hot chip

Now that I've decided to focus the music section of Silverwagon on electronic and its many forms, the London-based, new wave, dance rock group Hot Chip seems like a good start. (As well as the fact that they're the top post on a bunch of other music blogs recently.)

Let's start with the name. As soon as I read it I thought of chip beef on toast. When I think of chip beef on toast and then think of British electronic music, I laugh. So then I checked them out on itunes and I laughed at them again, this time because the album cover art work made me think of a person with a emotionally devestating IQ attempting to build a keyboard and then I thought of chip beef on toast and kept laughing. So I played some samples. . .
Hot Chip makes really authentic electronic music. They don't make any really memorable music, it's just fun to listen to. As I'm listening to No Fit State, hearing one singer repeat "I'm in no fit state," while the other lists reasons why he's in no fit state in a sort of call and response thing, I keep thinking: I hope this song keep going for around an hour. This is all sung over a droaning synth-pop keyboard and drooping base line, but it makes sense. Hot Chips songs would make the perfect soundtrack to a dream about playing video games at a friend's house afterschool in fifth grade. Sitting there on the couch with a bag of doritos open, shoes off in dim light. The clicks and gliding pops of Hot Chip's songs and their joking lyrics are the right sounds for listening alone or with a few friends-this isn't really dance floor fare.
Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor write this on their myspace page in an effort to explain their music. . .

"we started making music because we were bored with alot of other music. We loved the idea of 'pop' music but not the people who make 'pop' music now. We loved Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Robert Wyatt, timbaland and Madlib, Brian Eno and Devo, Anti-Pop Consortium and Aphex Twin, Will Oldham and Royal Trux. We decided to make our band different from most electronic music by playing everything live- no backing tracks, no computers. We decided to make our music different from most indie music- 4 keyboards and a drum machine, not all guitars. We decided to write folk songs and record them on old synthesizers. We decided to sing honest words about food and love, and try to make people laugh the way you laugh at richard pryor in the same song too. We made one album in Joe's bedroom for Moshi Moshi records, then we made another album for EMI still in Joe's bedroom (this one is coming out next spring). We used a computer to make them but almost everything on them was played by us with a keyboard on our lap whilst sitting on the bed."

On their most promising song, Over and Over, Hot Chip sings "Over and over. . .like a monkey with a minature cymbal, the joy of repetition really is in you." That sums it up, but the repetition is infectious.

-4 tracks available on Hot Chip's myspace page
-2 more at Palmsout blog

"Hot chip will break your legs, snap off your head."

new tune

The Appleseed Cast has posted another new track on their myspace page.

live Jim White+Handsome Family

I've spent a little time in Florida and a little time in Tennessee-that's the extent of my experience with the South. (Unless you count the Roots reruns that I've been catching lately on PBS around 2am.) After seeing Florida native Jim White and New Mexico transplants, The Handsome Family play Sunday night at The Ark in Ann Arbor, I have a new appreciation for all the ghosts and history that make up the South's swampy, sticky back story. All of these musicians play truly, I mean really, stripped down county. When I use the word country I'm not referring to "put another nickel in the jukebox and we'll do another Kansas City Shuffle", I mean "let's sing about abandoned trailers and killing your lover because it's only human."

Jim White's music is simple. Basic 3/4 or 4/4 country drum beats back his very simple guitar lines and chords often affected with tremolo and deep reverb. He sings his past really. White grew up in the Pentecostal community of Pensacola, Florida, worked as both a surfer and a model in Italy for a short time and then began writing music. In a 2000 interview White shed some light on his background and why his lyrics all come from the place he calls home.

Well you see, it's a deeper culture for those viewing it on the outside, but to the people participating in it, it's simply living. That's different. You don't notice the gems as much I think when you're caught up in the midst of it. You can't notice how pretty a river is... if you're 6 feet under the water drifting along. If you’re flying in an airplane over it and you look down, you say 'what a magnificent river.' Well I never got a chance to say 'what a magnificent river' until I left home and traveled all over the world and then, from a great distance, looked at my home and thought
"God what a beautiful place, let me go back there." And now that I'm back there, I appreciate it. But I don't know that the people who are here really think about it much.

His live performance was an equal mix of music and storytelling. While watching White on stage I couldn't help but think of the VH1 program storytellers how the rather intimate concert would have made a perfect episode. Between songs White would drift into stories ranging from where he was when he wrote the last song or why other folk musicians might look down on him for using a "Japanese orchestra" to loop guitar lines and vocals instead of using a full band. Whenever a story would make its way into a song, the room would take on the feel of an abandoned car on a dusty southern highway with the radio still on and the driver's door open. As I have seen few folk musicians play, White's performance was a rich experience, leaving me with a sense that I'd visited his home for a short walk down a path he knew well, walking along behind him with everyone else in the room.

Imagine any bar south of the Indiana border. Imagine then someone dropping some coins in the jukebox and a few bars of twangy guitar pouring into the room . . . and then a male voice sings, "This is why people OD on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Anything to feel weightless again. Those poor, lost indians-when the white men found them, most died of TB; the rest went insane. In our motel room you're drinking Slice and gin, reading Moby Dick on the other bed." Imagine that and you're thinking of The Handsome Family. Husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks formed in Chicago and have been releasing some of the most basic yet deeply disturbing and comical country music since 1995. In honesty, there's really noting interesting about the music, it could be created rather easily with an old guitar and drum machine. Many of the songs do include a steel pedal guitar which when added to the live performance gave the room the feeling of old cabin with a kerosene lamp lightly burning.

The Handsome Family's talent shines in their lyrics, written mainly by Rennie, a former fiction writer. Most of the songs revolve around the common themes of death, murder, drug overdose, excessive drinking and dead animals. These off themes, when set to basic country western music create such a strange feeling that I couldn't help but stare at the musicians as they played and sang thinking, "they travel around the country singing this stuff and what the hell does their house look like?" I have a feeling I was not the only wondering these things. It's as though being drunk and evicted at the same time would be a perfect few hours spent prior to seeing The Handsome Family play live-and I guess that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Looking over the tops of ten or so beer bottles in a cold dark room in February next to some good company watching a grown man sing, "I had nothing to say on Christmas day when you threw all your clothes in the snow. When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs, I just tried to stay out of your way. But when you fell asleep with blood on your teeth, I got in my car and drove away," was truly a good cap to a winter weekend. Yeah, their jokes got old and I could play songs just as well, but dog-gone-it, they're just such interesting people.

Music is often more about a musician's personality, history and a specific place, whether that place is where you fall in love or get sick on too much wine. The back story the concert told was well-worth the long drive and the $7.50.

I haven't posted any free samples because you should really buy music from these two truly original artists.

In These Times

Kurt Vonnegut's newest collection of essays, A Man Without a Country, published in September is also available through the In These Times magazine website. Vonnegut is also the Senior Editor of the magazine. His articles are a biting criticism of modern America and only traces of optimism are evident. Written by a man who has critically observed the past 60 years, he essays are engaging though worth a look. . .here's an excerpt.

Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn’t the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.
-Blues For America

A larger excerpt from the Sunday Herald.

The Knife

When a Swedish electronic group puts out a record with song titles such as High School Poem and Vegetarian Restaurant, you can bet they'll either be horrible or next week's soundtrack. The Knife will be my soundtrack.

As is the usual case here, thanks to better music blogs (gorillavsbear/saidthegramophone) than this floundering mess I've got one of the best free mp3s I found in a while. This Swedish group is making electronic that music touches a nerve a lot of other groups don't know exists. Imagine Xiu Xiu collaberating with Styrofoam to write songs people could dance to, then throw in some soft trance sounds and lulling swedish voice and that's The Knife.

Give Heartbeats a listen and see what I mean. A link to the Jose Gonzalez cover of the track is here.
Then head over to the Rabid Records site and check out a bunch of samples from other albums including the already sold out Silent Shout record.

Banksy

British grafitti artist Banksy has done some cool stuff.


I've also just discovered Coke machine glow. . .a not so pretentious Pitchfork.

Free Ted Leo + the Pharmacists

I realize they have been releasing material since 1999 and I'm just now discovering them. Yeah, that's pretty sad. They're pretty great though. There able to mix a rough punk sound with some great melody.



Pitchfork's Robert Mitchum had this to say regarding the band's 2003 Hearts of Oak album. . .
"Eschewing pretentious unpretentiousness for unguarded passion, strict '77-'82 influences for the classic rock stop on the FM dial, calculated instrumental inadequacy for guitar solos that are less technical flaunting (looking at you, Malkmus) than skillful, noisy exorcisms, Ted Leo makes a sound filled with so much authentic abandon that the British mags probably can't handle it."

check out a bunch of free mp3s here and and the current tour stops here.

Live

American Analog Set

I've stumbled across Bradley's Almanac and his great collection of live mp3s. He records everything right in the crowd with a Sony minidisc recorder-he even takes some pretty nice pictures.

I highly reccomend the Explosions in the Sky set and the American Analog Set set.
click on the names to go right to the download page.

Each set is only available for short time though. . .

No mowers

Read this Fast Company article describing why a CEO told Wal-Mart not to sell his products.

The man who said no to Wal-Mart.

Like music. . .?

checkout the great concert poster selection at The Poster List.
real cheap too.

The wait begins

The Appleseed Cast (myspace page) is set to release their newest album in March, but thanks to I Guess I'm Floating we've got a preview and it sounds great. Head over to the blog to hear two new tracks as well as an amazing array of free indie mp3s. .

Also, you've got to watch the preview for this new documentary by Eugene Jarecki title Why We Fight.
It's scheduled for relase tomorrow likely in NY and LA.
It looks incredible.
Read the interview with the film maker on the offical website as well-very insightful.

1.16.2006

click here in honor of the day . . .

remember segregation

Koppel and little else

"I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming. It's time to give something back."

So he's a thief.

This came from the mouth of Ted Koppel when asked about his decision to join NPR in June as a senior news analyst. I think Neal Conan and Mr. Koppel should have a bare knuckle boxing match in NPR fleece vests with the winner recieving the host spot on Talk of the Nation. . .

Aside from realizing through a friend that the 70s rock group CAN was a decade or two ahead of everyone else, I'd don't have much else.

Check out all the new links (that's where I steal all my ideas).

Watch this

Bill O'Reilley appeared on David Letterman recently and well. . .it was not pretty.

watch it here in Windows media.
watch it here in Real player.




oh, and read the real post for today below.

Not indie. . .but pretty damn good

Although We Are Scientists newest release Love and Squalor has been available overseas for months now, it's U.S. release yesterday caught the attention of not just this blogger, but most of the music blog community.
Love and Squalor is sure one of the next "it" albums with its almost perfect straddling of the line between furiously catchy pop-punk and that wildly popular greasy hair garage band sound. And even though the album is a Virgin release and the band has appeared on Letterman, it's indie rock. While comparisons to The Strokes and The Killers will inevitably be made over the coming months as "everybody else" becomes aware of the New York-based threesome, We are Scientists have something unique. (Or it could just be bassist Chris Cain's really thin moustache.)
While listening to the Inaction mp3 for close to a week now, thanks to gorillavsbear, the high octave guitar lines and Beatlesesque backing vocals on the chorus had me wondering what else these guys might have already released. It seems the two EPs which the band has released are still import only from the UK and one is available from iTunes.
Upon a full listen of the record, Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt will likely be the U.S. favorite, but certainly not the best track. The chours here beomes a little repetitive, fortunatly the music keep the song interesting. Can't Lose, the record's fifth track, begins with a poppy bouncing bass and drum mix as lead singer Keith Murray sings, "The party's alright, I might wanna stop drinking, what we're we talking about?" It's one of those songs, as most of the albums tracks are, one can find themself singing along with by the time the third or fourth chorus comes around. . . on first listen. That classic disco loose off-beat high hat snare combo is smattered all over the record and specifically The Great Escape and Worth the Wait. Both tracks immeditatly draw comparisons to the genres already-famous bands, We Are Scientists never lets that sound carry the song thugh, but instead refreshes the sound at the chorus with bigger guitars and drawn out singing.
While a lot can be said for the ultra-catchy hooks on the this records and the fact that almost everytrack could potentially be a favorite, We Are Scientists are not the next greatest thing in indie rock. Love and Squalor is great record with twelve well-written songs-and that's a perfect answer for a rainy January.

Read the Pitchfork review here.
listen and watch videos here.

Let it be known

Mylo will be big.

If you haven't heard of him or heard his tunes, let it be known that you read it here first. Mylo is creating what is some of the best electronic music available.
Check out a great review and some samples here and check Silverwagon again for more on this Scottish electronic pioneer.

Good for a Friday

I found this link on largeheartedboy, which you really should check out, and it seems an adequate post for a Friday at 1 p.m. in the almost middle of winter.

you were expecting an ipod, oh well how about some pink, raw-ass meat instead?

The emotions, I imagine, a 14-year-old girl would be going through upon finding meat when expecting an ipod.

1. Anger
2. Confusion
3. Lack of appetite
4. Confusion (due to odor)
5. Sadness
6. Denial
7. Compelling desire to contact local news and show them the meat.

No one else

I've been checking out a lot of year-end "best of" lists. Many of them overlap which is proof of the music's quality. Bands such as Deerhoof, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Bloc Party and Wolf Parade have all been written up and read up over the past three weeks-and they're great groups. You've probably already checked out many of those lists yourself and heard much of the music, so I've got a reccomendation that I have not found on anyone's "best of 2005" list.
Hird is the name the Swedish Christoffer Berg has given to his musical creation. On his 2005 debut release Moving On, the 22-year-old Berg is the mastermind behind every sound on the disc. Not only is the record the first full lenght release for Hird, it's the first album distributed DMN Dealers of Nordic Music. For only having released a few albums so far the site is a great introduction to the Scandinavian electronic scene.
The word nu-jazz appears all over the place in descriptions of Berg's nordic electronic creations. And really that's what you'll hear. While many of the tracks have a club feel to them, you won't find anything near a house anthem here. Jazz is hiding behind every syncopated note here and the female vocals suggest a deep appreciation for Ella Fitzgerald. Nine tracks of silky traveling chillout with a souful jazz backdrop is what you'll enjoy on first listen. On repeated plays the layers will peel themselves back revealing what is just really good mid-tempo electronic jazz. Every cut is outlined with a mellow yet soulful organ creating a warm nest for the deep bass high hat combos. Even though the vocals come across at first listen as repetitive, it's as though they are more part of the music than actually words. The words here continue, they travel, they don't merely repeat.
The album's jewel, Moving On, is the perfect soundtrack to a early winter drive through Sweden, I'd imagine, or an October run along a Michigan coast. Christoffer Berg has made a truly pleasing electronic album and certainly will again.

Check out Hird samples and many of the other DNM artists at the DNM Loft.

Discovery

I'm making a prediction that the Swedish born Jose Gonzalez will be the Sam Beam of 2006. This is not to say that he is in any way duplicating a sound, far from that actually, but the ultra-melodic and graceful sounds of this guitarist and singer will certianly be heard more and more in the coming year.
This is the cover his next single available in January. I learned from gorillavsbear.net that the picutre is from a Sony commercial in which the song is featured. The dots are some of the 250,00 superballs that were dropped in SanFrancisco for the ad.

Check out the video for the remix of Send Someone Away with Embee (Looptroop).
Listen to Heartbeats by Gonzalez, thanks to gorillavsbear.net
Hey, I'm still learning. . .

Happy New Year.

Silver Wagon is back.

The blog is back kicking like a mule on espresso and smelling like a department store after a busy day of shopping.

These two men have just broken open one of those little gas station ATMs with a crow bar and a blow torch and are now hiding behind this building waiting to carjack the first Buick LeSarbre that comes by.

They had time to pose for this shot. . .but not much time, as you can tell by all the squinting.