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Living Sisters’ New “How Are You Doing” Video Directed By Michel Gondry

admin — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:42:47 +0000

I’ve said this before, but I wish I had more time to listen to all the amazing new indy music that’s been flooding the market the last few years. Then it wouldn’t take a torrent of links flooding the web talking about a new Michael Gondry music video (see below) to get me to notice a cool band like The Living Sisters. I hadn’t heard of them until yesterday, but like most anyone with ears would be, I was immediately struck by their uniquely witty harmonies. They sort of reminded me of The Roches (who, unlike The Living Sisters, are sisters), not because of their sound, but because of the quirky vibe. And The Living Sisters’ voicing sounded familiar too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it hit me. Well, it didn’t actually hit me – I had to read this LA Weekly piece from last year to learn – that the reason that something about the voices sounded so familiar was because exactly one third of them were being provided by Inara George of The Bird and The Bee, who we touched on a few weeks ago. I guess on top of needing to listen to more stuff, I should follow up better on the stuff I already am listening to as well. So I don’t have much more to say about The Living Sisters, because until I finish downloading the album Love To Live from Amazon in a few minutes, I’ve only heard previews and watched some YouTube clips. I included a live one below, which proves pretty effectively that Inara George doesn’t need the autotune that seems so pervasive in The Bird and the Bee recordings. These ladies have amazing voices. Or maybe an amazing voice; at times the similarity of their timbre makes them sound like one person singing along with a Theremin…

A live studio performance in which Inara George makes it clear she don’t need no autotune:

Yeah Yeah Yeah. The Beatles Are On iTunes

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 03:25:54 +0000

The word is that the day before yesterday, after a decade long wait, the Beatles catalog finally became available on iTunes. Should we care? Well, Todd Martens of the LA Times has some reasons why we shouldn’t. Personally, you won’t see me rushing to download a bunch of Beatles songs for a price 30% higher than anything else on iTunes. But I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other; I prefer you think for yourself. Except you may have noticed I’m playing a little game of trying to sprinkle Beatles song titles into what I’m saying, because I’ll make money if you follow the links and buy something. After a few sentences, you’d think I’d be getting better at it, but clearly I’m not. So I will stop now. But that silliness I just engaged in is an example of something you might want to ponder. Releasing this material on iTunes really means only one thing. Revenue. And for whom? Certainly not the two Beatles that many would agree were the cool ones. And certainly not Michael Jackson, who owned half of the publishing rights. No, in my opinion, this is the big lumbering thud of the money tree of the old music industry falling. It’s ironic to ponder that without the business model that devoured the Beatles’ profits as artists and fueled the decades of legal wrangling over them, the Beatles would probably not have even existed, let alone become the legend that they now are. And then, you wouldn’t be able to buy every song over and over and over in endless re-re-releases including absurdities like a $299 Apple-shaped USB stick. Which, for the record, is probably better than a $149 Box Set that doesn’t come with a box. It’s a little sad, and at the same time rather telling that the Beatles are always touted as sacred icons of popular music, and then immediately pimped out in a different (often less-than superb) format. At one point I had every one of their LP’s in my vinyl collection. That overlapped with owning cassettes of a few releases, and later various CD’s. I don’t think I’ll be buying any of these songs yet again on iTunes, but I want you to. Because then I can make money like everyone else who isn’t the original artist. And feel good knowing that the estates of three pop legends get some more loot to pay off the lawyers, and that the executives at both Apple companies can make more money. And when I make that money, I can support a new indy act that sells direct. Ironic, isn’t it?

Joan Wasser’s Band Joan as Police Woman

admin — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 01:52:41 +0000

The only thing stranger than the fact that I hadn’t heard of Joan Wasser and her band Joan as Police Woman until the other day is the fact that I feel like I’ve known her and her music for years. Or maybe the latter is not really so strange, considering the fact that after her tune Start of My Heart (video below) literally made me cry the first time I heard it, I immediately bought her 2008 release To Survive, and in the 48 hours since, have listened to it like, four times. And in between listens, have read about her career and listened to or watched anything by her that I can find. But even if I hadn’t so instantly fallen in love with her work, there’s an intimate intensity and emotional depth to most of it that would have eventually had the same effect. One imagines that some of the incredible depth and “realness” of her expression is informed by the loss of her partner Jeff Buckley back in the 90′s, and more recently her mother (the inspiration for the title track of “To Survive”) but her talent as an arranger and songwriter is remarkable in itself. Listening to her work one is slowly struck by its subtly. I say “slowly”, because her impeccable arrangements allow horns, backing vocals and other instrumentation to weave through the tunes so effortlessly that one barely notices their coming and going until repeated listens. It’s almost hard to believe that she is – as she implies at one point in this interview – an “ear musician”, saying that music theory “is just like math to me“. Although Wasser only has a few solo releases as a songwriter and vocalist, her resumé as a violinist extends back to the 1990′s and includes work with the likes of Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, Sparklehorse, Elton John, David Sylvian, the Scissor Sisters, Antony and the Johnsons, Joseph Arthur, and Rufus Wainwright. I love that ex-Fishbone member Chris Dowd apparently praised her as a “soulful mothafucka” in the liner notes of a Seedy Arkhestra release. It’s that kind of reference that makes me hope Wasser finds the broader recognition that she deserves without a major label deal; I don’t think they’d know what to do with her! While her music has a mature honesty that is easily understood, there’s an intense beauty and strength in her face, her persona, and her work that defies definition, and would almost certainly be diluted and destroyed by the pop music packaging process. In spite of the fact that so far I’ve only picked up her 2008 release, I’m looking forward to her upcoming 2011 release “The Deep Field” (see clip below). Partly because the title references a place where galaxies are born, and partly because at this rate I will have listened to everything she’s done a couple hundred times by then.

Wasser talks about her upcoming release The Deep Field

Start Of My Heart

This is the tune that made me fall to my knees weeping. And maybe an example of how Wasser isn’t easily packaged. Maybe just close your eyes and listen.

Start Of My Heart Lyrics

You changed me
You chained me down and taught me
The damage I’ve done
(Damage I’ve done)
Can show me the way to my heart?

Sing, sing out my love
‘Cause I’ve been here before
And silence don’t get you a thing
(No, it don’t get you a thing)
I learned this on the way to my heart

It was with you Rivington deep
September we took the long way
And your hand led me home like Orion
You woke my heart with your northern lights
With your song

Yes you, you slay me origami dog
I wonder if you’ll do it again
(Please do it again)
I’ll thank you from the deep of my heart
I’ll thank you for the start of my heart

Best Coast’s Crazy For You & Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast

admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 03:53:46 +0000

You know how hearing a simple pop song can instantly transport you to another time and place, and evoke all the feelings associated with it? Today I was sitting at an outdoor cafe in the sweltering humid 90 degree weather where I live, and was suddenly teleported to the crisp and tragically moody monochromatic autumn reality that hearing California Dreamin’ inflicts upon me. Which reminded me that probably the only thing I like about living in a part of the US that has seasons (dear God please help me get out of here before winter!) is the brief periods of moodiness that are inevitable first when you realize summer is ending, then later when everything starts literally dying, and then not too long after that when the deadly cold and passionless midwestern dread sets in. And to be clear, these “brief periods” I’m referring to last about three days, and then I otherwise really should be on medication. So I decided I need a late summer playlist to help ease the pain of the impending gloom. One of the first picks was easy. Best Coast’s Crazy for You from last month is a perfect beach pop backdrop for August with its mix of upbeat pop and moody, sixties-tinged, reverb-drenched teen ennui. It for some reason made me think of relistening to Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, which made no sonic sense to me back in January when I first heard it, but suddenly does on a sweltering summer day. With all the guitars, reverb, and harmonies, both bands have a weird sort of Strokes meets Animal Collective meets Beach House kind of thing going on. Clips below. Any suggestions to keep a playlist going?

Best Coast “When I’m With You”

Surfer Blood – “Take It Easy” – HearYa Live Session

That’s not the prettiest video but it’s an awesome live studio performance.
Compare it with the studio track on the release:

VODO: A Cool New Idea For Distributing & Funding Independent Film

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:14:05 +0000

I have a number of friends who derive their livelihood from the mainstream, Hollywood-centric film industry, so if you find me dead in a ditch soon, it may be because of some of the things I’m about to say. In much the same way that record labels created their own demise a decade ago by desperately trying to hold on to a juicy business model that let them charge twenty bucks for a twenty minute CD (by doing things like suing customers and artists alike), the floundering and litigation-addicted film industry has been doing much the same thing for a while. They’ve used lawsuits, melodramatic anti-piracy clips, and distorted claims about how piracy has stolen billions in wages and thousands of jobs from Hollywood. Even the US General Accounting Office has called their bluff. So while it may have taken a few years for the indy music scene to evolve into the hodgepodge of profitable distribution channels that it is today, in the end we have more great music – and at a better price – than we’ve had in decades. And it seems that price is at most a dollar a song. So watch out Hollywood. Your days of multimillion dollar productions are numbered. And your demise will be at the hands of clever ventures like VODO, an ingenious new funding and distribution plan that coordinates the world’s largest torrent trackers to distribute artists’ films, and then facilitates funding them. You get a high-quality and original viewing experience for free, the artist gets massive distribution and a source of revenue based on perceived value, because you pay as much as you feel like paying, if anything at all. VODO has also partnered with MOFILM for a contest with over $100,000 in prizes. VODO’s currently highlighted project is a “hard sci-fi” series called Pioneer One. The series pilot cost just $6,000, which was raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter. Pioneer One was produced by the same team that created Vodo’s biggest success to date, a film called Lionshare. Having watched both Lionshare and the Pioneer One pilot, I have a lot of enthusiasm for where this could go. In spite of some occasionally wobbly acting, writing, or production in both projects, the material is largely pretty solid, and VODO has many other films to explore. All for whatever you feel like paying for them. Check out the trailers for Lionshare and Pioneer One below.

Lionshare is shot in a vérité style that suits its theme of “sharing files and girls”, but occasionally lingers on moments a bit too much. Still a nice piece of work, especially for the price.

Pioneer One has acting and writing that definitely wobbles here and there, but has an intriguing premise, and could easily gel into something much more solid.

By the way, if you like the idea behind how these projects are funded, make a donation to ME and I’ll keep writing about them

Live Indignation & Ticketmaster Slavery

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:44:57 +0000

Few things have made me more ecstatic than the explosion of indy music over the past decade. But I still have one complaint. Ticket prices. While the average pop song has settled nicely at a price of about a dollar, and the artist generally takes a bigger slice of that dollar in spite of the lower unit price, concert tickets rose in price by over 80% between 1996 and 2003, and have continued to rise consistently since then. What’s behind this insane inflation of concert prices? Well, everyone’s pointing fingers, but most agree that it began over a decade ago with the aggressive and monopolistic practices of Clear Channel, who devoted most of their energy to decimating the diverse network of venues and promoters that used to exist. But as easy as it is to place ALL the blame on them, the fact is that “premium artists”, i.e.: dinosaur rock baby boomer idols like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles – are just as much to blame in many ways, by charging upwards of 300 bucks for shows, in order to offset their lousy album sales and still be able to stay in $2,000 a night hotels while on tour. Even a next generation act like Green Day can be accused of this greed, if you believe the numbers in this infographic; Green Day’s 65% cut makes the promoters and venues look like they’re being reasonable. It’s rough enough out there that even a well-established artist like Imogen Heap had to throw in the towel recently. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better, in light of the DOJ’s recent approval of the monster merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. I think it’s time we started to practice some asymmetrical warfare techniques against the concert ticketing industry. It would be amazing if a network of non-ticketmaster promoters and venues could pull it together. I personally would be out every night of the week if I could catch a decent band for ten or fifteen bucks on a regular basis. We’ve done it with record labels, lets change the game with radio and live music too.

Entertainment For The Braindead

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:09:08 +0000

The sixteen year old me is really mad at Julia Kotowski, the twenty-something from Cologne, Germany that is the voice and talent behind Entertainment For The Braindead. You see, when I was first mumbling my moody songs into a microphone in my bedroom as a teenager, if I wanted to layer my simplistic guitar picking, I had to take my open-reel Revox tape machine and put scotch tape over the erase head to create multiple tracks with a method we called sound on sound. There was no way I could perform the stuff live in a cafe, staring at my feet moodily mumbling to charm the audience with my shy genius after setting up a groove on my digital looper. Plus I probably had to walk barefoot uphill both ways in a foot of snow to get to the gig, just like my grandad who worked in the coal mine did. Okay. I’m not mad anymore. See how temporal teen angst can be? It’s hard to stay mad at someone like Kotowski if you just toss on some of her music; the stuff was literally recorded in her bedroom, and although this kind of post-emo lo-fi electrofolk can be really annoying, there’s a delicate genuineness here that works. And the price is right; the two releases I’ve listened to – Hydrophobia and Hypersomnia are available as free downloads. Entertainment For The Braindead also seems to receive some kind of distribution support from “netlabels” aaahh-records.net and Aerotone.be, which as of this writing both seem to be restructuring their sites. ETFB’s site also has an amusing note on the “shop” page about how they received more than 75 orders and couldn’t keep up with the demand. Time to come out of the bedroom guys.

Entertainment For The Braindead – Resolutions (Live)
(I’ll give a prize first to the first person who can identify which song this rips off)

Bell Gardens – Hangups Need Company

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 19:40:30 +0000

If you enjoy perusing the meandering sub-genres of current indy pop, you might be intrigued by Bell Gardens’ new EP “Hangups Need Company” (available on vinyl as well as digital). Bell Gardens features members from ambient act Stars of the Lid, which is what first drew my attention. I fell in love with Stars of the Lid mainly because their music sounds so much like some of my own music (listen to “On The Eve” and “Redshore” from that link for comparison). Don’t look for the same ethereal ambient stylings in Bell Gardens’ music though; while they themselves reference the Beach Boys’ Cuddle Up, Jack Nitzsche’s We Have To Stay, and Bobby Vinton as influences, I can confidently say they lifted pages straight from Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and the entire gestalt of obscure 60′s folk psychedelia. The songs have a strangely comforting honesty that’s created by – as they put it – “mainly live instrumentation, thinking about what was available in studios from the 50s to the mid 70s”. If I had heard “Hangups Need Company” without knowing who it was, I would be certain that it was some lost pop treasure from the late 60′s. The videos they’ve made available so far (see below) capture a sort of David Lynch vibe with their quirky and surreally anachronistic images.

Bell Gardens “End Of The World”

This makes me feel like someone slipped acid in my Cheerios and left me sitting in front of the TV in 1965 while Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother played in the background. Which is my peculiar way of saying “I Like It”.

Bell Gardens’ “Labour At The Landmark”

This one makes me think of Angelo Badalamente watching his dad’s vacation clips:

Robyn With A Why

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:05:21 +0000

Swede Dreams Are Made Of This

Make that three whys. Why, why, why do I like Robyn? I’m supposed to be a mildly snobbish follower of quality indy music like, I dunno, Grizzly Bear, and Hot Chip, and Flying Lotus. That sort of thing. The effects-and-compression slathered beatbox pop of someone like Robyn should be total anathema to me. And frankly, when I first heard her a few years ago, her music was. On my first listen, I thought “Ack! It’s like Pink meets MIA meets Ephemera meets Powerpuff Girls”. Or something like that. And then I listened to it a few weeks later, and was mortified to find myself liking it. I think I was resisting because it was so much like music I was trying to do in the eighties, except what Robyn is pulling of is perfectly, plinkily, Europoptastical. I think I was also struggling with the fact that in her pretty/ugly asymmetrical perfect-hair androgyny, she looks like the the girl I used to WISH I looked like AND the guy I would want to want to date me. If I were a girl who looked like that. And if I liked guys that way. So it’s been a struggle, but I finally relented. Robyn rocks, and if you don’t agree, you probably don’t like pure, perfected pop. I’m not surprised she hasn’t really broken in a big way in the states; self-aware Europop genius like this is often lost on us. And to add to the challenge, appreciating the fairly genuine sentiments expressed in her best tunes requires being thoroughly in touch with your inner melodramatic teen. Check out the widget and video below, or learn more about the odd career of the Swedish/Brit pop phenom on Wikipedia.

With Every Heartbeat was one of her first hits. She’s kind of stiff, she over-emotes, but in the end that’s part of what works. She talks like a badass, but exudes a disarming discomfort with herself. And damn, that’s a great haircut!

I’m With The Brand: Musicians As Corporate Groupies

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:38:39 +0000

If you’re a working musician who understands anything at all about how the music industry works and want to earn a decent living, you’ll quit your job right now and start a record label. Oh wait. That doesn’t even work anymore. So what’s a penniless musical genius to do these days to make a living? Well, if you’re Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails – the two acts always cited when talking about making a fortune online with your music – you’re all set. But the fact is that these are pretty exceptional cases, and both acts had a major label deal before their success on line. In reality, there probably are a lot of acts out there that are happy with what they’re making if they self-produce, choose the right distribution channels, and remember that oft-forgotten secret ingredient, HAVING FANS. We’ve come a long way since the days when the typical artist/label arrangement meant the band would sell a couple million units, the label would make a mil, and the band would end up 50 grand in debt. If you think that’s an exaggeration, read this classic piece by Steve Albini (probably best known for producing Nirvana’s In Utero) that breaks it down in detail, or this quick Wikipedia entry about “recoupment”. To get an idea of how many songs an artist has to sell these days – and how – before they make US minimum wage, check out this handy infographic. So while it’s possible these days to make some kind of living as a musician, how does one make “superstar” money? Well not by being Lady Gaga selling tunes on Spotify, that’s for sure. No, much like any other art-meets-business activity, whoring yourself is probably the best solution. Devo was one of the early geniuses of this, building their brand as anti-corporate rebels while making fistfuls of money as savvy and willing team players with Warner. More recently, according to this Wall Street Journal piece, we’d have to tip the hat to Black Eyed Peas. Apparently will.i.am pitches his band-slash-brand to major sponsors like BlackBerry with PowerPoint presentations. Yes, it’s hard to tell the band from the brands these days. In fact, try this clever FastCompany quiz to see if you can tell the names of the bands from those who name the brands.