We had a Beck cover yesterday…how about a Nirvana cover today?!!
Brooklyn’s own Charles Bradley…the Screaming Eagle of Soul…cranks up the James Brown and makes Nirvana’s ‘Stay Away’ sound like a Motown standard! Backing him up are The Menahan Street Band, an ensemble featuring musicians from Antibalas, El Michels Affair, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and the Budos Band, who took their name from Menahan Street in Bushwick. The 63 year-old Bradley only began his singing career in his 50’s when he began performing in local Brooklyn clubs performing his James Brown routines under the alter ego “Black Velvet”. Gabriel Roth of Daptone Records, recognizing raw talent when he saw it, convinced Bradley to drop the “Black Velvet” act and signed him to Daptone where he has performed ever since.
SPIN is offering ‘NEWERMIND’…a Tribute to Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’…free for a couple of days, and since free don’t cost much, I hit the ‘DOWNLOAD’ button. Honestly, I was surprised at how most of it is unlistenable shit, especially an absurd version of ‘Come As You Are’ by some ridiculous Aussie outfit going by the name Midnight Juggernauts, who turned a Rock & Roll classic into a 4 minute Discofied atrocity on helium! But again…it is free and your taste might be different from mine (doubt it!), so head on over to SPIN, enter your e-mail address and you can make up your own mind, but for my money, I’d also make a bee-line to Daptone Records and pick up a couple of Charles Bradley records!
Late last year, Nadia Ackerman kept telling me about a singer/songwriter friend of hers with the most amazing and soulful voice that would immediately have me thinking of a female Tom Waits, and that I simply must meet her. Well, since then I’ve gotten to be very good friends with Chiara Angelicola…..Bird Call as she’s known on stage…..and while her vocals can go to the dark, bluesy place that Tom calls home, on her latest EP, Other Creatures, she’s recorded covers of songs from Fleetwood Mac, Nick Cave, Man Man, Kate Bush and Beck that don’t simply parrot the originals, but instead her unique voice gives a heartfelt interpretation to each one in her own style. I remember when Beck released Sea Change…his melancholy country-blues masterpiece…and how ‘Lost Cause’ quickly became my favorite song on the album, so hearing Chiara throw a sitar in the mix really caught me off guard. This from Chiara…..
“Lost Cause is one of my favorite Beck tunes. I think the Sea Change record influenced a lot of people my age at the time it came out. It signaled a major shift in the music world. I knew that it would be a challenge to recreate, but I was working with some really talented people and we found a way to diverge from it in a spiritual and organic way and stay true to it at the same time. I think the sitar really expresses the spiritual and emotional aspects of the song alone. I’m really glad we went that route.”
Joining Chiara on the record are Indra Roy-Chowdhury on the aforementioned sitar, Dave Smallen on guitar & vocals, the amazing Harvey Jones on electric pianos, harmonium & synthesizers, Aaron Nevezie on bass and the whole thing was mixed & produced by Joel Hamilton at Studio G in Brooklyn.
You can follow Bird Call on her website, then go pick up a copy of the Other Creatures EP on iTunes for only 7 bucks!
Finally…I was gonna drop the video for ‘Lost Cause’, but Chiara tells me that apparently Deli Magazine is getting a temporary exclusive on that one, so you’re all gonna hafta do with Beck’s original version and I’ll drop Chiara’s version when it clears Customs…..
This isn’t a Song of the Day. It’s too passive and all those electronic clicks and pops don’t really fit the Indie framework I think of when I kick out something for the SOTD…..but it’s still a nice, non-confrontational way to get going this morning. ‘The Broken Places’ is the first track from Moby’s latest album, Destroyed. And since there’s really nothing I can’t say about Moby that hasn’t already been said, just check out his website!
Most of you know that Audrye Sessions was one of my favorite bands of the past few years. Audrye Sessions are no more. Low Roar is Ryan Karazija. Ryan Karazija is Low Roar. Ryan moved to Iceland, the winter was dark, and he wrote a record. I have been dropping snippets from what he’s been working on for months, but I just spent the past hour listening to the final result…and it’s fucking awesome. He’s carefully composed a beautifully reflective, dark and brooding collection of stories that captured his feelings throughout that dark winter. This is no rock-n-roll record…the twelve songs are almost confessional and listening to them made me feel a bit like a voyeur…as though I was intruding on something profoundly personal. There were times when I got chills from the power of his soaring, chantlike vocals. This is a must-own album. You can buy it exclusively over at Tonequake Records…I suggest kicking in an extra 2 bucks for the alac (Apple lossless) cd quality download! And if you haven’t done so already, you can also pick up An Otherwise Perfect Day, the final EP from Audrye Sessions, for only 3 bucks. You can follow Low Roar on facebook.
BONUS…Here’s a stripped-down video version of ‘Patience’…..
A lotta you know that I just loveHaley Bonar and not just because we were both born in Brandon, Manitoba! The Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter with that honey-dipped sweet/sad voice has twice before graced the pages of the Song of the Day, but the news that she had self-released her new album, Golder, back in April, somehow evaded my radar. She funded the new record through a successful Kickstarter campaign and after hitting ‘repeat’ on the album all day, I can say the new stuff is jauntier, tighter, wonderfully melodic and a bit more upbeat than her earlier work. You can stream Golder on her website, and then pick up the album for only ten bucks over at BandCamp.
*UPDATE* I just found out Ms. Bonar will be playing The Bell House next Tuesday, June 21st….get your tickets in advance HERE, and then at The Mercury Lounge on Thursday. I gotta make room for this…
I think this must be the third time I’ve put up Kate Tucker’s Roman Candles as a Song of the Day. The first was way back when she gave me the Ball Of Wax compilation CD where it first appeared and I was still firing off email versions of the SOTD before it morphed into the blog you’re mired in. The second was about a year ago after I saw her rock it at her release party for White Horses at Spike Hill, and today I get an email telling me she’s gone and released a new version…recorded with Patrick Boyle (Lead Guitar), Andy Dolson (Keys), Michael Shepard (Backing Vocals), Andrew Cushman (Bass), Eric Baltrinic (Drums) and dedicated it to yours truly…and is offering it as a free download over on Bandcamp. And she even put together a little DIY video to accompany the latest version, too. You can listen & download more of Kate’s music over at Bandcamp and head on over to either her MySpace or Facebook pages and say hello!
Roman Candles
Recorded December 20, 2010 in Alliance, Ohio
Released 03 June 2011
Where o where can my true love be
Is she running circles away from me
In the morning she’s sailing in
With her gold and silver
In the palm of her hand
Tell me tell me you’re telling lies
I can see through circles into your eyes
You say haven’t we had the finest times
And there’s no one like us
There’s no one under the sun
Lay your head down just lay your head down
There’s no surprises with these disguises
Lay your head down just lay your head down for me
Baby one day I’m gone for good
They will never find me they never could
You’ll remember our finest times
How there’s no one like me
There’s no one under the sun
Lay your head down just lay your head down
There’s no surprises with these disguises
Lay your head down just lay your head down
These highway vandals shoot roman candles
Lay your head down just lay your head down for me
I’ve obviously been slackin’ off on my Song of the Day duties, but life and work have gotten in the way recently. So when I saw that Ryan had dropped a little video on YouTube of one of the many throwaway songs he’s recorded for the upcoming Low Roar album, I figured I could take a few minutes to quickly shotgun it out to you guys. Nice way to end a rainy Friday. You can check out more of what Ryan’s been doing with Low Roar over on his Facebook Page
Since Audrye Sessions packed it in last year, frontman Ryan Karazija moved to Iceland, got married to a lovely Icelandic lass, and spent a lotta long, cold, dark Icelandic nights writing news songs. Cold, dark, moody songs. And after trying out a few names for his new project, he’s settled on one that perfectly matches the feeling these songs evoke…Low Roar. Monastically holed up in an igloo with little more to eat than dried reindeer meat and the occasional sick Puffin that dropped outta the sky, he put together a collection of beautifully crafted stories, then went into the studio and with that remarkable voice of his, set them to music, playing all of the instruments and handling the production himself (with his friend and Audrye Sessions producer Andrew Scheps doing the mixing). Ryan told me today that the as-yet untitled album will be out in a month, he’ll be playing in California in August, and if he gets enough demand, will try to get to New York, too. Let’s help him out…head on over to the Low Roar Facebook Page and hit the “LIKE” button.
Finally, here’s Ryan doing an acoustic version of another of the new songs, ‘Help Me’…..
To pass the time this morning whilst the rain & snow once again descends on Manhattan, I put on an old Luka Bloom album and let the mournful wailings of a homesick Irishman wash over me, when outta nowhere I get an email from Francesco Ferorelli. He’s played drums for a bunch of punk and metal bands over the past decade and regularly sends me what he’s doing…most of it totally unsuitable for human consumption, or at least the delicate flowers that frequent The List…but now he tells me that during his head-bangin’ period he was actually a closet Kris Kristofferson fan and was writing his own songs…FOLK SONGS…and recorded them on an LP under the name The Heaven’s Jail Band. Making up the band are Ethan Schmid (Glory Girls) on drums, James Preston (The Americans, Alana Amrama and the Rough Gems) on Bass, John Hunter (Lower Dens, Glory Girls) on lead guitar, and guest Scott Stapleton (Phosphorescent, Virgin Forest) on keys. Now maybe it’s simply because I still had residual Luka swirling around in my earholes, but listen to ‘Mary Watches Everything’ off of 1992’s ‘The Acoustic Motorbike’ and then tell me if there isn’t an eerie similarity.
I had every intention of kicking out something rocky and dark and loud today, but I’ve had a headache since breakfast, so I’ve been quietly humming along all morning to this dream-poppy number from Brooklyn-based Aussies, Sherlocks Daughter. I first discovered these guys last month when I saw bandmembers Tim Maybury and Tanya Horo on the cover of the Village Voice in a real estate feature. Based on that bit of notoriety, I don’t know what convinced me to check them out, but I’m glad I did ‘cuz I love this kinda stuff. I find it very relaxing to be enveloped by waves of feedback-drenched shoegazey guitars, moderately self-important electronica and a softly swirling nondescript female vocal. They’ve caught the ears of the downtown music intelligentsia since even Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore is a fan…which, now that I think of it, sorta makes sense since Tanya’s voice is a lot like a softer version of Kim Gordon’s. Sonic Youth producer John Agnello is apparently twiddling the knobs on their debut album, due out later this Spring. In the meantime, head over to their MySpace Page to hear a few more tracks.
I’ve been so busy with real work that I kinda ignored everything that went on at SXSW this year, but I’ve just done a bit of searching around what caught people’s attention this week in Austin, and found a few gems that stood out from the rest, including a beauty from Lex Land. I haven’t heard much from her since she snagged the top spot on my Songs of the Year back in 2008 with the opium-laced crier, ‘As Much As You Lead’ from her debut album, Orange Days On Lemon Street, but on the quirky and jazzed-up ‘Havana’, from the upcoming album Were My Sweetheart To Go, she’s certainly pumped up the energy on this fun little hip-shaker. No release date yet for the new record, but you should check out her website for more news.
There are songs that can draw me in simply because of a visceral mood they create…songs where the lyrics and music blend so perfectly that reality gets momentarily turned off and I’m suddenly carried away by an aural wave of emotion…songs like this. I first heard ‘Polarise’ on Alt Nation and was immediately transported into a Cocteau Twins/Slowdive/Lush/My Bloody Valentine/Jesus & Mary Chain universe of dark, melancholy keyboard melodies, swirling atmospheric guitar runs, and an almost cinematic sense of dire importance. At the 40 second mark when that tinkling guitar sneaks up on Eleanor Dunlop’s hypnotic vocal, it actually raised the hairs on my neck.
Cameras are from Sydney, Australia and besides singing, Dunlop also handles the keyboards, while Fraser Harvey plays guitar & bass and Ben Mason is on drums. You really gotta check these guys out on MySpace or on their Facebook Page and you can get the Cameras EP on iTunes
Damn Ugly Photography has been around for just over two years now, but the main reason it exists at all…the Song of the Day List…started way back in 2004 as a way for me to waste some time by emailing out whatever new music I happened to find to a small list of my friends. That small list grew over time until I hit over 1,000 people and my ISP’s spam filter kicked in, making it no longer possible for me to send the mass email out to the blind list. So in February of 2009 I got this place going and decided to include more and more photo-related posts. I mean, I did call it Damn Ugly Photography, right?!!
Anyway…I was reminded of the early days of The List when I drove into the city yesterday while listening to a playlist of some of my favorite pre-blog stuff from obscure Indie bands that I was typically hearing for the first time. These are songs that I still count among the favorite music I have sitting in my iTunes folder. And as some of you probably know, over the years I’ve actually gotten pretty close with a number of the artists and record labels and we’re lucky enough to have new music fall off the back of the truck well in advance of the actual release dates. Jets Overhead, Say Hi, Kate Tucker, Audrye Sessions, Johanna & the Dusty Floor, School of Seven Bells, Nadia Ackerman and many, many more have all sent leaks from the studio for us to enjoy, and just today, Ryan Karazija sent me some new cuts from his latest project, Tabula Rasa, that I’ll be getting some of it up very soon.
So today I’m gonna give y’all a nostalgic look back of some of that music…without my usual flowery comments…as a little history lesson on how far The List has come. Trust me, this will make one Hell of a great Indie playlist!
Yeah, yeah…like I need you guys telling me I basically blew off February by hardly posting anything, but hey…on occasion I gotta work and Damn Ugly don’t exactly pay the bills! Alright…I’m gonna get back at it with a wonderful undiscovered song from late-’60s by The Rolling Stones!!! Of course, I’m just pullin’ your leg, ‘cuz The Booze are actually five kids from Atlanta, but come on…if lead singer Chaz Tolliver wasn’t hit with a Mick Jagger stick, I’ll eat a bug! And when you blend in the stripped-down, retro production on ‘Hit Me Where It Hurts’, you’ve got a song that feels like it was delivered in the Time Machine from the Summer of Love! You just gotta head over to their website or make friends on MySpace and follow these guys!
There a was a period a couple of years back where it seemed like everything I was listening to was from obscure Swedish shoegaze/dreampop bands…but I simply upped my dose of Lexapro and moved on to more happy tunes that didn’t make me wanna jump of the nearest tall building. Then just this morning I stumbled over ‘Waifs & Strays’, off of Silesia, the new album from the Swedish quartet Jeniferever, and all those dark thoughts are coming back to me. The deeply layered sound, with it’s orchestral richness and syncopated percussive flourishes, lifts singer Kristofer Jönson’s slacker vocal and achieves a beautifully overwrought grandiosity…all in about five minutes. And it’s got me thinking I might hafta spend more time back on the Swedish music blogs…
I kinda started loving this song as soon as the opening watery, retro lead guitar fuzzed it’s way into my heart, and then Cullen Omori’s psychedelic Emo vocal slipped into my ears and visions of Gary Glitter, Marc Bolan and T. Rex, 70’s glam, velour bell-bottoms and tie-dye washed over me and all that was missing was a bong and a black light! Smith Westerns are from Chicago and all of the members in the band (Cullen’s brother Cameron on bass, Max Kakacek on that groovy lead guitar and Colby Hewitt on drums) are between the ages of 18-20…so I guess the whole 70’s-Retro thing is all new to them, right?!! No matter…every generation needs a bit of Glam Rock for fun and these guys seem to have it down. ‘Weekend’ is from Dye It Blonde, which dropped last week, and you can head over to MySpace for more news about the band.
Yes…I know…we’re 21 days into the new year and this is the first newSOTD I’ve dropped on The List. It’s been so long I’m actually forgetting HTML codes! Sucks for you guys, but work has kinda gotten in the way of me pumpin’ out new tunes for your iPods! But never fear…I’ma gonna try to get back on the horse on a more regular basis, starting today…
Say Hi…Eric Elbogen to his friends…is dropping a new album, Um, Uh-Oh, on January 25th and you just know I’ll be first in line for a copy. Say Hi is right up at the top of my list of bands nobody has ever heard of, but I’ve been doing my best to change that. I’ve featured him on The List twice before (HERE and HERE), ‘November Was White, December Was Grey’ made it on the 2009 Songs of the Year and know that a number of your have shown the love and picked up some of his dark and spooky one-man-band recordings. And he’s even gotten a bit of mainstream play when Cadillac, of all things, used his song, “One, Two…One” in a CTS commercial a few months back! So let’s not let him down…head on over to The Official Say Hi Website and ‘Say Hi’…and make sure to check out the FAQ Section
And for you car geeks, here’s the short version of that Cadillac ad…
We humans just love lists! Even the least-OCD person you know secretly appreciates the order and clarity of nice, neat End-of-the-Year Top-Ten List. Lists make it easier for our little human brains to organize all the garbage that gets thrown at us every day. Unfortunately, a lot of the lists that you’ve seen in the past few weeks in newspapers, magazines, on TV and online are mostly full of shit! We live in a World where Cee Lo Green singing, ‘Fuck You!” (New York Times ‘Best Song’ of the Year) and an even more self-indulgent-than-normal Kanye West hollering, “Let’s have a toast for the Douchebags” (“Runaway” – New York Post ‘Top Song of 2010’), is lauded as High Art. Call me an old fart if you want, but I hear this stuff and can’t help but think that even some of the worst songs I’ve put on The List in the past year are better written and performed!
With that little rant outta the way, I’ve culled through everything I tossed out over the past 12 months, tried to keep it real by touchin’ on all the food groups, and finally come up with a pretty good mix of indie, guitar-strummin’, singer/songwriter, power-poppy, electronica and alt-rock goodness. And I gotta say, it was bloody hard this year to keep it to only ten choices! Each year, it always amazes me at the sheer quality of the music I stumble upon that quite frankly, most people will never even hear! Cee Lo may get 50 million YouTube views and Kanye is washing the road grime off of his Lamborghini with Cristal, but I’m still gonna champion these performers because they’re turning out music I can actually listen to!
So even though this will undoubtedly be looked upon by some as yet another full-of-shit Top Ten list…I give you…..
The Damn Ugly Photography Top Ten Songs From 2010!!!
10. JOHANNA AND THE DUSTY FLOOR
Love Is A Breakable Thing
Very good friends of The List, Johanna & the Dusty Floor, dropped The Forest EP back in November and it only makes me want to hear her new album even more. Keep your eyes on her MySpace and Facebook pages for the release date!
The theatrical, Joy Division-like fuzzy vibe these guys have working must have been catchy, ‘cuz a lotta you wrote thankful notes to me back in February and said you coughed up a few bucks to buy the EP. You can follow INU over at Inu Music.
It was indeed a very bad day when Audrye Sessions announced a few months back that they were packing it in…we were crying like babies here at The List…but back in May when Ryan sent me this song we were amped by the frenzy of fun ‘Bad Day’ laid down and so looking forward to more from would end up being the final ‘sessions’. But Ryan assures me his new EP will be out this month and you all know I’ll have a taste when it becomes available!
I loved Portishead, so it was natural I was gonna love Phantogram. The sad, drowsy guitars, the scratchy backtrack and even Sarah Barthel’s voice that’s a dead ringer for Beth Gibbons…’When I’m Small’ had me swaying side-to-side back in January. Check out Phantogram over on MySpace
6. ANDREW BELLE (featuring KATIE HERZIG)
Static Waves
I first found out about Andrew Belle after seeing Katie Herzig (#3 on the list this year) in concert and ‘Static Waves’, the duo they did together, showed up on The List in October. You can follow Andrew Belle on his MySpace Page or over on his website
It’s sad, it’s sexy and it’s simply beautiful. I can’t say it any better than I did when I originally posted it back in June, but do yourself a favor and check out Sarah on her MySpace Page
The first time I heard ‘Changing Your Mind’, it gave me an ache in the back of my throat…the kind of heartfelt ache that convinced me even back then that it was bound for the end of the year list. You can’t fake this kind of soulful singing. Check out Bob Schneider on his MySpace page.
I never knew when I went to see Brandi Carlile I’d come away with a bunch of CD’s from Katie Herzig, but that’s why we go to see live music, right? You never know who’s gonna pop up and grab you! Katie is a special talent and you can follow her on her website or over on MySpace
There was far less electronica on The List this year, but my love of dream-pop and the fact that this song stayed at the very top of my iTunes folder all year ensured it a spot near the top of this years list. And I could listen to Alejandra and Claudia Deheza trade off harmonies all day and night! Get more SVIIB on MySpace or on their Website
Over the past few months, Nadia has become BFF’s with The List…we even shot her new album cover package…so ya can’t be too surprised to find her sitting on top of this years heap, and nobody deserves it more! She’s such an amazingly gifted songwriter and that strong, expressive voice can melt even the hardest heart. Her second album, The Ocean Master, is due to be released this Spring…in fact, she and Harvey are in Wales mixing the record it as I type this…so please, head on over to her facebook page for more information.
This time of year it gets pretty damned hard to find anything new to put up on The List, so I was happy when Kate sent me this one the other day…
This is at least the second time Kate Tucker has covered Bruce Spingsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’…the first was when her and The Sons of Sweden did it for ‘Sweetheart’, a Starbucks Valentine’s Day Compilation of covers. I liked it enough to put it up on The List way back in February of ’09…you can listen to it HERE…but that version, with it’s up-tempo country feel high-register vocal…pales in comparison to this much more somber version she recorded for Gary Benz, one of her benefactors who helped sponsor her Kickstarter campaign to release White Horses earlier this year. Quiet and haunting, with no production tricks getting in the way of her voice, it’s a much more fitting homage to Bruce’s original.
Yes, I know…..I haven’t been around much the past few weeks…work and the impending holidaze have simply gotten the best of me, but I promise to end the year with a flourish of posts that will inform, delight and entertain! And on the entertainment front, I’m happily gonna stay away from Christmas Carols by tossing out a leak from the forthcoming album from Asobi Seksu, the noisy dream-pop outfit from Brooklyn last featured on The List back in March of 2009. If ‘Trails’ is any indication, Fluorescence…scheduled for a February release…promises to carry on the duo’s signature wall of shoegazey noise and operatic melodies. I’ve always heard heavy doses of Slowdive, The Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine in their music, but Yuki Chikudate’s trilling soprano vocals on this song have really tapped into a Siouxsie and the Banshees vibe! Her voice bounces and swirls around the layered, fuzzy arrangement with such abandon, it’s exactly what I would expect from a band whose name is Japanese for “playful sex”…! So head on over to their MySpace page for more playful sex, I mean…Asobi Seksu.
Damn Ugly Photography 