It’s been a week since I dropped anything on The List, simply ‘cuz I’ve been busy as Hell with new work…truth be told, I’m elbow-deep in processing about 100 gigs of RAW files…but with the Snowpocalypse swirling outside my window I needed a little break and Francesco Ferorelli just axed if I could give a listen to his friend Peter LaBier’s new band, Psychobuildings. After playing ‘Paradise’ a couple of times, I’d be willing to bet the ranch that they got the name Psychobuildings after tossing The Talking Heads “Psycho Killer” and “More Songs About Buildings and Food” into a blender, because it can’t be a coincidence that more than a little Heads influence pokes through in their music. And while I’m thinking about old New Wave bands, what do you call New Wave music made 30 years after the first New Wave…..“Neaux Wave”?!! Anyway…joining Mr. LaBier are Peter Schuette and Juan Pieczanski and from what I can glean from the interweb, they’re working on getting an EP out soon. In the meantime, you can follow them over on MySpace
I met Johanna Cranitch in a club downtown last year where she was playing with Kate Tucker, and since then she’s become a really good friend. It’s undoubtedly that friendship…and need to see me more often…that’s made her decide to move back from God-Awful L.A. to the warm embrace of New York…and not just Johanna, but Kate is ditching Seattle and the two of them are planning a full-frontal assault on Brooklyn this Spring! Besides singing angelic backup vocals with Kate, Johanna has been working on the second Johanna And The Dusty Floor album, due out this summer. John Balicanta from Lola Ray is producing and also plays on the album, and you can hear more on Johanna’s Myspace page
I needed a dose of loud, ballsy, feedback-drenched grungy rock this morning, and low and behold, Drive-By Truckers leaked me this beauty off of their eighth studio album, The Big To Do, due out March 16th. The dirty guitars with their slight country twang chug along like an assembly line and Patterson Hood’s voice cries out with just enough dragged out exasperation that you really, really believe he’s a down on his luck working man who’s just about had it with his fucking job! This ain’t brain surgery…but it’s damned good rock & roll! Give the Truckers a look over on MySpace
For more than a decade now, singer/songwriter Matt Pond has put together an ever-changing roster of top-shelf musicians known as Matt Pond PA that has become a staple of the indie music scene. Over the years, he’s performed with bands such as Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Guster, Neko Case and Liz Phair, but in true indie style, even after releasing 14 albums he’s managed to pretty much stay off of the radar of the general public. Come April 6th he’ll be dropping Number 15 with The Dark Leaves. Why not head on over to MySpace and give him a look.
Ronnie Weil figured that since I’m the only person she knows who has regular contact with bears, this instructional video just might come in handy. And I gotta say, I’m pretty impressed that the claymation Davey & Goliath-like action figure looks remarkably like yours truly…Enjoy!
CBS Sunday Morning did a wonderfully moving profile this past week on Melody Gardot, a 24 year-old jazz singer from Philadelphia, but far better known in Paris where she is held in such high regard that her recent album, My One and Only Thrill, went double-platinum almost the second it was released! But they weren’t featuring her just because of her singing…no, the real story is how she fought back from a near-fatal accident where she was mowed down while riding her bike by a guy who ran a red light. She suffered serious head and spinal injuries and her pelvis was shattered in two places. As a result she was confined to her hospital bed for a year and had to remain lying on her back. The most noticeable effect of the injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound and wears dark sunglasses at all times to shield her eyes. The accident also caused both long and short term memory problems and difficulty with her sense of time. As therapy, she began writing music…at first, she learned to hum but was eventually able to sing into a tape recorder. Making a verbal attempt to sing or hum apparently helped her brain form new neural pathways to take over for the ones damaged in the accident. All things considered, it’s a pretty amazing story. You should check her out on MySpace or on her website!
God knows The Song of the Day is a big fan of Fever Ray, but even we had to scratch our heads when, at the P3 Guld Awards this weekend in Gothenburg Sweden (best described as the Swedish version of the Grammy’s, The MTV Awards, an Ecstasy-fueled Rave and Art Basel all rolled into one) Karin Dreijer Andersson picked up a shattered piece of glass for Best Dance Performance dolled up like Lady GaGa dipped in sulphuric acid! Very weird…very cool…very entertaining!
If you didn’t know Charlotte Gainsbourg has a new album due out tomorrow, then you really haven’t been paying attention! Besides the usual leaks on all of the music blogs, Ms. Gainsbourg has been tearing up the promo circuit as well, capping it all off with a front page story in the Sunday Times yesterday. But I guess when you’re trying to get outta the shadow of your incredibly famous father, the renaissance man Serge Gainsbourg, you’ll take all the press you can get, however, the story behind “IRM” is quite fascinating….after a minor water skiing fall, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and if not for emergency surgery would have probably died. But even after recovering, she remained convinced she was not quite right, so she insisted on repeated MRI scans (‘IRM’ in French). The experience focussed her songwriting on her medical crisis and the result is a haunting work, filled with eerie lyrics (“…Drill my brain full of holes and patch it before it leaks…”) and musical samples of the MRI machines whose grinding sounds somehow soothed her while they probed her head. And Beck…they had become friends a few years earlier and she got him to handle the production, as well as contribute on a few songs, including ‘Heaven Can Wait’. You can check out Charlotte Gainsbourg on her website or over on MySpace.
There is something so wonderfully Portishead-like about Phantogram. I dunno if it’s because the Lo-Fi scratchy intro and fuzzy synth pulses and echoing guitar reminds me of ‘Glory Box’, or maybe it’s how Sarah Barthel’s voice has a similar fragile, floaty quality to that of Beth Gibbons, but it might just be ‘cuz I’m just so desperately in need of some trip-hop that when I heard this today I was immediately drawn in by the unique strangeness, the minimal beats and the angelic arc of Sarah’s vocals. Phantogram signed with indie power-label Barsuk Records last fall and their first full-length album, Eyelid Movies, is due out next month. Show ’em some love and head over to MySpace and make friends!
One of the cool things about the blog is the ability to look at the stats to see exactly who is wasting time in here, and one sort of weird thing has happened in the past few weeks…suddenly I’m getting a lotta hits from China and the blog is being fed into translate.google.com for English to Chinese translation! The only problem is, when I see how what I post gets translated, I hafta wonder if Google is getting it right! ‘Damn Ugly Photography’ comes up as ‘Disgusting Photography’ and ‘The Home Of The Song Of The Day List’ results in ‘But To Date Name List Song Home Page’…!
I dunno…I should probably just be happy that there are people half a World away checking out what’s sitting at the top of my iTunes folder!
As the new era at Bloomberg BusinessWeek begins, so does a new stable of columnists, and one of the first new names added to the masthead is the revered television interviewer and journalist, Charlie Rose. We had the pleasure of photographing him in his TV studio…at the table…for his new column portrait.
There hasn’t been nearly enough good, brooding Electro-Pop on the list of late, but when the latest from Cruel Black Dove fell into my lap a few minutes ago I figured it must be a sign from above. ‘Isolation’ has a very Depeche Mode-y feel to it, especially with that sharp, clicky synth and thick bassline that chugs along throughout the entire song, and lead singer Anastasia Dimou’s slinky, sexy vocal gives a soul to what otherwise would be a cold affair. ‘Isolation’ is off of the band’s brand-spankin’ new album, The Myth And The Sum, and if you like it, give ’em a look on their MySpace page and then head over to their website where they have lotsa free downloads to check out. And for you New Yorkers looking for an excuse to get up off of the damned couch, they’re playing the Mercury Lounge tonight at 9:30!
Austin’s Amy Cook just finished up her third album, Let The Light In, which is set to drop March 2nd, and if the rest of the record is as strong as this song, then Ms. Cook will have a real winner on her hands. Produced by Alejandro Escovedo, featuring guest vocals from Patty Griffin and a lush string arrangement performed by the Tosca String Quartet, this is powerful poetry set to music and Cook’s heartfelt, shimmering vocal has put me into a soulful, melancholy mood…but in a good way…
I’ve gotten a lotta e-mails in the past few days regarding this years Songs of the Year, but the runaway majority had to do with Metric’s ‘Gimme Sympathy’. And surprisingly (especially since I regularly get slammed for serving up too much ‘soft’ music) a bunch of you went back to the original post last August and watched the YouTube video of the acoustic version…and then asked if I had an mp3 of that one, too! Well…of course I do…and I’m just here to make you guys happy, right?!! As good as Emily Haines is in the album version, when her vocal is striped down and just a simple guitar is backing her up, all the sadness and hurt comes out and you really see just how great this song is. ‘Gimme Sympathy’ is off of Metric’s latest album, Fantasies. You should all make friends on their MySpace page
Another year is over and another decade done and all that’s left for me now is to cook down the music I’ve served up over the past twelve months into an easily digestible, playlist-sized morsel. God…even after all the years I’ve been doing this, it’s still not easy. With all of the inspiringly good music that came out this past year, the wrap-up could have easily been 30 songs long, so I’ll apologize up front if you felt Carbon Leaf or Blitzen Trapper or Wye Oak should have been recognized, but I had to swing the axe on something, otherwise why have an end-of-the-year list at all?!! Surprisingly, none of my faves showed up on lists compiled by Rolling Stone, Spin or any of the other ‘big’ name music mags. Well…NME did have The Horrors ‘Sea Within A Sea’ at #2…does that make me a little bit mainstream?!! And it might sound melodramatic, but many of these songs have become touchstones to my life…they jog my increasingly bad memory and remind me of how I was feeling, who I was with and what I was doing. As I sat here editing down the list and listening to these all again, it was as though I was watching the year musically speed past me…bringing it all back again as the melodies filled me up. So here they are…my favorites songs of 2009……
There was absolutely zero chance this wasn’t gonna be my number one song this year. From the first time I heard it leap outta my Sirius while listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel I was sold. Ryan Karazija has been compared to everyone from Bono to Thom Yorke, but the simple fact is his voice is an amazing instrument all it’s own, his timing and phrasing are extraordinary and he’s backed up with three of the most talented young musicians I’ve seen in years! And the cherry on top was that I got to shoot them when they were in New York back in March! Their self-titled debut album came out in October and you can check them out on their MySpace page
The one thing that nobody should ever have to witness is me singing, but this is the one song this year that I find myself harmonizing with (horribly) whenever it plays! Rachel Stolte’s trembling, trilling yet powerful vocals send shivers up my spine and the wall of fuzzy noise that accompanies her gets me swaying from the jump. Great Northern dropped “Remind Me Where The Light Is” in April…check ’em out on their MySpace page
Yup…those three goofballs from Leeds who studied the Nirvana songbook easily grabbed the #3 spot on The List with ‘My Rock & Roll’, certainly the most glorious rock anthem of the year. I found ’em on MySpace…where else?!!
There’s a certain member of The List who has told me in no uncertain terms that if ‘Quiet Dog’ didn’t make the Songs of the Year List, I would no longer be welcome at her dinner table! Well…she didn’t hafta threaten holding back food to get me to put this thing on, ‘cuz when I saw Mos Def do ‘Quiet Dog’ on Letterman I was instantly maintainin’ the rock and I don’t stop! Mos Def is the King of Kool…and he’s on MySpace
Just imagine…if it hadn’t been for me tossing and turning from a wicked case of insomnia and then switching on Kimmel I probably never would have known who Anya Marina was, but even in my sleep-deprived state I knew she was the real deal and in an incredibly short time she has rocketed to the top of the indie pile with the kitten-sexy ‘Move You’. In fact, she’s so damned good that she stole the show from headliner Emiliana Torrini when they played the Highline Ballroom this Summer! ‘Move You’ is off of her second album, Slow & Steady Seduction, Phase II and you can hear more on her MySpace Page
So what if Metric are electronically-driven popsters from Canada? Every time Emily Haines’ pleading, raspy vocal cries, “Gimme sympathy!”, it pulls at my heart! It’s just one of those perfectly hook-filled pop songs that I find myself humming long after it’s over and what can be wrong with that?!! Head on over to their MySpace page and listen to a bit more.
Few bands blew up as big as Band Of Skulls did this past year. Besides touring the World in the summer, they also killed it at the Lollapalooza festival and just when they thought things might die down a bit, one of their songs was featured in the blockbuster movie, ‘Twilight – New Moon’…not bad for a group who last year at this time were still playing skeevy clubs in London and only had a couple of EP’s under their belts! Hit ’em on MySpace
Karin Dreijer Andersson’s solo experiment, Fever Ray, caught even the most diehard fans of The Knife off guard. Where The Knife could wander off into an electronic miasma of utter weirdness, Andersson’s icy-cool vocals, haunting melodies and slickly-produced musical constructions created a surprisingly approachable, yet intensely primal, world of minimalism and harmony…while still remaining pretty damned weird! Hear more Fever Ray on their MySpace Page or over on the Official Website
Kate’s new album, White Horses, isn’t due out ’til next Spring, but I’ve been giving out tastes for most of the year! A document of heartache, lost love and rebirth, it’s an intensely personal diary that she presents with an anguish-filled urgency that you feel from the first few notes. Kate’s a friend of The List, and I’m expecting you all to pre-order a limited edition signed and numbered copy of White Horses (Release date: March 2010), and Kate will send you a free gift! Just go the the ‘NEWS’ section on Kate’s Website for details, and then check her out on MySpace
The Idle Hands were basically unknown, but they turned a lotta heads at SXSW this year when they debuted a bunch of the new stuff they’ve been working on, including this Nihilistically re-worked version of ‘Loaded’, for an as-yet unnamed new album. All you Emo Boys and Backpack Kids can check out more songs over on MySpace
What’s a list without a bit of Goth?!! Sure, they wear a lotta eye makeup and they’re probably very full of themselves (I mean, just look at how they pose!), but so did Bauhaus and these guys are the closest thing to that late-great band there is! For those of us with a penchant for gloomy poetics, Faris Badwan’s vocals come across like the like the bastard-child of Peter Murphy and Ian Curtis…just the kinda thing you need to listen to as your life slips away from you…..visit their MySpace page or their website for more.
This was the very first Song of the Day when I moved The List from the e-mail distribution to the blog and it has remained one of the most-played songs I’ve come across all year. Seattle-based Eric Elbogen performs as Say Hi, recording albums out of his home, playing a majority of the instruments and vocals. He is often compared to such disparate artists as Belle & Sebastian, The Beatles, The Strokes, Interpol and Gary Numan and since 2002 has put out a pretty damned impressive body of work…visit his MySpace page to hear more.
I’m always fascinated by Sarah Negahdari’s voice…at times it’s like Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but then she’ll get all introspective and moody like Tanya Donelly from Belly and just when you think she can’t morph into something else, she’ll do a mash-up of Patti Smith and Yoko Ono!!! It’s her trilling, high-register vocals that drive this L.A.-based power trio like a buzz saw on steroids. Their new album, Spells, dropped October 6th, and you can head over and make friends on MySpace
Even more tough-girl vocals from Sarah Daly, the lead singer of London-based post punk pop band, Scanners. Daly’s femme fatale swagger…part Karen O, part Chrissie Hynde…fits in perfectly with the eerie vibe on ‘Salvation’, with it’s dark harmonies that overlay a haunting melody. They’re set to release their second album, Submarine, in February on Dim Mak, but for now, check ’em out on MySpace
It’s kinda fitting that we come to the end of a list of the year’s best songs with a band that doesn’t even exist any more. The Sun were a collective of crazy talented musicians from Columbus, Ohio who packed it in back in January, but before they left, they finished Don’t Let Your Baby Have All The Fun that you can download gratis over at their old label, Rock Proper. And if you like following dead bands, head over to their MySpace page and ask ’em to get back together again, but to maybe come up with a better name!
Well…that’s it for another year. I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves! As for me…Hell, I just wanna be a rock star…..!!!
Because I can’t get it outta my head, I was searchin’ for the mp3 of that AutoTune mixup of 2009 that I posted a couple of weeks ago, when I stumbled across the website of Steve Porter…the DJ who did the remix…and ended up in an hour-long hole watching a bunch of his videos…but at least my time wasn’t a total waste, ‘cuz this one of Henry Rollins discussing his deep love of Techno is killer, because after all…who doesn’t love anything that features the Techno Viking?!!
And as a bonus, I actually did find an mp3 copy of The Year 2009 Filtered Through AutoTune. The quality ain’t gonna win any awards, but what the Hell…
My friend Adrian confessed to me this week that whenever he hears anything from the Charlie Brown Christmas album he turns into a pile of mush, so, because I’m the kinda guy who likes to make his friends get all mushy around the Holidays, here are a couple of versions of that old Christmas classic, Christmas Time Is Here. Happy Holidays!
Is it just me, or does it seem that most movie stars wanna be rock stars too? I mean, toss a dart in Hollywood and you’ll hit some actor who thinks he’s got the chops to rock out and the simple fact is, 99.9% of them suck at it! Why is it that Billy Bob Thornton, Kevin Bacon, Jared Leto and Russell Crowe all think they can force Bono to the unemployment line? Is the music biz so devoid of talent that there are record executives who think Juliette Lewis, Dennis Quaid and Kevin Costner need recording contracts? Can’t actors just be happy with taking huge paychecks for prancing around in front of a camera and leave my ears in peace?!! I guess not, ‘cuz now comes ‘Break Up’, the second simply God-Awful album from Scarlett Johansson. Apparently ‘inspired’ by the ’60’s duets of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, she teams up with Pete Yorn…a great singer/songwriter who bloody well should have known better, but was probably blinded by ScarJo’s inner artist and etherial beauty! I had heard the buzz surrounding the release of this album back in the summer, but after her first lame attempt at grabbing the Golden Ring of Rock-God fame, Anywhere I Lay My Head, an ill-conceived mishmash of Tom Waits covers, I could give a damn if I never heard her disinterested moaning voice plod through another collection of self-important garbage, but then last night as I was driving back into the city, this dirge slithered outta the radio and almost forced me off the road. I am slack-jawed over how amazingly bad it is. I would gladly just jump in front of a bus in order to never have to endure the pain of listening even one more time, but I feel it’s my duty to warn all of the Friends of The List to avoid this nightmare set to music at all costs…so please listen at your own peril!!!
Damn Ugly Photography 