art is the new religion

Best of 2008: Wildbirds & Peacedrums

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"

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.

No way to control it, it's totally automatic

I've had this song stuck in my head for days, so the only thing to do now is pass it on to you.

I've known this song for years, but I never knew who sang it until I Googled it.  And, I'm not gonna lie:  all this time I thought the lead vocal in the verse was sung by a man!  I had no idea it was the Pointer Sisters.  I'm still wrapping my head around this as I watch the video.

"All I can manage to push from my lips
Is a stream of absurdities"

OK now I'm on to the costumes - how great are they?  The lavender pantaloons?  The iridescent fabric?  Ruffles, ruffles, ruffles!  The Pointer Sister in the hot pink on the right, her legs go on for days.  The synth sounds in this song are out of this world.  And pay attention to the dancers on the wide shots - I love the woman wearing the spandex bodysuit with a belt.  What is the belt holding up??

More fun facts:

• They really are sisters with the surname of Pointer!
• The Pointers are from Oakland, heyy.
• They were the first black female singers to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.
• Ruth Pointer was a grandmother by the time "Automatic" came out!
• They recorded the pinball number count from Sesame Street!

That is quite possibly the greatest cartoon ever made!

So that's two earworms for ya.  Which one is in your head now?

Wainy Days & Horrible People

David Wain's online comedy series "Wainy Days" is now in its third season over at My Damn Channel, proving once again that time moves faster on The Interweb.  The start of the third season maintains the level of absurdity I've come to expect from the show, and the looking-for-love premise remains intact, but I wasn't really bowled over by either episode.  Don't get me wrong though, I still love the show so I'm going to keep watching.

While I was catching up on "Wainy Days", a promo for another My Damn Channel series caught my eye.  "Horrible People" is a soap opera send-up created by and starring A.D. Miles ("Wainy Days", "Reno 911!", Wet Hot American Summer) as well as Kristen Schaal who you may know as Mel from "Flight of the Conchords".  Mather Zickel anchors the show as the character Carter who is ridiculous and sinister in equal parts.  I actually think "Mather Zickel" (his real name, I presume) is one of the most soap opera-sounding names I've heard in a long time.  It's strangely satisfying to say "Mather Zickel" out loud. 

Mather Zickel.

Watch the first episode of "Horrible People":

If you like "Horrible People", you can watch the entire first season on My Damn Channel.

• Related:  Read my original post on "Wainy Days"

We Are Scientists: Git Along, Lil Doggie

My love for We Are Scientists is pretty well-documented, but they've managed to make me love them a little bit more.  I just saw the new video for "Chick Lit" off of Brain Thrust Mastery (thanks to CupCate's post).  Combine the humor we're accustomed to from W.A.S. with lots of fluffy pomeranians, and I'm hooked:



Can't wait to see We Are Scientists at The Independent on Sunday.

• Buy We Are Scientists' Brain Thrust Mastery from Insound.

My Brightest Diamond

My Brightest Diamond, a.k.a. Shara Worden, released her second album last week.  I don't have A Thousand Shark's Teeth yet but I'm going to snag a copy on vinyl as soon as possible.  The tracks I've heard from it, online and during a live set earlier this year at SXSW, are even more haunting, gorgeous, challenging and ambitious than those on her first album.  I love to hear an artist grow, mature and stretch, filling an ever more unique shape amongst the edges of their influences.  I usually despise it when people compare artists to Jeff Buckley, either because the comparison is completely unfounded, or because the comparison just highlights outright imitation.  Shara comes close to copping a few of Jeff's most unique legacies in her vocals, songwriting and guitar tones, but for some reason I register her similarities as tributes and not theft.

I got to see Shara perform at SXSW earlier this year in a church with gorgeous acoustics.  I sat with dear friends, eating homemade cookies we bought from the churchgoing ladies while Shara serenaded us with her opera-quality voice, theatrical garb, and comfortable command of dynamics.  Watch this live performance from Other Music (a record store in NYC - I used to work right across the street from it) for a taste of Shara's talents.

Hear more of Shara's thoughts about the new record:

Shark's Teeth - Part I from My Brightest Diamond.

The copy editor in me would like to point out, due to the placement of the apostrophe in the album title, that we're talking here about one thousand teeth (which come from a shark), and not all the teeth from one thousand sharks.

• Buy A Thousand Shark's Teeth from Insound (mp3).

Happiness is a Hammond

I found this video on Jessica Hopper's blog, one of my all time favorite blogs which I've read regularly for a few years now.  I don't know this Candy Lawrence, but in less than two minutes she's summed up a great deal of how I feel about music, dancing, and happiness.

Thank you, Candy Lawrence.

Another Rock n Roll Cinderella Story

I have another plucked-from-the-online-masses rock n' roll success story to share with you.  Borrowing some inspiration from the way Journey found their current lead singer, the rock group Boston found their new singer - a fan from Charlotte, North Carolina - when they ran across his MySpace page. 

Tommy DeCarlo, a manager at Home Depot, is a 43 year old father of two and a Boston superfan who memorized all their songs.  After Boston's lead singer Brad Delp committed suicide in 2007, DeCarlo's daughter Talia uploaded some tracks of him singing along to Boston songs to share with other grieving fans.  According to DeCarlo's bio, he "had to sing with the karaoke track because he had sold his keyboard in 2006, using the extra cash to buy Christmas presents for his children."

Boston founder and guitarist Tom Scholz was sitting at home one day while his wife was on the computer.  He heard a track coming from the speakers and asked which live Boston performance it was.  She explained that it wasn't an old live recording of Boston, it was a karaoke track from an unknown fan in North Carolina.  Due to the amazing similarities, Scholz took a bit of convincing that it wasn't original singer Brad Delp's voice. 

The band reached out to DeCarlo, flying him and his family out for an audition.  Since DeCarlo had never been in a band before, his first live performance ever was singing with his favorite band Boston at a tribute to the late Brad Delp.  He's now taken leave from his job at Home Depot (couldn't he have just quit?) to tour with Boston as their lead singer this summer.  Remember, kids, share what you love with the internets and your wishes just might come true! 

Here's a clip of DeCarlo performing with Boston at the tribute:

Let's wrap up this post with a truly live version of Boston's epic folk/prog/rock masterpiece "More Than A Feelin'" from 1979:

Sources:

• My post about the new Steve Perry
• Articles on Music Radar and USA TODAY
• Thanks to my friend Harold for sending me this story!

Who is Katy Perry?

I'm out of the loop on new music right now, I will freely admit this.  But I ran across something new this morning - purely by accident!

I'd logged into iTunes to download the latest New Yorker fiction podcast to my iPhone, when I noticed a promo for Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl".  Wondering if it was a cover of Jill Sobule's hit from back in the day, I clicked through to listen to the thirty second clip.  I found out it's not a cover of Jill's old song, and I found out that I liked the track.  I liked the production.  I also liked Perry's voice.  There are traces of Rihanna's "S.O.S." in the song, but it still sounds fresh.  Here's the video:


Who is Katy Perry?, I asked myself.  Judging by the prominent ad placement by Capitol on the iTunes store home page, clearly she's a heavily promoted and marketed artist.  She's all glammed up on this big budget video.  But judging by her lyrics and the cover of her Ur So Gay EP, she's coming across as irreverent and unpolished, the opposite of the stereotypically calculated puppets of pop.

Intrigued enough to want to listen to her other songs, I fired up Rhapsody to find out what else I could hear of hers.  All I could find was an EP featuring the single "Ur So Gay" which berates the subject of the song ("I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf.../You're so sad.../You're so skinny...") followed by the refrain "You're so gay and you don't even like boys".  At first, being the New Yorker-reading fuddy duddy I am these days, I bristled at the lyrical content, worrying about the possible re-popularization of using the word "gay" in a derogatory way.  I mean, retro production and imaging can be fun, but there are other areas where taking a step backward is not cool.  But, perhaps the song "I Kissed A Girl (and I liked it)" can do some good for tolerance, rather than just encourage teen girls to kiss their best girlfriends in order to attract and impress teen guys?

But let's talk about the real offense:  the third track on the Ur So Gay EP is a cover of The Outfield's "Your Love" (I got the cover wrong in an earlier draft of this post - I blame blogging after a long day).  Well, not so much a cover as a reinterpretation, complete with new lyrics and the destruction of some of the best hooks of the song ("tonight, tonight, tonight!" Terrible!).   Let's face it - "Your Love" is a pop masterpiece and just shouldn't be covered. By anyone. For any reason.  Go buy the original, everyone, young and old -- it holds up. (I'd show you the amazingly '80s video here, but it's another case of embedding disabled by request.  Thanks, Sony/BMG!)

The final track on the EP, "Lost", is a belter-ballad that might as well have been recorded by Kelly Clarkson and promoted and performed on an episode of "American Idol".  It's so sincere!  Where did the edginess go?  I won't even get into the Christian gospel album Perry (née Katheryn Hudson) recorded back in '01, because we all reserve the right to change our minds.

But the question still remains:  Who is Katy Perry?

Play

Continuing this week's theme of posts about some of the art that will soon be hung on the walls in my new home

When I started working at V2 Records in New York City back in the fall of 1999, we had a roster of talented artists but no clear superstars.  One of those artists was this electro guy named Moby, who supposedly had shopped his last record around and gotten rejected by almost every big label before Kate Hyman signed him to V2.

His album Play had been released the summer before I started working there, and by the end of the year it had started garnering some momentum with film and TV placements and critical acclaim.  He was definitely one of our priority artists, but the explosion of Play wouldn't happen until some time in 2000.  Moby was smart, funny and personable, and never threw around any attitude or ego when he came by the office. 

In December of '99, as a thank you/holiday gift to the record label staff, Moby drew a version of his character "the little idiot" for each one of us.  Most of the drawings looked pretty similar to each other, but he personalized mine and signed it with a heart.  I'd like to think he did that because I had a little extra bond with him, but who knows. 

Each staffer treated their drawing differently.  I saw one assistant in the radio department had hers tacked by a corner onto her corkboard, half obscured by a magazine photo of Derek Jeter.  I won't venture to guess what the execs did with theirs.  I had mine framed, partly because I knew it would be a nice reminder of that time of my life and I wanted to protect it from getting lost or destroyed.  And partly because it's always great to have someone I like and respect draw something just for me!

In the following months, someone at the label had the grand idea to remix the version of the song "South Side" that Moby had recorded with Gwen Stefani that hadn't made it onto the original record.  A pricey video was made and people loved it.  Play was re-released with that single, and almost 10 million copies of the record have sold worldwide to this date.

For a holiday gift the following year, after the explosion of his success in 2000, Moby gave us each a very nice bottle of champagne.  The champagne was great, but it's the drawing that will always stay with me.