The Dude Abides

Just wanted to post a quick link to one of the best articles I have ever read on any subject. I'm serious about that too. This article happens to be about the tenth anniversary of, what could be my favorite film of all time and what is definitely the most enjoyably quotable film of my lifetime, The Big Lebowski. I am in total awe of how good of a writer Joe Crosby is.

The Dude Abides::Ten Years Later

Enjoy.

Standing in for The Stand Ins

Okkervil River have a new album out called The Stand Ins which is a companion piece to last years excellent The Stage Names. In a brilliant bit of pre album release promotion, the band enlisted several of their peers to cover, acoustically, one song each from their album. The resulting covers (by a myriad of artists including Bon Iver, David Vandervelde, Crooked Fingers, and more) are fantastic and, having listened to them before I listened to the album itself, made for a very unique listening experience the first time I popped The Stand Ins in. Below I have posted a couple of my favorite covers. The rest of them can be found here.

Crooked Fingers - Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel, 1979


Zykos - On Tour With Zykos


Bon Iver - Blue Tulip


AC Newman w/ Will Sheff - Lost Coastlines


Okkervil River - Blue Tulip (mp3)

Buy The Stand Ins here

Bon Iver on Conan

Here's a video of Bon Iver performing "Flume" on Conan the other night. I'm sure everyone has heard this song or seen some sort of live incantation of it over the last year or so, but this version is slightly different, featuring a fourth member who was not present every other time I've seen the band perform. Adding a fourth harmony line doesn't so much change the song as it simply makes everything a bit more rich and full.

Bon Iver - Flume (live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien)



Bon Iver - Flume (mp3)

Buy For Emma, Forever Ago here

The Calm Blue Sea album review

The Calm Blue Sea’s debut, self titled LP (recorded at Cacophony Recorders with local wunderkind producer and engineer Erik Wofford this summer) begins gently with a delicately strummed set of guitar strings and a warm wash of delay. The music then builds and swells before dropping out again and being replaced by a tranquil piano melody. All of this takes place during the first 90 of the album’s 2787 seconds. Expect more of this. The Calm Blue Sea is an album brimming with tenuous lows and exalting highs, rife with both tranquility and chaos. Each track slides gracefully into the next (this is a gapless album) to create an overarching composition that quickly becomes greater than the sum of its individual parts. Having seen the band live many times, I can tell you that this seamlessness carries over to the live show, often leaving the audience unsure of where one song ends; the next begins, or even when to applaud.


If I were to map out opening track "We Happy Few" in terms of song dynamics, the map would resemble a sequence of three mountains, each increasing in size, with low, peaceful valleys between. The song slowly builds into peak one, then the music quickly drops for a languorous moment before climbing to an epic crescendo, only to drop again, hinting at an end that is still minutes away, and finally climb to its highest peak yet. "We Happy Few" slides effortlessly into what I would call the albums single, if a single can be seven and a half minutes long. "Literal" is the only track to feature vocals and rises and falls beautifully from end to end. The last three minutes of "Literal" are a constant build to a dizzying high of crashing drums, crushing bass, squealing guitars and keyboards that satiate the song’s soundscape.


The Calm Blue Sea - Literal (mp3)


My favorite moment on The Calm Blue Sea is the decrescendo towards the three quarter mark of "The Rivers That Run Beneath This City", wherein each band member slowly drops out of the mix, stripping the song first of guitar, then bass, then piano, and finally of drums for a brief moment of dead silence before the song crashes back into life. In a genre full of lots of slow builds and sudden drops, it’s nice to see a band focus on the comedown too.


The Calm Blue Sea is an album that I would describe as methodically proportioned and barely constrained servings of melody and chaos. At times the band is downright mathematical in their precision, interlacing and intertwining intricate piano and guitar lines while the rhythm section pounds away on the low end, then with a sudden crash of stick to snare, all hell breaks loose, but always perfectly on command. The band clearly draws a large amount of influence from this era’s great Post Rock bands such as Mogwai, Mono, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. That’s not all I hear though. I hear Pink Floyd. I hear Zeppelin. I hear Siamese Dream. I hear the influence of an entire era of music that chose big loud tube amps in combination with delay and distortion pedals over a Wah-wah pedal and a solid state amp. I really love this album and I expect great things from these 5 musicians in the future.


The Calm Blue Sea is being self released by the band and is currently available for purchase digitally from the following locations as well as at their shows and local record shops around Austin.

Buy The Calm Blue Sea at emusic

Buy The Calm Blue Sea at Amazon

Frightened Rabbit live album in October

According to a news blurb I just read on Pitchfork, Scotland's own Frightened Rabbit will be releasing a live album on Oct 21st called Liver! Lung! FR!. The album is being released by FatCat and features some guest vocals from James Graham of The Twilight Sad. Weeeee that sounds pretty kick ass. This is a perfect excuse for me to link all of you to some great videos of one of their semi-recent Austin shows at The Mohawk. The folks over at Switchburn are to thank for these lovely visuals.

Frightened Rabbit - The Greys (live at the Mohawk 06.05.08)



There are 3 more videos from this show here in much larger size. Be sure to check out the rest of the site too as it is chock full o' rock and roll videos.

The Walkmen - In The New Year (live)

The Walkmen recently filmed a set with Juan's Basement for Pitchfork.tv and the first part was posted today. It's hard to remember a band I've seen live before who play with as much passion and energy as The Walkmen do, and that energy is overly evident in the strained muscles running around Hamilton Leithauser's neck as he reaches way way deep for those awesome yells. Check this one out for sure and be sure to keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3.



The Walkmen - In The New Year (mp3)

Buy You & Me here

Wilco and Fleet Foxes covering Bob Dylan

Oh man, this is too perfect, Wilco and Fleet Foxes covering "I Shall Be Released" in Spokane, WA. As you watch this video, don't be surprised when a weird feeling overtakes you, the feeling of a hidden itch being scratched, or a desire you were unaware that you had suddenly being fulfilled. In a word, it's perfect. These bands were meant to cover this song in just this manner. Good stuff.



via You Ain't No Picasso