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2007:06:27:10:21. Wednesday. PANEL. Just a brief announcement: I'll be on a panel discussing local music blogging at High Noon Saloon, tonight at 5:30. Should be a hell of a time.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:25:15:04. Monday. SMALLNESS. It's things like this that make it impossible for me to support Barack Obama:
Let's review: In Act One, Barack Obama clasped hands with the coal industry and promised subsidies for liquefied coal fuel. In Act Two, environmentalists growled that Obama was backing one of the worst technologies ever devised from the standpoint of global warming, and, eventually, the senator backed away, which in turn made the coal industry very upset. So now we've reached the finale, in which Obama tries to pacify all sides with a clever compromise.
He's a bad candidate for the same reason that Fred Thompson is a bad candidate: He's accomplished little in government and doesn't seem to know what he's doing. It's hard to fault progressives for not noticing this, though, because our other choices kind of stink as well -- it's the story that's most completely getting buried by the story of the even worse Republican field. As of now I will be writing in Russ Feingold.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:15:08:00. Friday. NO!: DEAR AUGUST (#276, JUN 10 2007).
Dear August apparently have a history with Dylan covers, which is not much of a surprise given their sound. This faithful cover of "The Man in Me" -- explicitly dedicated to the Dude, in case there were non-Lebowski nerds in the audience -- fit well with the rest of their set, but the switch in vocalists was kind of jarring. They have a few songs of their own sung by their male vocalist, but they hadn't played any of them and I didn't really see it coming.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:14:08:00. Thursday. NO!: DEAR AUGUST (#275, JUN 10 2007).
Thanks to additions to their Myspace page made today, I discovered that this song has a name and is from Dear August's upcoming album. It's also probably my favorite tune that they played -- it's a little more folksy, with a sweet melody underlying it that doesn't quite recall other folk-pop acts quite so much. I hope it's representative of the record as a whole.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:12:17:40. Tuesday. MUSIC IN 2006: TOP 15 ALBUMS.
The Hold Steady I'm a compulsive list-maker by nature, and a strict one when it comes to these end of the year lists. So deciding to name co-#1's took a lot of going back and forth between these two albums. Ultimately it was realizing their surprising similarities and one big difference that led me to list them this way. The Long Winters made my favorite power-pop record of a crowded 2003 with When I Pretend to Fall, and they take it a step further on this one. I was a little worried when I heard the stop-gap Ultimatum EP because it was all acoustic and slowed-down, but the title track appears on this album as one of several rollicking barnstormers late in the set. "Ultimatum," "Rich Wife" and "(It's a) Departure" all push farther into the territory of straight-up guitar rock than any of their previous material has. Earlier in the album, they run over a wide swath of the power-pop genre, with tracks such as "Pushover," the opener; "Honest," a paean to the attractiveness of the fake connection between a singer and an audience; and particularly "Sky Is Open," a bright piece of key and guitar pop that rivals any of the upbeat material produced by the likes of former labelmates Death Cab For Cutie. I noted recently the crazy money I'd be willing to pay to see these guys live, and the reality of it turned out to be at least $13. But for as great as this record is, I'm skeptical about what kind of staying power it's going to have. It is a pop record, first and foremost, and pop is nothing if not disposable. The reason I ultimately had to give the Hold Steady the #1A slot instead of #2 is that I think Boys and Girls in America is going to be around for a while. This is not to say that it's not also a pop record -- in some ways its tunnelvisionary's focus on parties, drugs, girls and adolescent loss make it even more pop than Putting the Days to Bed. But along with its essential pop nature, this is a genre watershed album. The Hold Steady's last album was an unlikely success -- Springsteenian and Mellencampy bar rock seems an odd appeal for the 2005 indie scene that feted Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah -- that could have set them up to crash this time out. They moved to a big name indie label with a major label distribution deal, they started playing more theaters and fewer clubs and they played on network TV before midnight on the east coast. And the material was not just enough to support those changes, it demanded them. There are a million reasons why this comparison is not strictly apt, but it's an album that reminds me a lot of Nirvana's Nevermind -- a much-loved indie band takes the next step up and manages to deliver an amazingly catchy record with mainstream appeal, but without toning themselves down at all. As I said previously, the first three tracks of this album could sell a million records if only the general public got to hear them. Anyone who ever grew up switching between Springsteen and the Replacements, all the kids that grew up in Chicago and Detroit and the Twin Cities in the last 20 years, and scores of others who just know what it's like. Everybody who's ever walked through a winter day with a headful of static, waiting for the massive night to come. Everybody who's ever stuck with a dirty scene to make him like you. Everybody who's ever partied and settled and run away and wanted a fake kiss to be real. We'll all be feeling this one for a long time to come. posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:12:08:00. NO!: DEAR AUGUST (#274, JUN 10 2007).
I only had a chance to see one band at this year's Marquette Waterfront Festival, and coincidentally it turned out to be a kind of similar outfit to Charlemagne, the only band I had a chance to see last year. Dear August (fka Box Elder) played an enjoyable set of folk-pop in the vein of R.E.M.'s early Byrds-y stuff or, let's say, the Byrds. Unfortunately, I had to bug out and didn't have time to buy their record, so I don't know if this song is from that (though a quick scan of the titles makes me think not) or from their forthcoming follow-up. Being outdoors, this set also gave me a chance to experiment with my audio a bit. This song was recorded with my camera's built-in mic, and the clips to come were recorded with my regular external mics. As you'll hear tomorrow, the externals win hands down, capturing a much fuller range of sound.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:07:08:00. Thursday. NO!: THE BOX SOCIAL (#273, JUN 2 2007).
I only wound up recording one clip from the Box Social's set (though they've got more that they'll be putting up somewhere), partly because I already have tons of footage of them laying around, but also because I wanted to go jump around on the floor. This song in particular is probably the biggest grower of their new record for me -- the first time I heard it I thought it was a dud, but now I find the tune sticking me pretty tightly. If you'd like it to stick with you, well, you can buy the record online, in a number of fine record shops, at one of two Milwaukee release shows on Saturday, or at the High Noon Saloon tonight, where the band will be opening for the legendary Local H, to whom they owe a bit of a stylistic debt. Should be a good one, I'd wager.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:06:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: APPARENTLY NOTHING (#272, JUN 2 2007).
The last time I saw Apparently Nothing, it was at the Cacti Hi-Fi's release show in January, and while they did an admirable job of shilling for their friends' record at that show, it was nothing compared to the way they shilled the Box Social's record last weekend. The pronouncement captured here -- that during their set the Box Social would cum and cum and cum in our ear-pussies -- was, shall we say, par for the course. The most hilarious thing? As far as I can tell, chief shiller Aaron Shekey's mom was at the show, and she spent the whole time dancing like crazy. Prepare for an eargasm, ma!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:04:08:00. Monday. NO!: APPARENTLY NOTHING (#271, JUN 2 2007).
Well, the Box Social's album finally came out on Saturday, and the Madison release show was a veritable cornucopia of local talent. Power-popsters Apparently Nothing were the first full band of the evening, playing a rare hometown set ripe with material from their upcoming EP. This song debuted in demo form on their website something like a year and a half ago and has been developed into the just the kind of song that can cut short a discussion about the sliding scale of hotness which determines how much you must pay for the Box Social's record.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:06:01:08:00. Friday. NO!: MINIPOP (#270, MAY 24 2007).
Unfortunately, Minipop played far too short a set -- only seven songs -- but their dream pop sound seemed to go over well with the crowd and I was very happy to have seen them. In fact, as they appear to be a regional touring act at best, this may have been my only chance to see them, or at least my only chance in the foreseeable future. I've got some smallish local acts in mind for my upcoming trips to Boston (Taxpayer) and Washington (Karmella's Game), and I'm hoping I can find a good local act or two for my Vancouver trip as well.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra |
The Long Winters