Once, on my way to New York City, my father who was dropping me off at the airport, asked how much cash I was taking. Perpetually late, and perpetually putting off until tomorrow things I could and should do today, I replied, unashamedly unprepared, “None.” I planned to hit an ATM as soon as I got into the city. Simple enough. While I worried not a whit about traveling cashless, I wouldn’t dream of traveling without a good book, and more often than not, when traveling to New York City, I’d have a Jonathan Lethem book tucked into my carry-on. Lethem dabbles deftly in several genres. His novel, The Fortress of Solitude, one of my favorites, blends two styles of realism, gritty and magic, in a masterful coming of age tale of one young Brooklynite in the ’70s. His latest, You Don’t Love Me Yet, is his take on a romantic comedy set in Los Angeles among modern-day indie rockers. If you’ve been missing out on Lethem, you’ve been missing out on the last decade of American culture.
O+S
There’s a pretty cool explanation of how O+S came to be over at the Saddle Creek website. The short version: Orenda Fink and Scalpelist (Cedric LeMoyne of Remy Zero) used an old friendship and lots of new and exotic sounds to put together an album rich in texture and atmosphere. Even on the first spin these tracks seem to possess a complex, almost academic structure. Just the opening 30 seconds of “We Do What We Want To” can clue the listener in to the agenda of O+S, with their swirls of sound and ethereal vocals; that is, to put a little artistry into their art.
Wavves
Young Nathan Williams aka Wavves has been making a lot of…wait for it…no, I’m not going to do that to you…Williams has been making lots of friends (or enemies perhaps) over the weekend as out in Austin, Texas for SXSW as he just wrapped up ELEVEN appearances. He now makes his way out East and then back home to San Diego. Williams’ not-so-stealth appearance into the indie scene largely depends on his DIY ethic, both in production and publicity. He’s a one man bedroom band equipped with a multi-track recorder and enough instruments, harmonies and fuzz to fill said bedroom. I mentioned fuzz right? He’s full of it, but for those of you not trained to do so, be patient and listen deeper into the songs, past the noise, and you’ll be rewarded with this kid’s hooks! He’s full of them too. Plans are in the works to put out a proper studio album, but you’ll want to be able to tell your kids you were listening to Wavves “before he sold out.” It’ll be analogous to the “I was listening to Beck when he was on Bongload” conversations happening 17 years ago. Fat Possum just put out his album, Wavves, last week, but it was live on iTunes months before that. And previously Williams released a slew of cassettes and 7-inch singles on a handful of different labels. Wavves is stirring up a big tsunami in a little pond, jump on board and ride it in before the line-up gets overcrowded.
Coltrane Motion
There’s something about 3hive’s hard drives and Coltrane Motion. Sam’s crashed three years ago shortly before posting about Chicago’s Coltrane Motion, and mine recently had to be replaced, too, shortly before posting about them. I had intended to also post some photos I took of Coltrane Motion when I saw them in May 2006 while in Chigaco, but I may have to blame a different hard drive crash from last summer for misplacing most of those. Which is rather unfortunate, as they played in an old church, and I got a sweet shot of Michael Bond bouncing under an enormous lighted cross while still trying to keep his mouth at microphone level and not tipping over his laptop stand. Michael, the driving force behind Coltrane Motion, is also a dead-ringer for 3hive’s Sam, but alas, that photographic evidence is also missing. I did find an poor quality shot I took with my phone inside the church, which is below. Sam’s description of Coltrane Motion still holds true, as further demonstrated by their first 7″ release “The Year Without A Summer b/w Maya Blue,” out tomorrow.
Original Post by Sam on 14 Jan 2006:
My hard drive crashed this week which, as reliant as I am on my PowerBook, is like suffering short-term memory loss. One of the few artists I remember having on tap for 3hive is Coltrane Motion, who are members of a Midwest artist-run collective/label called, irony of ironies, datawaslost. These tracks are a good representation of Coltrane Motion’s “sound” — in quotes because they seem to have as many “sounds” as they have songs, due in part to their habit of making their own software and instruments. This makes remembering what I wanted to say about Coltrane Motion even more difficult. Was I pogoing to the urgent dance-punk of “I Guess the Kids Are OK” or singing along to the sizzling crooner pop of “Pi Is Exactly Three”? Cutting rug to the cheeky Beck send-up “Supersexy ’67” or stroking my chin to the backmasked glitch ‘n’ beats of “The End of Every Movie”? Couldn’t tell ya. So I guess I’ll own up to liking all four. And, please, before you start downloading: a moment of silence for my hard drive…
Mark Richard
If you’re an impatient Mark Richard fan like myself you’ve stopped waiting for his next fictional foray. After being crowned one of the kings of contemporary literary fiction (read: big fish in a really small pond), he left for Hollywood to write for television (Chicago Hope, Party of Five, Huff) and film (Stop-Loss and the adaptation of his story “The Ice at the Bottom of the World” due out next year). Outside of that bubble I highly doubt he’s made any new fans with his screenwritings. Mark Richard discoveries take place tete-a-tete, with loaner titles being passed mano-a-mano. I love digging up used copies to pass along as gifts and now, sharing with a wider audience. Take a deep breath before you dive into the first story. It’s two sentences long. One sentence slightly longer than the first and chock full of images you may want to consider before you move into that charming apartment after moving out or losing your house to this lovely market we’ve been experiencing of late.
(Note: If you’d like your fiction to be considered for review, please email us links to your work.)
King Loses Crown
I recall an interview with Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins many years ago where he said that in his head the music he wrote sounded like death metal. I get the same sense with King Loses Crown. While this San Francisco duo exercises their love of hooks and synthesizers analog and digital, somewhere in their heads perhaps their music sounds more like death metal than the electronic power-rock of their self-titled debut EP.
Jon Hopkins
Patience. Give it a moment of your time. You need a break from your lightning paced life. Breath in. Hold it. Breath out. Repeat three times. Now that you’ve fed your brain a healthy dose of oxygen, feed your head a healthy dose of ambient beats courtesy of Jon Hopkins, pianist, composer, self-taught producer. At once his compositions soothe and haunt. Audio rorschach tests, you hear what you are, where you are, where you want to be. Hopkins merely holds a mirror up to your soul—you decide what it means. The break down at the end of this track signaling a break from tranquility, or a break for lunch. Me? I’m always up for the latter.
Mary Robison
Besides music rattling around in my head most of the day, words take up residence there too, sentences, stories, novels. I’ve wanted to add stories to our offerings at 3hive for a while now and it’s time to stop wanting. The arrival of Mary Robison’s novel One D.O.A., One on the Way has been looming for too long. It looks ready for reading finally. The curt and sardonic Eve Broussard narrates the story of her life in post-Katrina New Orleans in quick snapshots detailing the decline of her husband’s health and the pair’s relationship. It’s not unlike the fragmented and funny Why Did I Ever? the novel Robison scratched out on 3×5 cards, often while in her car waiting at stoplights. Both perfectly consumable novels for the clinically distracted. Tune in again next weekend for another edition of WordHive.
Barzin
After checking through our voluminous archives of 3hive’s unpublished stuff, I found that my friend and colleague Sean was thinking of posting Canadian singer-songwriter Barzin back in November of 2006. Since the statute of limitations has expired, I’m gonna run with it. Like Josh Hayden’s old band Spain, or maybe Mark Kozelek’s Red House Painters, the songs of Barzin move at a snail’s pace. What may not be clear, though, is that it’s a beautifully passionate and intricate snail suffused with longing, filled with the heartbreak of being trapped in its rigid shell. In other words, Barzin rocks it low and slow, with strings here and vibraphone there, never losing control of the specific and delicate emotional precision of a moment. Over the course of three albums, Barzin has stayed quiet, which is naturally a welcome if not absolutely musical necessity in a world of big cities and small children, machinery, televisions, iThings, etc. Give these tracks a shot; you won’t be surprised at all.
Rae Spoon
Rae Spoon is, according to the publicists, “one of the world’s only transgender country singers.” He’s also a clever songwriter and a bit of a wit, and really not all that country, at least on his most recent release, superioryouareinferior. This disc is a trip through musical styles, from lo-fi indie pop to mod folk. Drop a buck and download “If You Lose Your Horses” if you’re looking for a classic country track, or check out the album’s opener for an example of Spoon’s songwriting smarts — I never knew I wanted to write a song for the Great Lakes until I heard his. Oh, and if you’re looking for a record full of what it means to be a transgender country singer, you might want to keep on looking, because this isn’t it.