Girl from Mountain Man:

As you can tell by the picture above, I did see them at some point: that night I ended up at the Woodsist showcase, and there they were. But there isn’t a happy ending here. They were just there to sing backup vocals for their friends’ set, and I don’t recall hearing their voices at all. This was the night of sound f-up’s at Cheer Up Charlie’s. When I was back in my bed after the show, ending the day with thin crust pizza from Domino’s (surprisingly tasty), I read Todd P’s tweet:

bizarre sound guy meltdown at cheer up charlies. dude apparently just completely lost it, puked, now in a fetal position. not one drink

Incidentally, I also had pizza for breakfast that morning. We said, “Well if we can’t see Mountain Man, we might as well go eat pizza at Home Slice“. As we ate, we listened to Phantogram play:

And guess who was there to get the party going while bands switched on the  main stage?

A Giant Dog Austin’s premiere party band?

My main reason for coming here was to check out Generationals (from New Orleans):

As we were driving into Austin, the radio was on, and they played a catchy tune called “Whey They Fight”, and it was just a really fun tune by this band called Generationals. So I was determined to check them out.

They seemed really likable, but their live setup was in its infantile stage. All the cowbells, horns and tambourines you hear in the recording? Well, there was none of that. And none of the strongly-implied dance moves.

Missing Mountain Man evidently didn’t teach us anything. We decided to leisurely check out all the stores on that stretch of South Congress Avenue. This was one of our stops:

We got a fresh cherry lemonade:

We ran into this guy (sounded great!):

Who had this sticker:

Some time around this hour, we missed Mountain Man for the second time, partly owing to the American Apparel flea market, which was the biggest waste of time. Then we were exhausted and took a lingering break for empanadas. But  we were told, “You must come down to French Legation Museum, it’s awesome!”And so we did.

Thurston Moore was playing:

This was probably my favorite venue. It was so relaxing that next year I’m determined to come here first thing in the morning every morning. Yellow Fever, Talk Normal and Sharon Van Etten had all played here earlier (separate shows), which I’d missed.

Thurston Moore was followed by a surprise assault from this awesome mariachi band:

They sort of appeared out of nowhere, and everyone’s faces went from “what the—” to “—oh my god this is so cool” within a second. I was ecstatic at the first sound of the trumpet.

Thurston was still hanging around:

We were running incredibly late for the Loom BBQ party where all our friends were going to be. We made it in time for Rural Alberta Advantage, which was the last band to play.

We missed our friends These United States’ set but we heard it was a-rocking. And there was still plenty of these:

John Fanning of The Loom atop a tree house:

Then we headed to Cheer Up Charlie’s for the Woodsist showcase.
Despite sound issues, The Beets (my neighbors in Brooklyn)! We take the same train and it’s not even the L or the G.

Woods and friends:

Someone Alex Bleeker (of Real Estate) playing his own stuff with members of Mountain Man and Real Estate:

Mountain Man:

Somehow Woods managed to work past the ongoing sound troubles:

Musically speaking, a terribly unproductive day.

Download Honeybee by Mountain Man
Download When They Fight by Generationals
Download To Clean by Woods
Download When I’m Small by Phantogram
Download Happy But On My Way by The Beets

While busyness continues behind the scenes here on this Hooves on the Turf, why don’t you watch a video of the Rural Alberta Advantage playing a song at the Union Hall when they were here earlier this month?

As always and ever, watch in HD + fullscreen mode
If embedding this video, please link back to this page

There’s also a video of These United States from the same show, if you missed it.

Websites: Rural Alberta Advantage Myspace, Rural Alberta Advantage Official

Union Hall
Park Slope, Brookyn
February 6, 2009

Download “Don’t Haunt This Place“ | I went to Pianos camera-less last night with the intention of being “off duty” but here I am, posting a few re-colored cellphone pictures and a summary. It was The Loom’s last residency show at the venue (new material’s sounding great and showing signs of a maturing band); they had invited Rural Alberta Advantage to play with them, which, as it turns out, would make it the first US show for the Canadian band. I’ve never seen Pianos that packed on a Tuesday night. Even when great bands are playing, sometimes it’s just disappointingly empty, but there was no room to move last night. RAA’s frontmant Nils Edenloff looked visibly surprised as his band took stage, saying, “Is this some kind of improv group pulling a prank on us?” He thanked The Loom about a hundred times for asking them to play, and kept repeating how grateful he was for the “warm reception” in the US. Story continues…

Not only was the place packed, but at least the first two rows knew all the lyrics to RAA songs. There was one girl who yelled out that it was her friend’s 25th birthday and that the birthday girl, also present at the show, was a huge fan. She added, “She’s from Poland! She’s a Communist!”, at which point Nils stopped short alarmingly and refrained from delcaring any political allegiance, saying emphatically, “We do want to come back to America”. They were catching a flight back in about 4 hours after their set, but they will return on Feb 6 for a show at Union Hall with some band called These United States (about whom I know absolutely nothing–but I hear they’re promising).

To use points of reference I’m familiar with, Nils’ voice sounds somewhere in between AA Bondy and Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel), but the music’s quite different from both. There were several songs inspired by Nils’ own hometown(ish), including a pilgrimage site of a town upon which surrounding hills collapsed and fell (once upon a time!) and another about a group of kids who planned to make a 5-hour-long bike-ride during winter from one town to another, both of which kind of had the Neutral-Milk-Hotel-ish quality of storytelling, but the similarities stop there. The other two members, who said they were happy that Nils didn’t require them to wear uniforms anymore, have cheerfully hyper personalities on stage, moving from one percussive instrument to the other, dancing, and singing along. Once done, they walked into the crowd and sang a wonderful good night song unamplified–everything sounds so much better unamplified!

Oh, and for the 101st time, thanks to The Loom.  They’re playing Bell House on Feb 12 as part of the “BAM: Sounds Like Brooklyn” program.

Update: Video of the unamplified “Good Night” from the Pianos show (via A Rightly Timed Pause)