Fuel/Friends favorites of 2008

Another year packed with music has come and gone. Music is a language I can't create myself but it does me good to know that every hour someone out there is humming a snippet of a melody, returning to their seat at the bar with a head full of lyrics that just occurred to them, or tapping out a drumbeat on their leg in the car. People everywhere are trying to get it right, to get the music out just so they can be. I am glad that they do.

2008 was full of fantastic (and varied) music from all corners of the world for me. I sometimes feel overwhelmed with the quantity of music and the subjectivity that swirls around the ones that make it vs. the ones that no one ever hears. I wish I'd had more hours to listen to (and properly digest) more songs this year. As it is, these are ten albums (plus two EPs plus one carryover from last year) that affected me on a gut level in the past twelve months. These are the ones I listened to over and over, that knocked the wind out of me and made me glad I have ears.

These aren't "the best." These are just my favorites.


FUEL/FRIENDS FAVORITES OF 2008

Lucky
Nada Surf (Barsuk)
I've been surprised by the intensity with which I've listened to this album in 2008. I guess it's tapping into the introspective moments of my year as it pertains to "grown-up life," which Caws sings is like "eating speed or flying a plane -- it's too bright." The album cover hints perfectly at the feel of the music; the moment where it's still warm from the sun but the gorgeous pinpricks of light are starting to shine through. I talked today about the cascades of glory on this album, a blazing meteor from this band that's been around so long. I saw Matthew Caws perform solo last night and he said, "We feel blessed to have a second story," (post-mid-Nineties buzz band). "It's the story we always wanted anyways." I've listened to this album a hundred times this year and it still affects me deeply, makes it okay to be fragile -- and to be on a vector up.
[original review, interview]

Beautiful Beat - Nada Surf


Midnight Organ Fight
Frightened Rabbit (Fat Cat)
Coming from Scotland with their hearts held out for the offering, these two brothers plus two bandmates have crafted an album that is not for the fainthearted, but excellent for the honest. Over gorgeous melodies and with a thick and wrenching Scottish brogue, Frightened Rabbit guttingly dissect the moments of bravery and moments of weakness that go with a relationship ending. Peter Katis (The National) produced this lilting, rocking piece of perfection -- unflinching in its intimacy.
[original review, interview]

Backwards Walk - Frightened Rabbit


For Emma Forever Ago
Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
I didn't know when I started 2008 just how much I would need this album. Justin Vernon recorded this achingly vulnerable album in the Wisconsin woods in the dead of cold winter as he recovered from a breakup. The name he adopted means "good winter" in French, and I think the name fits the music as well as that ice-encrusted window on the cover. In winter, things move a little slower, but with more crisply defined edges, and the first time I heard this something was scraped loose inside of me. His music is wrapped in a thin skin but a current thrums powerfully under the surface. This is an album that I am unable to shake.
[watch: still one of the most perfect things I've seen this year]

Skinny Love - Bon Iver


Stay Positive
The Hold Steady (Vagrant)
I think the thing that gets me with the Hold Steady, this year or any past year when they've released an album, is that they are unabashed in their belief in rock and roll. Craig Finn is a modern day prophet who flails and explodes with the force of the catharsis of these fantastic sounding songs that they must get out. The lyrics trace some of the most intelligent, evocative stories you'll hear with characters I feel I know by now (they might as well be breathing). This is an immense album, with the pounding piano that crashes across the songs and the brass instruments slicing through. Gorgeously grand and subversively hopeful.
[original review]

Constructive Summer - The Hold Steady


The '59 Sound
The Gaslight Anthem (Side One Dummy)
If the Hold Steady filter their love for Springsteen through a lens of kids raised on punk and The Replacements, Jersey's Gaslight Anthem play with an urgency and passion of a pre-Born to Run Bruce, young and hungry. Lead singer Brian Fallon grew up in a home four blocks from E Street, and this band is crafting songs that hold up as well when howled out ragged as they do stripped down to their bare acoustic bones. There's a wisdom and sometimes a resignation beyond their years.

Great Expectations - The Gaslight Anthem


Ode To Sunshine
Delta Spirit (Rounder)
Delta Spirit was formed in San Diego when lead singer Matt Vasquez was busking loudly by the train tracks and he met with Brandon Young at two in the morning. The honesty and sloppiness that bleeds through at 2am is captured well on this authentic album with a vintage feel. It basks in the warmth of the surf guitars, the singalongs and handclaps and banging on trashcan lids, the tinkly last-call piano over glasses clattering.
[original review]

Trashcan - Delta Spirit


Dual Hawks
Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel (Misra)
The cinematic desert beauty and chugging fuzz-rock found side-by-side on this dual album swooped in late in the year to win me over. I saw an acoustic video of Will Johnson, who helms both bands, performing "I, The Kite," from an album I'd passed over too quickly the first time around. Both bands are Will's and explore different dimensions of his music -- Centro-matic electric like the heat in the air even as the Texas August sun has just begun to rise, whereas the more muted, spacious South San Gabriel has tones of evening and fireflies. This album was written and recorded fast and pure in a handful of days in the studio, and has a feeling of distilled essentials.

Counting The Scars - Centro-Matic


Oh! Mighty Engine
Neil Halstead (Brushfire Records)
Taking six long years from his last solo release Sleeping On Roads, influential British musician Neil Halstead (Slowdive) comes quietly back with a humble album of acoustic folk melodies that rewards the listener for their patience. This is a slow grower for me, and I find that more hues in the songs are revealed to me the longer I sit with it -- a task I am eminently willing to take on. Halstead sings about trying to get the colors right, and with these unassuming tunes I think he does.

Paint A Face - Neil Halstead


The Great Collapse
Everything Absent or Distorted (self-released)
This Denver collective does things full tilt. They play with seemingly all the instruments they can find, in order to squeeze the earnest beauty out of every melody and every rhythm. They fearlessly meld incisive lyrics with a resilient hope, like on "Aquariums": "We are aquariums -- left outside, but we hold life and a bright light in our glass walls." With eight official members (and up to 15 on stage) EAOD is a joy to watch, and that joy transmits onto this smart album of sweeping scope. Amidst banjos and casio keyboards, trumpets and pots and pans, this band is ready for a larger stage. Literally.
[original review]

A form to accommodate the mess - Everything Absent and Distorted


Little Joy
Little Joy (Rough Trade)
It's as simple as this: Little Joy just makes me happy. Their thirty-minute debut album is short and occasionally rough, it's kitschy and danceable with Brazilian influences. I like the quiet Technicolor flicker of songs like the Portuguese "Evaporar" as much as the jerky fun of "How To Hang A Warhol," and all the shades in between. Binki Shapiro's vocal contributions on this album are especially charming, as she croons out of my stereo like an old-time Victrola.
[original review]

No One's Better Sake - Little Joy


HONORARY TOPS (should have been on last year's damn list):

In Rainbows (physical release)
Radiohead
Because I was overwhelmed and ignorant at the end of 2007, and didn't give this my undivided attention until someone sat me down in a darkened room and made me really, really listen to it.

And come on Heather. Come on.

Last Flowers To The Hospital (bonus track) - Radiohead



BONUS: FAVORITE EPs

Second Gleam EP
The Avett Brothers (Ramseur Records)
Scaling back from their potently explosive live show of punk bluegrass, the Avetts showed again this year that they can also craft devastatingly simple ballads relying solely on acoustic guitar, strings, and their pure voices that blend and compete as only brothers can. [original review]

Murder In The City - The Avett Brothers


The Confiscation EP, A Musical Novella
Samantha Crain (Ramseur Records)
Also from the excellent Ramseur label, 22-year-old Oklahoman Samantha Crain has Choctaw Indian roots and a dusky earnestness to her alto voice. The five songs here tell a cohesive story (a musical novella indeed) with shimmering, unvarnished truth.
[original review]

In Smithereens, The Search For Affinity - Samantha Crain



LISTEN: Once again this year, I'll be appearing on NPR's World Cafe with David Dye on January 1st to talk about stuff from this list! We have a lot of fun. You should listen (online, or via your local station that carries the show), and tell your mom to listen too. I know mine will be.


[top image credit tim!]

Hold Steady contest winners

The Hold Steady's new album Stay Positive is out today on Vagrant Records, and the randomly-selected winners of the contest are as follows:

STAY POSITIVE CD
Cousin Walt
The Blot
Ryan

STAY POSITIVE VINYL
Benjamin K.
Miles in Denver (hi neighbor!)

If you are a winner, please let me know where to have the good folks at Vagrant send your musical winnings. Thanks for all the amazing entries; what a breathtaking lyrical pool we have to select from.

The Hold Steady / Stay Positive: "Let's clutch and kiss and sing and shake, tonight let's try to levitate"

"Back then it was beautiful
The boys were sweet and musical
The laser lights looked mystical
. . . Messed up still felt magical"

The more I listen to The Hold Steady, the more I think they might have what it takes to save rock & roll from crushing heartlessness, unoriginal pallor, and detached apathy. You might have noticed that people tend to fall diametrically on one side or the other of the Hold Steady spectrum. My friend Barber once described lead singer Craig Finn as "a crazy inebriated prophet, ear tuned to the roar, shouting out real-life scripture over the ocean of noise of society or a really loud bar band." Yet I have other friends who violently object to the whole concept whenever I broach it. The Hold Steady must be something you either get --and get hard-- or don't. On this new album especially, I find it difficult to understand the latter.

On their fourth studio album Stay Positive (which drops in physical form July 15th) these five guys from Minneapolis stretch their songwriting out down new roads, and as always everything feels pretty epic and massive. Pressed up against gorgeously grand and subversively hopeful songs, Finn weaves complex stories of lust and confusion, of cutting and car crashes, of oracles and angels.

You can get an accurate impression of the feelings contained on Stay Positive from the cover and superb inner album art. Despite the muddy ground and the nauseatingly yellow sky with all the color bled out, there is always the potential for something exciting to happen tonight, for some urgency to swoop down and make you feel alive for forty-five minutes. The feeling of continuity that connects all of the Hold Steady's albums is present here, through serial characters like Holly --who has been in the hospital, shaky but still trying to shake it, and now the girl who won't say hi to him-- and also through recurrent themes that perennially crop up to make a Hold Steady song what it is. The landscape is desolate, but the kids in the songs still yearn.

Stay Positive is also their album of bleeding and miracles -- a fitting dichotomy for a band that plumbs both the gritty violent parts of our psyche as well as the redemption. On one of the album's strongest tracks, Finn calls a girl named Sapphire (who possesses some hallucinogenic visionary abilities) and begs, "I know you said don't call until I'm clean . . . but I'm not drunk, I'm cut. I'm gushing blood, and I need someone to come and pick me up." I find something in the desperation of how Finn wrenches and pleads out that line that reverberates throughout the album. There's talk of crucifixion, visions, and miracles, and later he sings "Don't mention bloodshed, don't tell them it hurts, don't say we saw angels, they'll take us straight to the church." Make no mistake, this is an album of the mud and the blood and the beer, but along with that comes some old-fashioned revival-style hallelujah.

Musically, Stay Positive is as richly dense as anything they've done. I always find a sort of deliverance in the crashing piano cadences and expansive guitar solos of the Hold Steady, even as the lyrics detail another sad night, another desperate move. J Mascis guests stars (playing banjo on "Both Crosses"), as do Ben Nichols of Lucero and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers (on backing vocals in a few songs). This is an album I am obviously enjoying immensely through the throes of this sweltering summer.

LISTEN: Sequestered In Memphis & Lord I'm Discouraged (stream)


NEW CONTEST: Thanks to the good folks at Vagrant, I have Hold Steady largess to scatter upon ye lucky masses like manna from the heavens.

Three lucky winners will win the Stay Positive CD (with the 3 bonus tracks on it, I think) and two of you will be spinning the black circle with the vinyl LP. The vinyl is 160 gram (black color), gatefold, and will feature one bonus track “Ask Her For The Adderall.”

Please leave me a comment indicating which format you are entering for, and since there are so many good ones to choose from, let's talk about favorite Hold Steady lyrics.


Walk away with these lines from the new album -- they leave you with that ache:

"Girls didn't seem so difficult
Boys didn't seem so typical
It was all warm and white and wonderful
We were all invincible

We were wasps with new wings
Now we're bugs in the jar
We were hot soft and pure
Now we're scratched up in scars."




POSTSCRIPT OF OLD CONTEST BUSINESS: The Joe Strummer prize pack garnered some of the very best comments yet left on Fuel/Friends. From lighting Joe's cigarette (a tale I verified with the cool commenter - oh, to have a lighter just when Joe Strummer fumbles for one outside a Vegas hotel) to talking to him backstage, wracked with nervous anticipation, you gotta go read all the great tales. Because I'm soft, I went with a randomly-selected winner: James from Brooklyn. Congrats! Let me know where to send it.

Free Hold Steady show in Boston tomorrow

While we wait for Stay Positive to fully unleash upon the masses, Miller Lite and Going.com are bringing Bostonians a free show with The Hold Steady tomorrow (Thursday) at The Paradise.

You gotta dance with who you came to dance with, and also you gotta RSVP here: going.com/theholdsteady

Opening act is Boston's own Aberdeen City. Show at 8pm, 21+. If past performance is any indication of future results, it just might be a massive night.

Massive Nights - The Hold Steady

(man I love that song).

The Hold Steady almost killed me

The Hold Steady have their newest album all wrapped up. Stay Positive is due out on July 15th on Vagrant, and the first single "Sequestered in Memphis" is out this Tuesday on iTunes. To help ease the sting of waiting for their follow-up to the absolutely brilliant Boys and Girls In America (2006), I've gone down a few rabbit trails and come up with the following live versions of new Hold Steady songs for you to wrap your ears around:

NEW HOLD STEADY: SONGS FROM "STAY POSITIVE"
Stay Positive
(live at Emo's 2008)
Constructive Summer
(live at Emo's 2008)
Lord I'm Discouraged
(live at Toad's Place, 2007)
Magazines
(live at the Metro, 2007)
Joke About Jamaica
(live at the Metro, 2007)

ZIP: NEW HOLD STEADY SONGS

Also for your reading pleasure, UNCUT Magazine blog posted a very positive early review of the overall feel (with some strong lyrical excerpts), while The Music Magazine UK also published a track-by-track review.

I'm excited as all get out about the summer tour which was announced Thursday. Presales are on this weekend, with several ending Monday night. The Hold Steady still put on one of the most ebullient live shows I've seen. Go buy your tickets now.

HOLD STEADY SUMMER TOUR
07.17 - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
07.18 - Pontiac, MI - Crofoot Ballroom
07.19 - Chicago, IL - Pitchfork Festival
07.21 - Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre
07.22 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
07.23 - Fargo, ND - Fargo Theatre
07.26 - Seattle, WA - Capitol Hill Block Party
07.27 - Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
07.29 - San Francisco, CA - Mezzanine
07.30 - Los Angeles, CA - Avalon
08.02 - Tucson, AZ - Rialto Theatre
08.03 - El Paso, TX - Club 101
08.05 - Dallas, TX - Palladium Ballroom
08.06 - Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa
08.08 - Oxford, MS - Proud Larry’s
08.09 - Athens, GA - 40 Watt
08.10 - Charleston, SC - The Pourhouse
08.12 - Carrborro, NC - Cat’s Cradle
08.13 - Norfolk, VA - The Norva

[t-shirts here]

"On Your Sleeve" :: New covers album forthcoming from Jesse Malin

According to the Jesse Malin website: "New record out April 2008 on One Little Indian Records in the UK and Europe, 'On Your Sleeve.' Full-length studio album of covers from Elton John to the Hold Steady, 14 songs plus 3 bonus iTunes tracks. Stay tuned for details."

Iiinteresting. I don't know what he's putting on it, but I would guess that this is the Hold Steady cover, and two other tenuous possibilities below:

YOU CAN MAKE HIM LIKE YOU (HOLD STEADY COVER)
Jesse Malin at Vintage Vinyl 3/20/07


3 Martini Lunch (Graham Parker cover) - Jesse Malin
Questioningly (Ramones cover) - Jesse Malin

Monday Music Roundup

Hot on the heels of the date we lost Lennon, and after a long weekend in a hospital waiting room, I am not going to commemorate another morose anniversary today.

Instead let's celebrate the life of Otis Redding. I've re-upped all the great songs on this post from his birthday last year in honor of this fantastic musician, one of my favorites. Today I'd also like to add one addition to the Otis playlist:


Hard To Handle
Otis Redding
So I could save face and be all, "Yeah, I knew that Black Crowes song was totally a cover of Otis." But that would be a big fat lie. Somehow (?!) I missed this original until a guy recently enthusiastically cited it to me as Otis' best. Song. Ever. That title is up for some discussion with me (I like Tramp. Or maybe Dreams To Remember). This tune was originally released posthumously in 1968 as a b-side, and soundly trumps the Black Crowes cover I've been listening to all these years. You can find it on this recent anthology. Go Otis. We miss ya.

Skinny Love
Bon Iver
While I work on finalizing my year-end favorites list (meaning painfully hacking perfectly good albums left and right in order to narrow it down into something meaningful) I've been taking the opportunity to listen to some artists that never actually got the chance to vibrate my eardrums in 2007. Dodge put this album as his #1 for the year, and since Dodge is right about a lot of things (he loves me, for instance) I thought I should spin it. Wow. As you listen to Bon Iver, it starts to scrape something loose inside of you. This is one that you might find yourself listening to over and over again as I have been, even if you are unsure when it first kicks in. Something intangible and gorgeous and raw thrums under the thin skin of this song.


Geronimo
Phantom Planet
While the themesters of the O.C. (sorry but they are never, ever going to slip out of that recognizable tinny piano melody rising to the top of my mind whenever I say their name) work on recording a new album for Spring 2008 with Fueled By Ramen, Phantom Planet is making a limited-edition tour EP available with some new tunes. Aptly titled Geronimo, this song sounds pretty ferocious and relentless, like a fashionably new-wave native jumping off a sandstone bluff onto the waiting trusty steed? Not like I would know firsthand, but I have been re-reading some Cormac McCarthy. So.

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (Dylan cover)
The Hold Steady
This came on the local SF radio station KFOG this weekend when I was out in California, one of the few bright spots of my hellish weekend. Starting slowly from the restrained opening, it cracks open like a carnival into something exuberant and near life-affirming. Something about the way The Hold Steady treat this, it perfectly preserves the just-barely-hanging-together feel of the original, with a huge rush of their own unique spirit. Probably the best song on that (dang good) I'm Not There soundtrack.


Burn
Sean Jackson
Weird me out. I was adding this song into the post, the final paragraph of which has already been written with that Singles nod in the last sentence, which really is the only way to say it. I visited one-man-band Sean Jackson's MySpace and I see that his profile quote is, "Other than that, he was ably backed by Stone and Jeff." And I love him. So I'm just gonna leave it at that; you may be familiar with how much I love that movie and quote it at inopportune times. This guy definitely has tones of the Foo Fighters (although not as good as their new album, more from me on that later perhaps) and he namechecks influences like Westerberg and Malkmus. So okay, we'll listen. Album is called For You.


* * * * *
And PS - I got a kick out of this; I somehow made the Business section of the Tulsa World newspaper.

The final sentences read, "As for me, a few days later -- before the technician could arrive -- the light on my modem mysteriously came on again. With all apologies to my wife, I went straight to Heather. Honey, it had been too long." I am loved in Belgium, and apparently Tulsa! Thanks John.

Monday Music Roundup

I watched the new Oasis tour documentary Lord Don't Slow Me Down on Saturday night, and I was thoroughly entertained beyond what I had anticipated. It's a look at a band that seemed unstoppable in the cocky cocaine madness of '95-'96 (years which Noel admits he doesn't remember. At all.) now doing the unthinkable and growing up a bit. Stable girlfriends, kids, and years of living the rock n roll lifestyle seem to have muted the Gallagher brothers just a tad (even though they are still devastatingly funny to watch, and pull off an epically rocking show with the best of 'em).

LDSMD provides an all-access look at the band on their 10-month world tour for Don't Believe The Truth in 2005. As a document of those months, the footage underscores both the high of the huge crowds that sing at the top of their lungs to every word -- regardless of their native language (pretty tingly-cool when everyone breaks with "Sooooo, Sally can wait....") but also the monotony of the *same* blessed pickin' questions from every single interviewer, a thousand times over, and the jet-lag and disorientation and inner workings of living together with the same folks for that long in a bus. I liked the small, quiet insights best: Liam ape-dancing alone in a dressing room when he apparently didn't know the cameras were taping, the guys playing a rollicking board game of Frustration backstage (and man, I miss the sound of that dice popper from being a kid), the tinkering around on the instruments in a music store somewhere in urban Tokyo on a day off.

The film is mostly shot in iconic-feeling grainy black and white, except for a few notable scenes in hyperbright '70s-style Technicolor, like a performance of Champagne Supernova, and a shot of Liam leaning back into the sunshine on the back of a skittering speedboat in the Sydney harbor. It's a visual treat in the arthouse film style. The elusive angles used in filming lend it a weight that made me feel like I was watching an epic lost Beatles doc or something. Which I suppose may be a point. Combined with the second disc of the complete epic Manchester homecoming concert, this is a vastly entertaining look at a seminal rock band still doin what they do so well.

As for the music this week, I finally attacked some of the emails I've been meaning to get around to, and found a few ace new tunes to grab our ears:

Pep
Polytechnic
Speaking of guys from Manchester . . . Polytechnic is a feisty Britpop quintet that have been called "one of the most uplifting sounds to have emerged from Manchester in recent years -- fashionably angular but also joyously buoyant.” (Rock Sound Magazine). I can catch the comparisons to Supergrass, The Shins, and even CYHSY - they've got a fun and unique jangly blend of shimmering vocals lit to a danceable perfection. They have two shows on American soil this week, Wednesday at LA's Spaceland, and Friday at the Mercury Lounge in NYC. These guys are unsigned but sound to me as if they might not stay that way for long. Down Til Dawn is out now.

Sad Songs
The Pendletons
Not a sad song at all, unless sad songs make you want to scream and yell and dance around a sticky-floored backroads bar to this toe-tapping bit of catharsis. The Pendletons are from Athens, GA and their brand of urgent, catchy tunes share a rawness and a jangle with someone we've heard before out of Athens (Peter Buck has been seen at their shows, raising a beer to the lads). Rolling Stone recently said that their new album Oh! Me sounds "like Vampire Weekend on a semester abroad with Arctic Monkeys." I am all in for that kind of action.

Out of Time
Jason Collett
I saw Broken Social Scenester Jason Collett a few months back at the Bluebird (and he's back in Denver this week with Feist) and his unique brand of earthy twang and clean beats stole my heart. His newest album is called Here's To Being Here, and this song sounds to me like a hypothetical moment where the droningly lyrical poet in Bob Dylan joins Apostle of Hustle, with a bit of late-night sexy bluesy swagger to it. The new album is out February 5 on Canadian label Arts & Crafts.

Girls And Boys In Love
The Rumble Strips
So is it just me or does the name of this British band sound exactly like it could be the hip new bikini wax to ask for? That's awesome. But oh, then I remembered that rumble strips are those divots along the outside of the lane lines designed to jolt awake drivers who doze, so nevermind. These Rumble Strips are from London, and this selection is a lighthearted song that sounds best while driving, reminding me of a super peppy, clap-happy Robert Smith. None of the band's trademark horns here, but it's a soundtrack for youthful tomfoolery. They are finishing up some Irish dates, and then hitting the US on tour with the Cold War Kids in just a few cities: DC, Philly, NY, LA, and SF's Popscene in December. Girls and Weather (two fluctuating topics) is out now.

Stuck Between Stations (acoustic)
The Hold Steady
In honor of me seeing the Hold Steady again tonight (with Art Brut) in Denver, we'll end our roundup with this fantastic tune from last year's Boys and Girls In America album (ps - now being re-released in the UK with the elusive "Live from Fingerprints" tracks included).

I am not sure where this acoustic version was recorded, but for me it highlights the lyrics even more; I still find them crushing and hopeful all at once:

these twin city kisses.
sound like clicks and hisses.
and we all come down and drown in the mississippi river.

we drink
we dry up.
we crumble into dust.

we get wet we corrode
we get covered in rust.

I can't wait for the show.

[photo from Chicago Metro Halloween show, credit]

Exclusive! Eddie Vedder & The Million Dollar Bashers, "All Along The Watchtower"

The new Dylan biopic I'm Not There takes the interesting, surrealistic angle of illustrating Bob at different stages of his life through the rubric of six distinctively different actors (including a black man and a woman): Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale. I am very curious to see how this works itself out in the film - at least it's a fresh angle (I mean, how many Dylan movies can you make?).

In addition to this creative lens used in the film to examine the man himself, the soundtrack is a double disc jamboree of some pretty cool Dylan covers, including disc 1, track 1 with Eddie Vedder & The Million Dollar Bashers covering "All Along The Watchtower." Fuel/Friends is pleased as punch to get an exclusive stream for you guys to take your first listen of this!

EDDIE VEDDER & THE MILLION DOLLAR BASHERS
"All Along The Watchtower"

Stream FLASH
Stream QUICKTIME
Stream WINDOWS MEDIA



And who are said Million Dollar Bashers? It's Wilco's god-like guitarist Nels Cline, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley (from Sonic Youth), bass player Tony Garnier, keyboardist John Medeski (from Martin, Medeski and Wood), and guitarist Smokey Hormel (onetime Beck guitarist, Smokey & Miho). I never thought I'd hear musicians from those bands all jam together. The guitar solo (assumedly from Nels?) is pretty blazing, and Vedder's got the seething caged scream goin' on.

Historical tie-in from last summer: there was an absolutely scorching live version of this song that full-band Pearl Jam did in San Francisco (when Sonic Youth opened), climaxing in a very rock n roll moment of Mike McCready giving his guitar the Townshend treatment and then surfing on it across the stage. PJ has played Watchtower 4 times live before, but that was my favorite. If you'd like to hear that one as well, the link over on that old post still surprisingly works.

You can also stream four other full songs from the biopic over on the soundtrack's MySpace (the ones by Sufjan Stevens, Cat Power, Jeff Tweedy, and Jim James with Calexico). Among others, I'm also looking forward to hearing Mason Jennings' two contributions, The Black Keys cover of Wicked Messenger, and The Hold Steady enticing me to climb out my window. The soundtrack is out October 30, and the film opens Thanksgiving weekend.

NEW CONTEST:
Would you like to win one of two copies I have to giveaway of this lovely double disc? Of course you would. Leave me a comment to enter, make sure I have a way to contact you (might wanna spell out that email addy), and if you feel so inclined, please let's talk about your favorite Dylan cover. So I can wrap this up before I head to NYC, this contest ends Wednesday at midnight.


I'M NOT THERE (FULL SOUNDTRACK LISTING)
Disc 1
1. Eddie Vedder & the Million Dollar Bashers: "All Along the Watchtower"
2. Sonic Youth: "I'm Not There"
3. Jim James and Calexico: "Goin' to Acapulco"
4. Richie Havens: "Tombstone Blues"
5. Stephen Malkmus & the Million Dollar Bashers: "Ballad of a Thin Man"
6. Cat Power: "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again"
7. John Doe: "Pressing On"
8. Yo La Tengo: "Fourth Time Around"
9. Iron and Wine and Calexico: "Dark Eyes"
10. Karen O and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Highway 61 Revisited"
11. Roger McGuinn and Calexico: "One More Cup of Coffee"
12. Mason Jennings: "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
13. Los Lobos: "Billy"
14. Jeff Tweedy: "Simple Twist of Fate"
15. Mark Lanegan: "The Man in the Long Black Coat"
16. Willie Nelson and Calexico: "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)"

Disc 2
1. Mira Billotte: "As I Went Out One Morning"
2. Stephen Malkmus and Lee Ranaldo: "Can't Leave Her Behind"
3. Sufjan Stevens: "Ring Them Bells"
4. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Calexico: "Just Like a Woman"
5. Jack Johnson: "Mama You've Been on My Mind"
6. Yo La Tengo: "I Wanna Be Your Lover"
7. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"
8. The Hold Steady: "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window"
9. Ramblin' Jack Elliott: "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
10. The Black Keys: "Wicked Messenger"
11. Tom Verlaine and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Cold Irons Bound"
12. Mason Jennings: "The Times They Are a-Changin'"
13. Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers: "Maggie's Farm"
14. Marcus Carl Franklin: "When the Ship Comes In"
15. Bob Forrest: "Moonshiner"
16. John Doe: "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine"
17. Antony and the Johnsons: "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
18. Bob Dylan: "I'm Not There"

[Vedder photo credit Kerensa Wight, header image credit Playlist]

Indeed: how a resurrection really feels

"he likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the dehydration.

most nights were crystal clear but tonite
its like it's stuck between stations"

The Hold Steady were all I had expected and more. We walked into the hot, loud club just as the opening notes of Stuck Between Stations was starting, and I felt a crackle of electricity run through my nerves to my fingertips. I came with really high expectations and Craig Finn pretty much singlehandedly fulfilled each one. To be completely honest, words like "salvation" and "rock and roll redemption" kept flitting across my mind as I watched this band pour every ounce of themselves into each song they created for us with raging ferocity and heartfelt passion.

I didn't take any pictures or video because I was too involved to be bothered. But the picture that kept echoing in my mind was what I had written about Josh Ritter, another amazing performer:

"Ritter is also a rare, rare performer in his obvious ebullience to be performing. As he weaves his intricate, literate songs on stage, he overflows with each lyric as if he were birthing every line afresh for the first time. There is no sense of a rote performance, and no indication that he's sung some of these hundreds of times. Instead, he radiates a palpable joy and a sense of barely-contained anticipation with each word that comes out."

Finn made me think of these things, except -- his exuberance in performing is multiplied by a factor of 4,354. It's as if all the molecules of his being are spinning in a fury of musical joy, barely and not-even-completely contained by his skin from flying out into a million directions. Instead of a gradual dawning of the birth of a lyric, it's an atomic bomb. He gestures, he spits, he jumps as he shouts out the lyrics. He dances these slightly uncool jigs without caring that folks just don't do that anymore. The rest are all too hip. He doesn't care. This is music, their music, their lifeblood pouring out for the joy of the moment.

we had some massive nights

every song was right

all that wine was tight

we had some massive highs

we had some crushing lows

we had some lusty little crushes

we had those all ages hardcore matinee shows.

Go, ye, and be saved.

HOLD STEADY TOUR DATES

5.23.07 Salt Lake City UT Urban Lounge

5.24.07 Boise ID Neurolux

5.26.07 George WA Gorge Amphitheatre Sasquatch Fest

5.28.07 Portland OR Crystal Ballroom

5.30.07 San Francisco CA Slim's

5.31.07 Los Angeles CA El Rey Theatre

6.1.07 San Diego CA Cane's Ballroom

6.2.07 Phoenix AZ Brick House

6.3.07 Las Vegas NV Beauty Bar (FREE SHOW)

6.4.07 Tucson AZ Plush

6.7.07 Houston TX Walter's on Washington

6.8.07 Austin TX Emo's

6.9.07 Denton TX Hailey's

6.10.07 Norman OK Opolis

6.11.07 Little Rock AR Sticky Fingerz Chicken Shack

6.12.07 Columbia MO Blue Note

6.14.07 Ashville NC Grey Eagle Music Hall

6.16.07 Manchester TN Bonnaroo Festival Grounds Bonnaroo Festival

6.23.07 GER Soutside Festival

6.24.07 GER Hurrican Festival

6.27.07 NOR Hove Festival

6.30.07 BEL Werchter Festival

7.2.07 London UK Shepherds Bush Empire

7.4.07 Portsmouth UK Wedgewood Rooms

7.5.07 Manchester UK Academy 2

8.4.07 Chicago IL Lollapalooza

[img credit]

Just hold it steady, will ya?

I am thoroughly excited to be seeing The Hold Steady tomorrow (Tuesday) night at the Ogden Theatre in Denver, as everyone who sees their live show comes back fairly glowing. Last year's Boys and Girls in America is a solid, lyrically dense, interesting rocker of an album, but I really started getting excited about buying a ticket for the Denver show when I saw the video of Craig Finn performing at Carnegie Hall for the Springsteen tribute:

Now that's what rock and roll is supposed to both look and feel like.

I also read a very good snapshot interview with The Hold Steady in Paste Magazine on the airplane this afternoon. I recommend the whole article, but here's a snippet that made me smile:

It’s awfully easy (and somewhat fun) to get tangled up in The Hold Steady’s Midwestern mythos— the band’s aesthetic is straightforward (brews, devil horns, guitars, good times) but not simplistic (Finn’s lyrics are near-prophetic), and they’ve cultivated, however inadvertently, a certain working-class appeal (see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, The Hold Steady’s most obvious predecessor). They’re the band you go see when you feel like getting drunk on PBR, dancing and then loitering outside the venue, eating crappy pizza on the curb; they embody the half-tragic, half-ecstatic American adolescence every 33-year-old with a desk job wants desperately to re-live.

In some ways, their appeal is as much about escapism—a return to teen-dom, to making out with a friend and hunting down parties in the woods—as anything else. I hold up a stack of press clippings and tell Finn I’m tempted to highlight every instance of the word “beer.” Finn grins, surveys the drained mugs littering our table, and raises his eyebrows. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he deadpans.

While I was reading the article somewhere over Arizona, I also listened to a handful of related b-sides and live tracks assembled by my friend Tom and scavenged in various locations.

Enjoy these, and come out to the show tomorrow:

Curves and Nerves (b-side) - The Hold Steady

Stuck Between Stations (acoustic) - The Hold Steady
I just love these lyrics

Against The Wind (Bob Seger cover) - The Hold Steady



FROM THE LIVE AT FINGERPRINTS EP

(links removed: you can still buy it here!)

THE BROKERDEALER
And here's an interesting collection: Craig Finn's old band The Brokerdealer, which may be likened, at least on these tracks, to Finn's own Postal Service project. All electronica and club-beats, but those same biting, poetic lyrics.

Give Me Back My Body - The Brokerdealer

If Not For Hipster Pictures - The Brokerdealer

The Last Ones Up Became Lovers - The Brokerdealer

THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL
And finally a soundtrack to the season: If you're a baseball fan like I am, you should read this lovely piece from the Portland Mercury with Craig Finn ruminating on the connections between music & baseball, recording "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" for his beloved Twins, and how he saw Paul Westerberg at spring training.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame - The Hold Steady

Odds & ends

It's been a long time since I compiled one of these odds and ends posts, but there were several little things today that caught my eye:

۞ Brian Deck is on board to produce the new Counting Crows record, according to Adam:

March 16, 2007 12:53am
Berkeley, CA

Rehearsals have been going really well the past few days. I'm pretty excited about the 2nd half of this record. I really dig the producer we've chosen. His name's Brian Deck. He produced "The Moon and Antarctica" for Modest Mouse, "Our Endless Numbered Days" for Iron and Wine, "The Animal Years" for Josh Ritter, and this album I love by the Fruit Bats called "Mouthfuls". We're getting really cool weird twisted folksy sounds.


۞ Paul McCartney is set to release a new album this summer, the inaugural release for new Starbucks label.

I drink Starbucks. I love McCartney. But why does this just feel so dirty and somehow depressing?

۞ Mason Jennings has a new blog post that starts with the sentence, "Did you ever just get so high that you wrote on your arm never to smoke weed again? Me neither." It goes on to discuss music he likes and life in general lately for him, but opening sentences don't get much more engaging than that one.


۞ I truly love the new Hold Steady video for "Stuck Between Stations." That is a dang fine song, and since I haven't caught them live yet, I've never seen it performed, seen the way they jolt out their music.

Incidentally, I think their piano player may actually be Oliver, Kat's husband from Miami Ink. Rock the 'stache, dude.



۞ SPIN tries to deconstruct the method behind Ryan Adams' crazy, internet-facilitated, musical-diarrhea madness.

۞ Pete Yorn's cousin/merch man/video whiz Maxx updates Pete's MySpace friends with setlists and excellent pictures from the road. The most recent post has a haiku to match each photograph, and is a must-read. I laughed out loud at a few:

sid is funnier
when he's not wearing his clothes
but someone else's

simon is undead
he will eat your flesh
even from the stage

۞ SXSW. Most of the SXSW coverage from my fellow bloggers seems like drinking out of a firehose, and I am not able to fully absorb all of it yet (although I am trying). This, however, was one show that I had read about and found video for -- very cool. Pete Townshend was at the fest to speak at a panel and joined British buzz band The Fratellis for a cool little cover of The Who's "The Seeker":

And the best picture that I've seen so far from SXSW was taken by my friend Brian H., who has been regularly updating me with more pics and details than you can shake a stick at (thanks!). I don't know the story behind this shot, but I thought it was cool how it speaks to the environment of total musical domination in Austin these past few days:

Rock 'n roll.

The Hold Steady: Outtakes (etc) from Boys & Girls In America

A friend passed this great little collection of outtakes/alternate versions/misc from The Hold Steady, Brooklyn's best bar band that is finally getting some of the acclaim they deserve with their latest album, Boys and Girls in America [see previous post].

Their sound is gritty but melodic -- and I'll have more to say on that later. For now, enjoy these:



Girls Like Status (bonus track)
Arms & Hearts (bonus track)
Teenage Liberation (bonus single)
Modesto Is Not That Sweet (amen! from Crisp Songs, Vol. 1)
You Gotta Dance (with who you came to dance with) (from Crisp Songs, Vol. 1)
Chips Ahoy! (acoustic) -

The Hold Steady: new song "First Night," album & tour news

Huh. I think maybe I misunderestimated* The Hold Steady.

Perhaps subconsciously it's because Craig Finn's voice sounds exactly like the scruffy, leather-clad, black-dyed-spiky-haired lead singer for the house band in the movie Empire Records ("Gotta have it, really need it, Sugar High . . ."), but here I was pegging them as solely a raucous rock/punk band -- when in reality the Brooklyn-based group has more depth than perhaps I gave them credit for.

The cuts I've heard from their critically acclaimed Separation Sunday (2005, French Kiss Records) were dirty and rusty, riff-heavy, with a pointed, wry spoken drawl to the lyrics (Exhibit A: "Banging Camp," Exhibit B: "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"). I missed what some call the Springstonian threads in their tunes, hearing only some dirty Replacements-style rock 'n' roll (Finn's previous band Lifter Puller was from MPLS). And it was good raw fun.

So when AOL Indie (wait . . . what?) offered up a free download of the second song I've heard off their upcoming Boys And Girls In America album (Oct 3, Vagrant), I was shocked to hear this melodic, wistful song with a rambling piano and strings:

"The First Night" - The Hold Steady

Some reviewers who have their advance copies are pegging Boys And Girls In America as one of their top albums of 2006 (the album is named after a line from Kerouac's On The Road, so clearly this isn't bathroom wall scrawl christening here). I also just learned that it is produced by John Agnello (Breeders, Drive-By Truckers, the new Sonic Youth, Son Volt).

Interesting. I stand enlightened and now am really interested in hearing their new album with open ears.

Their tour starts this Saturday, Masonic Temple Connecticut style.

The Hold Steady 2006 Tour
Sept 30 - Hamden, CT - Masonic Temple
Oct 1 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza
Oct 2 - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar
Oct 4 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
Oct 5 - Birmingham, AL - Bottle Tree
Oct 6 - Memphis, TN - Hi-Tone Cafe
Oct 7 - Denton, TX - Hailey' s
Oct 8 - Austin, TX - Emo's
Oct 9 - Houston, TX - Walter's on Washington
Oct 12 - Tucson, AZ - Club Congress
Oct 13 - San Diego, CA - Brick By Brick
Oct 14 - Costa Mesa, CA - Detroit Bar
Oct 16 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour
Oct 17 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall
Oct 19 - Portland, OR - Lola's
Oct 20 - Vancouver, BC - The Plaza Club
Oct 21 - Seattle, WA - Crocodile Cafe
Oct 24 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
Oct 25 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
Oct 26 - Chicago, IL - Metro
Oct 27 - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
Oct 28 - Toronto, ON - Horseshoe Tavern
Oct 29 - Ottowa, ON - Zaphods Beeblebrox
Oct 30 - Boston, MA - Middle East

Oh, and Stereogum's got the news of the new Hold Steady podcast (which, really, has little to do with music from the actual band, but is a good excuse to listen to some Replacements and Bad Brains).


*that word's just for you, Chad.