Wilco Live Photo

My camera is crap so I didn't get any good shots at the Wilco show last Sunday, but here's one I think turned out OK.

Wilco Live Review- Rewrite

Hey all. I rewrote my Wilco review for the school paper. Here's the new version. Thoughts?

Baltimore's Lyric Opera House is a gorgeous building even better sound, and alt.country band Wilco took full advantage of that last Sunday with a tight set that was evenly culled from their six studio albums.

The group’s 24-song, two-encore show was stuffed with new favorites like the bluesy “Hate It Here” as well as older cuts reaching back to their 1995 debut “A.M.” (the rollicking “Box Full of Letters” was a highlight). Even though the line-up has changed considerably since their inception, the sextet played as if they've been together their whole lives. Loose songs got looser, loud songs got louder, and everything just sounded how music is supposed to sound.

After opening with the mellow, harmonica-tinged “Sunken Treasure,” Jeff Tweedy & Co. got the extremely receptive crowd even more enthusiastic by wedging scorching jams into many of their songs. The audience hit its peak when the band segued from “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” to 11-minute jam “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” which showcased guitarist Nels Cline’s absurd ability to shred.

One of the most compelling things about Wilco’s live performance is how rather than jamming melodically, their songs morph into beautifully dissonant soundscapes. "Spiders" was the best example of that, but set closers "I Got You (At The End of the Century)" and "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" also built skyscrapers of wonderfully orchestrated noise, with Cline’s blistering solos and chord progressions at the vanguard.

Aside from the stellar music, Tweedy's stage banter was right on point. After noticing a man with a neck brace, he asked if he could wear it and the sported it throughout "Kingpin.” Tweedy elicited loud cheers when he forgot a line in "Jesus Etc." and later explained it was because he was thinking about Baltimore-set television show “The Wire,” and wondering if popular character Omar was at the concert.

Tweedy didn't babble too much, and let the music speak for itself. "California Stars" and "Heavy Metal Drummer" got the crowd to sing-along while older numbers like "Forget the Flowers" and the twangy "It's Just That Simple" were extremely well-received by the appreciative crowd.
The band has immense talent, not just in songwriting but in execution and sheer ability. Each member was on point, adding muscle to even the most lighthearted and jaunty song (the peppy "Walken" was especially strong on stage). Wilco is currently on tour opening for Neil Young, but they made a special stop to headline their own show and proved that one day Neil Young could be opening for them.


Picture stolen with love from Charles Harris. If you want me to take it down, just ask!

Hired @ BYT!

The other day I was hired as a writer for the DC blog Brightest Young Things. Here's my first post there!

http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/live-dc/loose-and-looser-with-wilco/

My Favorite Songs of 2008

This list is numbered, but I know that right after I post it I will want to shift stuff around, so don't take the order to seriously!

1. Your New Twin Sized Bed- Death Cab for Cutie
I read more than a few reviews that people were disappointed in Death Cab's latest album, but I loved every song. My favorite was "Your New Twin Sized Bed." The lyrics were solemn but balanced by Chris Walla's rich production. The refrain (2:10), with its swirling texture in the background and Ben Gibbard's pleading vocals, is my favorite moment of the song.

2. Hallelujah- The Helio Sequence
I'd never heard the Helio Sequence before this year, and this gorgeous song is the reason I bought their latest album. This punctuated lyrics, the skittish drums and the synth and guitar undertones meshed together to create one of the most relevatory songs of the year.

3. Strawberry Swing- Coldplay
Viva la Vida was no doubt a departure for Coldplay. I honestly love every song, but "Strawberry Swing" defined my summer. It's lo-fi yet slickly-produced sound is a hidden gem on an album filled with so many anthems.

4. Skinny Love- Bon Iver
Bon Iver put all those fresh-faced, angsty troubadours to shame with this heart-wrenching track. This song alone justifies the existence of any acoustic, singer-songwriter genre.

5. Red and Purple- The Dodos
The charming lyrics and rustic, booming sound that the Dodos produced on their latest album came through strongest on this ditty.

6. Acid Tongue- Jenny Lewis
Here's why: the harmony on the chorus. I live for moments like that in a song.

7. Walcott- Vampire Weekend
8. Furr- Blitzen Trapper
9. No One Does It Like You- Department of Eagles
10. Life in Technicolor- Coldplay
11. When the Day Met the Night- Panic at the Disco
12. Lights Out- Santogold
13. This is Not a Test- She & Him
14. Spaceman- The Killers
15. How to Hang a Warhol- Little Joy
16. Kids- MGMT
17. Use Somebody- Kings of Leon
18. In the New Year- The Walkmen
19. Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)- Beyonce
20. You Are the Best Thing- Ray LaMontagne

Panic at the Disco- Pretty. Odd., Indeed.

When Panic! at the Disco hit the scene in 2005 with their skin-crawlingly annoying debut A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, they were just another Fueled by Ramen disciple cashing in on Fall Out Boy's success, with the addition of more creative eye makeup and tackier costumes. On their latest album, released in March, the boys made a few changes. One: they listened to Sgt. Pepper. A lot. Two: they began dressing like OK Go. Three: They lost the punctuation in their moniker and added some to the album title.

Pretty. Odd. is pretty odd indeed. It marks a severe departure for the baby-faced quartet. Rather than the abrasive, near-unlistenable emo-pop that marred Fever, this album is packed with sweet grooves, appealing harmonies, and sophisticated pop songs.

Normally, I would never think twice about purchasing a Panic album. I was at a record store when I heard "Northern Downpour" and asked the clerk what the song was. I was shocked, and disgusted at my taste. But then, I listened to the album more, and realized that it was a really solid set of tunes. In fact, if a group on an indie label released it, I'd say they'd have fair success in that realm. Unfortunately, their reputation is quite the turn-off. It took me months to build the courage to buy the album.

I'm glad I did. Tackiness still remains with song titles ("Folkin' Around") but hearing the jangly pop redeems any trace of sleaziness. "When the Day Met the Night," probably the best track of the album, is gorgeously textured with acoustic strums, "Within You Without You"-esque noodling, horn jabs, pulsing strings, and classically-appealing Beach Boys harmonies. Songs like "Day" and the chugging "The Green Gentlemen" showcase Panic's songwriting chops and musical maturity.

By replacing cabaret with 60's-era pop sensibility, Panic at the Disco has found a new lease on life. If they continue to grow like this, they could be one of the few Fueled by Ramen groups to live through the trend.

Indie Boy Crushes

Inspired by Stereogum's Gummy Awards, here's a list of my Top 7 Indie Boy crushes of 2008! (What do you expect, I'm a teenage girl.)



Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend)
From magazine covers to MTV interviews, shots of Koenig's preppy charm and boyish face added to all of that hot-vampire hype 2008 brought (Twilight, anyone?)



Conor Oberst
Year after year, Oberst brings that underfed, angled haircut, haven't slept in days look to the scene. Finally recognizing his brooding good looks, the former-prodigy/current-songwriter appeared on the cover of one of his albums. I love you, let's eat food together so you can get some meat on those bones!



Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan didn't even release an album this year, but his innocent stare will always strike me right in the blood-pumper. Put some butterfly wings on and whisper to me, Sufjan.



A-Trak (Chromeo)
When your mom asks you to bring home a nice Jewish boy, perhaps she means A-Trak, hipster extraordinaire and self-proclaimed momma's boy. He's no doctor or lawyer, but he can rock a keyboard with women's legs.



Justin Vernon (Bon Iver)
This is why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62i9Sodwp5o



Andrew Vanwyngarden (MGMT)
Hilarious and inventive, Vanwyngarden has shaggy, don't-give-a-damn looks that are so pretentiously hipster...and yet I can't resist for the very same reasons.



Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes)
I saw Fleet Foxes at the Black Cat in July. Pecknold was sporting a flannel-and-wool ensemble and drinking hot tea. In July. Thus, he's hot. Ba-dum-chhhh!

Also, most of these men get honorable mentions for weirdest names in rock.

808s & Heartbreak- Kanye West

Kanye West is a drama queen. He has thrown tantrums at award shows, compared himself to Jesus, vandalized airports and declared that George Bush doesn't care about black people, to name a few exhibitions of this fact. That said, 2008 was quite a year for West. His mother passed away (eliciting an extremely moving rendition of "Hey Mama" at last year's Grammys) and his engagement to longtime girlfriend Alexis Phifer dissolved. It seems as though for the first time, any claims of dissatisfaction or despair from West can be taken seriously.

On 808s & Heartbreak, West channels his depression into a finely crafted canon of detached yet highly emotional tracks. Using the ubiquitous AutoTune, West develops a downcast narrator who waxes despondent on the "good life," upon which he waxed rhapsodic with last year's Graduation. The songs found on Heartbreak are full of disillusion and gloom, a mood accented by the use of the Roland TR-808. The drum machine's low, tribal booms create a rumbling undercurrent to the album, appropriately suggesting an incoming storm. The robotic AutoTune, the thunderous 808 and the fact that West opts not to rap, mold Heartbreak into an intriguing and oddly lovely album.

Heartbreak's eleven songs (not counting the unnecessary live bonus track, "Pinocchio") are perhaps the most cohesive of any of West's albums, if only in the respect that they are intended to be thematically and musically related. Songs such as the 80's throwback "Paranoid" (feat. Mr. Hudson) and "RoboCop" (which samples the score from the film "Great Expections) segway neatly into each other, forming a hip-hopera of sorts. In this opera, though, the protagonist is an antihero: irreversibly depressed and dejected, with hardly motivation to improve his conditions. West chooses to bask in his tears, luckily to the benefit of the listener. The gorgeous "Streetlights" is a showcase of why West was an innovative producer in the hip-hop world before he even began to record himself. The singles "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless" are interesting and creative cuts, the former for its sparse atmosphere, the latter for its juxtaposition of a jaunty beat with glum lyrics.

808s & Heartbreak is no doubt a departure for West. While innovative and stunning in its own rite, its shroud of ice prevents it from holding a candle to Yeezy's past efforts. Reviews of the album have been divisive, and while it impresses me greatly, I hope West will pull himself from heartbreak and (excuse the pun) be stronger on his future albums.

Download these: "Street Lights," "Paranoid," "See You In My Nightmares."

Lo siento

My posting has been very sporadic, and unfortunately I have not had a chance to post since Thanksgiving! Not to worry though, dear reader (singular), there will be posts galore in the coming weeks!

Interview with Tom from Los Campesinos!

Last spring I sat down with Tom from Los Campesinos! for a chat about their tour, their debut album Hold On Now, Youngster, and punctuation. Tom was incredibly sweet and friendly. This interview and more appear in the latest issue of my zine, Championship. If you're interested in a copy, shoot me an email at nmsles@gmail.com!

So how’s your tour going?
It’s going really good! The first gig in Hoboken was the sort of size venue we’re used to playing. It was kind of like a bar, but a really good atmosphere. Georgia from Yo La Tengo came. I’m a massive fan of Yo La Tengo so that was pretty overwhelming. We’re just glad we got through the set without completely messing up. It was a really good show, and we had a really good one last night as well. We’re going to do a crap show tonight because that’s how things go [laughs]. Brooklyn was bigger, it was a really good venue and we had a really nice response there. It’s just a lot of fun. We’ve been shopping, buying musical gear, so I’m happy!

So tell me about your latest album, Hold on Now, Youngster…
Well it doesn’t feel very new to us anymore, we’ve had it for a while. I haven’t listened to it in ages. It came out in April here, so I guess it’s still relatively new. We were really pleased with it. I guess it was quite a self-indulgent album in a lot of ways. We tried to write it and record it in a way that we’d be happy with rather than trying to worry too much what people think of it, and just do our own thing. That was always the most important thing, and I think we achieved that. We were all pretty happy with it. It’s strange now- cause there’s been enough time since it, and because we’ve been writing new songs and we’re doing some recording in the next few weeks- it almost feels like and old album now. We’re looking forward to recording new songs and recording on them.

Between your band name and the rhyming of “parentheses” with “ellipses,” the band seems to have a bit of a fascination of punctuation.
Well, Gareth is the lyricist so that’s really his obsession. I think there’s a certain element of OCD. We’re quite into the details of everything, really. Punctuation kind of represents that quite well. We get pretty pissed off when apostrophes aren’t used correctly which is really lame and embarrassing, but those are the things that matter to us and I think they matter a lot to Gareth as well, which is why they enter his lyrics. He’s quite autobiographical in his lyrics. So if a lack or misuse of apostrophes in the world bothers him they’ll turn up in songs. Look forward to “Ode to the Semi-colon” or something on the next album [laughs]. That’s why I don’t write the lyrics!

What’s your favorite song of yours?
It changes all the time. I think when we finished the album, “…And We Exhale and Roll Our Eyes in Unison.” I think we were all really pleased with that. It came together really well. It’s got two distinct halves and the second half is really fun to play. But I guess “We Are All Accelerated Readers” was the one that we were most happy with as well, because it’s been around for a while but it was in a completely different form when we first played it live, and we were aware that it wasn’t working quite right, but it sort of felt like it had potential to be a better song. We worked really hard and we changed the drum parts, we changed a lot of the positions of the vocals and the melodies. Through working on all of those details it suddenly came together really well and when we recorded it was far better than we ever expected. That’s one we still enjoy playing live as well. Harriet worked really hard on cool violin sounds and violin lines. It felt really fresh compared to some of the other songs, so that’s still one of my favorites. Of course then there are songs like “You! Me! Dancing!” which get really good responses live and so that’s always really fun to play because you feed off the crowd. That’s a complete cliché, but it really happens. If that song gets played well then it doesn’t really matter if we play other songs badly [laughs].

Why did the band decided to have a violin player?
The whole formation of the band was accidental in a lot of ways. We didn’t really know what we were doing. From my perspective, I met Neil, who had been jamming with Ellen and Ollie for two weeks and we started playing songs together. Gareth overheard what we were doing and he came along to do vocals. For some of the songs we were playing we decided they would sound kind of nice if they had strings. It was that casual, we never had any big picture of the sound we wanted to create. We just thought strings would sound good, and we invited Harriet along. It was really that simple. It was the same with Aleks. We thought a female vocalist would be good, so she came along. That was really the formation of the band. We never really expected to get to be in this position, so nothing was thought out particularly well. We get asked questions about the name, and those are questions without a significant answer, because it was a bit of a passing thing.

Are there bands that you try to emulate in your music?
Yeah, I mean I sort of presume this is the way any band works. When we started off we just tried to rip off the bands we liked, and I think to an extent we still do that. And then as you get better at it you get closer to a lawsuit [laughs]. But me and Gareth bonded especially over our love of Pavement, which is probably my favorite band ever. I think we’re sort of lucky because we didn’t rip off the bands that well, so we stumbled across something unique. Our instrumentation is different, and Gareth’s vocal style is different, his lyrics are really different, so I think we have come across something that isn’t like all the bands we rip off. We’ve almost got our own sound now. There are certain ways you try to emulate bands as well. It’s not so much you hear the song and you like the melody so you play the melody as well. It’s more the fact that there are so many good melodies in Pavement. Pavement write amazing pop songs, but they’re presented in a less-than-technically-accurate way. It’s more about the song rather than the way it’s played, and that’s something we’ve tried to take on board as well. The songs are the most important thing, and the energy. The songs are more important than hitting the right notes all the time so that was always an element of fun we tried to maintain. We do still want to improve as musicians and songwriters, and improve in a technical way, but the energy is always the most important thing.

Would you consider Los Campesinos! a pop band?
Yeah. Genres are so…murky. Especially in the U.K., the word “indie” doesn’t really mean what it used to mean. That forced us a bit into using the term “pop.” I’ll describe Pavement as a pop band because of they have fairly structured songs and they’re melodic. I think we like the term “pop” because it’s such a fluid term, and it’s probably the most vague of all the genres. Any sort of music can come under that term, so it feels liberating and empowering in that sense. I don’t think we want to limit ourselves to a specific genre because we don’t really know what we’re doing. The word “pop” doesn’t really mean “popular” or “populist” anymore. It’s more like the energy and the sound…I’m trying not to sound pretentious.

You guys are a pretty young band.
I think we’re younger at heart than we are in physical. We’re still young, but when there are bands like the Arctic Monkeys and Smoosh, you feel pretty old. When you’re younger, the thing you always want to do is either be a footballer or a pop star, but then you reach an age where you start seeing other people that are successful footballers and they’re younger than you and pop stars that are younger than you, and you just think, “Yeah well, I’m past it now” [laughs].

Looking ahead ten years into the future, where will Los Campesinos! be?
I haven’t got a clue! We’re aware that it isn’t going to last forever, and we’re not trying to make it last forever so we’re just trying to make it be as fun as it can be while it is lasting. With pop music, especially at the moment, everything is over so quickly. We are just trying to have as much fun as possible and not worry too much about the future. I guess in ten years when I’m 33, there will probably be smack habits, and illegitimate children [laughs].


Photo courtesy Barry Yanowitz.

Joe's Record Paradise

When my parents used to travel a lot, they would buy a record from each country/city they visited. Over their years of travel they amassed a fair amount of Indian and South American vinyl. It got to take up too much space though, so today my mom had me go through and pick out what I wanted to keep so that she could sell the rest. After I scoured for cool cover art and interesting music, we took the box of records to a store I'd never been to called Joe's Record Paradise.

When I used to play indoor soccer, I would pass this shop, but because of its small and poster-covered exterior and strip-mall location, I never thought anything of it. Turns out I was missing out. Inside the sticker-littered doors is a vinyl mecca. Rows of LPs, ranging from soul to blues to reggae to punk to rock line the floors and walls. There's also a fine CD collection. The vinyl is all pretty inexpensive. While my mom chatted with the man who was flipping though her albums for what he wanted to buy, I thumbed through the store's supply.

I ended up with a Johnny Cash album for $1.50, Talking Heads's Remain In Light for $8.00, and Joni Mitchell's Clouds for $4.50.

The man who had been helping us, Johnson, recommended we take the records he didn't buy a few doors down to a thirft store called the Wagging Tail (it supports the Humane Society), which we did. At this store, there was a nice vinyl selection with each record $1 a piece. I didn't pick anything out, but in the CD section I found Son Volt's Trace and The Replacements's Don't Tell a Soul.

I also got two hours of highway driving in! Overall a very productive day. Unfortunately, I now have to finish writing a research paper...