Pavement in 2010!

As you may have heard by now, the blogosphere got word of a rumor last night that the seminal indie band Pavement was getting back together. Now we have conformation.

Via an interview with Rolling Stone, Guitarist Scott Kannberg said the reunion “happened naturally” and the group will most likely head out onto the road. They are currently scheduled for only one show at Central Park Summerstage on September 21, 2010. Yep that’s right, a year from next monday. For one, we expect to be there with our impending graduation. It is strange news to the blog since we have been listening to a lot of Pavement recently. Some great Karma I guess.

Just to keep the hype going, Matador Records announced today that pre-sale tickets will be available tomorrow morning and general admission will go on sale on September 25th.

The link for the tickets. Password: ZOWEE

A look at: Washed Out

Ernest Greene never expected his solo music project Washed Out to gain recognition. 

After graduating with masters in library sciences last year, Greene, 26, moved back to Macon, Ga, proposed to his fiancé Blair Sexton and was content making respectable bedroom pop while searching for a job at university libraries around the South.

But then the blogosphere came knocking. 

“Chaz [Bundick of Toro Y Moi] started getting a lot of attention and the guys from Nopaininpop.com sent me an e-mail, said they liked the song, asked me if I had any other new stuff,” Greene said. “So I sent them some new songs, they put it up and its kind of snowballed from there.” 

However, Greene’s prominence in the scene didn’t really take off until he sent the leading lo-fi blog “Gorilla Vs. Bear” a sample song and they decided to post it to the site. In the following months, noted blogs Pitchfork, Hipster Runoff and Stereogum followed suit and posted Washed Out songs including a remix of his track “Feel It All Around” from Bundick.

Greene has been recording music in Columbia for around three years but only recently found an interest in the fuzzed-out drones of what he now calls Washed Out. He said the name really doesn’t mean anything but if it does, it describes the overall sound of the project.

Initially, Greene’s musical endeavors were slanted more towards the hip-hop end of the spectrum. 

But working with local group Bedroom pushed Green in the direction of a more lo-fi pop and dance sound of bands like Emil and Friends and Neon Indian.

“They were really into doing aggressive dance stuff, like Crystal Castles-sounding,” he said. “It was the last month or so that is was in town and it was a natural progression.” 

His goal was to combine the lo-fi rock sound with a more danceable melody. But writing pop hooks is new territory for Greene and he doubts if he can create the intricate layers involved in certain dance pop. Instead, he decided to head in a simpler direction, incorporating subdued hooks. 

“It’s just bringing that lo-fi rock sound and marrying it with just more straight ahead dance stuff,” he said. 

For Greene and his music, it is about keeping the production simple.

On his songs, Greene plays the role of multi-instrumentalist. He relies on a studio he constructed in his bedroom and utilizes the software Reason for synth layering and programming. To add texture, samples from old records are introduced and his vocals are recorded on a simple microphone.

The uptick in Greene’s popularity even surprised Mexican Summer, the label he has been working with. Originally, the plan was to limit his releases with only 1,000-record pressings and 300 cassettes but high demand has led the label to plan a release of his album “Life of Leisure” into stores.

“I had no idea it would build to this scale,” he said. “At the time I was talking to Mexican Summer, I was thinking to myself ‘there’s no way 1,000 people would want to buy this.’”

Even with the demand, Greene still doesn’t know if he will bring his music on the road. With getting married this month, he is apprehensive about the idea of being away from home for long periods of time.

Greene has talked about doing one-off shows every once in a while and currently has plans to return to Columbia to perform at the Whig. The label he is working with currently is asking him to possibly do a showcase at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. 

“I’m into the idea of doing shows here or there but as of right now there is nothing long term planned,” 

And even though he currently lives in Macon, Greene feels a kinship to Columbia and its scene and could see moving back to the city.

“I definitely claim Columbia,” he said. 

Either way, Greene wants to continue making music in some shape or form, even if that means a record deal. But he is still guarded about the industry.

“It would be certainly nice to just make music,” he said. “I just don’t feel that nowadays with independent music it is hard to make money unless you tour a lot.”

Review: Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs

From The Daily Gamecock

Hoboken, N.J.-based Yo La Tengo is a difficult band to categorize. 

With 12 studio albums, four compilation albums and one film score under its belt, the group is difficult, if not arduous, for new listeners to enjoy. Each successive album appears to jump from genre to genre like some chaotic game of musical hopscotch. From folk to noise pop to pure indie rock, husband and wife duo of guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley, along with bassist James McNew, have a love for the new and different in their songs.

However, it isn’t about consistency; it’s about keeping the art fresh and surprising as a whole. 

For instance, the members recently convened for a garage band side project under the alias “Condo F**ks” and released a collection of garage covers on an album titled “F**kbook.” They even created a convoluted back story for the fictional band to add to the illusion. In a way, Yo La Tengo’s mantra as a band should be “conventionality be damned” because it seems that they just don’t care what anyone thinks. Essentially, it’s their music and they are going to make it how they want.

But while Yo La Tengo has never been known for uniformity of style, it has been consistent with professionalism and aptitude when it comes to the music as a whole.

With that in mind, the group’s 12th studio album, “Popular Songs,” continues the trend of changing the sound in each song, but it displays itself as a good inlet to the band and its 25-year career.

The garage sounds of “F**kbook” have bled into this collection and combined with the standard eclectic nature of the group. On the opener, “Here To Fall,” a fuzzed-out bass drones over a string composition reminiscent of a seventies pop opus. 

There is a sensed sloppiness to the songs, such as the upbeat “Nothing To Hide” with its scratch guitars and organ lead, and the noise pop closer “And The Glitter Is Gone.” But you can tell the love and care that Kaplan and Hubley have for the songs.

Like their relationship, they have bonded over a collective eccentricity. It’s this strangeness that permeates their songs and makes something beautiful out of them. The band is able to shift from song to song in seamless fashion. 

As genres combine into a sublime concoction, the soft Latin jazz sounds of “I’m On My Way” appear to congeal with the countrified chords of the follower “When It’s Dark.”

In another point on “Popular Songs,” the crunchiness and pop grit of “Nothing To Hide” glides into the dreamy funk influenced “Periodically Triple or Double.” Kaplan’s voice has a soft reluctance to it as if he’s almost afraid to sing the lyrics. It’s these combinations, empty of shock or care, which marks the band and its discography. 

But there is nothing reluctant about Yo La Tengo as a whole. They are not afraid of testing their abilities as musicians and the conventional wisdom about music as a whole.

As long as Yo La Tengo continues to create music, it will be this stubbornness and disregard of definition that will keep it ahead in terms of creativity and risk.

Q & A with Author Tucker Max

Here is my Q & A with Author Tucker Max that was published in the Daily Gamecock.

The Daily Gamecock’s Mix Editor Colin Jones: When did you first start writing about your experiences?

Author Tucker Max: I started writing about 2001 and it was just e-mails to my friends. They loved it, started forwarding them to other people and it just kind of blew up from there.

DG: I’m sure you get this question a lot but are all of your stories real? 

TM: Yeah, how do you make this s–t up? What are you, 26- 27?

DG: 21.

TM: So you’ve been drinking for a while, you’re hanging out. Don’t you have basically the same type of stories? To me, the question isn’t are they real, the question is why was I the first to write all this s–t down? Cause it’s all the same s–t we all do, I just write it down first.

DG: You don’t seem to shy away from any topic, do you?

TM: No, why would I? 

DG: Why do you always seem to end up in these crazy situations? 

TM: I mean, you know how it is. You go out drinking and enough crazy s–t just finds you, but then you make a decision that’s like ‘am I going to back off and say ‘OK that’s too much’ or are you going to say ‘f–k it, let’s see what happens.’ And I’m just very risk-taking and to me it’s like, “alright let’s see what happens.”

DG: Do you have a process to your writing? Friends? From memory? Voice recorders? 

TM: It’s a combination. On my iPhone, I have a voice memo thing, so if I say something funny I’ll put that in, or I’ll send myself an e-mail or I rely on friends and whatnot. But generally if I remember just one turn of phrase that triggers a series of memories. Or I’ll be like ‘dude what happened” and he’s like ‘oh you don’t remember this.’

DG: You first started the site in 2002, how did this eventually transfer into the book ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell’?

TM: The publishers came to me actually. I put the site up, and it kind of blew up and got a ton of attention and everyone loved it. And so publishers are no different than any company, and they saw I had an audience and so they were like ‘lets do your book.’

DG: How exactly would you describe your style of writing?

TM: Warren St. John wrote an article in the New York Times that said that me and a couple other authors invented a new genre called ‘Fratire’ which is unapologetically men being men. It’s not necessarily defined by a style, but more by a viewpoint. Because stylistically. I think my style is very sparse and very raw and focused on what’s funny and what’s entertaining, ’cause it started as e-mails to my friends, and you can’t B.S. your friends.

DG: What would you say your out look on life is?

TM: I hate to sound cliché about it, but life is a lot of fun if you just let yourself enjoy the fun s–t. So many people I feel like, and I was being guilty of this at times, do the things that they think they’re supposed to, but not the things they want to do. And I just said f–k it at one point and said I’m going to do the things I want to do and be the person I want to be.

DG: On your Web site you say that John Kennedy Toole’s “Confederacy of Dunces” is your favorite book. Who else influences your writing? 

TM: I think Chuck Palahniuk. Another big one is P.J. O’Rourke who did “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Parliament of Whores.” O’Rourke is one of the first writers to kind of combine pop culture comedy with serious topics. And Palahniuk writing is very terse, short and focused on the message. John Kennedy Toole is just brilliant. If I could write a paragraph as well as him, I would be happy.

DG: Moving onto the film, how did the idea to turn ‘I Hope They Drink Beer In Hell’ into a movie come about? 

TM: It was always an obvious extension because you read the stories and you think this would be kind of funny. We started as a T.V. show, [producer and co-screenwriter] Nils Parker and I did, and we couldn’t really get the creative control we wanted. So we realized the only way we could get it done was as a movie.

DG: Was it difficult transferring your stories into a screenplay? 

TM: Yeah, it was f–king hard. You see a really well-made movie and it looks simple and easy and breezy. That’s kind of the mark of a good movie is that it looks easy, but it’s really hard to take all these different events and all these different jokes and make them quick and immediate and important to the audience. When we dove into it, it took us a good two years. Being funny is easy for us and the characters are already there. The hard part was making it work in story format. It was important to us to make a movie with a real story that wasn’t just joke, joke, joke, joke. 

DG: So what stories did you decide to combine to create the movie? 

TM: The Austin Road Trip story is the real backbone of it, because that’s just a funny story and it’s really cinematic. And everything else we used to kind of plug holes. We’ve got a really good bar scene, and we were like ‘well I’ve got this and I’ve got this.”

DG: What’s next for Tucker Max? 

TM: In the next 30 days I have to release this movie. If I live past this, I don’t know. God willing if the movie does well, we’ll do sequels and then I have another book [A--holes Finish First] coming out early next year. It’s different stories, but it’s absolutely the same idea and same concept. I’m not going to change that. There will be a time to change that, but it’s not now.

Review: YACHT-See Mystery Lights

“Will we go to heaven or will we go to hell?” 

YACHT’s Jona Bechtolt presents this existential question while breaking into the jaunting opening “Ring The Bell” on the group’s “See Mystery Lights,” and while electro pop isn’t necessarily known for its introspective side, Bechtolt here has essentially blended emotional moans and lyrics, synthed out riffs and perfect production with deft skill. 

Over the past few years, Bechtolt has become the darling of the electro pop and art rock scene with his impressive, imaginative shows. But it is with “See Mystery Lights” that he has taken it a step further with connected and innovative pop songs that show a gifted touch within his genre.

With Clare L. Evans now a full member of the band – she was featured on half of YACHT’s last outing “I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real” – Bechtolt’s project has taken on the overall feeling of a real group, instead of a simple solo outing or collection of beats. 

Evans’ low-key vocal drones are almost akin to the talk-singing style of The Pixies’s Kim Deal or Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. On “Don’t Fight The Darkness,” Evans lets loose with Bechtolt while singing in a perfect harmonic tandem. While she remains restrained and a background character in his game, her element provides a sublime balance to Bechtolt and his masculine drone. 

While Evans has been added to the production as a whole, it is Becholt’s vision that shines the brightest on the album. His love of Brian Eno’s producing ability and the dark hum of David Byrne are felt in the cowbell rhythm of “Ring The Bell” or the manic nature of “It’s Boring /You Can Live Anywhere You Want.” While Byrne’s influence can be felt on almost every track, Bechtolt takes the shaky, quivering vocals and the afro-beat influence of the Talking Heads front man and makes it his own.

On “The Afterlife” the blatant Byrne and Heads influence goes deeper into almost Tom Tom Club territory. Tom Tom, the rhythmic backing and a sucessful side project of the Heads, dove deeper into the pop heavy elements of the former, and it is here that Bechtolt distills that into his own concoction. These are pop songs with a twist and a kick. He whips up a pounding snare and bass beat behind Evan’s almost sarcastic quips and his subdued chorus calls.

While there is seriousness behind this work, what Bechtolt has presented is a piece that is thoroughly fun to listen to. It’s happy and excited to be alive in a time of despair. It’s this devil may care recklessness that makes the collection all the more gorgeous.

The freewheeling epic “I’m In Love With A Ripper” is just the kind of chaotic delight that Bechtolt seems to revel in.Avocoder-soaked romp with guitar-layered synth backing the whole mess seems to surge in every right direction,coming up and down in emotive, howling waves that crash into the senses.

It’s this looming sense of controlled chaos that always seems on the brink of falling apart that makes “See Mystery Lights” and Bechtolt’s vision the correct dose of bittersweet medicine for these times and the people who inhabit it.

-Colin Jones

And We’re Back…

It’s been a while since our last blog post but things got a little crazy with the New Orleans internship. But now we have returned to Columbia (unfortunately) and are prepping to have daily posts on this blog. We will feature all things eclectically interesting. Enjoy!

Alaska Goes Down to ‘Alaska’

Alaska is eliminated to the new song ‘Alaska’ but who really though that Phish would hold a Halloween festival in a state where the average high in October is 46 degrees.Everyone is betting on Indio, Calf. including the overly analytical people over at Jamtopia but personally I’m rooting for the site of the Echo Project, Fairburn, Ga., or Big Cypress.

Beck Interviews Tom Waits, Covers Velvet Underground and Goes Internet Crazy

In updating his web site and giving it a very lo-tech feel, ever the strange one Beck has begun a series called Record Club where he and other musicians cover famous albums, one song at a time. The current album covered is The Velvet Underground and Nico and comes complete with some pretty fuzzed out videos. Check them out here and look for updates Thursday evenings.  Beck also appears to have gotten the DJ bug and has started a weekly series entitled Planned Obsolescence (wacky titles, ho!) where either Beck or a guest DJ spins some of the music they are digging that week. In keeping with the odd names, the first one is called Autobahn Hologram.

In addition to the Record Club and the DJ project, Beck has put up a free format interview, aptly named Irrelevant Topics,with gravely voiced troubadour Tom Waits where the two discuss hard hitting topics like California, Oscar Meyer Weinermobiles and best of lists. It’s a bit random but it’s impressive that Beck even got Waits to sit down for an interview. Beck has plans to sit down with other musicians, filmmakers and artists in the coming weeks and have these loose, conversation like interviews.

Heres a taste:

TW: You see the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile?

BH: I’ve seen it parked.

TW: They used to pass out little whistles that were about two inches long and it had three notes available. (Laughs.) Whittier lore.

BH: I was born in the McArthur park area.

TW: You remember when they drained McArthur Park, the lake?

BH: I do, yeah…

TW: They found unbelievable things: Cars, human bones, weaponry.

BH: They should have done an exhibit.

TW: I don’t know why they didn’t. I thought that’s why they drained it.

BH: I’d always heard that when they drained the Echo Park Lake they found an amateur submarine.

TW: Oh, my God.

Part one is here and look for part two next week. One request to Beck, bring on some audio of this interview.

So Long Ohio and Kansas

I know it seems as if I’m overbearing you with Phish news but their website has just put up a little graphic which you can check out here. As you can read above, it says save the date and lists the Halloween weekend. Why Idaho, Oklahoma and West Virginia deflate after a minute or so, I’m not too sure about that. But rumor has it that the festival will be located at the Coachella grounds.

Update:

The darkened states apparently represent locations where the festival is not going to happen. Each day a new graphic appears to wipe out the states. Today’s was a horde of red ants wiping out North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The states now out of the running are New Hampshire, Washington, Idaho, Oklahoma, West Virginia, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Another Update:

Today a ship came up and grappling hooked my home state of Ohio and Kansas from the running.

(Via LiveMusicBlog)

-Colin

Another one bites the dust

While I’ve never been a reader of Vibe Magazine, it is sad to see another publication shutdown. According to the NYT, the hip-hip focused magazine would immediately suspend production Tuesday. Vibe now joins the ranks of Blender, which folded last year and in my opinion will not really be missed, and the great Alt-country magazine No Depression. Last month the jazz focused Jazz Times suspended publication and is being sold off to a different owner.  Other magazines are hurting as well with Conde Nast cutting Portfolio and Rolling Stone shifting to an alternative design format after years of retaining the same tabloid format.

But the suspension of Vibe creates a vacuum in the hip-hop/R & B magazine world that only leaves The Source to fill. With troubles of its own, Source remains the last man standing in an unrepresented genre in print. While their are blogs and online pubs to fill the space, hip-hop needs its representation in the print world. I’m no fan of the magazines (Source, Vibe) themselves but rock already has itself firmly in print, hurting most definitely but still standing. I don’t really know where the magazine world is heading but if Vibe is any sign, there will be more to come.