Brad Trent

Don Draper Wins A Clio? Big Deal…I’ve Got A Clio!!!

OK…so on Sunday night, just as ‘Mad Men’ was lassoing its third consecutive Emmy for Best Dramatic Series, I was over on AMC watching that nights episode where our hero, Don Draper, wins his first Clio Award (and the apparent pain & suffering that comes with the honor). Well, maybe pain & suffering is a bit strong, since as Don does a victory lap around a bar with his trophy, all the gals in attendance are clamoring to spend the night with him! And that’s when it hit me…wait a second…..I have a Clio, and the damned thing has never managed to get me the ladies like it did for Don!!! I kinda think I got a raw deal…….or maybe I just need a tailored suit, a high & tight haircut, and a skinny tie!

Song of the Day

LAND OF TALK
Quarry Hymns

DOWNLOAD: Quarry Hymns

The Montreal-based Land of Talk has a perfect song to kick off what looks like it’s gonna be a very nice week. Liz Powell’s easy-going vocals, the cool shoegazey vibe and the light and airy mood the song has put me in has almost convinced me blow off the mountain of work I have in front of me and spend the rest of the day up on the roof soaking in the sun. And even though the lyrics are profoundly sad, there is a sweet sexiness that is both uplifting and hopeful…

…And on days like these
I could take apart my window
So let down, I was so let down…

‘Quarry Hymns’ is off of Land Of Talk’s second album, Cloak & Cipher, that dropped last week. Check out their MySpace page for more information and be sure to check out this acoustic version that was recorded under a bridge…

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix

I have to admit, I had zero interest in seeing ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’ before I saw this trailer, but now…..WHOA!!!

Song of the Day

MATT ELLIS
Heart Of Mine

DOWNLOAD: Heart Of Mine

It often surprises me just how much stuff I pass on to The List that fits into the Alt Country category…God knows it’s been kinda folky in here recently…but even though I spent a lotta time growing up on the farm in Saskatchewan, I never really had much use for all the twang and slide guitars. Now for some reason I find myself listening to much more down-home, country-fried tunes than I used to. Maybe it’s an aging thing…or just me bein’ a bit more open-minded…or just maybe, the music has gotten so much better over time and the line between Folk Rock, Art Rock and Country Rock just gets fuzzier and fuzzier! Anyway, a couple of hours ago, Matt Ellis…an Australian Singer/Songwriter who’s living in the Country Music capital of Venice, California…sent me his latest album, Births, Deaths & Marriages, a collection of the above mentioned Alt Country warblers, soulful ballads and Delta roadhouse jams. I’ve listened through the entire thing twice already and Goddamn it if it ain’t shuffle-steppin’ it’s way into my heart. Matt’s lonesome lyrics and Sad Bastard vocals and a parade of guest musicians have crafted a tight little hoedown with haunting Pedal Steel work from Greg Leisz (who’s played with Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss) and guitars from Tim Young (Beck) and Nick Luca (Calexico). Go on and give him a look on MySpace or over on his Web Site

And for all you dog lovers, this video is gonna put a tear in your eye…..

There Are No Words…..

Nothing I say could possible add to the luminous beauty of this famous album cover by gospel singing trio The Faith Tones, so let’s all just sit back and enjoy, shall we?!!

Song of the Day

JOEY RYAN
Broken Headlights

DOWNLOAD: Broken Headlights

One of the perks of being in New York is being able to listen to new music every single night and last night Vienna Teng was doing her Farewell Tour at the Highline Ballroom and I was there…front row & center! Vienna is truly one of the most gifted artists I’ve heard in years and it rips my heart out to think she’s packing up her piano (at least until she gets her Masters from the University of Michigan) because even as talented as she is, it’s damned near impossible to survive in the music business…unless you shake your ass around like GaGa or Beyoncé! But this isn’t about Vienna…it’s about the guy who opened for her, a darkly funny Angeleno named Joey Ryan. Joey took the stage wearing a slightly ill-fitting tweedy suit, carrying nothing but a guitar that was ‘older than his parents’…and he went on to totally win over the crowd, most of whom had probably never heard of him! His folksy, self-deprecating banter between songs has a real Luka Bloom quality about it, except that where Luka would typically be moaning about how horrible life on the road is and that he misses Ireland terribly, Joey lamented about how life on road sucked and he missed the lack of weather back home in L.A.!!!

Joey’s gonna be playing a solo gig at the small room at Rockwood Music Hall this Friday and will back in New York on September 22nd, this time playing Stage 2 at Rockwood with Amber Rubarth. ‘Broken Headlights’ is off of his new EP, Kenter Canyon, and I strongly advise you all to head on over to his MySpace page and give him a look!

You Mean You Can’t Use A Canon 7D For The Remake Of ‘War & Peace’…?!!

I love these xtranormal.com animations!

I Shoot Kaz…Kaz Shoots Me…..

A few weeks ago, the folks at Resource Magazine got in touch with me and asked if I would be interested in contributing to a photo essay they’re doing on Photographers and their Assistants. The idea is for me to shoot a portrait of my assistant and then have the assistant shoot me. I thought it sounded like an OK way to spend a day, so on one of the hottest days of the year, Kaz and I trucked a few hundred pounds of gear up to the roof and I did one of my Artificial Portraits of him, then we went back to the air-conditioned comfort of my apartment where he did a particularly scary shot of me…

The story will be in the Fall issue which comes out in early October…I’ll let y’all know when it drops!

Song of the Day


LISSIE
In Sleep (Live)

DOWNLOAD: In Sleep (Live)

It’s been almost a year since I turned you guys on to Lissie Maurus when I leaked ‘Everywhere I Go’ from her stunning debut EP, but yesterday she dropped Catching A Tiger…her first full-length album…and it is a bit of a surprise. Where the EP was dark, blues-infused and introspective, the album is more upbeat, sunnier and filled with twangy country pop themes. The Rock Island, Illinois native calls L.A. home (and must hang with the cool kids ‘cuz she even sang at Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s wedding), but recently relocated to London to jump-start her career. In fact, the album has been out in Europe since early this summer and she’s deep into a tour of the continent and won’t get back to the States until later this Fall. This live version of ‘In Sleep’ isn’t on the album…it’s a little bonus for all you guys on The List! Enjoy, and then head over to MySpace and make friends with Lissie.

Song of the Day

ZOLA JESUS
Sea Talk

DOWNLOAD: Sea Talk

Growing up in rural Wisconsin must have made Nika Roza Danilova think her name isn’t quite unique enough, ‘cuz when she’s on stage she would prefer if you call her Zola Jesus. I stumbled across her new EP, Stridulum, the other day and being a fan of all things Goth, was immediately taken by her Siouxsie Sioux-like vocals and the sparse, haunting, industrial backing track. She’s getting lotsa notice overseas…in fact, she’s opening for Fever Ray all over Great Britain before she heads out on her own European tour in September…then back State-side where she’s criss-crossing the country, including a gig in NYC at the wonderfully creepy (and just a bit Goth!) United Palace Theater October 2nd! This is some really cool shit and I think you all should head over to MySpace and make friends!

I Luvs The Piggy !!!

Best creepy commercial in a long time…..

Song of the Day

BEST COAST
Boyfriend

DOWNLOAD: Boyfriend

Bethany Cosentino does a killer homage to 60’s girl groups like The Shirelles, The Shangri-Las and The Chiffons with her sad, lo-fi ballad, ‘Boyfriend’, off of the just-released Best Coast album, Crazy For You. The song has a wonderfully retro, transistor radio/mono sound and is so wrapped up in treble-heavy guitars and cymbal crashes that you’d swear they let Phil Spector outta jail to produce the thing! Head on over to MySpace for more from Best Coast.

Song of the Day

TIM CHAD & SHERRY
The Love I Make

DOWNLOAD:The Love I Make

I’m gonna get back to spittin’ out the free tunes with a wonderously boogylicious funk number from from the Nashville quartet, Tim Chad & Sherry. Apparently there is no one named Tim, Chad, or Sherry in the band, which was put together by Brian Kotzur, who used to drum for The Silver Jews. ‘The Love I Make’ is from their just-released debut album, Baby We Can Work It Out, and you can follow the boys over on their MySpace Page

The BEST New TV Show of the Day

Things have been quiet on The List lately…mostly ‘cuz I’ve been busy with work, but also ‘cuz I’ve just been lazy. It’s just been too damned hot to muster up the strength to hammer away a few pithy thoughts for you guys, so I decided to just ignore the place and maybe you would all go away, but that didn’t work so I guess I gotta get back on the horse.

I’ve been wanting to spread the word about my newest fave TV show…Louie…a must-watch for your Tuesday nights! Louis CK has created (he writes and directs every episode) kind of a Seinfeld for the New Millennium…it’s amazingly funny, it’s smartly written and best of all, it doesn’t follow any kind of normal structure you’re used to seeing on TV…every week it’s like they forgot what they did last week and started over! You can catch up on the back episodes over at FX, but please…set your DVR’s to FX every Tuesday night at 11:00PM…..you’re gonna thank me as you die laughing!

And for those of you chained to a cubicle, the following clip is completely Not Safe For Work !!!

How’d You Do That?!!

Click on Any Image for Full-Size
______________________________

Ever since I posted THIS Song of the Day last week, I’ve been getting e-mails from photo geeks around the World asking me about the shot of Kate Tucker in that field. I’ve had more theories tossed my way than I ever could have imagined, from the type of lighting…did I use an HMI spotlight or studio strobes or small, battery-powered flash units…to whether or not Kate was even in the field…a lot of you actually are convinced she was shot in the studio and stripped into a stock field shot! All of this speculation knocked me out, especially since the truth is that it was a kind of a throwaway that neither Kate or I thought was working, so we bailed on it and moved on to another idea after only five or six frames!

So…for your photo-geeky viewing enjoyment…here’s a breakdown of the shot and the post-processing steps involved in making it look the way it does…

We shot this on the Hasselblad H1 with the Leaf Aptus 75 back which gave us this very normal, if a little flat, RAW file. To keep the lighting dramatic, the only light I used is that Profoto beauty dish (with a grid) you see above her head. It was powered by a Profoto 7B at about half power which nicely darkened the mid-day ambient light down to mimic twilight…

Next, I had to do a bit of cosmetic retouching and obviously the light boom and sandbag had to go, but since I grey-balanced the shot heavy on the blue side, I had to bring back the vivid red of the dress and yellow tone of the guitar. I also lowered the contrast and added a bit of shadow detail using the ‘Shadow/Highlights’ adjustment because I knew that a few steps down the line I would be amping up the levels and contrast a lot…

Now came some color correction. Leaf RAW files are inherently flat and need a lotta help to get the kind of color I like in my final images, and in this case, because of that very blue white-balance I did, I inserted a Color Adjustment Layer and added 20 Red to the shadows and 20 Cyan to the highlights…

…then I added a Selective Color Adjustment Layer and really increased the Blue and Cyan levels…

Next, I pumped up the contrast in the Curves and Levels Adjustment Layers…

…and the contrast went up even more when I duplicated the image layer, converted it to ‘Soft Light’ and applied a healthy dose of the High Pass filter set at a radius of 150 pixels…

With the higher contrast, the High Pass layer added a lot of drama, but I still felt I had to draw more attention to Kate, so in a final step I created a new Overlay Layer (filled with 50% grey) and I ‘burned’ down the horizon line, the grass on either side of her and a bit of the sky, then I dodged the grass directly around her to make more of a spotlight effect…

That’s it…a simple photo in only seven steps!!! And here are all of those steps…side-by-side…one final time…

Song of the Day/Show of the Night

KATE TUCKER
Roman Candles

DOWNLOAD: Roman Candles

Before I get outta here, I’m dropping a rare Saturday song ‘cuz I went to see Kate play Spike Hill in Brooklyn last night as she kicked off her latest solo release, White Horses. The show was great, the crowd was stoked and to cap it off she did a totally rocked-out version of ‘Roman Candles’, one of my favorite songs and one I’ve been trying to get her to include on the set list more often! And for all you New York types who haven’t fled the city for the beaches this weekend, she’s playing a set tonight at Rockwood Music Hall, so if you’re just sitting around wondering when the heat wave is gonna break, get off your ass and head downtown for a bit of fun!

You can follow Kate on her MySpace Page

Song of the Day

CROCODILES
Sleep Forever

DOWNLOAD: Sleep Forever

It’s been more than a year since Crocodiles graced the pages of The List with Neon Jesus, and their debut album, Summer of Hate, tore up the blogosphere and they toured across the US and Europe opening for bands like Holy Fuck and The Horrors…but now they’re back with more buzzy, swirling, My Bloody Valentine-like psych-rock on this Summertime 7″ release. ‘Sleep Forever’ is meant to whet your appetite for their new full-length release due out September 14th on Fat Possum Records. I’m diggin’ singer Brandon Welchez’s laid-back vocals, but what really stands out is the tight production on this song is a noticeable change from last year’s intentionally punkier, lo-fi album.

You can hang with Crocodiles over on MySpace

Song of the Day

HANK & CUPCAKES
She’s Lost Control (Joy Division Cover)

DOWNLOAD: She’s Lost Control

Let’s have a bit of fun before we all head out for the long weekend! Hank and Cupcakes are a Drum & Bass Duo (please don’t call them techno!) that arrived in Brooklyn from Israel a little more than a year ago who have quickly built up a reputation for having one of the most infectious stage shows around. Over the years, lotsa bands have covered Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’, but I don’t remember anybody sexing it up into a dance number…..it’s just what you need whie you’re stuck in traffic on the way to the beach for the Fourth!

Check out Hank and Cupcakes on their website or over on their MySpace Page

Song of the Day


THE STRANGE BOYS
Be Brave

DOWNLOAD: Be Brave

Thanks to Adrian for turning me onto today’s song. He sent me a link to a Nick Knight-directed video of Kate Moss shimmy-shakin’ to this twangy, foot-stomping, lo-fi, jangly little blues number and I’ve been diggin’ it all morning. The Strange Boys are a simple little garage band from from Austin, Texas that blew up overnight with last year’s killer debut, The Strange Boys and Girls Club, and now they’re following up with Be Brave, an R&B meets country charmer that sounds as destined to be featured in an iPod ad if ever I heard one! Lead singer and songwriter Ryan Sambol isn’t gonna be mistake for Pavarotti any time soon, but he sings with such emotion and charisma that you get instantly caught up in the rollicking fun that ensues.

Follow The Strange Boys on MySpace