An atmospheric-bluegrass-folk-Beachboyharmony kind of bandwhose debut album is best listened to straight through so that it can wash over you. The first song below is my favorite of theirs and the second is another really good one put to a claymation video, so heads up to fans of claymation.
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Clergy Guy has a great post on his time spent visiting the elderly. Read the whole thing. Here’s just his moral, but there’s a lot of fun getting here:
Often someone will grab my hand and speak urgently of what they used to do. “I was a policeman for 35 years.” “I owned a ranch.” “I have five children.” They want me to know that they were once somebody significant.
When I walk into a stuffy smelly room to visit an old man in his bed and I see WWII medals on the wall behind him, I realize that older folks have nothing more to prove. They are heroes who refuse to go away.
Could I ask you a favor? If you’re like me, you don’t like going to the nursing home. Please go anyway. You will make someone’s day just by entering the building. You could find a blessing, too, if you look deeply enough to really see the people.
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I’m pretty sure there’s a law on the books somewhere that you can’t make a movie about the ’60s counterculture without featuring “Time of the Season.” And that’s the way it should be, as far as I’m concerned:
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The 21st Century ’70s Springsteen, Craig Finn writes songs that are anthemic, evocative, and rich with narrative and emotional detail and perceptiveness. If his talk-singing didn’t become a slog so often, his band would rank much higher. This song always makes me smile though:
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The list of my top 366 favorite bands now becomes a list of the top 300 with Joseph Arthur:
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The Good Life’s Album of the Year is an album of a year long relationship and as a sucker for concept albums and songs about the complications of relationships, I eat it up. I love this (long) song most. It’s the only one with a female lead vocal on the album:
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Easily one of the most prolific and promising punk rockers of the young century until his tragic and untimely death earlier this year:
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The first terrific 2010 debuting band to make the list:
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So, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince are a childhood favorite and “Men In Black” was essentially the song of the summer in 1997 as, dancing and singing along to it, I cleaned theaters playing the film Men In Black for weeks on end. I rarely listen to either musical incarnation of Will Smith anymore but pure nostalgia keeps him on the list:
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Just the second of what will be many Swedish artists to make the list, but the only one who sings their songs in Swedish:
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So earlier in the month CWH webmaster Dave and I went to see Laura Marling, who is one of both of our favorite recording artists, and we featured two great videos taken during the show here on Camels With Hammers and expressed hopes that video of Laura whistling her way through the string portion of one of her songs would surface online. I had observed a girl in the front row recording that song and so figured there was hope it might show up. Well, it appears that that girl has heard my desperate plea and come forward with the amazing footage. Behold the power of the internet.
And to hear how the song goes in its recorded form, the song’s official video can be found here.
Thanks again, Ale!
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I have their newest album, Ashes of Grammar, and it’s a really enjoyable hour long psychedelic atmospheric experience taken all in one straight through listen. They’re the kind of band whose songs I wouldn’t even attempt to listen to apart from the full context of the album because they’re so jarring and hard to get a read on when isolated. But listened to as an album it all is really engaging. To characterize their sound I would say they’re the only band that I can think of who belong in whatever genre Animal Collective belongs to. When I first heard Ashes of Grammar I considered it the first Merriweather Post Pavilion-influenced album I had heard. Whether or not that influence is direct or not, I have no idea.
Here’s their appropriately titled “Headphone Space” from an album that belongs in your headphones to be maximally enjoyed:
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A warm, character-filled bluegrass drawl often over some sweet electric guitar picking, landing in no specific genre.
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Their EP is only 4 songs long but it’s spectacular. With a full LP this good, they’d rank way higher on the list. Here’s their anthemic, “It Gets Your Body Movin’”. One of those songs that felt so right to me the first time I heard it that I could have sworn I’d known it all my life:
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The new Mr. Deity:
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Another level of insanity to this vile proposed law:
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Catchy melodic riff and bass heavy hard rocking punk:
Their entire Veni Vidi Vicious album just never lets up and I never want it to.
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Another video about graduate school that hits a little too close to home:
Thanks, Dr. Coulter for the heads up!
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The Atlantic has a pretty interesting article on how their business methods provide a model for emulation in the internet, social networking driven era. And what they have accomplished has not been accidental:
the connection between the Internet and the Dead’s business model was made 15 years ago by the band’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who became an Internet guru. Writing in Wired in 1994, Barlow posited that in the information economy, “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.” As Barlow explained to me: “What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.” The Dead thrived for decades, in good times and bad. In a recession, Barnes says, strategic improvisation is more important then ever. “If you’re going to survive this economic downturn, you better be able to turn on a dime,” he says. “The Dead were exemplars.” It can be only a matter of time until Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead or some similar title is flying off the shelves of airport bookstores everywhere.
I guess this means it’s just a matter of time before CEOs start following the Dead around the country too.
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Alright, so I normally hate children’s choirs as much as the next guy, but that’s because they’re normally put to the smug indoctrinating purpose of having children innocently and preachily mouth platitudes their parents, churches, or schools want to inculcate into them. It’s nauseating. But there is another way to use children’s choirs and it’s the way that capitalizes on their potential for eeriness, subversiveness, and authentic jubilant affirmation, and that’s what Dead Man’s Bones uses them for so delightfully. Put simply, Dead Man’s Bones have put out a terrific little debut album which makes listening to the occasional children’s choir a whole lot of fun. The kids provide an irreplaceable layer that sometimes participates in the flowing concept album’s moody atmosphere and sometimes provides a counterpoint to it. It’s the kind of album I love listening to straight through and never am inclined to stop for something else.
And did I mention that this is the brilliant actor Ryan Gosling’s project, which makes it even that much more awesome? The four songs below are the ones which showcase the kids. The first three in particular are each exceptional.
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