Free Download: A Typically Entertaining Dan Bryk Show from 2009

Today’s free download is a fantastic live album. Dan Bryk’s Live at Bread & Circus Toronto is a solo performance from around 2009. Bryk’s unaffectedly clear voice soars and whispers and his piano playing is solid, but ultimately it’s the songs that knock you out. When it comes to purist pop tunesmithing, this guy is unsurpassed: Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann and Ward White could pick up a trick or two from him. Bryk’s 2009 record Pop Psychology, a corrosive concept album about the music business and people dumb enough to get involved in it, is a genuine classic. This one is more lighthearted, but it’ll give you a good idea of what this guy is all about: sardonic, self-effacing, unable to resist a good pun or a good joke, and a great storyteller. This is obviously a room recording, with sonics on the boomy side and plenty of crowd noise – Bryk takes a pause or two to get them to shut up, then gently assails one particularly chatty group. But by the encore he’s won everybody over, all the girls singing along with the chorus on Discount Store, a wickedly catchy, understatedly biting song that perfectly captures the cruel ironies of the current depression.

“If misery loves company, where the fuck did everybody go?” he asks with his first song; at the end of the set, the crowd wants a happy one, so he gives them the self-explanatory Just Give Up. The version of She Just Wants to Get High rhymes “Regent Park”(a Toronto slum) with “Maker’s Mark,” its harried narrator trying to save a girl from herself as much as from the cops: “Officer, I don’t have the money for this kind of weed.” He serves up a bouncy tribute to chunky girls – Bryk is a big guy himself – and then to a video game programmer he idolized as a teenager, imagining him living it up in California, “doing lines off the sand.” The punchline, where the programmer calls and leaves Bryk a message, is too good to give away. The strongest song here is The Next Best Thing, one of only two tracks from Pop Psychology to make it onto this one, and it packs a wallop. It’s as self-critical as it is angry at execs who won’t go near artists who aren’t ”cute and quirky and complacent:”

They wonder why I get so nervous
Airing my laundry to the weak and curious
I know it’s really not a public service
Supplying the freakshow to the circus

When you download this, you’ll see that Pop Psychology and Bryk’s 2007 Discount Store ep are still available, both hints worth picking up on.

The Sambasunda Quintet Take Gamelan Music to New Places

What would gamelan music sound like if it was played on stringed instruments instead of bells? The Sambasunda Quintet, a small-group spinoff of the famous Javenese gamelan orchestra, answer that question on their brand-new album, simply titled Java. It’s absolutely gorgeous. But unlike their main project, this particular unit doesn’t use gongs. Instead, this crew substitutes lush layers of kacapi (a boat-shaped zither) along with lute, wood flute, percussion and the delicate, dreamy Javanese vocals of frontwoman Rita Tila for an effect that’s far more eclectic, ambitious and global in scope than you would likely imagine. The songs here are LONG – miniature suites that clock in at ten minutes apiece or even more. It’s music to get lost in, especially for fans of Bollywood, gamelans or, for that matter, anyone who gravitates toward lush, hypnotic sonics.

With its lush dreampop-style harmonies, the opening track makes it easy to see where the roots of Indonesian pop originated.  Elegantly arranged, it builds almost imperceptibly to an unselfconsciously intense crescendo like several of the other tracks here. Another cut morphs from a big, tensely restrained minor-key ballad into a South Sea Islands tango; a bit later on, the group sends an Irish reel reeling into Javanese territory. While the idea of segueing from a gentle march, into hypnotic, pointillistic gamelanesque ambience and then Arabic modes might sound overwhelming, this group does it with a grace that’s often quite plaintive. One of the more anthemic numbers builds from an ominous motif that wouldn’t be out of place in heavy metal; by contrast, a catchy, biting pop number grows sunnier as it goes along, ending with a joyous “wheeee!” The album’s strongest track is a wary, ten-minute epic that mingles Bollywood, Middle Eastern and north Asian tonalities; the album winds up with another catchy, swaying tango-infused track and then a sweeping, insistent overture that rises and falls, mingling gently persistent lute with fluttering flute and the bell-like tones of the kacapi. The band is currently on UK tour; the record is out now on Riverboat Records.

Grand Guignol Eye Candy

…well, sort of. Here’s violinist Arianna Warsaw-Fan and cellist Meta Weiss playing a sweeping, inspired version of the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia in this rather creepy, dramatically shot video (which must have cost a fortune to make – then again, up in Montreal, people take pride in supporting the arts).

In Memoriam – Michael Davis

Michael Davis, the MC5′s smart, versatile bass player died today of liver failure. He was 68. Davis was a master of many styles: slinky soul grooves, fast melodic pop lines, hypnotic botttom-heavy psychedelia and jazz. He and drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson were one of the greatest rock rhythm sections ever, whether playing pummelling proto-metal, catchy janglerock, blues, soul or crazed avant-noise freakouts (where Davis would hang out and let the guitars go wild while he anchored the sound). Always active in music, he recently toured with the regrouped version of the classic Detroit band alongside bandmate Wayne Kramer. Davis was an underrated player, an important figure in rock history, especially in the great Detroit scene of the 60s and 70s, and will be missed.

Cross-Pollination from the Toure-Raichel Collective

If you follow cross-cultural musical supergroups, you may have heard of the Toure-Raichel Collective: pyrotechnic Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure (son of Ali) in surprisingly laid-back acoustic mode alongside Israeli pianist Idan Raichel plus bassist Yossi Fine and percussionist Souleymane Kane. Grab a free download of their lush, watery, John Fahey-esque new instrumental, Bamba; they’re touring in support of their forthcoming album this spring, with two nights in New York at City Winery on April 13 and 14.

Album of the Day 2/18/12

New feature! The 1000 best albums of all time list countdown continues, a cross-blog collaboration with New York Music Daily’s older sister blog Lucid Culture. Saturday’s album is #456:

Mos Generator - The Late Great Planet Earth

The artsy metal trio’s 2005 quantum leap, ironically, remains their mellowest album. Their earlier stuff is solid, but here they take their sound to the next level: this is a lush, atmospheric, genuinely haunting concept album about the apocalypse. The foreboding On the Eve kicks it off, followed by the epic dirge Crematorium; the rhythmically dizzying, manic depressive Six Billion People Dead; the aptly titled Opium Skies; The Myopic and its understated bitterness; the morbid Closed Casket; and the plaintive, Pink Floyd-ish Fall of Megiddo. Frontman/guitarist Tony Reed continued to assert himself as one of the underrated guitar heroes of the past couple of decades, while adding layer after layer of keyboards to the mix (which dominate as the album winds out, hypnotically). It winds up on a crushingly ironic, cynical note with the surprisingly funky title track and a mini-suite with a centerpiece titled Exit the Atomic Age. Long overdue for a reissue, the band is still selling it at cdbaby; if you’re looking for a torrent, try this random one.

More from Mike Rimbaud

At the risk of Mike Rimbaud overkill here – in case you’ve been paying attention, his two most recent albums are amazing – here’s his new video for You Make Love Like You Make War, a delicious blast of southwestern gothic from his Funeral Lover album. This guy just doesn’t stop.

Two New Bands to Keep Your Eye On

As many bands as there are here in New York, you’d think that finding good new ones would be like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s not – but isn’t it fun when you do? Two new acts who’re already good and seem like they’ll get even more interesting are Lucy Foley and Llama. Foley is a newcomer from Ireland, a confident, dynamic and often dramatic singer who’s equally at home with retro new wave pop and stagy noir cabaret. At a gig a couple of weeks ago at the Parkside opening for the perennially brilliant, inscrutably charismatic Tom Warnick, she was backed by a great band: her new husband Ross Bonnadona on guitar, Tom Pope on drums, Andy Mattina on bass and a guy who doubled on synth and tenor sax. Anytime a musician can get a supporting cast of that caliber, it’s an auspicious sign. Fans of Blondie and the Dresden Dolls should check her out; she’s at Fat Baby on March 22.

Llama isn’t a reference to the foul-tempered ruminant: the band name is Spanish for “call.” The nine-piece group plays what they call psychedelic salsa, with electric guitar and electric piano instead of a brass section. There have been plenty of other bands who’ve played punked-out electric salsa – Los Santos, who played the Coney Island boardwalk on Sundays for what seems like decades, were one of the best. But what makes this band unique is their dub arrangements: one of the women in the band adds layer after layer of oscillating, trippy sonic layers on a synth that she runs through a labyrinth of digital effects. The result is slinky and danceable and when the band is at the top of their game, it’s completely brain-warping. They’re still figuring out the sonics of their live show. But because they’re all excellent players, especially the killer three-piece percussion section – timbales, bongos and congas – they have the potential to be one of the most interesting bands in town. And they don’t just play straight-up classic salsa – there’s a little cumbia and some funk and maybe even some reggae in the mix too. Right now Barbes seems to be their home base.

Album of the Day 2/15/12

Back in 2009, New York Music Daily’s sister blog, Lucid Culture introduced its 1000 best albums of all time list. A spinoff of that blog’s well-liked Best 666 Songs of All Time list, it was designed as a countdown: a new album every day, all the way to #1. Trouble was, it never became anywhere near as popular as the Best Songs list did. How come? For one, the retard-room contingent on the web had more or less all migrated to Facebook by then – if you’re on the world wide web right now without being signed into Facebook, that makes you one of the cool kids! - so it’s safe to assume that some people who would have visited the 666 Best Songs list in 2007 wouldn’t have bothered to look for it a couple of years later. And by the time the Best Albums countdown started, Lucid Culture had morphed more or less into a jazz and classical music blog – so as an attempt to keep one foot in the rock world, it was a mistake. And it dated the blog, since fewer and fewer acts, particularly rock acts, bother to put out full-length albums anymore.

But here at New York Music Daily, there are no rules. So in an effort to cross-pollinate, here’s something from another time and another place. The list has been on hiatus at Lucid Culture since August of last year: consider this an attempt to defibrillate it. Today’s album is #457:

Neil Young – Living with War

From 2006, this is his best album. A ferocious, electric response to the criminality and genocide of the Bush regime, it’s political rock at its most insightful and tuneful. After the Garden coldly and cynically sets the stage for the sarcastic title track, and the equally scathing The Restless Consumer. Shock and Awe and Flags of Freedom call bullshit on the regime’s endless lies, while Families looks sympathetically at those left behind when Cheney sent the troops off to Iraq, from where 55% of the survivors would come home to disability pensions, unable to work because they’d been poisoned by depleted uranium. Let’s Impeach the President is a classic – and maybe the most intelligent song about an American President ever written. Looking for a Leader suggests that “maybe it’s Colin Powell, to atone for what he’s done;” Roger and Out looks back to Helpless, an enlisted grunt grudgingly admitting “that’s when we needed the hippie highway.” The closing cover of America the Beautiful is pretty pointless, but after all that, it doesn’t matter. The album itself is hard to find online, but the dvd with all the songs isn’t; here’s a random torrent via Three Times J.

Great Oldtime Country Sounds from the Weal and Woe

The Weal and Woe write great original oldtime style country songs, and play them with soulful expertise. The guy/girl close harmonies of guitarist Russell Scholl and bassist Barbara Ann have an unaffected southern charm, soaring over an early 1950s style backdrop with fiddle, lapsteel and occasional resonator guitar. Ex-Moonlighter Mark Deffenbaugh’s lapsteel steel playing is absolutely off the hook, whether adding smartly spaced accents or sly Leon McAuliffe-style swoops and dives – just his parts alone make their debut album The One to Blame one of the most enjoyable recent releases in Americana roots music. The Weal and Woe are playing the record release show at the Jalopy on Feb 18 at 9 – if really smart songwriting and great musicianship are your thing, you should go.

Most of the songs on the new album are short, clocking in at about three minutes or less. They get things going with the harmony-driven In the West, which has more of an oldtime, 19th century folk feel than anything else on this collection, with a tasty, sailing resonator solo that Deffenbaugh hands off elegantly to fiddler Jason Cade. The title track is one of those songs that sounds like a classic from about 1952, except that it’s new. Barbara Ann sings it with a sad, biting edge, from the point of view of a girl who’s thinking about going to the bottom of her neighbor’s pool, and staying there – and maybe taking the guy who broke her heart with her. Once again, the steel handing over a terse instrumental break to the fiddle is absolutely gorgeous. They Think We Don’t Know, a brisk shuffle with twinkling steel guitar, also has an element of mystery. Sung as a duet, it’s about a couple who are the talk of the town, but because everybody wants to set them up? Or because they’re on the fast track to some serious cheating together? “If wishes came true, I’d drive them crazy with my moves,” Barbara Ann croons: “I’d stay up late and drink their booze,” Scholl replies goodnaturedly.

The one instrumental here is Kings County Blues, a western swing number driven by swaying fiddle, steel in the background until Deffenbaugh busts out with a clever, wryly swooping solo. The longest song is a big, somewhat brooding ballad, Taking One on the Chin, which chronicles someone’s long decline to barroom dissolution, pensive lapsteel contrasting with Cade’s offhandedly bright lines. There are also two covers here: a vintage Grand Old Opry-style duet version of Frankenpine’s clever I Don’t Love You ‘Cause You’re Pretty, and a brisk bluegrass take on the country gospel song S-A-V-E-D. Fans of the Maddoxes, the Louvins, the Delmores, Hank Williams and also current country songwriters like Laura Cantrell who’ve found a home in an oldtime Nashville vernacular will love this record.