Blog of Dreams

If you haven’t been swept up in the craze that is IfIBlogIt, then here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor. My friend Evan Kessler has started a celebrity baiting blog that is (not so) subtlety tempting Kevin Costner to send in a photo of himself looking at the site. Full of laugh-out-loud pleas to Mr. Costner to take a career-defining step (as well as some reworked lyrics to one of the early 90’s very best power ballads), the blog displays Evan’s genuine appreciation of Costner’s classics, and even those that were, um, slightly less well-received. Go for it Ev. He will come.

Besides, Costner is in a band now apparently, so check that out. And all this time I thought baseball was his favorite hobby. Whatever, I bet his band rocks.

January - The Month @ Pop Headwound (Part 2)

Here’s your chance to catch up with some of the tracks we thought were really great this month.

MP3: David Vandervelde - Nothin' No

Vandervelde does his best at impersonating him some T. Rex, and fools just about everyone who’s never heard them. This song proves to be its own electric warrior, full of jagged, crunching guitars, and witty phrases.


MP3: Viking Moses - I Will Always Love You

Moses strips this sometimes overbearing song down to its essence, finds the heartache and makes it his own. Said the Gramophone said it best, “Some feelings can only be expressed in a few particular phrases; some things need to be said over and over, while they still hurt”.


MP3: Somme - Massless

Words aren’t necessary when you can carry this much weight on your shoulders.


MP3: Maria Taylor - Lost Time

Taylor returns this March with Lynn Teeter Flower. This delicate, beautiful folk song represents one side of her talents, as the album mixes folk with something more electronic. She’s at her best here, just that vulnerable voice floating in and out of some simple guitar chords and a lilting piano on the chorus.


MP3: Bright Eyes - Tourist Trap

What do you call home when you don’t recognize it anymore? The percussion sounds like footsteps on a gravel road, somewhere dusty and flat. Conor Oberst sounds tired of the city’s cement walls, imagines them crumbled, and leaves to find his love and bring her home, wherever that is. His heart may be an open door, but the home it leads to has been torn down.


MP3: The Swimmers - Goodbye

This one is like Damien Jurado‘s “Honey Baby” meets A.C. Newman. Just a really pleasant pop song that rolls along under bright skies as it tries to say its goodbyes.


MP3: Andrew Bird - Heretics

Bird is set to return on March 20th with Armchair Apocrypha, his debut for Fat Possum. Bird spoke to Billboard last year while working on the album. He said the songs are “big and spacious, with long, stretched out phrases, a sense of large, open air. But it's also really concise. I'm trying to keep it to 10 songs, but short is pretty hard to pull off when you're trying to create space”.


MP3: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Graceland

What if the Mississippi Delta was shining like a Mac Power Book?


MP3: The Shins - Sleeping Lessons

I have to say that I’m really pretty disappointed in Wincing the Night Away as a whole. The Shins have never changed my life, nor are they favorite of mine, but I was kinda hoping they’d do something remarkable with so much time between albums. Instead they trade their hyperactive songs overflowing with hooks for something more “mature” and “slick“ and “blah”. “Sleeping Lessons” kicks off the album right though. It starts off dark and moody, with a winding chorus, before building up to a blast of power chords that finally relieve the tension.


MP3: The National Lights - Midwest Town

The Dead Will Walk, Dear is a debut album filled with dark little murder ballads and ghost songs. It’s a stunningly cohesive record filled with this and 9 other songs equally as beautiful and secretive.


MP3: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - The Sons Of Cain

Ted sounds reinvigorated on this one, frantic yet self-assured. He’s in his comfort zone, the band is prime - all punk rock fury mixed with some Who-like power chords - and it all comes on like nothing we’ve heard from him in years.

************************************************

January - The Month @ Pop Headwound (Part 1):

In retrospect, I picked a great time to start Pop Headwound. January 2007 was a top-notch month for new music. So good in fact that it deserves a little recap to give you folks a chance to catch up on some great albums/tracks you may have missed the first time through. Here’s a recap of some of the best albums released over the past few weeks:



First comes Of Montreal. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is my first experience with this band, despite the fact this was their 10th album since 1997! This is pretty much the album I was hoping for from the Shins, a reckless pop album that goes off in hundreds of different tangents, shifting in sound and tempo every chance it gets. This is actually much more synth-driven than the Shins too, with more of a soul/80’s influence taboot. Under all the beautifully discordant music are the desperate lyrics of a man at the end of a relationship, very quickly coming apart at the seams. An early contender for a top-ten spot at year’s end.

MP3 - Suffer For Fashion
MP3 - Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse



Menomena is another reason why indie rock is off to a great start in 2007. Friend and Foe was released on 1/23, and my local Brooklyn indie-record store got one copy that day. Needless to say when I got there sometime after 6 it had long since been sold. I’m still without a purchased copy. Luckily it’s streaming here. Pitchfork claimed that this is the first great indie-rock record of the year. Another early contender for the Top 10.

MP3 - Muscle n Flo
MP3 - Wet And Rusting




San Francisco rock band Deerhoof released Friend Opportunity on 1/23. The album continues their move away from the more dissonant sound of their early albums to friendlier song structures. Much more concise than 2005’s The Runners Four, the album maintains that album’s focus on short, tight, pop-rock songs. However, it’s Satomi Matsuzaki's childlike cooing that will be the deciding factor in whether you get Deerhoof or not. Underneath the voice is some really interesting rock music, full of complex chord progressions and odd time signatures.

MP3 - Matchbook Seeks Maniac
MP3 - +81



Clap Your Hands Say Yeah released Some Loud Thunder this week, and it’s been garnering reviews all week that sound eerily similar to the one I posted last week. The aesthetic choices they use on several songs are disappointing, especially the fuzzed out album-opening title track, but the album does boast a denser production and some sharper musicianship than the brilliant debut. It just doesn’t have that album’s barrage of really-good-to-great songs from start to finish.

MP3 - Emily Jean Stock
MP3 - Underwater (You and Me)



The Broken West released I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On this month as well. The album has an endearing, workmanlike sense about it, and sports the best 1-2-3 punch in a while with opening tracks “On the Bubble”, “So It Goes”, and “Down In The Valley” . Lacking the unpredictable genius or virtuoso musicianship some of these other albums feature, the album simply gives you strong melodies wrapped in 70’s A.M. radio power-pop. Reminiscent at times of The Pernice Bros., Teenage Fanclub, & The Honeydogs, the band shows great promise for the future.

MP3 - So It Goes
MP3 - Down in the Valley




And sneaking in under the radar was the Kill Buffalo EP from The Roadside Graves, What Happened To Him Could Happen To Anyone. Basically a way for fans to catch up with the band before April’s release of the No One Will Know Where You’ve Been LP, the EP does a good job of highlighting a few of the band’s old favorites and wetting appetites for new ones with the new album’s first single, “West Coast”.

MP3 - West Coast
MP3 - Jesus Is A Friend Of The Family

Buy these albums from Amazon, Insound, or Emusic. The Roadside Graves EP is available at Amazon, Itunes, or thru Kill Buffalo.

Check back tomorrow for a round-up of some of the great tracks that 2007 has offered so far!


*************************************************************

Wilco - "A Ghost Is Born - Re-Imagined"

In 2004 Wilco released A Ghost Is Born, the long awaited follow-up to their critically acclaimed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The album came at the peek of public interest in Wilco, as everyone was anxious to see what the band would produce after what many considered one of the finest albums of the young decade. It didn’t disappoint. Yet again Wilco seemingly had a world of positive critical feedback in its pocket, and the album debuted high on the charts, breaking into the top ten in its first week. The album garnered almost universal applause, even scoring two Grammys along the way. By all accounts it was a huge hit in the indie-rock world, with Wilco ending the year headlining a show with Sleater-Kinney and The Flaming Lips at Madison Square Garden.

It’s hard to complain about an album that yielded such a positive response. When it first came out I remember thinking immediately that it wasn‘t as great as YHF, but maybe I‘d feel differently if I gave it time. But that just didn‘t happen. It wasn‘t an album I felt compelled to go back to very often, and eventually I just stopped trying altogether. Listening to it now I can’t help but feel that it has flaws that keep it from being the classic follow-up it should have, and could have, been.

Recorded during a tumultuous time in the life of lead singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy, the band, and especially Tweedy, sound exhausted on many of the key songs. Several of the songs were performed live for a long time before they were recorded and wound up in completely different versions than fans anticipated on the album. Deconstructing the songs on YHF was a brilliant move, as the songs were rebuilt into shapes that were more pleasing than where they started. The same thing that worked so well on that album seemed to suck the life out of the Ghost songs. People described how “warm” the record sounded, most likely due to the spontaneous recording techniques and the minimal overdubs. Listening now I can’t help but feel the record sounds just the opposite. It has a coldness to it, a distance, that sounds like it was recorded by expert musicians who were somewhat detached from what was going on around them.

This was, and is, especially frustrating for one simple reason: the songs themselves on A Ghost Is Born are every bit as great as those on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Tweedy may have been suffering at the time, but he channeled all his pain into the lyrics to brilliant effect. Lyrically the album raises the already high standard he set on YHF and 1999’s Summerteeth. These songs deserved the spirited musical accompaniment that those from YHF got, and only a few times did that happen.

The different versions of songs that appear below are of course not the exact versions I would want on a studio album. My idea is that there would be studio versions that use these arrangements/impassioned performances to a better result. So, again with a tip of the cap to the “Playing God” column over at Stylus, I present “A Ghost Is Born - Re-Imagined”. Taking live tracks and alternate songs from the time period of the recording, I’m presenting to you how I wish the album would have been released. Hope you enjoy:

1. “At Least That’s What You Said” - The album version is safe in large part for the breath-taking guitar solos that Tweedy unleashes during the second half of the song. The song is head and shoulders above everything else that follows as far as a passionate band performance goes, and proved to the world that Tweedy was a highly underestimated guitarist for far too long.

2. “Hell Is Chrome”

3. MP3 - Spiders (Kidsmoke) - It seemed everyone had an opinion about the drastic reincarnation of this song from the live performances to the studio one. At some point during recording “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” was transformed from what sounded like it could be a modern-rock radio hit to a huge, Krautrock-influenced monster (check out “Hallogallo“ by Neu! to see what the band was listening to at the time). The result was perhaps the most divisive part of the album. There is no doubt that the album version is tremendous, but early live versions had all the same aspects that make the album version great, and contained more melody and, well, fun. This version is from the summer of 2003.

4. MP3 - Muzzle Of Bees - I feel this song suffered the most between early live performances to studio, as it went from a spry, bouncy pop-rock song to a long, slow, droney one. The studio version does build up to a memorable finish, but you have to sit through the first 4 minutes to get there. Enjoy it here in its original form, again from the summer of 2003.

5. “Handshake Drugs” - live version from Kicking Television. I’m cheating here technically, because this version has Nels Cline playing guitar, and he wasn’t officially in the band until after AGIB was released. Whatever. The album version lacks the spark this song had live before the album and then again after.

6. “Wishful Thinking”

7. “Company In My Back” - This is one of the very few studio versions that improves the live versions from before release.

8. “Kicking Television” - from the live album. This is not really here for any other reason than the original album is 12 songs, so this one ought to be too. I just like it better than “I’m A Wheel”, and the studio version of this song that’s out there lacks the ferocity of this live take.

9. “Theologians”

10. MP3 - Less Than You Think - another live version, again from the summer of 2003. Forget what I wrote about “Spiders”, this song was the most divisive on the album, what with 12 minutes of effin’ drone. The song started out as a really beautiful little folk song with nice harmonies. Seriously, how the band allowed the album version to see the light of day is beyond me.

11. “The Late Greats” - the album version is more concise than the live versions that appeared before the album came out, making it a shorter, livelier song.

12. MP3 - Not For The Season - a live version from 10/22/02. Again, I’m cheating here because this song dates back to the YHF sessions, and appeared on Loose Fur’s debut album. But, this is one of my favorite Tweedy songs, and although there are plenty of versions available through bootlegs, Loose Fur, and the Sunken Treasure DVD, Wilco never released a definitive studio version. It was played at many shows between YHF and AGIB, so I don’t feel guilty including it, as it would have made a tremendous album closer.

Sorry to “Hummingbird”. Like the song, especially the lyrics, just not as much as what’s here. Besides, it would make a killer b-side.

*****************************************************************

New Wilco album news - “Sky Blue Sky”

*****************************************************************

Album Review: the National Lights - "The Dead Will Walk, Dear"

Hearts and Bones

The songs on The Dead Will Walk, Dear, the debut album from The National Lights, are some of the most beautifully haunted you are likely to hear all year. Literally. They all touch on death, ghosts, non-accidental drowning, and living with dark secrets. Inspired by American gothic writing, particularly Flannery O’Connor, lead-singer and songwriter Jacob Berns takes the template of a traditional-folk murder ballad and spreads it out over 10 songs. Centered around an unnamed river and the lost love at the bottom of it, the songs have a easy, gentle flow to them that belie the violence alluded to in the lyrics.

The album is nothing if not concise. The 10 songs clock in and out in under 30 minutes, and often drift one into the next like a series of pretty little nightmares. It’s as if the songs came to Berns in his dreams, woke him up, and left him scrambling in the dark to get them down before they disappeared. He takes the idea of Neil Young’s “Down By The River” to a conceptual extreme, ditching the gun and electric guitar, and instead use bare hands and acoustics to do the deed.

The album works in part due to the subtlety of the stories. If you’re not paying attention the album plays out as a series of lost love songs, and you miss the band’s true intent. Songs such as the sublimely beautiful “Riverbed” and “The Water Is Wide” rarely do more than dance around the edges of the murderous event, usually only hinting at the act itself or the reasons behind it. The closest we may get is when he sings “somewhere there’s a heart in your body, you hide it well, but sooner or later, babe, I’ll get to it” on album centerpiece “Buried Treasure”. What sounds like a confident declaration to a coy new love on first listen slowly shows itself as a literal threat. “There was a time when your body kept on beating; all you’re good for now is bones for buried treasures in the shoreline”, Berns sings later in the same song.

The Dead Will Walk, Dear also works because of the consistency of the songs. What the album lacks in stylistic diversity is more than made up for with the relentlessly beautiful melodies. The harmony parts of Sonya Maria Cotton are reminiscent of Natalie Merchant, and balance out Berns’ lead in a sweet and understated way. She is most prominent on “Swimming In The Swamp”, ironically the song with the most direct violent imagery. Her voice rides side by side with Berns throughout the song, and swaps into the lead for the chorus, seemingly leaving her as the new love and next victim for the narrator.

The National Lights have proven that taking an age-old song idea, in this case the murder ballad, and injecting it with new life can yield stunning results. The Dead Will Walk, Dear is a noteworthy debut, filled top to bottom with lovely little folk songs that can snuggle up between Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Numbered Days and fit right in.

*********************************************************

Read the recent Pop Headwound exclusive interview with Jacob Berns here.

Check out these 2 songs from the upcoming The Dead Will Walk, Dear:

O, Ohio

Midwest Town

Buy The Dead Will Walk, Dear here. Visit the band at their myspace to hear more!

***********************************************************

New Music - Andrew Bird, "Heretics"

Andrew Bird’s The Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005; Righteous Babe) was one of those albums I had heard about for quite a while before checking out. I picked it up only after connecting the dots between about ½ the ’05 year-end lists I read, figuring I was missing out on something special. Turned out I was right. Since then it’s been in a pretty regular rotation around the Pop Headwound office (bedroom, work, car, etc.). Songs like “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left”, “Fake Palindromes”, and “Masterfade” mixed enough of a folk-jazz aesthetic into its indie rock boundaries that it became something wholly original sounding.

Bird is set to return on March 20th with Armchair Apocrypha, his debut for Fat Possum (also, by the way, the new home of Dinosaur Jr.). Bird spoke to Billboard last year while working on the album. He said the songs are “big and spacious, with long, stretched out phrases, a sense of large, open air. But it's also really concise. I'm trying to keep it to 10 songs, but short is pretty hard to pull off when you're trying to create space”. Read the whole article here.

Check out this song from Armchair Apocrypha:

MP3 - Heretics

And this one from The Mysterious Production of Eggs:

MP3 - A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head

And hear more at his myspace page. Don’t miss “Fake Palindromes”.

*****************************************************

Maria Taylor - "Lynn Teeter Flower"

So, there’s more news coming out of Saddle Creek. In addition to Tuesday’s news regarding the upcoming Bright Eyes releases, they have also announced a new album from Maria Taylor, formerly of the band Azure Ray, and now a full time solo artist. The new album is called Lynn Teeter Flower, and will hit stores on March 6 along with the new Bright Eyes Four Winds EP. The album is the follow-up to 2005’s critically acclaimed 11:11.

The songs I’ve heard, which are available here for download, show the diversity that she is capable of. “A Good Start” is wispy electro-pop with a big chorus. Take out the electric guitars that crash the party as the song is winding down and this might fit into a VH-1 Sunday morning countdown. But don’t take out the electric guitars. Add more if you can. A bit more interesting is “Lost Time”. It takes a somber, reflective lyric and sets it to a delicate, frail folk melody. The song is poignant and insightful as it reflects on some tough luck and, well, time lost.

MP3 - Lost Time
MP3 - A Good Start

Check out Maria on tour this winter/spring:

Thu-Mar-01, Norman, OK, Opolis
Fri-Mar-02. Austin, TX, Emo's
Sat-Mar-03, Denton, TX, Hailey’s
Sun-Mar-04, Houston, TX, TBA
Mon-Mar-05, Baton Rouge, LA, Spanish Moon
Wed-Mar-07, Orlando, FL, The Social
Thu-Mar-08, St. Augustine, FL, Café 11
Fri-Mar-09, Athens, GA, Caledonia Lounge
Mon-Mar-12, Chapel Hill, NC Local 506
Tue-Mar-13, Charlottesville, NC, Satellite Ballroom
Wed-Mar-14, Washington, DC, Rock and Roll Hotel
Thu-Mar-15, Philadelphia, PA, First Unitarian Church
Fri-Mar-16, New York, NY, Mercury Lounge
Sun-Mar-18, Cambridge, MA, T.T. the Bears
Wed-Mar-21, Toronto, ONT, El Mocombo
Thu-Mar-22, Gambier, OH, Kenyon College
Fri-Mar-23, Chicago, IL, Beat Kitchen
Sat-Mar-24, Minneapolis, MN, Triple Rock
Tue-Mar-27, Seattle, WA, Tractor Tavern
Wed-Mar-28, Portland, OR, Doug Fir
Fri-Mar-30, San Francisco, CA, Bottom of the Hill
Sat-Mar-31, Los Angeles, CA, The Echo
Sun-Apr-01, San Diego, CA, Che Café
Tue-Apr-03, Phoenix, AZ, Modified
Thu-Apr-05, Salt Lake City, UT, Kilby Court
Fri-Apr-06, Denver, CO, High Dive
Sat-Apr-07, Omaha, NE, Sokol Underground

Visit Maria Taylor’s myspace here

Visit her Saddle Creek website here

*****************************************************

The Roadside Graves

Kill Buffalo is a Brooklyn record label that looks to have an exciting 2007 lined up. They already announced the news that Earl Pickens will be releasing a brand new set of songs via an April EP, tentatively titled Turn On The Radio. They have also announced the release of a new introductory EP from The Roadside Graves, What Happened To Him Could Happen To Anyone. The EP is available starting January 30th, and includes a mix of the old and new, including fan favorites “Jesus Is A Friend Of The Family”, “Song For A Dry State”, and “Reverend Blue Jeans”.

The Jersey boys have taken a few years to follow-up the pretty excellent If Shacking Up Is All You Want To Do…, and the new material promises to be well-worth the wait. The label had this to say of the new EP:

“this is also an opportunity to hear some of The Graves forthcoming LP, No One Will Know Where You've Been, which comes out April 4th. The lead single “West Coast” is a portrait of an individual's resiliency in the face of a collapsed family and crumbling dreams. It was inspired by Dave Eggers’ semi-autobiographical A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, in which the author is thrust into guardianship of his young brother after the sudden death of his parents.”

“West Coast” is an instantly memorable song, with a driving beat, excellent piano-guitar interplay, and an anthemic chorus. Shacking Up was a distinctively Americana sounding record. “West Coast” takes that template and runs with it, becoming something reminiscent of a rootsier Springsteen/Counting Crows in the process. This song continues the outstanding songwriting from lead singer John Gleason, whose vivid and heartbreaking stories are always excellent, often unforgettable.

Here’s the full track listing for What Happened To Him Could Happen To Anyone. The highlighted songs are available for download.

1. West Coast

2. Song For A Dry State

3. Mosquitos (Let The Fireworks Explode)*

4. Jesus Is A Friend Of The Family

5. Hell*

6. Reverend Blue Jeans

7. Stranger

* previously unreleased

And visit their myspace page to hear more.

***************************************************

New Music - Bright Eyes, "Tourist Trap"

Bright Eyes announces US tour dates along with Four Winds single and Cassadaga CD/LP.

Today I got an email from the folks at Saddle Creek, the recording home of Bright Eyes. Included was an mp3 of a song to be included on the upcoming Four Winds single/EP. Check it out here:

MP3 - Tourist Trap

They also had this exciting information to pass on, some you may know, some that you certainly don’t:

“Cassadaga, the new full-length from Bright Eyes, will be released on April 10. The first single from the album, Four Winds, is set to be released as the Four Winds CD/12" on March 6 and will include 5 exclusive b-sides.

Touring for Cassadaga and Four Winds will begin on February 25 in Chicago. A full list of dates is below. Tickets will go on sale January 25. This smaller tour will be followed by a full US tour in the spring.”

BrightEyes-FourWinds
With the once revolving line-up of musicians settled on the three constants of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, Bright Eyes spent much of 2006 in the studio working on their follow-up to the acclaimed simultaneous releases Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. The first single from these sessions, "Four Winds", is presented here along with 5 exclusive B-sides.

Retaining the simmering glow of its predecessors, Four Winds is full of the magic that brought Bright Eyes to international attention. Carefully played, deftly poetic and quietly enchanting, the release has a wandering country charm and all of the story-telling seductiveness of earlier work.

Four Winds and Cassadaga were recorded in various studios in New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, OR and Lincoln, NE. The sessions included a host of guest performers including M.Ward, David Rawlings, Gillian Welch and Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney.”

And catch Bright Eyes on tour this winter at one of the following dates:

Sun-Feb-25, Chicago, IL, Metro
Tue-Feb-27, Toronto, ON, Opera House
Wed-Feb-28, Somerville, MA, Somerville Theatre
Fri-Mar-02, New York, NY, Bowery Ballroom
Sat-Mar-03, New York, NY, Bowery Ballroom
Mon-Mar-05, Washington, DC, 9:30 Club
Wed-Mar-07, Los Angeles, CA, El Rey
Thu-Mar-08, Los Angeles, CA. El Rey
Fri-Mar-09, San Francisco, CA, Great American Music Hall
Sat-Mar-10, San Francisco, CA, Great American Music Hall
Sun-Mar-11, Seattle, WA, Showbox

the National Lights - Interview

The National Lights are set to release their debut album, The Dead Will Walk, Dear, on February 27 through Bloodshake Records. The album is cohesive and stunning, filled with 10 beautiful, dark folk songs that creep around down by the river and come home with new secrets. According to their website:

“The National Lights is the primary song-writing project of Jacob Thomas Berns. Assisted by the arrangements Ernest Christian Kiehne Jr. (The Bland Allisons, Sonya Cotton), Jacob Thomas sets out on his full-length debut, The Dead Will Walk, Dear, to forgive the past while compounding its wrongs.

The National Lights marry traditional American folk stylings - acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins and lap-steel guitars - with beautifully hushed harmonies, and lyrics that owe as much to Flannery O'Connor as to the 1980's slasher film.”

The band sent me an advance copy of The Dead Will Walk, Dear last week, and it hasn’t left my cd player yet. I was interested in finding out more about the band at this exciting moment in their careers, and lead singer/songwriter Jacob Berns was gracious enough to answer a few questions for us here at Pop Headwound. Here’s what he had to say:

What inspired the album's dark subject matter?

The American Gothic genre, particularly the writing of Flannery O'Connor, is one that interests me a great deal. This was especially the case at the time I began writing the songs that would become TheDead Will Walk, Dear. Once that tone was established, and seemed to be working, it made sense to continue developing whatever was there.

Is there any actual narrative happening on the album, or is it more like a series of conceptually related stories?

There certainly is a story happening here, though it may be interrupted by a tangential ghost tale or two. The anonymous river that shows up in a number of the songs plays a major part in the narrative, but it occasionally flows off into other narratives as well.

It seems BloodShake Records is a close-knit group of musicians. How
did you all meet and decide to work together?

We all met at college. Chris and I had been in a band prior to the National Lights, and we had been friends since early our first year. Sonya and Chris began dating not too long after. It made sense that we would all work together, seeing as we all enjoyed the music each other was writing. I would like to think we all pushed each other as well, creatively, though I can really only say with any certainty that Chris, especially, was of great help to me.

Why was the album's release date pushed back several times over thecourse of 2006?

The easy answer would be to say I was overly insistent on how I wanted the finished songs to sound, more often than not to the added frustration of Chris (Kiehne), who was producing and arranging the album. Other factors did contribute to the release date being pushed back, though, such as we were in our final year of college and trying to graduate with respectable marks, and we also moved to a new city right before mixing began, which took up both time and energy.

The painting on the album cover really fits the theme of the songs. Where did it come from?

The cover on the album now was not actually my first choice. I ran into some trouble securing the rights to reproduce my initial choice, and after that I began searching for artists whose copyrights had long expired and whose work was now public domain, which was how I came across the current album cover. The image of what appears to be sirens in the water appealed to me and my idea of what the record was ultimately going to feel like. Unfortunately, I have no idea to whom to attribute the painting, which I suppose fits in with the anonymity of the notion of 'public domain.'

How much touring will you be doing to promote the record? Who will bejoining you?

The original plan was to do a national tour with my good friend Chris Maher, starting out in L.A. and leaving us in New York. But as is the case with all best laid plans, this one didn't work out, at least on my end. Chris will still be touring, to support his debut, and I ask everyone to go and see him play. He's a great performer and even a better dude.

******************************************

Check out these 2 songs from the upcoming The Dead Will Walk, Dear:

O, Ohio

Midwest Town

Buy The Dead Will Walk, Dear here. Visit the band at their myspace to hear more!

Album Review: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - "Some Loud Thunder"

Some Loud Thunder, the sophomore album from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, begins with what could be considered its catchiest and most frustrating song. The title track comes crashing through the gate, with lead singer/songwriter Alex Ounsworth wasting no time in declaring “all this talking, you’d think I’d have something to say”. Along the way he proves himself wrong as he packs most every line with too many syllables, racing to keep up with his hyperactive band. Along with “Underwater (You & Me)”, the song is the closest the band gets to straight pop on the album, but at some point they decided to bury it beneath a harsh wall of distortion. On first listen the decision proves to be distracting. I thought it was a damaged or corrupted mp3 file, but after a few tries the fuzz began to fade and the song shimmered its way into my head. The song’s refusal to sound as it “should” is representative of most of the album. There’s an obvious growth in musicianship running throughout the album, and the band has become comfortable dabbling in “weird”, textural sounds that betray the charming pop they hide. This system works for the majority of the record, but falls short on a few occasions.

The most immediately noticeable improvements on the album are the increased production quality over the debut, and the more diverse, fuller band sound. Producer David Fridmann has helped some pretty huge bands in the indie rock world further their studio capabilities. He practically re-invented The Flaming Lips on 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, and prior to that he did the same for Mercury Rev on their brilliant 1998 album Deserter’s Songs. He has expanded the palette for CYHSY as well. The album is filled with sounds that were nowhere to be found on their debut, some natural, some of the “blips & bleeps” variety. Together with the improvement in the band’s playing, the production leads to a thoroughly dense album, one that rewards repeat listening, and one that may scare off listeners expecting a retread of the more straightforward song structures on the debut.

Most of the songs on the album come off as totally schizophrenic, in the best way possible. They usually shift wildly in sound and tempo inside the same song, and rarely follow any sort of traditional structure. “Emily Jean Stock” is pure 60’s psychedelic pop deconstructed, brimming with memorable hooks and an inventive arrangement. “Underwater (You and Me)”, with it’s bouncy rhythm and hummable melodies, is the only song that comes close to sounding as if it could have been on their debut. And album closer “Five Easy Pieces” is a gorgeous soundscape, with harmonica, acoustic guitar, toy piano, indecipherable vocal chants, and what sounds like accordion floating in and out of the mix indiscriminately. It’s all held together by the bass, which enters proudly around the 1-minute mark and hoists the song on its shoulders, carrying it and the album to an unforgettable close.

Several songs fail while attempting a similar ambition. “Satan Said Dance” is actually one of the more sonically impressive songs on the album. It’s a hybrid of video game sound effects and a fierce dance-rock groove. However, the repetitive, non-sense lyrics are too much to take for 5 ½ minutes, overstaying their welcome by at least 2. And apparent first single “Love Song No. 7” is a monotonous, piano-driven ballad that only hints at releasing the tension it continuously builds. Sporting a melody that never seems to find its footing, the song comes across more as an unfinished demo than a fully-realized song. The fact that these two songs appear back-to-back halfway through the album disrupts the flow set by the first three and last five songs.

Some Loud Thunder can be seen as the kid brother of Here Come the Warm Jets, finally at the age where it can stand up to him and not have to worry about a beat-down. Both share a nasally-challenged vocalist (Ounsworth sounds like David Byrne meets mid-90s Dylan), skewered pop song structures, and an ADHD sense of experimentalism. Big bro is proud, and maybe slightly jealous, that despite the lack of a label to help with promotion, Some Loud Thunder is an ambitious stab at greatness. It actually achieves this goal intermittently, with several stunning songs that one-up the debut, and several that don’t work nearly as well. For now, big brother can sleep easy.

MP3 from Some Loud Thunder:

10 Underwater (You and Me).mp3

MP3 Round-Up, Vol 1. 1/19

Since I started Pop Headwound 3 weeks ago I‘ve come across a ton of great music online. There’s no way I could keep up with it to the extent it deserves and give you multiple write ups every day on all the worthwhile bands that I find. So, here’s a sampling of some mp3’s I’ve come across this month that I think are worth checking out. Some of which I’ve written about recently, others that I wanted to but couldn’t find the time. Where appropriate, I’ve given the links of where I found the songs myself. Enjoy!

“07 Murder In Michigan.mp3” - David Vandervelde. Read the Pitchfork review here. Vandervelde dresses up as T. Rex for Halloween and fools everyone who's never heard of them. Found this one at Stereogum, but the mp3 has long since been removed. It’s from The Moonstation House Band. For some reason the song "Nothin' No" won't let me upload it, or else that's the one that would be here. It's a great song, check it out here.


“The Sons Of Cain.mp3” - Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. The first released song from Living With The Living sounds fierce and revitalized, displaying a punk enthusiasm Ted only hinted at on Shake the Sheets.


“02 I Will Always Love You.mp3” - Viking Moses. Yup, that “I Will Always Love You”. Read about this track at Said the Gramaphone for some true insight.


“Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse.mp3” - Of Montreal. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is the new album, hitting stores 1/23. I'd heard of this band in the past, but hadn’t listened until now. I’ve added this to the small list of cds I’ll be picking up Tuesday.


“01 On the Bubble.mp3” - The Broken West. I’m really looking forward to I Can‘t Go On, I‘ll Go On, also coming out 1/23. I’ve heard 5 songs and all are really, really strong. Check out An Aquarium Drunkard for a nice write-up.


“03 Wet And Rusting.mp3” - Menomena. Found this over at Rawkblog. Their comparison to TV on the Radio is what attracted me, and they do sound like a kinder, gentler version of that band. Friend and Foe, their new albuum, is reviewed at Pitchfork. They said it’s the first great indie-rock album of 2007.