Foggy Wednesday Nights

My absence dragged on again, busy with school this week. I've been trying to fit music into my busy schedule still though. Bought the new, self-titled Monsters of Folk album yesterday, no surprise there- I'm a giant fan of anything Jim James lays his angelic, reverb-laced vocals on.



And I somehow found myself standing in a record store the past weekend looking for Brendan Benson, only to come across the new Beatles re-masters. Of course I couldn't resist, and quickly picked up the new (but old!) White Album. Very well-put together. Over on NPR's "All Songs Considered" podcast last week they brought on a Beatles historian to talk about what's new on the re-masters. Among the obvious sound quality improvements is notice to fine details. Certain songs have more of the original sounds on them (over time the vinyl to CD transformation lost details like that). Anyway, hard to go wrong with anything the Beatles have done. I mean, seriously folks, it's the Beatles.

I'm back from my late Wednesday night class now. Alive and kicking with energy. So I figured I'd post some new music that I've found especially brilliant this week.

New Alberta Cross (I'd call them a cross between Delta Spirit and Company of Thieves maybe?), new Girls (fantastic little pop/old school band from right here in SF!), new Land of Talk, and new Monsters of Folk. Here's to this weekend!

New Alberta Cross streaming over at www.albertacross.net

Girls - Lust For Life
Land of Talk - May You Never
Monsters of Folk - Whole Lotta Losin'

You Go Out Of The Loop For Awhile...

...and you lose updates for certain things.

Since my last post here I've started my college career at SF State and moved into the beautiful city of San Francisco. It's exciting, scary, bold, independent, and memorable all at the same time. But then again, what isn't?

I've tried to keep a close eye on new music throughout my move/start of school but I can't say that I've done a great job. I usually try and judge whether or not I'm watching new music by what's currently in my iTunes "Recently Added" playlist. As I type this I've got some Brendan Benson, Amy Winehouse, Camera Obscura, VEGA, Farmer Dave and Sea Wolf. Some of it's current right?

Anyway, I'm considering going to see Brendan Benson at the Great American Music Hall tonight. He's pretty much in my top 5 favorite guitarists list:

1. Jim James (My Morning Jacket)

2. Dan Auerbach (Black Keys)

3.Jack White (White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather)

4. Brendan Benson (Raconteurs)

5. Nick Zinner (YYY's)

Brendan Benson - Don't Wanna Talk

In my own "Channel"

I'm approximately a week behind on my review of the April 3rd Great Lake Swimmers show at the Bottom of the Hill.

So here it is. (I wrote this short review for my blogger friend, Liz, over at The Bliss List, so if it feels like it was just cut and copied from a comment on her blog...you know why)

1. First opener that replaced the Winterbirds was Ari Shine. Picture the lovechild of Ben Stiller and Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks/millionaire entrepeneur) and you have that guy. Unimpressive for the most part. Tough to dog on the opener of the opener though. Ha.

2. Kate Maki followed. A Canadian girl with grit and a charming smile. Fluid, tiny pop songs with a little noise here and there. I felt like I could meet her at the grocery store and never know that she's a musician. Very down to Earth in that respect. I liked her.

3. Great Lake Swimmers swam their way deeper into my ears. Much like the water-references throughout their albums (their new album, Lost Channels, is named after some body of water near the place they recorded the album), there music has a distinct flow. And playing live they don't try to swim against this, they flow with the normal sound you'd expect. Softspoken and a tad shy, they are true musicians. There's no care for radio play or bigger venues and you can see that in the band's eyes.

The best moment though? They finished the show with a fantastic cover of the Kink's "This Time Tomorrow" (which you might remember from "The Darjeeling Limited"). I don't think I could've asked for much more in the show.

It was a mellow show overall, but for me, it was just what I needed the past weekend.


Great Lake Swimmers - "Pulling On A Line"

Zoo days

Odd celebrations on odd days. The girlfriend, Jake + Clara and I took a nice little getaway to the San Francisco Zoo the most recent Wednesday. Praying for no rain on the way there, we got a decent sunshine-y day in between hovering clouds.

I say odd celebrations because I found out later that night about April 8th being "Zoo Lovers Day" from a SF Zoo tweet (twitter.com/sfzoo). I'm not quite sure how legit the "celebration" is, but here's the link SF Zoo provided - Zoo Lovers Day.

Nestled in the city, the place is pretty damn big. And ignoring the '08 tiger attack, all of the animals seem pretty chill. Now I'm not normally one of the people that says things like "Oh no! Animals shouldn't be caged" or "They're not treated well!", but seeing the most human-like animal there, the Silverback Gorilla, freaked me out. Mr. Gorilla has the ability to look you in the eyes and there's a very soul-punishing feel to this.

He looked me in the eyes and seemed to rip apart the line between humans and apes. Very chilling. Made me even more sure of evolution.

All issues aside, we eventually made it over to the beach...nearly right outside the steps of the exit. Driving along the coast down that specific little ocean highway was priceless too. I'm lucky to be a Californian.

The ride home involved rush-hour traffic, Beatles' songs ("Hey Jude", "Within You, Without You") and yelling at cars that weren't in the carpool lane.

Seattle-based band, Telekinesis, has their debut album out now on Merge Records called "Telekinesis!" The album was produced by DCFC's Chris Walla and can be streamed in full at MergeRecords.com

I especially like Walla's words about the album.

"Telekinesis is the geography of dreams; a school year abroad; love letters from Liverpool coffee shops to the Carolina coastline and Tokyo and everywhere in between everywhere; a road trip waiting to happen"

The lead single feels very much like...well, a trip to the coast.


Telekinesis - "Coast Of Carolina"

Delta Spirit at Bottom Of The Hill 2/4/09

Took my first ever trip to SF's famous Bottom Of The Hill concert house/club last night. I say house only because it's basically a converted house. Or at least that's how I saw it.

Lately I've been seeing things in a generally weird way.

Anyway, aside from that the show rocked. Openers Dawes (myspace.com/dawestheband) and Other Lives (myspace.com/otherlives) provided two nice sets before

 Delta Spirit came on. My one complaint is that Other Lives didn't have their cello player turned up enough or something because the poor woman sat in the corner and played beautiful-yet-barely audible cello strings.

Delta Spirit came on around 10:30 and played to what seemed like a full house (not the John Stamos kind). Lead man Matthew Vasquez provided a ton of energy - honestly the guy could be considered mentally unstable in some way, he uses a ton of crazy facial expressions and head nods while looking at certain audience members. They played about 4 new songs that they said "would be out later this year" and went through most of last year's Ode To Sunshine.

This show was also my first concert with my new Rebel XS D-SLR. I didn't take many pictures but still got a few decent shots of Vasquez. Once I buy a better lens I'll be set for that part of attending concerts (I'm still using the stock 18-55 mm lens right now).

Concert rating: 8/10

myspace.com/deltaspirit
(I'd post a song but I only have iTunes protected mp4s...boooo)