Pictured: Yeah, no one’s ever questioned this guy’s love for National Geographic.
It sounds fairly trite, the idea of a band writing its music based on National Geographic articles from the 50s and 60s, but Portland, OR’s Bark Hide and Horn finds its inspiration from these little gems. Articles written about a grizzly’s great revenge on the hunters who killed his mate, honey ants slaving their lives away, a spider who fell in love with his insect-food, and so on and so forth, all become ideas for folkie rock songs. Somewhere in the vicinity of Conor Oberst’s lighter work with a Sufjan-ish style for arrangement, Bark Hide and Horn is mostly soft and careful, floating around acoustic guitar and very prominent lead trumpet parts, but they’re never afraid to throw in a few surprises (spoiler alert: electro-pop parts) to keep our interest.
Bark Hide and Horn - Treasure of the Everglades
Treasure of the Everglades is about two snails breeding. It was instantly good for me, and I think it can be good for you too. Snail breeding, that is.
Pictured: Hospital Ships’ Jordan Geiger with big-head cheat code on.
Songwriter Jordan Geiger is (un)known for his writing and singing in Minus Story, and recently for his trumpeting in the band Shearwater. With his new project, Hospital Ships, Geiger steps into his own even more.
The creativity that flows through Oh, Ramona is similar to that heard from Islands. The layers and layers of nasally vocals are nearly the same at times, and songs use heaps of keyboards and organs on top of less dense guitars. Where Islands has a flare for the silly and overly dramatic, Hospital Ships manages to stay a bit more low key and straightforward, making them slightly less difficult to relate to at times. That’s not to say that songs like Bitter Radio Single and I Want It to Get Out are anti-climatic though, as most of the album works by building up to giant choruses of overlapping parts and colorfully laid vocals.
Hospital Ships - Bitter Radio Single
Geiger hits it perfectly on Bitter Radio Single. “Screw this fucking city,” in the bridge explodes into the song’s ending.
Pictured: The band was doing just fine until Steve Nash showed up on keys(far right), wearing his favorite collared shirt and that damned howling wolf tank top again.
Let’s be honest, I’m a sucker for songs with lots of bells, and Deleted Scenes carves itself around them on the song Ithaca. I know what you’re thinking, but really, this is a good rock band and there’s no cutesy toy xylophone ridiculousness involved. Instead, a constant tonal ringing is a frame for the band’s somewhat afro-cussion, bright, accommodating guitar melodies and Menomena-esque double-vocal lines(ehh, two posts in a row with mentions of Manenema?). They get themselves worked up every once in a while, but for the most part my beloved bells keep Deleted Scenes in a sleepy, laid-back and lovable sort of mindset. Plus, one look at their Myspace page, equipped with small tour dates, cheap EPs and mega-appreciation for slowly growing press, and it’s hard not to root for guys like these.
Deleted Scenes - Ithaca
Click, click, click.
Pictured: Lackthereof asks not indie-rock-weirdies can do for you, but what you can do for indie-rock-weirdies.
Lackthereof is an awesome project from Danny Seim (Menomena). It sounds sort of like what Primitive Radio Gods would sound like if they were still around, and not just a one hit wonders from the mid-nineties. There’s bass heavy, drum heavy, mid-tempo jams with bittersweet melodies all wrapped around some sing-song melodies that make you shake your sarcasm-hardened groove thang. Yes, thang.
There’s a close enough tie between Lackthereof and Menomena to occasionally get a “Oh yeah, he was in THAT band” moment, but enough of a distance to give Lackthereof an identity all its own. Anyway, Lackthereof is on Barsuk now, which will hopefully get Seim the attention he so desperately deserves. At last count there were something like 1100 friends on his myspace. I routinely get adds from fat kids playing sevendust covers with more friends than that. C’mon America let’s get with the program.
Last November is the best track on Lackthereof’s new album, Your Anchor. It bounces along with minimal bass and organ until the end of the song, when we get some relative explosiveness (and even a key change). Anyway, find this album if you get the chance. It goes great with a pog collection and a half liter of Surge.
Lackthereof - Last November
Pictured: Everest. Stealing the souls of hitchhikers since 2005.
Everest is an alt-country band from California. They sound like what would happen if Michael Stipe took over The Cardinals and got a severe case of catchy-awesome-hook syndrome. It’s all there, the build ups, the sweet melodies, the twangy guitar, and the organ. I have a feeling this album is only going to get better as we approach the melancholy months of Fall, but even as it stands now, I can’t get enough. There’s something to be said for a band that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but does something that’s been done before in such a novel concept that it seems fresh and new. I don’t know how deft of a sentence that is, but it’s heartfelt.
Rebels in the Roses is the heartbeat of Everest’s record. It is all crashing guitars, melodrama, and heart fluttering tremolo. Everest never loses sight of the goal of music, to make you feel things more deeply than previously thought possible. You might crinkle your nose at the idea, but Everest takes your crinkle and busts right through it. Seriously, just listen to the bridge and I won’t have to explain. Good job California, you finally gave me an emotion besides “happy” and “excited about surfing.”
Everest - Rebels In The Roses
Pictured: Sing, scream, repeat.
Justin Vernon is one bad-ass dude. He grows beards, he pushes people around in the post, and he writes records that everyone loves and wants to buy. That’s a big three for three. This is from an album he did before the glory (but when he was still pushing people around in the post.) Vernon recorded and released this in Eau Claire back before Deyarmond moved to Raleigh.
It’s funny how much this bridges the gap between Deyarmond, both musically and ideologically. There is still the same loneliness, the same isolation that so many people have come to relate with Justin’s current work, but there’s still something folky and earthy about the Hazeltons recording as well. This is Justin stripping down, calling us out, and getting out before anything hits the fan. Oh, and the music is unstoppable too. That helps.
It’s pretty hard to find this recording, but if by magic you find it, immediately pick it up. It’s not only a portrait of the artist as a young man, but a portrait of the rest of us too. Sheesh, who knows what I’m saying anymore. Just listen.
Justin Vernon - Hazelton
Pictured: We usually only wear two piece suits when doing the show. Shorts count as one “piece.”
Hey guys, we’re almost one year into doing our radio show. It has been a fun ride thus far, filled with good music (that andy picks) and ok music (that I usually pick). We’ve gotten yelled at by an old man, done interviews with some local music scene movers and shakers, and generally made all sorts of musical chaos. There may have been some Randy Newman in there too.
Anyway, this is just to let you know that the show still goes on. If you live in the Eau Claire area, you can catch it at 96.3 WHYS from the 9-10pm slot. If you don’t live around us, you can stream it online for free at www.whysradio.org (same time). We’ve been promising an archive of old shows (of which we have a bunch) for a long, long time now. We can’t talk in certainties, but it looks like we’ll have something cool lined up with Volume One (the magazine Andy and I write for) very soon. Until then, we may put some up, we may not. It’s all sort of up in the air. No radio pun intended.
Anyway, we appreciate whenever you listen/read/whatever. Thanks, and let’s make it another year.
Pictured: White Hinterland can play your next “brown out” party.
White Hinterland recently played a living room in Eau Claire at our friend’s house. It was, in one word, incredible. In two words it would be, “incredibly awesome”, or maybe, “damn dude!” Anyway, they put on a helluva show. We wanted to take a video of it for the website, but unfortunately for us they play in almost total darkness. We could have turned our night vision on, but did you really want to watch concert footage that looks like a Paris Hilton sex tape? We didn’t think so.
Anyway, here’s the next best thing, a track from White Hinterland’s newest album, Phylactery Factory, “Dreaming of the Plum Trees.” The track sort of sways back and forth in the breeze, like a Jobim fever dream. The piano jolts and jives and generally creates perfect summer noise while lead singer, Casey Dienel cutes her way through a song about people buying cigarette boats and running around in bare feet. Yeah, I know, someone wrote ANOTHER song about buying a cigarette boat.
I feel like the less I say about this, the better. Just listen on your ipod, stereo, or whatever with your feet up and your nose in freshly cut grass. It’s what life is all about.
White Hinterland - Dreaming of the Plum Trees
Pictured: Geri X may, in fact, be rocking a six string bass. I’m not sure, I sort of lost count after four. Anyway, another Peervalidated first!
Geri X is another great band that we played with on tour. If I’m honest with myself (which I think is the best policy for all the parties involved), I would say that I was a bit *ahem* skeptical when I heard their band name, which sounded to me more like an X-Man from the mid nineties than a typical indie-folk rock bard. Luckily for me (and you) I was wrong.
Geri X sounds like what Regina Spektor and Fiona Apple would sound like if they had a magical baby that they raised with a profound hope in the human race. Geri’s vocals tilt and lilt along the backdrop of organs, acoustic guitars, and good old fashioned hand claps. She alternates between songs about hopeful love and the end of the world. This dichotomy might seem a bit odd on paper, but it works out in the best possible way.
“3,000 Lines of Defense” is the opener on their record, Anthems of a Broken Heart. Sounds like a Portishead folk song. Yeah, weird. Anyway, if you like this sort of thing (and who doesn’t, really?) than this is for you. Yes, you. Check out their ambitious tour schedule to see when they’ll be playing around your little ear drums.
Geri X - 3,000 Lines Of Defense
Pictured: Daredevil is ready for some quality D&D. Hope you brought Cooler Ranch.
As you may or may not know, Kyle and I play in a band called Laarks. We recently went on a tour with the very incredible, “The Daredevil Christopher Wright”. I know it probably isn’t proper to put their name in quotation marks, but it seemed like there were a lot of “the”s in a row without it. Anyway, this comes from an EP that they put out in support of their most recent tour. Every one of them was hand painted and came with a mis-labeled mp3 tag. The former was probably intended, the second was probably not.
Anyway, this EP is solid stuff. The first track is from their forth coming EP, a cute little mid-tempo song about a brother moving to the east coast. It is titled (appropriately enough), “The East Coast”. This is not the song we are posting. Look for it soon. I’ve heard the whole album, and it kills me a little bit everyday that I can’t put it up on here.
The next track is a 7 minute epic that has some of the weirdest, greatest harmonies I’ve heard from a band in a long time. We aren’t posting that one either.
“Ian,” you are saying with the knowing smile of an older sibling, “What could you possibly be putting up? What could possibly be as great as those other songs?” Well, let me tell you, friend. “Old Time Love Songs” is a beautiful, short, little gem that manages to unlock that part of your brain that says, “Ah yes, there it is. THAT is what I’ve been looking for.” There is organ, there is guitar, there isn’t really any drums. It’s virtually perfect. The low-fi recording (the band did it themselves on a ratty old laptop) only adds to the charm. Do yourself a favor and check it out before they blow up big-time. We’re talking, “Grey’s Anatomy” big.
The Daredevil Christopher Wright - Old Time Love Songs
Pictured: Murdocks only travel one-by-one, in a straight line. Buddy-system style.
I want to drink beer with this band, and I want to be as loud and reckless as they are when I do it. I want to be sloppy drunk while we parade around town and spit in the face of the whole damn thing. It doesn’t need to be the weekend. It could be Tuesday. It could be noon. That way we’d be more out of place and cause more of a disturbance.
Something about the Murdocks’ album Roar! makes me feel this way. It’s a blaze of indie-rock gone pop-punk, full of simple power chords and nasally hooks, plenty of vocal lines involving meaningless sounds like “hey,” and “la.” This is pop-punk that kids who grew out of pop-punk long ago can still get excited for. Also, the album cover is pink and has a yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex on it. Awesome.
Murdocks - Playhouse Down
Playhouse Down is a fan fave, as in, I’m a fan and it is my fave.
It seems a little bit bandwagon to tout an album that has been in Paste, but I knew it first, so this is my call for cred. Doug’s Burr’s On Promenade was released last year by a small label in California, Velvet Blue Music. VBM is sort of my go to label. Because of gems like the initial release of Richard Swift’s The Novelist, Frank Lenz’s Conquest Slaughter, and LN’s Novel, when adequately financed, I will buy most anything they do. At this point it is safe to mention On Promenade in the same breath as any of the amazing albums put out by this definitionally independent label. Also, I obscenity in the milk of cred.
Doug Burr is what country music should be. He should be headlining Country Jam/Fest with Okkervil River, Songs:Ohia, Sixteen Horsepower, and Willie Nelson. Unfortunately, popular country and western music has become a purgatorial reflection of top forty radio pop, embracing all of the inherent flaws and mediocrity of music that has current mass appeal. There isn’t really a profitable place for songs of this sort. Songs that are important. For shame.
Burr’s writing can be both ominous and hopeful. Vivid descriptions of dreams and letters from painters are paired with lush instrumentation atypical of the sometimes austere alt-country genre. The album has a well crafted ebb and flow of tempo and mood making repeat listens genuinely enjoyable.
‘How Can The Lark (My Dear Theo)’ is presented as a letter from an aforementioned painter to his brother, a correspondence of love and pain and compulsion. The guitar swell at the end of the first verse may be my favorite moment in any of his songs, so pay attention. The song will leave you, the listener, hanging a bit as it fades absolutely perfectly into the next song. You’ll have to buy it or come over to my house to hear it in context. Open invite.
Doug Burr - How Can The Lark (My Dear Theo)
Pictured: Carl Spidla. Reinforcing every indie-kid stereotype in one photo. If only it were a polaroid.
My least favorite part about writing for Peer Validated is that more often than not I have to find music on other blogs before I can post it. Basically, I have to steal from other sites, and I feel really bad about it. Sometimes I can convince myself that it’s worth it, mostly when what I’m stealing is really, really good, like re-posting something that was once completely original isn’t half as bad as keeping it to myself. This live recording of Carl Spidla’s Blackfly Rag, originally posted on my very favorite site, Saidthegramophone.com, is that kind of thing.
The rolling, finger-picked song, both smooth and ragged in the same way that Devendra Banhart can be at times, the roomy recording, leaving every breath and foot shuffle, every creaking chair, Spidla’s wise, caring voice and domestically conflicted lyrics, “I pretend to be myself and you pretend to be the woman I love. My whole heart is coming apart at the place it meets…,” are all just too good to not post…again.
Carl Spidla - Blackfly Rag
This song helps me enjoy my summer nights. This song and patio furniture. And rum.
The name of this band puts me off, but their name is the only thing that puts me off about the French Kicks. There is not a song I would skip on their new disc, but for now I will focus on “Love in the Ruins”, which is great in context or as a standalone, or an introduction to the French Kicks. I guess that’s called a single.
Is that a ukulele in the beginning? Whatever it is, I like it because it’s misleading. Kind of a switcheroo the Kicks are pulling on us. “Love in the Ruins” is not a fast song by most standards, but it does move along at a pace that I didn’t expect upon hearing the opening chords. Which is weird, because the tempo doesn’t actually change at all. Music.
The bass part comes in halfway through the verse and is just sexy. When I flipped through the liner notes for Swimming, I noticed that they thank the Walkmen. I can hear that Brooklyn stuff in the bass track. Surely I’m not the only one who lumped all those Brooklyn bands together and got sick of all of them at the same time, but the French Kicks are breathing new life into the scene. It’s not annoying to me anymore.
The chorus, the chorus. The chorus represents the thing I love most about this band: laziness. The vocal tracks just sound so lazy and slurred and it’s fantastic. They really have the loose-feel thing down to a science. Which is weird, because it’s like a paradox… right?
One more thing I would like to note is the verse that cuts the bass out again. There a lot of moments on the record that work because of spaces, silences, subtractions. This is one of them. So good.
French Kicks - Love In The Ruins
Go to the French Kicks’ 
, or their MySpace.
Video: Just The Small Cities being The Small Cities.
As previously posted, these doods are pretty durn good. “They sound like David Bazan and Low blowing apart your hollow construct of reality,” said we. The Small Cities deliver the full experience live, making epic narrations look easier and more flawless each time they play. The footage can only portray so much of it, but this threesome can completely fill a room with surprisingly large sounds. And, of course, we fully appreciate a band that can hold its own with witty on-stage banter.
Do the myspace thing to hear more of their songs and catch a show.