Photo by David Greenwald
Photos/ramblings re: yesterday’s madness (featuring Spoon, Rose Elinor Dougall [pictured], Real Estate, Toro Y Moi, Yukon Blonde, International Waters and more) will be up on Cokemachineglow this afternoon. Hugs!
Labels: Concert Photos, SXSW Comments
Photo by David Greenwald
Friends, as you read this, I’m probably hungover in some godforsaken Austin hotel, girding my loins and liver for the 2010 SXSW Festival. (I wrote this post last week. Magic!) It’ll be my first rodeo here at the million-band fest and I’ll be doing my damndest to see at least one act for every beer consumed (I make no promises on the former). I’ll be covering all week for Cokemachineglow, with my review and photos of today’s madness up there tomorrow (more here, of course) and live music updates on Twitter at @cmgzine (and live beer updates, as usual, on Twitter at @daverawkblog). One promise: no bullshit “[Hyped band] is [killing] it! They’re playing [cool song] at [venue you're not at]!” Tweets. Pals, if you’re not here, hope you enjoy the pix/thoughts and if you are, holler, will ya?
Previously: SXSW 2010: 50 Bands to Watch
As Laura Veirs’ July Flame, the follow-up to 2007’s Nonesuch-released Saltbreakers, sat in label limbo last summer, the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy Tweeted that it was his favorite record of the year and added, “Please pester @nonesuchrecords and tell ‘em to PUT IT OUT!” Why they didn’t is beyond me. July Flame is a terrific record, heartfelt and magnetic folk that recalls Michigan-era Sufjan Stevens and humble enough to include an ode to legendary session bassist Carole Kaye. It’s clever without being quirky, as best shown on “Life is Good Blues,” a mournful melody matched to cup-half-full lyrics. My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Karl Blau and others contribute here and there, but the focus is always on Veirs, who steps into the spotlight without either affectations or shyness. It’s an album to believe in — even if one former label did not.
Laura Veirs – “July Flame”: mp3
(July Flame is out now on Veirs’ own Raven Marching Band Records)
More: New Music | 2010 Album Release Calendar
Boat Beam
SXSW is supposed to be a new music festival, but frankly, if you’ve savvy enough to be reading this blog post, you’ve been listening to the best “new” acts playing the Austin festival for the last year. I can say this definitively because I’ve just listened to every single one of the 1038 songs available on the free, legal SXSW 2010 torrent, a fascinating experience I recommend to everybody. It also proved that, despite the indie roar echoing through the blogosphere right now, SXSW isn’t an indie fest at all — not by half! At least not as genres are concerned. Judging by the torrent, the most prominent sounds in Austin this week, in declining order, will be hip-hop (yes, really!), Spanish-language world music, terrible ’90s-style pop-punk, terrible The Fray-style modern rock, would-be Neko Case alt-country, terrible heavy metal and then, finally, indie rock. That tiny chunk is then further splintered into terrible dance-y Hype Machine-ready remixes, terrible post-rock, terrible anthem-rock in the vein of the Arcade Fire, Bloc Party or both at the same time, and then — then! — a handful of interesting bands. Luckily for you, dear reader, I’ve picked out 50 songs/bands that struck me the most from the thousand available for your listening enjoyment — both at home on your iPod and this week in Austin, should you be in town. (Say hi!) Grab the .zip after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
I wonder if it ever dawned on Andy Warhol that someday, everyone would have their 15 minute of fame… simultaneously. Indie rock’s greatest problem at the moment, whether one’s in a band trying to signal through the noise or a listener trying to sort through the muck, is the sheer glut of material: in any given day, Pitchfork (just for instance) reviews five albums, three tracks and drops another half-dozen MP3s on Forkcast. And they’re supposed to be the filter! No wonder Best New Music bands become such lightning rods for sales and attention: it’s too much fucking work to listen to the rest. Read the rest of this entry »
Guys, the Wall Street Journal did an article about chillwave. And reported that Hipster Runoff invented it! Feeling proud/embarrassed/fearing the apocalypse.
Labels: Chillwave, News + Links Comments
News: Rawkblog has a new Facebook page; Ryan Adams has a new (metal!) album; The Radio Dept. to tour, finally; thoughts on Coachella, single-day tickets and the L.A. festival scene.
Live: The Clientele at Spaceland.
Jams: Miles Kurosky’s The Desert of Shallow Effects; Rawkblog gets a theme song!
Video: She & Him’s “In The Sun“; two clips for Toro Y Moi’s “Talamak.”
Camera Obscurist: A trip to Portland (pictured: Voodoo Donuts; photo by David Greenwald)
Labels: News + Links, The Week in Rawk Comments
Pals, if you’d like to follow/fan Rawkblog on Facebook, you can now do so here. (Inexplicably, I couldn’t figure out how to edit the name of the previous “Rawking Refuses To Stop!” fan page.) In advance of next week’s SXSW festivities, you may also want to flood your social networking feeds with what’s sure to be a Twitter shitstorm at @daverawkblog and @cmgzine. And, of course, you can add Rawkblog’s RSS feed to your Google Reader, etc., and our concert recommendations to your Google Calendar. Web 3.0, holler!
