NYC-based Teen have been playing together for about a year now. They’re fronted by Teeny Lieberson, formerly of Here We Go Magic; who’s teamed up with her sisters, Katherine and Lizzie, and two other female musicians, Jane and Maia, to form an all-girl harmonizing powerhouse. I met them in Sunnyside, Queens, to film a few songs; featured here are: “Why Why Why”, “Come Back”, “Charlie” and “In Limbo”. They have some songs up on bandcamp, and you can keep in touch via Facebook.

photo: sarahana

Met up with Portland trio Nurses for some morning voice over iced-tea, and the piano at Piano’s (!). They played stripped-down versions of some songs from their new album Dracula (while someone diligent cleaned the crap out of that place); included here are “New Feelings” and “Trying to Reach You”. Sounds pretty good…

A long time ago, before I went on an indefinite hiatus, I visited Revival Times at an incredible residential space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, converted from an old school gym. Here’s a song off what I filmed then (2 and a half years later!): a more laid back version of “Ear to the Ground”.

ps. I wrote the date the European way. It was filmed March 1st.

Brazos is Martin Crane—and your next favorite “new” band. They’ve got a full-length from 2009 (Phosphorescent Blues) and two EPs, that I know of, from 2007 (Feeding Frenzy and A City Just As Tall). All three are really really good. The opposite of dull and a foe to the generic, you know what I mean? You can look up the full-length on Spotify (since you’re all spoiled by now), and get the EPs on iTunes (listen to the Daytrotter version of “Mrs. Virginia” and tell me if it isn’t just hilarious).

The 18-minute video, filmed in Bushwick, Brooklyn, features five songs, three of which are new. I’ve included a little about each at the end of this post.

SONG LIST:

“The Observer”
From Phosphorescent Blues. The lyrics are an incredibly perfect poem of the same name by Adrienne Rich. You should try to read it first because once you’ve listened to the song, you’ll always hear the song when you read it. That’s the truth. It’s as if the song was always there in the poem. Anyhow. In the video I’ve used a warm-up take that I wasn’t meant to use because I liked it too much, so that was that.

The Observer (by Adrienne Rich)

Completely protected on all sides by volcanoes
a woman, darkhaired, in stained jeans
sleeps in central Africa.
In her dreams, her notebooks, still
private as maiden diaries,
the mountain gorillas move through their life term;
their gentleness survives
observation. Six bands of them
inhabit, with her, the wooded highland.
When I lay me down to sleep
unsheltered by any natural guardians
from the panicky life-cycle of my tribe
I wake in the old cellblock
observing the daily executions,
rehearsing the laws
I cannot subscribe to,
envying the pale gorilla-scented dawn
she wakes into, the stream where she washes her hair,
the camera-flash of her quiet
eye

“Men are Wild Creatures”
New! (I don’t want to quote lyrics I haven’t read yet but there’s a part about making plans and the plans not happening and having the future free. Yep.)

“Day Glo”
Also from Phosphorescent Blues. Some people would call it “infectious”, probably. Like every song on this album, it has really nice lyrics, too:

day glo, chrome windows
shapes in the clouds
the hungry fish for miles around
upstream jumping out of the water
gills in the air
i’ve got many people to thank
but i can’t write letters

The album version is way more upbeat, but everyone, the whole world, knows that in these videos we only care about the sullen.

“My Good Friend from Virginia”
I was told this song probably wouldn’t be recorded but I love it. And it’s funny, more so because it acts like it isn’t. Who is it fooling? Nobody!

“Deeper Feelings”
New. All of the sadness without the Bon Iver (ha. ha. ha.)

Finally, there were at least four new songs I heard live since this filming that were kind of addictive. So, look out. I guess.

The day before filming, Timo Sullivan from Motel Motel told me that the Staten Island beach he wanted to takes us to was the same distance as Coney Island. That was entirely untrue. It was a while to get there. But it was the most fun we’ve ever had making a Secret Garden video, and his super secret spot was so worth the trip that I made sure he dropped a pin on my google map before we parted. To this day I only know it by this pin as the Motel Motel beach.

(Photo by Sahara)

Included in the video are stripped-down versions of four songs: “Harlem”, “Cowboy”, “Forest” and “Coffee”. Drummer Jeremy Duvall, owing to a day job, was absent.

Here it is: a four-song edition of a Secret Garden mini-movie with Sweden’s The Tallest Man on Earth. It was shot the last time he was in New York (he returns this weekend for two shows!). Kristian Matsson was barely up when we infiltrated the Brooklyn apartment he was staying at. His tour manager, Ryan, led us to the stairs that was, who knew, the perfect spot for Kristian to sing “This Wind” and a cover of Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” (the best versions of both that I’ve ever heard). And you know how it is with a perfect hint of reverb: you cast aside your head and pull your heart out your neck (that’s right). We wandered around to the windy rooftop for “Over the Hills” and locked ourselves in an old-fashioned elevator for “Steal Tomorrow”.

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Check out all of our previous posts on The Tallest Man on Earth.

Before heading over to Sycamore to play a show that night, I met with Iceland’s Ólöf Arnalds and her equally impressive friend Davíð Þór Jónsson, who had played a fantastically whimsical show with her at Union Hall the previous night. As we walked past a large tree towering over a mound, Ólöf’s head turned, and we decided she might as well sing under it. First song is the catchy “Klara”, which she wrote for her younger sister, the second is Caetano Veloso’s “Maria Bethania.” Before singing this song, she realizes she is missing her lyrics notebook. Davíð keeps company with a short bout of singing and dancing. One more song in Icelandic follows.

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When Washington DC’s Middle Distance Runner was in town to play The Annex, they were staying at their friend’s hotel room at Times Square, though they told us it was really their label who’d put them there. In preparation for songs they were going to play for us, they’d recruited a few things lying about the room, including a towel, an ice bucket (?) and a tray. We decided to leave the TV on, though muted, to faithfully honor the Times Square hotel room atmosphere. Between gulps of coffee and screwdriver, the band also gifted us with an impromptu song that involves wearing a skirt and stealing a checkbook, amongst other things. All that and more in the video we bring you here. The band will be playing Union Hall with Pretty & Nice on May 14th.

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When Maryland’s Cotton Jones showed up at Grand Army Plaza the morning after their short set at Le Poisson Rouge, the only thing they’d grabbed from their van was an acoustic guitar. Despite the inevitable traffic noise, we decided it’d be worthwhile to have Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw jump into the empty fountain and try a song there (for an opportunity to see Whitney sit on the lap of some frozen Greek hunk, if nothing else). We then headed to Prospect Park across the street, where they played several more songs, and the rest of the band lent doo-woops and finger-snapping while drummer Chris Morris settled on a pair of sticks, of different dimensions, to use for percussion.

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While we were in Austin for SXSW, we swung by the Red House Pizzeria for a pizzastic breakfast one morning. Out in the backyard a host of bands were readying to kickstart another day of endless music, and England’s Fanfarlo, who was scheduled to go on later, had prepared a few songs for our mini-musical-documentary series: the Secret Garden. We walked a short distance away from the venue and halted outside someone’s house, where I was drawn towards a white garage and the entire British crew towards a car draped in a car cover behind a chain link fence. They played three songs there —”Finish Line”, “Luna” and “Comets”, all from their new album, Reservoir. Plenty of bird chirps were available for accompaniment!

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