SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

This post-millennial in-your-face, hit-you-in-your-gut, dirty, grimy Hendrix and Zeppelin-infused psychedelic act hailing just outside of Austin will make you jump around your living room in the worst way, taking you back to your giddy teenage days jumping on your couch when you heard Zeppelin or Hendrix, Jane’s Addiction, Tool or Faith No More for the first time. And no doubt you probably missed it, hence this review.

From the heart-stopping opener of “Radio Milk How Can You Stand It” accompanied by a thudding, tribal, Tool-like driving bass-line mixed with Black Keys and Hendrix to the surpisingly post-modern TV on the Radio sha-na-na, incredible closing “Syncn,” this album, in a word, rocks. Once over, you’ll just want to hit repeat to see if what you heard was actually real or some acid-induced psychotic dream that you’ll never forget. And if you’re not shitting in your pants by the time “Sex Prayer” comes on, the funkiest Jackie Mittoo, Groove Collective or Funkadelic-like track sandwiched between the harder first half and the more classic-rocky second half, there’s something wrong with you! (If you like funk or 70’s blaxploitation soundtracks, that is.) Hendrix, Zeppelin, Sam Cooke (as I’ve read in other reviews) The White Stripes, The Beatles, The Black Keys, TV on the Radio, early Red Hot Chili Peppers with the intensity of Faith No More and Tool, even Animal Collective, plus anything off the famous Nuggets compilations have been purified in a blender and spit out as White Denim. Crazy shit, this is, and it’s easily one of the best albums of 2009, even though you’ve never heard of it. Fits takes you on a roller-coaster through all that was great about rock n’ roll and funk from the latter half of the 20th century up to now. This shit goes to 11 and will be a New Spin favorite. Another band that’s doing this kind of thing right now is The Heavy, but that’s for another review. For now, go out and get some White Denim and start the new year off with a bang.

www.myspace.com/whitedenimmusic

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Only available digitally right now, try Alphapup, this album should make quite a stir for fans of Bibio, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tobacco, Caribou and other artists who are taking electronic music to another level. If it doesn’t, then I don’t know music. (I don’t really, I mean whoever says music can be known just doesn’t get it, right?) But there’s clearly a diverse and exciting electronic movement going on in LA right now as can be seen from the vid below, and Jogger’s brilliant song “Gorilla Meat” seamlessly blends electronic beats with Beach Boys/Fleet Foxes-like harmonies and was made the top tune at KCRW. And it gets lots of play on my show The New Spin as well, of course. But “Gorilla Meat” only scratches the surface of the sonic secrets this album gradually reveals, ranging from grimy drum n’ bass to screamo to 60’s folk and Yo La Tengo lo-fi indie rock sensibilities to techno, all sewed together by an electronic thread for the entire course of the album, much like The Flaming Lips with their sonic exploration on Embryonic. It forces anyone to reconsider the obsolete/tired belief that electronic and computer music is just about four-on-the-floor beats.

Anyone that’s been paying attention knows electronic music can serve as a magical window into exploring unlimited musical possibilities, not a trap at all. Jonathan Larroquette and Amir Yaghmai that is Jogger clearly respect this world by not abusing the freedom, rather they let the sounds breathe and take their space, allowing the sounds to take hold of us and then let go. Quite brilliant stuff, if at times a bit abrasive with the screamo in “Nephecide”, but the compositions are layered and complex, with lots to discover.

Daedelus, no stranger to innovative approaches to electronic music as he plays with it much like jazz musicians explore their modes, (check out his brilliant album Invention) does have a hand in the production of this album (I think), which is the first release on his new label Magical Properties. Based on this album, the future of Magical Properties looks rosy, indeed. Here’s that vid mentioned earlier.

Listen to Jogger on myspace. This is Some Wicked Essential for sure.

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The New Spin’s goal is to expose the great underground musicians of today. But given that 35% of everything The New Spin plays must be Canadian, I have discovered many great Canadian bands from among the piles of crap that’s out there. So here is a list in the order that I discovered them (kind of), the cream-of-the-crop Canadian bands making waves on The New Spin for 2009, some of which I have already written reviews for (they have links included.)

Of course, to listen to any of these artists, you can always tune in to the show every Thursday night on 93.5 CHMR-FM, online here, 9-11 Newftime, 7:30-9:30 EST, 4:30 Pacific. You should be able to find most of them on CBC Radio 3. I have added a few keywords to describe each artist in case you only like certain genres. SL means “sounds like.”

Tonight I will do a special show playing these artists, so tune in and hear the best of the best in Canadian music.

Hear a playlist of most of these artists here.

Timber Timbre (truly unusual folksongs, like Patrick Watson, this guy’s in a class all his own.)

Bruce Peninsula (dark choir/chamber folk, oh yes.)

Geoff Berner (Klezmer punk, what more needs to be said)

The Hylozoists (all instrumental like post-rock, but wow.)

Headache24 (SL Pixies)

Japandroids (SL Fugazi)

Olenka and the Autumn Lovers (if you like Dead Can Dance, etc.)

Weather Station (folk on the laptop loveliness)

Rae Spoon (how many transgendered folksingers do you know who sound like women but are actually men and who trade in their guitars for computers? not many, I’m sure.)

Patrick Watson (one of the best of the year, avant-garde/progressive indie folk)

The Torrent (dark 80’s inspired electro)

Pat Lepoidevin (amazing folk guitarist with an oh-so-sweet Scottish touch)

Eleazer Vs John (like Junior Boys?)

Tiga (play this at any club and watch them feet move)

Rural Alberta Advantage (dark, folky, I like them better than Elliot Brood)

Lovely Feathers (indie rock)

Hidden Cameras (80’s, New Order-ish, I love their new album)

Dan Mangan (folk, songwriter)

Wooden Sky (dark folk, reminds me of 16 Horsepower a bit)

Kids on TV Remixed V.1 from Blocks Recording Club (beats!)

Cousins (I can’t get play “Growling” enough)

Spiral Beach (kick-ass garage rock/punk)

Acres and Acres (lo-fi folksongs with St. John’s guest Amelia Curran)

Brock Geiger (banjo heavy folk songs)

Reverie Sound Revue (SL Stereolab)

Dark Mean (a little EP, but let’s see what they do in the future)

The Got to Get Got (fun fun in the sun indie rock)

Ambisonic (avant-garde-ish)

Jordan Klassen (love this guy from Calgary, oh my. SL Sufjan Stevens, David Pajo)

Gypsophilia (my interview with them is on my site here)

The Diableros (they have a new album, but haven’t heard it yet!)

The Danks (you love da danks if you love da strokes)

Flotilla (harp-based folk stuff from Montreal. SL Sunday All Over the World if you know who the hell that is)

Extra Happy Ghost (I only like one of the songs on this EP, but it’s so incredible I have to mention it. That would be “mash up: neither being nor nothingness”)

Vincat (Vincat!)

Rival Boys (alt-country, but their EP has grown on me)

Jesse Matheson (this guy’s songs are hilarious and oh so fun)

Octoberman (SL Calexico)

hellothisisalex (unusual chill-out chipcore or chipcore chill-out, whichever sounds better)

The Sales Department (electronic)

The Mountains and The Trees (from St. John’s, they’re making waves!)

Errand Boy (he moved away from St. John’s, too too bad, but keep an eye out for this dude)

Islands (not really underground, but whatever)

Language Arts (whoah, spoken word/hip-hop folk, cool…)

Fritz Helder (not really my favorite, but he has a very original electronic style that’s hard not to notice and that you may love, who knows)

Gregory Pepper and His Problems (problems? on his eclectic album With Trumpets Flaring I don’t see any problems, this guy’s uber-talented)

Makita Hack (straight up bluegrass, but awesome bluegrass at that)

Miss Quincy and The Ramblers (less exciting than Makita, but if you’re a bluegrass fan, why not?)

Woody Johnson (this guy’s a whiz on the acoustic blues front. so is Trevor Caswell, for that matter.)

Let’s Go to War (funky, electronic stuff, probably worth mentioning. SL Groove Armada)

We are Wolves (easily one of the best Canadian albums of the year, wow…)

Peace (who is this dude??? dark 80s-like stuff. SL early P.I.L. or Wilderness if you know them)

Minto (don’t know the album too well, but it’s produced by Steve Albini. yes, Steve Albini!)

The Fugitives (find me, find me! oh god, I’m drooling over them banjo licks.)

Digits (this guy emailed me and showed me his music. I cannot stop playing “Endgame”)

Jon and Roy (from BC, “Another Noon” is one of the best songs of the year.)

Vivian Houle (WTF???)

Rep by Pop (one of my favorite Canadian albums of the year, Cell Phone Camera, just wrote the review.)

Devil Eyes (very raucous, loud, but in a good, trashy-garage-rock-kind-of-way)

Sex with Strangers (I just love “We Want the Fire”)

Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills (good folky stuff)

You Say Party We Say Die (yep, this is a good album, very punchy and lively)

The Racoon Wedding (like if Arcade Fire came from a bluegrass angle with some brass thrown in for good measure)

Okay, that’s it, I hope that’s enough to keep you busy for awhile, assuming you read this. I’ll post another list of the best underground artists from the rest of the world later. If you’re a new spinner, you already know them. If you need more, here is my list of top ten most under-rated records of 2008.

in sound,

Dashiell Brown

www.thenewspin.ca

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Like folk songs about vegetables, desserts and animal fables? Varied instrumentation like accordions, banjos and fiddles, tubas and trumpets? Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum’s scratchy warble? Then you’ll love Philadelphia’s mewithoutYou’s new album, it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright just released on Tooth and Nail Records. I am crazy for this album, easily one of the best under-the-radar albums of the year so far.

NPR has just posted their list of their listeners’ best music so far, and I’m clearly whistling to another dixie as any listener of The New Spin might attest to. Yes, a lot of the artists on the list are great, there’s no question, but it’s clear that the stars of the indie world are launching further into the limelight of what we call mainstream, and the indie label/sound starts to get obfuscated in a quagmire of pleasing-to-the-ear melody and harmony that speaks so loudly to a common denominator that I have to dig even deeper to root for the “best music you’ve never heard,” which is the mission I have set for myself for The New Spin.

This album is so great, you’ll just have to see this video to get a sense of what it has in store for you. For fans of the “ballads” of Neutral Milk Hotel, Okkervil River, The Mountain Goats, and The Decemberists.

Listen to another track from this album tonight on The New Spin, tonight at 9-11 PM, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific. Streams tonight online here.

And now a few unique details about the album…

Aaron Weiss’s lyrics are somewhat inspired by the Sufi mystic, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Their tour van often runs on vegetable oil.

The Weiss brothers are currently doing a little tour in August, but it’s not a mewithoutYou tour. Important to know. It’s called The Weiss Family Tour. They’re actually playing at The Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, my stomping grounds at one point when going to UNC-CH.

They made Paste Magazine’s Band of the Week. Just the week?

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Anyone heard of this guy, Pat LePoidevin? He’s stationed in Sackville, New Brunswick, and his new album Blue Tornadoes is something to behold, especially for any of you folkies out there. By folkies, I mean people who like folk/Americana and International folk music, including bagpipes and tin whistle, the former of which he learned while living in Scotland. Similar to St. John’s own The Mountains and The Trees, Pat LePoidevin apparently uses a looper pedal to create innovative soundscapes using organic instruments. His voice has the power to make you cry, very similar to M. Ward and Nick Drake and Samamidon, very smokey. He gets a little too rock n’ rolly with his voice almost going to an Eddie Vedder style, but it’s not so bothersome that I can’t get past it. Others will love it because of that, I’m sure.

Here’s a sampling of his incredible music that you’ll just have to hear for yourself. I’ll also be featuring it this week on The New Spin this Thursday night, 9-11 P.M. on 93.5 CHMR-FM, 7:30 EST.

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Winner of the Polaris Prize in 2007 for Close to Paradise, Patrick Watson’s new album on Secret City Records, Wooden Arms, will truly leave you spellbound, especially if you’re a fan of progressive/experimental (and even classical) music that utilises the whole gamut of the musical spectrum for pure sonic ear candy. Any instrument you can think of, it’s probably on here, with just about every style, save perhaps Latin American. Though originally from CA, like me, he lives in Montreal and this album could be easily classified under the new weird America tag that you might’ve seen on last.fm.

With a tenor-like/falsetto voice similar to M. Ward, Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, Nick Drake, and Bon Iver, Patrick Watson serenades with you sweet nothings and lullabies, but these songs are anything but simple, rather they are meticulously layered and composed with complex arrangements like Animal Collective, Yeasayer, and The Microphones, leaving you with unlimited opportunites to explore this album’s exciting depths like an undiscovered gold mine. Every song on this incredible album will take you far on a journey somewhere that you never knew you could go to or even wanted to. Whether it is the stunning barrage of Kodo drums thundering in your ears on “Beijing” taking you to fog drenched hidden mountains in the farthest depths of Asia, the Cabaret-like Tom Waitsian numbers,  the beautiful classical arrangment of “Hommage”,  the exquisite alt-country/folk harmonies of “Big Bird in a Small Cage” against a backdrop of quiet guitar fingerpicking and banjo, or the utterly exciting track, “Where the Wild Things Are,” this is easily my favorite album of the year, one I will play constantly on The New Spin.

Having also released last year’s Polaris Prize-nominated Plants and Animals to well-deserved critical acclaim, Secret City Records are clearly a label that wants, deserves, your attention, and Patrick Watson’s Wooden Arms is their latest secret weapon, one that will shoot you straight in the heart and leave you begging for more.

–Dashiell Brown, host of The New Spin, “the best music you’ve never heard.”

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Not really, but close enough to get a buzz. I can’t stop listening to the album and it has totally grown on me. His voice sounds like Sufjan Stevens, but there’s a full electronica vibe going on amongst so much space which will leave you in a peaceful, meditative state, singing along to the wonderfully crafted songs like your favorite Grandaddy or Flaming Lips song that you just can’t get enough of. Just about every one of them stands out, I love almost all of them, save one, I think, which is still good anyways. It can start sounding a little cheesy at times, which brings me back to the time when I was listening to “I just called to say I love you” a million times on the plane when I flew to Taiwan way back when I was 10 years old, that song you love to hate, I mean it almost borders on schmaltzy, but not enough to turn me off. Somehow, this has now become my favorite album of the whole year. It just calls to me, to say “listen to me again and again.” And I do. I just absolutely love this wussy electronic Euro sing-songy stuff. Talk about stuff white people like. Ah, the Swedes, sometimes they just hit that perfect spot like no one else can. I really love Swedish and Norwegian music, it seems. I’m kind of ashamed I like it so much, but man, it really is compelling stuff. Speaking of Swedes, Fever Ray’s album is great, too. But I’m not into Royksopp’s latest at all. That was a dud for me.

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OK, enough with the politics, for now. I was getting incensed about what’s been going on, and now that the administration is getting charged as becoming increasingly Socialist a la 1984 in which they are going to tax the air you breathe, I am reminded of the title of NIN’s amazing, incredible essential, The Downward Spiral. Looks like that’s what’s going to happen to America, it’s been going downhill and will continue to do so, so is it even worth getting upset about? The drain plug in the bathtub has been pulled. Wake me up in four years.

On with the music. No matter how bad society gets, we’ll always listen to music, eh? Dark Was the Night is worth picking up, the latest “Red Hot” Compilation. I think it’s a great album with tons of lovely music by incredible artists, more of the alt-mainstream variety, but something to mull over and contemplate as we watch the economy go down the drain. Yep, music to watch the economy go down the drain by. When are they going to put out a cd where all the proceeds go to creating a third party that will leave the dinosaurs in the dust? Newsflash: more government spending = fraud and cover-ups, deception, and the like. The Repubs and Dems and knee-deep in this shit. Who’ll get us out? Not them. Not their government. And not the MSM. Ah yes…the people. The people will save us…as soon as American Idol is over.

Seriously, the bands on this compilation have some wonderful surprise collaborations, like Sufjan Stevens with Buck 65. My Brightest Diamond, though her last album was really weak, does an amazing track, “Feeling Good.” The Cream of the Crop is on this compilaton, Yo La Tengo, Beirut, Yeasayer, The National, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Feist, and on and on. My favorite track is a Nick Drake cover by The Books and Jose Gonzalez. Wow.

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as promised on The New Spin last night, I said I would put up a post about Anavan. The last time I heard an album as fun and energetic as this was either Hercules and Love Affair, LCD Soundsystem, or The Rapture’s Echoes, which was made so delectable since it was a DFA production (all of these are DFA productions.) Anavan is not produced by DFA, but it might as well have been because it has that same dirty and raw post-punk sound that immediately grabs you, forces you to get out your dancin’ shoes and pounce.

but hey, there’s no guitar in this crazy trio, imagine that. but the synths go flying in every which way, the beats are pumpin’, and i’ll be spinning this album for quite awhile, there’s not a bad track on it that i could find.

rather than Brooklyn where the DFA home is, Anavan actually hail from Los Angeles home of the So Cal hardcore scene in the 80’s, where I got my weekly dose of Rodney on the ROQ on K-ROQ, which sucks now that it sounds like every other radio station. Is KROQ owned by Clear Channel now? this album does have a retro 80’s synth-heavy feel to it, but they are doing their own thing, and a wonderful thing at that. not much seems to be known about them, though they’ve been around for five years now, but i’m sure that’ll change once they play at the SXSW in Austin. to not take notice now, you’d have to be blind. http://www.myspace.com/anavan

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