I hesitate to call any list a "Best Of". That title comes loaded with a slant towards the author(s) personal preferences and the publications intended audience**. Despite what my ego thinks, I don't really know what the "best" is.
But, I do know what I like. The more I like an album, the more I listen to it. So, this is my Favorite Albums of 2012 based on what I've listed to the most this year. I hope you'll find something you like. And if not, you can search the rest of the year end lists, like I will, for something you do, and may have missed this year.
[**Disclaimer: Like the "Best Of" Lists you'll find on this site.]
Note: Each title links to a video of a song from the album.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ 37. Jimmy Fallon: Blow Your Pants Off
_____________________________________________________________________________________ 36. Mac Demarco: 2
_____________________________________________________________________________________ 35. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas
From The Bowery Presents: Live, Trey shares his thoughts on his recently released solo album, Traveler, and trades in the Languedoc Ocelot for a Fender Jaguar.
On October 16th, Syracuse area band Soul Risin' will release their third studio album titled Rise & Fall. Soul Risin' is a five piece band fronted by singer and guitarist Bryan Weinsztok and backed by John Capozzolo on drums, Adam Fisher on bass, Mike D'Ambrosio on keys and Jim Dunham on percussion.
To celebrate the release, the band is hosting a CD release party at the Westcott Theatre on Saturday October 20th, and will be joined by Syracuse locals Boots n' Shorts and Brooklyn's Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra. As a tribute to the spirit of the album and in honor of Bryan's father, Alex Weinsztok, the band will be donating some of the proceeds from the show to a local family dealing with the hardship of caring for a family member with cancer.
I got a chance to sit down with Bryan and ask him a few questions about the new album. Give a listen via the link below and check out a really fun interview. Plus, enter to win free tickets to the show along with a CD and signed vinyl copy of the new record by commenting on this post! Rules As Follows: 1. Enter a comment, any comment, at the end of the blog post. * You MUST "Comment as: Name/URL" (See the drop down under the comment box). 2. Enter your name and the URL to your Facebook profile page. * This is how we'll get in touch with you if you're selected as the winner.
3. We'll contact a winner via Facebook by this Friday, October 19th.
The first thing that stood out to me on the new record was the production. The addition of the horns and the vocal harmonies really stand out. What made you want to add those elements to this album?
I think I just wanted this, and had the drive for this, to be my best work yet. I knew I wanted it to be way better than the other ones. I wanted it to have everything that the first two albums didn't have, which was, time and some knowledge put into them and some true thought and a lot of rehearsal beforehand. The last album only has a couple of harmonies because we ran out of time and money. All that extra stuff takes time. This time I just made sure that I was gonna get the product in the end that I wanted. I just wanted to spend the time, so I did and got all the harmonies. Andrew Greacen, the second engineer, coached me through a lot of them and he was great helping me with that.
Right, cause a lot of background vocal were you?
Yea, it's mostly just a lot of Bryan Weinsztok vocal.
And then the horns, I knew I just wanted to get some horns on there. I didn't want it to be a horn album, cause I didn't want people to think they're going to come to our shows and expect horns, so I just wanted it on a couple of songs. And Jeff Stockham, from the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, who plays trumpet and french horn and all sorts of weird brass instruments as well, he came in and just laid it down. His parts are so crisp they almost sound fake, [laughs] but it really is someone playing.
Do you plan to try and bring that [the horns] to your live show?
On the release show, if Jeff's available to come sit in, we will. We just don't have a horn section who comes out to rehearse with us. So I'd hate to throw it out there and have it flop. Who knows - we'll see what happens. If these guys are available to come play horns, then we'll have horns.
Overall, it really feels like you guys made a conscious effort on Rise & Fall to better use the studio as a tool.
Yea a lot of it has been learning from experience. The first time we went into the studio it was totally blind, we had no idea what we were doing and we we spent way too much time putting out not as good of a product as we could have put out. And that was strictly our inexperience. That's why I feel like our first album is more of a glorified demo. The second album we did it a little better. And then this album I just said this one's gotta be really good. I don't wanna hear mistakes. I think it was our best work and a lot of it was really learning from experience.
Even with those additions you didn't lose your core sound - "Tidal Waves", "Worcester", the end of "Punk", for example, all have some extended sections of jamming where you guys stretched it out. Is that stuff you guys rehearsed beforehand or did that happen in the studio?
The base of it was rehearsed and we knew [beforehand] we wanted to make a well produced album that was structured, especially from the arrangement side. So all of the songs are decent length, not overly long, but we knew on a couple songs we wanted to include the jam aspect so we didn't totally lose that and so that people know they're going to get this and more in a live show. And we found a couple spots, on "Worcester" and "Punk", where we were able to have a jam within the song and at the end as well. The first couple notes to get it started would be rehearsed, but then the guitar solos and what happened from there was a result of what happened in the studio.
There's a couple of themes that come through to me on the album. You've had a couple of significant life events that contrast each other with the death of your father coupled with the birth of your first child. At the end of "Baby" you reflect upon that experience in total. How did those experiences shape this record?
A couple of the songs, like "Heaven's Done" - that song has been around, and was supposed to go on the last album and it didn't make it on. Songs like "Leaving Train" and "Tidal Waves" were just good songs that fit on this album. The opening song "Fool Like You" was written after everything else and was just a song we really liked so we found a way to get it in there. It doesn't really fit with the theme although some people could think so. The song "Rise & Fall" tells the overarching story of why the album is titled Rise & Fall. And then you get into "Worcester" and that whole section is about my father, and my dealings with the year he was going through his battle with cancer and his passing, and they were just songs that came during that time. I had little parts and I played that group of songs with the band in rehearsals but we saved them for the studio. That's the first time we've ever done that where we had a handful of songs that were not going live until after we got out of the studio. So there's "Worcester", "The Door", "Part Two / Open The Door", "The Greatest Advice" - those are all directly about my father. And then "Baby" is kinda that wrap up of 'I dealt with all this stuff [with my father]' and now the resolution is there's this energy back in me. And "Punk" is just a powerful way to end it. And that section really is about him, it's inspired by him, and it really is the reason for recording the album.
Unless you're a beltway insider, long-winded pundit, or sadomasochist, it's hard to find a lot of joy in the nuts and bolts of running a country.
Unfortunately, in this season of elections and debates, it's hard to escape robo-calls, unsolicited mail, and lots of someones who "approved this message". All the posturing and positioning, glad handing and stumping, pledging and promising, can get a little tiring.
Even our beer and music have been given a political spin.
See the new collaboration between Clown Shoes and Three Heads Brewing, Third Party Candidate, a 50/50 mix of the former's Imperial Amber Eagle Claw Fist and the latter's Oatmeal Red Ale Loopy.
And, while you're downing a limited batch of bipartisanship in a bottle, check of the timely new release by Ry Cooder, ElectionSpecial.
Ry doesn't hold his leftist political cards close to his chest, as evidenced with titles like "Mutt Romney Blues", "Kool-Aid", and "The Wall Street Part of Town". Even if, like Washington, you can't agree on the opinions espoused, hopefully you can appreciate the blues as a fitting medium to express the message.
Check out the video of "Cold, Cold Feeling"from the new album below.
Putting two things together to make them both better.
What works for beer also works for music. So why not join the two in a music playlist honoring the versatile everyman beverage?
Inspired by a couple recent articles (Draft Magazine's 2012 Summer Beer Mixtape and "The Classical Kegorator: Pairing Beer With Music" from NPR's Deceptive Cadence blog) I've put together my own playlist of songs that highlight the multitude of genres that have paid complement to that delicious mixture of water, barley, hops and yeast.
From gettin' beer, to asking for a beer, and wanting more beer, to wanting to get drunk, being drunk, and being too drunk to do lots of things - there's something for everyone.
Check out a couple highlights below and the full Spotify playlist here.
More and more I find myself spending as much time flipping through the channels as actually watching something interesting. There is however, one favorite, that is worth making an appointment for - HBO's Treme.
The show takes place in post-Katrina New Orleans, as an ensemble cast of residents attempt to recover, rebuild, and get by after the storm, each with varying degrees of success. To say that music plays a part in the show is an understatement. Musicians real and fictional weave throughout the story lines as art and life mix in reflexive imitation.
I'm really interested to see where last years plots go this season, the show's third: from Annie's impending breakout stardom, to Davis' next foray into the music industry (after getting essentially kicked out of his own band), to Delmond embracing and reconnecting with his roots, Sonny finding his way, and Antoine making success on his own terms - not to mention LaDonna, Janette and the rest of the characters.
The recently released trailer gives a short preview of things to come in Season 3, which debuts on Sunday, September 23rd at 10 pm.
To catch up on the past couple seasons, check out NPR's coverage, who provide an episode by episode commentary that gives great insight into all the shows references and connections.
Also, the Season 2 soundtrack is out on Spotify, with originals from the show like "Road Home" by DJ Davis and the Brassy Knoll and "Hu Ta Nay" by the father son supergroup featuring characters Delmond (Rob Brown) and Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters).
In a few short days, I'll be making the trek to the smallest of our states for the Newport Folk Festival at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island.
The festival, first held in 1959, has a rich history in the lexicon of American music. Amid sailboats and saltwater breezes, the seaside festival has helped introduce the roots of the country's music to generations of new players while simultaneously exposing listeners to some the nation's most influential figures, from groundbreakers Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf to new voices like Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zero's and Neko Case.
While I've seen a lot of the performers from this years lineup before, here's a couple just hitting my radar I'm looking forward to checking out.
Check out the full line up here. And, you can be part of the action too, thanks to the NPR Music webcast. Check out all the details here.
Mention that you're a fan of "jambands" in certain circles and you're wound up to get beaten to the ground and stuck with a broken bottle, left for dead while "Dark Star" quietly plays in the background for the 35 minutes it takes you to bleed to death.
There is a certain hatred of long, extended noodling, self-indulgent progressive rock, hippies, and the kind of free-form wankery that comes with the genre.
But the core ethos of the jamband is a list of really attractive qualities for a band:
Excelling at Live Performance
Improvisation
Constantly Changing Set Lists
Interplay Between Band Members
Reinterpretation of Songs
Blending One Song (or Songs) Into One Another
Off-Beat Covers
Here's a few great bands that might not chart on the UmphsPhishDeadBiscuitmoe.PanicCheeseIncident list, but harbor some latent jamband tendencies.
5. Animal Collective
Like any good jamband Animal Collective draw you into the trippy, electronic drone and just when you think receptive monotony has set in, they shift the landscape ever so slightly, the axis tilts, and suddenly the perspective is completely new.
They solidified their jam credentials with "What Would I Want? Sky", by being the first to license a sample from the godfathers themselves, the Grateful Dead's "Unbroken Chain".
4. Iron and Wine
The beard. The ambling, poetic lyricism. The humble, polite, laissez-faire demeanor.
On his tour backing Kiss Each Other Clean, with the help of a full band, Sam Beam stretched out old songs with new arrangements, which strayed from noise jazz to skank funk.
They should release a live album from this tour. Seriously. Easy money.
3. My Morning Jacket
Guitars. Hair. Beards. Head banging. Loudness.
Maybe their Kentucky upbringing makes them hospitable in any environment, but these guys are a Venn Diagram of genre overlap.
Jim James' shaggy swagger is the middle finger to jam antagonists.
2. Tame Impala
Pre-melt acid trip anticipation wrapped in a stoner, slack, fuzz exterior.
Origin type shit.
Tame Impala rock messy, but aren't afraid to stride headlong into liquid slipperiness and remix themselves into a dirty hippie dance party.
1. White Denim
White Denim is every band you love in one band.
From their own website - "White Denim is a mercurial four piece band from Austin, TX. They make forward thinking, free-wheeling rock sweetened with a psychedelic swirl".
They out duel the double lead of the Allman's, out technic the technique perfectionism of Emerson Lake and Palmer, and flat out outwit, outplay, and outlast all their contemporaries left struggling to survive in a plume of their psych exhaust.
Anything that I do know has been bastardized by United Airlines commercials, Looney Tunes, and wedding processionals, making the scant catalog of tunes I could put song titles to ostensibly embarrassing.
It's not that I have anything against classical music per se, but it was never accessible to me, and generally speaking, I could never hear it playing in any context I could picture myself in. It was elitist, and snobby, and pretentious.
Andrew Bird does not make classical music.
He does however, play a violin, and make thoughtful, layered, and unfolding music that spills around you in quick bursts and elongated passages. Which, upon first listen, might get it labeled as elitist, snobby, and pretentious.
But it's not.
It is warm and inviting, textured but not overwrought with adornment. There are strokes of classical, but also pop and indie, Americana and jazz. It's friendly and homely - more like music at a farmer's market than a concert hall.
Bird's sixth solo album, Break It Yourself, released in March of this year, gongs to a dissonant beginning with "Desperation Breeds", but plucks and chants soon give way to fingers on guitar strings and humming, with Bird breathing:
"Beekeeper sing of your frustration / In this litigious breeze
Of this accidental pollination / In the era without bees"
From this point on, Bird never looks back. There is a persistent forward motion that propels the album onward like some peaceful version of manifest destiny.
The instrumental "Polynation" segues into the stylistic polyglot of "Danse Caribe", in successive movements is folk, Caribbean, and Appalachia, the repeated lyric "here we go mistaking clouds for mountains; autonomy" hanging over the song like those mistaken clouds we'd built into obstacles all on our own. Around the 3:04 mark Bird plays the fiddle and then, metaphorically at least, switches to violin 15 seconds later, the hesitation in his phrasing at the transition allowing you just enough time to consider how your class let's you decide which instrument you think he's playing.
It's at this point that I hear in Andrew Bird someone else - Aaron Copland.
Yes, I know that's a stretch of a comparison since I already admitted my ignorance when it comes to the classical genre, but I saw enough commercials from the American beef industry as a kid to draw a comparison to "Hoedown" when I hear it.
Aaron Copland was raised in Brooklyn, the son of Russian-Jew immigrants, and came to compose some of the most iconic pieces of music that became representative of America - the rustic individualism of the people, the wide open expanses of the land, and the ideals of its democracy. "Rodeo", "Appalachian Spring", "Lincoln Portrait", "John Henry", "Billy the Kid" and "Fanfare for the Common Man" have passages that unmistakably conjure images of pioneers taming the Wild West, of outlaws and heroes, of thoughtful and reflective leaders, families around the dinner table, neighbors chatting over the white picket fence, and Normal Rockwell putting brush to canvas.
With pieces like these, as well as his work for radio, plays, and movies, Copland made a conscious effort to move away from earlier composing dedicated for a select group of urban elites to create "music for use" that appealed to the masses, but still retained the intricacies and sophistication of the European masters.
That retention of sophistication without compromise of accessibility is also the hallmark of Andrew Bird's work on Break It Yourself. But where Copland inspired and dazzled with brass fanfare, Bird suspends the listener in the music with overlapping, intertwined movement, looping, and deft lyricism. He inflects his whistling as a peoples violin, proving that you don't need the orchestra; the common man is his own instrument.
"Give It Away" laments the price of a relationship as a nation-state metaphor while the rhythm shifts behind a bouncing folk pop. "Eyeoneye" exposes the fallacy of protection gained by a hard exterior with crisp reverb and swelling harmonies, both songs blending concise strokes of instrumentation and songwriting. "Lazy Projector" allows the tempo to drag while still keeping time, as the strings rush in around Birds lyrics, culminating in a whistle clear like the memories that aren't.
"Near Death Experience" whirls with the sounds of cavitation. "Lusitania" rivals Josh Ritter's "The Last Temptation of Adam" as the best love song wrapped in an allegory about a World War. "Orpheo Looks Back" is a traveling song for a man on foot; "Fatal Shore" the hanging fog he walks through. Thirteen songs in to Break It Yourself, "Hole in the Ocean Floor" siphons you in completely, floating down ever faster into the escaping water, before being memorialized in the closing "Belles".
While stylistically Copland and Bird diverge, their connotation does not. Andrew Bird, like Aaron Copland, and that beef commercial, are all selling us the same thing: an image of America.
In Copland's, men stand tall with full chests curving out, golden beams of sunshine radiating around them, with battles to be fought and won. In Bird's, the opponent we face is ourselves, and how we choose to live in, and with, the world and relationships we create. Where Copland is the accompaniment to America's story, Bird is more the score to the film.
In each image is the dream - the dream of America and what we look like in it. But where Copland feels like thing we're all supposed to be striving for, Andrew Bird is the satisfaction with the dream that we define.
We're all dreaming for something.
In Copland we dream as a nation. In Bird we dream as a people.
With the general decline of new blues musicians and radio programs that feature the music, it's not everyday I hear a new blues song that really captures my attention that I haven't heard before in one version or another.
Luckily, Rochester is home to a great blues show, "Blacks & Blues" hosted by Doug Curry on WRUR 88.5, Friday nights from 9 - Midnight. I happened upon this song on the car radio on my way home Friday night that made me smile.
Earl Scruggs, banjo pickin' pioneer who played with legendary bluegrass progenitor Bill Monore, and one half of Flatts and Scruggs as well as a principal member of The Foggy Mountain Boys, died this week.
I thought banjo always sounded as cool as this. It didn't until Earl Scruggs came along.
Thanks for the music Earl. Check out an article from the NY Times about his life here.
What came first beer or music? I know, it's a whole chicken and egg-type thing.
Not really, but on a serious note, beer does go nicely with music: an American light swill for the pre-show shotgun, a dark stout for a cold winter's night and some jazz on vinyl, a generously hopped full nose IPA for a bluegrass pick-a-thon, or a lemon infused summer wheat for flip-flops and Buffet (insert your favorite pairings here).
While a small handful of brewers have attempted to pair a band and a beer, see Lagunitas "Wilco Hotel Foxtrot" and the soon to be released MMMHop, by yes, you guessed it, no one has done as well representing music in the taste of yeast fermented grain better than Dogfish Head.
Bitches Brew, the first of three in their Music Seris so far, was created for the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis's seminal improvisational, electric jazz recording. The brew is "three threads of imperial stout and one thread of honey beer with gesho root" coming in at 9.0% ABV and 38 IBU's. Dogfish founder Sam Calagione draws the comparison between the exploratory, genre crossing album and the Delaware brewers innovative spirit as "analog beer for the digital age".
Hellhound on My Ale was brewed specifically for last years 100th anniversary of blues legend Robert Johnson's birth, and is fittingly a Centennial dry-hopped ale at 10% ABV and 58 IBU's with some bold lemon notes that will make you feel like the devil socked you in the head and left you at the crossroads, but still totally worth the price of your soul (or your Sunday recovering from the hangover).
Faithfull Ale was brewed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the release of Ten, Pearl Jam's monster of a debut album and is a Belgian style golden ale brewed by adding black currants to the boil for a fruity deliciousness best enjoyed in flannel. Again from Calagione, "As an off-centered brewery, we believe in celebrating the breadth of our whole portfolio and we feel an affinity for Pearl Jam - a long-player band in a singles-obsessed world."
As winter wanes, and spring turns to summer, so to do thoughts turn to sunburns, hangovers and the stench of a thousand poorly maintained portable toilets. Yup, that means it's festival season again.
So get your coolers cleaned, your koozies zipped up and your over sized $5 sunglasses ready for long car rides, sleepless nights and silent discos all across this great nation, cause we've got every weekend of your summer planned out with our 2012 Music Festival Guide. Thank us in October when you rest up.....and shower.
Craig Finn's heart is clear. And his eyes are full.
Maybe his eyes are clear and his heart is full too.
The Twin Cities raised agitator best known as frontman of Brooklyn based The Hold Steady proclaims as much as he ushers in 2012 with his first solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes. With a title that sounds like a New Year's resolution ready to be fulfilled, we get the first hints of departure from the boozy punk and classic rock bent of his full time band.
Recorded in Austin with the help of producer Mike McCarthy (Spoon) and musicians from Heartless Bastards, White Denim, Centro-matic, and Phosphorescent, Clear Heat Full Eyes adds up like the sum of a Georgia Satellites + The Clash + Uncle Tupelo mixture to form a kind of a hipster roots rock. The sounds range from the jumpy roadhouse of "New Friend Jesus", to the Stones-like bar blues jangle of "Honolulu Blues", to the down right Grateful Dead-ish licks of "When No One's Watching".
Finn's voice has a nasal huskiness that feels at home in the dirty twang and dusty shuffles of Full Eyes, dispensing his literate wit as bleary, but not blurry wisdom from the last bar stool in the honky tonk instead of his usual punk club hangout. The vocals are delivered less as antagonistic speak-sing shouting and more in the range from suggestive loud talking to muffled party banter.
Instead of reaching for the Hold Steady's celebratory flashes, the arrangements are more bare and open, but still with an ascending bigness that nods toward a Minnesota Bruce Springsteen rather than the hero of Finn's home state, Bobby Dylan.
Lyrically, Finn touches frequently on religious imagery as co-mingled with popular culture and everyday circumstance, weaving in some character based stories like "Jackson" with more personal fare. His pious mutterings come off more as a middle aged altar boy still miffed at Sunday school contradictions rather than someone about to bring down the church. All grown up, Finn is like your company's IT guy who lets his part-time preaching spill out while he's rebooting your computer from a blue-screen-of-death. His skill is in building characters (Biblical and of his own making) into action heroes that come to life in a mix of simplicity and profundity. On Clear Heart Full Eyes, these figures (sometimes Finn) come across more as the alcoholics who are recovered and disillusioned as opposed to the party kids and junkies depressed and still using.
It is this storytelling, of the kids on the margins who are less depressed by the loneliness it brings than they would be as part of the mainstream, mixed with well-read quips and droll one-liners that consistently captures even the cool kids admiration. On some listens, Full Eyes might be heard as a slowed down Separation Sunday turned down to 5, slowed by 20 BPM, and recorded in Texas.
The alt-country tendencies of Finn's inaugural solo project blends a new aesthetic that add to his songwriting, lending new images of "getting through" into his stories. In the end, what resonates is music as catharsis. Where a bands frontman can be as important a figure as Jesus and the coping mechanisms don't get any more appealing with elevated age and adulthood. As Finn sings on "No Future", "there's one thing that's certain / the devil is a person", most likely the one staring us back in the mirror. But don't fret; keep your heart clear.....and your eyes full; it's "hard to suck with Jesus in your band".
