Under Cloud Cover and Drifting Away

Well, I touched down from a brief retreat to Chicago this weekend for Greek Easter, but even my family and my fair city by the lake weren't enough to snap me out of my funk, so we'll keep it short this time, offering a sort of soundtrack to my moping around while I continue to make a mess of my life after hurting my Big Toe.

First up in this duo of covers -- sad bastard music, as Jack Black would undoubtedly say, but pretty nonetheless -- is a B-side from fellow Chicagoan Andrew Bird, covering the old Dylan tune, "Oh Sister." Besides showcasing his standard weapons -- the ethereal whistle, plucked violin, and soothing croon -- and being a nice reinvention of the original, this is another example from Bird of how perfectly some voices go together, the counterpoint coming again from Nora O'Connor, a woman whose voice sounds like it was created just to be paired with Bird's, as I've said so often before. A brilliant little tune that simply and stolidly marches along, this one's lyrics and pace hit the right notes to calm my melancholic edge. Check it out...here.


The second one should be no surprise as it comes from the subject of my last post, the ever-trusty Elliott, who is again being called on -- as so many times in the past -- to help tease a little prettiness out of my blue, blue mood. This one's a relatively recent find for me, compared to my years-old obsession for the rest of his tunes, as it's a rare live nugget that he occasionally played while on tour.

The song may not be his -- it's a cover of of his friends Quasi's tune, "Clouds" -- but the lyrics are quintessentially Elliott, cutting both ways depending on your mood. On one pass it can be read as a pretty little love tune, the song's two subjects floating away as one in the devastating titular lyric. ("I am mist, you are steam, we are clouds. And we are drifting away, drifting away...") On another -- like now -- it can be a bitter lament on loss and incompatibility. Either way, the song is another Elliott gem, one that manages to surpass its original -- like his equally heartbreaking cover of Big Star's "Thirteen." (An interpretation rivaled only by hometown hero Wilco head Jeff Tweedy's.) The video that accompanies this is utter schmaltz, and for that I apologize -- I couldn't find a good version of the song anywhere else online -- so just start it up and close your eyes so as to avert the cheesey damage.



That's all for now, kids -- thanks to Pie for breaking the curse and bringing another opinion to the collective. (I echo the Spoon shoutout -- they've been one of my faves for years. I'll have to post the tracklist from my "One You Should Know"-style greatest hits disc later on.) Let's keep it going...

RdS

Ode to Sp...oon.

...yet another brilliant product of Austin, TX. Yes, I do think I'm quite comfortable devoting my first submission to "Eyes" with an ode to perhaps one of the most under-appreciated indie rock bands of all time, Spoon. This band has mastered the art of blending the best of the 60's, tortured indie wails, sharp, punky riffs, and dramatic clamor of piano keys with good ol' pop rock crafted to perfection. ("Iron clad hooks," I once read.) And when I say "perfection," I mean it.

The band's frontman, Britt Daniel, is known for his obsession with detail. In fact, one may wonder if that obsession has made him a bit of a misanthrope...he's not known for self-indulgent interviews soaked with feeling, his ego needs no stroking, and rumors have it that he doesn't actually like to perform on stage. (From what I've witnessed, I'd beg to differ.) I'd say he likes interviews even less. Here, take this example of one hilariously bad "BD" interview:

LS: Have you ever felt like that, been so inspired by someone's art or talent that you developed a crush?
BD: Yeah. Malcolm X for instance.
LS: Really?
BD: No.

LS: So I was curious why you used to perform under the pseudonym Drake Tungsten?
BD: I think I just wanted a more entertaining name.
LS: I think Britt Daniel is such a rock star name, no?
BD: Yeah, well, I’m starting to come around to it.

LS: And you're from Texas originally?
BD: Yeah. I grew up here.
LS: How come you don't have an accent?
BD: Smart people don't.

LS: When you play live, do you inspire more schoolgirl crushes than hardcore groupies?
BD: Well yeah, I definitely don't see any girls that look like they should be at Motley Crue shows.
LS: No panties being thrown?
BD: No.
LS: Never?
BD: One time somebody lifted up her shirt and thought that would be a way to get us to play a song that she wanted to hear.
LS: Did it work?
BD: No.

Right up front on Spoon's MySpace page, it reads: "the higher the monkey climb, the more he expose." For the first time in the five years of my Spoon fandom -- I know, not nearly long enough--I realized this band finally has exposed its depth...emotional depth. Now don't get me wrong, I've adored such older diddies like "Jonathan Fisk," one of the best original rock songs ever to fall on my ears, "the Fitted Shirt," "Back to the Life," "Mathematical Mind" (that blew my face off with first listen) "The Beast and Dragon, Adored," etc etc etc. But all these brilliant tunes fulfilled one thing for me: they just made me feel gosh darn cool, a true bad arse behind the walls of my brain, for no justifiable reason. And that's rock and roll, dammit. That's what it does best!

But then came their latest album, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." And at the risk of being almost a year late in giving this album its proper credit -- perhaps reflective of most Spoon fans slow to come around--I think the first time I actually felt moved by a rock song was with "Little Japanese Cigarette Case." (Ok, "2+2 = 5" was the first but I digress...) Maybe it was the mood I was in, or maybe it was because I read an article explaining that Mr. Daniel wrote the song in the wake of a painful breakup with his ex, after having moved to Portland for her ("we tried and we tried," he said briefly in an interview that he actually took seriously), but all in all, that avalanche of guitars -- compounded by the classic Daniel wail -- that builds and crashes at the end in a tidal wave of cathartic sadness and well, a "letting go," so to speak, is just bella. The whole song is a few lines repeated:

"It's just my Japanese cigarette case,
bring a mirror to my face
let all my memories be gone

Bring me my Japanese cigarette case,
bring a mirror to my face,
oh, let all my memories be gone."

All this is to say Spoon is worthy of deep respect and a careful listen. They have much more to offer than a good ol' dancin in your room, singing with your Bic pen microphone, or driving down a windy road with your shades on, being the bad arse Spoon has helped you think you are. They are human beings struggling, living, and learning like the rest of us. It's all there, weaved in lyrics of superbly crafted-to-precision rock songs. Somewhere John Lennon is smiling for Britt and his boys as I type...

Miz Fitz

One You Should Know: Elliott Smith

Before I got locked up in the basement at work a month or so ago, I had the chance to read Benjamim Nugent's Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing, the first biography on my end-all, be-all fave of the same name. So I figured I'd take this opportunity to combine efforts and give a little recap of the book while also giving my rundown on the best of Elliott's earlier work.

Nugent's book is a frustrating read -- the first "official" biography to come out, it tries to tell the story of Elliott's life from youth in Texas to his wrenching demise in Los Angeles. (And for my tastes, spends far too long dwelling on those earlier years -- parents divorcing, poor relationship with his stepfather, possible, unexplained abuse. As a result, the first chunk of the book moves at a snail's pace.) The problem with this effort -- and one that compounds the aforementioned statement -- is that, despite being an "official" biography, the people closest to Smith refused to go on record and talk to Nugent themselves. His closest friends in the music community, his family, etc. They are all conspicuously absent.

Which makes reading this book (and Nugent's admittedly difficult task in writing it) a bit like a transcript of a game of Taboo -- there's a lot of talking around things and gaps in what actually transpired. You get a sense of what happened and what Nugent is getting at, but there's all these words he can't say (mainly because he himself doesn't know). It's an admirable effort -- and I've since heard that Smith's family and friends have agreed to talk on a true, "official" biography -- but it means that overall, the book leaves you feeling that you're no closer to understanding Smith and his life than you were when you began.

And part of that comes from the book's focus -- for me, when I pick up a book on Elliott Smith, I want to know how things in his life were translated in the lyrics and melodies of his absolutely heartbreaking music. What drove him to write the brilliant songs he did and to craft such devastating lines? (Like this example, from one of my favorites that appears in the tracklist below, "Pitseleh."

I'm not what's missing from your life now
I could never be the puzzle pieces
They say that God makes problems
Just to see what you can stand
Before you do as the devil pleases
Give up the thing you love...

*

The first time I saw you I knew it would never last
I'm not half what I wish I was
I'm so angry
I don't think it'll ever pass
And I was bad news for you just because
I never meant to hurt you...

It's rare for a songwriter to be as open about the problems he was dealing with as Elliot was in his lyrics and not have it come across as sappy and trite. He wrote about the drug use, alcohol, and depression that plagued him with astonishing honesty, so it's sad to see a somewhat diminished focus on the music that came out of him as a result. One of Elliott's immense gifts was in finding beauty in the sadness -- pairing his wonderful melodies to words that resonated far louder than his dual-tracked whisper of a voice.

One of the best parts of the book -- partly because it seemed like all of the people involved were there on record (Elliott had isolated himself from almost his entire circle of friends by this point, the ones who were so crucially mum earlier) -- was the latter portion detailing the recording process of what would turn out to be his final album, From a Basement on the Hill. His drug use and drinking had become worse than ever, as had his paranoia and somewhat manic behavior, but what comes across in this section is not a tawdry rundown of all his rock and roll excesses, but how immensely gifted and deliberate a musician he was, in spite of those things.

Despite not eating or sleeping much at the time, while still pouring a sizable amount of drugs and alcohol into his system, Elliott was consumed with the recording of the album. He was constantly fiddling with the sound of the album and the equipment used to capture it, doing multiple takes on his guitar parts and vocals just to get it "right," before passing out from exhaustion on the floor or the recording booth's tiny love seat. The album and his music were still the anchor -- some might argue life vest -- that he clung to in the midst of his burgeoning meltdown.

And it comes across in the music. I remember one of the most heartbreaking things about Basement when I first heard it was how happy and confident it sounded. How it finally seemed like Elliott was getting things together and had turned the corner on the darkness that kept threatening to consume him, which made the sadness over how his life ended that much more potent. Unfortunately, as you read about this time of his life in the book it compounds that gutted feeling, both because you realize how bad things had gotten and how fleeting and elusive that last victory was. (Elliott is thought to have stabbed himself in the heart only a few weeks later.)

And so sad biographies aside, what we're left with is the music -- the brilliant, brilliant music. The true gift of Elliott's music, besides the aforementioned descriptions, is in how versatile it is and how it fits such a wide range of emotions. You can listen to the same song dozens of times and the intent and tone of the song will shift with each listen. The nuance and subtlety of his lyrics -- one time thru you'll read a line as happy, the next time as a callous F.U. to whoever's in the crosshairs -- is remarkable and means the songs never get old, despite repeated listens. This list of songs below is the starter set I give people I really like -- I'm not going to betray such a jealously guarded part of myself, and such a brilliant musician, on just anyone -- when I want to introduce them to Elliott.

Comprised of songs off his first four albums (chronologically, this time) -- Roman Candle (songs 1-8), Elliott Smith (9-13), Either/Or (14-18), and XO (19-23) -- they take you from his formative years in Portland to his time in LA and New York. It's a bit heavier on his earlier stuff -- his entire first album (barring the instrumental outro track) is here, as I continue to maintain (as I do with Led Zeppelin) that despite later brilliance, nothing matches the perfection of his debut. Highlights from the rest include the amazing guitar work on "Angeles" (a flawless song -- I get chills every time), the thinly-veiled venom of "Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands" (a blistering middle finger written after a failed intervention by his friends and family), the bluesy blear of "Alphabet Town," the quiet menace and desperation of "St Ides Heaven" -- the list goes on. They're all jewels.

Every time I give this CD out to someone, I listen to it through again and still find myself struck by how gifted Elliott was. Initially I identified with the difficulty of his life and was captivated by what he made with it. Now I find myself constantly striving to do that which he so repeatedly achieved -- find beauty in the sadness. Enjoy, my friends...

Elliott Smith:

1. Condor Ave.
2. Roman Candle
3. No Name #1
4. No Name #2
5. No Name #3
6. Drive All Over Town
7. No Name #4
8. Last Call
9. Christian Brothers
10. Southern Belle
11. Coming up Roses
12. Alphabet Town
13. St Ides Heaven
14. Angeles
15. Alameda
16. Ballad of Big Nothing
17. Rose Parade
18. Between the Bars
19. Waltz #2 (XO)
20. Baby Britain
21. Pitseleh
22. Independence Day
23. Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands

Justice Awaits, Foolish Suckas

In one of the rare moments of freedom from work I've had lately, I escaped long enough to re-watch this little gem from New Zealand, Eagle vs. Shark, and felt the need to recommend it to the group. Starring Jemaine Clement -- of HBO's Flight of the Conchords fame (something else you should all give a watch) -- and adorable newcomer Loren Horsley, this one tells the tale of Clement's Jarrod and his fumbling attempts to secure love, happiness, and revenge in Nowheresville, New Zealand. I caught this when it first came out in the theaters last year, which didn't last too long, despite the popularity of Conchords at the time and the film's getting nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Touching, quirky, and laugh out loud funny, this one is like Napoleon Dynamite set ten years after graduation, and every bit as satisfying as that offering.

Jarrod is a Napoleon-style nerd who works at a tech store in the mall -- he is a video game aficionado, a conceptual candlemaker, and a student of faux martial arts, all played to their dorky hilts -- consumed with his quest for revenge against a former high school tormentor. Horsley's Lily is a sheepish sweetheart who works at Meaty Boy, a burger joint in the food court, and is madly in love with Jarrod. After several clumsy exchanges at the mall -- culminating with their hysterical consummation at the "come as your favorite animal" party that gives the movie its title -- the pair head back to Jarrod's hometown so he can exact his measure of revenge.

The film's heart (and comedy) comes from the pair's on again, off again relationship and their awkward exchanges in determining its outcome. Jarrod's obsession with his training and general dimwittedness continuously have things on the rails, but the charm comes in watching the two flailingly sort it out. Lily's sweetness and that of Jarrod's family -- his wheelchair-bound father, still mourning the death of his son; his sister and her husband, the failed (but try telling them that) fashion mavens who hawk custom track suits and makeup kits; and sundry other relatives who hang out at the house -- flesh out the romantic storyline and give you a host of characters to enjoy for the duration.

Just an all-around cute movie that embraces its characters' quirkiness like Napoleon and other personal fave Juno rather than make fun of it, this one's an underrated gem that's worth a look or two. Enjoy, cockhole...

-----------------------------------------------------------

For this week's entries in the song o' the week category, we've got another double bill for your enjoyment, a bluesy twosome from two bluesy twosomes, the Black Keys and the Kills. The front half is off the Keys' new Danger Mouse-produced album, Attack and Release, where the boys expand upon their formula of thunderous drums and fuzzed out vocals and guitar. For those unfamiliar with the band, the Keys sound like gritty Southern bluesmen of yore -- like the love child of Muddy Waters and the White Stripes, perhaps -- and make a glorious, glorious racket for two mere humans. But then you find out they're not from the South, and they're not grizzled old bluesmen either -- they're two white boys from Akron, Ohio -- and your appreciation/interest takes on a whole new level. More subdued than some of their other songs, this one's got some of the moodiness that's Danger's specialty and hooks to spare. A great little ditty on another strong album, this one's called "Psychotic Girl."




The back half is from the Kills' new album, Midnight Boom, which showcases the duo's twerpy electronic percussion, sexy vocals, and thunderbolt guitars. For those unfamiliar with these guys, the band is London native Jamie Hince on guitar/electro-beats and Floridian temptress Alison Mosshart on vocals, and they sound something like Yeah Yeah Yeahs-style punk rock (sexpot lead singer, laser beam guitars, gritty, dark mood), with a bluesier, electronic edge. This song "Sour Cherry" shows them at their best -- irresistible beat, punk rock attitude and stutter lyrics, droning guitars; it's bad ass do-it-yourself stuff from the depths of the garage -- and has a sweet little video to boot, so give it a whirl.




[And I'll actually throw this one in, too, because I like you (and because it's one of my favorites on the album). The lead track off the album, this one's got all of the above, with a cool looking viddy and sweet swirling guitar effect that you can't get out of your effing head. Check it here:]



BOTH of these bands are going to be at Lollapalooza this year, which has a ridiculous lineup to enjoy. Whereas last year the promoters picked some of my favorite new bands from the last couple of years, this time they've pulled some of my all-time favorites -- Radiohead, Nails, Rage, Wilco -- for what promises to be another brain-blowing experience on the lake. Check out the full lineup here, and get your tickets now...

--Bobby Sunshine

One You Should Know: Built to Spill

Thanks to my being surged to a special project at work, I've been holed up in the office basement the past month, putting in 30-odd hours of overtime during each of my six-day weeks. Thus the absence of posts, calls, or any other signs of life from yours truly in that span. (Which, depending on your viewpoint, could be a blessing I'm now shattering.) Unfortunately, things aren't expected to change any time soon, so it looks like we'll be testing the theory that less is more here for the near future. That said, I wanted to take a few minutes here to both implore others to make posts and recommendations -- I KNOW you people are out there, I can hear you breathing -- and to start another segment, that of the title. The thought with this form is to provide your own "greatest hits" tracklist for a band you feel everyone should know, and a brief explanation of why. I've been doing this for years on CDs, usually tacking them onto birthday or Christmas gifts for some of you, and thought this would be a perfect forum to put them on paper for others.

So, the first band to be thus honored here is Built to Spill, the best -- and only, I think -- thing to come out of Idaho besides potatoes. Formed back in the early 90s when grunge was still king and muddy, meandering guitar solos were all the rage, Doug Martsch grabbed a couple of friends from Boise and formed this band, a unique mix of knotty, intricate guitar parts and wistful, sardonic lyrics. Initially meant to be a rotating lineup of friends and musicians playing beside Martsch (a la Queens of the Stone Age for that band's front man, Josh Homme), the complexity of the songs -- with their slow buildups, sharp tempo breaks, and consistently changing melodies -- eventually became too tiresome and difficult to teach, so Martsch settled on a permanent lineup of guitarist Brett Nelson and cans man Scott Plouf for their major label debut.

Besides being an incredibly creative and talented guitarist -- Martsch's guitar parts continually shift and move, diving off down random melodic rabbitholes before coming back to the surface in the chorus -- Martsch's delicate, wisp of a voice beautifully marries up to the numerous melodies packed into each song. Unafraid of longer instrumental sections and songs that defy the standard verse-chorus-verse scheme, Martsch manages to avoid the excesses of other bands employing these weapons, keeping Built to Spill an indie band without the pretentiousness and a "jam band" without the pointless, self-important meanderings.

The songs chosen here are from their first three albums after their major label debut, 1997's Perfect From Now On, 1999's Keep it Like a Secret, and 2001's Ancient Melodies of the Future. It's a mix of all their strengths and represents the high points of each album, capturing the melancholy of Martsch's voice and lyrics and the heroics of his guitar work. Furthermore, I put them in reverse order, chronologically, so you build to their masterpiece off that 1997 debut, the blistering five-minutes of perfection, "Out of Sight." So load up your Itunes and get ready to enjoy...

Built to Spill:

1. In Your Mind
2. Alarmed
3. Trimmed and Burning
4. Don't Try
5. Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss
6. The Weather
7. Carry the Zero
8. Time Trap
9. Else
10. You Were Right
11. Temporarily Blind
12. I Would Hurt a Fly
13. Stop the Show
14. Out of Sight