My friend Cheech is driving around the USA this summer with his girlfriend and a Geoffrey Roberts Award, tasting and blogging about our country’s endangered foods. How great is that?! (Check out his adventures at www.eat-american.com, and maybe buy a thing or two. A few years ago he sent me a bottle of datil pepper hot sauce, and that stuff was awesome.) In honor and support of his cool summer, I’m posting The Sheds, a do-it-yourself pop-rock outfit from Cincinnati that, in my mind, embodies in music what Cheech is doing with food. Pumping out quirky Americana for the last few years, The Sheds seem a little endangered too; they offer everything they’ve got for free on this here Internet. How do they eat, or at least make a buck? So, here’s to good free music and good, honest food. May both live long and prosper.
The Coach and Four
It’s my last post from Memphis, so I’d better make it a Memphis band, eh? I especially like the changing moods of “In Transit” by The Coach and Four. First delicate and almost plaintive, then building until becoming strong, fierce, and frantic, it reflects the hidden stories of the band’s namesake, a local run-down hotel.
Varnaline
I can’t write about Space Needle without plugging Anders Parker’s Varnaline with equal, if not greater, vigor. It’s almost easier to do, given Parker’s more prolific output—whether as Varnaline through 2001 or his subsequent eponymous work for Baryon Records. Sadly, Varnaline’s music received limited notoriety in their time due in part to their now defunct record labels, Zero Hour and Artemis, neither of which were really a perfect fit for Varnaline’s sound. The Varnaline take on alt country was blistering, raw, and true, with really excellent texture and sobering lyrics for those left standing.
The Foundry Field Recordings
During the Civil War, Missouri was a border state, supplying formal regiments and informal militias to both sides of the conflict. Therefore, I’m not sure if Clay would consider The Foundry Field Recordings — hailing from Colombia, MO — a Southern band. Regardless, they tend to be a shimmery pop delight, with long, serious compositions, a little precious but a lot of fun. I especially like “Buy/Sell/Trade” (which appears on both of the EPs below) and “Dancing Lights/Slow Machines.” Sure hope y’all do too, now.
Parade
Two weeks ago when posting the Childballads, I quoted from Jonathan Fire*Eater’s “Give Me Daughters” in relating that I have three daughters, just like the song. In my quote, I left out the lines immediately preceding the words I quoted: “I will raise them/I will raise them/I will raise/I will raise/I will raise them oh/In the city surrounded by water.” Now that me and the family are moving San Francisco, which I understand to be mostly surrounded by water, I’ve started to wonder about Stewart Lupton’s impact on my life. Of course, this also means that for the near future I will be focusing purely on Southern bands, like Atlanta’s (via Athens) Parade, in celebration of the 81% of my life spent living in the South. I’ve loved Atlanta bands since I first heard the 1986 compilation of Atlanta bands Make the City Grovel In Its Dust, and I can still remember almost every word and guitar lick of Train Black Manifesto’s “Bristol” and Rockin’ Bones’ “Be At Ease.”
So back to Parade and their smart rock-tinged pop. On “That’s Hott” from their recent EP, one cannot almost imagine the B52’s raised in this millennium on Parade’s stated influences of Radiohead, Gang of Four, Nick Cave, and PJ Harvey, while others like the acoustic guitar-based “Hunting” embrace the Southern singer-songwriter tradition of other Athens and Atlanta bands. But whatever the style, Parade is simple and melodic, kinda like the South.
Space Needle
For a brief moment in the ’90s (I’m talking like, three years), Jud Ehrbar, Jeff Gatland, Anders Parker were responsible for some of the most underrated music of that decade. Reservoir (Ehrbar’s ambient-ish side project) and Varnaline (Parker’s Americana/altcountry-ish side project) were impressive enough, but Space Needle’s two albums, Voyager and Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle set the standard for melancholic, noisy (and often very lengthy) art rock that modern acts like Animal Collective and Black Dice are still trying to catch up with. Why were they so overlooked? Some blame Zero Hour, the record label shared by all three bands at the time, and their distribution deal with folk-friendly Rounder which landed their records in patchouli-soaked bookstores instead of the appreciative hands of adventurous nutters like you and me. (The silver lining is that you can pick up the entire Zero Hour catalog at CD exchanges for the price of a BK value meal.) For those who’d rather have history packaged for them nice and neat like (and can afford a king-sized value meal), Eenie Meenie Records last year reissued select tracks from those two Space Needle albums on one CD called Recordings 1994-1997). Enjoy the trip…down memory lane.
Saturna
I’ll cop to being a wee bit of a sucker for the newish, more combustible brand of shoegazer fuzz. It just feels closer to what I’ve always thought of as the ideal of rock and roll: nihilism in three chords or less. Portland’s Saturna don’t shy away from such interpretations, giving us both the more traditionally atmospheric naval gaze of “Roll Down†and the slightly embittered and fully catchy kiss-off of “Pop Rocks.†There’s even a cowbell in there.
The Winston Jazz Routine
The Winston Jazz Routine doesn’t come off as the kind of music you’d typically hear coming out of Nashville. Then again, I’ve spent a grand total of 20 minutes in Nashville and it was all in a car on the freeway—and yes, I’m a bit ashamed of that fact. Nathan Phillips is the man behind an ever-rotating cast of characters in The Winston Jazz Routine, yet despite who comes in and out, this is Phillips’ child, and that child ain’t no troubled-troubadour or honky tonk hoedown. It’s more like torch music for the youthfully somber. Phillips is at heart a piano crooner whose songs are more likely to stir in you the desire to embrace your regrets like a warm blanket than to tap your feet or snap your fingers. Yet these compositions are far from hopeless. On the contrary, they ease into your mind and plant the seed of melancholy we all need every now and then to wash ourselves clean. It’s tailor-made for rainy days, and Nashville has its share of those, right?
Canada
Leave it to Sean in sunny California to raise awareness of a record label that’s operating practically in my backyard, even though he’s three time zones away. Canada, like the previously-posted Chris Bathgate, records for Quite Scientific, right here in Michigan. That is, Canada the seven-piece band out of Ann Arbor. If you’re looking for a bit of a late night summer folk-rock sing-along anthem, check out “Hexenhaus,” fom their 2006 LP This Cursed House.
The Childballads
Whilst sitting in church last week with my three daughters, I thought of a Jonathan Fire*Eater song that I first heard before I had any children. I could just hear Stewart Lupton singing in my ears “Give me daughters/And make ’em 1-2-3/I will raise them/they’ll go to church with me.” Now I know he wasn’t prophesying about me, but Stewart’s imaginative lyrics were one of my favorites things about one of my favorite bands. Three of the Fire*Eaters went on to The Walkmen after the big breakup, but Stewart’s new band the Child Ballads hit the scene around two years ago. Style-wise, Stewart’s 60s-influenced acoustic guitar rock is a long way from the Fire*Eater days, but when it comes to the lyrcis, he’s still got his muse.