Sophie Madeline - Love. Life. Ukulele.

Ever since Hank posted a video of Sophie Madeline singing about beards, I’ve been smitten. After some searching, I found that her new album, “Love.Life.Ukulele” is available to download for five bucks. I forked over the money and gave it a few spins. I’m in love.

Madeline has a fireplace warmth to her voice that hugs perfectly against simple, yet smart lyrics. The melodies are stripped down, straightforward, without being boring…a tough task. Simply put, this album isn’t “Kid A” but does good music always have to test the limitations of sound? No, I would hope not. My favorite track on the album is “Wave Goodbye” a waltzy song that is just pure beauty all around. This is an emotional album that highlights Madeline as an extraordinary talent with a bright future to come. I will certainly be interested in seeing what direction she takes her music, I think her voice would sound just as good against a more aggressive sound, a la Patti Smith.

With Dent May and now Madeline, it seems the ukulele is to 2009 that the accordion was to 2008. It’s a welcomed instrument as it is featured on two of my favorites of this year. Next year it’s all about the glockenspiel.

Silverlake Steps - Clues

Band bio:

CLUES began building in secret in the summer of 2007, playing a series of un-advertised shows in small Montreal venues. Emerging above-ground in 2008, their first performances elicited passionate responses from both audiences and music media.

CLUES was founded by Alden Penner and Brendan Reed, both active for years in the Montreal music scene. Alden was one-half of Unicorns, a band that burned bright and fast at the beginning of the century, and Brendan has been a member of a number of groups, including the endless, Endless Forever. In 2008, CLUES recruited friends Ben Borden, Lisa Gamble, and Nick Scribner from the Montreal art and music scenes. Fully formed, CLUES began work on a debut record.

Through their founding and early work as a band, CLUES has remained close to home, dedicated to collaborating with and supporting fellow independent artists. In 2008, Reed started VillaVillaNola, a curated digital music store with records by artists from Montreal and beyond who have flourished underground but who otherwise receive sparse attention. Strong ties to the independent music community, together with shared ideals have led CLUES to a collaboration with Montreal’s Constellation, who will release the band’s debut record in May of 2009.

I was fortunate enough to catch Clues play live and I'm here to say that this is one of the most exciting new acts of 2009. Their debut self titled album is set to be released May18th on Constellation. Very excited to hear the whole album, I'm predicting it will be one of the best of the year.

(Let the video fully load to avoid jumping)

Silverlake Steps - Clues - "Remember Severed Head" from We Listen on Vimeo.

Silverlake Steps - Clues - "Perfect Fit" from We Listen on Vimeo.

MARCH MUSIC MADNESS '09

VOTING NOW OPEN!

It’s BACK! Our 2nd annual March Music Madness, a competitive 64 band/solo artist tournament that runs concurrently with the NCAA Basketball tourney, is set to start this THUR. The bands that move on round to round are determined by you, the music fan. We will have an embedded screen up on the site THUR that will easily allow you to vote for who you think should move on. The reasons for your vote is entirely up to you…who is the best, who is your favorite, who is more “now”.

We narrowed the field to sixty four teams by selecting the most relevant indie rock/hip hop bands to compete. Absent from this years list is RADIOHEAD, who won it last year. We also dropped Wilco, LCD Soundsystem, and The Flaming Lips who all did well in MMM ’08. For those wondering how we selected the bands and why they are seeded in a certain way…fear not, tomorrow (MON), we will post a podcast where we discuss our logic and turn to our thoughts on the first round.

What we changed this year are the selections for the 16 and 15 seeds. In the basketball tournament, smaller teams make it in…so Hank and I (Zach) wrote in four teams apiece for those seeds. They are:

HANK
The Avett Brothers
Shearwater
Frightened Rabbit
Ladyhawk

ZACH
Mother Mother
The Henry Clay People
Foals
Late Of The Pier


This was a ton of fun last year and I hope you will participate in the voting to ultimately crown the 2009 March Music Madness Champion. Tell your friends, link us up, and let’s make this big.

As today was the day that the Basketball bracket was released, we roll out ours below as well. ENJOY. (how can you not love a world where Dan Deacon and Joanna Newsom square off?)

REVIEW: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!

Release Date - Mar 9th, 2009

Label – Interscope

ZACH THAT:

When reviewing an album that is not a debut, I find it nearly impossible to stray away from comparing the current release to past works. In 2003, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released one of the most impressive debuts of the decade with the pyretic and down right aggressive “Fever to Tell”. Frontwoman Karen O was the essence of cool, showing the “I don’t give a shit” rock attitude that would make Patti Smith very proud. The album shook the foundations of the rising synth driven indie pop movement and showed that there was still a place for jagged guitars and proved that screamo female lyrics could be nothing short of beautiful.

We catch up with the band six years later, a befitting follow up LP, “Show Your Bones” and a throw away EP, “Is Is” under their belts and a new album being released into the public. The fans became giddy with the unveiling of the striking title, “It’s Blitz” and drooled when they saw the eye candy album cover of a hand dramatically breaking an egg. It was all perfect, but then came the actual music. The first two tracks are as poppy as the band could possibly get and are convenient enough to be the first two singles released. “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” are nice, but basically equate to the missionary position, while I find myself wanting to reconnect with the mind-blowing sex that was every track on “Fever To Tell”. Listening to the first two tracks, it becomes very apparent that the guitar has found a new friend in the synth. The very music that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs challanged in ’03 is what they decided to bring to the table for the new album. It’s a horrible move that leaves a lot of their early fans wondering why the change was necessary.

With this said, these two tracks are really the only interesting pieces on the whole album. Tracks three through ten sludge around, mopping transition to transition, while my ears wish to grow eyelids to gently close. Oh, Zach is getting a little dramatic again, you might be saying, but really, when I spin this album I really can’t find any reasoning for the existence of these eight songs. These tracks are the equivalent of a band’s sound going into the witness protection program…where are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs??? One of my favorite responses to this album is a friend saying, “I know that it’s a woman lead singer, but ‘Fever To Tell’ had balls…where are the balls on this album?” While I think it can be articulated better, the sentiment rings extremely true. Where is the risk? The intensity? The passion? The balls?

It’s always hard to write a review like this for two reasons. I really love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and was looking forward to this album. Also, most critics and fans, for the life of me I don’t know why, love this album. For this reviewer, everything that made the band extremely special in the first place is absent on this record. I’ll chalk it up to the band wanting to try something new, but what worries me the most is that if people accept this watered down sound, we may never get the true Yeah Yeah Yeahs back. That to me is the most depressing part of this failure of an album.

REVIEW: Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Release Date - March 3, 2009

Label - Anti-

It's easy to deify Neko Case. There's the good looks, the angelic voice that puts her as a logical descendant of Emmy Lou Harris, and her fair share of lookers on. But you almost have to put that aside for the moment and just listen. Her latest LP Middle Cyclone isn't as good as Fox Confessor but is the logical next step, the continuation of Case's career from punk to indie superstar songstress. That, of course doesn't mean that this album isn't incredible. It's beautiful, haunting, and at moments both at the same time. It feels bigger too. More guitars and goo-gas, more witticisms (my favorite being "the next time you say forever, I'll punch you in the face), and more of that persona that makes men's jaws drop.

If anything, this feels like the album where Case accepts her role as a force of nature. Fox Confessor was ethereal and intimate. This is an album for getting caught in a tornado to. An album for every inch of pavement between Jackson, MS and Tucson, AZ. What keeps it from spinning out is Case's command, her presence, and, yeah, her voice. It's always somewhere in the clouds. Her voice is so sweet that it makes you believe the old scientists were right when they said that ether held the universe together, but by ether, you know that they meant the sounds from Neko Case's mouth. She's almost the anti Tom Waits - you hear each cigarette, each half-cooked meal washed down with vermouth in Waits. In Case, you hear a future you'll never have. Waits is the past. Case is the future. Which, of course, is no judgment call on either.

A few days ago, a friend and I were having a discussion about Case's cover of Harry Nilsson's "Don't Forget Me." We were comparing Case to Marianne Faithful's Kurt Weil take on the tune. In Faithful's aged voice, you could tell that she's been through it. And the lyric - "When we're older and full of cancer / C'mon get happy!" was schmaltzy and sardonic in Faithful's hands. In Case's there's a jubilant irony, but it's never black comedy. Case is almost too pristeen to go there. Undoubtedly she's haunted and afriad, but we don't get an insight into the fear. What is offered instead is a recounting of how we deal with it. How we miss and fear and how we try to get bay in those minutes when we're taken over by these emotions. Faithful is jaded. Case is tongue-in-cheek.

My hesitance to say this is better than Fox Confessor stems from my respect for that album and possibly the best moment of syncronicity between music and lyrics (just listen to "Star Witness"). And, honestly, I hate saying that one thing is better than another. It isn't fair, by in large. If I lean towards Fox Confessor, it's because of the chamber-like sound. The way that it seems to fit in to dreams. Middle Cyclone, as the title suggests, feels at home in a whirlwind. It's a 60 mile dust storm of an album and should be listened to as such. And the beautiful thing about a storm as big and beautiful as Case has created, is that it's impossible to not get caught up in it.