Another Form of Relief

I love finding awesome new music, which sadly doesn’t happen anywhere near often enough. The vast majority of things I listen to don’t grab me at all, but every now and then I find a real gem. Keegan DeWitt falls into that category.

Keegan DeWitt is a New York singer songwriter. He plays these songs with a full band who call themselves ‘The Sparrows’. Their upcoming album was produced by Chris Stamey, who has worked on material from Whiskeytown, REM and Yo La Tengo. They have just played a bunch of sold out shows, and from listening to these songs, it isn’t difficult to see why.

This is the sound of a confident band, offering up songs that range from mellow acoustic folk rock right up to slightly more rocking country numbers. You can certainly hear the Whiskeytown influences in some of these songs, and I’d go as far as to say there’s a little Dylan in DeWitt’s voice. I know that comparison is thrown around way to often, but that was one of the first thoughts that came to me when listening to ‘Bed Of Mercy’.

MP3 Keegan DeWitt - Bed Of Mercy (expired)
MP3 Keegan DeWitt - So High So Low (expired)
MP3 Keegan DeWitt - More Of You (expired)
MP3 Keegan DeWitt - Come On Byrd (expired)
MP3 Keegan DeWitt - Christmas Light (expired)

You can listen to the full album up on his website, and of course, here’s the obligatory Myspace link. I see big things in the future of Keegan DeWitt, so make sure you give these songs a little attention.

When it’s twelve loop noose time, Chatterton won’t talk you out of it, but they can fray the knot a bit. They won’t knock the revolver away from your temple, but they can help you out with a misfire. They aren’t without heart, but they don’t want to see you just waltz on by, either.

I don’t often include website blurbs in these things, but I liked that one far too much to leave it out. Chatterton have a sound that evokes familiarity. Not in a bad way though. The kind of a familiarity that you can’t quite put your finger on, yet you are happy to hear again anyway. The lyrics are heartfelt, but never to the overwrought levels that seems to be the fashion these days.

Chatterton recently played at SXSW, and currently playing a number of shows in their native Fort Worth and around the US. I wish I had more I could tell you about these guys as I like their sound a lot, but I imagine we’ll be hearing more of them in the near future.

MP3 Chatterton - Another Night On The Moon
MP3 Chatterton - A Good Place To Start

Chatterton will be releasing their first EP in the near future, which will be available on both CDBaby and Itunes. You can hear some more songs from it on their Myspace page. You’ll also find a little more information on their very cool website.

Brookville is yet another artist that I probably wouldn’t have discovered if not for a cheap sale CD. The only reason I even picked up the Brookville’s ‘Wonderfully Nothing’ was because I’d got a promo email for the band a few weeks ago. I hadn’t actually listened to the song I was sent so had absolutely no clue what Brookville might sound like, but saw the disc and thought I couldn’t really go wrong for £1.99. That thought turned out to be very true.

Brookville is the solo project of Andy Chase, who is part of another band called Ivy. I don’t know much about Ivy, but there was a label promo bundled with the Brookville disc that had a couple of songs on and they sounded pretty good. Anyways, Brookville makes romantic, multi-layered electronic music with an almost medicated delivery. All of which leaves us with an end product that isn’t all that different from Her Space Holiday, just without quite so much of the emotional damage. Making it far less depressing.

MP3 Brookville - Summer Parade (Wonderfully Nothing, 2003)
MP3 Brookville - Sweet Sensation (Wonderfully Nothing, 2003)

MP3 Brookville - Nothing’s Meant To Last (expired) (Life In The Shade, 2006)

‘Nothing’s Meant To Last’ is taken from Brookville’s upcoming album, which will be released on June 13. If I’m honest, if I’d listened to this song before I got hold of ‘Wonderfully Nothing’, I probably wouldn’t be writing about Brookville right now. It’s a solid enough song, but it doesn’t exactly grab me, and I find the female vocal layered over the top of the song somewhat jarring. I liked the other songs because everything else on the songs never overwhealmed the vocals, and that is kind of thrown off here. Maybe the album as a whole will make things sound better though.

To hear more Brookville, you can visit his Myspace, where you can listen to a couple more songs from ‘Life In The Shade’.

Devin Davis doesn’t look like a rock star. In fact, he looks far too much like an ordinary man to seem like someone who can cause people to “rock out”. But rocking out is exactly what he manages to do, either when playing shows in Chicago and around the US, or with his debut album, ‘Lonely People Of The World, Unite!’. The album was released last year to much critical acclaim, even garning a 7.2 rating from the stingy folks at Pitchork. Devin was recently kind enough to answer a few questions via email.

How are you today?

Devin: Kind of stressed out.. trying to get our june tour dates finalized.. not much “fun”…

How did the idea for your solo album originally come about?

Devin: I moved to Chicago to explore music.. and wasn’t meeting anybody to play with.. the songs were, I suppose at the very very beginning, intended as something that I could give out to people to see if they would be interested in playing in a band with me.

Did you originally write ‘Lonely People..’ to be a concept album of sorts? That each of the narrators has to deal with loneliness gives it that kind of feeling. Was this intentional or does the topic just crop up in a lot of your songs?

Devin: That was very much intentional.. from very early on when the phrase “lonely people of the world, unite!” popped into my head.. it became the mantra of the whole thing.. eventually making it’s way into the lyrics of “giant spiders”.. which i’m happy about.. (having the album title as a lyric is kind of fun). it kind of sprawled out from there.. I wanted all the songs to be about loneliness.. i was new to Chicago and had no friends.. it wasn’t hard to be a method actor.

There are seemingly a lot of ‘classic rock’ influences on ‘Lonely People..’. Was this a conscious songwriting decision or did these just naturally work their way into your music? Who would you say are more contemporary influences?

Devin: It was definitely a conscious decision.. I was listening to a LOT of 60’s and early 70’s albums.. there are some obvious moments of reference.. The Who.. Baba O’Reilly, Pink Floyd, Simon & Garfunkel, The Kinks.. and some Beatles of course.. my intention was not to create “a sound unlike anything that had ever been created in the universe”.. I just wanted to record the catchiest songs that I could.. and have the lyrics be intense/strong (and sincere) enough so as not to be dismissed as irony and (hopefully) have some kind of emotional impact on the listener. I was hearing a lot of current indie music, at that time, that sounded like the people were trying SO hard to NOT sound like ANYTHING before.. that it almost seemed absurd to me.. that may have partly been a motivation for me to reference some of those classic rock songs.. kind of like a “lighten up and have fun” type of thing.. That said.. it was pretty naive to think that way, but it made sense at the time. I am very excited about making a much more sonically adventurous album next. As far as contemporary influences go… well.. I really dig The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, The Shins, … just to name a few.

You played most of the instrumentation on the album yourself. How do you play your music in a live environment? Do you use a backing band?

Devin: I play with a band sometimes and I play solo sometimes.. I finally, through giving out early CDR copies of the album, managed to meet people to play with (Jim Duffy on drums, Nick Meiers on bass, and Nick Mazzarella on sax/keyboards). The band varies in size (with the addition of a pedal steel/2nd guitarist and 2nd keyboardist) depending on whether we’re playing in Chicago or on tour. I have been playing a lot of solo acoustic shows as well.. I use a looper pedal on my voice so I can build layered, harmony vocal parts.. as well as a looper pedal for drums and percussion instruments.. that way I can build drum beats from scratch and then play/sing over them. I’ve also been bringing the theremin along with me everywhere and doing short solo pieces over pre-recorded piano parts.. the theremin seems to be the thing that everybody remembers!

How helpful, if at all, do you think the internet has been in getting the word out about your music?

Devin: The internet has been absolutely vital.. as I only ran one print ad in one issue of one magazine.. the web, and especially the blog community, has been the main springboard for the album. I was fairly ignorant of the depth and reach of the blog phenomenon. The way that everybody links to everybody else’s site.. it’s awesome.. and it’s genuine.. there’s no ad revenue or back scratching.. it’s just people writing about music they’ve heard..

What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t making music?

Devin: Hmm… I would probably be a secret agent of some kind.. something along the lines of Fox Mulder… something like that.. or maybe just a park ranger.. not to try to bust campers or anything.. just for the view.

What does the future hold for Devin Davis?

Devin: Hopefully a new album by early next year.. probably on a label this time.

MP3 Devin Davis - Iron Woman
MP3 Devin Davis - Turtle and the Flightless Bird
MP3 Devin Davis - Deserted Eyeland

If you still haven’t picked up ‘Lonely People Of The World, Unite!’, you can do so over at Insound. For more Devin Davis awesomeness, be sure to check out his brilliantly designed website, which has a ton of information and some more mp3s for your enjoyment. Devin also has a Myspace, so pop over there and say hello.

As you can probably guess from the helpful picture above, The Koreans aren’t actually Korean. I also can’t seem to find out why they decided to call themselves The Koreans. It all seems rather random if I’m honest.

There’s a good chance that I never would have discovered The Koreans if not for the Virgin £1.99 sale. I bought a ton of discs by bands I’d never heard of before, but had something to convince me to give them a shot. Some of them had record labels I liked, others were bands I’d vaguely heard about but had never listened to. The Koreans though sold me entirely with the cover to their album. Now granted that’s a pretty lame reason to buy an album, but it seems to have worked out rather well in this case.

I don’t know a great deal about the band, other than the fact they are British. They are also very refreshing in that unlike nearly every other recent UK band, they don’t go for the rough garage rock sound. Their music is carefully constructed, with every note seemingly put in it’s place for a reason. There’s nothing groundbreaking original here, but next to The Libertines clone #517, they do sound rather refreshing.

MP3 The Koreans - Keep Me In Your Mind

The downside of all of this though seems to be that the band is no longer together. Their website hasn’t been updated in the best part of two years since the record came out, there’s no reference to them on just about the entire website, and their message board is quieter than a Scientology birth. Whether they are still together and just very, very lazy in updating I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to look good for them. Which is a shame as they had potential to be very good.

Awesome film alert..

Last night I went to see Brick, which is easily the best thing that has been released this year. It opened in the UK yesterday and it’s still playing in a limited run in the US, so there’s still a chance to see it. I’m not here to talk about films in any great detail, so I’ll be brief, but it’s intelligent, it’s funny and features Nora Zehetner, three things that are sadly missing from the vast majority of films these days. So get in to see it early, because I’ll put money on it being the next “cult” thing that everyone will be raving about by the time it reaches DVD.

I’ve been pretty busy over the past few days with various things, which explains the lighter blogging schedule. As such, this isn’t a “proper” post, more a collection of random odds and ends that I want to babble about but don’t really require a whole post.

So Clor announced that they are splitting up today. This news was greeted with the kind of media storm that is helpfully illustrated to your right. Ok, so that may be a little harsh, but it does seem as if no one really cares about this. I’m not exactly cut up about it, but I think it’s something of a shame. The first album was fairly fun and I was looking forward to what they would be coming up with in the future. Included here is ‘Love + Pain’, probably the funkiest song of 2005.

MP3 Clor - Love + Pain (expired)

I really need to find some new bands that I can jump on the bandwagon of. I’m really not getting much out of the current batch doing the blog rounds. I don’t like Tapes n Tapes much. I don’t like Band of Horses at all. I’ve never been one for Sufjan. Cold War Kids leave me, well, cold. Bishop Allen are ok, but what’s the big deal? Same thing for Feist. I find Beirut rather bland. I don’t get the Lily Allen thing at all. And what the hell is so good about Gnarls Barkley? I guess these things go in cycles, but it feels like six months ago I was falling over myself finding new bands, now I’m not finding much that grabs me at all.

There’s a good chance I’ll be seeing the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in a couple of weeks, which has the potential to be very cool. They play a mean Nirvana.

MP3 Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - Smells Like Teen Spirit (live) (expired)

When I wrote about Malcolm Middleton I mentioned an irrational hatred for Arab Strap. I’d never really listened to their music for some reason knew that I hated them. Anyways, I finally got past that stupid attitude, listened to a few albums and feel really bad about all that. They really are quite awesome. I seem to have only scratched the surface of their material too. Here’s the song that has grabbed my attention the most over the past few weeks, with it’s wonderful upbeat depressing style. I adore that delivery too. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a band that has embraced their accents and dialects to such an extent that Arab Strap have.

MP3 Arab Strap - The Shy Retirer (expired)

Think that’s about it for now. I’ll hopefully be back to more normal updates tomorrow. I think I might throw in a post like this every now and then though, it’s kind of handy for the little things. Be sure to check back over the weekend when I’ll have an interview with the most excellent Devin Davis.

Well it’s that time again folks. The post that crops up every couple of weeks or so and doesn’t see me shilling whatever new band I’ve discovered this week. It’s time for a bunch of weird and wacky cover songs!

MP3 Belaire - Through The Wire (expired) (Kanye West)
I originally posted this one when I first wrote about Belaire. Originally I had absolutely no idea that it was a cover, much less that it was a rap cover. I think I’m one of the few people that the Kanye West bus (other than Gold Digger and Jesus Walks) hasn’t rolled over just yet. Anyways, after I found out I went and listened to the Kanye version, and I’m all the more impressed by it now. This sounds absolutely nothing like that version, turning it into a driving guitar song, and I love those borderline aggressive female vocals.

MP3 Teenage Fanclub - Here Comes Your Man (expired) (Pixies)
I always find Pixies covers to be interesting if only for the way that they put bands into an awkward spot. They have such a unique sound that it’s pretty hard to cover them without either copying it exactly or changing the sound a hell of a lot. Teenage Fanclub elect the copy scenario, which is reasonable enough. It’s harldy the world’s greatest cover version or anything, but it’s a solid version of a solid song. It seems to have something of a cleaner sound than the original too, actually making it easier to make out the words. Granted they still don’t make a lot of sense, but it’s a help nonetheless.

MP3 Dan Wilson - Everything I Own (expired) (Bread)
I guess I’m about the only person excited by the upcoming Dan Wilson solo album. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of his projects, be it Semisonic, Trip Shakespeare or solo material. I know most people are going to cry ‘middle of the road’ at it and the such, but I don’t really care. I’ve yet to be let down with any release he’s been involved with so I’m very curious about this. Anyway, this is a cover version of a Bread song recorded as part of a live radio performance several months ago. I’m going to be honest and say that I don’t really know the Bread version, but I like this a lot, and it’s the perfect song for Dan’s vocal style.

MP3 Death Cab For Cutie - This Charming Man (expired) (The Smiths)
Oh boy, where do I start with this one? This has to be one of the most shambolic, disastorous covers that I have ever heard. Oddly though, I still like it a hell of a lot. If you’re a big fan of The Smiths oriignal though, you’re probably going to consider this to be akin to rape. I wasn’t when I first heard so it’s not a massive deal for me that the lyrics are completely wrong. It’s all good though as the band apparently feel really bad about getting them wrong. You’d think if you were covering a song you’d check your lyrics were correct first, but apparently not Gibbard and his merry men. Thankfully this doesn’t do any major damage though, other than changing the entire meaning of the song. It’s still a lot of fun in a car crash kind of way though.

If I could just do a quick bit of pimping before I go, don’t forget that this is the last couple of weeks for eMusic’s 50 free mp3 offer. If you haven’t taken advantage of this awesome deal yet, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. If you already have and want a new fix of mp3s (or are just greedy!), don’t forget that Audiolunchbox are also offering 50 free mp3s. Both of this sites have a lot of great stuff available, so be sure to grab what you can, while you can.

Well that’s your lot for today. I’ll hopefully be having my second interview type thingy coming up soon, which should be pretty damn cool. Once again I’m not going to say who it is, just that it’s someone I’ve written about previously. And like last time, it’s not William Shatner. Although that would be aweosme in itself.

Any of you that keep up with what other blogs are writing about will already be familiar with Parlour Boys. A number of major blogs have leapt all over them, and for a good reason: they are damn good at what they do. For once though, the “next big thing” tag actually seems to be appropriate here. Over the past six months they have gone from being a completely unknown five piece from Kentucky to winning the Verizon and Myspace “Calling All Bands” contest (which had 4000 entrants), something that has brought them a truckload of exposure.

Their music certainly isn’t going to win any awards for originality and you pick out a ton of influences in these songs, but they sound damn good. Anything that brings an 80s disco type sound and manages to make it blend perfectly with contemporary indie rock isn’t going to get any complaints from me.

MP3 Parlour Boys - Lovers
MP3 Parlour Boys - Sick Friends

They are currently in the studio recording their second EP (presumably printing a lot more copies too), which is due out sometime this summer. In the meantime, you can purchase their first offering directly from their website for only $5. You notice how cheap awesome music seems to be lately? Random observation I know, but it’s pretty damn cool. You can also go along and say hello to them on Myspace.

Mancino are a New York three-piece that is “one part sonic beast, two parts insecure nerd”. That’s not me trying to insult them, that little gem is straight off of their Myspace page, and yet it seems so very appropriate.

Mancino dabble in just about everything, from 60s pop to jazz to 90s indie songwriting sensibilities. There are elements of Ben Folds alongside elements of Pavement alongside elements of the Beach Boys. And if you aren’t tempting by that combination, you must have had a musical lobotomy.

MP3 Mancino - Tina’s Little Joy (expired)
MP3 Mancino - Hiccup Lines (expired)
MP3 Mancino - Babel By The Mouthful (expired)

As per usual, there’s a website that doesn’t give a great deal of information, a more helpful Myspace. You can purchase their EP for only $8 from the greatness that is CD Baby.

Apologies for the brevity today, just got a lot going on at the moment.

Boy am I late in posting this up. I was originally going to do it last night but was too tired by the time I got home around 1:30am. Handy tip for bloggers: if you’re going to go to the pub and be out until the wee hours, write your posts before you go as you sure as hell won’t want to by the time you get back. Anyways, then I decided to leave it until this morning, when I got sidetracked after learning that the awesome £3.99 sale in Virgin has now become a £1.99 sale. This meant I had to go and buy another 11 discs from it. I’m finally here now though, and I have a new mixtape type thing for your enjoyment.

Now I’m rather nerdy myself, and I’d hazard a guess that quite a few of you reading are too. I think everyone is nerdy is their own way actually, whether it’s about music, film, politics, sport or whatever, and this is certainly no bad thing. At least I hope that it isn’t given the number of things I know far too much about. As such, today we have a little mix dedicated to appreciating the dorky, nerdy, geeky or whatever you want to call it. If you’re wondering, the title ‘Nerding It Up’ doesn’t really mean anything, it was just something I used to describe a very, very geeky conversation in a pub once, and I kind of liked the phrase.

MP3 Weezer - In The Garage (expired)

What else could I open a nerdy mixtape with other than this? Probably one of the first great celebration of geekdom songs there was, and it’s certainly awesome. Covering the geek staples of Dungeons & Dragons, comic books and rock bands, it’s a wonderful ode to having a space where one can entirely be themselves no matter what anyone else thinks. Of course seeing as it’s Weezer, Rivers has to get in a little negativity about himself and his abilities (”I play my stupid songs / I write these stupid words”). Which is all very ironic given their recent material, but let’s not go there.

MP3 Something Corporate - Babies Of The 80s (expired)

I’ve mentioned my liking of Something Corporate despite their distinct lack of “indie cool” in the past, so you’re just going to have to deal with them being a part of this. Songs don’t really get much more dorky than this, and it’s all the more great by the fact it’s a nostalgic trip through everything of the 80s. Star Wars, MTV, Nick At Night, Toys R Us and a bunch of other stuff is all in here, and it sounds good. I really don’t get what people have against Something Corporate actually, they make some awesome pop songs.

MP3 Mixel Pixel - At The Arcade (expired)

Couldn’t really leave off a song called ‘At The Arcade’ now, could I? Thankfully it’s a good, fun song too. Essentially the tale of a boy meeting a girl at the arcade (she’s playing Pacman) and the awkwardness that follows. Until they get it together and just get stoned together.

MP3 The Rakes - iProblem (expired)

The ultimate in songs that name check other artists. Not only do The Rakes reference Bloc Party, Babyshambles, The Go! Team, The Futureheads and Kasabian, they also manage to mimic some of them a little. All of this while lead singer Alan is talking to Apple tech support about getting his iPod fixed. If you’ve ever spent time on a customer service helpline, this will be so very true (”I’ve been on the line about fifteen minutes now / And I’m starting to get a little bit annoyed / No, I know it’s not your fault / Are you really in India?”). It’s hardly a musical masterpiece, but it rarely fails to put a smile on my face.

MP3 MC Lars - Space Game (expired)

I know I said I wouldn’t post any MC Lars for a while, but the guy has an entire discography that could fit in with this theme. Narrowing it down to one was pretty hard, but it had to be ‘Space Game’ in the end, merely for the fact it references more scifi films, tv shows and comics than I can count. I won’t even begin to cover the references here, but when a song includes lines like “Hey Fry, look, we can still be friends / I won’t ask Leela out again”, I think it’s safe to say that it doesn’t get any geekier than that. Throw in an awesome guest appearance by ‘DJ HAL’ (yes, that HAL), and you’ve got the most gleefully geeky song I’ve ever heard.

MP3 Ozma - Game Over (expired)

This could almost be a sequel to the Mixel Pixel song earlier on. ‘Game Over’ charts the end of a relationship as the end of a video game (”I bet you don’t know how to find / Our extra lives times ninety nine / I know you tried but we still died”). Ozma are another band where there are a whole bunch of songs that fit the theme, so let’s all be happy that they are back together again after a three year hiatus. I also love the video game type music that seems to be in the background through most of the song too, and any song that refers to the other half in a relationship as “2P” is going to win me over.

MP3 Hartley Goldstein - The Mystery Of George Harrison’s Beard (expired)

Is there a bigger geek currently recording music? On the basis of Hartley’s five song EP, “Songs In The Key Of Zoloft”, I think not. In other songs he sings all about his hero, music producer Brad Wood, and sings a love song to the good Woody Allen films of the 70s. This one is all about growing up as a lonely nerd and never really getting past that even in adulthood (”But now I’m old and those days are gone / And everything I used to like now is no fun / I’m 23 and I wish I was a third grade”). Apparently there will be some new Hartley material coming later on this year, which is more exciting to me than just about every other upcoming release.

Bonus MP3 Ozma - Korobeinki (expired)

Honestly, if after listening to this one, you have no idea why I included it, you’ve probably been readng the wrong post.