some paste yer taste

Here's my album cloud from last.fm.

No real good reason. It's kind of pretty.

I bet it says something about me. Or just as likely not.

I

I don't think you think you know what you think you know what it means, but you can check with him

I don't want to flavor or color wednesday's performance by Sovron Court with descriptions of what they sound like or, more aptly, who they sound like.

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What I will say is that there's something you need to know.

You may not have realized it when you walked in the door, or even when you were getting your first pour. Still, it comes over you quickly. As soon as you realize you think you know what you need to know, you realize you don't think you quite have a fix on it. You have a furtive grasp, and you know it seems more concrete than it is.

In how Cameron and Glen put sounds, you begin to realize there is some kind of betrayal in the perception of words and notes, voices and tones. The shapes they cut, the volumes they fill, the echoes that render those heaving vibrations; each one is a mirage. You think you hear them, that you know what they are telling you.

But they don't give themselves up so easily. There's more behind them than you're probably willing to digest at once. They know this. Those on stage, in whose custody the sound is being let loose, are considerate. The secret you know you think you know but know you don't know is a big one. And letting it loose in more than 2-3 eeks per measure would probably be unsettling. Bring along a hearty reluctance to assume you can hear the whole story all at once; savor the details.

In that voice and that chime, you know they're trying to bring the secret across to you whole-heartedly. But like a wolf among mice, they know they need to apply that pressure in a measured way.

They have a secret. Reluctantly they loose it; but it's for your own sake. You will know when you know.

Keep an eye out for more from Sovron Court; and obviously if you're in Columbus you can also check out Glen's recently-signed band Way Yes

Update on 2:46PM by mfg

Actually, der grilled cheeses will be usurping my evening tonight;

so you at Rocktoberfest actually

end of Summer head wrap

So I wasn't in the mood when I first came across them. I was more into Hospice by Antlers earlier this year. Now a whole summer has passed and I am finally getting into Foster the People. I got Torchesand an EP from emusic.

I guess they were denied "Best New Artist" at the MTV VMAs. Now I don't really know what constitutes MTV these days; I haven't really watched anything since Beavis and Butthead on there. Maybe they should have got it, maybe not. I don't particularly know what the Video Music Awards are about, nor do I place stock in someone getting a VMA. That said, I'm not so jaded as to assume neither have value. Nor do I assume a VMA nod disqualifies them as worth a listen.

So Summer unofficially ends this weekend. Listening to Foster the People is probably a good way to tie it off if your in the mood for some indie pop. I have a strong inclination to assume they are the next Vampire Weekend, which is to say they will burn bright and burn out (on me) fast. Nonetheless, I still smile if Horchata or some of the other tracks pop up on random.

Foster the People is incredibly exactly what you expect. They are utterly ripping off the most accessible parts of Ben Folds, Weezer, and Postal Service with spooky nods now and then to the 80s. They are utterly why no one should ever Legalize LA. No one deserves that plague of denialism, there's enough of it on tv. That said, airy indie pop can be a nice boost now and then. Especially when it's so slutty and easy.

This may just be a plague surrounding indie pop. I have my favorites along the spectrum from the Baroquiest Chamber pop to the twee'est sugar kids. The dark molasses of the Chamber pop sustains them like a carbohydrate being burned, the saccharine sweetness of the twee causes them to flare out in no time flat. Actually, I haven't heard any twee I've really liked in a while. Maybe I should go looking to temporarily sustain my denial of Summer ending.

last.fm paste your taste

i listen to music, and i am sometimes as consumed by vanity there as everywhere else.

Got bored, checked in on last.fm and thought i would put up some meaningless tidbit about myself and my proclivity for self-absorption qua taste-in-music (artists with over 100 listens from the past 3 months):

I'm into indie, folk, electronic, singer-songwriter and female vocalists, including:
Bon Iver, Woods, Memory Tapes, Basia Bulat(*), The Microphones, Dengue Fever, The Antlers, The Flaming Lips, Thao Nguyen And The Get Down S, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Washed Out, Cults, Beirut, The Fresh & Onlys, Air Waves, The Avett Brothers, Gillian Welch, Times New Viking, Bill Callahan, Best Coast...

Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/raamindasu

(*) Probably the least represented, since I have been listening to her non-stop on 2 non-scobbling devices as well. Also, 335/379 listens represented are in the past 7 days. Yep. I'm probably really a girl and just never knew it.

"In conclusion, leaving is easy when you've got some place you need to be"

In conclusion, superb.

Every facet of expectation in a performance that can be reviewed was not only met and exceeded but in cases shattered. At times radiating from the stage was the subtlest precision, effortless expanse. Then it would shift to pressing urgent and then around to these unwinding heartbeats like experiencing the slowing of your pulse. The Bill Callahan show last night was off the chart. Mostly he stood there, in a white linen suit with an acoustic guitar, occasionally donning a harmonica, but constantly, unwaveringly reaching out from some unknowable depth of human emotion.

Touring with Mr. Callahan were Neal Morgan on drums and Matt Kinsey on guitar. Kinsey's style, backing up off the album, was in loops and sounds and pin pointed notes. There was a regular tension between fluffy and spacious ohms and slices of tone that cut through the air, drifting off into looser vibrations. He works the guitar technically sometimes, broodingly, and then like a mother gives birth to the world at other moments. Morgan's drumming was nothing short of mesmerizing. Kinsey was fantastic at producing, coaxing, manufacturing sounds from his guitar and what I can only assume was a stable of pedals at his feet. Morgan had more than the basic drum kit to be sure, but not by much. There were songs where he was creating sound with things that just don't sound like that. He approached the kit like some kind of painter using his tools variously like brushes (the brushes), pens (sticks), and charcoal (finger tips) to make corresponding volumes.

Surely the Americana and Western references have always been made about the work. To be sure, it is playfully doused in the tropes of some ok corrale populated panama shanty town hooverville. But the genteel, dapper Kenny Rogers / Van Morrison a la "Listen to the Lion" that was the Bill Callahan that took stage last night was more striking of bone china plantation effulgence and deep bayou murder fires and other mysteries.

Stand-out tracks from the show included "America", "Drover", and the Smog song "Say Valley Maker" (part of the encore, which was the first one i have cared to stay for in quite awhile). But those are just as songs. The whole concert stood head and shoulders above anything else I have seen in terms of showmanship relative to anything I can think of back to a trip to Nashville in 2008. The trio had a pacing and a shared energy of patient emergence. There was, throughout the whole show, the sense that a yarn was being spun; a long, intimate, gracious one. They didn't let up on that story until it was done. You really get the sense that, during the show, he is working on something; resolving, exploring, digging into it. Callahan's work may seem at first glance like something akin to Lambchop's Kurt Wagner. However there is a level of attachment that Callahan has that either Wagner lacks or, probably, shuns. It is this attachment, sentiment, that he draws you in to witness with him; it's his struggle in and out and around, his ecstasis and catharsis that you come to see at the show. After 21 years playing, he is definitely not that performer who shows up tired and leaves utterly deflated. He showed up confident and shockingly polished to a gritty shine.

So, in conclusion, it was the shit. I told you so. And for all you suckas who didn't go, tough tit. There were far too few that showed up, but it was better that way.

Columbus Crowds can Underwhelm even Freak-Folk Patriotic: Akron/Family & Delicate Steve

yeah. so columbus doesn't pack in the crowds that have the most enthusiastic participation drives, especially in march. so i dont know if it was the fact that it was Akron/Family or the comfortable crowded venue, but despite a lackluster crowd response, there was a penetrating electric feel uniting the crowd.

Wednesday i went with john.a and megan.a to see Akron/Family, with the opening band Delicate Steve. It just so happened that I installed and booted up Songbird on Wednesday. It just so happened that I tethered my phone while I was at work (never happens anymore). and It just so happened that I clicked on the 'upcoming events' add-on, WHICH had been disabled temporarily (deprecated) but I randomly updated despite knowing updating (effectively re-adding) broken addons slows songbird. So anyway, suffice it to say, some great random coicidences, along with downloading Akron/Family's new album two days prior, led to me wanting to go.

Currently they are on tour supporting that new album, called "S/T ][ : The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT." it's an epic beast of a listen. A lead up press release from their label Dead Oceans had this to say, “S/T II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey Of Shinju TNT .” In a press release from Dead Oceans, an account of the “arrival of the album” was given; “Opening it revealed a sincere but poorly made diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a track list written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant…”

The opener, Delicate Steve, is quickly becoming my new at-work listening music, and anywhere else. I've logged 82 listens since yesterday. They have a great studio album. But live (and unlistened to previously, for me) they had a warm dynamic on stage. They are all very young, and on the one hand it seemed like college kids with degrees in [band], and on the other they had an aneseptic garage or basement party feel. The album doesn't highlight the lead guitarist's work as much. Nor does it really capture the sound from the stage. From the studio they sound more like Ween, but more on the side of building rather than "challenging" compositional structure. Live, the Ween element was there, but there was also an early Dinosaur Jr. doing surf rock thing happening too.

The band worked incredibly well together and each one hopped to the next queue with an unremitting energy. The soprano-alto lead guitar, which is more of a tenor-alto on the record, nailed every note with a precision and lack of mercy that you almost ended up feeling bad for what at times was strung to sound almost like a toy guitar. The drummer / percussionist was the most visceral, as opposed to technical, of the group. But his work was the hardest; keeping every piece from being some disembodied riff. The drumming comes across more prevalent on stage than off, mostly due to his hunched standing over his cauldrons of noise. They keys are more dominant on record than on stage, but this may have been due to the slowness of the sound board.

Once they had finished, Akron/Family came on and played for about 100 minutes straight through. One thing megan.a mentioned, that we also picked up on, was the lack of interludes between songs. The band would thread 3-5 songs together, in an effortless meld. Amazing and epic as this was, it seemed a poor fit for the performance space. Whether because of the low turnout (when we saw Bon Iver there it was packed to the balcony with people chilling out against or on any surface available), or the crowd's temperance itself, the space Akron/Family was creating was being partially lost.

About 2/3 of the way through the show, they broke out into "Another Sky" and during the chant of "WHOA-Oh-oh-oh-Oh-oh ohh ohh" the crowd just wasn't playing along. Maybe it's because it's the first week in March, or was there a final that week, or that the performance space is almost completely black, but few among the crowd got into it. Not at first anyway. Eventually about 30% of both sides of the room were hooting along, then the singers divided up the room into the stage left and right sides doing offset competing chants.

Beyond the crowd's lackluster performance and enthusiasm, the band was great. Down to just three now, both the bassist and guitarist now have podiums, draped with pretty linens, of doodads and noise makers to play with. Their spotless execution and nasty grinding out of songs like "Silly Bears" and the like, as well as the weird and the transcendental, called to inner animal spirits; it's everything in me to not feel like growling and running around on four legs.

I got a chance to talk to the "delicate" Steve of Delicate Steve. He was in the back by the sound board, where we were standing, at the latter half. Delicate Steve had gotten up on stage for a brief jam session with Akron/Family. Seemed like a good guy. I gave him a recommendation to check out Buckeye Donuts if they were hungry after the show, since its decent, open late and was right across the street. Here's me: "you should check out Buckeye Donuts, they a good gyro, falafel..." "they have donuts too right?" "oh, yeah, good stuff."

Delicate Steve - "Wondervisions" Video (Feat. Nat Baldwin) from stereogum on Vimeo.