You and I/Analyze

I've never posted my own music on here, but since this isn't really mine per se, I'm making an exception today. As you might have gathered from my last post, I'm really into the new Thom Yorke album The Eraser. One of the tracks that I like the most is Analyse. But whenever I listen to it, I always hear melodies from Jeff Buckley's "You and I" – from Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk – as vocal embellishments, even though the songs aren't really that similar. Or maybe they are... So the other night I decided to sit down and see if they would fit together the way I was hearing them in my head. And they did.

I'm working with a really low quality mp3 of Analyse, so the whole thing is a little lo-fi. Email me if you would like it in a higher-quality format.

Daniel Johnson – You and I/Analyse (Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke)

It's Summertime

And the living is easy.

Music sounds good again.
In between early morning searches for fresh dandelions with my daughter and the endless joy that seeps out from heated pavement into summer dusks, there is the day. For me, the day is usually bogged down with brightness and and its own dry realities. And so a rhythm emerges of the hot hours, abrasive and stifled, sandwiched between a cool dream. This is the high-contrast trade off of the summertime extreme. A whole change of seasons in a 24-hour span. I accept this, but am always looking for ways to stitch those higher summer sentiments into the boring fabric of facts I call a job. And this summer, I have the music to do it.



Thom Yorke – This is a masterpiece of focus and restraint. A multi-instrumentalist, peerless composer, and leader of this generation's The Beatles, Radiohead's Yorke could have indulged his most avante garde whims for his first solo project and it would have been, no doubt, arresting. (When it comes to bold leaps of style, Yorke has never not nailed the landing.) Instead, he's chosen to work within a refined pallette – the slippery, crunchy drum programming he perfected records ago, a little slinky bass playing, and various shades of pianos bouncing around the stereo spectrum - all in service of his crookedly delivered croon and a smattering of songs in various shades of black. The result is crisp and current.

Carelessly described, it's just glitch beats under sad songs. But there's more nuance in here than normal for this micro-genre. This is electronic-based music that finds a way to be twisted, soulish, funky, and yearning, with lots of asymmetry written in. Yorke first mastered, and has now subverted, the grid, discovering how to make machine-based music with enough loose ends to still be an analog to the human condition. He has a strange sense of harmonic rhythm, flipping or dropping a beat without telegraphing it; changing chords in the wrong part of the measure... But that sounds academic. This isn't just geek-good. Its tunefulness and energy are accessible in the way that records felt when I was a teenager.

I have this theory that Yorke sings best when it's not Radiohead (duets with Bjork and PJ Harvey come to mind) - his delivery is more open, less constricted without the burden of warding off evil that his band has imposed on itself. Here he sounds like more of a human, and more of a man.

The Eraser finds him working again with Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's in-house producer on their last four releases. Not to slight a brilliant sonic innovator like Godrich, who has become a star in his own regard – this generation's Phil Spector, a leading name-brand producer – but I've never been a big fan of the way he records rock bands like electronic groups, putting the instruments in neat sonic drawers, everything in its right place. However, this compartmentalization couldn't be more appropriate for a collection of recordings which is essentially the sound of Yorke and his toys.

The record, titled The Eraser, comes out July 11.

Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
Thom Yorke - Analyse




Augie March - You probably haven't heard of Augie March. That's not a dig on your with-it-ness, just the sad reality. The reason for this is something as stupid as distribution. They are a magical five-piece of Australians making literate, inventive rock on par with all the records you reach for in moments of weakness. But nobody's done much to put their records out in the states or for sale digitally, and paying import prices to discover new music is not something the kids are willing to do lately. So they toil in genius an ocean away while entire continents miss out on their glory sound. The thought of this should scare the shit out of people who are serious about music. Imagine if Jeff Buckley had been German but never signed a stateside distribution deal and we never heard of him here. Remember the bleak alternate reality of George Bailey's dream lesson in It's a Wonderful Life, where he sees what the world would be like if he hadn't lived? We are living in such a dark version as American music fans. An Augie-free reality.

That was a bit dramatic. But I've made my point. Don't feel bad for Augie March. They're kind of a big deal where they're from. Feel bad for us.

Augie March and I go way back. Through an Aussie friend, I became obsessed with an EP they released in '98 called Waltz and followed them as they made the antiquey, smoky masterpiece Sunset Studies in '01 and its refined but overly wordy, grown-up successor Strange Bird three years later. The staggering breadth of this triple feat established enough of a track record to expect excellence from anything they might do. But the beauty of this new album is beyond even that promise. There's a point where the artist looks back and recognizes that all of his periods, most now neglected, are his children, and embraces them again as part of himself. Augie was definitely on a path from fumbling brilliance to cool headed craft, which was a less interesting trajectory for me. But their singer Glen Richards seems to have summoned his dead strengths from the tomb, finding a sturdy resonance in his throat that didn't exist before. It's commanding and above all true. Richards has always aspired to understated honesty in the tradition of Gillian Welch, only working the sentiments he truly owns. And the meticulous arrangements (featuring the best use of piano in a rock band I can think of) have such chiseled simplicity that you are forced to look at Richards' new creations for what they are: his best writing yet.

The new record, unfortunately titled Moo, You Bloody Choir, is out now. (Warning, their songs are "growers" and this record also makes more sense turned up loud.)

Augie March - Victoria's Secrets
Augie March – Stranger Strange



The French Kicks – I don't really understand why this band isn't a bigger deal than it is, even among the indie. My guess is that there's a backstory. Like, the lead singer broke the heart of a sexy witch and they were cursed by some kind of rock hex. I've always had a thing for bands with rock hexes though, so this is right up my alley. The French Kicks are kicking it exactly the way a band should kick it in '06. A modern approach to a live rhythm section informed by electronic production, understanding the value of space in arrangements (another five-piece on par with Radiohead and Augie March in terms of knowing when not to play), insisting on yin for yang – prettiness for every crudeness - and employing their secret weapon: falsetto harmony. Harmonizing in a falsetto voice is a difficult thing to pull off and keep the in tune, but they don't seem to have any problems with it. In fact, they make everything they do seem easy, like the groomed, privileged prep schooled pretty boys of their press photos. I smell rich kid all over this band, and yet I hate them not. Maybe it's the hex. I mean, these guys are better looking than the cast of most TV shows. So if the masses won't join me in valuing their artistic merits, I can't figure out why the superficialities haven't made the broader case.


A friend (who doesn't exactly love them) described them as Motown by way of Morrissey. Totally. The new record, with its out-of-date title Two Thousand, comes out July 18.

French Kicks – Cloche
French Kicks – Also Ran

Man High

Boards of Canada just released their first music video. The track is Dayvan Cowboy from The Campfire Headphase. Most of the video is based around footage of Joseph Kittinger (crazy-ass old guy smiling above) skydiving from a hot air balloon. What you will begin to notice is that he's in outer space doing this. The footage kind of makes me sick to my stomach. That first drop, being at such high altitude, there's just no wind resistance. He motors. He actually broke all these records, going the speed of sound like that. Check out wikipedia.




I've posted one or two other tracks from The Campfire Headphase here before. It's an inconsistent album, but the half of it that is good is REALLY good. Dayvan Cowboy is one of my favorites. They say that there are no new chord progressions. That it's all been done, but then someone like Boards of Canada will come along and put together a couple of chords in a new way. Really beautiful, with fresh mountainous drum programming breaks that fall in weird places.

Boards of Canada – Dayvan Cowboy

Update

1. A move happened. And while my arms and legs burn like I just shimmied up Everest (it was actually just the two back flights of stairs to Kirst's apartment, scaled 600 or so times), and my Achilles tendons are threatening to snap if I break out into sudden dance (which I have been known to do), our relationship surprisingly shows no signs of wear. Now, I'm not going to lie. It was completely shocking to arrive Thursday night and, instead of finding her apartment in a state of neatly boxed moving appropriateness, open the door to this:



"What!" she says. "I've been doing stuff!"

"I didn't say anything!"

The fact is, there are an inconceivable amount of things that need to be done when you suddenly have two weeks to move your entire life to a new state, new job, new car. And in between taking care of business, Kirst launched a full-on bi-state farewell tour that included seeing each of her closest friends at least twice (four if they have a baby), and getting in one last meal at each of her 25 favorite restaurants. What can I say, the girl's a social butterfly and it's one of the things I adore about her (We both have August birthdays but I always say she's the real Leo). So packing was a low priority and ended up getting done during and up until the final seconds of move-out day. But in the end, we nailed it, and within about 36 hours the monolith of mess you saw above had been safely transported to Michigan and stacked in the 50 square feet of floor space that we call The Manor.







2. The saga continues. A couple of weeks ago I alerted you to the world series of trash talk, a comments section on a site for illegally downloading movies. Believe it or not, those idiots are still going at it. If this keeps up it's going to fester into some kind of mini world war, with UN peace keepers and secret prisons. Was it Robert Frost who wondered if the world would end in fire or ice? Maybe it ends in douchebaggery.

Bubble

I watched Bubble last night. If you’re not familiar with the backstory, quick recap:

Steven Soderbergh directed it. Soderbergh is credited with starting the successful independent film movement that continues today with his movie Sex, Lies and Videotape. After that hit, he took the path of more experimentation with a series of increasingly esoteric films that he admits were of little use to anybody but himself. He got back into the mainstream game with some hip (Out of Sight), corny (Erin Brockovich), masterful (Traffic) and annoying (Ocean’s 11 a and b, which were kind of like GQ fashion spreads with stories) blockbusters.

With Bubble, the recently prolific Soderbergh is trying an experiment again. It’s the first time a movie will be released simultaneously in three formats: theatre, DVD and cable TV. When I heard this, I was really curious to see how it would work out. When people experiment with traditional forms, especially if it’s effective enough to change the way the industry works going forward, I think it’s extremely interesting. I wanted to see how this would go over and wanted to be part of it. Unfortunately for me, my chance to participate in the experiment was thwarted because, though Bubble was released in January, it has been marked “Very Long Wait” in my Netflix cue until this week.

Anyway, I’ve finally seen it. What was great about Bubble, the film itself, is that as a movie it’s also an experiment in form. At first I was shocked to read that for his great test flight Soderberg was going to use what sounded like a throwaway project: digital cameras, non actors, extreme minimalism. But the results are pretty incredible. For a while now we’ve got a taste of how reality, either in documentary or ‘reality TV’ form, can be often be more engrossing than traditional narrative forms when edited right. Some of the best movies I’ve seen in the past few years (Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, Winged Migration) have been documentaries, and the boom of reality TV dominated prime time TV for years and is still a huge ratings draw. But nobody’s ever combined reality with narrative before in this way,that I know of. Soderberg picked ordinary people from the town he was filming in, gave them a loose idea of the story and what needed to happen in each scene, but asked them to elements from their real lives to fill out the characters. I'm sure something like this has been tried by real actors before, and that it has some kind of method name, but surely this is some kind of first. The DVD bonus features include the extensive casting interviews where you realize just how much the real versions of these people were simply coopted into the film. It’s pretty odd, even creepy when you consider how one of the characters turns out to be a latent psychopath. (In real life that person seems sweet as pie.)

Besides this innovative method, even the story arc feels new. Though it’s a murder film with an investigation, the truth of what will happen and who will do it is telegraphed fairly on. That settled, our minds are allowed to meditate on the very mundane awfulness of how the wrong combinations of human interactions could end in mindless violence. A lot of the credit for the fact that this movie works at all has got to go to the casting department. You can’t take your eyes off these actors. Two of the three principals are as beautiful as they are believable. The third, Debbie Doebereiner as Martha, should get some kind of award. The mask of meek rage that slips across her face in certain scenes made me nervous to watch. I can’t even put my finger on what it is. It’s just the coldest face you’ve ever scene, while looking hot with blood. You know something’s not right. The last third of the movie is really tense. An uncomfortable thing to watch.

Smartly, they kept the running time short. If you're like me and you enjoy watching movies that approximate what it's actually like to be a person and think that humanity is engrossing enough without embellishment, you should watch Bubble.

Chris Whitley (Memorial)

Chris Whitley (b. 1960, Houston. d. 2005, Houston)

A friend emailed me last Friday. "Did you hear that Chris Whitley died? They announced it during the Grammys." I hadn't heard. I got on the Internet. I discovered that, not only had he died as long ago as November (of lung cancer) he had released 4 records in the past few years that I wasn't even aware of. I felt sad and guilty that I had stopped paying attention. I can't even really say why. I only know that there are some artists who stand outside of music fashion and consistently produce work of their highest quality that, for whatever reason, I take for granted. I had gone to see Whitley whenever he played in town and bought all of his records up to 2001's Rocket House. But I guess at some point he slipped under my radar....

Sometime before 1998, Chris Whitley found himself without a contract after his label, the Work division of Columbia, folded. His response was to make a sparse recording in a barn of solo performances featuring just his hoarse voice, rusty sounding steel guitar and boot stomping called Dirt Floor (If that description sounds terrible to you, it does to me too. I don't like my music "rootsy", "folky" or "bluesy". Instead picture a huskier Jeff Buckley mumbling minimal, swampy "scrapyard lullabies" with atonal, fractured alternate tunings). There is a frequent thread on the Internet "Name 10 perfect albums. Albums where you don't have to skip a song." I can't even think of 5, but Dirt Floor is one of them. It's short, 9 songs in fewer than 30 minutes. But it's as complete a listening experience as any album I own. The aesthetic choice of this kind of simplicity was a statement of independence itself: that if you take away all the sophisticated production and flushed out band arrangements, Whitley could still deliver something perfect, with just his feet, hands and voice. The title song itself took the metaphor further: "There's a dirt floor underneath here/ To receive us when changes fail/ May this shovel loose your troubles/ Let them fall away." This is one of the most comforting psalms I've ever taken to heart. The worst that could happen to us is death – which is just rest, in the earth.

Dave Matthews, who said in memoriam that Whitley's music was more important to him than his own, created a label called ATO and had the good sense to sign Whitley, giving his career a second chance. After this, he experimented with electronics a bit on Rocket House. I felt at the time it was both a cliché to marry electronics to older music forms hoping to cheaply modernize them, and that it also worked. I guess at this point I might have assumed he was safe in the hands of his new benefactor and lost concern.

During my reinvestigation last Friday, when I bought most of the records I missed off emusic, I discovered something sublime: the album he released in his last year of life called Soft Dangerous Shores. I don't know what lung cancer did to his throat, if anything, but there was more whisper and rasp now. The dissonant alternate tunings and wire brush timbres of his playing were still intact, but the whole thing was submerged in a sonic ambience that won't show its face to my discerning ear. It's difficult to pinpoint where the sense of ethereal distance is coming from, or what the textural ghosts are that pop in and out of the mix. Is it reverb, synthesizer? What is being played? It is the musical equivalent of disembodiment. A truly disorienting listening experience, more suited to emotional provocation than most. I thought of how Jeff Buckley's guitarist Michael Tighe said after Buckley's death, about Buckley's erratic behavior in his later days, that the parameters of experience are wide open for someone in the transformative period which will result in death. He compared it to a cocoon and butterfly. Not two separate things, life and death, but all one big thing with stages. Whitley sounds both physically shredded by illness and like he has begun to glow out his fingers and mouth.

I saw Whitley once at St. Andrews. He was touring Dirt Floor and had rigged a "Boot Box" which was a wooden plank with a microphone underneath to amplify his one footed-blues stomp. But they EQ'd it like an 808 drum machine – an odd juxtaposition of sound and style. But fucking rad. His set was flawless and huge. One man making a mighty sound. I caught him at the bar after and he was tiny, greasy, shy. –almost shifty – and his teeth were stained gray from tobacco. I had read his bio about a childhood of wandering vagrancy and that he had busked for money on the streets of NY to try and start a career, but you usually assume hyperbole in those things. In person, he really looked the part of a hustler. He was very kind to me. I asked him all the questions I could think of.

A few years later, he was touring with the rhythm section from Madeski, Martin and Wood. They were playing the Shelter. The turnout was moderate. He must have been having technical difficulties – I had no idea – but suddenly he stormed off stage. The band followed in shock after a minute. I thought, at the time, it was a pretty diva thing to do. But then, after a bit, he swallowed his pride and took the stage again. You could see he felt embarrassed for overreacting. I always admired that move; the way he checked himself and finished out the set strong.

I'm sad he's dead. I don't know why. Death still seems very abstract to me. I don't romanticize it and I don't indulge fantasies of a connection with the musicians I listen to. Yet, it bothered me when Elliott Smith died and it bothers me that Chris Whitley died, and that I did not even know it. I think maybe it's because I listen to people whose musical choices and the human spirit they put in song exhibit a type of courage and conviction. Those qualities seem more real to me than other things like jobs and cars and politics. And so does the death and absence.

Chris Whitley – Fireroad, For Two (From "Soft Dangerous Shores")
Chris Whitley – City of Women (From "Soft Dangerous Shores")
Chris Whitley – Dirt Floor (From "Dirt Floor")
Chris Whitley – Loco Girl (From "Dirt Floor")