Video Dump Day #2 5/2/13

Damn, the May concert calendar is a whopper. Putting that thing together has become a weeklong project – so much good stuff coming up it’s almost suffocating. Of course, one of the most major and historic and intense events of the year – Wadada Leo Smith‘s three-night stand at Roulette – had to coincide with this project. In the meantime…time to empty the tank with all the freebies and singles and videos that have been kicking around the corners here like dust bunnies.

Here’s the Rotaries’ Before Leaving – a gorgeous, anthemic, singalong janglepop gem to kick off your summer. The vocals could be stronger but the band is kicking. Does anybody hear White Hassle in the distance?

Shannon Wright’s The Caustic Light is a pitchblende hypnotic minimalist Randi Russo style dirge from her forthconing album In Film Sound due out May 7.

Portland, Oregon’s Alelia Diane’s The Way We Fall sounds like Cal Folger Day with a chamber pop band (or a mellotron) – intriguing stuff from her forthcoming album Come Out Swinging due in late June.

If you’ve got a minute, hang with Mike Vial’s Reaching Back til this hypnotic jazz-pop number gets creepy. It reminds a lot of Lee Feldman in darker moments. And the piece de resistance:

“In honor of Obama’s Second Term, Neil Nathan Inc. releases the Jumpstart Music Video off their acclaimed Power 2 The People Concept LP, Sweep the Nation [very favorably reviewed here back in January]. And like any 21st Century profit minded corporation in Earth’s Global Village, they outsourced production to the tiniest of Asian Tigers, the Philippines.

In it, the Obama Twins, Hope and Change, drag race each other in an all out battle to see who will Win the Future. But obstacles abound in the form of  Fearless President Putin, Iranian President Ahmadenijad & His Nuclear Bomb, Angela Merkel & the Euro-Mobile, as well as the Republican Elephant & their radical counterparts, the Tea Party. But do not fret, for help is on the way from Israeli President Netanyahu, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping & His Gang of Dragons, and ultimately America’s Man of Steel, Super Bill Clinton.

Neil says the tune was influenced by Cheap Trick, Guided by Voices, and Iggy Pop, and is giving it away for FREE.”

5/1 Video and Free Downloads to Keep You Entertained

Long overdue for some video here (click the links below) – comes in handy when there’s a massive update to the monthly NYC live music calendar going on. Out of all the months, the May calendar is the biggest bitch to pull together since all the summer festivals are being announced. So before all this gets stale, here goes, a handful of the best tracks to come over the transom here over the last few months.

Mike Rimbaud offers a sympathetic shout to the guy or girl in front of all the kids with Ritalin or Prozac-fried brains in Teacher’s Got a Bad Mouth, and sends a dis out to the lords of Wall Street with Big Bad Bully. Both tracks from his most recent album Midnight Rainbow.

Noir Britrocker Mike Marlin – who’s at the Highline on June 3 at 8 opening for what’s left of the Stranglers – offers a creepy free download, The Murderer, from his forthcoming solo album. Alec K Redfearn & the Eyesores’ The 7 & 6 - from their phenonenal 2012 album – is even creepier.

Lisbon Street, by Her Majesty is another freebie, a theatrical, psychedelic soul tune with fado overtones.

Beans on Toast’s Beer & a Burger is sort of British Steve Earle or Joe Pug – a sardonic, savagely cynical blue-collar acoustic punk anthem.

Yellow Red Sparks’ A Play to End All Plays is cynical doomed druggie Waitsish oldtimey circus rock. They’re at Union Hall in Park Slope on May 17 at around 10.

Army Navy’s Pickle is total mid-80s Brit-jangle except that they’re from California – an irresistibly clanging, ringing anthemic pop gem.

And here’s another killer free download, Pinknoizu’s Tin Can Valley, a twisted Middle Eastern flavored surf rock tune.

An Excellent New Album and a Bowery Ballroom Show by Hem

What do you make of the fact that excerpts from some of the songs on Hem’s new album Departure and Farewell first appeared in tv ads? On one hand, for an artist with any cred at all to debut new material in commercials usually amounts to career suicide – John Mellencamp could tell you something about that. On the other, it’s tempting to give Hem a pass. If there’s any band that deserves a little trickle-down money so they can afford the big-studio production that their lushly orchestrated, sweepingly melancholic songs require, Hem fits the bill. Yet from an artistic standpoint, would you want your audience to associate your music with, say, a credit card company whose ad they (or their lazy flatmates, or siblings, or parents) forgot to mute? As a listener, would you want to hear a song that reminds you of a  commercial? Obviously not. Those are just a couple of the dilemmas faced by artists these days. Robert Johnson had to go down to the crossroads to make his deal; 75 years later, Hem simply handed over the files and took the cash.

Whatever you think of that transaction, there’s no denying how beautiful the new album is. Seriously: do you know anyone who doesn’t like Hem? Sally Ellyson’s sad, poignant vocals and the band’s slow, Indian summer ballads have won them a rabid following that acts who play such quiet, often delicate music seldom achieve. They’re playing Bowery Ballroom on May 4 at 9; general admission tix are $20 and still available as of this writing.

The theme of the album is endings, no great suprise considering the band’s previous output, a topic to which they’re especially well suited. Several of these tracks are available as free downloads (and for more delicious live stuff, check out the Hem channel at archive.org including their show earlier this month at the Bell House).

The opening, title cut sets Dan Messe’s terse piano against stately harp and bassoon, building to one of the band’s signature swells. The first of the free downloads, Walking Past The Graveyard, Not Breathing is an ominously blithe oldtimey waltz at its roots. “They are there inside, though we can’t see them,” Ellyson intones nonchalantly. Things Are Not Perfect in Our Yard is short and hypnotic, playing off a catchy, fingerpicked Steve Curtis riff.

The Seed has an oldtime country gospel feel lit up by Heather Zimmerman’s rustic violin. Bob Hoffnar’s blue-sky pedal steel washes through The Jack Pine. “My blood runs into the Gowanus Canal where it sinks to the bottom , it hurts like hell,” Ellyson laments in Tourniquet (another free download), a tale of Civil War era Brooklyn.

Seven Angels spices an oldtimey waltz with gospel piano and lively, twangy Gary Maurer guitar. Gently Down the Stream builds a pretty majestic rolling-on-a-river sweep, while Bird Song (an original, not a Dead cover) works a gentle 60s folk-pop vein.

Traveler’s Song – still available on a No Depression free sampler (via Limewire) – is over in less than two minutes, a rewrite of an old Irish ballad. The Tides at the Narrows builds to an unexpected majesty out of a spiky bluegrass-tinged tune on the wings of Maurer’s dobro. Last Call, with its sly Buffalo Springfield reference and a dreamy Ellyson vocal, is the album’s longest song; it winds up with the surprisingly upbeat, somewhat honkytonk-flavored So Long. Call this chamber pop, art-rock or even country music – it’s all three and it’s uniquely and instantly recognizable as Hem. May they thrive long past the point of needing corporate cash to pay for studio time.

Another Year, Another Beautifully Brooding Album by Low

Low’s new album The Invisible Way is out today, March 20 and they’re celebrating the release with a show at the Ethical Culture Society, 2 E 64th St. off Central Park West. Indie classical ensemble ACME opens the night at 8 PM and then will join the band later during their set for an enhanced evening of art-rock. Tickets are $30 and still available as of today at Ticketmaster outlets (no service charge applies) as well as at the door.

The new record is fantastic. It’s hard to believe that Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker and Steve Garrington have been doing this for twenty years. For starters, there are a couple of free downloads up at Soundcloud, both sung by Parker: the haunting, plaintive, hypnotic If I Could Just Make It Stop, and So Blue, fueled by gorgeous Jayhawks-ish harmonies and a desperation that goes beyond even seeking revenge.

The rest of the album is just as good, cynical and catchy as you would expect. The opening track, Plastic Cup,with its spare, low-register piano and Beatlesque keys (is that a mellotron?) mocks trust-funded junkies while pondering how history will judge an archaeological artifact once used for pee samples. They keep a somber trip-hop groove going with Amethyst – which may have a snidely metaphorical political message – and then go deep into slow, Beatlesque gospel with Holy Ghost.

They keep the slow gospel thump going with the tersely bitter Waiting and follow that with Clarence White, an apprehensive anthem for a possibly would-be killer inspired by a Charlton Heston movie, building to a sudden, creepy crescendo. Four Score is a paradoxical study in accumulation that adds up to nothing; Mother is a ghoulish and understatedly vindictive elegy. The album’s longest track, On My Own has an unexpectedly savage guitar solo that starts out like the Melvins but quickly goes in a vintage Lou Reed/Velvets direction. The album ends with To Our Knees, its stately, echoey sonics contrasting with Parker’s anguished trail of metaphors through the wilderness. All the way through the album, there’s everything we’ve come to expect from this band: beautiful vocal harmonies, smartly crafted lyrics, sardonic anger, dark humor and singalong tunesmithing, one of the best two or three albums of 2013 so far. Head over to Soundcloud for a sample or two; with the string section, the show should be killer.

The Lyrics That Fuel the Arab Spring Now Available For the First Time in the West

As the Arab Spring contines to spread throughout the Middle East and points further west, hip-hop music continues to be a prime force and a main source of information, something to be expected as citizens create their own means of communication to bypass the censors. For listeners outside of the Arabic-speaking world who might be interested in this furiously literate, stunningly sophisticated lyrical art form, Syrian-American producer Dub Snakkr has asssembled the brand-new Khat Thaleth (Arabic for “third rail”) compilation, a brave attempt to collect some of the revolution’s greatest hits.

Just as you need to speak English to appreciate American hip-hop, you need to speak Arabic to appreciate this, especially since such a variety of regional dialects, historical and literary traditions are represented. For the Arabically-challenged, fortunately, there are extensive if rather primitive English translations of the first seven joints on the album at Stronghold Sound’s WordPress page. Be aware that the page is a PDF that also includes the original Arabic lyrics, and don’t forget that it starts at the right margin and goes left. The cd also comes with a black-and-white printout of this page which is a lot easier to read. There’s also an abbreviated seven-track version of the compilation up at Stronghold Sound’s Bandcamp page for free download.

Musically speaking, it is what it is. Just like American hip-hop, the lyrics are the focus. Aside from some eerily minimalist guitar on the ninth track, some tantalizng oud on the song after that and then an organ-based backing track that reminds of what the RZA was doing fifteen years ago, there’s not a lot going on. But the lyrics…WOW. In the Arabic world, poets are rock stars: they sell out giant stadiums, and their books sell better than most albums (the week the Bush regime invaded Iraq, the #1 book on the bestseller list there was a poetry compilation). Because Arabic poetry is a part of daily life rather than an ivory-tower pastime, and because music and poetry are pretty much inseparable throughout the Middle East, it has always had more in common with American rap than any current incarnation of a western poetic tradition. And it’s always been a spectator sport. Throughout the Middle East, there are centuries-old traditions of a sort of Arabic version of battle rhymes, which just like the oldtime African-American game of “dozens” ultimately draw on the roots of where it all began back in Africa. You could make a strong case for the argument that an Arabic version of hip-hop predated the English-language kind by thousands of years.

Add to that the bottled-up hostility of emcees from Palestine, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon finally breaking free of the chains of oppression, and this is what you get. And just like American hip-hop, it’s just as cynical as it is incendiary: none of these lyricists seems to hold out much hope for a better future. Lebanon’s Touffar excoriates revolutionary-era profiteers and what he perceives as limousine liberals: “If you want to talk about the hungry, first try hunger.” Zeinedin and Narcysist  gloomily ponder the prospect that what comes after the revolution could be even worse than the terror of the present. Palestinians Yaseen and I-Voice pile metaphor on top of metaphor and do wild linguistic gymnastics as they take aim at western-oriented kleptocracies. La Tlatleh paints a cruelly surreal portrait of death in the streets, while Iraqi Al Sayyed Darwish (the rapper, not the legendary composer), La Tlatleh and El Rass elegantly and bitterly contemplate the fate of an exile, then El Rass chronicles decades of deceit and corruption and lays it at the dictator’s feet, while warning his revolutionary comrades not to accept anything American unless it comes from Occupy Wall Street. And Syria’s El Haqq draws a grim judgment day scenario where the dictator casts himself in the role of god – and then the people turn the tables on god himself. These are just a few of the thousands of lyrical gems in this collection, offering inspiration, encouragement or simply solace in the face of what appears to be hopelessness. Often creating their art in the face of mortal danger, these artists have captured the cruel complexities of a world all too often reduced to soundbites.

Mucca Pazza: An Explosive Carnival of Souls at Globalfest

In their headlining set at Globalfest Sunday night at Webster Hall, Mucca Pazza played what had to be the most exciting, lavishly intense live show by any band in New York in recent months. With zombie apocalypse choreography and a raw, frequently macabre, punked-out brass band sound, the 28-member version of this Chicago circus rock monstrosity careened through a mix of  instrumentals that drew equally on marching band music, the Balkans, horror surf and menacingly cinematic vamps. They used the big split-level space for all it was worth, marching their way in from the balcony, many of the instruments running through battery-powered amps built into the band members’ uniform hats, the players trailed by a ceaselessly energetic crew of cheerleaders who lept gleefully and hoisted each other high above the band when they weren’t flopping into horror-stricken Pompeiian poses. On a couple of occasions, the band split, the brass section scampering from the stage to the balcony and then engaging in a lively call-and-response with the reeds gathered on the sidelines below.

As seemingly chaotic as their antics are, in reality Mucca Pazza are an exceptionally tight, well-rehearsed unit, which an act this size has to be in order to pull off their shtick. The juxtaposition of a bunch of wholesome, athletic, Middle American-looking bunch of guys and girls leaping and grinning against a backdrop of ominous minor keys and monster movie chromatics blasting behind them is surreal to the extreme, and it’s far more disconcerting than it would be if, say, they dressed like dead monks or real apocalyptic zombies (do such things exist? This band makes you think they might). And as entertaining as they are to watch in their non-matching vintage marching band uniforms, ultimately it’s the music (their most recent album Safety Fifth and other releases are streaming online or available for free download at their site) that’s the most exciting part of their act. The surrealism extended to a couple of intros chanted in unison by the cheerleaders: “Embrace absurdity and all that comes with it, good or bad,” seemed to be the message.

One after the other, the songs maintained a creepy carnivalesque atmosphere. A couple seemed to be parodies of happy-go-lucky parade marches; a handful of others were minor-key surf songs turbocharged many times over with roaring brass arrangements. They looked to Serbia or thereabouts a couple of times for pulsing two-chord vamps to bludgeon the audience (or make the cheer squad look as if they’d been bludgeoned); a few of the other tunes had a less gloomy, more lively Mediterranean flavor (the band name is Italian for “crazy cow.”)

One of the best songs got a sobering intro when a member of the band reminded the crowd how brave it must be to go to the school bus stop carrrying a violin – and then the band’s violinist made his way furtively and actually very hauntingly into a wicked gypsy-fueled dance number. Later in the set, guitarist Jeff Thomas led them through a pounding hardcore punk number built on a menacing series of tritone chords, spurring another exodus from the stage by what seemed half the band. The drumline came to the front, the cheer crew and some of the horn players keeled over into mock grotesquerie, and the glockenspiel player and electric mandolinist fired off chillingly strange, ringing solos. Before Mucca Pazza marched in, the impressively large crowd who’d stuck around after five hours of three stages’ worth of gypsy music, brass band funk, latin rock and an early-evening performance by brilliant Iranian composer/spike fiddle player Kayhan Kalhor, were suddenly reinvigorated. Which they should have been: Mucca Pazza are a force of nature. To think that this band actually squeezed themseves into little Public Assembly in Williamsburg a few months ago is as impressive as it is funny. Where this act really ought to be is Broadway, in a big space where they can work their theatrics for all they’re worth.

Lush, Moody, Free Chamber Pop from Carrousel

Today’s free download is from Tallahassee, Florida chamber pop band Carrousel. Their moody, catchy debut album 21 rue de Mi’Chelle came out last year and is up at their Bandcamp page. The title seems to be a barely disguised reference to a relationship gone irreparably wrong: one suspects that Michelle is French, probably not much older than 21 and the singer rues the day he met her. Frontman Joe Piedt works a rain-drenched neoromantic vibe, balancing steady, reverb-tinged acoustic guitar against echoey electric piano in the album’s sparser moments, often buildling to lushly orchestrated swells. Overall, the album works better as a mood piece than a narrative: the lyrics don’t add much, and by the end of the first song, you know how it’s going to end anyway. But the tunesmithing is strong and holds your attention all the way through.

It opens with a distantly anguished two-chord instrumental vamp: that right there’s a dead giveaway. The first song, simply titled 14 artfully balances catchy bounciness with heartbroken dramatics, spiced with tasty touches like pizzicato violin, swoopy backing vocals and carnival organ. Similarly, You Only Love Yourself builds to a big cymbal-crash crescendo on the chorus, hits an unexpectedly atmospheric interlude and winds up with a gothic angst.

The aptly titled Moonlight is a successful attempt to evoke a dreamlike ambience…and then it goes swaying, both the acoustic and electric guitars dripping with brooding reverb. With its lush strings, galloping drums, cascading piano and trumpet, Where Do We Go From Here reminds of Oxygen Ponies at their most ornate. They follow that with In Her Tomb by the Sounding Sea, a dark soundscape inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee

Take Me Now mines a spare, acoustic Beatlesque vibe, which grows more hypnotic and insistent on the next track, 15, a bitter resignation setting in over a slow, steady 6/8 dirge pulse livened with echoey layers of keys. The title track revisits an earlier melodic theme and finally achieves the towering, tormented majesty that the album has been hinting at all along. Piedt’s vocals are not his strong suit: he sings on key and has a good ear for harmonies, although his affectation of letting the end of pretty much every phrase trail off suddenly is one of those annoying indie tics that deserves to disappear, like, yesterday.

Fun Post-Velvets Stuff from the False Alarms

Today’s free download is the debut album by the False Alarms. If Darklands-era Jesus & Mary Chain is your thing, this is for you: the Brooklyn band use that album as their template, right down to the murky sonics and offcenter bent-note guitar leads. What differentiates the False Alarms from the rest of that crowded field is their energy and sense of humor. This is one of those bands whose ideas are better than their execution – tightness is not their strong suit. But having the ideas is the important thing. Just about anybody can build up chops on an instrument if they practice enough, having good songs is a whole different story.

Six of those here. Nothing of the Sea nicks the hook from Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Dead and takes it to Darklands. When She’s Able is more of a post-Velvets stomp, and it’s funny; this girl is a real mess. Johnny Suicide takes Jim Carroll’s People Who Died and adds Dead Boys snarl and roar, while White Flowers goes back to the J&MC, with lyrics so completely dissociative they’re a hoot. The reverb-drenched Don’t Mind Feeling Bad has the same vibe but no drums; the closing cut, Formality Blues is the funniest, has no bass and would have made for a good stoner jam if they’d decided to make it any longer than about a minute 45 seconds. “Why you have to be so fucking lame?” asks the frontman. Bands like this usually A) don’t last more than an album, B) typically disperse their members into even better bands…or morph into one. Get this one now while it’s online.

The Mason Affair Brings the LA Party Vibe

Party music gets a bad name and that’s too bad. We need party music! Remember the last time you walked to the top of the steps and into the place and heard…nothing…and saw all these awkward dorky faces looking around anxiously and realized that you had to LEAVE IMMEDIATELY? This is where bands like the Mason Affair can save an evening. This group is from Los Angeles; they play oldschool 70s funk, but not in a cliched way. What they do is artsy, and slyly funny, and so catchy it’s obscene. The cover of their latest album Eyes on Fire pretty much gives it away – palm trees swaying in the wind. If your idea of a good time is a ride in the back of a ’74 Caprice convertible rolling through the hills on Mulholland at night, bass cranking out of the oldschool speakers right in front of you, this is the next best thing.

The Mason Affair’s style of funk is slinkier than it is hard-hitting, closer to the Blackbyrds than the JB’s. They also mix up the oldschool with the new, which is a lot of fun. For example, the opening track, All Night has sly Zapp and Roger vocoder, and also sexy lowdown Sly Stone clavinova doing the dog in the background. Likewise, Spend Some Time is sort of Pink Floyd gone to Muscle Shoals with Bernie Worrell on keys and Dr. Dre producing.

First Time Again evokes laid-back beach funk bands like Pablo Cruise: it’s retro 70s in the best possible way. Over a sweet, pulsing minor-key groove, the title track makes its way suspensefully up to the big hook…and then they work toward a classic disco vibe on the way out. A little later, I Can Tell you features some sweet tradeoffs between Jay Logan’s wah guitar, Jake Smith’s wry keys and the groove of bassist Jon Olmstead and drummer David Celia – it’s sort of part Ohio Players, part vintage Tower of Power.

The long, lush boudoir groove of Hush contrasts with the album’s hardest-hitting, horn-driven track. Feeling Good. Of the songs with lyrics, the best and edgiest one is The Breaking, a word of warning to a party animal to slow it down a little, set to a biting minor-key tune with a gritty, crescendoing guitar solo from Logan to cap it off. One other refreshing thing about this album is frontman Mike Mason’s nonchalant vocals: he’s not trying to be anybody but himself.

There are also a couple of first-class instrumentals: Fat Strut, which would have made a good Starsky & Hutch theme, and Balls Deep, the most psychedelic track here, with a long guitar outro and a terrifically soulful baritone sax solo from Mike Maricle. The band also has a fun version of Led Zep’s Whole Lotta Love that’s way sexier than the original that they’ve got up as a free download at their Bandcamp site.

Free Download For the Japonize Elephants’ Amazing New Album

The Japonize Elephants are giving away their new album Melodie Fantastique. Too good to be true – but it is true. The giveaway starts 12/12 at midinght and goes all day (these folks being a San Francisco band, one assumes that this is happening on Pacific time). It’ll be high on the 50 best albums of 2012 list when that goes live here at the end of the year – and it can be yours. If gypsy rock, art-rock, funny surreal country songs or Middle Eastern music – or all of the above – are your thing, grab this mighty monstrosity. The download link isn’t up yet but it will be somewhere here. This is a kickoff for their US State Department-sponsored world tour – strange but true!