Mr. Holland and his opus say "Download new Coconut Records for free!"

Jason Schwartzman ("oh, are they?") returns to quirky pop-heaven territory with the sophomore effort from his band Coconut Records. The unassuming debut Nighttiming was one of my favorites last year; I'm a sucker for that chimey, eclectic, slightly-awkward sound and openhearted joy. As I wrote before, normally we can all agree that actors making music spells disaster, but in this case it absolutely spells y-a-y.

Davy is out January 13th on Young Baby Records, but you can now download the first track "Microphone" from his new album on Amie Street for free -- and for each download they will donate $1 to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, which gives musical instruments to kids. You can also pre-order the album for only five bucks while you're over on Amie Street.

This catchy new track sounds like it has one of those weird accordion-sounding instruments that you blow into the tube for. That's a technical music writer descriptive term right there.

LISTEN HERE:


DOWNLOAD FOR FREE HERE. Richard Dreyfuss wants you to.

Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers get the fever out

Oklahoma native Samantha Crain released one of my favorite EPs of 2008 on the Ramseur Records label, and will be back in 2009 with The Midnight Shivers (great band name) for her debut full-length.

Called her "account of excavation," the new album was recorded in five days at the gorgeous Echo Mountain Studios with producer Danny Kadar (Grizzly Bear, My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers). Surrounding by a setting like the one pictured above, it's no wonder such sweeping, amazing recordings have been made there. This first single is more vibrant and less lushly meandering than her previous EP, with a full band and a choir of background harmonies from the Midnight Shivers:

Get The Fever Out - Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers


Songs In The Night is out April 28, 2009 on Ramseur Records. The spectacular album art by artist Chad Mount was just unveiled today, and looks like this:


[top photo of album recording session, credit Samantha Lamb]

Show some restraint: The Notorious Bettie Page

[Originally posted two years ago - a re-up in honor of Bettie, who died in Los Angeles on Thursday]

Last night we settled in with some popcorn and the usual assortment of riding crops and corsets to watch the latest biopic to catch my eye: The Notorious Bettie Page (Picturehouse/HBO Films, 2006). The prurient among us may know of Bettie Page as the woman once named the "Pin-Up Queen Of The Universe" in the '50s. She was a model, actress, pin-up girl, and is most often remembered from her (now a bit comical looking) bondage photo shoots. You may also think of her in that tigress outfit, or winking as she trims the Christmas tree in the nude (and who among us hasn't would be my question).

In any case, I found it be a pretty interesting look at the bravery of her life and the depth her dreams -- as well as her rationalization (if you will) for the pictures she took ("I figure God gave me a talent for taking pictures and making people happy. Shouldn't I use that talent?"). After watching the film, I was curious to know what became of her (she became quite reclusive and mostly vanished from the public eye). Her Wikipedia page had a link to a current picture of her at 80 looking about 55 and still glowing. Not bad Bettie.

The film was written and directed by two women (Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, who both worked together also on "The L Word" and "American Psycho"), and in the same way that Bunny Yeager's photographs of the real Bettie Page brought out some of her best moments, I think that having this movie envisioned through the eyes of females lent it a certain depth that I liked.

Bettie Page's openness and vitality were conveyed well through the acting of Gretchen Mol. There were some interesting bonus features as well, which showed the making of the movie and some original footage of Page. Gretchen Mol is a blonde in real life. This made we wonder if there were merkins involved (Pearl Jam fans might have some idea what I am talking about. When I mused that question aloud last night, I was so proud of myself for ever getting to use that word in a sentence. I mean really.)

There was a nice femino-centric (new word) soundtrack to this film, with era-appropriate innocence and swing. Here are four notable tracks that I enjoyed. The smoldering Julie London track was the closer to the film and absolutely perfectly placed.

Life's Railway To Heaven - Patsy Cline

It's A Good Day - Peggy Lee

Sopa de Pichon - Machito & His Afro-Cubans
(mood music for the Miami photo shoots with Bunny Yeager behind the lens)

Gone With The Wind - Julie London

And here's the trailer:

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!]

Rustic warmth and seeping wistfulness

The honest, richly-spun folk sounds of Gregory Alan Isakov captivated a packed house in Denver last week as he opened for the Calexico show. I've written about the marvelous skiffle of Isakov's "The Salt and The Sea" tune before, and have been appreciated the bright talent of this local artist in several venues across Colorado this year. I love to hear Gregory sing; his voice is really something special in the singer-songwriter pantheon, with hints of sly knowing, balanced with a warm and soaring verve.

"Gonna write one for you, the unwritable girl . . ."

Unwritable Girl - Gregory Alan Isakov
[from his 2007 album That Sea, The Gambler]

All pictures of Gregory's set with Calexico are here.


Isakov is playing again this Friday night at Boulder's B-Side Lounge with Wisconsin folk artist Peter Mulvey. When I ripped out the ad in The Onion at a local coffee shop, I knew I recognized the name Mulvey from somewhere fantastic. Turns out that I've long loved a collaborative set that Mulvey did with two other excellent "dusky-Americana" musicians in the same vein: Jeffrey Foucault and Chris Smither. I've listened to this set from WPLN many times when I need an infusion of something . . . authentic.

In addition to a cover of "Buckets of Rain" that gets me every single time, this set also includes one of my favorite sad songs of the last few years, "Northbound 35."

I mean seriously:

We fought all night
and then we danced in your kitchen
You were as much in my hands
As water or darkness or nothing
Can ever be held

It's just flashes that we own
Little snapshots
made from breath and from bone
And out on the darkling plain alone
They light up the sky

Agonizingly gorgeous in the sadness.


DOWNLOAD THE SET:
WPLN SONGWRITER SESSION, MARCH 2003
Train Home - Chris Smither
29 Cent Head - Peter Mulvey
Stripping Cane - Jeffrey Foucault
Lola - Chris Smither
Stranded in a Limousine - Peter Mulvey
Northbound 35 - Jeffrey Foucault **highest rec**
Crocodile Man - Chris Smither
Shirt - Peter Mulvey
Secretariat - Jeffrey Foucault
Outside In - Chris Smither
The Road To Mallow - Peter Mulvey
Buckets of Rain (Dylan) - Jeffrey Foucault

ZIP: MULVEY-FOUCAULT-SMITHER SONGWRITER SESSION


TICKETS: Gregory Alan Isakov with Peter Mulvey
Friday, Dec 12 - B-Side Lounge in Boulder

[audio via]

#5 ain't half bad

Hey! Stereogum readers ranked Fuel/Friends as the #5 Music Blog That's Not Stereogum. What a huge honor for me, to be among such stellar company on that list. A sincere thank you guys!

New solo album from Raveonettes dude

Sune Rose Wagner is the masculine half of Danish duo The Raveonettes, alongside his platinum counterfoil Sharin Foo. After seven years of working in tandem (including on this year's marvelously cool Lust, Lust, Lust) Wagner is striking out on his own for an album of solo material, released this week.

That same echoey blend of surf sounds and scuzzy garage rock from the Raveonettes output is at play on this collection. To my non-Nordic eyes, these song titles look like Sigur Ros, but sound like Phil Spector -- except completely in Danish. It works!

Beruset Og Forhadt - Sune Rose Wagner

Wagner's self-titled solo album is out now on Juvenile Records.

The Gaslight Anthem on Conan Tuesday night

"Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?"

Monday Music Roundup

I went skiing this weekend, a rare occurrence for me despite living in Colorado. My body doth protest heartily today, after using muscles near-forgotten. I am a novice skier but by the end of the day Saturday I was hitting a stride where I wasn't fighting against the giant contraptions buckled to my feet and I could just glide down the mountain (almost) naturally. It felt at times like flying, silently.

It was a gorgeous day and occasionally the sun would break through the clouds and shimmer across Lake Dillon in the distance. Even though I was listening to things like The Strokes and The Darkness, I couldn't help but think of the Josh Ritter lyric, "The lake was a diamond in the valley's hand." A few times I stopped dumbfounded on the edge of the run and said out loud to no one in particular, "Man alive, that's gorgeous" -- all I have is a cell phone snap that doesn't do it justice.


We also saw a free Girl Talk concert outside at Keystone Friday night (part of the impetus for the original trip) and it was short but fantastic. Gillis could have held the stage for another two hours and I think we would have all been happy as cold little clams. Due to the fact that we were dancing outside on snow, it never got as hot and sweaty as your standard Girl Talk concert, leaving us all wanting more and more.

Here are a few new tunes in these waning weeks of the year:

Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus
This is a fantastically sloppy, raucous track from Jersey's Titus Andronicus. Like the band's live shows, the song is loose and unhinged, with frustrated lyrics about the creative pressures like "throw my guitar down on the floor, no one cares what I've got to say anymore." Frontman Patrick Stickles vows to write his masterpiece another day, but it sounds like they capture a fine visceral slice of their lives right at this moment. The band is named for the bloodiest of Shakespeare's plays, and the re-release of their debut album The Airing of Grievances is due January 19 (XL Recordings). They hit the road next month with Los Campesinos!.

Headin' Inside
Surf City
A dear friend is currently out of these snowy Colorado climes and spending a month in New Zealand and Australia. She regales me with emails about how humid it is there, while I am watching snow twirl outside my window right this minute. Fittingly, in the dead of winter New Zealand band Surf City (formerly Kill Surf City) brings a hot and feisty slice of July back into my music life this week. With an opening riff that sounds like the Jesus & Mary Chain channeling Dick Dale, they tie up the classic pop sound with "the simple structure meets raw energy" of punk. Their self-titled EP is out now on Morr Music.


Hurtin' You
Ben Kweller
Deep within Ben Kweller's gawky indie-rocker heart, which normally beats with sublime pop harmonies and sunny construction, there lies a downhome country fella. We've heard hints of it spun marvelously in 2006's self-titled album and more recently on his How Ya Lookin', Southbound? EP. But this new slide-guitar laden song from his forthcoming Changing Horses full length (ATO Records, February '09) just consummates the ongoing flirtation once and for all. And I'm glad.

Overcome
Juliette Commagére
One of the coolest girls ever to wield a keytar, the fearless Juliette Commagére fronts the L.A. band Hello Stranger, sometimes in knee-high red boots. Now embarking on a solo jaunt, Juliette gives me chills in the opening moments of this pristine song with cascading harmonies that sound more at home in a Tibetan monastery, but then breaks into a fine, loud Blondie-type rock. Ry Cooder guests on her enticing album Queens Die Proudly, out now on Aeronaut Records.


Girl Ain't Preggers
Grampall Jookabox
The world might be a better place if every song came complete with a video game where you can jump over babies while the song discusses the protagonist's conflicting feelings about the girl not being pregnant (starting with "I need some money right now, I can't pay for no baby," then moving into a surprisingly sentimental line of thinking about how cute tiny baby hands are, and ending with, "Don't it make you feel bad that the girl ain't preggers?"). Despite two of my guy friends each feeding over 25 babies on this game and being praised for their superior parenting skills, I regret to inform that I kept landing on the babies. Sigh. Grampall Jookabox's new album Ropechain is out now on Asthmatic Kitty.

Sufjan gets behind the Welcome Wagon

If you showed me the cover of this (2008!!) album from Brooklyn's Welcome Wagon and asked me if'n I would like to borrow it from you and listen to it, my first reaction would be "No." That would be based largely on the fairly unbelievable cover. But shucks -- beyond that Seventies-tastic artwork lies a whole downpour of wholehearted harmonies and majestic banjos on this debut album from Rev. Vito Aiuto and his wife Monique. As it helpfully says on the cover, "Pastor and wife join voices in sacred foks songs for All Ages."

The album was produced, recorded, and arranged by Sufjan Stevens, and this song was originally written by past Sufjan collaborators Danielson Familie. Fans of Sufjan's music will appreciate the same childlike delight and shiny newness in their music.

Sold! To The Nice Rich Man - The Welcome Man

Welcome To The Welcome Wagon is out December 9th, and that night they are playing St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Brooklyn.


[thanks bruce!]

The great collapse of Everything Absent and Distorted

The end of last year was a nightmare for me of long hours in hospital rooms, soundtracked by the beeping and whooshing of intimidating machines under a sickly halogen buzz. As I confronted very real fears and my absolute inability to do anything other than hold a warm, dry hand and sing the occasional song, I lacked the words to express how that feels.

Everything Absent or Distorted is a band of wonderful guys from Denver whose new release The Great Collapse incisively explores some of these themes that gnaw in your head during long hours of waiting. In the starkly-perfectly titled song "A Form To Accommodate The Mess," lyrics ponder all that a hospital room has seen over the years, and the cycles that hold us all together. Over a slowly-building cadence that grows like a tsunami, the words question why the stench of sickness is the same as the smell of medicine and healing. "We are born gasping for air," the song notes, "and we die gasping for air. One, two, three deep breaths -- the end and the beginning." It's hit me rough and potent.

A form to accommodate the mess - Everything Absent and Distorted

Through EAOD's gorgeously vibrant multi-instrumental music (that sounds "more at home in Montreal than Denver") this album is helping to define something to accommodate a mess and a chaos that befalls me lately. During the recording process of this album, band members faced massive situations like a dad dying, a baby being born prematurely, a marriage beginning -- the true grit that makes up life. Life's ups and downs are all there, reflected in the incisive, poetic lyrics.

Like an Arcade Fire collective, all eight band members cohere through a symphony of instruments ranging from "violin, cello, bowed double bass, guitars, glockenspiel, casio keyboards circa 1985, alesis synthesizers, bass, drums, trumpet, trombone, banjo, piano, pots and pans, trains, and fences." And just in case eight is in fact not enough, they're also joined on the album by members of Denver bands DeVotchKa, Bela Karoli, and Cat-A-Tac.

I've been privileged to see EAOD a few times live (and will again this Saturday at their record release show at The Gothic) and it's one of the most pure-hearted rock 'n' roll bacchanalias you will see. They convulse and thrash and jump and fall over each other, but they close their eyes and they sing with their whole hearts and therein lies a gorgeous glimpse of the role music plays to them and their audience. As another song on the album says, this feels like "featherbeds in a bomb shelter, trying to find some sleep." For me, The Great Collapse is a bit of comfort during the shelling.


Both EOAD albums were recorded, financed, produced, mixed, manufactured, distributed by the band with their own limited funds. As member John Kuker says:

"We barely make enough money in a year’s worth of shows just to make a record – we then go in debt to put it out – and slowly try to recoup some of the funds. We’re a part of the so-called Needlepoint Records family with Rabbit is a Sphere, Thank God for Astronauts and Cat-A-Tac, as we thought an Elephant 6 type deal could be fun.

But at the end of the day, of course all the label/money stuff doesn’t matter at all to us. Of course this project will end up costing us tons more money than we could ever make and we don’t care. We put our blood, sweat, tears, and dollars into this because it’s about all that matters to us.

We never set out to get signed or tour the world. We just all had to make some art in order to be. To be."

As they also said in a recent interview, and what must be keeping this fantastic album vibrating and resonating within my chest, is that "anything meaningful in this world, musical or non-musical, is bound to take a great collapse."


GO: Everything Absent or Distorted album release party at The Gothic Theatre, Saturday, December 6th at 9pm for a mere eight dollars.

LISTEN: Most of the new album is streaming at their Myspace, and you can buy it here.


[band photos from my Monolith Saturday set]

Autumn de Wilde turns her lens on Elliott Smith (new contest)

Insound is teaming up again with Fuel/Friends to give away another music prize -- the book Elliott Smith by Autumn de Wilde. This is "a portrait of the beloved and troubled singer/songwriter by those who knew him well. Complementing de Wilde's riveting, personal images are ephemera, handwritten lyrics, and revealing talks with Smith's inner circle, many speaking here for the first time. Also included are a foreword by Beck Hansen and Chris Walla, and a live CD of unreleased solo acoustic performances."

Autumn de Wilde also did the video for Elliott's "Son of Sam": [thx]


Enter to win the book here through December 10th (and even though there is no confirmation page after you submit your name, I am assured it is working). Looks pretty sweet; I've been listening to a lot of mopey Elliott Smith lately. The book is part of Insound's Holiday Gift Guide.

Angeles (live on KCRW) - Elliott Smith
Trouble (Cat Stevens cover) - Elliott Smith

Hang the DJ

I'm gonna try my hand at this DJ business as part of Denver's New Music Mondays over at the Larimer Lounge on January 19th. A new event on Monday nights, folks can bring their own vinyl or iPod contributions to add between sets to this record party. Should be a cool time of new music discovery with local, national and international tunes, brought to you by the Monolith Festival folks.

If you're in Denver, come check it out. And don't tell them I have no idea how to actually DJ (shhh!).


NEW MUSIC MONDAYS GUEST DJ SCHEDULE
Dec 1: Jim McTurnan (Cat-A-Tac) + Joshua Novak (Songwriter)
Dec 8: Brian F Johnson (Marquee Magazine) + Nicole Covington (Gothic Theater)
Dec 15: Kurt Ottaway (Overcasters) + MondoGarage (Garage/Spy Fi)
Dec 22: Chris Martucci (Laylights) with Miles & Baumer
Jan 5: Eryc Eyl (Westword) and DJ Ginger
Jan 12: Citrus Sauthoff (U.S. Pipe) and Julian Wakefield
Jan 19: Heather Browne (Blogger, I Am Fuel/You Are Friends) with Meese!

For the most current schedule updates, check here.

[photo credit]

I'll be satisfied this week with just a Little Joy

I've completely fallen for the short and sweet debut album from L.A. trio Little Joy, who hit Denver's Larimer Lounge on Tuesday night. After a chance meeting at a Portuguese music festival, Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes and Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos) sat beside a river and talked about their musical leanings. Upon returning to Los Angeles, they formed this trio along with local musician Binki Shapiro. The three moved into an Echo Park house, starting recording demos, and named their project for the cocktail lounge down the street.

Like a Shirley Temple, there's an innocence from another era captured here, but also a hearty dose of more modern sounds cultivated in both garages and bossa nova clubs. The sum effect feels like someone took a band like the Strokes (no denying -- Amarante often sounds delightfully like Casablancas, at the peak of his lazy lounge-singing), plunked them down in some post-war era American nightclub in Rio de Janiero, and gave them a regular gig on Tuesday nights. That's how this fantastic album feels - without pretense, eclectic, wistful . . . but music you can dance to.

How To Hang A Warhol - Little Joy

The singing occasionally lapses into Portuguese, the vocalists croon while the backup singers shoo-wop in Motown moments. The music clatters and sways with Latin influences and island ukuleles. Some of the slower songs --especially the ones fronted by Binki and her charmingly honest voice (listen: "Don't Watch Me Dancing")-- sound like the perfect soundtrack to a Technicolor 8mm film projecting in slow motion. Or maybe something I want to listen to on a sticky-humid night, unable to sleep in hotel sheets, while watching the ceiling fan lazily spin and waiting for an ocean breeze through the open window.

Of all the side projects of Strokes members, this one checks in tops with me because there is an almost-kitschy but genuine joie de vivre captured in these thirty minutes. As Moretti said when asked about how this project came to be, he replied that "We weren't doing it for the sake of doing it; we were doing it for the love of doing it." And you can tell.

Little Joy is out now on Rough Trade Records, and you should really go see them in the coming weeks if you live in any of these West Coast cities. Me, I'll be there with bells on Tuesday night in Denver.


[top photo credit the awesome Autumn de Wilde]

Fuel/Friends is three!

Hey guys, remember that time my blog hit the third birthday mark and I didn't notice? Last week marked three years of Fuel/Friends' existence, and in those thousand-plus days we have had a lot of fun.

As I say continually and every year around this time, I am humbled that you stop by to see what I am listening to or reading or exploring, and it has been my distinct pleasure to unearth some sonic gems for your enrichment and mine.

In keeping with tradition, here are twenty songs from Year 3 that have been high on my list of radness and worth parading past one more time as we embark on our fourth year. As I began going through my monthly archives I thought the culling might be difficult, but as always, several effortlessly effervesced to the top, and this is a list I feel great about.

Make sure that you didn't miss these the first time around; burn yourself a CD with these twenty, and let's celebrate another year.


TWENTY FROM YEAR THREE!
One Crowded Hour (with orchestra) - Augie March
A few days into Fuel/Friends Year 3, I posted a gorgeous set from melodic and wistful Australians Augie March, playing a set with a full orchestra. I wrote, "Already literate and lavish, their songs become absolutely something else in this setting. 'One Crowded Hour' makes me want to climb inside of it even more than before. What an elegant, evocative, soaring song." Some of the best lyrics of the year, too. [Nov 23, 2007]

Frankie's Gun - Felice Brothers
Even now, every single time the wheezy opening notes of this song cue up, a wide smile spreads across my face. The Felice Brothers are from the Catskills in NY, and there's a raw and unfinished sound to their storytelling brand of folk-americana. I wrote that "as you sit with them, the colors of their music start to come out in a warm rich burn, like a campfire at 2am. Very few artists write stories like this anymore, except for folks like Ray LaMontagne or the Hold Steady, in very different-sounding ways. Their vivid music is populated by characters with names like Long-Legged Brenda, and take the listener along on all kinds of wild narratives that echo Dylan in their complexity and seeming unsingability." I absolutely adore this song; seeing them do it live in SF was a highlight of my summer. [Jan 18, 2008]

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Oh, Nick Cave had me wrapped around his finger this year. After seeing him throw down the rock 'n' roll fire and brimstone in September, I have been converted on a religious-fanatic level. This ace song is a "danceable apocalpyse," and in order to properly appreciate it, you simply must watch the music video. HOW does he do that? Nick Cave is the most effortlessly cool mofo in music today (and for the last thirty years). [Jan 21, 2008]

Nothing - The Hands
The Hands are from the Pacific Northwest, and there's something "slightly off and unnerving in the melody and rhythm here -- just a half-second syncopated, or too fast. Either way, it feels like about seven cups of coffee in the morning: all jittery and yowling, but anchored by a classic rockin' feel with those dead-ringer Jaggeresque vocals. I want to keep replaying the opening notes to figure out what's going on there in those first thirty seconds." [Jan 28, 2008]

Monk Chant - The Monks
A recommendation from a friend sent me on a historical dig into the music of The Monks from the mid-'60s, American G.I.s stationed in Germany whose sound was leagues ahead of the era and laid the groundwork for the punk and rock I love today. "There's an urgency and an animal primacy to the music that belies the sweaters and the bobby socks of 1965," and this crazy tribal chant and electric feedback swamp gets my blood running hot. [Jan 31, 2008]

You Left The Water Running - Otis Redding
One of my favorite dork-concept mixes this past year was loosely based around a kids book called That's Dangerous!, and following the model of the book, I soundtracked all sorts of bad ideas and the grown-up trouble we can get ourselves into. I wasn't familiar with this Otis Redding song before, but from the opening countdown and that bewitching thump of melody, this soulful burner is one of my favorites to sing along with when I feel that somebody done me wrong.
[Feb 2, 2008]

Grounds for Divorce - Elbow
I was recently reacquainted with this fabulous song from Manchester rockers Elbow that starts off as a subdued tale about "working on a cocktail called Grounds For Divorce," then explodes into "a haunting, gospelly blues track with a guttural punch and stomp." I love being surprised by the way it shimmers with almost-glam overtones. [Feb 11, 2008]

Rat Within The Grain (b-side) - Damien Rice
One day before leap year, I posted one of the best songs Damien Rice has written, overlooked by the world as a b-side but amazingly piercing and terribly sad, soaked in a wistful bitterness. An intensely personal song for me, it "gouges pretty harshly at the softest parts of my insides, as his jaded self-contempt seeps into the tender, almost-hidden professions of a maybe hopeless kind of love. In one long sentence, he goes from wanting to keep her at arm's length because he knows that parts of him are a turbulent ocean, and wanting so much to be wonderful in her eyes." [Feb 28, 2008]

Circus of Horror - Quiet Village
"Sometimes a song sneaks up on you and surprises you with the way it insinuates entire cinescapes in your mind. That picture above belongs with another film, but it is a vague representation of the colors, the era, the intrigue that this song (by Quiet Village) conjures up for me. This seems a perfect soundtrack to a forgotten '60s Italian spy movie -- a little campy but sleek, ready for some fast driving down narrow cobbled streets. Or perhaps you can hear a change of locales with a dash of cool saunter down the Miami waterline, scoping out the sinister antagonist." [April 17, 2008]

Lovely Allen - Holy Fuck
This was the year I finally discovered Coachella for myself, and one of the live highlights was seeing Toronto's Holy Fuck create this song urgent and perfect inside one of the shady tents. "My mind was sent reeling by their brand of lo-fi improvisational electronica, which was anything but sterile. Watching them pour their hearts into their music, doubled over their machines, radiating intensity -- and then hearing the warmly soaring sounds that emerge -- made me reconsider what's possible with that genre." They closed their set with this marvelous song, and "I know it sounds a bit hyperbolic, but for those final five minutes my soul levitated a little."
[May 4, 2008]

The Only Moment We Were Alone (live in SF) - Explosions In The Sky
This was also the year I first heard Austin, Texas' Explosions In The Sky, a band that "tells amazing stories through songs which happen to lack words." A live recording of their epic show in SF conjured up a half-dreamt vignette in my mind that is still one of my favorite things I wrote this year. Maybe the earth is not a cold, dead place after all. [May 6, 2008]

Gratification To Concrete - Robert Pollard
Former Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard made huge waves in my kiddie pool at the beginning of summer with this "monster jam of a summer pop song." I'm still not sick of this, two seasons later. I originally cautioned that "this will work best if you don't try to understand Pollard's lyrics but just enjoy the crunchy riffs at play." 'Bout time concrete got some gratification. [May 12, 2008]

Soul on Fire - Spiritualized
"This back-with-a-vengeance song from seminal British space rock/shoegaze '90s band Spiritualized starts gently over an intimate acoustic strum, with lyrics about being born on a black day shot through with starlight. But before the first minute passes, all the strings swell and rise together and there's a hurricane in your veins. It's terrifically stirring yet somehow comforting, as if I've heard it a thousand times before and want to be a part of it. It's a tour-bus singalong, it's a gospel choir, it's a ballad just for me." [June 9, 2008]

Seven Fingers - Black Francis
"'I was born with seven fingers and seven toes, in my dark face sadness always shows,' claims the thumping, thrumming acousto-punk title track from Black Francis; a tasty return to classic form for the former frontman for The Pixies. It's only one minute and forty seven seconds long, but it is addictively refreshing as he sings, 'Tonight I'll be with you, and in the morning when we're through, please know that you have helped me with my pain.' Tunes like this'll numb it for me too -- it makes me feel as happy as I did that summer when I was 14 and listened to the Violent Femmes on cassette nonstop through June and July." [June 21, 2008]

I Woke Up Today - Port O'Brien
This tune from Oakland's Port O'Brien is easily one of the most vibrant tunes of my aural year. When I saw it performed without amplification in an SF Diesel Store happy hour in February, "the spirit in the air 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 was fitting because it's a song that feels chaotic and wonderful." [June 22, 2008]

No Water - Hearts of Palm
Since I first posted this superb song in preview of the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase this summer, I've seen it performed live by Hearts of Palm approximately seventeen times in various venues throughout Denver -- and it's always a fantastic uprising of crowd participation. It makes me puff up inside to hear the momentum behind the song, the way everyone sings along above that bouncy bassline, and "how enthusiastically the band gives back to us all." They always perform with joy, and this is one local band that is going places. [July 17, 2008]

Trees - Everest
In quiet moments for the last six months, the "muted Buddy Holly classic vibe with autumnal colors" of this song from Everest streams through my head on repeat. I'd heard it somewhere and learned it enough to hum the melody, but then forgot to write down who it was and promptly forgot. After rediscovering it, I'll never let go (Jack). It's a lovely, humble, halcyon song and I still feel perfect when I am listening to it. [July 28, 2008]

Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare - Matt and Kim
"Brooklyn duo Matt and Kim turned in one of the single most enthusiastic performances that I saw at Monolith last year, a cataclysmic explosion of spirited yelling and jubilant rhythm. This shiny song opens with such a sunny simplicity that it could be one of those homemade ditties you would compose on your new Casio keyboard on Christmas morning, using the program function and your siblings' handclaps for backup percussion." It also sounds like a whole army of awesomeness stomping their feet and clapping in a warehouse in the "We Will Rock You" of today. [Sept 1, 2008]

Get Yourself Home (In Search of The Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous) - These United States
"The most recent Colorado show that Washington D.C.'s These United States played was at a farm party for Labor Day out near Nimbus Road and Diagonal Highway in Niwot. I hear the two things that existed in some abundance were farmland and alcohol. This sounds like the kind of band that you could have a lot of fun with in those doses. There's a rustic folk charm here with a feisty and jittery thread weaving through this that would make M Ward proud." An excellent album this year. [Sept 22, 2008]

I Can't Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt cover) - Denison Witmer
Philadelphia artist Denison Witmer self-released an inspired set of covers this year, and I keep on letting this Bonnie Raitt cover rip into me. It's worth a few minutes of your time "even if you haven't given Bonnie Raitt much thought since you (like my sister) sang this song in Girls Choir in high school." This reimagining of Raitt's 1991 song "starts with a settling in a room; you can hear the grey empty space starkly bouncing back his plaintive, resigned voice. It is an absolutely devastating song, and especially the way he does it -- all void and defeated." [Oct 13, 2008]

On that note....
ZIP: TWENTY FROM FUEL/FRIENDS YEAR THREE


And hey -- I am absolutely looking forward to year four! Thank you (sincerely) for playing along. What have been your favorite discoveries here this past year? I do so love to hear about it.