Today’s Christmas special comes courtesy of Brushfire Records. Looking for last minute Christmas music? Download this festive collection and 25% of the profit goes to support children’s music education. Lots of stocking stuffers here from Matt Costa, Money Mark, Rogue Wave, and of course Jack Johnson, but I can never pass up Neil Halstead’s toe-tapping authenticity song, so I’m passing this one along to you. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Cheers.
The Man in the Santa Suit [MP3, 3.8MB, 160kbps]
Not only does “Are You Sure?” take the prize for being the sunniest song about winter I’ve heard all year, it also wins the best Beulah song since Beulah broke up four and half years ago. It also happens to be one of my favorite songs of the year. A Block of Yellow’s bright melodies come directly from the Elephant 6 Collective songbook and the general ’60s garage pop sound. A Block of Yellow chased with a hot cup of cocoa will run the chill right out of your fingertips and toes this winter.
Wintermitts is a quartet from Vancouver, that inexplicably chipper Canadian raintown that is lax on the doobie laws and serious about its pop music. Wintermitts is so serious that it features accordion and flute regularly and bring in horns, harmonica, melodica, and even glockenspiel for extra-special occasions. If that weren’t enough, they’re also serious conservationists — they gave away an Heirloom tomato seedling with their previous CD, aptly, Heirloom. But wait…there’s more. They sing in French sometimes, and sometimes is perfect because us monolinguists can enjoy how they make an octopus a symbol for true love (really, it’s not far-fetched at all once you know that octopi have three hearts) in English and then enjoy whatever blah blah blah they’re saying in French on tracks like “Petit Monstre.” Seriously, Lise Monique Oakley can be singing about emptying the litter box for all I know and I still want to grab her and say “Kiss me, mon amour!”
Regarding that which we would term “Americana,” do they call it “Canadiana” in the land to the North? Just curious. Ox = American lo-fi alt country from Canada. They showed up on a nice little sampler from Weewerk that I’ve been listening to like a homemade mix-tape lately. My favorite among these tracks is probably “Transam,” which with its wavering vocals and shady narrative (not to mention the Bond-themed guitar solo) kind of reminds me of those Neil Young songs about drug shipments and getting burned. The thing is, download any of these freebies from Ox’s two albums and you’ll find great narratives wailed over stripped down simplicity. This time less is more.
I’m certainly no longer a teenager, but Starf**ker makes me want to call my mom and tell her “I love this band named… STARF**KER” just because I will have a way to drop the f-bomb in front of her with immunity. Now I’m certainly way too grown to think of cussing a some form of small rebellion, but this album makes me feel young again! Like I can hang out until 5am on a Monday night! Like I might run off with a bass player and become West Coast Lisa! Like I don’t have to go to work in an hour! Like Long Island Iced Teas are still an acceptable drink! None of this is true in any way, but I believe in an album that can make me believe these things for at least a moment. SF is from Portland, the music is dreamy, happy/sad pop and they rock my socks off. Your turn.
Here’s one that’s been hiding right under my nose, Joey Barro, aka The Traditionist, a gentle-voiced crooner chronicling the details of his life through song. The liberal harmonica and slide guitar on “I Know My Ocean” makes it sound as if Barro’s an Austin 6th Street local and when he sings about the “sting of pine needles” on “Driftwood Doll” you imagine he’s recording in some cabin deep in Montana’s mountains. These assumptions would be wrong. Barro could be found guilty by association associating sonically with such surf-folk artists as Matt Costa or Neil Halstead. The loose and bouncy “A Sleep Be Told” easily charms and surprises when fuzzy guitars and a bubbly organ percolate their way through the bridge. Barro’s soft and poetic strains are a welcome antithesis to Huntington Beach’s unfortunately traditional dude-buddy-bro-jack-up-your-four-wheeler attitude.
Just the other day, my buddy Roland from my freshman year of college said on Facebook that “Love Like Blood” by Killing Joke was the best song ever. While I think “The Fall of Because” is Killing Joke’s best song (let’s not even get started on the topic of “Best Song Ever”), it did cause me to pull out some old records of other electronic tinged artists of that era that Roland introduced me to, namely Click Click’s Rorschach Testing and Clan of Xymox’s self-titled LP. The Labrador Records site describes Pallers as “the darkest and finest electronic music we’ve heard in a long time.” That’s the perfect description of Pallers, who take the dark electronics of the previously named bands, yet add vocals with an amazing Swedish pop sensibility a la fellow Swedes The Radio Dept, making what was old new again.
â€Saws are tremendous pranksters, and the ruse of causing Human Beings to believe that they are actually playing them is perhaps the most beloved and persistent joke in Saw-kind’s long history.†That’s funny because when I think of saws, I usually think “sharp teeth†and “missing fingers.†Of course, I’ve never been intimately involved with a saw and, though I’ve heard melodies made from them, I believe this is the first time I’ve heard saws sing with no accompaniment. Julian Koster — he of The Music Tapes and Neutral Milk Hotel — coaxes from the saws a sound that is eerily placid. Yes, it’s shrill and not for everyone, but it’s quite lovely if you’re in a right merry frame of mind…and if you’re tired of the same-old holiday songs sung by pompous humans. The bewilderment comes roughly every three minutes or so as you realize, holy crap, you’re listening to an entire album of holiday standards played on a piece of actual hardware. But, as Koster notes, Jesus was a carpenter. Who knows—after a particularly stressful day of sermonizing and house framing, maybe the Son of God sat down with his saw, bow and a goblet of wine and conjured a soothing rendition of “Silent Night†to remind him of that fateful evening away in the manger.
I love the way “Georgia” meanders its way into my consciousness. It opens in the middle of an off-the-cuff saxophone riff, then the low-end guitar joins in and finally the sweet, laid-back double vocals of Kim Talon beckon my full attention, and unlike Odysseus I’m fresh out of beeswax, so I can’t plug up my ears to avoid certain destruction. Or certain seduction in this case. There’s a bit of nostalgia at work for me with Eagle & Talon. I love Kim’s double-voice work like I loved Julie & Gretchen’s vocals in Mary’s Danish, although Eagle and Talon’s low-fi, earthy production and their stop/start rockin’ and slowin’ recall Sleater-Kinney’s red light, green light energy. Lyrically, Eagle and Talon cover all stages and consequences of desire, from the lead up in “Hot Caught” to the act in “One Lark;” then you’re living with the product of that desire from birth, “Georgia,” through high school, “Ice Life.” Eagle and Talon provide an alluring soundtrack to the entire cycle.