art is the new religion

Meet Marlo Meekins

2008-08-07T13:05:12-07:00

Reading my friend Anil's blog earlier this week, I clicked through to a site that featured him in some list of cool people on the internets (he's ambivalent about such things). While on the random website (which, in protest, I shall not link to) my eye was caught by an entirely sexist list of "bloggers we'd like to see in bikinis" (written by a man, featuring all female bloggers). I won't waste any time detailing why exactly a list like that gets my hackles up, because hopefully the reasons are obvious to any regular readers of my blog. To offset the stupidity and offensiveness of the list, I clicked through it with the intention of reading the bloggers' content (and not judging their comeliness.) That investigation actually tipped me off to a fascinating, fantastic artist: Marlo Meekins.

Apparently she draws (or drew) for Spumco (of "Ren & Stimpy" fame - one of my favorite cartoons of all time), which makes sense when you see her work: there is a lot of humor, exaggeration, imagination and naughtiness (some NSFW).

And yes, Marlo is beautiful (and has gorgeous hair). You can tell from her pictures.

On Maiden Lane

2008-08-06T01:36:45-07:00

I just discovered that my friend Kimmie started a blog for her design inspirations. She posts almost daily with a gorgeous photo, a compelling quote, and a link to the artist or designer who inspired her.

Superb.

Visit On Maiden Lane

Welcome to Land of Talk

2008-08-05T12:14:26-07:00

Congratulations to my buddies at Saddle Creek who have just signed Land of Talk. And I should also thank them, because I've never heard the band before today and I really like them. I can't find a great video to share with you, but this'll give you an idea of what to expect:

Here's a preview of "Some Are Lakes" off their forthcoming record:

Their new record won't come out on Saddle Creek until October, but I'm listening to their last album Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss right now on Rhapsody. Recommended if you like Metric. Seems they'd fit nicely on tour with Cursive, too.

on vacation

2008-08-04T12:27:51-07:00

I'm on vacation this week. Which will either mean that I post even more, or don't post at all. I've already been posting from my phone to my Vox blog.

In the meantime, aloha from Kailua beach.

Pen Pals & "Mental Reservations"

2008-07-30T10:41:16-07:00

Mena accidentally sent me this clip this morning and I had to share it. It's about a two classrooms of young students whose teachers originally met as pen pals. The teachers set up a pen pal program for the students and their reactions are great:

I love the kid who describes what 1991 must have been like.

This is the clip she intended to send: "Are All Babies Really Cute?".

That's my friend Ben, Mena's husband, and their baby Penelope at about :28 into the clip. (It's true, Penelope really is that cute.) At about 1:58 in, Father Kelly says, "there's all the difference between a lie and what they call a mental reservation." I wish he'd elaborated more on that difference.

Read Mena's post¹ about Penelope's national TV debut.

¹(This is the first occasion I've had to send a trackback to Mena. Good times!)

@ The Homestead

2008-07-22T15:19:13-07:00

I was looking through the photo album on my phone and found this one from the night of my birthday party.

I had just moved back to San Francisco about five days prior. I had my birthday get-together at one of my favorite bars here, The Homestead (you can see the "H" stamped on my wrist). I love the jukebox there, so I played songs all night. I'd never had this beer before and was loving it - it had the perfect combination of coffee and chocolate flavors. I held it up to the light of the jukebox so I could take a photo of the label to remember it. You can't see them in this photo, but a bunch of my friends and coworkers - and even some of their dogs! - were there with me. It was a great night, so looking at this photo makes me happy.

Hold the basket of puppies

2008-07-21T21:39:29-07:00

"Look, I know what people's automatic responses are. And sometimes you work with them, and sometimes you work against them. In almost any scene, you can go with an applause ending or a transitional ending. It's like, sometimes you think, Oh, shit, please don't kiss now, and they don't, and you say, 'Thank God.' At other times, here it comes, here it comes, and -- yay! -- it happens. But you can't bring out the basket of puppies every time."
- Choreographer Mark Morris, in The New Yorker

Best of 2008: Wildbirds & Peacedrums

2008-07-16T17:42:41-07:00

A few Sundays ago, I sat with a group of friends at a bar before we all headed to the same show. Three of the five of us hadn't heard much from the band we were about to see, so they asked me to describe it.

Me: "Well, they're not going to change your life --"
Friend: "Why do you say that? You said that when you were describing another band, too."

I say that because most of the music I truly love does change my life. The highest calling for my most beloved musicians is that they touch my ears and my heart in a completely new way. They open up new worlds of possibility in my imagination. Their work can make me feel new sensations, emotionally and physically. When I hear, for the first time, an artist whose work will change my life, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever known.

Accordingly, it's not often that I find an artist that affects me this way. This is not to say that I don't enjoy a lot of music. In fact, I regularly discover new artists and uncover artists from the past whose music I love and who I rave about and recommend. But my life-changers? I only run across one of those artists once every year or two.

A few Fridays ago, I discovered another one*:

Wildbirds & Peacedrums

How did I find them? I was making a rare visit to Stereogum, paging through post after post about bands I don't care about -- new bands that are covered mostly because they're new and heaven forbid Stereogum not cover the next big [blank] -- when I saw My Brightest Diamond listed in one of the posts. Thinking it would take me to a live performance or news or a video by My Brightest Diamond, I clicked through only to discover it was a post where Shara Worden, aka MBD, talked up "a couple of her recent favorite outside sounds" in a series about bands from Sweden.

(A word of advice: whenever you get a chance to get recommendations from an artist you love, listen to them. It's the best kind of word of mouth.)

Wildbirds & Peacedrums are Mariam Wallentin (vocalist) and Andreas Werliin (drummer), a married couple from Sweden. Much of their music consists of spare arrangements of drumming and singing with only the occasional embellishment from another instrument. There isn't a whole lot written about Wildbirds & Peacedrums yet (at the time of this post, they have less than 3000 MySpace friends), but what's out there includes a whole lot of comparisons. You can drop names like The White Stripes (another two-person band), Joanna Newsom (it's just an occasional similarity in timbre), Karen O (I don't hear this one really) or PJ Harvey or Feist, but I promise you've never heard anything like Wildbirds & Peacedrums before.

"We had no musical ideals to trust or lean on, so we just had to believe in ourselves and each other"

- Werliin

Their album Heartcore is high art: it doesn't follow convention, it finds its own way, makes its own strange sense. It's not easy, but it feels right. It rewards the careful listener, blooming brighter with each successive spin. There are no signposts here; the terrain changes from one song to the next so you must be willing to get lost with them. Wallentin's voice is a universe unto itself, a true original.

After reading Shara's words about them that Friday night, I woke up the following morning and made a rare trip to Amoeba to buy their album. Thank you, Shara, for the tip, and thank you Amoeba for having one copy of Heartcore on vinyl.

I cannot wait to see this band perform live. Until then:

#9.2 Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Doubt Hope from Handheld Shows on Vimeo.

#9.1 Wildbirds & Peacdrums - The Window from Handheld Shows on Vimeo.

Buy Wildbirds & Peacedrums Heartcore on vinyl from Insound.
Related: My post about My Brightest Diamond's new album

*I'm not saying they'll change your life, I'm saying they're changing mine.

Woke up with this song in my head: Whiskeytown "16 Days"

2008-07-14T10:30:36-07:00

Here's a live performance of "16 Days" from April 1997 in St. Louis. Doesn't Ryan look happy here? I wish I could have seen Whiskeytown back in '97, but I don't think I'd heard of them yet.

If you enjoy Americana, country, folk, or any of Ryan Adams' later efforts, I highly recommend you get a copy of Strangers Almanac. It's a terrific record from start to finish.

Buy Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac from Amazon.

Unboxing Insound

2008-07-10T17:27:01-07:00

I don't really understand the fascination with unboxing, but I'm excited enough to get my order from Insound today that I'm going to share photos!

I opened the box to discover some free stuff that had been thrown in. Seven inches from Trail of Dead and Midnight Movies, a RATATAT iron-on, and a Spring/Summer Insound catalog. The other seven inch is one I ordered - Constantines' "Hard Feelings/Easy Money" - in order to reach the free shipping over $x threshold.

My Brightest Diamond A Thousand Shark's Teeth & Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago:

Constantines Kensington Heights & RATATAT LP3: