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

Exciting new band to come out of NYC. These girls can sing.

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…

Unamplified sing-along from last night; I was photographing for Brooklyn Vegan. They’re super young sisters from Sweden, and like all Swedes, they love Bright Eyes. When they first got noticed by doing you tube covers of Fleet Foxes, they were 18 and 15 respectively.

Well I’ve been hiding in this bag of bones
In a dream where no one comes to wake me up
So long, so long, chemical inversion
Smiling on the black talk[?] cause my mind’s made up

Cause I’m riding
On a long shot
And the future’s bare
And my radio’s on

No entrance, no evidence
No black burns[?] of fire
In a dream where no one comes to wake me up
We’ll all go
We’ll all go
I’ll see you in that halo
Quiet like the body of the passing thought

Cause I’m riding
On a long shot
And the future’s bare
And my radio’s on
Cause I’m riding
On a long shot
And the future’s bare
And my radio’s on

I posted a transcript of a Slavoj Zizek talk last night at the endangered St. Mark’s Bookshop. The talk is as meaty as a Zizek rant can get in an hour. Topics covered include a theoretical discussion of melancholy, mourning and prohibition, and how they apply to the Occupy Wall Street protests as well to the state of the left and modernity, in general; the problematic relationship between democracy and globalization, and how the protests and Anne Applebaum fit into this; the obscene pact of Zionism; the true 99%; a new multi-centric world where countries like India, China and South Korea are buying tracts of land from countries that can barely feed themselves; and lots more.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

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.

Off their new album Little Wind. This one’s from their last NYC show at Union Pool, Brooklyn (boy, people talk a lot at that place!)

You know who’s going to love this Ray Charles / Aretha Franklin cover? You. You’re going to love it. From last night at Rock Shop, Brooklyn. They’re playing 2 more NYC dates: today (Oct 12) at Cake Shop and tomorrow (Oct 13) at Union Pool.

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.