Today’s post is dedicated to Serge and Sabrina, who today will marry in a Manhattan loft overlooking the Hudson river. Serge’s taste in music splits pretty evenly between ’80s one-hit wonders and old timey bluegrass. Sabrina’s…well, let’s just say her request list for the wedding mix included this song. So, in their honor, I’m going with the banjo and fiddle. Congratulations, S+S!
Rocky Votolato
With a name like Rocky Votolato, I was expecting disco covers, not classic folk-rock — acoustic guitar, harmonica, brooding lyrics, scruffy cheeks and the long gaze. Ah, I shouldn’t make assumptions based on the guy’s name, especially with that Italian ring to it. Did you see those ads in the paper, around the time of the Alito confirmation, blasting people for calling him “Scalito,” claiming that was ethnic bigotry? 3hive doesn’t need that kind of attention. Anyway, Rocky’s an old-style singer-songwriter from the PNW, and “Portland Is Leaving” is the prettiest sad song I’ve heard in a long time. “Love’s a trainwreck, you’re a mistake…”
Thanks to everyone for pointing out the bad links…
These songs are only downloadable directly from Barsuk’s website. Sorry.
Play It As It Lays #228
SXSW is in the Ear, er, Air
American Analog Set
Seriously now, how did we here at 3hive miss out on American Analog Set for so long? My commute home was extra long due to rain, so whilst trolling through my MP3 player in the car, I settled upon AmAnSet. I couldn’t find one of my favorites, “Hard to Find,” but since I knew I had it somewhere, I hit the computer once I got home. So after checking my collection, I didn’t see “Hard to Find” there, so I hit their website. All this time I’m wondering to myself if AmAnSet has made it to the pages of 3hive. Somehow, some way, we missed it. For those of you who love AmAnSet like I do, enjoy. And for those of you who do not know AmAnset, enjoy.
Spinto Band
Props to Shiv and Mike over at WOXY.com for turning me onto the Spinto Band. Actually, let’s talk about WOXY.com before we get back to the music—after battling the economic realities of internet radio for a couple years, WOXY.com is turning to its listeners for support. Their goal is 7,000 members to keep the music streaming. If you’re already a listener, subscribe. If not, start listening and if you like what you hear, subscribe. Sure the internet puts power in the hands of the people, but those hands gotta be generous and help foot the bandwidth bill.
Back to the Spinto Band—they’re a bunch of East Coast boys with ties to the Mississippi delta and who like a little rhythm to their pop. “Crack the Whip” is a close runner up to what I consider the most danceable pop track from last year, Of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and other games).” And since Beulah called it quits, the Spinto Band make for a respectable replacement in the post-Elephant 6 world. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for an upcoming tour with Arctic Monkeys and a new album for Bar-None in the near future. Oh, and more props to *Sixeyes for unearthing the MP3s.
Wooden Wand
I never really cared for the meandering freak-folk outfit Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice. To be fair, I haven’t listened to everything they released — if I had that much free time I could finish my Master’s degree — but what I did hear seemed to require an accompanying prescription to hallucinogens to be appreciated. So it’s strange that I even stopped to check out founding member James Toth’s solo record. But I did and I really dig it. Toth seems to have holed himself away from the world, or at least his cumbersome collective, and stripped his mystical and spiritual meditations down to their hypnotic core. Even his moments of self-indulgence are done with humor and innocence, such as his “okay” vocal tick on this track. I may be able to join this cult after all…
The Jimmy Cake
It was absolutely impossible for me to pass up listening to a band called The Jimmy Cake. I expected a bout of disposable pop, something frantic, sugary and forgettable. Not so. The Jimmy Cake is anything but. They’re (at least) a nine member band out of Dublin making improvisational rock with plenty of percussion and wind instruments that give the music a bit of an Irish flavor. Did you see that high school band performing DJ Shadow songs? Well imagine a similar band interpreting Beowulf with their instruments, or performing Mogwai songs. You’d come close to imagining the epic jamming of The Jimmy Cake.
The Capes
I’m still recovering from recent fatherhood, I’m just now climbing through my in box and was reminded — by a series of associations too mind-numbing to recount — of this rambunctious pop outfit from South London. Okay, I won’t bore you with how I found them, but I will drop this equation on you: I’ve got a well-documented soft spot for snarling, synth-seared melodies. The Capes are all about snarling, synth-seared melodies. Therefore, I’ve got a soft spot for The Capes. I believe that’s called the transitive property.
Pink Mountaintops
We usually save our announcements for the Junk Drawer, but today is a momentous day of sorts here at the Hive. It was two years ago that our very first posting went live. Although we contributors are more likely to get excited about the birthday cake than the party, we thought we’d celebrate in our own way by bringing you a two-fer and saying thanks for checking out what we’re listening to these days. Speaking of which…
It doesn’t take long to lock a visual on the meaning behind the name of Black Mountain guy Stephen McBean’s side project, and as titillating or offensive as you might find it, the name thankfully ain’t all she wrote. McBean is a maverick one-man-band who falls somewhere along the continuum between Eels, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Drake, Self, and that dude from 13th Floor Elevators. That’s a pretty disparate list, and it still doesn’t do much to describe how Pink Mountaintops mixes bawdy lyrics with Casio-tized death metal, sweet noir balladeering, and even singer-songwriter affectation. He’s an enigma, in case you didn’t get that from the poster at the label website, and like all good enigmas, you won’t want to stop listening even if you can.