hey, all. hope everyone had a terrific flaggy patriot’s day weekend. i had fun with a two front war on my aging computer and my own inertia. but i did make it out to park slope for an awesome show. it was at union hall, which might qualify as an officially awesome bar, as it features both indoor bocce ball and sprawling, cooshy couches backed by row upon row of faux-leatherbound books. anyway, the show featured four artists, namely julia read, lady lamb the beekeeper, lucius, and (the headliner), you won’t (an awesome boston band that combines the better aspects of neutral milk hotel with the precision rhythms of rob crow and incredibly catchy melodies). lucius was also worth checking out, a peculiar (but highly appealing) detroit motown spin on the givers-style crawdad-nawlins tight-harmony pop-rock. lovely. it’s worth noting that lucius just dropped an EP + you won’t a full-length album. andy-ways, here are some fo-tos from th’ sho-to!
jody rosen of slate said it too well for me to bother paraphrasing: “jonah, forget rusted root. try baha men. one of the things i love about ‘ambling alp’—and there’s lots i love about this clattery art-pop freakout—is the fact that it’s a stealth jock jam.” put that together with naked people in the desert and you have a song on repeat repeat repeat:
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well, after around two months of shuffling my feet, i’ve finished anna karenina. personally, my interest dropped off dramatically after about 200,000 words (or, you know, halfway) and i found it hard to come to terms with a resolution that i felt bore little or no relation to the substantive action of the book. but then again, i’m really not in a position to criticize leo tolstoy.
anyway, speaking of shuffling your feet, if you’re planning to do that, you should do it to the song “ripe” by givers, which is the only song i can bring to mind which begins with something resembling “chopsticks” and winds up in a kind of orgiastic explosion. (truthfully, though, how many can there be?)
i’m sorry to say i don’t have a raft of pictures soaked deep in the spanish sun to share with you (i’m waiting until i get access to a computer that has a screen larger than a postage stamp), but i’ll share a few just to be sociable. hope you’re all grand!
allow me to add myself to the growing clamor surrounding rjd2′s new project (with aaron livingston), called icebird. they’re going to be releasing an album called “the abandoned lullaby”. i’ve only heard this one track (and true to “since we last spoke” form, it fades out and explodes), but it’s pretty super. enjoy!
“going and going. and going” (icebird)
