I’m not much of a listener when it comes to minimal ambient music, but I went with a friend who adores Stars of the Lid, and it was easy to see what draws people to this genre, and especially to a band like this.
As nice and cozy the layout is down at the Tap Bar at Knitting Factory, the sound pretty much sucked. There was quite a bit of distortion through the two band sets I stayed for, and a couple of feedback issues during These United States, but luckily there is too much charm, energy and cohesion in this band for little things like terrible sound to come in the way of total enjoyment, and I remain baffled as to what it is about these songs, especially the ones off Crimes, that makes them come alive as far bigger beasts when performed live. I must mention that they didn’t play “Honor Amongst Thieves”–why wouldn’t I be obsessed with this song, I listen to it every time I feel the need to awaken from daily slumber. But they did end with “When You’re Traveling at the Speed of Light”, which was just as good, and really the entire set was filled with goodies. Since Mark Charles is away touring with his own project Vandaveer, they played as a four-piece. I made sure to take a video of “When You’re Traveling at the Speed of Light” so that you can witness some of the awesomeness.
I wade through an inbox filled with mp3s and bring you only the good ones! In this installment: sass and melancholy, banjo and accordion, Danish and the ghost of Bob Dylan.
The music of New York City’s Twi the Humble Feather sounds like a Wes Anderson movie waiting to happen. Comprising of three acoustic guitarists who all play and sing, often identical or nearly identical parts, the band revels in a cerebral kind of sweet and silly; like a reincarnation of whistles blowing out of a school bus, only here fingers leap in unison like ballerinas and quick gasps of breath make way for a trail of some very important monosyllabic sounds. It turns out, anyhow, that there is a story of cinematic proportions here, and this oddly heartening music owes itself to Twi (pronounced Twai).
Singer Sharon Van Etten’s Apple G4 laptop, bearing a red streak from the time she painted her nails red and accidentaly scratched it, has gone missing! Lovingly named “Sharon Van Halen”, the machine’s deskop was set to the picture of a Dolly Parton statue. Sharon had parked her car near East Houston street and Suffolk street on Thursday night, from where the laptop hidden underneath the seat in a black fitting laptop case with no strap, just handles, was stolen, leaving Sharon several songs poorer: all of the new songs she’d worked on this year were on that computer; tracks by Sharon Van Halen and Sharon Van Etten populate the iTunes. If by a stroke of magnificent chance you happen to see this device floating around, you can contact Sharon on her myspace (or you can always buy her wonderful CD to help her pay for her new laptop!). Download “It’s Not Like”
Photo by Victoria Jacob
I saw filmmaker Craig Zobel’s The Great World of Sound a while ago, but got it on Netflix again to re-watch a scene in which a character performs Joanna Newsom’s “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie” a cappella. Outside the context of the movie, the singing by actress Tricia Paoluccio is a little too theatrical even for Joanna Newsom material, but it gives me goosebumps nevertheless, and worthily illustrates Joanna Newsom’s gift as a songwriter. The story of how this song ended up in the movie is discussed in an interview on Fabulist. When I first watched the film, the surprise was so unexpected that it almost made me leap; so I’m sorry about the spoiler, though it has been over a year since it came out! It’s not by any means a movie that will move you a million miles, but it’s kind of a sweet story with a sad aftertaste, and modest in its telling, about a disheartened music enthusiast who finds himself working for a record company that scams aspiring musicians in small towns; Kene Holliday, who plays a colleague bent on making his job work, is actually pretty hilarious; and though Tricia Paoluccio was a hired actress, most musicians you see in the movie are non-actors who thought they were auditioning for real–their responses to the staged auditions are far more telling about the entertainment industry than the plot itself. Continue to download the song and watch the trailer.
hooves on the turf is a mostly-music blog based out of brooklyn. i can be reached at hoovesontheturf [at] gmail [dot] com - please send me your lovely music as an attached mp3 or an mp3 link. if i like what you send, i'll be sure to ask for more.
