See How The People Here Live Now

Hope That They're Better At It Than I Was



So John Darnielle announced today on the Mountain Goats website that there will be a new Mountain Goats album titled The Life Of The World To Come that will be released this coming October.
The post reads like this:

July 28, 2009 the Good News

Kept busy all spring and I'm here with the news.

1. 1 Samuel 15:23
2. Psalms 40:2
3. Genesis 3:23
4. Philippians 3:20-21
5. Hebrews 11:40
6. Genesis 30:3
7. Romans 10:9
8. 1 John 4:16
9. Matthew 25:21
10. Deuteronomy 2:10
11. Isaiah 45:23
12. Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
The Mountain Goats: The Life of the World to Come
release date 6 October 2009

The album was recorded between April and June: first at Electrical Audio with Brandon Eggleston; then at Sonic Ranch with John Congleton; and finally at Baucom Road with Scott Solter. Scott also mixed the entire album at Baucom Road. The band is still Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes, and me; Owen Pallett did string arrangments & played on the Electrical session. The third song in the tracklisting above is a link to the song itself - enjoy!

I guess the obvious question is going to be: "John, have you had some sort of religious awakening?" and while I guess lots of people might want to be coy about answering that, that's never really been my style, so: no. It's not like that. It's not some heavy-narrative-distance deal either, though, and it's not a screed. It's twelve new songs: twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of. More than that I'd want to wait to say until some people have heard it, which won't be long. Will there be more news soon, quite soon? Like, next week, even? Oh yes there will!



I, for one, am excited to hear this album in its entirety as, although there have been several smaller project releases in the last year or so (The Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice- Moon Colony Bloodbath; The Mountain Goats- Satanic Messiah EP; The Mountain Goats & Kaki King- Black Pear Tree EP) this will be the first proper LP release since Heretic Pride which was an incredible effort (albeit in a bit of a new direction- Darnielle certainly taking this past few years' newly acquired taste for higher production value and more complex composition yet another step forward- but I think at this point us Mountain Goats fans have come to expect a certain degree of progression and experimentation in John's new work) and without a doubt one of 2008's best albums. The above-posted announcement does mention Owen Pallet's involvement in the album's "string arrangements" (you might recognize his name from his credits as string/orchestral arranger as well as violinist on records such as Fucked Up- Hidden World and both Arcade Fire LP's as well as the newest Pet Shop Boys LP "Yes") so I'm betting we get some more of the highly orchestrated type string-work which was liberally invoked on Heretic Pride in a way which TMG's previous work had traditionally strayed from- still taut and moving but fuller sounding and littered with steep-crescendoed-swells.

The song which has so graciously been provided to us in TMG's album announcement (Genesis 3:23) seems to be written in a manner reminiscent of some We Shall All Be Healed material, maybe"Letter From Belgium", "Quito", and "Against Pollution", and there are also some phrase-ending-inflections he uses a few times which are somehow familiar, perhaps sharing an aural-chromosome or two with "Autoclave" from Heretic Pride. I like it, then again I like everything TMG does.

In other entirely unrelated news, our buddies over at Grillo's Pickles are going to be featured in the Boston Globe this week so keep an eye out for that, it's supposedly going to be written concerning an interesting new pickle-pursuit which Trav embarked on recently. In the last few days Adam Sandler also ordered a Grillo's tee, big ups to Sandler for being down with the up and coming pickle scene, we can only hope he's wearing it while listening to unreleased demo's of "The Lonesome Kicker".

Well that's about it as far as breaking news for me, but here are some records I've been listening to lately:


This record is actually not a proper LP but a collection of songs from various compilation releases as well as the Mountain Goats' Songs About Fire, Orange Raja, Taking The Dative, and Tropical Depression. As is the case with most TMG releases this one's just packed with the signature TMG lo-fi recording style, intelligent lyrics packed with geographical, historical, and literary references, and desperate and earnest at-the-end-of-his-rope type vocal inflections which characterizes the first half of Darnielle's career. Personal highlights include the tracks "Golden Boy", "Pure Gold", "Song For John Davis", "Going To Port Washington", "The Only Thing I Know", "The Anglo-Saxons", and "Flight 717: Going To Denmark".


The Mountain Goats- Ghana
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This album does a great job of not only invoking the perfect ghosts-of-rock-and-roll-past but managing to keep it from ending up stale, it seems like a breath of fresh air into a genre which is pervaded (and perverted) by so many blatant rehashers. Think garage rock, Iggy, Richard Hell, and even some early Psychedelic influence (shoot out to Barrow for turning me on to the Nuggets compilations, especially the Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (1965-!968) boxset). "Energetic" is probably a word that should be used in this description, "infectious" too.


King Khan And The Shrines- The Supreme Genius Of King Khan And The Shrines
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This thing just sounds dirty and evil and awesome. J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr/Witch.. ya might've heard of him) on drums and presumably also sharing some guitar duties.


Upsidedown Cross - S/T
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Man, this single is a beast. Fast nasty snarling garage rock/punk that doesn't let up the whole way through, comparable to maybe AK-47 or a quicker Dead Boys or just a snotty bunch of assholes laying it down in a style that remains tangentially classic without ever even coming close to being a "throwback".


The Sleaze - Smokin' Fuckin' Cigs single
* * * * *

I originally listened to this record on the suggestion of John Darnielle and so by its title had initially assumed it to be some sort of black metal record; I would have been happy enough with that as usually everything John recommends in the way of metal is awesome, but here I was dealt an interesting surprise. This thing is not metal, it might not even be rock and roll, its a whole different beast. Weird loops, atmospheric and odd and sometimes downright uncomfortable sounding vocals, choral backing tracks, feedback, and a type of somehow fundamentally contradictory rhythmic ambience that certainly owes a debt on some level to the likes of Leonard Cohen and maybe Phillip Glass (and on not-quite-the-opposite side of the coin, perhaps even New Order). Hard to classify, its very weird and cool and I think it does a good job of standing for itself.


Blackout Beach- Skin Of Evil
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This bad boy is a mix of dark doomy metal, jammy psychedelia, and the like- I have reason to suspect that these guys use Marijuana. In reading this band's name and the record's title you can probably get the general impression that you have some Sabbath fans on your hands, and thats certainly part of it, though they tend to be way more lo-fi and (you guessed it..) fuzzy sounding. I'm pretty sure a lot of this album is unrehearsed, most of these songs are probably improvised from root-riffs that the band planned on jamming through. They have a lot of other releases (many cassette-only) so it's kind of hard to get a grasp on their whole catalogue but this album will find a place in the collection of any fan of loud fuzzy electric guitars and improvisational shredding. Sorry that I don't have any cover art.

Fuzzhead - High In A Basement
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Well, that's all for me right now. Keep watching the skies.

Oh You're So Virulent, Jens

Well Maybe I Am, Maybe I Am.

So I went down to NYC for the weekend and returned only to find that everyone's favorite singer/songwriter/weirdo/genius Jens Lekman has contracted the much-publicized H1N1 Virus aka Swine Flu. Sweden's native son posted this info on the Smalltalk section of his website:

June 27, 2009

I picked home one last souvenir from South America, it's called the H1N1 virus. Wrongfully known as the Swineflue.

I was crossing the Atlantic when things started getting really bad, the fever was hallucinogenic and shaking me like a leaf and I grabbed the sleeve of the Air France steward. "I'm not feeling well, I should see a doctor" I said and the reply came as a brilliant mix of death anxiety and french rudeness: "Uh, yes... Terminal D... go there maybe... when we land". After that the stewards and stewardesses took long detours. A ring of empty seats formed around me. Peoples eyes were kind but determined, they read "Poor you, I really wish you all the best but if you come near me or my kid I will have to stab you with this plastic fork". I got up and went to the bathroom where I fainted.

Now I'm in quarantine for ten days. I can see the summer through my window and it's just perfect. Summer is always best through a window.



For those of you currently residing underneath (or perhaps deep within) some type of geological formation, Jens Lekman is a critically acclaimed Swedish musician who has released some of the most interesting work of recent memory and is the mastermind behind Night Falls Over Kortedala, one of 2008's Top 5 LP's. His style is pretty unique, combining crooning and dynamic vocals with oftentimes catchy and upbeat drum breaks/loops, expansive string parts (both original and sampled), and witty, dark, and forlorn lyricism. He gets likened to Belle & Sebastian pretty frequently so for the sake of comparative originality I'll say that his work can be described as being loosely akin to the sound one would imagine Beck having cultivated if he had continued down the same sonic path he had chosen on Mellow Gold and Odelay combined with a touch of quasi-Morrissey sensibility. Due to his widely varying sound and unique compositional strategies it's always up in the air when he performs live, audiences may be treated to a large scale production of his songs complete with ample accompaniment or a personal solo mandolin set.

So, in hoping that this troubled-troubadour makes a full recovery (I'm certain that of all the art emerging from this perceived epidemic, the post-infection song(s) Jens will surely pen in regards to his experience will undoubtedly outshine any other reactionary compositions) I've decided to put the spotlight onto some of my personal highlights of Jens' work.

First off, here's a fantastic video of Jens doing an extremely interesting cover/artistic re-rendering of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al":



Next, here is Jens' incredible cover of Arthur Russell's "A Little Lost". He plays the song on a yellow Kalimba which gives the music a truly haunting sound that bleeds together in a cloud of consonant fluidity alongside Jens' vocals. This video is extremely aesthetically pleasing as well, with Jens seated alone in a theater amongst a sea of similarly yellow-fabric-upholstered seats:




To conclude the Lekman portion of tonight's program I'll leave you with 3 of his releases, his first LP "When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog", his newest LP "Night Falls Over Kortedala" and a collection entitled "Oh You're So Silent, Jens" which is a compilation of his EP's "Maple Leaves", "Rocky Dennis In Heaven", and "Julie" as well as a couple tracks from "En Garde Fanzine" and the "Accelerator Compilation". All three are more than worthwhile listens, I've been enamored with his work since the first time I heard it. I've posted a couple of these before but I'm pretty sure the links are dead by now seeing as how it was over a year ago, and anyway these releases merit re-visitation.


Jens Lekman- When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog


Jens Lekman- Night Falls Over Kortedala


Jens Lekman- Oh You're So Silent, Jens


Now, in other business, a record which has managed to grab me by the brain recently is Paintbox's forthcoming LP Trip, Trance, and Travelling. I believe it's been released on vinyl by Prank and it is really a great effort. It's a moot point to try and compare it to other artists, but that's never stopped me before: This album somehow manages to sound like a combination of "We Must Burn"-era Poison Idea and "Self Titled"-era Rocket From The Crypt tinged with moments of influence from Sheer Terror, The Enkindles, and even Rancid.


Paintbox- Trip, Trance, and Travelling

Next, we have the ambitious 1997 LP "Mississippi Luau" by Charlie McAlister released on Catsup Plate Records. This record is an incredible lo-fi concept album blending Polynesian song structure with the instrumental sensibilities of the American South. I've read that it is potentially John Darnielle's (aka The Mountain Goats) favorite record, so take that for what you will.


Charlie McAlister- Mississippi Luau


Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to a few links. Our buddy Josh Feola recently re-located to Beijing and is heading up a couple new blog-projects that will definitely be worth your attention, so make sure to check them out over at:

http://joshfeola.posterous.com/
and
http://megalopoli.posterous.com/

ps, theres a new video from our buddies in SCREAMING FEMALES up on RollingStone.com, check it out HERE. These guys have been on the grind lately doing long tours filled with top notch individual gigs and finally getting the press they deserve. Check out the video and then go buy their records from the guys over at Don Giovanni Records. Next Boston gig shoud be a blast (July 18th @ House of Blues).


Well, that's it for now, I'm off to the drive-in Bingo.

Tonight

I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown

It's no secret that I will forever be indebted to my father for (among countless other things) getting me into all the coolest music that I listen to; so, yesterday on Father's Day I began recounting just how many of the top played records in my collection are direct products of his taste. Among this myriad of artists lies the body of work produced by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and his sometimes-associates The Flatlanders. The man's voice is impeccable and The Flatlanders were pioneers (the group consisted of Jimmie along with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock), but this particular record has always stood out to me. It's Jimmie's third solo LP, it was released in 1991, it's called After Awhile, and thanks to my father I've been aware of how incredible it is for nearly as long as I can remember.


Jimmie Dale Gilmore- After Awhile

Now, I'd be guilty of a flagrant omission if I were to leave out the fact that you may recognize Jimmie from his cameo appearance in The Big Lebowski as the timid pacifist Smokey, whom is so memorably instructed to "mark it zero" by the lovable Walter.



And as an added bonus here's a photo of a little souvenir I picked up when I saw Jimmie perform a few years back at the First Congregational Church in Montclair, NJ as part of Outpost In The Burbs:



I felt like I'd be blowing it if I just saw Jimmie Dale perform solo to a crowd of about 50 people and didn't chew the fat with him for a bit after the gig and so I wound up bringing the Lebowski dvd insert over to him. He was a really friendly guy and he seemed genuinely happy to see that someone had remembered his brief acting career, replying "whoa mann..ohh man" about 10 times (punctuated by intermittent laughter) when I produced the insert.

So, Jimmie's a remarkable talent and a real class act, but let's not forget the root of this post: thanks, Dad.

Fuck it, just for good measure here's a video of Jimmie performing at the Townes Van Zandt tribute at The Bottom Line in NYC:





* * * * *
PS our boys over at GRILLO'S PICKLES have gotten even more press from the guys over at Stuff, check the vid HERE. also check out Pickle Freak and keep supporting the Grillo's empire.

Tripping Out with Tim Burton

Tim Burton's adaptation of Willy Wonka left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I shook my fist in anger and asked why the hell he didn't make it ultra-creepy. I now know that he most likely was saving all the gruesome goodness for his version of Alice in Wonderland. My hopes for the film is that it terrifies young children, and gives me fantastic nightmares. I know this will prove to have all the good wholesome fun of hallucinogens without feeling guilty for taking them. The only bitchy part is waiting until March 5th 2010 to see it.

Don't Do Drugs

But if you're going to anyway, listen to this:

My buddy RO'C turned me onto this bad boy which is described as Zambian Psych-Fuzz. The band hails from, you guessed it, Zambia and apparently all 4 members share songwriting and vocal duties which makes for a fairly varied release. Anyway, I dont have my more background for this one besides the fact that it came out in 1975 and its incredible. FFO: Africa, Electric Guitars, etc.


Amanaz- Africa

The Post That Was Here Was Stupid

So here's something completely different.

Take a gander at these Skynet demo tracks. This band is the stuff that legends are made of. They were either ahead of their times or possibly way behind, stuck in some more classical time. But either way, they and their times weren't seeing eye to eye. Members went on to form For Science.

Skynet Demos

enjoy.

For No Particular Reason

Here's the third Warren Zevon album.

The man was a genius, a truly talented songwriter and performer.
RIP.


Warren Zevon- Excitable Boy


"enjoy every sandwich"