Song Of The Week: Park Ave – Lachrymose Obsequious Vehement Elated

Park Ave. was an indie pop group from Omaha, Nebraska. The line up included: Clark Baechle (The Faint) and Jamie Williams (Tilly & the wall) on guitars, Conor Oberst (bright eyes) on drums, Neely Jenkins  (Tilly & the wall) on bass guitar, and Jenn Bernard on keyboards.

I accidentally stumbled upon park ave when looking around for early bright eyes demos. Their 1st and only record, When Jamie Went to London We broke up, isn’t perfect, but its pretty astounding considering how old these kids were when they recorded this stuff (in high school). I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that most of the lyrics were written by Conor, I’m not sure if its true but they certainly seem like early BE style lyrics.

anyway, great song. Its worth checking out the album if you can find it.

Park Ave. – Lachrymose Obsequious Vehement Elated

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New Release : The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

Just In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard, The National dropped the first single off their new album High Violet (due out May 11). Their Last two albums (Alligator and Boxer) were among the best of the decade (imo) .  Listen below, its amazing.

The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

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SONG OF THE WEEK: The Tallest Man On Earth – Kids On The Run

Im sorry I wont shut up about the new tallest man on earth album. I promise I’ll start talking about new stuff next week. I had to post this song. The lyrics are too good.

Oh meet me when the morning fails on the fields of desire
Oh meet me when I lost my part in the choir of dusk
Where the promise to lead what is right
As we both know how fields will turn white
And know I will never speak of days
Cause I know you wont count them.

No we have never grown a day from the poison we shared
And we’re walking our crooked backs home
But will we ever confess what we’ve done?
Guess we’re still kids on the run.

And no we will never be a part of the pictures once taken
When we’re feeding fire with the flames til no memories gone
And the cold sky will write us a song
But will we ever confess what we’ve done?
Guess we’re still kids on the run

And the reflections in their eyes
Sure could paint us as killers
Oh, I’ll be there.

And til the terror of our time
Could forgive us as lovers
Oh, lets break some hearts….

And no i will never speak of ways ’cause i know you wont try them
But all the weapons raining from the sky will be ours to embrace
And the cold sky will write us a song
But will we ever confess what we’ve done
Guess we’re still kids on the run.

The Tallest Man On Earth – Kids on the Run

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How Do You Feel About All These Shitty No-Fi Bands?

Just this morning (a few minutes ago to be exact) I stumbled upon Spinner’s new song of the day, the fantastic OCD GO GO Girls, By rocking trend setters, Lovvers, and I honestly couldn’t be more excited. This is is not, of course, because this band is any good (they are terrible) but because shitty derivative no-fi bands like Lovvers are one of the main reasons behind why I started FNR, and now I have a chance to talk about how awesome they are.

Being the stupid music loving hipster that I am, a few years ago I thought It would be a great idea to move to Brooklyn. All those awesome bands!, all those great all ages venues! Optimism for the future filled my silly little hipster heart, needless to say,  I couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out, approximately 9/10 bands that play in Brooklyn actually suck. and approximately 1/2 of them are essentially Lovvers.

“But wait dude! Living in Brooklyn is totally still worth it because even if 9/10 bands suck there are like 109480958205 bands, which means that there are a ton of rad ones right?!”

well…kind of. You see, there are a lot of pretty cool bands that come out of BK, but the problem is that there are SO MANY shows every single night, that your chances of seeing a good band (before they’ve blown up, and people are paying attention to where they play) are slim to none. It’s not really any better than if you lived in any other major city in the US with a decent music scene. Basically BK is a total crap shoot, and the only real advantage to living in BK is that you also live in NYC, which means that pretty much every band that does a full US tour will make a stop here, so I’ll stop complaining for a little bit and get back to Lovvers…

Now, this band is called Lovvers, obviously its supposed to be ironic right? I mean, two “V’s”, they are most definitely making fun of wavves right?

Maybe…I imagine the naming of this band went something like this:

—

BRO A: “bro, I totally love this new band Wavves, they totally rule”

BRO B: “bro, we should totally be in a Wavves cover band, and misspell the name using two “V’s”, I think that would be totally ironic right?”

BRO A:”yeah….Uh….if people shit on us we can just say we’re trying to be ironic, that’s ironic right?….and its hip to be ironic right?….lets do it!”

BRO B:”this is great, neither of us can write lyrics, so now we can just mute them with fuzz and people wont be able tell how shitty they are”

BRO A:”I’m so stoked dude, lets do this! load up garage band right now!”

—

DO SHITTY NO-FI/LO-FI BANDS PISS YOU OFF?

DO YOU FEEL LIKE WRITING GOOD LYRICS IS SO PASSE?

DO YOU THINK ITS TOUGH TO FIND GOOD BANDS IN BROOKLYN?

IRONY?

/S

Lovvers – OCD Go Go Girls

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Review: The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt

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In his second full length album, The Wild Hunt, Kristian Matsson (A.K.A.) The Tallest Man on Earth, sticks to the sparse instrumentation and alternatively detached and affected vocals of his debut, Shallow Grave. Oscillating between calm, restrained singing and swells of emotive howling seems to have become a staple of folk singer/songwriters like Matsson. Conor Oberst (Bright eyes) is known specifically for this kind of performance, but while Oberst often accompanies his vocal outbursts with indulgent, instrumental flourishes, Matsson doesn’t need keening strings, blaring synths, or pummeling drums to augment his most chillingly powerful deliveries.
—

Read the rest of this entry »

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Noisecast #1 – Voice//Guitar

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on developing an acoustic set for my solo live performances. Ive been paying a lot of attention to what makes a song feel complete when its stripped down to nothing but vocals and acoustic guitar. No overdubs, piano, doubled vocals, strings, effects, etc. I started looking through my music library for songs by some of my favorite artists that I could reference/steal from for inspiration, and (kind-of) to my surprise, a much larger number of tracks than I would have imagined featured extra accompaniment of some kind. I actually found it pretty difficult to make this playlist flow well with the limited amount of music that fit the requirements(no live tracks/bootlegs solo performances allowed). I’m pretty happy with the result though, and I think its a pretty good showcase of just how many different things you can actually do with only one voice and one guitar.

enjoy.

—

The Tallest Man On Earth – The Gardner

Nick Drake – Road

The Microphones – I Felt Your Shape

Neutral Milk Hotel – Two Headed Boy

Elliott Smith – Pitseleh ( I cheated it has a piano part! it’s one of the few Elliott songs with no guitar overdubs though)

The Mountain Goats – Island Garden Song

Tom Waits – I Want You

Bright Eyes – Waste Of Paint

Noisecast #1 – Voice//Guitar

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New Release: The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt

A short while back The Tallest Man On Earth dropped the first single for his sophomore album, The Wild Hunt.  Now he’s back, this time with the album opener & title track. The Wild Hunt is due out April 13, 2010 via Dead Oceans. You can pre-order / buy the album here , and you definitely should, because its amazing. I’m talking album of the year contender.

The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt

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Deluxe Edition #4: The Hold Steady – American Music

Lately I’ve been super into The Hold Steady’s 2006 gem, Boys And Girls In America. Recently I stumbled upon The Deluxe Edition, which features an awesome cover of the Violent Femmes classic American Music. Its Similar enough to the original to feel familiar, but different enough to avoid feeling rehashed, and though I don’t think Craig Finn Could sound any more different than Gordon Gano, he does a pretty good job filling the shoes.

The Hold Steady – American Music

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New Release: Against Me! – White Crosses

White Crosses, Against Me!’s second album with Sire records (the follow up to their critically acclaimed New Wave), finds the band working again with Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, L7, Garbage). Listen to the em’ moving even farther away from their folk-punk roots in these two tracks.

Against me! – Because of the Shame

Against me! – Ache With Me

(removed by warner bros request)