Saul Williams Pre-order

Saul Williams is possibly the most powerful live performer I have ever seen. He can absolutely overtake an audience. I last saw Saul a few years ago opening for The Mars Volta at an insanely packed outside show at Emo's. It appeared from the chatter amongst the crowd that not many had heard of him before, and most seemed surprised that a single man came out on stage and not a full band. The surprise got rocketed up a bit when it became apparent that Saul was just going to recite some of his poetry, but that surprise quickly faded to awe struck, jaw on the floor amazement as soon as Saul opened his mouth and started firing verbal bullets around the room. He destroyed what was probably the largest gathering of jaded hipsters the city could offer that particular night and after he left the stage, to a riotous applause from an audience that had surely just been won over, the line at the merch stand to buy his poetry book Said the Shotgun to the Head was impressive. Saul has a new album coming out soon called The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (produced by Trent Reznor) and Saul has decided to take the Radiohead approach and release his album digitally. Saul is improving the process a bit though, as he is offering the downloader their choice of digital formats, all of them completely DRM-free. You have a couple of options when it comes to buying this album. The first is to download it for free, at 192kbps, and the second is to pay a $5 donation which allows you to download at either 320kbps or in FLAC form (which is a lossless format). I'm expecting to see a lot of bands doing this in the near future. I think it's a good system, but it definitely has its limitations. For one, not all record labels are the tools of the devil, and a lot of the better independent ones do actually work really hard to promote their artists and if this system completely catches on it's going to hurt them a lot in the long run as well as limiting the number of records a person can sell. On the other hand, this puts the power right back into the consumers hands in every way. With the drop in price of excellent quality home recording options, almost anyone can make a great sounding record for a fraction of the cost, and this method allows the savings to be passed on to the consumer while allowing the artist to receive 100% of the profits. It's going to be really interesting to see how this works out in the long run. A band like Radiohead can pull this off, because everyone knows who Radiohead is, and it can work for someone like Saul Williams, because his audience is exactly the market that downloads music, reads music blogs, and generally keeps themselves informed about the bands and artists they like anyway. This is a fascinating time to be involved in the music industry, either from the corporate or consumer side of things, and I can't wait to see how this all turns out.

Preorder The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust here.

Marissa Nadler - Diamond Heart

Marissa Nadler's music is like water in a very dark room. It's very quiet, but there's a bit of an unsettling aspect to it. There always seems to be something lingering just below the surface with an image nearly distorted enough to make your mind start to turn. I know that sounds sort of ominous, but my intention is to imply mystery. Marissa also has a wonderful, haunting voice that will surely make an impact on you. "Diamond Heart" is the opening track from Marissa's new album Songs III, Bird on the Water and it's a keeper, pretty indicative of the aural experience to follow as well.

Marissa Nadler - Diamond Heart

• Buy Songs III, Bird on the Water here.
  

Beirut - Cliquot

Here's my favorite track from Beirut's exceptional new album The Flying Club Cup. Oh, what's that I hear? Is it accordion again? Indeed, it is. Consider me an accordion addict. To me, the greatest thing about the music Beirut put out is that it sounds like a room full of people playing music. That may seem a bit simplistic, but I think it describes the band's sound well. It sounds like an ultra high quality recording of an unforgettable live performance. The future is definitely bright for Zach Condon and his band of gypsies. Creating music this good at such a young age is very impressive.

Beirut - Cliquot

• From The Flying Club Cup (buy it here)

Beirut recently undertook a collaborative project with the fine folks at La Blogotheque to record a series of their inventive Take-Away Shows that covered every song on their new album. The reaction to these videos was so great that they have decided to compile them all onto a DVD and put it out for sale in the near future. These are a lot of fun. Check the videos out here.

Old Rilo B side

My magical musical experiment has netted me another forgotten gem. Back in 2002 Rilo Kiley released "The Execution of All Things" single in the UK and this song, Emotional (Until The Crickets Guide You Back), was one of the two B-sides featured on it. The song was recorded at the same time as the rest of the tracks from the Execution of All Things. It's always been a favorite of mine, and really captures a lot of the things that made Rilo Kiley such a great band back then. Highly recommended.

Rilo Kiley - Emotional (Until The Crickets Guide You Back)

Sea Wolf - Winter Windows

I took a step back the other day and sort of looked at my life from the outside in and I made a startling realization. I listen to a lot of music that features the accordion. It's pretty crazy how this instrument, which was the most ludicrous thing in the world to me as I grew up, has become as commonplace as a tambourine on stage and on record these days. It's definitely present in this new Sea Wolf song. In fact it almost is the song, taking the reins early on and gently fading towards the middle, only to reclaim its throne towards the end. Only time will tell if musical afficianados of the future will look back on these accordion tinged times with a smile or if the accordion will be this era's key-tar.

Sea Wolf - Winter Windows

Check Sea Wolf out on tour with Nada Surf this fall (no austin dates as of yet)

Listen to their Daytrotter session here.

Buy Sea Wolf's new album Leaves in the River here

Some stuff

New Final Fantasy song put up on Final Fantasy's Myspace. The song is called "Hey Dad" and features a guest spot from Zach Condon (Beirut). It is weird and pretty.

Here's Ghostland on Conan. This just doesn't translate to TV. Ghostland's music is decent but it's the whole show that makes them incredible to see and that just isn't present here.



Here's Spoon on SNL. Britt looks like he's done this a time or two before.






And finally, here is that Panda Bear DVD I posted about a long time ago. Some copyright issues came up with the selling of it and so it kind of stalled for a bit, but now it's on youtube. Check it out.

Lazy sunday

My musical experiment is into its third day and it's been successful in all the ways I had hoped and, wickedly enough, it's been every bit as annoying as I expected too. I'm currently enjoying a nice set of live and unreleased Jeff Buckley songs that are making this a lovely Sunday evening. One of the things that I figured might happen is that I would occasionally simply not be in the mood for the music that was playing. While that is certainly not the case as I type this, thanks to the Buckley, it was most definitely the case earlier today when the player hit some Jawbreaker that I was not in the mood for at all. I love Jawbreaker, but that shit can be draining and depressing when you are not feeling it. Even though I wasn't feeling Schwartzenbach today I was reminded of how awesome "Sluttering (May 4th)" off of Dear You is. This is exactly the type of rediscovery that I was hoping would take place. I acquire music at such an alarming rate and so often an album or a song goes unnoticed or is simply forgotten over time when it isn't heard enough and this song was exactly that. I used to slap "Sluttering (May 4th) on countless mix tapes but it has been a while. Hopefully I'll come across some more forgotten gems over the course of my experiment.

In other news, I went to the Caribou show at Club Deville on Friday night, here are a few notes and thoughts.

• Born Ruffians, who opened, were fantastic. I came in having never heard them and left a fan. Great Oh - Oh - Ohs all over the place, I recommend checking them out.
• Caribou was amazing. They were really tight and had a cool trippy projection show.
• The PA went out 3 fucking times during their set and was breaking up and cutting in and out during Born Ruffians' set as well. This is beyond unacceptable, Club Deville. If you can charge people $12 a head on a Friday night and pack them in, the least you can do is to provide a decent PA system. I have, literally, had more sophisticated and better sounding PA systems set up in my living room before. I'm not passing judgement yet, as this was the first large show that I've seen there, but with the booking you guys have been doing lately, there needs to be an upgrade. If this happens again, I think a lot of people will leave and not come back.

In summation; Born Ruffians were surprisingly great, Caribou was fantastic (not a surprise), and Club Deville has sound issues that need to be resolved ASAP.

Here are some songs.

Jeff Buckley - Please Send Me Someone To Love (live on WFMU)

Jawbreaker - Sluttering (May 4th)

• from Dear You

Born Ruffians - Hummingbird

• from Hummingbird EP

Born Ruffians Youtube Goodness