Arguably the best moment of Monolith '08

...And Fuel/Friends video was there.


Port O'Brien is from Oakland, CA, and they are riotously full of joy and good tunes. They brought a wooden box full of pots and pan lids to their show on Saturday and invited the audience to come up on stage in a collaborative percussion-and-yelling celebration. It was just fantastic.

We survived Monolith, and will be reporting more soon.

Port O'Brien: All we could do was sing

Port O'Brien is a nautically-named collective of five musicians based out of the California port city of Oakland, the neighbor across the bay from San Francisco. Their songs are mostly written by lady baker Cambria Goodwin and her commercial salmon-fisherman boyfriend Van Pierszalowski. Their self-released 2008 album All We Could Do Was Sing contains one of the most vibrant tunes of this year (and hey, M. Ward agrees):

I Woke Up Today - Port O'Brien

Part of the reason this song hit me so viscerally is due to the first time I saw it performed live. This February I was out in San Francisco to cover the Noise Pop Festival. Every event all weekend long had about twelve good artists on the bill, including a happy hour at the Diesel Store on Post Street.

So maybe we can call it the four free vodka/fruity concoction dealies that the excellent amateur bartender made for me amidst the overpriced denim, but the spirit in the air when Port O'Brien kicked into their free set was nothing less than jubilant. I would even call it riotous as people sang along, the percussion beat at full-force, and the vocals keeled into an almost war chant.

That mood of spur-of-the-moment explosion served the song better than cutesy sailing videos, in my opinion, because it's a song that feels chaotic and wonderful - akin to this session that my Blogotheque peeps captured a few weeks after I caught the Port O'Brien set in SF:

Monday Music Roundup

Pop quiz: What do all of these things have in common?

-study abroad (ouch!)
-Mos Def ("I don't see race")
-Whole Foods
-knowing what's best for poor people

??
Why, this is all stuff white people like, the subject of a fantastic blog by the same name. Good lord this is funny stuff . . .

Notable related link: Top Ten Rap Songs White People Love with some awesomely excellent videos. Yo VIP. . . Let's kick it.


Yes Man
Ari Hest
Brooklyn musician Ari Hest was looking for new ways to challenge the conventional music-releasing paradigm, and decided to try something new in 2008: releasing one song per week and offering fans the opportunity to subscribe to his creativity, as it were. This tune is currently top on his MySpace player and caught my ears with its warm, roots-rock sound, but everything I am hearing spinning on there so far is good. The best-loved songs from this year's "52"experiment will be released as the follow-up album to last year's The Break-In. I think he came through Denver in support of that album playing with the Damnwells but oh wait I missed it.

I Woke Up Today
Port O'Brien
I'm going to try and see Port O'Brien this weekend as part of the most excellent Noise Pop Festival in San Fran. They're playing at Cafe du Nord, which is the sweatier, dirtier, downstairs cousin to the Swedish American Hall -- where this Oakland band played just a few weeks ago, opening for Nada Surf. This song sounds like a joyous cross between some tribal ceremony and a playground dodgeball riot. I love it, it makes the floor wanna shake.


Gray or Blue
Jaymay
Jamie Seerman is a 26-year-old New Yorker with an earnest, pleasing voice and melodic songs that draw from a range of pop and jazz influences.
But seriously.
Has no one in her management advised her that people hear her stage name and perhaps think of this? Or am I the only one?
In any case, this song packs a limber bassline that stretches and wraps itself around her effervescent strum and playfulness. It charmingly starts with "i feel so helpless now, my guitar is not around" as she tries to memorize everything about the guy in this song, and it makes me feel exactly like I am fifteen. I found myself singing this (out loud!) in a 7-11 the other day, so it must be catchy. Autumn Fallin' is out March 11 on Blue Note.

Ready For The Floor (Jesse Rose Mix)
Hot Chip
There's something just a little endearing about the marginally off-key exhortation of lead singer Alexis (guy) Taylor here as he urges me to do it, do it, do it, do it now. It creeps into my subconscious. Maybe it's that borderline-nerdy feel combined with the dancefloor-ready beats that is making Hot Chip such a huge success amongst the kids who don't dance much, and this remix brings out all the parts of the song that I like the best. From their new album Made In The Dark (out a few weeks ago on Astralwerks).


Falling Slowly
The Frames
After the agonizing THREE musical theater extravaganzas from the Amy Adams "Enchanted" film last night at the Oscars, I was even more excited about Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova winning for best song. This tune is just ridiculously, impossibly gorgeous and if you've seen the lovely little story soundtracked by it, it becomes even better. The song was originally written and released with Glen's band The Frames in this slightly different early version from the 2006 album The Cost (Plateau Records). Listen here for an injection of tension and fervor with the electric cascades, but it does make me miss Marketa's prominent duetting vocals. "You have suffered enough and warred with yourself, it's time that you won." Good for them.