The Most Important Video of 2014

Surprisingly comes from Broken Social Scene,  Here's Golden Facelift, a song from their Forgiveness Rock Record sessions, that recounts the highs and lows of 2014.

It Comes Back To You

America's greatest living songwriter, Christopher Owens, does the obligatory KEXP video set.

Horses In the Sky

from 2005

St. Paul and the Broken Bones at the Egyptian Ballroom, Atlanta, December 27, 2014

Winter, especially the holiday season, is the worst time for live music in Atlanta.  Acts tend not to tour during the holidays as audiences generally don't come out to hear live music during this time. Last night was an exception, as Birmingham, Alabama's St. Paul & the Broken Bones performed at the Fox Theater's Egyptian Ballroom, the first live show I've seen since last November's Quiet Hounds show at The Goat Farm.

Athens' Sam Burchfield opened.

Burchfield played inspired Americana, mixing the sounds of banjo and trombone into the guitar-driven country rock of his songs.  The music gamboled along at a pleasing pace, and he kept the audience engaged with a mix of soul, bluegrass, and even a little New Orleans' stomp.  It was a nice opening set.

The headliners, Paul Janeway's band St. Paul and the Broken Bones, took the stage at 10:20 pm and played a 90-minute set, including encores.

Janeway more than channels classic soul performers like Otis Redding, he absolutely recreates their sound.  Close your eyes and it's easy to forget you're listening to a white band from Alabama but instead that you've been transported back to Stax Records' Memphis studios circa 1968.  The eight-piece band included three horns, which added a satisfying punch to the arrangements.

The band was enthusiastically received by the sold-out audience, and Janeway kept the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout the show.  They played songs from their album Half The City, plus covers including soul classics like Wilson Picket's 99 And A Half (Won't Do), as well as some surprise covers, like David Bowie's Moonage Daydream and even a Radiohead song.  They closed their four-song encore, after Call Me, with a rousing and faithful rendition of Try A Little Tenderness.

The Egyptian Ballroom is a lovely venue, about the size of  Terminal West, and I'm not sure why there aren't more shows booked there.  The audience was not your usual rock-club crowd, and for once I wasn't the only one in the room with a grey beard.  It might have been the band or it might have been the venue that attracted the older crowd, but it should be noted that it was also one of the ruder audiences that I've been a part of.  Say what you will about Millennials, but they know how to pack together in a room (and even mosh) while still respecting each others' space.  There was more than one person who looked like an over-40, suburban attorney who tried to push in front of me before the band started and acted indignant and privileged when others in the audience expressed their displeasure in being pushed aside or having their view blocked.  This isn't a criticism or a knock against the band, but pull it together, boomers, you're giving us a bad name,  

Pink Mountaintops

Black Mountain side project Pink Mountaintops have dropped a new single, Asleep With An Angel.    

Thee Silver Mt. Zion

A live-in-studio version of God Bless Our Dead Marines.

Joyeux Noël, Y'all!

New Videos from Animal Collective's Panda Bear

Two trippy videos and two great new songs from the forthcoming and eagerly anticipated Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper.   

The music in both of these songs are like puzzles where it's not completely obvious at first how all the parts are supposed to fit together or if they even do, and it's not until the time the songs end that you realize that you had it figured out.

This Gentle Hearts Like Shot Bird's Fallen

from Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upwards (2001)

Alvvays & The Decemberists

Good stuff just keeps getting better: The Decemberists drop another song from their new album and meanwhile it's been announced that the Toronto band Alvvays will be opening on both nights of The Decemberists' two-night stand at The Tabernacle in Atlanta.

Alvvays opening for Yuck at The Earl, February 2014

The Decemberists' new What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World came out a little late this year to make most critics Best Of lists, but Alvvays' Archie, Marry Me is on a lot of Top 20 lists for 2014.

Musicians Are Cowards

"Sisters and brothers, we have surely lost our way
In strip malls full of cancer and a pathetic rain."

 - The Triumph of Our Tired Eyes from Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upwards (2001)

Just Another Band From Montreal

The Barr Brothers at Bumbershoot 2012

If I had to choose a city to live in based only on the bands that come from that city, the pick might go to Portland, but on the other hand, I'd have no problem picking Montreal to live in the city of Godspeed, Silver Mt. Zion, Suuns, and the Barr Brothers.

Somebody needs to get these guys to Atlanta.

Your Shadow Under My Feet

Promo video for Tu Sombra Bajo Mis Pies, featuring a short excerpt from Tho You Are Gone I Still Often Walk With You from Silver Mt. Zion's Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upward (2001)

Spark & Whisper

Here's a new song from Marin County's Spark & Whisper

13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed

from He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms. The 2000 album was dedicated to frontman Efrim Manuck's late dog, Wanda.  A few years later, in God Bless Our Dead Marines, Efrim would sing,

"I love my dog and she loves me.  
The world's a mess and so are we.
She tumbles long green, muddy fields, sick with joy and glee.
And as she dreams sweet puppy dreams, whimpering gently."

Allo Darlin'

Allo Darlin at 529, October 14, 2014

The Allo Darlin' tour, which brought the band to Atlanta's 529 during Rocktober, continued on to the West Coast where they performed Bright Eyes, We Come From the Same Place, History Lessons, and Crickets in the Rain at KEXP's Seattle studio on October 30.

Stumble Then Rise on Some Awkward Morning

from He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms (2000)

We Don't Torture

As Laurence Lewis writes in The Daily Kos, "The United States tortures people. It isn't a matter of rogue agents and rogue government officials, it is systemic. The United States tortures people. One president may order the torturing stopped, but there is nothing to prevent another from ordering it resumed. Those responsible for torturing people are identified but not brought to justice. They are, in fact, given free rein to talk openly about it, to minimize it, to justify it, to continue to lie about it, and to act as if questions or criticism about torturing people is just another partisan political argument. The traditional media, the most powerful mass media, play right along. Some in the mass media all but gloat about it. The United States tortures people. It is known. It is not treated as a crime against humanity. It is normalized. It will happen again."

In 1981, the Au Pairs wrote a song about a prison in Armagh, Ireland that the British used to detain and torture woman prisoners suspected of being members of the IRA.  Different country and different cause, but same result: a civilized nation caught in the cognitive dissonance of believing that they were on the right side of morality, but at the same time maintaining that the ends justified the horrific means. The video at the top of the post is highly effective but contains an abridged version of Armagh that avoids the specifics of the British situation; the devastating, full version of the song is below.

Sallie and Anita

Sallie Ford with The Sound Outside at Smith's Olde Bar, March 2013

Sallie Ford has disbanded The Sound Outside and released an album last October with a less rockabilly-oriented, all-female band.

Notably, the band includes Anita Lee Elliott, formerly Robinson and formerly of Viva Voce, on bass. Here's Anita on guitar at Bumbershoot 2007.

Back during Rocktober 2011, Viva Voce played a set at The Earl that was as interesting as it was intimate.  Folks in the audience had driven all the way from Muscle Shoals, Alabama for the show, and a couple there had used Viva Voce's music in their wedding ceremony. 

Viva Voce at The Earl, Rocktober 2011

So, yes, I have an affection for Viva Voce and Anita, so it's nice to see that she's now part of fellow Portlandian Sallie Ford's band.

Shabazz Palaces vs. Animal Collective

Talk about your dream match ups, and why didn't I think of this before?, here's Shabazz Palaces remixed by Animal Collective.

San Fermin

San Fermin at The Loft, Rocktober 2014

San Fermin's new album, Jackrabbit, comes out April 21, 2015.  Tour announcements sure to follow soon.

Swans

108 shopping days until Swans perform at Atlanta's Terminal West.  Better start shopping for earplugs now.

RIP John Lennon (1940-1980)

Thirty-four years ago today, also a Monday night. . . I was teaching high school (Earth and Physical Science) in Salem, Massachusetts, site of the famous witch trials of 1692 and 1693.  Relaxing that night, watching Monday Night Football - the Patriots (naturally) versus Miami - when sportscaster Howard Cosell delivered the one bit of news that I would have preferred to have heard anybody but Cosell deliver. 

The next day, I had to try and explain the impact of the event to a bunch of 9th and 10th graders. Words failed.

Eric D. Johnson

The soothing sounds of Eric D. Johnson on the Deschutes River.

Quartet for Heart & Breath

Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry's solo project Quartet For Heart & Breath at Basilica Soundscape 2014. 

New Hilang Child Video

We stole all the praise

We laughed at the old ways

And tomorrow we ride

Tomorrow we all hold on to life

Waste it all

We hid from the jeers

We gained all the long years

And were told it's the life

Told we would all grow up to die

Waste it all

The rest stayed the same

And crawled into old age

And they almost survived

Almost got all of us to lie

Waste it all

Tomorrow we ride

Tomorrow we all grow up to die

Waste it all

Sonny & The Sunsets

Sonny & The Sunsets at Bunk Bar, Portland, MFNW (RIP), 2013

Admit it - you had fun watching the video below.

Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo at Buckhead Theater, 2013

Yo La Tengo have this year reissued their sixth studio album, 1993's Painful, as More Painful. The album marked a turning point for the band, and guitarist Ira Kaplan has said, “Anyone who ever said they liked our older records more than Painful, I just told them they’re wrong.” 

Writing in The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones notes. "Yo La Tengo has been around for thirty stubborn years , , , The obvious antecedent of the group, founded in Hoboken, is the Velvet Underground. (Its members—Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew—even played the Underground in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.)  Yo La Tengo is specifically rooted in the Velvet Underground’s third, eponymous album, in which the delicate and the noisy collapse into each other, and even violent feedback feels soft. Dozens of bands have sprung from this source, including My Bloody Valentine and the Feelies, but Yo La Tengo has never been big on the obscure or the hip side of the Velvets; it votes, repeatedly, for beauty. . . "

"Yo La Tengo has an approachable quality," Frere-Jones continues. "Each year, the band plays a Hanukkah show at Maxwell’s, the Hoboken rock club that was sold in January; there’s none of the haughtiness that surrounds so many of the Underground’s descendants. Kaplan, Hubley, and McNew apply themselves to one of the most common templates in indie rock and consistently get it right: melodies you can remember easily and eruptions of noise that you can’t be sure even happened, with sharp and unadorned language. They’re the cool kids who refuse to act cooler than you."

My favorite Yo La Tango album is probably 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, the first truly great album of this millennium.  The closing number, Night Falls On Hoboken, is quiet and gentle, but is nonetheless one of those songs that, if listened to carefully, has the power to change your life.

Also, Cherry Chapstick, because why not?

Lake Song

Only 128 more shopping days until The Decemberists two-night stand at The Tabernacle. . . 

More Ex-Cops