#live

Jason Isbell

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Here We Rest

Your favorite band is playing in town, but the show is completely sold out. Fortunately, a local radio station is giving away a pair of tickets. You time your phone call just right. You dial the number… busy signal. Shit! You hurriedly dial again… Holy crap, it’s ringing… “Congratulations! You’re our ninth caller and you’re going to see [insert favorite band name here]!”

Sound familiar?

Before last week, I had never won tickets to anything. Like, ever. And even though the scenario I described above may be a little old-fashioned, winning tickets remains one of those those cliched musical experiences (like meeting an idol or catching a projectile guitar pick at the end of an encore) that everyone should have at least once, despite the fact that the interweb has dramatically changed the way ticket giveaways are conducted.

I have Charlottesville’s Starr Hill Brewery and [gulp] Facebook to thank for my very first clichéd, fist-pumping, ticket-winning moment. Last Wednesday, Starr Hill posted a video to Facebook of a mystery substance being pumped into a huge mixing tank alongside the promise that “If you can guess what style of beer it’s going to be, you could WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS to see Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit at The Jefferson Theater this Friday night!” Finally — an opportunity to combine my [cracks knuckles confidently] formidable familiarity with beer and my love of concert-going in a way that doesn’t involve fighting through a crowd to pee halfway through a headliner’s set! Alright! Two guesses later — “Wheat beer” was wrong; “Belgian IPA” was right — I earned two spots at Friday’s Isbell show, which proved to be nothing short of amazing.

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Dawes

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OK, Dawes. I understand that you can’t help writing beautiful and moving songs. But that’s no reason to go around making people get all misty in public places. See, I had no idea what I was getting into when, during one of my embarrassingly frequent trips to Panera, I hit play and heard the opening piano line of “A Little Bit of Everything.” All I knew was that my friend Mike liked the song and that it involved biscuits and beans — this much I gleaned from Mike casually singing a few lines. Maybe I’m alone here, but in my experience, beans haven’t often been part of emotionally charged songs (though the lyric in “We’re Gonna Make It” about having to eat beans every day offers a quality exception), so let’s just say I was caught a little off-guard. But I’m so glad it happened. Not knowing what “A Little Bit Of Everything” was about afforded me the most wonderfully pure, tear-jerking listening experience I could have hoped for. But this is not sentiment for sentiment’s sake. And I think I know a thing or two about sentiment for sentiment’s sake, having rewatched two-thirds of The Notebook last weekend. Each of the song’s three verses tells a nuanced story that hits on different emotional pressure points, as if Taylor Goldsmith imagined himself an engineer at a power plant, deftly opening and closing valves to maintain just the right level of internal pressure, ensuring that the whole thing doesn’t explode (as opposed to The Notebook, which is of course the Chernobyl of this analogy). See what I mean by checking out the acoustic performance of “A Little Bit Of Everything” above, the studio version and Dawes’ infinitely lovable anthem “When My Time Comes” below, and click here to buy Dawes’ most recent album, Nothing Is Wrong.

Dawes — “A Little Bit Of Everything“

Dawes — “When My Time Comes“

Passenger

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Just a quick post to: A. Let you know I’m still alive (been working on some fun future bloggishness) B. Pimp my two-part “YHT Top Ten Albums Extravaganza,” which starts tomorrow, and C. Pass along a link to iTunes, where you can pre-order Passenger’s soon-to-be-released album, All The Little Lights. I learned about Passenger — real name Michael Rosenberg — this summer, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed 2010’s Flight of the Crow, but shit got real when I saw a video of Rosenberg performing his song “I Hate” at a venue called The Borderline in London. “I Hate” is such an elegantly written, funny and hope-in-humanity-reaffirming piece of social commentary, setting its sights on talkative concertgoers, fake Facebook friendships and, in a verse that makes me want to stand up and applaud, The X-Factor. I wanted to stand up and applaud again when I scanned the track list for his upcoming album and saw that the same live version of “I Hate” that I love so much would be included as the finale. Check out the video above, listen below and click here to pre-order All The Little Lights. And don’t forget, when you pre-order something, you usually forget that you paid for it by the time it comes out, so it’s pretty much free! (Editor’s Note: You Hear That Accounting Services L.L.C. is not legally certified to provide financial advice.)

Passenger — “I Hate“

Jonathan Vassar & The Speckled Bird

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So often in music, the string-snapping, cymbal-smashing and tonsil-tearing performances are the ones that are deemed “passionate.” However, there was a most intense stillness to the back room of Balliceaux this past Sunday evening as Jonathan Vassar & The Speckled Bird performed their brand of eclectic and, yes, passionate folk music for a raptly attentive audience that filled every available booth, chair and coach seat (as well as the spaces in between).

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Alabama Shakes

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Alabama Shakes, Part 2
(Click here for Part 1)

Remember the Andre Agassi “Image is everything” commercials? You heard about the whole wig thing, right? Isn’t it wild that he would do a commercial about image being essential when, any moment, a poorly placed opposing serve could have dislodged the image he’d marketed so lucratively? It’s either the most or least ironic thing that’s ever happened, but either way it’s definitely sad. Sadder is the fact that he lost the French Open final that year because he was concerned that his locks would come loose. He said of that match, “During the warming-up training before play I prayed. Not for victory, but that my hairpiece would not fall off.” It takes a big man to admit this kinda thing, especially when he totally got away with it, and it teaches a powerful lesson: Fake stuff is distracting. When you’re thinking about what people are thinking about you it’s difficult to reach the state of mindlessness in which athletes (POORLY VEILED PREMISE ALERT) and musicians really thrive. Authenticity, on the other hand, offers freedom. It’s an invitation to dive deeper. Authenticity is the red pill from The Matrix. And that’s exactly what the Alabama Shakes were dispensing this past Tuesday at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA (Note to the VA law enforcement community: At no point did an Alabama Shakes band member actually dispense pharmaceutical drugs or smuggle audience members into a post-apocalyptic computer world). After a fantastic set from Richmond’s Black Girls, the Shakes took the stage for the very first time in the Old Dominion, or “Virginny” as frontwoman Brittany Howard put it, and set about showing us the genuine joy that can be found in live performance when you let go, lose yourself (apologies to Mr. Mathers) and pour out your heart and soul  — with an emphasis on the “soul.” I wrote yesterday about how the Alabama Shakes shouldn’t be called “soul revivalists” because it feels more like they’re creating than recreating, but you could hear the genre’s influence throughout their show. You could also hear healthy doses of rockabilly, blues, R&B and a ton of rock n roll. In truth, more than anything else, it really did feel like a rock show, with Howard’s emotional energy leading the way. Howard’s voice was packed full of expression and soulfulness, but there’s a whole other gear there (soul overdrive?) that she used to soar over blasting choruses full of ringing cymbals and electric guitars being strummed mercilessly. Along with Howard’s voice, I was particularly struck by the relationship between these two guitars, a bright-sounding hollow body Epiphone plucked by the co-lead guitarist and backup singer and a cool-sounding SG piloted by Howard herself. The tones of the two instruments couldn’t have been more complementary, and the same was true for the players, who traded rhythm and lead roles — the Epiphone providing driving riffs and lead flourishes and Howard’s SG adding rhythmic punctuation before tearing through frenzied solos that channeled the same emotion her voice conveyed so powerfully all night long. To see that kind of passion on display as she’s singing about wearing your heart out on your sleeve in a song like “You Ain’t Alone” represents a perfect marriage of message and messenger, and that authenticity made it easy for me to lose myself in the Alabama Shakes on Tuesday night. If you have the chance to see them, do not pass go, do not collect $200, just GO. Until then, you can check out the video above of “You Ain’t Alone,” listen to the studio version below, and pick up their EP here.

The Alabama Shakes — “You Ain’t Alone“

Alabama Shakes

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Alabama Shakes EP

Alabama Shakes, Part 1
(Editor’s note: I’m so excited about last night’s Alabama Shakes show that I’m splitting my reaction up into two parts, one offering a macro view of the experience, and one that gives a little more detail. Hope you enjoy!)
–
“Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you”
— Sam Cooke

Over the course of 28 years, I’ve become an expert at certain things. Choosing which tunnel to use when traveling from Richmond to Norfolk is one. Choosing non-mealy apples at the grocery store is another. And I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I consider myself the Michael Jordan of choosing the wrong checkout lane at Costco. Soul music, however, is not one of my (apologies to John Hodgman) areas of expertise. Soul is such an influential, historically rich and culturally significant force that I’ve always approached it with a sense of cautious reverence. And while I’m somewhat familiar with greats like Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and Mavis Staples, it’s always seemed like a broader understanding of the genre’s history and icons is just too steep a hill to climb, and that I’m destined to remain on the outside looking in. Lately though, a number of bands that have caught my attention are making it more and more difficult to stay on the soul music sidelines. Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing one of these bands in person, a group called Alabama Shakes. I’d been hearing this 5-piece outfit’s name everywhere, often lumped in with the present wave of so-called soul revivalists, so I came to the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, VA prepared to find out firsthand where they stood within this movement. But as they worked their way through a powerful, confident and wildly entertaining set, it became clear that they weren’t reviving anything. What I saw felt like an authentic act of creation, not one of imitation or recreation. It felt like something totally new. Maybe I’m inclined to think this way because I lack the baseline of knowledge to make proper comparisons, but to say that frontwoman-extraoridnairre Brittany Howard has pipes like Aretha, or a 5th gear like Janis Joplin, or moo-oo-oo-OO-OO-ooves like Jagger (sorry, I really tried to stop myself from typing that) would, as accurate and complimentary as those comparisons might be, situate Alabama Shakes in the past, which is not where they belong. Sure, you can call them neo-soul, or something like that, but it really doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to be a soul savant, or an expert in musical taxonomy, to enjoy Alabama Shakes. And the proof was standing all around me last night. The crowd was as diverse as I’ve seen — black, white, young, old, hip, unhip — and while that could be a side effect of being relatively new and not having been pigeonholed yet, I’d like to think it’s because there’s so much to enjoy in their music that almost everyone can connect with it. See what I mean by listening below to “Hold On,” the first track off their eponymous EP, which you can snag here.

Alabama Shakes — “Hold On“

Cotton Jones

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Tall Hours in the Glowstream

You like penguins? Me too! They’re adorable, usually friendly, always dressed for success, plus they’re the stars of my favorite scene of any halfway-decent nature documentary series — the obligatory Antarctica scene. You know, the one in which thousands of male penguins huddle together in negative-bazillion-degree-temperatures for months without sunlight, taking turns on the group’s extra-chilly perimeter, all while playing the world’s most boring game of soccer with the unborn child that rolls around between their legs the whole time? Seeing footage of this rotating huddle always blows my mind,  but this act of extreme parental endurance isn’t even my favorite penguin fun fact. Did you know that after all those soccer balls hatch and form a giant field of thousands of cute, fluffy, pretty much identical penguin chicks, the parents identify which is theirs by listening for their chick’s distinct call? In a sea of screaming voices, one cuts through. It’s incredible. So what does this have to do with Cotton Jones? Well, this folk-y/rock-y/whatever-y band (Thought Cotton Jones was the dude’s name? I did too. The curse of Jethro Tull strikes again…) from Cumberland, MD wrote a song that may very well be my illegitimate musical penguin baby (DNA tests are pending). I wasn’t terribly familiar with the Cotton Jones catalog before seeing them at the Camel this past Thursday, so a few hours before heading out, I rushed through some of their albums, enjoying them immensely but moving too quickly to commit the songs to memory… except for one. One tune stood out as I hurriedly listened, a sweet and timeless-sounding river song from their Tall Hours in the Glowstream album called “Somehow to Keep It Going.” The same thing happened at the Camel, as hearing the chorus produced such a strong reaction of recognition mixed with excitement that it’s hard to believe I’d heard the song for the first time just hours before. In a sea of unfamiliar music, “Somehow to Keep It Going” cut through and connected, and I can’t wait to explore more deliberately the rest of what Cotton Jones has to offer. Listen below and click here to snag Tall Hours in the Glowstream from iTunes.

Cotton Jones — “Somehow to Keep It Going“

Who wore it best?

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Did everyone have a great Thanksgiving? Get enough gravy? Watch enough football? I managed to catch chunks of all 3 of Thursday’s games, but there was one thing I was determined not to miss: Nickelback’s appearance during halftime of the Lions/Packers game in Detroit. I was fascinated by the hullabaloo leading up to their performance — I can’t remember the last time mean-spirited-ness was so widely tolerated (especially of the musican-on-musician variety). Hating on Nickelback is fun and all, but the campaign to have them replaced seemed bizarre in its fervor, and I was curious to see how they would handle the adversity. The event itself was relatively uneventful, in a way that these performances must be in a post-Nipplegate world, but two things stuck out… 1. The lead singer got a long-overdue haircut, and 2. There was a drumline. Hmmm… Now, marching bands and football go together like Forrest and Jenny, but this seemed like an odd choice, given how little the corps was utilized and how little you could actually hear it. See what you think…

Still with me? What a trouper you are. Seemed kinda off, right? Well the drumline issue jumped right back to the front of my mind when Enrique Iglesias took the stage just a few hours later during halftime of the Cowboys/Dolphins game. Why? Because Mr. Iglesias, owner of the world’s tightest hoodie, was flanked not only by rapper and co-founder of Bad Boy Records subsidiary Bad Boy Latino, Pitbull (he knows you want him), but also by a sizable group of marching drummers. Have a look…

Seriously, if you’re still reading, you get a gold star for wading through this crap with me. Speaking of crap, if you’ve ever read a glossy gossip magazine, you may already be familiar with the commonplace feature where they place pictures of two celebrities wearing a similar outfit side-by-side and ask the question (we’ll go with US Weekly’s wording here), “Who wore it best?” So what do you think? Who wore the drumline best, Nickelback or Enrique? Feel free to comment below, or just click here to get both out of your head as soon as humanly possible by watching the University of Southern California’s marching band back up Radiohead in their performance of “15 Step” at the 2009 Grammys.

Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds

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I was in New York City for a wedding this past (long) weekend, and had a super fun, action packed few days — I ate at some amazing restaurants, visited a museum exhibit that included a working slide from the 4th floor to the 2nd, conducted an unscientific study on regional differences in transactional conversation (saying “Thank you!” enthusiastically to store owners and waiters to see if they return a “You’re welcome” — they usually don’t, which I know isn’t considered to be rude, but it’s still fun to try) and saw an amazing band that I didn’t even know I’d be seeing. Saturday’s wedding reception was packed with great music, thanks in large part to the fact that the couple of the hour answered “Both” to that age old question, “Band or DJ?” The DJ provided an excellent chronological progression from Motown to “Otis,” deftly managing the inverse relationship between time and mean age, but it was the band, Brooklyn-based Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds, that totally blew me away, playing a short set of dynamite soul songs that packed a serious punch. It can’t be easy to come into that environment and get people dancing with original music, but Sister Sparrow, fronted by Arleigh Kincheloe’s booming yet feminine voice and bolstered by a 4-man horn section (I think it was 4, but don’t hold me to that — the Brooklyn Lager was a-flowin’), did just that, playing tunes off their self-titled album alongside a few covers, and everything just worked. The horns were great, the vocals were great, the lead guitar was great, the harmonica was great — to paraphrase our good friend Thom Yorke, everything was in its right place, and I eagerly found the album on Spotify so I could preview it on the train ride back home to Richmond. Check out a full stream of their album below, and buy it on iTunes here.

Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds – Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds

Carl Broemel

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All Birds Say

Sometimes you have to take an unpopular stance, though it’s nice when you have a good friend standing unpopularly with you. My buddy Coyle and I are both staunch supporters of the most divisive song in the entirety of the My Morning Jacket catalog. That’s right, Coyle and I are proud members of team “Highly Suspicious.” I’m pretty sure we both like it for the same reason, too — the hilarious, over-the-top serious way Carl Broemel, co-lead guitarist and backup singer to Jim James, delivers the song’s title lyrics. Watch the band performing the song on Austin City Limits to see what I mean…

How can you not love that? It falls in some strange netherworld between parody and badassery, and ever since the first time I saw a video of “Highly Suspicious” being staged, I’ve watched Broemel with an added sense of enjoyment. That’s why I was so elated when the wonderful people at Daytrotter recently posted a session that finds Broemel performing 4 of his own songs that I had no idea existed, all of which can be found on an album he released last year called All Birds Say. I dove into the record as soon as I could, and it didn’t take long to learn that Broemel is as gifted at writing solo material as he is at the guitar-thrashing, falsetto-floating duties he executes so expertly as a member of My Morning Jacket. All Birds Say is a mellow record to be sure, but there’s a great deal going on in these largely down-tempo songs worth noting, including a fascinating relationship between theme and substance. Many of the songs deal with the idea of spare time, surely a commodity when you’re part of an overwhelmingly successful band, with titles like “Sunday Drivers” and “Retired,” and lyrics like “I was waiting for the moment to be perfectly clear, when the world would stop and let me catch up,” and “save an hour for yourself.” Images like these appear throughout, and pair perfectly with the choice of tempo and mood. Too perfectly, in fact. That’s what’s most interesting about All Birds Say — it’s a leisurely sounding record about trying to find time for leisure, which, as any busy person can attest, is hard work. After doing some research, I wasn’t surprised to find that he recorded the album one song at a time, whenever he had an opportunity, over the course of 4 or 5 years, so it’s no wonder he’s focused on those elusive spare moments. Even his guitar work reflects this odd coupling of efficiency and relaxation. “Questions” features a walkdown that sounds so breezy on the surface it could have followed a drunk down the street in an old Disney cartoon, but it includes just about every single in-between note that particular scale can hold. So loose, yet so tight at the same time. And these extra, in-between notes are everywhere on All Birds Say. I’m enjoying the album so much I can’t decide which song to recommend, so I’m including performance videos of three of my favorites — “Questions,” “Carried Away,” and “Heaven Knows,” where he pushes the leisure theme even further by playing the song on an autoharp in the middle of a round of golf. Check out these three great songs below, his Daytrotter session here (you’re a member already, right?), and buy All Birds Say here.

Carl Broemel — “Questions“

Carl Broemel — “Carried Away“

Carl Broemel — “Heaven Knows“