Lately one of the highlights of my week has been going to dance classes at Rhythm & Motion. Dance is an amazing workout, but it's also mentally challenging in a way that's totally different from work or writing. Picking up nuanced choreography takes a physical intelligence that I'm slowly developing over hours and hours of practice.
There are a few songs we hear a lot in one of my classes, and I was able to track two of them down to share with you. The first two are songs we often warm up to: MC Magic's "Dancer" and Ne-Yo's "Closer".
The third track is a bonus because I'd never hear it in dance class. Chris Cornell, an artist I've been obsessed with since I was a teenager, is releasing a new record this fall and the single "Long Gone" is a crazy R&B-tinged departure from his normal sway from stompy rock to sappy serenades. You can tell Timbaland produced it, which makes me love it even more. (Disappointingly, the other single I've heard from the album, "Watch Out", is egregiously bad.)
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.
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:
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.
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"
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:
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.
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??
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Who still has cassette tapes anymore?
Keep the dream alive: send a photo of yourself holding a cassette tape to kteeger AT yahoo and I'll add it to the gallery.
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