Okkervil River opening for Wilco? Pretty cool show.
Unfortunately, we raced to Ticketmaster.com and bought two Wilco tix for Keyspan Park thinking Okkervil was playing that show, too. Pays to actually read entire news items. So...who's coming with?
In related news, a few days ago we put together a brief obit for the Daily News on Jay Bennett. Should have posted it on RIB but didn't (as we do almost as a rule). You can read it here.
So yes, we're still alive.
As part of our NYU Web Dev class, we've put together an Album of the Year Web site and are now hosting it on the brand new and glorious mattmarrone.com.
If you'd like the check out the Album of the Year site, click the image to the right. If you're using IE, just kill yourself now and get it over with.
The site is fully functional, so register, login and comment. We reserve all rights to delete any remarks that aren't filled with glowing praise.
We're looking forward to next Tuesday with great anticipation - and so should you. The date has been marked with a gold star on our calendar for some time. Here's why:
Sometimes choosing our Album of the Year is a no-brainer, but not this time around.
Over the last few weeks, a couple of front-runners emerged but if you had asked us just a couple days ago which of our Top 3 - Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's Lie Down in the Light or Shearwater's Rook - would win out in the end, we'd have thrown our hands up in the air. All three have what it takes - Bon Iver's record is the year's warmest blanket, Billy's is one of the finest works of this decade's best songwriter and Shearwater's is as haunting and as deep as rock gets.
But this morning - decision day - we woke up and our winner was clear. No album this year was played more often, more diced and dissected, more quoted and proselytized, more treasured and enjoyed, than Rook. So much so that we've overdone it a bit - we're looking forward to the albums that will grab us in 2009 to give Meiburg and company a well-deserved rest.
All three of our favorite records of 2008 were introspective and gorgeous, but perhaps there was one element that gave Shearwater the advantage: Rook rocks. Not quite as much as its predecessor, Palo Santo, and not as much as we'd have liked it to - and not as much as we'd like the NEXT ONE to - but it was a nice change of pace to shuffle from Bon Iver's best track - Re: Stacks - and Bonnie Billy's standout cut - You Remind Me of Something - to Shearwater's knock-your-socks-off anthem Century Eyes or the ringing electric pulse of Rooks.
Only time will tell if Rook is still No. 1 years from now, but that's the beauty of music - and the risk of choosing an Album of the Year. It's also what makes the choice special - we might hate Shearwater in a few years, but we'll always have the memory of how much we loved them right now.
(Happy New Year!)
Decided to play around with iMovie. So...here's an audio clip of Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power playing Independence Day, live at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco on Nov. 11, 2008, along with still photos (audio and photos taken with an iPhone). Both Matthew and Geoff G. attended the show, which was fantastic. Even met Vic briefly outside the men's room afterwards.
A little late for Turkey Day as the tradition goes, we know, but here they are, in alphabetical order. As you can see, we kept it real short this year.
(A full-on audio podcast version, if you're interested, is available as well. Just email us or tweet @thebigm.)
Antony & The Johnsons - Another World
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light
The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
Okkervil River - The Stand Ins
R.E.M. - Accelerate
Shearwater - Rook
Honorable Mentions:
The Baseball Project - Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails
Bowerbirds - Hymns for a Dark Horse
Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power And The Amorphous Strums - Dark Developments
Kimya Dawson - Alphabutt
Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
The Fireman - Electric Arguments
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Innocence Mission - Street Map (EP)
Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
She & Him - Volume One
Here, in reverse-order Twitter posts and iPhone photos, is RIB's review of Bon Iver/Bowerbirds at Bowery Ballroom, from a long, long time ago (July 29, to be exact).
Moni sent this in eons ago but we've been too lazy to post. We're almost too lazy to post it now, too, but we don't want to cause an international incident. However, we can't help but include Moni's own email preface: "Is it too obvious that I was drunk when I wrote half of this? Anyway, I dunno if this review is usable in any way, and I am wondering the same about that damn album. Grr." That being said...
RIB gently asked me if I wanted to review Death Cab For Cutie's latest record, "Narrow Stairs." Right now, I'm not so happy with it.
It's not that I think it's a bad record, not at all. I'm just a little frustrated with it. The album does have its beautiful moments, smart instrumentations, lyrics to scratch your head over, as well as more sweet bass lines than any other Death Cab album to date. It also has many things I know from earlier Death Cab albums - the quiet, almost serene intro track, Ben Gibbard's penchant for repeating words/phrases (and in the case of "I Will Possess Your Heart" I found that repetition quite fitting) and that somewhat muted, fluffy guitar sound.
Overall it's not too different from earlier Death Cab albums, despite claims that this is their "prog" album. There are moments that I enjoy every time I listen to the record, like the piano and bass intro from IWPYH, Gibbard's vocals on "Talking Bird" that seem to be floating above the instruments, the lyrics on "Your New Twin-Sized Bed."
"Narrow Stairs" could be a great record - it sounds great, it's smart, well made, it works your brain and your heart. But for some reason it doesn't really touch me. I am missing something that every one else who loves this record has found, and if you have any idea what I might be missing, please let RIB know.
Back in the early nineties, Michael Stipe would talk in interviews about hanging out with the late River Phoenix. He would usually bring up that River always wore his sunshades inside, as if River was trying to hide. Or to keep the world out.
For the last half dozen times I've seen R.E.M. live over the past 7 years, Stipe has worn his Daryl Hannah replicant makeup. It, for all intents, served the same purpose as River's sunshades. This Thursday, he left it off.
In fact, Stipe at Madison Square Garden didn't --
- Strip
- Mope
- Read his lyrics from a nightstand
What he and Peter and Bill (and Scott and Bill) did was rock. Rock a very large room for two hours. It was great. And it was very different than the R.E.M. shows we'd been used to.
The post - millennial concerts up until now all seemed to be (in retrospect) performed almost in defense of the material on Up, on Reveal, on Around the Sun. Throughout, the band was trying to conjure a moment of transcendent beauty with new songs like High Speed Train, or Falls to Climb. R.E.M. wanted to prove so badly that they still had it. And everyone had just shown up for a rock concert.
And that disconnect, between people in their late twenties and thirties, who associated the music with their youth, and the band on stage who desperately wanted late career legitimacy (the kind U2 enjoys in thier third decade of performing) directly lead to the Stipe & Co. of old. I'm a serious fucking lyrical master -- see my music stand. I'm a record company whore -- here, I lost my shirt. I'm deep -- you can't see my eyes. And maybe I can't see you.
Needless to say, that's all disappeared. On Thursday, the house lights were up more than they'd ever been, and you felt like the band really saw the audience this time. And the audience really saw them. Accelerate was a reinvigorating album (and tour) on so many levels. Foremost, it redefined the band: R.E.M. is a quirky, unpretentious, ridiculous, angry, political rock band. The most important word is "rock". It's good to have you back, boys.
(image from workinpana)
We'd like to write about the neat-o Mountain Goats cartoon we got from Brianna or speculate about the fact that the Innocence Mission just posted on their Web site that "Right now we are recording some new songs. We hope to have a record finished later this year" - but we really would be remiss if we didn't get a word or two up about the two records that have been wearing out our stylus and/or sucking the last bit of juice out of out six-year-old iPod as it makes its way toward retirement (it's eligible for a full pension on July 11), starting with:
So if you've received an email from us anytime in the last year-plus, you've noticed the phrase "There's something singing in the ice" at the bottom. That's a Shearwater line, from their last album, Palo Santo, which has been praised to the skies on this blog.
Speaking of the decade's best, it's going to take quite a lot in the next year and a half to unseat Will Oldham as this decade's best songwriter. The winner of the 2003 Album of the Year has been extremely prolific and has now released three records that are as good, if not better, than his winning effort, Master and Everyone. (He's also become somewhat of an accomplished actor, and yes Becca, we've developed a serious man-crush on him to boot.)***
So back to the title of this post. It's always great to have so much to choose from, especially this early on, when we think of the year's best. Palo Santo finished second in 2006, Oldham's The Letting Go was third. Despite the competition, we think top 3 finishes for both artists are certainly not out of the question in 2008.After too long an absence, RIB is proud to post the following concert review from our lone international (and female!) correspondent, Moni. Moni, as you may know, is the world's foremost Ken Stringfellow stalker. Her review this time? Why Stringfellow's band, the Posies, of course.
Band: The Posies (acoustic)
Date: 04/19/08
Venue: Flex, Vienna, Austria
Rating: 4/5
I have waited to see an acoustic Posies show since I bought the band’s sophomore album, “Dear 23.” I got a used copy in Athens, Ga., signed by Mr. Stringfellow himself, who wrote, “Pls. take me home!” I just had to do him that favor.
The first thing that captured me were the phenomenal harmony vocals of Stringfellow and Jon Auer all over the record.
My only previous time seeing the band was a couple of years ago in Munich, in full-band mode and ear-shatteringly loud - at one point it was almost impossible to recognize the songs. Harmony vocals? Yeah, maybe. I couldn’t really tell from all the white noise coming from the speakers. Until this show at the Flex, the Posies hadn’t been to Vienna for almost a decade.
So the whole way to the venue I kept wondering if I'd be disappointed. Truth be told, the show didn’t meet my expectations at all. I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn't sure what to think of it at first. I was certainly a bit let down by the low turnout - I had expected the venue, which holds a few hundred people, to be more or less full, but there were maybe not more than 60-80 people there. We made quite a lot of noise between the songs, though, and I had the impression Jon and Ken felt very welcome.
Overall, I was expecting something more loose and more wild. (I know, how wild can an acoustic show get? Still, leave it to those guys to turn any show into happy, drunk debauchery.) But I guess that's a small complaint, since, as laid back as the show was, it was very sharp - I have no idea whether the two of them still have to rehearse after all these years; seeing them make music together looks and sounds incredibly effortless, but without ever sounding stale or having an air of mere routine. Those brilliant vocal harmonies sounded as great as ever, especially on beautifully melodic songs like “Every Bitter Drop,” where they were pure bliss. And while I prefer Jon’s guitar playing, Ken’s voice is simply amazing. That man sounds like he could hold a note past the point where any other singer would’ve gone blue in the face.
They worked their way through songs from every album and even a song from their EP, “Nice Cheekbones and a PhD,” and even “Believe in Something Other” from their debut album, “Failure” - just not a single song from “Dear23." Maybe I’ve lined up too much bad karma? After almost two hours, the Posies closed their set with the nicely sinister “Coming Right Along."
In his blog Ken later wrote, “It’s these relaxed shows that I love the best, where playing with Jon feels like putting on your favorite old leather jacket, and effort is minimal for maximum effect. And for sure people loved it. We had great praise after the show from Daniel from Nada Surf, who was home between tours.”
Yes, Ken, we liked it lots. I’ll take one point off for the complete lack of songs from “Dear 23," though. Maybe next time? I just hope it won't take them another ten years to come back.
