the late nineties deserves a re-issue and a chance to be re-introduced to fresh ears. Undoubtedly, many new Julie Doiron fans will appreciate its simple elegance. Recorded in Memphis with a few other indie musicians (Dave Shouse of the Grifters, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, Doug Easley and Davis McCain), it was released on Sub Pop records when Doiron was a mere 25 years old. By then, though, she had already been playing music semi-professionally for an astounding eight years.
Since then, Doiron has continued to have a complex musical career. She created her own label, Sappy Records, went by the moniker “Broken Girl,” and joined up with The Wooden Stars, receiving a Juno (Canadian Entertainment Award) for the album they created together. She also continued her work as a photographer, and published a book of her photographs called The Longest Winter in 1999. All of these creative meanderings and collaborations come as no surprise when you hear the complexity and emotion on Loneliest In The Morning. The album is cerebral and gentle, a powerhouse combination for a singer/songwriter. If only I had discovered Julie so many years ago, when this album was first released! I would have no doubt been listening to this album in my car and on my headphones repeatedly, gleaning something new or different with each listen. The album is an unforgettable collection of songs that offer profound lyrics, but also very unique and satisfying sounds, all while remaining very sparse. It is the sort of experience I had and still have when I listen to “The Lioness” by Songs Ohia, which is also several years old now.
Some of the most notable tracks on Loneliest In The Morning include “Sorry, Pt. 1,” “Explain,” “Tonight, We Sleep,” “Condescending You,” and two of the bonus tracks, “Second Time” and “Too Much.” The gut-wrenching, beautiful sadness of “Sorry, Pt. 1” begs for a second and third listen. The slide guitar also provides hints of independence, perhaps because it’s such an American sound. I’m convinced this song could come in handy for a very introspective moment alone in the future. “Explain” cuts to the heart of Doiron’s feelings without pretention. She really lets her bruises show in the lyrics of this song, plus the strong, medium-paced guitar and soft cymbal hits perfectly convey the feeling of being freshly minted a single person. “Tonight, We Sleep” has one of the prettiest guitar sounds I’ve ever heard. It’s light and airy, and evokes imagery of being home alone with all the windows open on a breezy spring morning. It’s also a strumming that is reminiscent of a lullaby, which goes along with the subject matter. “Condescending You” is the sort of song that demonstrates Doiron’s greatest strength, which is creating a sparse composition of guitar, piano, and softly sung lyrics that penetrate the psyche.
When it comes to articulating emotions, Doiron soars and, at times, reminds the listener a bit of Joni Mitchell. They both have a direct, unabashed nature and write songs without emotional filtering. “Second Time” is Doiron plying her strong suit once again, but with a more lilting voice and fuller sounding music. “Second Time” even has a bit more drama to it-there is a slow, deliberate sound to Doiron’s voice, along with plenty of natural sound mixed in the background-everything from a baby crying to things crashing to the floor. The reason “Too Much” left such an impression on me is because it is so soft, so minimalist, involving mostly just Doiron’s restrained voice and five or six piano chords. Yet it manages to sound bold, strong, and unapologetically simple. There is no dearth of creativity in Julie Doiron’s music. There is only a lack of bombastic, pretentious performance.
Amanda Carnes
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Tagged: Hot Wax, Julie Doiron, TRACER
Since February of 2008, the Cincinnati Museum Center has played host to Premier Exhibitions Incorporated’s controversial “BODIES… the Exhibition.” For those unfamiliar with the exhibit, “BODIES” presents a series of actual human bodies, preserved by a rubberization process known as plastination, which have been dissected and posed in a variety of ways. The result is a one of a kind anatomy and physiology lesson… which would be fine if there weren’t so many questions about who these “BODIES” were and where they came from.
The problem is, for a bunch of cadavers, these bodies all look pretty damn healthy. That leads to the question… how exactly did they meet their end and where exactly did they come from? The answer? Chinese prisons, of course. According to the exhibitions’ website, “This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.” It’s not unreasonable to think that most of the people put on display within “BODIES… the Exhibition” probably did not formally donate their bodies to science, nor did they agree to have their cadavers desecrated, dissected, playfully posed and then placed on public display. There’s certainly no paperwork to back anything up.
It’s nice to know that Cincinnati was prepared to lynch Robert Mapplethorpe while his photographic exhibit, The Perfect Moment, was on display. Let me see if I understand this. Consenting adults exploring sexuality and the human form is inappropriate for public exhibition. When political prisoners are executed, mutilated and put on display, though, no one seems to mind. What the fuck, Cincinnati?
“BODIES.. the Exhibition” runs through September 1, 2008.
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The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.
Sometimes an album is more the recording of a cataclysmic life event than an amalgamation of in-studio bursts of creativity. The much written-about, much discussed Bon Iver debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, is just that. Just as you’ve probably heard, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon holed himself up in a cabin in the remote wilderness of Northwestern Wisconsin and lived a simple existence, mostly for the purpose of creating an album to express his emotions over a recent break with his band. It’s also been said that there was a romantic break in the back story of how this album was created, but either way, Bon Iver’s first album is a stunner, the documentation of a life experience that makes you reel backwards with its blinding honesty and emotion-filled simplicity.
Just as a painter hopes to solicit an intense reaction, either negative or positive, Justin Vernon has accomplished in his first attempt what many musicians spend entire careers trying to achieve. It’s clear that by stripping away the modern amenities and unnecessary distractions of everyday life, he has tapped into a wellspring of music-making that is adept at making the listener’s arm hair stand on end, the raw emotion of the subtext taking its seemingly effortless toll. The album is not for an impatient ear, as the songs often have a very soft sound and a gentle tempo. At the very least, most listeners will be baffled, searching for reasons why such minimalist lyrics and music can be so affective. From the first track “Flume,” with its sparse guitar strumming and subtle, yet haunting, ambient sounds, it’s clear that For Emma, Forever Ago deserves some attention. The harmony of Vernon’s vocal tracks woven together on “Flume” provide instant imagery of a quiet, snow capped hillside, with the blue and orange sights and smoky smells of a cabin lit up with only the glow around the hearth. “Flume” is so tragically beautiful and timeless, it is by far the most emotionally affecting song on this album.
There is an immediate allusion to choral harmonies on “Lump Sum,” before the soft and pulsing rhythm guitar moves the song back into the realm of modern songwriting from the ethereal, shapelessness of the ghostly intro. “Skinny Love” is everyone’s favorite, the song Bon Iver performed at the Austin City Limits Music festival, generating plenty of interest in the video of this performance and in Bon Iver in general. It’s a soulful, pretty, lovesick song, with only Vernon’s voice and his guitar as the genesis. This is commonplace throughout the album. The lyrics solicit the feeling that a heartfelt expression of betrayal and/or romantic disappointment is inherent between the lines and give it an overall anguished tone. “The Wolves (Act I And II)” has an intriguing seed, beginning with only hand or finger taps on the body of the guitar.
The troubling aspect of Vernon’s vocals on “The Wolves” is his penchant for stretching his breathy falsetto to the genre bending point of sounding a smidge like an R&B singer (his harmonies here could easily be mistaken for D’Angelo’s), though it does give the song a new originality, and the choral-esque harmonies are a welcome change from the usual suspects in singer-songwriter minimalist vocals. You can almost hear the winter wind howling along with Vernon’s voice, and with all of the ingenious ways he uses it to provide original nuance to For Emma, Forever Ago (listen to it on your headphones or in an audio booth for its complex tapestry of sound to become evident), one might guess that he even recorded the wind and added it in for a chillier effect. “For Emma” lightens the mood with its brassy sound and somewhat positive-sounding guitar strumming, and there is an Hawaiian-sounding instrument and a trumpet that provide a bit of sunlight to the otherwise deep, dark, quiet winter of “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Some emotional progression seems to have taken place, if you only assess the tone of this song. The final track, “Re: Stacks,” improves upon the healing felt in “For Emma” and Vernon sounds more content with his surroundings. He iterates a feeling of new beginning, and declares, “this is paradise,” while giving his voice a lilt not heard in the pain of the first several tracks.
This is a true album, in the sense that there is a subject matter, an impetus for creating several songs that are intricately linked by emotion and with inventive modes to evoke imagery of quiet and solitude. There is also the sense that the beginning, middle, and end are all necessary, and a process of discovery and mending are set in motion with the first song, a progression that becomes increasingly clear by the final two songs. This is an album and artistic statement not to be missed, not because everyone is talking about it, rather because you will likely respond to it. Experiencing a natural, physical, and emotional response to an album is probably all Justin Vernon could have asked for.
Amanda Carnes
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Tagged: Bon Iver, Hot Wax, TRACER
Heading to Manchester, Tennessee? We provide you with a last minute guide to the mighty BONNAROO!
Let’s just say I’m going to go with the popular consciousness of music journalists from the varied music magazines I read on an almost daily basis for this first day of ‘Roo. Based on the buzz, I plan on seeing What Made Milwaukee Famous, MGMT, and Battles. I basically know very little, meaning one to two songs of both WMMF and MGMT, and all I know about Battles is that they play a high energy, winding sort of cerebral math-rock. Other than that, I’m going to go and show support for one of the best new bands of the year. This is a band that Curt and I just happened upon one night while watching The Late Show with David Letterman, a few weeks before the world would be inundated with information on them. That’s right: Vampire Weekend. I would imagine this will be a very energetic dance party because there will be African drumbeats and positive vitality paired with the summer sun. Add to that the fact that there will be plenty of people at this show who will be seriously willing to get their dance on – anything goes on the “dance floor” at Bonnaroo!
I don’t even know how to describe the magnitude of the musical offerings on Friday. I’ll start with the absolute must-sees. First, if I can convince my TRACER colleagues of its importance, and I’m sure I can, I need to see at least some of Stephen Marley’s set. That’s just the way it is for someone who has been a Bob Marley and the Wailers fan for a solid twelve years. Then it’s off to the races to see all of the premier bands and solo acts/duos on this day of the fest – The Raconteurs, The Swell Season, Willie Nelson (I’ll hope my grandma is smiling somewhere), Rilo Kiley and !!! and M.I.A. (even though these three are virtually playing at the same time). The night will be punctuated with My Morning Jacket’s performance. This is one of the bands that I’m looking forward to seeing the most at Bonnaroo this year. This barely scratches the surface, though. After all, Chris Rock is doing a comedy set on the Main Stage, something that’s never been done before. I’ve been a fan of his for at least ten years, so I’ll be one of his legions of fans ready to relax and take in the funny. These are just my “even if I can’t feel my legs, I must see these bands/artists” picks. I also hope and expect to experience some music I’ve never heard that I’ll take back home with me. I’ll check out The Fiery Furnaces, if possible, as well as Minus the Bear, Grupo Fantasma, etc., etc.
This is only my second Bonnaroo experience, but I’ve learned that Saturday is the Muhammed Ali of musical performances for the four-day festival. This is absolutely the truth for this year’s schedule. The bands that I simply have to see, from the first note to the last, include Pearl Jam, Cat Power (holy Toledo, I am beside myself about this performance), Sigur Ròs, and Kanye West (it’s a glow-in-the-dark late night performance on the Main Stage, afterall). This is really a conservative list, though, because I’m pretty sure I’ll be flocking to the Soul Rebels Brass Band, Gogol Bordello, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Levon Helm and the Ramble on the Road, B.B. King, and Chromeo. If my curiosity gets the better of me, I’ll probably check out Iron & Wine. I’ve never been too impressed by the whispered vocals and hushed instrumentation in the past, but his new album (The Shepherd’s Dog) has a lot more oomph to it. Plus, Sam Beam has worked with the likes of Calexico, so I really do want to learn more about him solely based on that association.
This is going to be a jam-packed afternoon, no doubt about it (and no pun intended). The most important performance on Sunday will probably be Broken Social Scene. My fingers are crossed about which guest members of BSS will be in attendance – Leslie Feist? K-Os? I’m very excited about this set, especially in light of the fact that I rececently watched K-Os’ amazing Publicity Stunt DVD, which included a beautiful synergy of break dancing and K-Os’ tunes, with plenty of other artistic elements thrown in for good measure. It will be kind of a shame that we’ll be missing Robert Plant and Alison Kraus (featuring T Bone Burnett), but that’s all part of the music fest game. Then again, the slower, folkier sets didn’t rank as high on the list for me last year in terms of the best performances to experience outside in a crowd that can swell to 80,000. I have to choose the out-of-control guitar licks and soulful meanderings of some rippling rock-and-roll over the alternatives in this atmosphere. But I digress. Back to the schedule, some other crucial performances will likely include, but will not be limited to, Solomon Burke, Aimee Mann, Death Cab for Cutie, and Ladytron (I’m going to Bonnaroo to dance as much as possible, after all). Finally, Curt and I have decided to wander over to Widespread Panic on Sunday night to get the full Bonnaroo experience and close out the weekend like the experts do.
There’s plenty of fantastic music and entertainment to check out at this year’s Bonnaroo. Here are a few sets that you should definitely make an effort to catch! See you on the farm…
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Tagged: Alive!, Bonnaroo, TRACER
The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.
Maybe I’m not accustomed to art-rock, and maybe I just don’t get it. Fine, but if you’re like me and you’re into music that offers consistent melodies that demand more from your sense of hearing than your, shall we say, encyclopedic lexicon of spiritual-journey musings, Veda Hille’s new album, This Riot Life, isn’t for you. Is there a guitar somewhere in there? Yes, but it’s buried, and lives in the background, with the barely audible drums. Are there more orchestral moments and dramatic vocals, often spoken rather than sung here? Yes. There is a heavy dose of insight on topics such as “heaven and earth,” a “love divine,” “Emmanuel,” and “the kid of God”. But the music is troubling, and not pleasing to the ear, although that could be because I demand a certain amount of formality from my songs when it comes to their structure. This Riot Life offers a cascade of tunes that sound like the orchestra’s sheet music for a community theater’s latest experimental play.
So, that being said, obviously I found very little to get excited about when it comes to Veda Hille. I’ve read plenty of praise in doing research for this review, but “I will not martyr” when it comes to this album. The album opener, “Lucklucky,” has a promising musical palette – plucking on a violin, which to my ears sounds like a West African mbira or finger piano instead of a violin – very nice, steady yet light percussion, a defiant horn part, and intriguing lyrics, e.g. “There is the place you know / there is the place you don’t know…there is where I did this, there is where I did that / It took thirty years to draw this map.” However, on the rest of the album there is nary a song that is similar to “Lucklucky,” not lyrically, vocally, or musically.
Veda Hille and her cohorts on this album, a 12-piece “band” (re: orchestra), plies the listener with life’s bigger questions and music that is composed seemingly with the goal of broadening your horizons. She actually demands that you “Grab your coat and your popular music / We’re taking it to the streets.” The high-energy “Ace Of The Nazarene,” sounds too much like a mega-church sing-a-long complete with lines that ruminate on searching for life’s meaning through “Christ,” accompanied by violin, light, (though pounding now) drums and bass, and the arguably off-key sound of Hille’s voice. She has been compared to art-pop musicians Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, but I have to say those comparisons ring true only compared with her emotional and cerebral gravitas and piano, Amos’ mode of musicianship, and the soliloquy-esque vocal stylings that are DiFranco’s m.o. Beyond that, I believe Amos and DiFranco have produced material, even on their early albums, that for their musical originality, songwriting skills, and lyrical takes on introspection and ethereal revelations in a modern world far surpass the light, boppity, faith-centric, theatrical sound of Veda Hille on This Riot Life.
Amanda Carnes
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Tagged: Hot Wax, TRACER, Veda Hille
It’s been a while since Amanda or I have worked on the Nostalgic for Now blog, so I thought I would give everyone an update of what we’ve both been up to. As many of you probably know, we launched TRACER Magazine approximately one month ago and our schedules have been more or less devoted to that venture ever since.
In a little over a month, TRACER’s website has already hosted 13,977 visitors. Not too bad, considering that word of mouth is the only promotional tool we’ve been using thus far. We’ve got plenty of cools things planned for the weeks and months ahead, so… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Here’s a sneak-peek at what we’re working on, for you loyal Nostalgic For Now readers:
Until next time,
— Curt Whitacre, Editor In Chief, TRACER Magazine
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The full version of this review appears in the pages of TRACER Magazine.
On their fifth full-length, San Francisco’s Mates of State broaden their musical horizons with a little help from some talented friends. Unfortunately, a cadre of guest musicians (including Chris Walla, Ben Gibbard, and Jim Eno) and some slick production cannot save Re-arrange Us from being an altogether unfulfilling album.
Re-arrange Us marks a significant musical evolution for Mates of State. The husband-and-wife duo of Kori Gardner (vocals, keyboards) and Jason Hammel (vocals, drums) have always known a thing or two about writing hook-laden pop songs, but their latest album sees them expanding their artistic palette considerably. The Mates’ cascading melodies and vocal harmonies now float atop a bed of strings, brass, and guitars. Despite this fuller sound, though, there is a surprising lack of depth on display.
This shallowness is particularly true of the album’s lyrical content, which runs the gamut from bearably cheesy to unbearably trite. On mid-album track “Jigsaw,” for example, Gardner and Hammel open with the unnecessary call-and-response of: “You write the good songs, baby/ You write the good songs, baby/ I’ll write them ‘til the end/ I’ll write them ‘til the end/ And you can stand up above us/ And you can stand up above us/ And we can still be friends/ And we can still be friends,” before introducing the hazy simile after which the song is named. Even worse is “Great Dane,” a song that devotes several measures to the painful repetition of the word (I use the term loosely) “da.” A chorus that proclaims, “I can hear you t-t-t-tonight, t-t-tonight/Sing in the sunshine,” does very little to redeem the effort.
The studio gloss applied to Re-arrange Us makes such vapid observations easier to stomach, but it also drowns out any of the personality that could be found on earlier Mates of State efforts. The result is a dreadfully domesticated power-pop album that lacks any sense of exuberance. I’m hard pressed to find any real hint of emotion on Re-arrange Us. Instead, the lazy and repetitive songwriting on display creates a sense of artistic contentment. Even with ample assistance in the studio, the duo’s musical bombast rings false here. Re-arrange Us clocks in at a generously brief 35 minutes, but even that seems a bit too long, considering the general lack of substance on the album.
Curt Whitacre
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Tagged: Hot Wax, Mates of State, TRACER
