February of 2006, I saw mewithoutYou in the Kokomo Convention Center. They had wrapped up a tour a couple months before, had done some writing, and were driving to California to record their new record.
That night, they played some of songs from that record for the first time. And immediately, it was obvious that things would be different.
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When my wife and I started dating, we went through that phase every new couple goes through where you share mix CDs back and forth.
One of the mixes that she gave me included “Brand New Key,” a bouncing, Honky-Tonking raucous track led by Melanie’s powerful voice and a mischievous innuendo (the key is a…you know).
I found this record in a dollar bin years ago, and haven’t listened to it until now. And with that single as my only preview, I’m a bit surprised.
I wasn’t alive in the 1960s, so my understanding of the decade has been distilled through decades of media digest. But this record is about as close to the quintessential ’60s sound that I can imagine.
The last couple years, I’ve been noticing a trend of female singer-songwriters picking up electric guitars and coating their otherwise gentle compositions with thick layers of doom metal and shoegaze (see also: Chelsea Wolfe, King Woman). It’s a simple enough formula, but it works, and I am here for it. Continue reading
In college, I frequently visited a French music site called La Blogotheque. The site had a segment called Takeaway Shows, which were videos of independent artists performing stripped down arrangements of their songs.
This project led me to discover a number of my favorite artists, such as Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Lykke Li, and Swedish chamber pop maestro Loney Dear.
I arrived at college as a scene kid freshman with a swoopy haircut, girl jeans, and a CD wallet filled with metalcore and emo albums.
Living in a dorm beside so many diverse music fans was a quick relief for that.
In the first few months, I was inundated with wonderful music that expanded my own tastes outward—many of those CDs still have a place among my favorite records. Artists like Sigur Rós, the Mars Volta, Imogen Heap and Frou Frou, Bright Eyes…
And Damien Rice.
Among the masses of hipsterdom, the pantheon of Americana has long been dismissed as “dad rock.” Uncool, out-of-touch, and pedestrian. It’s to be expected: indie rock has always been rooted in a sort of iconoclasm. It’s imbued with a rejection of establishment practices and the conventions of commercial music.
Then, like a bolt of lightning across the night sky, a two-headed beast reached out of Philadelphia and grabbed Dad Rock by the shoulders and pulled it toward itself.
The beast’s heads were Kurt Vile and Adam Granduciel.
“If there’s no such thing as time, you’re already there,” asserts the professorial voice that opens the record.
But given that it took me seven years to add this record to my collection, I have to take issue with his claims.
