I've Moved

http://finestkiss.wordpress.com/

On Glenda's recommendation, I've jumped ship. Apparently blogger is for newbies and wordpress is the new sliced bread. Anyway see ya at the new place!

Human Television + Lilys @ Crocodile Cafe

5 July 2005


Human Television brought their 80's college retro sound to Seattle last night. They're opening for the Lilys and I found out that half of Human TV is the Lilys at least on this west coast tour. Dealing in that mid-80's college rock sound, they could be the offspring of the Feelies mating with Dumptruck. I hadn't heard either of those influences until seeing them live last night. Two guitarists, one sitting and one standing played well off of one another with Billy Downing choosing to sit down while playing his shiny red Rickenbacker guitar. Actually three fifths of the band sat through their show. Kinda weird I thought, but it kinda goes along with their laid back jangly persona. This was the most sparsely attended show I've been to at the Croc, must be that everyone is on summer vacation. Although there weren't a ton of people to see them, those that were there were very enthusiastic, myself included. They played pretty much everything from Look at Who You're Talking To and a couple from their All Songs By... ep.

The Lilys have changed their sound so many times in their career that you can pretty much bank on not hearing anything from their old albums when you see them live. You get only the Kurt Heasley sound du jour. So we didn't hear anything from their My Bloody Valentine days, or their Kinks days. What we did get was the Spacemen 3 influenced rock the he started with Eccsame the Photon Band and has kind of continued with Precollection and the latest Everything Wrong is Imaginary. A few of the new songs had a bit of a Prince feel to them, kind of funky, but no Prince-like dancing, only a similar haircut.

Midway

I was gonna do some geeky post about the best cd's I've heard the first half of 2006. Very predictable and kinda boring if you ask me. Better to highlight something different. My music collection is somewhat underrepresented by the female of the species, so I thought it would be better to focus on the unusually large quantity of female fronted bands and solo artists that have come across my radar this year. Maybe I'm mellowing with age or merely broadening my tastes, but here is a top ten for for the women of the first half of 2006 (in no particular order).

Cat Power The Greatest Not a greatest hits, but probably her best record. This is one of those old sounding records (M Ward, Richard Hawley) that evokes a time from way back. Listen to it.

The Concretes In Colour Motown influenced Swedes (in the same way the Jesus and Mary Chain were.) They sound young fragile, and a bit twee, but they seem to transcend their obvious influcences. Concretes music here.

Sing Sing Sing Sing and I Emma Anderson was half of Lush and has since moved on. Sing Sing at myspace

El Perro Del Mar She looks like a cross between Edith Piaf and Twiggy. Think Rhino's box set of Girl Groups and add a little Goldfrapp in. Here's a song

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan Ballad of the Broken Seas Former Belle & Sebastian member finally puts out a good record. It's not too twee and that's not because of Mark Lanegan. Campell wrote most the songs on this one. Listen to Isobel here

Howling Bells Self titled debut from gothic/blues influence Australians. Add in some Siouxsie and voila a cool band is made. Go here to listen.

Camera Obscura Let's Get Out of this Country They're from Scotland and they wrote a song about Lloyd Cole, go figure. This is their third record and it lives up to the promise of their debut. Stream a few songs here.

Monkey Swallow the Universe The Bright Carvings - Virtually unknown, but that's only because smart acoustic music just isn't cool these days. This is my favourite song of there's: Jimmy Down the Well

The Essex Green Cannibal Sea Mix of guy/girl vocals so this may be pushing it. I like to think of them as the U.S. Acid house Kings.
Listen to Some songs

Amy Millan Honey from the Tombs From Stars, she does a solo thing of country tinged stuff. She's channeling the ghost of Kirsty MacColl (Think Don't come a Cowboy and Guy down at the Chip Shop Swears he's Elvis)
Listen: Skinny Boy

Long Lunch

Monday afternoon I walked out of my office, down the street about 6 blocks and into the dimly lit Triple Door. Why would anyone go to the Triple Door in the middle of the afternoon? Well I guess they do serve lunch, but I went there to catch the Black Angels and Jose Gonzalez. It was a KEXP special event for their high rollers. I'm not a high roller, just a poor music geek, but my friend Rachel is and she invited me as her plus one. The last time I was at the Triple Door was to see the late great Go-Betweens. It's a great venue, if only a bit diner theatre-ish.

Everyone was there to see Austin's Black Angels and when John Richards came on stage to say he had some bad news and the Black Angels wouldn't be playing for another 30 minutes there was a collective moan. He said he did have some good news, Jose Gonzalez was there and was gonna play. Bonus! Gonzalez came out and sat down at the center front of the stage and steam-rolled through 8 songs:

Slow Moves
All You Deliver
Stay in the Shade
Lovestain
Send Someone Away (new track)
Heartbeats (Knife cover)
Crosses
Hints

He sounded really good, and the venue was perfect for his hushed voice and acoustic picking.

The Black Angels came out almost immediately after Gonzalez left the stage. Why can't all shows run this smoothly?
To call them derivative is like no duh! If you closed your eyes you could have convinced yourself that you were listening to Jefferson Airplane. Not a bad thing mind you, they can put together a wall of sound that rivals some of the best I've seen. They reminded me a bit of the Warlocks but a little less intimidating. Where the Warlocks look like they could kick your ass, the Black Angels looked like they might be able to beat up your little brother (maybe). Their live sound was a lot more dynamic than their record, and they've got a ton of instruments. Either they're rich, or they spend all their money on guitars. I swear not one person played bass on back to back songs, and each guy had his own bass guitar along with at least 3 other guitars. Somebody's taking care of these guys. Here's what they rocked the house with:

Ronettes Jam
The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven
The First Vietnamese War
Black Grease
Empire
Young Men Dead
Manipulation

After the show, I looked at my watch and it was 2:20. I walked back outside into the blinding daylight. My phone is ringing with work on the line....back to reality and the rest of the day.

Here's someone else that saw the show:
theCultFigurine

Kid Rock and Dad Rock

Ian is now 4 years old, and he has his opinions about music. Often I will have something playing and he will either say I love that song, or he definitively says I don't like this song. Being the music geek that I am, I try to make a mental note of what he likes.

I've often wondered why I became obsessed with music. Well I don't think I have to look much further than my dad. He had a huge selection of vinyl in his day. I remember as a kid always looking through it and not being familiar with any of the records he had. He wasn't into the Beatles, Stones or Beach Boys. He preferred instrumental music and could always do without the singing. For instance, I could have played him the new Hot Chip record and he would have been into the music, but I know he would said something like, does the guy have to sing and ruin every song? He was into sound effects records, Herb Alpert, Wes Montgomery, Neal Hefti, James Bond soundtracks and a bunch of other stuff that may have been popular back in the day, but is certainly considered obscure today. I remember when he really liked a song he would say, that sounds tough!

My dad could have been considered a music geek (a compliment in my book). I remember instead of alphabetizing his records he ordered them by the catalog number on their spine. So in order to find a record you first had to go to a typed document that listed the records in alphabetical order to find out the catalog number so you could then go and find the record. I suppose you could say that's something of a precursor to Rob in High Fidelity reordering his record collection by some random category.

Anyway, here's a mix I made for Ian to listen to while riding in the car with mom or dad. I wonder what kind of mix my dad would have made me?


Buddy Holly - Everyday
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart - The Sun Does Rise
Perry Como - Catch A Falling Star
Of Montreal - Wraith Pinned To The Mist And Other Games
The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Starlight Mints - Rhino Stomp
Frank Sinatra - High Hopes
The Zombies - Care Of Cell 44
The Shout Out Louds - Oh, Sweetheart
Dizzy Gillespie - Don't Try To Keep Up With The Joneses
The Proclaimers - King Of The Road
Belle & Sebastian - Step Into My Office, Baby
Paul Kelly & The Messengers - Careless
The Waterboys - Upon the Wind and the Waves
The Futureheads - Hounds Of Love
Hector Zazou Featuring Suzanne Vega & John Cale - The Long Voyage
The Beatles - Drive My Car
The Lucksmiths - T-Shirt Weather
The Beat Farmers - Happy Boy
The Bees - A Minha Menina
M. Ward - Carolina
Super Furry Animals - Golden Retriever
The Specials - Monkey Man
They Might Be Giants - Birds Fly
The Beach Boys - Sloop John B
The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society
Johnny Cash - I've Been Working on the Railroad

G'day you Hosers

The Pacific NW is known for its beer. There definitely are a lot of breweries up here, but quantity does not always mean quality. I'm not dissing NW beer, there is a lot of good stuff produced in the NW, but it's harder finding the really good stuff because there is so much you have wade through to find it. Yeah, I know, there are a lot worse things you might have to do in your life. Being a beer snob though, there's nothing worse than having to drink a sub-par IPA. So without any more verbiage, I'll do the run down of what I've found up here that rates in my book.

Boundary Bay









Their IPA is excellent, and their Imperial IPA is even better. Lots of hops and a good amount of residual sugar on these. You can find the IPA in the 32oz bottles, but you either have to travel to the brewery or hope one of decent bars has the Imperial IPA on tap to taste it.

Snoqualmie Falls










Steam Train Porter is one of the few porters that I will drink on a regular basis. It's not flat and dull like so many porters. It's got a bit of a bite to it, strong undertones of chocolate and refreshing crisp aftertaste. The Wildcat IPA is well worth a drink too.

Elysian Brewing Co.














I love going to either the Capital Hill or Tangletown pubs to grab whatever they're serving on Cask. Usually it's an IPA! There is nothing better than an IPA served on cask. That's one thing about Seattle pubs, the good ones always have one or two selections on cask.

Silver City










Only recently tried their stuff, which I found at Bottleworks. They have a couple of IPA's, one being their Whoop Pass Double which is quite tasty and high in alcohol (9%).

Opening: Silversun Pickups & Voxtrot

Neumo's: 31 May 2006.
(photo swiped from Voxtrot's website)















I went to a show on a school night, saw two bands and was home by 10:45! For old people, this is the way to go. Silversun Pickups and Voxtrot were opening for Elefant on their west coast swing. I could care less about Elefant so I scrammed after Voxtrot's set.

I guess Silversun Pickups are getting good airplay over at KEXP, so there were a bunch of people their by 9pm to catch the Pickups. They've got elements of shoegaze, Nirvana and little bit of Grandaddy thrown in as well. One thing that I thought was hilarious was that the drummer had one of his symbols so high he had to stand up to hit it. Honest it was taller than the drummer. I like their Pikul ep and they've got a full length coming out this summer which I'll be looking out for. Their live set could have had a bit better sound and more prominent vocals, maybe the sound will be better when they headline.

My first impression of Voxtrot last night was that if there would have been a live band in the movie Rushmore, these guys would have been it. Maybe it was the singer's resemblance to Jason Schwartzman or the bass player's goofy moves, I don't know. Voxtrot seem to be riding a wave of hype only after two eps. Both eps have their moments and I'm excited to see what this band will do as they mature. They've got all the right influences (at least from an anglophile's perspective), heavy on the Smiths, Cure, and Wedding Present. Hell they even look like little skinny English blokes. Must be something in the water down in Austin, see: Spoon and American Analog Set. Voxtrot sounded really good, actually better than their records. Better vocals and more guitar made the songs more distinct in the live setting and they started to shed some of their blatant influences.

A few others saw the show and lived to blog about it:
theCultFigurine
CleverTitlesAreSoLastSummer