songs:illinois

If you’ve read this blog from the beginning (sometime in 2004) you know of my love for the SF band Built Like Alaska. I’ll follow them anywhere, whether they’re into noisy ephemeral rock (like Mercury Rev) or folksy, earth-mother jams I’m a 100% behind this band. It’s been three years since 2004′s Future Farmer release Autumnland and the band is looking to self release a 2 disc set sometime mid-winter. They’re also entertaining offers from indie labels. Since I’m pretty sure Blitzen Trapper’s been signed up, I’d go as far as to say they’re one of the best unsigned bands in America.

This is a demo of a new song. Who knows what form it’ll take on disc, but for now I’m loving the high-pitched, Neil Youngish vocals and acoustic instrumentation.

Break Of Day

How about this show: Bright Eyes, The Felice Brothers and Nik Freitas. At the shows Nik will be selling his tour only ep called Shoe Bee Doo Bop. “Sun Down” is a song that examines all the frailties of the world, the environment and life as we know it on planet earth. This is really what I hoped the new Ben Lee and the new Josh Ritter would sound like. I was disappointed by both of those but thankfully now have room for more stuff like this.

Sun Down

Bonus song from Shoe Bee Doo Bop:

Comes To Me

From Nik’s 2006 release Voicing The Hammers

Maria

P.S. I wrote up a couple songs from a new cd from Chicagoan Daniel Knox on Transmission. He fit’s the circus/cabaret/lounge rock of previous songs:Illinois posts. Also Swedesplease has a great pop song from Slow Motion Club.

Not much time to write but today’s YouTube feature revolves around the bands, friends and acquaintances of Chris Stamey. Unfortunately there’s very few videos of Chris Stamey’s solo career although there are plenty with the db’s (although mostly of the live variety). Here’s the few I could find plus friends et al.

The db’s – “World To Cry”

Chris Stamey/Peter Holdsapple – “Angels”

The db’s – “Amplifier”

Mitch Easter’s band Let’s Active – “Writing the book Of Last Pages”

The db’s “Big Brown Eyes”

The Beat Rodeo – “What’s The Matter”

No one would ever say Bob Dylan sings pretty. Nor would you say Mike Skinner of The Streets has the best enunciation or grammar. Hell, half of the indie folk I listen to hardly passes as in-tune. So, as you can guess, Tom Williams’ slightly cockney flavored delivery of his anti-folk-rock blend was not a deterrent for me falling for his new ep The Penguin. In fact those two artists mentioned above are not that far removed from the sound Tom gets out of his 6 piece band The Boat. On “Jazz Singer” the harmonica solos remind one of Dylan’s best work, and the clever wordplay of “pretty daughter god I love her, came back last week and saw a neck and back tattoo” is both as modern as Skinner’s and as emotionally bare.

You can hear more songs from the ep on Tom Williams + The Boat’s MySpace page and you really should check them out as the stylistic changes between and among songs is striking (i.e. the punk energy of “Yup” and the gentle but cynical (anti) folk of “Three Thursdays”). Tom’s unsigned in the states, but this new ep is available to pre-order in a limited edition pressing of 100 copies now from the British label Unlabel (here).

The Jazz Singer

Tom Williams (solo) – “You Talk So Loudly On the Phone”

I can’t figure out what it is that causes bloggers not to write about MV & EE and The Golden Road. The band’s indie cred is legendary (living in a cabin, doing tons of drugs, not selling out to the man), for goodness sake Thurston Moore is the label pres at Ecstatic Peace, and both on tour and on the new record a certain guitarist and indie rock stalwart, j mascis, plays drums. For all the Flaming Lips fans that purport to be out there why can’t they get with the dreamy psychotic rock of “I Got Caves In There” (sounds like an outtake from early Lips stuff). On “Susquehanna” you can easily hear Velvet Underground and Creation era bands like My Bloody Valentine or Jesus And Mary Chain. Promoters of every new, blue-blood, freak folk performer of the moment should be all over these two but they’re not.

Gettin’ Gone came out last week on Ecstatic Peace and the band is currently on the road blowing eardrums and minds up and down the east coast.

I Got Caves In There
Susquehanna

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P.S. I’m going to keep it experimental and add this one song to today’s post from the upcoming record from Parker Street Cinema titled Music, In The Blood on Abandoned Love Records.

These Precious Seconds

P.P.S. Not exactly what you’ve come to expect from S:I but I stumbled upon the mp3 of the new song from i am bones called “The Main Thing Is To Keep the Main Thing The Main Thing” from their new record The Greater Good (Morningside Records).

The Main Thing…

The Can Kickers seem to know just everybody. When I mention the band to any other touring group inevitably I get nodding heads of approval, if not looks of sheer astonishment. It helps that they live out of their van and tour constantly. It also helps that they are complete originals. They play a kind of punk-celtic-bluegrass-old-timey concoction, they add to that a 1950′s era Communist streak that would have got them blacklisted by McCarthy.

I’m not sure if their energetic shows will ever translate onto disc, but their most recent release, Live At Lavazone, which captures a live show in Philly, comes close. Here’s two from The Can Kickers who return to Chicago to play MoJoe’s Hothouse at 2849 W. Belmont on Oct. 22.

Rachel Corrie

Bonus song from 2006′s We’re Dyin’ But We’re Not Dead

Strike The Bell

Last time I wrote about Roger Dean Young I butchered his name, misspelled the song title and claimed he could fill in if needed for Steve Earle while he gets all that overt political chest thumping out of the way. I got three comments that day, 2 correcting my mistakes and 1 setting me straight vis a vis Steve Earle. I’m back for round two with Roger Dean Young since his new record, Threshold, was just released on Copperspine Records in the US.

Roger Dean Young is often photographed in a Western hat and boots, but his music is much too atmospheric and his voice too self-consciencely murmered to be confused with any known genre of country music. But still the sound of his band and his somber voice does conjur up images of desolate Canadian plains and deserted backwoods. “Juliana Park” is a beautiful song with Roger’s voice front and center with some nice embellishments of accordion, female harmony vocals and eerie guitar rounding out the back end.

Juliana Park

Back catalog

Pebbles

Simpleton

Heather Rhapsody

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Maybe it’s not fair and completely off base but it’s hard for me to listen to “Juliana Park” by Roger Dean and not also hear The Gunshy from Chicago. The Gunshy is one Matt Arborgast and his new record is a concept project based on his grandfather’s letters from WWII. There’s No Love In This War should probably be required reading/listening for George Bush and his cronnies (if they’re too stupid to read the lyrics maybe a private showing of “All’s Quiet On The Western Front” would do). The record comes out October 30 on Latest Flame and within these songs (based on the letters) there is a litany of reasons war, any war, is just plain wrong. You can start the pre-order process at Latest Flame beginning Oct. 16.

May 14, 1943, The Khaki-Whacky Girls

Kevin Kane records for Bongo Beat Records. If you know anything about power pop and Bongo Beat Records than you may already know exactly what this release from former Grapes Of Wrath frontman sounds like. And if you don’t just look up any of these artists: The Bongo’s, The db’s, Bobby Sutliff, Richard Barone, or early Mathew Sweet.

How To Build A Lighthouse just sounds great! And “Last To Know” has the perfect blend of overdubbed falsetto vocals and rich full orchestration. Buy it here through the power pop superstore – Not Lame Records.

Last To Know

The Grapes Of Wrath “Peace Of Mind”

The Grapes Of Wrath “All The Things I Wasn’t”

When I wrote about The Izzys from NYC over a year ago I thought that’d be the last of them (I have that effect on bands) but they’ve shaken off the S:I curse and resurfaced with a new record. At the time I also thought they were maybe a bit of a one trick pony; able to play stonesy, r&b-fueled rock but little else. I was wrong about that too, sure on “Madman Sleeps” the guitars rage and the lead singer struts his stuff (vocally that is), but on the title track, “The Violent Bear It All Away”, the band works the other, subtler side, of the same coin. On “The Violent…” they mix The Band’s organic earth-tones and slightly groovy guitar/organ interplay with their British Invasion rawk.

The Violent Bear It All Away comes out Oct. 16 on Fat Man Records, but is available as a digital download or a cd here.

The Madman Sleeps
The Violent Bear It All away

The music blogs that get my respect today are those that don’t mention the band R**i*h**d. Any mention of that band automatically brings a blog down several notches. Do you really think they need any more help promoting this record? You’ve had it for 5 hours how can you really say whether it’s deserving of any serious consideration?

Anyway during one of my series on British americana and alt-county I stumbled upon the band The Epstein. At the time they were unsigned and had very little recorded or much info up on their site but I was nonetheless impressed with the song “Charanga”. I’ve since learned that they were recording their debut record at the time and as of Nov. 3 that record, Last Of The Charanguistas, will be released.

“Leave Your Light On” is a simple song with a compelling message of love. No new ground is covered either lyrically or musically but the slight tremor in the lead singer’s voice expresses more emotion than you could imagine. Musically the mandolin fills and female harmony vocals are just beautiful. “Just The Wind” rocks a little harder and adds electric guitar and horns to the mix.

Leave Your Light On
Just The Wind

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Completely unrelated (although I guess he is British, if he is indeed from this planet) is the new song from Darren Hayman (in the form of a YouTube video or .mov file). Darren (Hefner) has a new record out on Track and Field called Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern.

Darren recorded an interesting and at times amusing podcast about the making of the record. It’s like turning your favorite dvd’s commentary track on.

Listen to the podcast here.

From the song below, “The Wrong Thing”, and the songs interspersed into the podcast, this record has transformed Darren’s sound from humble, lo-fi bedroom pop into a much more produced, albeit, very rough studio sound. None of the intimacy is lost with the fleshed out mix (upwards of 8 musicians on the record), nor are the songs any less immediate since they were written and recorded on the spot in a matter of hours. This may be Darren Hayman’s solo breakout record given the quality of the songs and the ability of Track & Field to get it out to consumers. I hope so, as I consider him one of the true hidden treasures England has to offer.