The Zimmermann Note

Okkervil River reminds me of what Wilco was back in the old days. They are original and yet sound like those great old alt-country bands that we all came to love and adore.  Some might see the similarities with Neutral Milk Hotel, but it is often Will Sheff’s lyrics about the Rock and Roll Lifestyle. 

Whether it is the 6 and a half minute country ballad, ‘A Girl in Port’ or the climax suicide note ‘John Allyn Smith Sails’, with the Beach Boys ‘Sloop John B’ written as his ode there is plenty to absorb.  

Well before I start writing music reviews, I figured I would create a little podcast of some of my favorite tracks. The length is slightly over 60 minutes and jam-packed with music.You can download it here.This is a good way to start putting together your Christmas Lists. Here is a list of the stuff played.

1. Flight of the Conchords – If You’re Into It

2. Panda Bear – Comfy in Nautica

3. Sea Wolf – Leaves in the River

4. Of Montreal – We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling

5. Caribou – Melody Day

6. PJ Harvey – Silence

7. Sunset Rubdown – The Mending Of The Gown

8. The National – Green Gloves

9. Deerhunter – Strange Lights

10. Glen Mercer – Whatever Happened

11. Robyn Hitchcock and The Venus 3 – (A Man’s Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs (Live)

12. Robyn Hitchcock and The Venus 3 – Queen of Eyes (Live)

I am going to be writing small reviews of some of the albums that I have enjoyed over the past year which will lead up to a full length best of list for the year.

Its been at the back of my head to create an end of the year album listing of my favorite albums of 2007. However, since the year has not ended yet I am thinking that the better way to go by this is just start reviewing albums now and then by the end of the year pull together my definitive listing.

Its been a solid year for music even if these songs are not being played on the radio. I have opened my ears and found several worthy albums of note.

Not sure where I am going to start or when the first album review will hit the store shelves but expect to read it soon.

I hate writing reviews a day into an album. In many respects its not fair to the artist and in other respects not fair to me. I will say this, however is that there is an interesting aspect to my listening experience. This is not just testing out a new album but there is a buzz surrounding it, a buzz that was not created by the music but the marketing geniuses of Radiohead who have created an interesting way not only not only to distribute music, music that was cheap for the fans, and was distributed to fans, critics, insiders and outsiders all at the same time, without any preconceived notions of what the album was going to sound like. There was no pitchfork or NME or Rolling Stone to guide the listener through this process, the fan had to do that on their own.

While the critics will inevitably have their say in this recording, I can say that I probably gave this album more time than I would have normally given this record if it was released under normal circumstances.

That being said, the album has been growing on me and I can easily forsee this album being in my top ten list at the end of the year. Radiohead have put out a daring, yet beautiful record, maybe not at the level of some of their classics like Ok Computer or Kid A but right up there as one of their best.

What Radiohead has done with In Rainbows is prove once again they are at the forefront of both popularity and cutting edge. While you might not hearing their albums being played all over the radio, the fact is that they have pushed ahead of the grandfathers of the progressive rock, bands like R.E.M. and U2 by challenging the listener, providing something soulful, melodic and daring.

Rock music is more than just a three an a half minute song you might hear on the radio, but an experience, matching a mood, a thought, a feeling and the good albums are not just good today but tomorrow the next day, the next month, the next year, the next century.

And even as I cringed past the opening sequence of 15 Step the first time I listened to it, today I am becoming drawn into the song, as if just like a good book you need to reread the first chapter. Without reviewing each song in their entirety this is what a great album should do anyhow. Repeated listens, repeated awakenings, and feelings strewn across the floor as Thom and Co. rewrite musical history.

In my opinion Nude might be their best “Ballad” if you call it that since “Lucky”. This somber number reintroducing us to everything that makes Radiohead a class band. You see the darkness the despair, the sidewalk in front of you. Part of me feels the sadness and the other part of me sees this as the saddest love song ever written.

“Faust Arp” bekons us back to some of the acoustic classics like Elliott Smith and Nick Drake. The line in the sand can be drawn as far as copying artists but in this case, we hear a Radiohead song saluting these artists more than Xeroxing them.

Possibly the best song on the album, Reckoner, and that is hard to say at this point, builds from a steady dose of percussion into a melodic masterpiece with Thom Yorke’s voice holding everything together.

And lastly, I cannot forget the Ok Computer sounding Jigsaw Falling Into Place, that just wants you to get up on stage and dance like Thom Yorke.

It is very difficult in this age of ours as a band to continue on with the same high quality product album after album. While I have not been too impressed with Radioheads last couple albums, I have to say that they are back at the top of their game.

Idolator.com 

Fans, media, bloggers and whomever else making a point in ripping on Radiohead’s decision to release ‘In Rainbows’ online defies all logic and sense that this writer feels the need to clarify some things. In the age of albums being leaked to the public, what Radiohead pretty much did was leak their own album before it’s release. They said to themselves, let’s just put it out there for a small administrative fee, an amount that totals peanuts and let the fans decide if they want to go out and buy the album when it is officially released on CD.

There should not be a soul that feels ripped off by this unprecedented move. They did not force anyone to pay more than they wanted to and if someone does feel ripped off they should blame themselves and not the band. I typically look at it this way, if you have a significant other and you pass on a nude photo of yourself to them, there is a good chance that might get out to the public. Radiohead, on the other hand, just defined the terms and conditions which is something that bands and studios have been afraid to do.

Also, noone should feel as if they were duped. The commentary made by their manager of fans going out in the future to buy their CD is a no-brainer. First off, noone is forcing anyone to buy any CD and secondly, the point of a band is to make money and promote their product. They are not doing this for free. To find people almost shocked, is idiotic at best that a manager would come forward and make comments to that effect.

Now I also know that there are standards with audiofiles and that sometimes people complain if the kilobyte ratio for MP3s is too small, but again people, that is what you decided to purchase in the first place. Not wav files, not a CD.

The point was to test out their music and if you feel strongly about it then go buy the album and if not then don’t.

* Come celebrate Radioheads release by going out and buying yourself a bucket of KFC and start rubbing those chicken pieces all over your body. Radiohead’s newest album In Rainbows is a Rock Opera about a Leprachaun named Seamus that is black. its going to be a hit. (Or as Derek pointed out “A Tragic Mulatto”).

* I wish I could write reviews of albums after the first 30 seconds of listening to the opening track. It would make music writing more awesome. Right now I am listening to the new Sunset Rubdown album, and I write that like I have been listening to Sunset Rubdown for years. The great thing about the internet is that you can pretend to be someone you aren’t. Since I have only listened to less than a couple minutes so far I really do not know if I can give it a positive or negative review just yet.

* However, the new PJ Harvey album White Chalk. This is a very “Somber”, melodic album than some of her previous works but at the same time, it reminds me of PJ doing Sufjan Stevens.

* This is actually pretty cool. The Japancakes are 1) Coming out with another album and 2) Covering My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’.  http://opticalatlas.com/?p=485

John Peel – Margrave of the Marshes

It is obvious that disc-jockeys , as a class, are essentially parasitic. We are, with lamentably few exceptions, neither creative nor productive. We are, with lamentably few exceptions, neither creative nor productive. We have, however, manipulated the creations of others (records) to provide ourselves with reputations as arbiters of public taste. There is no more reason (nor no less) why I should be writing this column than you – however I am in this unmerited position and you’re not. I believe very much in radio as a medium of tragically unrealized possibilities and also in the music I play. Therefore accepting the falseness of my own precarious position I will do what I can, wherever I can, to publicise these good things I hear around me. These musicians have made you aware of, and appreciate of, their music, not J. Peel.

John Peel, Disc and Music Echo, 1969

Sometimes it can be awfully boring to read an auto/biography about an individual that I know too much about. Typically, these just offer a rehash of their lives or contain information that I know too well about already. Picking up a book about an interesting topic or person that I spent too little time or did not have the opportunity to listen to, well that is a different story.

Before the internet, before cable television, before our lives were consumed with the media, there were individuals such as John Peel who dedicated their lives to offering the public an opinion that was outside the norm.

John Peel did this on a medium that today that is all but dying and that medium is Radio. ‘Margrave of the Marshes’, is the story of Peel told from both Peel and his wife Sheila.

Peel left this world all too early, hit by a sudden heart attack while vacationing in Peru. These events never allowed for Peel to finish his autobiography for which his wife Sheila promptly completed.

As an American I never had the opportunity to be able to listen to Peel on any sort of basis. Every once in awhile I would find an album, a demo, bootleg or some other sort of recording by a band labeled “The Peel Sessions”, and for many a band, getting to play on Peel’s show was a way to arrive at notoriety.

When he died, Brits wept and bands played tribute in his honor. Only then, do we get a full impetus of what he left for fans across the globe.

You did not have to listen to John Peel to be influenced by him because Peel not only influenced listeners but he influenced bands.

Peel believed in the individual and the fan and did not believe in the corporate environment that tries to sell to the lowest common denominator. He challenged his fans as well as himself. He was a fan of music, setting up his office in his house with it full of CDs, LPs, Demo Tapes and whatnot.

What Peel was successful at doing was being passionate and humble at the same time. I got the feeling that Peel never thought he was the best father or even the best DJ.

John Peel was Great Britans answer for that cool guy down at the end of the hall who had the best record collection and would play a mix tape of his. We are not talking Bee Gees or Bay City Rollers but Captain Beefheart, T-Rex, Sex Pistols, and or introducing his audience to other genres such as Reggae and the like.

Realize that this was before the internet, before we were linked to every Tom, Dick and Harry’s blog, and on the limited medium of Radio, Peel offered his audience the full potential of it.

Typically, when I finish a book, I try to take something from it. For me, I look at this lowly blog which is probably read by like three people. I hardly have the audience of a John Peel but I also realize that if someone takes something from an article, an album or a book that I have read and also found it amazing or even atrocious then there is something positive that is going on.

First a hearty thank you to Derek for bringing this to my attention. Glenn Mercer was a member of the famed Feelies, one of the most underrated and underappreciated bands in the US. His first solo effort should invigorate Feelies fans that loved albums like ‘The Good Earth’ and ‘Crazy Rhythms’.

I came late to the game with the Feelies, partly because for who knows how long their albums have been out of print, so for any new fans out there they are stuck with substandard copies of them on the internet.

Mercer was one of the main co-conspirator’s in The Feelies with Bill Million, and in this album we hear the influential jangly guitar rhythms matched with the solid percussion and Mercer’s stipean mumbles underneath the music. Mercer’s album also features pretty much every Feelie, minus Million on this recording helping out on the various tracks so in many respects it feels Feelieish.

‘Until It’s Clear’ sounds like decaffienated Nirvana meets Luna. As was the case with classic Feelies, Mercer allows the music to venture into your brain, the guitar chords and drums becoming mesmerizing. ‘Whatever Happened’ reminds me one of those classic Feelies songs like ‘Slipping (into something)’ with the catchy extra long guitar, drum intros.

In a way, bands like the Feelies, helped initiate the entire shoegaze era where you can hear bands like Luna interwoven in their music. But it’s that combination with that R.E.M.-like jangling which makes this album so desirable.

Some of the more impressive tracks include a salute to the great George Harrison with the medley ‘Within Without You/Love You Too’ a seven minute heroes welcome to the silent Beatle. As on the Feelies albums that commonly added a cover version or two on an album Mercer does not cheapen the music but offers up a Hobokian salute that sounds like Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) is drooling in the background listening to it.

And lastly, one cannot forget the Velvet Underground cover of Sunday Morning which is available as a bonus track if you download it (iTunes). Mercer gives this little eclectic treat gives the track warmth.

Rock music critic Jim Derogatis ranked this album as the best album of the year and while I will not go that far just yet I will say that it will get multiple plays from this listener. To be honest with you, one of the sad facts is that many of the “Indie” music sites did not review this album which is just about where ‘The Feelies’ stand in their memorybanks which is really sad and pitiful indeed and I can understand where Derogatis is coming from by making that proclamation.

This is an album that I just thought I received that I was late in receiving for the annual 2007 year review however, it must be added to the list of albums that I have been listening to of as of late. The first thing that I thought of when I heard ‘Object of My Affection’ was the classic band from suburban Chicago, ‘Helium Derby’, and now I know that the lead singer went to Sweden to start his own band.

As my sites typically have some crossover, I do want to mention one album that seems to be playing pretty nonstop on my Ipod as late. Spoons latest effort, ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’, is perfect for that Summer Weekend BBQ party, but more importantly it might be one of the best albums of the year. Songs such as ‘You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb’ pleasure the listener with a revamped 60’s sound, full of horns whereas ‘The Underdog’ sounds like something that I listened to on the radio in 1975 and Wilco stopped writing when Jay Bennett left the band.

The album sounds fresh enough to feel indie yet accessible enough to allow your neighbors into its delights. Typically it’s bands that can gain this crossover appeal which will gain some type of acclaim.

At any rate if there is any album I would check out before the heat dies down is this one.