Another Form of Relief

The Decemberists are one of those bands that I like but don’t really keep up with. The last time I heard anything of them, they were having their asses handed to them by Stephen Colbert as part of Guitarmageddon. It is perhaps fitting then they will apparently be on the show once again in a couple of weeks. Maybe if they had a song like this the first time around, they may have won.

The Rake’s Song is thoroughly unpleasant. It’s not like the Decemberists haven’t put together twisted tales in the past, but this one took me by surprise. It all starts routinely enough with a guy marrying a girl. He’s not entirely happy but it seems to meet his needs. It falls apart when “her womb started spilling out babies”. The wording of that line alone gives a hint of the dark nature of what is to come, but it still manages to take one aback with just how graphic it gets on it’s spiral downward.

If this song was by any other band, I’d probably be somewhat disturbed by it all. Somehow it manages to suit the Decemberists though. Colin Meloy’s voice is perfectly pitched for the “dark fairytale” kind of sound, and now it would appear for even more grim material. It all jumps along jauntily enough, which should be even more disconcerting. Somehow it all works though, perhaps because of it’s very sound. If the music was as dark as the words, this would probably almost be unlistenable.

The Hazards of Love is out now on Rough Trade.

It seems inevitable now that any band that is even the least bit theatrical will be compared to The Decemberists. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Meloy and company are certainly a decent band. I find that my tolerance for elaborately instrumented stories is rather limited. It all sounds very nice and all, but is there really a need to be so over the top?

Which sounds like I’m setting up Pale Young Gentlemen for a fall. There is no way of getting around the fact that their music is theatrical, but they also manage to still sound like a band who isn’t fussed about that fact. The song is still the most important element, racing onwards, with just a hint of desperation in singer Mike Reisenauer’s voice. If a few extra instruments have jumped on board, the band is too busy to have noticed.

I’m a latecomer to The Decemberists party. I only really discovered them a fair bit after the buzz that surrounded their previous album, ‘Picaresque’. Since then, I’ve got into that album and a few other songs, but they’ve never excited me enough to try and find more of their albums. I don’t know why this is; I know that there is certainly nothing wrong with The Decemberists and their songs, and they should be a band I absolutely adore, but for some reason I just don’t.

Anyway, last year they created a small stir by signing with major label Capitol Records, leaving a bunch of fans eager to hear whether their sound has been reduced to a shadow of it’s former self. While this is what sadly happened to Death Cab For Cutie with the release of ‘Plans’, the change in environment seemingly hasn’t changed The Decemberists at all. If you’re familiar with the dodgier parts of the internet, you’ll probably know that The Decemberists’ upcoming album, ‘The Crane Wife’, is now “available”. Despite my previous reservations about the band, this has quickly become one of my favourite releases that I’ve heard this year. For those of you worried about a potential dumbing down, the standard eccentricities are here, to the point of multi-part songs (the album opens with ‘The Crane Wife 3′ – parts 1 and 2 come later) and two songs that are in excess of eleven minutes.

Today, the first “official” free download was made available when ‘Summersong’ from the upcoming album was offered up on Pitchfork. Seeing as it’s been up there all day, I imagine all of you have already got it, but if you’re one of the three readers of my blog who doesn’t read Pitchfork, feel free to enjoy the song below. It’s not my favourite song from the album (‘O Valencia’ wins that by a mile’), but it’s the one I’m less likely to get sued for posting. If you’re familiar with The Decemberists, there won’t be anything massively new and exciting here. If you’re not, it’s probably one of their most accessible songs yet, a nice little indie folk number that still manages to be full of lyrical eccentricities. At the very least, it should be curious to make you want to seek out more from the album.

MP3 The Decemberists – Summersong (expired)

‘The Crane Wife’ is released on October 3 on Capitol Records.

The Decemberists: Website || Myspace

So yesterday I went to see United 93, which was a far better film than I imagined. I’m not sure what I expected it from it, but it wasn’t as depressing as it could have been, nor was it flag-wavingly patriotic, my other main fear for it. In it’s place was a well thought out character study of how people deal with a crisis. It’s incredibly brutal at times, particularly the final frames, but well worth the effort.

On the other end of the entertainment scale, I saw the finale to Everwood yesterday, which has been one of my favourite shows of the past few years. The show is the biggest casulty of the WB and UPN merger, meaning there wasn’t room on the schedule for it with such classics as Seventh Heaven and America’s Top Model needing a place. It’s a shame that it ended so suddenly, and the rewrites of the finale did lead to a happy ending overload, but it was a satisfying enough conclusion to a great series.

Oh, right, we’re here for music? Today is one of the fun covers posts I’m afraid, as I’ve got a bunch of other fun site related work to get done this afternoon.

MP3 Pavement – The Killing Moon (expired) (Echo & The Bunnymen)
‘The Killing Moon’ is a defining song to both music fans of the 80s and Donnie Darko fans, and this Pavement version does it justice. Recorded at a BBC session in 1997 and released as part of the ‘Major Leagues’ EP, it keeps the abstract feel of the original while still giving it a sound that is undeniably Pavement. Malkmus’ adds his typically lethargic vocals, and somehow manages to start singing about ‘cucumbers’ and ‘cabbage’ by the end of the song.

MP3 Ryan Adams – Wonderwall (expired) (Oasis)
Take one overrated song from a pretty crappy band, put it through the Ryan Adams depression process and the result isn’t actually as bad as you would think. It’s far from perfect, the computer trickery on Adams’ voice really does the song no favours at all, yet it still manages to hold one’s attention for it’s four minutes runtime. It doesn’t seem possible, but Adams also seems able to make the song seem even more self-important than it did before. Quite a feat given how crappy the words are when you actually pay attention to them.

MP3 The Decemberists – Up The Junction (live) (expired) (Squeeze)
‘Up The Junction’ is just about the only Squeeze song that I really like, although I haven’t really explored a great deal of their back catalog. The Decemberists version keeps the fun, upbeat feel of the song, even with the pretty miserable subject matter. It also manages to suit Colin Meloy’s voice perfectly, which is pretty weird as he’s about the last person to sound working class from Clapham, but there you go.

That’s all for now folks. I’d also advise that you check out Nothing But Green Lights, the new blog from Mike, who was behind the excellent Take Your Medicine. I’ll warn you now that it’ll take a little getting used to if you have an aversion to green though.

So today I found out about a music festival called All Tomorrow’s Parties. I’ve heard of it before, but today I found out a little more about it. Only to discover that the damn thing has been taking place right under my nose for the past six years. Anyone who knows me will have heard my rants about how where I live is a cultural wasteland, devoid of anything remotely interesting without a trip to London. Yet since 2000, there has been a musical festival occuring a mere 90 minutes away that I was entirely oblivious to.

Just to beat myself up a little more about this, I had a look at some of the artists that have played it in the past few years. Arab Strap, Yo La Tengo, The Fall, Enon, Modest Mouse, Malkmus, The Shins, The Violent Femmes, Spoon, I Am Kloot and most intriguingly of all, Vincent Gallo. All of these were playing just down the road. Granted it’s a pretty long road, but there they were. Oh, and if anyone has any idea exactly what Vincent Gallo does at a music festival, I’d be delighted to hear it.

So with great haste I scrambled through the website looking for details of the 2006 event, and was pleasantly surprised to find the best line up so far: The Shins, The New Pornographers, The Decemberists, Spoon, Teenage Fanclub, Broken Social Scene and a ton of others. And of course the bloody thing is sold out already, isn’t it?

So here’s to All Tomorrow’s Parties 2007. Which knowing my luck probably won’t happen for one reason or another.

Oh right, you’re here for mp3s. Here, in celebration of this wonderful discovery, are a few mp3s of bands that Eddie won’t be seeing at ATP 2006:

MP3 The Shins – So Says I
MP3 The Decemberists – Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect
MP3 The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

Cheap CDs ahoy!

UK readers may be interested to know that Virgin Megastores have one hell of a sale on right now. It’s in store only, but involves them selling off thousands of CDs at a bargaintastic

There is just about one thing that I find more interesting than music in this world: politics. Now I realise a ton of you have just written me off as being entire insane, but I can live with that. Nor do I particularly hide my politics, being a card carrying (literally) liberal of the (hopefully) non-loony variety. As such, it seemed fitting that the first mix I’d put together on here would be a combining of my politics into what I usually do here.

So in celebration of another glorious raping of our civil liberties that the public don’t give a shit about, Another Form of Relief is proud to present The World Is A Mess, But Our Hair Is Perfect. This is an updated edition of a mix I originally made last year, and seems depressingly more relevant than that. I know there’s a certain irony in most of the songs being by American bands about American issues, but god knows British bands aren’t getting political which would make this thing pretty damn short.

Note: This will only be available for a limited amount of time, so if you want any part of it, get it now, as I’ll be taking it down within a week of this post.

MP3 01 – The Robot Ate Me – The Genocide Ball (expired)
MP3 02 – Koufax – Why Bother At All (expired)
MP3 03 – Actionslacks – This Damn Nation (expired)
MP3 04 – The Rakes – Terror! (acoustic) (expired)
MP3 05 – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Counting Down The Hours (expired)
MP3 06 – The Decemberists – Sixteen Military Wives (expired)
MP3 07 – Ben Folds – All You Can Eat (expired)
MP3 08 – The Wading Girl – Amber Waves (expired)
MP3 09 – Stars – Celebration Guns (expired)
MP3 10 – Elliott Smith – A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free (expired)
MP3 11 – Ben Kweller – Jerry Falwell Destroyed The Earth (expired)
MP3 12 – Desaparecidos – Greater Omaha (expired)
MP3 13 – And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Worlds Apart (expired)
MP3 Bonus – The Rakes – The World Was A Mess, But His Hair Was Perfect (expired)

The additional Rakes song doesn’t really fit the rest of the theme, but the title fits perfect and it’s a rather good song, so I thought I’d throw it in there. There’s an 18 minute version of it with a massively extended pub conversation, but that seemed a tad overbearing so I kept it to the shorter version.

I’m not sure how well it flows together, but I tried to assemble it the best I could so it had some sense of cohesion to it at all. I know it can be a little preachy at times, and this may grate for some people, but I like my music to actually have a message, and everything here certainly has one.

I’m going to try and put up some kind of new mixtape every fortnight, but seeing as I’m exceedingly lazy it’ll probably end up being every couple of months instead. Still, enjoy. Normal service will resume sometime tomorrow.

And until then, Good Weather For Air Strikes have a complete Belle & Sebastian concert up in awesome quality that is certainly worth your time.