No lyrics today. I got back late from The Hives concert last night. I’ve decided that I’d like to form a Donnas cover band and tour Rochester and the outlying cities. This probably won’t come to fruition, mostly because I refuse to wear cowboy boots. Oh well.

Last night’s concert was so-so. I think there were things that each band could have done differently in order to make it more enjoyable. That list would include:

1. Stop telling the crowd to cheer louder after every song.
2. …

That’s about it. The music was good, but I got a little annoyed the 10th time I got told to cheer louder. On to today’s post!

Anybody ever see a friend do that magic trick where they fold their thumb into their hand and then make it look like they’re pulling the top part of their thumb off? Did you think that it was cool the first time you saw it? How’s that trick treating you now?

I’ve had a similar experience with Yoav. When I first heard some of his music and was then told that he’s making all of the noises with his own guitar, I had an Andy McKee (linkster) moment. So I bought his album and listened to it. It’s not bad music. It’s got a definite lowest-common denominator feel to it that a lot of pop music has, but I thought that because he’s making all the noises by himself, that it was still pretty cool.

I then tried to get more information on the Yoav character. I first went to wikipedia, where there was no entry, but I found a link to his web page and read his biography. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Imagine a record that matches the leftfield edge of Beck or Radiohead with the kind of sure-footed pop hooks Justin Timberlake’s people would write a blank cheque for. A record which vividly conjures the life of an insightful outsider, set to the dark, loping rhythms of Massive Attack or Portishead. A record built around a voice that’s as sweetly expressive as it is richly soulful. Then imagine that every single sound of it, including the bass & the drums, is performed by one man on his amazingly versatile guitar. That record is Charmed & Strange.

Yikes. Now, I know it was written by a publicist, and there’s probably a lot more of these out there than I want to acknowledge, but come on. Do I hear Beck or Radiohead anywhere in his music? Nope. Massive Attack is closer, I’ll give him that.

I then found a video of him playing one of these songs and came away less than impressed. Yes, he’s good at using pedals for everything, but like I said above, I expected Andy McKee, and all I got was a decent guitar player who has learned how to use his pedals well.

Sorry to bum you out, folks. I don’t usually like to complain about music, but I felt a little slighted by this record. Here’s the song he was playing in the video above, Beautiful Lie.

Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things
- Rodgers and Hammerstein

Yeah, I chose lyrics from The Sound of Music. I apparently loved the musical when I was four years old. Ah, internet anonymity. If only my main audience weren’t people I actually know. Oh well…

In a strange twist, a good concert has actually come to Minneapolis in the dead of winter. The Hives are playing at First Avenue tomorrow, with The Donnas opening. Granted, The Donnas kind of frighten me, but combine them with The Hives and I’m expecting one high energy show.

Here are a couple of my favorite shows (in no particular order):

1. The Hold Steady – August 4th, 2007. This was the second time that I had ever seen The Hold Steady, and being roughly tenth row from the front in the middle of a crowd of thousands could have been the highlight of lollapalooza.
2. Muse - August 4th, 2007. If it weren’t for Muse, The Hold Steady would have easily taken the prize for best concert of the weekend. That being said, Muse, in my books, was probably five times cooler of a show. That’s how good they were.
3. The New Pornographers – August 5th, 2006. Interesting. Another lollapalooza show. This was my first time seeing The New Pornographers and I realized that I’m going to see them whenever possible. They just know how to have a good time while putting on a great show.
4. Jimmy Eat World – September 13th, 2001. Two days after September 11th, Jimmy Eat World plays a show in Madison, WI, playing over two hours of tension-filled music evenly covering their entire catalog.

Have I seen a couple of shows that I would consider better than the above shows? Possibly, but it would be hard for me to think of any.

Today’s song comes from The Hives. If you’ve watched any sports lately, The Hives are a very popular band as your sporting event goes to or returns from commercials. Here’s Hey Little World.

Woke up afraid of my own shadow.
Like, genuinely afraid.
Headed for the pawnshop,
to buy myself a switchblade
-The Mountain Goats

I can’t tell you how excited I was that I had missed the fact that the new Mountain Goats album, Heretic Pride, was coming out last week. I was excited because 1) new Mountain Goats album – woohoo! and 2) although I had missed that it was coming out, I had found out early enough that I could get my hands on it on its release date. Ok, so emusic stalled and I got it the day after.

The Mountain Goats have quickly become one of my favorite bands since I picked up The Sunset Tree. Yes, I’m technically a newbie to TMG’s awesomeness, but that doesn’t mean I’m not enthusiastic.

The Mountain Goats is pretty much lead singer John Darnielle and his live counterpart, Peter Hughes, although there is a large number of collaborators. Up until 2002, TMG was the epitome of lo-fi, sometimes recording with only a microphone and a boombox. Since then, studio time has been good to them and they’ve release several successful records.

What makes The Mountain Goats special are the simple hooks combined with smart and colorful lyrical content. The characters in a Mountain Goats song aren’t so much a story as someone you feel you have known for a while. On top of that, stories across multiple albums begin to appear. Check out their wikipedia page to read about the different “series” of stories that continue on a common theme across numerous albums.

For the debut of Heretic Pride, emusic had an interview with Darnielle asking him who his five all-time favorite characters are. I found the interview incredibly interesting.

For today’s song, I’ve wrestled between playing either of the first two tracks off of the new album. The first being about the crime novelist, Sax Rohmer, and the second containing the final characters described in the emusic interview – a story of two teenagers and a motel bathtub birth. Granted, not the easiest subject in the world, but it’s really a beatiful song.

And yet, I’m playing the song about the crime novelist. Its style is closer to that of regular Mountain Goats fair and Erin recently complained about me talking up one song and playing another, so I thought that I’d let that streak continue. Here’s Sax Rohmer #1.

Running out of time,
Running out of time,
Running out of time,
Run out of time.
- Hot Hot Heat

Classic Hot Hot Heat lyrics there. I’ve got plenty of post ideas ready, but fun song Friday is a different kind of beast. So, we’re going to be playing the iPod shuffle (not to be confused with the actual iPod Shuffle).

For those of you not familiar with the game, I set my iPod to random and write about the first five songs that play. Here-a we go!

• Franz Ferdinand – 40′. Is it bad that I think that the repetitive nature of Franz Ferdinand’s songs makes them a little boring? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I was rocking out to what I thought was the better band, Bloc Party, at the time. Either way, I haven’t listened this song very much, but it definitely sounds like FF. I actually really like some of the harmonies that FF throws out, but getting any new albums is probably out of the question.
• William Parker – Purple. I got this song from the Pitchfork music festival sampler off of emusic. It’s jazz, and has some nice moments, but tends to swing into the “I’m going to play random notes and you’re going to like it so you can look cultured” zone. Don’t get me wrong, I like jazz, but this definitely pushes the limit for me.

Sidebar – well… we’re off to a great start, aren’t we?

• Jose Gonzalez – Save Your Day. I like Jose Gonzalez. It’s good music to sit at work and ignore people around you. I’d like to say that this song is typical Jose, but technically just about everything he plays would fall under that category. This song slowly builds to it’s peak with about 30 seconds to go, and then falls off the map and quietly exits. Pretty good for something just over 2 minutes.
• Hot Hot Heat – Running out of time. The source for today’s lyrics! This is the opening song for their second album, Elevator, and starts off the album well. Staccato verses followed by a grandiose chorus. You’d think that singing “running out of time” three times would get old, but it’s really hard to translate that he sings each line slightly differently so it doesn’t sound so stupid.
• Cake – Comfort Eagle. “He is in the music business, he is calling you dude.” Cake was probably the first band that I listened to that tried really hard to not write songs about cliche things, instead deciding to focus on weird and themes, such as building a religion using this guy trying to act cool by calling you dude, dude.

So there you have it. Five songs. How’d it go?

Today’s song is not one of these. Instead, I’m playing the single from the new Hot Chip album. Here’s Ready for the Floor.

h

I get up, and nothing gets me down.
You got it tough. Ive seen the toughest around…
Might as well jump. jump !
Might as well jump!
-Van Halen

Lately, I’ve found myself jumping between Atmosphere and Beirut. For those of you wondering why that’s significant, listen to the song in this post and then go listen to the song in this post. Apparently I’m an eclectic weirdo.

I’ve collected a decent amount of music in the past couple of days. Here are my first impressions:

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago. After his current band had broken up, Justin Vernon decided to get away from it all, living in a remote cabin in northern Wisconsin. The desolation of this cabin comes through clearly in his recordings, making for an exciting debut album.

The Brunettes - Structure and Cosmetics. I saw The Brunettes open for The Shins a couple of years ago. My favorite song they played that night involved them singing, “B-A-B-Y…” and then I can’t remember the rest. Well, guess what. That song opens this album. Weird.

Hot Chip – Made in the Dark. This album has been playing in my car the past couple of days. It’s an interesting electro-pop album that starts off really strong, kind of tapers in the middle and ends strong again. The third song on the album, Ready For the Floor is already one of my favorite songs of the year.

Yoav – Charmed and Strange. There will be a post on Yoav at some point here. You get a top-40, club-like feel from his music, and then you’re told that every sound he’s making solely with his guitar. Oh, and his back story is great as well, but that’s for another post.

The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride. After writing three albums in a row of personal material, lead singer John Darnielle has returned to what he does best – writing songs from the point of view of strange people. Don’t get me wrong, I loved The Sunset Tree, but Get Lonely was, well, a little too lonely for me.

---

That’s a lot of music. Combine that with the Atmosphere album that I picked up last week, and it’s going to be tough to keep on top of everything. I say that I could see Hot Chip moving back because I’ll really only want to listen to the first three tracks.Today’s song does not come from any of these albums. Instead, it comes from Jason Collett’s, new solo album, Here’s to Being Here. He’s currently taking a break from Broken Social Scene to focus on his solo career.Speaking of Broken Social Scene, apparently Canada is making a rule that before you can have your own band, you need to pay your dues by playing for either Broken Social Scene or The New Pornographers. Not to mention that they give out free money to artists. I have to look into that last part – it could be a good topic to expound upon.Here’s Roll on Oblivion.

Let it snow,
Let it snow,
Let it snow.

Sorry guys, I’m running a bit late this week. I spent the weekend in Madison and yesterday drove through a rainstorm/snowstorm and took a lot longer to get home. Typical amount of time for this trip on a normal day: three to three and a half hours. Yesterday? Five hours. Not horrible, all things considered, but there were some moments when I just wanted to pull over and not have to drive any more.

I was driving Erin’s car, so I had the XM radio, which would normally be a bad thing considering how many stations I flip through, but I simply turned it to XMU and sat back to listen to whatever came at me. That is, when conditions weren’t so bad that I had to turn off the radio because it was distracting.

I found out that XMU has a program that it plays every Sunday afternoon where they play what I assume is a pre-recorded set list from a random college radio station. This week they were listening to WMUH from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The DJ’s actually played a decent set of music for about an hour and a half, including songs from Vampire Weekend, Sigur Ros, Hot Chip, Of Montreal, and Broken Social Scene.

They also gave me a couple of bands that I’d like to check out. The link above will go to their website, where you can stream music online ( I think). Check it out. In listening to the college radio station, I realized that I never listened to the college station in Madison, and I’m not sure if there even is one. Perhaps I missed out on a great opportunity to hear some interesting music. I guess I’ll never know.

Today’s song comes from a small band out of England called The Answering Machine. Here’s the title track from their new EP, Silent Hotels.

This is why I’m cold,
I’m Minnesota nice,
If you want my CD,
I will give you special price
- St. Paul Slim

If there were ever a rap lyric that described me, this would be it…

I’ll be honest. I’m not really into the underground rap scene. What’s interesting is that if I were, then Minneapolis is the place to be. For a Valentine’s Day special, The onion’s A.V. Club interviewed Minneapolis’ own Atmosphere’s MC Slug. What made it a Valentine’s Day special was that he agreed to answer fourteen questions about love and relationships.

As a note, this article is probably not suitable for work, since there are some “interesting” questions. Some highlights:

• When asked for a pick-up line: “Try this one. Next time you’re at Daiquiri Joe’s tossing a few back with your Billy Bro-ceans, walk right up to that long-legged makeup kit and tell her, “I’m the type of guy that thinks it’s hilarious to write into an advice column asking for good pickup lines.” Dog, she will think you are the cat’s pajamas.”
• Would he marry a questioner? “And no, I will not marry you. Buy my new album.”
• Finally, what’s the biggest difference between men and women? “The “wo.” Sorry. Had to. I’m an idiot, mostly.”

For me, the best part of the article was learning that Atmosphere has a free album, Strictly Leakage available here. I picked it up Thursday morning and had such a good time with it, that I’m going to play a track off of it today. Check out Little Math You.

This is the first day of my life,
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you.
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you,
And I’d probably be happy.
-Bright Eyes

I hit the car in front of me at the car wash today. The woman driving it got stuck at the end of the conveyor belt, which slowly pushed me closer and closer to the back of her car. I managed to break and have the conveyor belt roller slide under my tire the first time, but then the second roller came up behind me and my brakes were not enough.

After running into her once, I put the car in park and tried to open the door, which is pretty difficult when the door is being held closed by the drying fans. I then told her to get back in her car and helped push her over the edge. It was easily my weirdest experience in a car wash.

In case you are wondering… no, I did not do the slow motion, “Nooooo!!!” as I slid into the back of her car, but I seriously considered it.

I’ll get to the Valentine’s Day post soon, I just thought I’d post a couple of links first.

Pitchfork has written a couple of articles in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The first is a 1997 interview with lead singer Jeff Mangum. The second is a long list of artists talking about how they were influenced by this great album.

The second thing I want to mention is that The Mountain Goats new album, Heretic Pride comes out next week! Not only that, but it’s currently streaming on spinner. Check it out.

Finally, I went back and read last year’s Valentine’s Day post and wow. I was on a roll on that post. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it was my fifth post ever and I was still a fresh-faced newbie with plenty of time and ideas to write these posts. It’s a year later and I’m hoping that I can come up with something like that again.

Currently, a pretty decent “love song” has broken through into the mainstream – The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson. I think I enjoyed the song just because of the way she says sweater in the line, “If you are chilly / here, take my sweater.” I then got to thinking about that lyric, and realized that Ingrid must like small men. I mean, unless she’s wearing large sweaters, it’s not realistic for her to blissfully hand off her garment to a man of similar size.

Going back to my post from last year, I think that Ingrid Michaelson’s song is a good example of what indie rockers do a good job of. It’s obviously a love song, but it’s not as direct as, oh, I don’t know… Endless Love. It’s almost saying, “I like the way you call me baby, you can take that in whatever way you want, but I hope you’ll take it as I love you, or at least enjoy your company.” Yeah, we indie rockers aren’t great with being direct, unless we’re being ironic.

Today’s song is actually from Bright Eyes. If you want to listen to the Ingrid Michaelson song, check out her myspace page. This song is a proper indie love song. It’s a song about a character who has made a mistake. He’s walked out and realized that it was a very bad idea. It’s as if his life started the minute he stepped outside of that door and all he wants to do is go home.

Near the end of the song, he sings, “But I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.” Hey, check that out, a realistic view on love. Enjoy!

Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
- The Beatles

Combine one part working a home all weekend with two parts doing taxes, and it was quite the Vampire Weekend. No, I’m actually talking about a new band that’s been receiving some major press lately. Because it’s been such a weekend, I think I’ll just write about their history as read from Spin magazine, taking liberties in the description:

Almost a year ago – last Valentine’s Day to be exact, Music for Robots posted a song called Oxford Comma by a band made up of friends from Columbia University. Good Weather for Airstrikes followed up a month later, posting the same song, saying that Vampire Weekend was “the best unsigned band in New York City.”

In June, the New York Times reviewed a Vampire Weekend show and a cover of Radiohead’s Exit Music (For a Film) was posted on Stereogum in July. This was followed up in August by Vampire Weekend signing with Radiohead’s label, XL Recordings.

Their debut self-title album was released two weeks ago and has been receiving great reviews, which leaves us to the most current chapter of their illustrious, blog-driven career. Noeviltwin plays their first single, Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.

Oh, you’re expecting a review of the album? Sure. Fun, African-inspried indie pop graces the album from front to back. It’s good stuff. Don’t like it on the first listen? Listen to it multiple times – it will grow on you quickly.

Don’t stop believin’
- Journey

Last week, I got a recommendation for a Bonnie “Prince” Billy album and went to emusic to see what they had. The answer was not much. However, I stumbled on a virtual gold-mine of fun. Engine Room Records had put out a sampler CD of its bands, except each of the bands chose a cover to play!

For a bit of history, in high school, I loved albums like Punk Goes 80’s, which was really nothing more than punk bands playing 80’s songs twice as fast as they were originally played. What can I say, my musical tastes weren’t quite as (ahem, cough cough) “refined” as they are now.

There were two songs on this album that I enjoy enough that I can’t choose which one to play, so you’re getting both of them! If this doesn’t start your weekend off on the right foot, I don’t know what will.

The first is a remake of Paula Abdul’s Straight Up remade by Luna. What makes this song so great? Two lines. Apparently, in the original song, Paula sings, ” Are you more than hot for me / or am I a page in your history / book, I don’t mean to make demands.” Clever. Book does not rhyme with me, so she abruptly ends the line with history. Luna? He just sings straight on through and it’s awesome.

Luna – Straight Up

For the second song, the first thing that you’ll say is, “Is that Journey?”. The second thing you’ll say: “I love Journey!” quickly followed by, “Is that an all-female a ca pella version of Don’t Stop Believin’?” Yes, yes it is. This song starts out good and just gets better and better as it goes along.

Petra Hade – Don’t Stop Believin’