“God should have made you ugly, ’cause that’s what you act like.” No doubt Ben Pilgrim wasn’t talking about how the rest of the country is treating Detroit these days, but like Bob Marley said, if the cap fits… I’ve never felt more clearly like I wasn’t a part of the United States, like I was living in some backwater colony that had outlived its mercantile usefulness. Hey remember, people live here; it’s like being in the South before the Civil War. Maybe we should start talking nullification. Anyway, Ben Pilgrim is a Rhode Island crooner, sloppy and heartfelt and primitive. And he’s welcome to visit the D whenever he wants (assuming the whole state of Michigan isn’t purchased by Ontario for a year’s supply of Timbits).
Sam Bennett
Sam Bennett’s music is for the post-sarcastic, post-ironic believer in &mdash what did Obama call it? oh yeah — the audacity of hope within all (some? a few?) of us. As Detroit lurches towards extinction right down the expressway from my house, I’m thinking the honest, upbeat, youthful dreaminess of this British singer-songwriter will temper the total depression that’s surely going to soak southeast Michigan. (Either that, or a huge meteorite will blast us into oblivion; right now, I’ll take Bennett’s positivity instead.) Listen to “I Love” first to get a sense of what to expect, then check out “I Am A Lighthouse” if you’re still into it. And for those of you who are all snarky, who live in a state where the unemployment rate is lower than a typical mortgage rate, for those of you who are still listening to that which celebrates our impending darkness, don’t even bother. Personally, I think we need more lighthouses among us.
Nik Freitas
As I was putting this post together, and listening to “All the Way Down,” I started thinking about a conversation I had a few years ago with Jen Larson. At the time, she was my student; now, she’s a college grad in a half-dozen Chicago bands and is cooler by three-and-a-half times than I ever was. Anyway, one day I made a random comment about how I don’t really care all that much for The Beatles. I was like, “Who really listens to them anyway?” And you can probably guess how she looked at me — This guy doesn’t like The Beatles? How can he be qualified to teach me anything? This is a long way of saying that of course I was wrong, and that Nik Freitas reminds me of clean 60s and 70s pop in all the right ways. “Sun Down” might be one of the nicest little songs of the year, smooth yet inspirational (as if those are contradictory). For some fun, and a little Built to Spill style without all the noise, check out “Normal” from Freitas’ 2002 debut. And if you still want to hear more, check out his website for a few more free downloads.
The Olympic Symphonium
If you’re looking for mellow, melodic and pleasant — as opposed to mellow and just plain slow or mellow and super-hyper-overcontemplative (you know what I mean, right?) — The Olympic Symphonium might work for you. This trio from Maritime Canada brings an intimacy and gentleness to the ten tracks on More in Sorrow Than in Anger, their sophomore release due out in a week or two. Though the instrumentation changes a bit here and there, the album maintains a pleasant pop cool, perfect for the change in seasons. “Intentions Alone,” the free download down there, kind of has that crunching-the-leaves feel to it; check out the rest of this disc to maintain that vibe.
Paul Westerberg
I’m sorry, but I get so sick of new music sometimes. It’s not that I want to live stuck in the late ‘8os or ’90s, enveloped by the past, but I need to see where I’ve been. Not to get all Nick Hornsby here, but I want access to the personal history that comes with MY music. Case in point: Sam and I went to see The Wedding Present on Thursday night in Pontiac (where, apparently, Elvis split his pants playing at the Silverdome), and it was awesome. David Gedge has been making music since 1985, and we’ve been listening to it for almost long, and it felt so good to hear him rip through “Kennedy” and screw up the lyrics to “Crawl” and play half of the Seamonsters album and turn “I-5” into the most intense therapy session. So with this post, I wanted to tap into similar memories, like walking up the Lake Michigan bike path from Hyde Park to Grant Park to see Paul Westerberg play the 1996 Chicago TasteFest wearing a bright yellow suit. I’ll keep the rest of my stories of Westerberg and The Replacements to myself, and let you know that, 1) Paul has been recording and releasing single, studio session length MP3s recently, and 2) a bunch of Replacements albums were remastered and rereleased a week or two ago. Also, for anyone still reading, I can offer one of the best songs ever recorded in the whole history of music (“We May Be The Ones”) and a handful of other tracks kindly provided by Vagrant Records, so you start making some of your own history.
Jenny Lewis
So, I think it’s great and all that Jenny Lewis is now on Warner Bros. The thing is, the WB has this super-duper security thing going on with their advance copy CDs, and I can’t play the promo they sent me of Jenny’s new album, Acid Tongue. I tried it on my computer, I tried it in the car, and the players just kept spitting it out. Yes, it’s important to protect one’s recordings from piracy, but it seems you certainly can reach a point where there’s too much security and not enough liberty. In this case, I’d love to hear more of Lewis’ arresting voice, especially in collaboration with Elvis Costello, Benji Hughes and everybody else the publicists say is on the album. If the one free and legal download is suggestive of anything, it’s that I totally want to hear more. I trust that you all can fill me in on how the rest of Acid Tongue sounds.
Fleet Foxes
Jessica and Kat, who unlike me are both young and hip, have been talking about Fleet Foxes since there was snow on the ground. I swear I checked the band out in February and there was nothing available to share, but who knows? Maybe that’s just an excuse for being so late on highlighting a CMJ #1 band, a Rolling Stone favorite, etc. etc. So, here goes: Seattle’s Fleet Foxes offer up fuzzy, old-fashioned-sounding pop songs, vaguely reminiscent of the era depicted in the album cover. (SubPop’s got deep pockets, so I bet Bruegel got a decent commission for this one). With just one EP and one LP under their belts, Fleet Foxes have plenty of time to carve out a little musical turf of their own, and a hipster following ready to hang on faithfully (for a year or two, at least).
Portastatic
I’ve already written about how Mac has been my personal shrink. Portastatic’s got a double disc of demos, singles, B-sides and covers — Ryan Adams, Galaxie 500, etc. — coming out in a week. Some Small History: sign me up!
Some Small History [MP3, 6MB, 192kbps]
Original post: 01/17/06
Mac McCaughan — either with Superchunk or solo as Portastatic — pretty much got me through the 1990s, much to the annoyance of my friends and girlfriends. Yes, every song does sound the same, and no, I don’t care. “I Wanna Know Girls” is like unconditional love for me, a song that I’ve been waiting for, maybe without knowing it, for five years or more. ” I wanna know girls but only love one,” “and yeah my love weighs a ton.” (So do I, with the sympathy pounds I’ve added during my wife’s pregnancy, but that’s another story.) It’s nice to see Mac’s songwriting mature from last decade’s boozy lovesickness, and it’s also nice, for me at least, to hear that the songs do still sound the same.
Frontier Ruckus
The scrawled and scratched-out lyrics on the band’s website, the quavering vocals, the images of dust and absence and longing — Frontier Ruckus is tapping into all the elements of that particular folk style wherein the songs (and singers) appear much older than their actual age. In the demos for their album The Orion Songbook — that’s not Orion like the constellation, but Orion (oree-un) like the suburban Detroit city & lake — this Michigan outfit seems to be dreaming back to the time when it took two weeks to travel from Detroit to Saginaw. Appropriately, tracks like “Orion Town 2” and “Mohawk, New York” are filled with an old-time, bare-bones aesthetic. Dig through the band’s website to find more downloadable demos.
Chad VanGaalen
I’m kind of busy right now watching Canada vs. Cuba in Olympic baseball on CBC, but I will say this: Chad VanGaalen’s trembly, trippy, falsetto-ed pop makes a lousy soundtrack for watching athletics on television. (For the most part: the rocking “Graveyard,” available for free download below, might fit in during the half inning breaks where t-shirts are tossed into the crowd.) VanGaalen, of Calgary, crafts stylish and hip songs with a strong D.I.Y. vibe. With these tracks below, borrowed from VanGaalen’s three ablums, all your lo-fi friends will be wanting to know what you’re spinning. Tell them you’re busy — water polo’s on in ten minutes.