Album Review: Super XX Man

Scott Garred, Super XX Man, writes and plays straightforward, melodic music. Exemplifying Thoreau’s simplify, simplify, simplify mantra, Garred and his bandmates play what needs playing and leave the rest behind. With an acoustic guitar, accordion, flute, harmonica and unabashed sincerity, their new album, X, lifts the spirit and, on occassion, uses humor to remind us of the joy music and life can bring.

A few of the articles I’ve read about Garred compare him to Willie Nelson, one of my favorite artists (and someone I saw in concert last month). While X’s sound doesn’t remind me of Willie, I do understand the comparison. The simplicity and honesty that encompass Garred’s music reminds me of classic Willie Nelson albums like Red Headed Stranger. Maybe this is one the Nelson albums Garred references in A Garage Apartment, the fourth track on X.



X opens with Collecting Rocks, a graceful song with the accompanying vocals of Ali Wesly, whose voice is warm and so so sweet. The album then transitions from a song about love to a song about falling out of love. The vocals on Up Up Up remind me of a somber Tom Petty, and the melancholy is somehow reassuring.

Usual Way is an odd, endearing track. With an accordion and one goofy banjo scat, the song ambles along and then segues into lyrics I didn’t see coming: Don’t doubt my faith. Don’t doubt my Savior, my Grace. Don’t doubt my outcome. Don’t doubt my outlook. Don’t doubt my place in this life. And then the accordion kicks back in and the track wraps.

A Garage Apartment makes me sing a telephone number. I’m not sure how it does it, but it does. 458-4492 458-4492 458-4492… And then there’s a song about bottle caps. It might sound weird, but, just like the rest of the album, it works.



Moving forward on the record, Grace is haunting and slightly-discordant; Coulee City is upbeat, with a country-music feel; and Stroll On Through New Orleans has a chorus that makes me sing along: bum bum, bum-bum, bum bum, bum-bum…

See You In The Evening closes the album with brushed drums, Ali Wesly’s vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica and what I think is a xylophone. Blended together like a good fruit smoothie, all of these components end the record with harmonizing perfection.

For more information about this album and Super XX Man, visit Hush Records and MySpace.

Downloads:
Super XX Man | Collecting Rocks [MP3]
Super XX Man | I Can't Figure Out These Bottle Caps [MP3]

Saturday Roundup

Stereogum is running a Red Hot Chili Peppers giveaway and CNN discusses the RHCP album leak.

HeroHill is running a Go! Team giveaway.

WeHeartPrints posted the artwork of Catia Chien. (Very Affordable)



Scott Adams discusses Gender Pay Disparity on the DilbertBlog.

Gorilla vs. Bear posted a ridiculously good song by Martin Crane.

David Sedaris, in the May 8th edition of The New Yorker, writes about the pressures of gift-giving. As always, Sedaris writes with wit and humor, and even manages to throw in a skeleton to boot.

The DCist interviews John Vanderslice, who discusses Stereogum, Larghearted Boy and other music blogs.

Random Wiki pointed me to information regaring Setthathirath.

The artwork for the new Pearl Jam album is creepy, and Fernando Apodaca, the artist who created it, has an equally creepy web site.

This month's issue of Vanity Fair highlights environmentalists and the green movement – because green is the new black, or so they say. Three web sites featured are TreeHugger, Idealbite, Grist Magazine and StopGlobalWarming.

Downloads:
The Essex Green | Don't Know Why (You Stay) [MP3]
Dirty Three | Doris [MP3]
Mouse on Mars | Wipe that Sound [MP3]
Visit PitchPerfectPR for information regarding these bands and others.

Flashback Friday: Philip Roth

This week, instead of having an album flashback, I'm going with a book. With the release of Philip Roth's new novel, Everyman, I thought I'd post a review of The Humain Stain I originally wrote for The Charleston City Paper in 2000. Philip Roth is one of my favorite authors, and The Human Stain is one of my favorite Roth novels.



Philip Roth writes with uncommon clarity, and his cerebral novels place him in a modern-day authorial trinity. Alongside John Updike and Don Delillo, Philip Roth is an American literary icon and Nobel Laureate in waiting. His novel, The Human Stain, further validates this distinction. Nathan Zuckerman, a recurring Roth character, is the story’s voice and pseudo-author. Zuckerman’s narrative is set in 1998 amid Presidential scandal, and it revolves around Coleman Silk, a Classics professor and Dean Emeritus of Athena College.

The Human Stain opens with Coleman Silk abandoning his academic career under false accusations of racism. When speaking of two always-absent students, Coleman uses the word ‘spooks’ in its original ghostly sense. Unfortunate for Coleman, the two missing specters are African American and Delphine Roux, a new dean, is power-hungry, self righteous, and insecure. Delphine’s racist charges bewilder the aged professor and stress his wife to a literal death. In disgust, Coleman walks away from Athena, blaming its faculty for his wife’s demise. He firmly believes that the faculty “killed her as if they’d taken aim and fired a bullet into her heart,” and Coleman wants this tragedy exposed and forever documented in a book.

Enter Nathan Zuckerman, the writer. Even though the planned book is never written, Coleman and Nathan create a late-sixties early-seventies best-buddy kind of friendship. Coleman confides in Nathan and ends Nathan’s self-imposed hermitage. Once their friendship matures, Coleman tells Nathan about his Viagra-enhanced love affair with Faunia Farley, an illiterate college custodian half his age - his self-defined Voluptas. After two years of suffering, Coleman is happy enough to flirt in Latin.

Reenter Delphine Roux, the bitch. A self-important, look down her nose, stir up some trouble, bitch. Delphine discovers Nathan’s newfound romance and aims to ruin his born-again life. Delphine Roux mirrors Kenneth Star, and her Puritanical intrusiveness is clever social parody. In Chapter 3, Philip Roth removes his thinly veiled satire and offers five provocative pages about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, which is frank and roll-around-on-the-floor funny.

The humor fades however, when Delphine’s witch-hunt creates in Coleman contempt of contemporary American culture – a hypersensitive land of the free. The pursuit of happiness and freedom of speech are nice until society deems your words or lifestyle immoral, odd, or unfashionable. Coleman is tired of being ‘appropriate’. “The current code word for reining in most any deviation from the wholesome guidelines and thereby making everybody ‘comfortable’.”

Why would anyone in their seventies deprive themselves of happiness, just to make others comfortable? For societal reasons, Coleman had done so in the past and refuses to do so in the present. He led a long fraudulent life to make others (and himself) more comfortable. Coleman’s secret haunts him, and, until mid-novel, Philip Roth hides it from the reader. Once Coleman’s character development seems complete, Roth drops a bomb, shattering the book’s spine. A new level of complexity is reached, increasing exponentially the absurdness of Coleman’s demise.

The Human Stain is a vertebra in the backbone of great literature. Philip Roth compassionately and critically discusses political correctness, Bill Clinton’s escapades, Viagra love, and racial tensions. The Human Stain is a lucid snapshot of 20th Century America, taken without filters and painstakingly developed with care.

Roth Readables:
New York Times | Pen Award for Philip Roth
The New Yorker | The Great Enemy
Random Wiki | Nils Gabriel Sefstrom

Unrelated InSound Downloads:
Camera Obscura | I Need All The Friends I Can Get [MP3]
Asobi Seksu | Thursday [MP3]
Brightback Morning Light | Everybody Daylight [mP3]

Gogol Bordello

Normally, when I stumble into something, it hurts. For instance, if I stumble into a tree or a wall or a giant aardvark, I generally say something like ouch and get left with a bruise and/or abrasion.

This wasn't the case on April 24th, when I stumbled into Gogol Bordello via Leah's post about the film Everything is Illuminated. Leah mentioned that Eugene Hutz (who steals the show in the movie) was in a band called Gogol Bordello. So, I found their web site and their MySpace page and I started listening...



If it were possible for something to be very unique, Gogol Bordello would be it. Mixing together punk, gypsy music, ska, reggea and the kitchen sink, Gogol Bordello creates a musical genre in which only they reside. With vocals in four languages, I'm not always sure what they're singing, but I really don't mind. I just sit back, listen and enjoy what NPR calls a multicultural mashup.

Downloads/Whatnot:
Gogol Bordello | Gypsy Part of Town [MP3]
Gogol Bordello | Little Spy [MP3]
Gogol Bordello | The Last Wish of the Bride [MP3]
Random Wiki | History of Worcestershire

Album Review: Band of Horses

Band of Horses | Everything all The Time | SubPop Records

The first few bars of Everything all the Time, the debut album of Band of Horses, flashes me back to Us and Them by Pink Floyd - and then the vocals kick in and the comparison flies out the window.

With a unique ethereal sound, Ben Bridwell (guitar/vocals) and Mat Brooke (guitars), open the album with The First Song and then move into the more up-tempo Wicked Gil. Bridwell’s vocals are high-pitched and likable, and each track on the album surrounds his voice with both lush instrumentation and stripped-down acoustics. Our Swords opens with a simple bass line and then carries a catchy drum beat (that I quixotically keep trying to play) throughout; The Funeral shifts from quiet to epic and back again with ease; Part One is acoustic and beautiful, with a reference to Carolina, which makes it all the more endearing. Yes, I’m biased.



Even though the bearded duo look a little like Iron & Wine, the similarity ends there – many Band of Horses songs (like The Great Salt Lake) open quietly and crescendo into layered, energetic sound. Weed Party opens with a yee-haw and is a straight-forward rock-n-roll single.

The album closes with my three favorite tracks. I Go To The Barn Because I Like The has a strange name, but it's the most melodic song on the album - acoustic guitar, harmonizing vocals and great lyrics (okay so maybe there is an Iron & Wine comparison) converge, and the world is a better place for three minutes and six seconds. Monsters follows and begins with the same laid back feel. Then it picks up the pace and the album rises once more, before ending quietly and introspectively with St. Augustine.

If you can’t already tell, I really like this record; so far, it’s my favorite album of 2006. To me, this type of album is what a music blog is all about – hopefully, a few people will read this post and, hopefully, Band of Horses will gain a few more fans.

Downloads and Links:
Band of Horses | The Great Salt Lake [MP3] | SubPop Records
Band of Horses | The Funeral [MP3] | SubPop Records
Band of Horses | MySpace
Random Wiki | Shigeru_Oda

Danielson Ships in One Week

I posted about Danielson a couple weeks ago, and I'm going to post about them again now. And I'll probably post about them next week too, just for good measure.

Danielson's new album, Ships, is out next Tuesday, so you better get prepared. Be sure to get out your foam tree and wear it when you camp out at your local music store Monday night. I can't remember the last time an album created so much buzz.

Can you hear it?
I can.
Who ha what?

To help get you through the week, there are links below to MP3s available on the Danielson web site. My favorite Danielson Famile song, Rallying the Dominoes, is amongst the downloadables.



Downloads:
Danielson | Did I Step on Your Trumpet [MP3]
Br. Danielson | Things Against Stuff [MP3]
Br. Danielson | Daughters Will Tune You [MP3]
Danielson Famile | Rallying the Dominoes [MP3]

Readables:
Wiki | Danielson Famile
Cornerstone Magazine | Daniel Smith Speaks
Random Wiki | Gamma Leporis

Pearl Jam

Since Pearl Jam is such a small, up-and-coming band, I thought they could use some extra press...

When Pearl Jam’s Ten was released in 1991, I was working as a waiter in Hope Mills, North Carolina, and one of my coworkers listened to the album all the time. He let me borrow it one night, and I’ve been a Pearl Jam fan ever since. The day Vs. was released in 1993, I picked it up at a little music store in Chapel Hill and listened to the album in my cramped dorm room over and over and over again. After the Vitology release in 1994, I saw Pearl Jam in concert with my best friend, Matt (who also got me tickets to Pink Floyd). The show was amazing, even though a crowd-surfer just about knocked me out. With each subsequent album release, I’ve been there, waiting in line (yes, I’m a big nerd), looking forward to new music by one of my favorite bands.

Tomorrow, Pearl Jam’s new self-titled album hits the shelves, and I should be getting a pre-ordered copy in the mail. And (sorry about this, Leah) when I get home from work, I'm going to play it loud enough to scare the cats.



Rolling Stone says it’s the best Pearl Jam album in ten years, and I’m hoping they’re right. I’ll let you know with an album review in a week or two (I have to let the music sink in). This month’s magazine also has an interview with Eddie Vedder, and an extended edition is on their web site.

Monday Morning Concert:
John Vanderslice | Up Above the Sea [MP3]
John Vanderslice | Time Travel Is Lonely [MP3]
John Vanderslice | Live 021506 [MP3 Flac Ogg]

Readables:
Rolling Stone | Pearl Jam Album Review
Rolling Stone | Great Interview with Eddie Vedder
Random Wiki | You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3