Videos rarely emerge from Largo (and Rawkblog does not endorse taking them!), but whenever they do, they’re always so remarkable that I can’t help but repost. Here’s a killer version of Fiona Apple’s 1999 classic “Fast As You Can,” which probably has my favorite bridge of all time.
Photo by Josh Goleman
Actual guitar-toting indie-rock bands are about as endangered as Siberian Tigers these days, but Cymbals Eat Guitars are keeping the music very much alive. On the band’s debut album, Why There Are Mountains, they nodded toward ‘90s heroes such as Pavement and Built to Spill; this year’s triumphant sophomore effort, Lenses Alien, is a broader, bolder release that finds the group balancing between extremes: eight-minute opuses compete with three-minute pop gems, full-throated harmonies nudge up against catastrophic dissonance. We spoke with bassist Matthew Whipple last month to discuss the band’s secret pedal-making weapon, Elliott Smith’s influence and their New Jersey connection with Yuck. The band plays the Echo tonight.
David Greenwald: The album’s been out a week now, how has the response been so far?
Matthew Whipple: The response has been really great so far. It wouldn’t be accurate to say there wasn’t a certain amount of hand-wringing on our part about what the critical response was going to be because obviously that was a big part of our initial success with the last record but it’s been really pleasant thus far. We’ve been really pleased.
DG: It seems like the band was able to take its time between the debut album and this one. Did you feel like that was the case?
MW: Actually, on our end it feels like we never stopped working, when it comes to touring and then suspending touring to finish writing the record. It’s different sides of the business of being a band but we’ve been pretty much noses to the grindstone for what feels like the past two, two-and-a-half years.
DG: How much time did you spend recording the album?
MW: Actually recording, we were only in the studio for 15 days. Our producer, John Agnello, kept the vibe very workmanlike but relaxed. We got a lot done in a very short amount of time. Read the rest of this entry »
Odd Future tend to get the credit for being L.A.’s most violent act, but consider Summer Darling frontman Ben Heywood. “Spectacular Violence” is a vicious song, from the hailstorm guitars of its opening moments to his matter-of-fact depiction of a drunken murder. It’s fiction, of course, or so Heywood says: the track joins seven other narratives on Skills For the Long Emergency, his solo debut and a concept record chronicling the aftermath of “a state’s war over dwindling natural resources” that’s “forced the dissolution of the Union.” Is it his Stephen King moment? Decide for yourself:
Ben Heywood – “Spectacular Violence”: mp3
(Skills for the Long Emergency drops December 6 on Heywood’s own Chain Letter Collective label)
Photo by David Greenwald
While Fool’s Gold’s Lewis Pesacov did a fine job on Best Coast’s Crazy For You, I can’t complain at his replacement: Rawkblog hero Jon Brion will team up with Bethany and Snacks for LP2, a move that shouldn’t be surprising considering the band’s recent infatuation with Largo. Per Best Coast’s Facebook, recording starts in L.A. “in a few weeks.”
Brion recently scored Miranda July’s The Future and is currently at work on 2012 release ParaNorman.
It’s a sad day for folk as we bid goodbye to Bert Jansch, whose work with Pentangle and complex guitar style ushered in a new generation of U.K. folk. Of late, the musician was touring with Neil Young and still producing new material; you can find his last album, The Black Swan, and three classic reissues via Drag City. Above, here’s the first song from his self-titled debut, a record that’s style was a precursor to Nick Drake’s better-known Pink Moon and an impressive piece of work in its own right.
Photo by David Greenwald
Radiohead’s influence has played a definite role in the initial singles of New York’s High Highs, with the homage coming to a head in “Ivy,” the group’s fourth released song and second of 2011. The melody is inches from Radiohead’s “Worrywort,” a warm bath of a song that offered that rarest of Radiohead-y lyrical themes — reassurance — and equally comforting synthesizer tones. “Ivy” exchanges those for acoustic guitars that flicker in and out like a forlorn candle. Combined with the band’s tender, even wounded harmonies, it’s no less than gorgeous. They were, after all, the only band I had to see twice at SXSW. “Ivy” will arrive officially on High Highs’ long-awaited vinyl debut, a self-titled EP due Nov. 22 on the Yvynyl/I Guess I’m Floating-run Small Plates Records. The four-track release will feature the band’s uniformly excellent previous three singles, which you can hear in full on Bandcamp.
1963 Bob Dylan would be proud. Read more about the movement at OccupyWallSt.org. (Via Pitchfork)
