So we just found out on Tuesday that Bob Dylan is releasing a new album, entitled Tempest, on September 11. I don’t know about you, but album announcements don’t usually get me too riled up. It’s hard to get excited about a press release accompanied by a list of out-of-context song titles, especially when the payoff can be so far away. I mean, September is like a year away (delayed gratification and I are not friends). This announcement was different though, and not just because it’s Bob Dylan, and that’s reason enough to get one’s undies in a bunch. My undies bunched double because I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, the “Scarlet Town” that’s included on the track list was a cover of the “Scarlet Town” Gillian Welch released on her 2011 album The Harrow & The Harvest. I even spent like 30 minutes drafting unsent Tweets about it:
“Part of me is hoping that “Scarlet Town” from Bob Dylan’s upcoming album is a cover of the @gillianwelch tune. The other part of me thinks that’s wrong.”
Other drafts were less circumspect, focusing on how I’d probably pee my pants if my theory were to hold true. (Does anyone else routinely spend half an hour writing tweets they don’t send? Anyone? Please tell me I’m not the only one.)
But all that excitement and subsequent guilt over rooting for a cover from the greatest songwriter of all time vanished into thin air when I actually took the time to read the whole press release, which states clearly that Tempest features “ten new and original Bob Dylan songs.” Well, then. There goes that. Guess I should know better than to try to predict Bob Dylan’s behavior. After all, this exists.
My Tempest gratification may be delayed until September, but Tuesday was kind enough to balance things out by dropping a brick of pure, uncut, instant gratification in my lap via a text from my friend Tex (say that 5 times fast) asking if I’d heard the new Old Crow Medicine Show album.
¡Hola, amigos! As I type this here sentence, I’m situated a terrifying 33,000 feet above South Carolina, just an hour or so away from completing the last leg of my trip back to Richmond from a beachy Mexican locale called Playa del Carmen. And despite the fact that I derive very little enjoyment from being this high in the air, I’m excited to be writing these words, because I’ve been looking forward to this post for a while now. About five months, in fact.
In October of last year, Mrs. You Hear That and I took a trip to Portland (this one, not that one), where we tried some amazing restaurants, flipped through some excellent record stores, stumbled across an absurd number of tasty breweries and made sure to include a stop at the storied Powell’s City of Books. Why storied? Well, size, for one thing. A number of people told us about how Powell’s takes up an entire city block (it’s true, check out this screen grab from Google Maps), giving the store an almost legendary aura. It’s also storied in the sense that there are multiple floors in this city-block-sized bookstore, with separate rooms for different genres, meaning the shelves really do go on forever. And lastly, they’re storied because, ya know, that’s what they sell, and the story I decided to buy couldn’t have been more appropriate for the trip.
If you checked out the series of 3 “New Year’s Reso-tune-tions” that I did last week, you might remember that my first vow was to cheer up a bit, musically speaking. Of course I broke that promise to myself almost immediately by posting a moody but totally beautiful song called “No Room For Doubt” by Lianne La Havas. My bad. I just can’t help it! So many of my favorite songs sound like downers, even when their lyrics are upbeat and inspirational — Gillian Welch’s “Hard Times” really stands out in this respect. But I’m not giving up, and Generationals are helping to push me in the right direction. My big-city friend Coyle sent me two colorfully named Generationals tunes via Spotify late last year — “Black And White” and “Greenleaf” — and the more I listen to them, the more it becomes clear that they offer the inverse of “Hard Times.” Even though they deal with complicated or ambiguous emotions, there’s an unfailing sunniness to both tracks. Take “Greenleaf,” for example. The lyrics have a vaguely indicting tone, but there are two high-pitched piano parts that keep the track feeling light and fun — one that provides constant, driving eighth-notes and a second, even more cheery melodic line that speeds up ever so slightly, as if it’s so happy to be there, it can’t wait for the rest of the music to catch up. See what I mean below, and if you feel as uplifted as I did, you can click here to snag their 2011 album Actor-Caster on iTunes.
Welcome to Part 2 of YHT’s Top 10 Albums of 2011, also known (as of this very moment) as the High Five! Before continuing, I highly recommend high-fiving the first person you can find, or if no one’s around, simply accept the internet high five above. Yay! OK, let’s finish 2011 off in style…
Dubstep not your cup of tea? Mine neither! But so much of what James Blake does well has nothing to do with wobbly bass or sub-bass or wobbly sub-bass. Take his minimalism, for example. A track like “Lindesfarne” builds so much tension via empty sonic space that by the time the track is in full-swing, it feels like your heart is going to explode, even though his version of “full-swing” is still relatively sparse. He’s also capable of making songs feel emotional, regardless of what’s going on lyrically. In some ways, James Blake is like the musical equivalent of the plastic bag from American Beauty — an object of creation that seems simple on the surface, but as you continue to fill it with your own emotions its meaning becomes almost overwhelming. Then, like I said, your heart explodes. Boom. Just like that. Listen to “Lindesfarne” below, read more here and here, and buy here.
I don’t know if I would have made it through this past year without Helplessness Blues. 2011 was a time of exciting change for me (this blog being one big development), and the Fleet Foxes’ latest effort resonated deeply, touching heavily on themes of transformation and self-determination. I fell in love with the album’s exhilarating title track, which manipulates momentum so brilliantly, but our affair was sidetracked abruptly when I heard “Someone You’d Admire,” a hymn-like song with lyrics that offer both an admission of personal defeat and a reaffirmation of the ongoing inner-struggles that push us to get out of bed in the morning and keep fighting. Wow. This blurb certainly got serious. Here’s a video of a monkey riding a dog! Better? Great! See what I mean about “Someone You’d Admire” below, read more here, and buy here.
3. Bon Iver — Bon IverBON IVER AT #3? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS! GOOD DAY SIR!
Wait for it…
Wait…
[DOOR SLAMS]
Alright, now that that guy is gone we can have a rational conversation about Bon Iver, one of the most ambitious albums I’ve heard in a long time. In my mind, making this album was an act of extreme musical courage. It would have been easy for Justin Vernon to dust off the For Emma, Forever Ago recipe and make another batch of the same bittersweet-yet-delicious confections, but he went so much further with his second full-length, thickening the batter with diverse instrumentation and bold stylistic leaps. Out of the oven came songs that feel radically different, even though they bear the same yearning falsetto that so many people have grown to love since 2008. So why do I have it ranked at number #3? Um… I dunno it just kinda felt like the right place. Listen to “Holocene” below, read more here, here and here, and buy here.
Why is this one’s album art smaller? Is it because it’s just an EP, and it’s size is being represented in correlation with its running length? Actually no. For some mysterious reason I couldn’t resize the image. Oops. Besides, if I had to represent how impactful this album has been, I would need a shit-ton more pixels. Probably more pixels than any other album on this list. The Alabama Shakes have landed on so many year-end “Best New Artist” lists with just these four soulful rock songs and some YouTube videos, making this album the pound-for-pound, hardest-hitting release of the year. I’m still recovering from being slugged by their early-December show at the Jefferson in Charlottesville, VA, and I’m beside myself with anticipation for the next time they’re anywhere near Richmond. Listen below to “You Ain’t Alone,” which is just a scary-good song in my opinion, read more here and here, and buy here.
The top spot goes to the album I played more times from start to finish than any other this year. When The Harrow & the Harvest came out, a big deal was made about how long it had been in the making — 8 years had passed since Welch’s last release — but this is no Chinese Democracy. Many of these tracks were captured on the first take, giving the album a natural, lighting-in-a-bottle feel that stands in stark contrast to their remarkable quality. I read that she and David Rawlings started a few recording projects in the years between this album and her last, but they abandoned each one because they weren’t convinced that the material up to snuff. These songs sure as hell are, and though nothing’s perfect, “Hard Times” is as close to a perfect song as I heard in 2011, offering a pure, heart-wrenching, two-by-two pairing of verse and chorus, guitar and banjo, her voice and his. Take a listen below, read more here, and buy here.
Before you go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for reading You Hear That in 2011. It means so much to me that you’re reading this here blog, and I’m beyond excited for what’s in store in the future. I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and that your 2012 is 1000% better than the Mayans said it would be. Now let’s all go get hammered, call cabs and get home safe and sound!
I’ve been doing some serious unplugging lately. Between the 4-day, post-Irene power outage and this past weekend’s trip to Chincoteague Island, which has a very high pony-to-Wi-Fi ratio, I’ve been forced to pause, ignore Twitter and reconnect with old musical friends. This was especially important when the power was out, and I needed something that would be comforting in the midst of a crazy storm and its aftermath (for me, “unplugging” still involves listening to music with a battery-operated iPhone speaker dock. I seem to have some technology addiction issues). Where did I turn? The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, for one. More specifically, the 10th anniversary deluxe edition, which just happened to be my last iTunes purchase before things went crazy. Lighting candles and listening to old favorites like “Down to the River to Pray” and “Po Lazarus,” plus the 14 new tracks that didn’t make the original edition, felt less like weathering a power outage and more like stepping into a time machine with Alison Krauss, Norman Blake and Gillian Welch, bound for Depression-era Mississippi. After a while, Irene-era Richmond didn’t seem so scary. Take a listen below to one of the newly released tracks — the Cox Family’s rendition of “Keep On the Sunny Side,” and buy the deluxe version of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack here.
During one of my previous themed weeks, I wrote about how collaborations are a great way to discover new artists. This is all well and good, but I can be pretty dense sometimes, and Gillian Welch is a shining example. I had so many chances to jump on her bandwagon. My first opportunity came with the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a movie I watched maybe 1,253 times. Not only was she associate producer for the sensational Grammy-winning soundtrack, singing on two of the songs, SHE ACTUALLY APPEARED IN THE MOVIE. Sigh. Another chance passed me by when she recently contributed backing vocals to seven of the ten songs on the Decemberists’ The King is Dead. Somewhere in between she played drums on Old Crow Medicine Show’s debut record, recorded with Bright Eyes, Ryan Adams, I mean c’mon, how oblivious am I? In truth, the fact that these projects didn’t make me run out and buy Gillian Welch albums illustrates her gift as a collaborator. In each case, her talents enhanced songs without overpowering them, even though she’s talented enough to outshine many of these artists. I’m finally learning this because my friend Giselle recommended that I give Welch’s new offering, The Harrow and the Harvest, a shot. After several listens, I’ve found that it’s a truly engaging folk album, full of tender moments and bittersweet beauty. My favorite so far is “Hard Times” — a song that is so bitter and sweet at the same time, you almost think the conflicting emotions are going to tear the song apart. Take a listen below, buy The Harrow and the Harvest here, and learn from my obliviousness, so you don’t have to spend one more day without Gillian Welch in your life.
BON IVER AT #3? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS! GOOD DAY SIR!
You Hear That 