“Crowdsourcing killed indie rock. You wanna know why? Because crowds have terrible taste.” - Christopher R. Weingarten

After 3 years of self-induced blog anxiety I’m finally coming to terms with my random and infrequent posting schedule. There are so many blogs and sites and tweets spewing information and repeating each other that it’s become an exercise in futility trying to make sense of it all. I hate posting unless I feel that it’s something unique. It’s become impossible to actually listen to all the new music coming out let alone write about it (which is frustrating because it’s so easily accessible and I’m somewhat of a completist).

I recently opined that there hasn’t been a year which produced as many of my favorite albums as 2003 and I don’t think it’s coincidence that those were mostly albums which I was introduced to through word of mouth. My friends and I actually purchased Give Up by The Postal Service on a road trip to Montreal and we listened to it the whole way home. Imagine that? Paying money for a record and sharing the enjoyment of the first listen with friends? That shit just doesn’t happen anymore.

The ease with which music is obtained isn’t as much of a problem as the ubiquitous and pointless commentary that surrounds it. I agree wholeheartedly with what Christopher R. Weingarten says in the following speech from the 140 Character Conference - especially how reviews are simply reporting on trends. I’m guilty of it too; my first post was about Voxtrot for crying out loud.

I enjoy forming my own opinions about music, but I also enjoy reading descriptive critiques which help me form those opinions without heavy-handedly telling me what I should think. Those reads are becoming harder to find as they get drowned out by the citizen media mass.

Chris seems upset that he doesn’t get to help people “discover” music like he used to, but his point about the masses deciding what is covered by media outlets is very true. Perhaps I’m sympathetic to his speech because I totally agree with his number one example of a terrible band that everyone is fawning over. In any case, I liked what he said enough to post the whole thing here. It’s an entertaining speech.

All that being said, I’m working on some recordings from the Northside Fest from some great young bands. I’ll be self-employed in a few weeks so I will probably find more time to share live recordings again.

In summary, stop wasting your life reading all the pointless comments on Brooklyn Vegan and Stereogum. Stop basing your opinions on lists. Go to shows. Lots of them. Make it there in time for the opening band you never heard of and buy their record. Explain to your friends why [insert band here] is awesome. Elaborate. Discover music at your local record store. Just TRY to wait until a release date and actually remember what it’s like to ANTICIPATE an album. Get away from your computer. I am contributing to the problem. Stop reading this. Bomb the blogosphere! And rebuild it with substantive opinions.

(click above for full-size poster and tickets)

After the Jump is pleased to have had a hand in putting together Deli Magazine’s Best of NYC Fest, taking place at various venues in New York from May 6th - May 10th. The fest is built around the Magazine’s annual Best of NYC issue which features a ton of local bands, many whom have played past After the Jump shows. The lineup for the event is pretty stacked, tickets are now on sale, and you seriously consider joining us there. Here’s what’s going on…

Wednesday 05.06 [$10 at the door]
(sponsored by BMI)
@ Southpaw
11:10 Lowry
10:30 Elizabeth & the Catapult
9:40 The King Left
8:50 April Smith
8:10 KaiserCartel
7:30 Mia Riddle

Friday 05.08 [$15 BUY TICKETS]
@ The Bell House
12:00 Crystal Stilts
11:00 Blank Dogs
10:00 Religious Knives
9:00 Dinowalrus

Saturday 05.09 [$12 BUY TICKETS]
@ Joe’s Pub
9:30 The Lisps’ FUTURITY
FUTURITY is an original indie-rock musical by Brooklyn band The Lisps. A theatrically staged song cycle, FUTURITY tells the story of a Union soldier in the Civil War who is an aspiring science fiction writer. The work fuses traditional Americana, found text, experimental music, and The Lisps’ own brand of quirky co-ed pop.

Sunday 05.10 [$12 BUY TICKETS]
@ The Bell House
(sponsored by ASCAP)
10.00 Chairlift
9.00 Takka Takka
8.10 Angel Deradoorian
7.20 The Secret Life of Sofia
6.30 The Gay Blades

The internet is supposed to be used for complaining about things that no one else really cares about, right? Cool, just checking. But if you have any interest in music, physics, engineering, cars, 19th century opera, 20th century television theme songs or dancing bananas, please read on.

We’re going to start with exhibit A. This, my friends, is one of my favorite commercials. It ranks a close second to the Nanerpus.

And… why not…

There were “making of” clips on the Honda website during that ad campaign that showed the composer’s process and the crazy looking sheet music. They staged that parking garage performance for the commercial, but the recording sessions used a ton of microphones and I’m sure they spent a long time mixing and editing. Definitely a great combination of creativity, musical performance and technology.

Now, has anyone seen the more recent Honda commercial for the “musical road” they created in California? It was a very cool concept - they cut groves in the road spaced out so that the relative frequencies would be musical and it would generate a tune when you drove over at a constant speed. They used the theme from the William Tell Overture - public domain, easily recognizable, only 6 notes, Hi Ho Silver! - so far so good.

Here’s the commercial:

There’s also a series of behind the scenes clips which are interesting.

However, after all the time and money that went into this, THE INTERVALS ARE WRONG! AHHH! It’s grating! (ha). All the notes are in the key of F Major, but the first leap should be a fourth, instead of a third.

Correct: F-Bb-C-D or Do Fa So La or 1-4-5-6
Actual: F-A-Bb-C or Do Mi Fa So or 1-3-4-5

The rest of the song is similarly flat - scalewise compared to the starting note - until the last five notes which are spot on. I guess when all was said and done they figured they were close enough. That the vast majority of people wouldn’t notice and definitely wouldn’t be offended unless they had a ridiculous obsession with the science of music.

But, how can you spend that much time and money on a project and end up with the wrong notes? The tune has been the same for 180 years! They have a “musician/mathematician” on the project! They did calculations! In spreadsheets! Twelveth root of two and all that jazz (see: equal temperment). Watching these videos is bittersweet because I LOVE the concept and the passion that went into the project. I think working on this would have been the best job ever.

The funniest part of the videos is when the people who drove over the road sing the song themselves and do it the correct way without realizing the difference. And it’s not just the speed of the car that makes it wrong. Trust me, I’ve spent way too much time thinking about this.

They say in the videos that the mechanical cuts in the road are similar to how a CD is made. More like vinyl perhaps, since CDs are a complicated encoding of digital bit strings that don’t translate in the mechanical world. Furthermore, CDs have built in error correction. Snap.

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Bonus Jonas. If you’ve never seen “Cog” it’s an incredible 2 minute Honda commercial of a Rube Goldberg machine made entirely of car parts that actually achieves its goal. I hope the guys who designed this were as psyched when it finally worked after 600 tries as the people on the musical road were when it almost sounded right. Some of this stuff looks impossible. Some explanations - the tires are weighted, the windshield wiper system automatically reacts to rain (still not sure how it shuts off) and the only thing faked is that the room wasn’t big enough so they filmed it in two halves.

I often feel that my favorite bands are being unjustly overlooked, perhaps because they don’t fit squarely into any of our critically sanctioned musical categories. Regardless, The Life and Times should be proud of not being easily classified. Though the member’s previous bands (Shiner, Someday I, Strings and Return) have been labeled as post-punk and post-hardcore, The Life and Times are usually grouped into the post-rock scene, despite the fact that they prefer traditional song structures that don’t last for 20 minutes. In the past few years they’ve toured with bands as diverse as Mono, Pinback, and The Appleseed Cast. If you ask various fans of The Life and Times to name their favorite bands I bet you’d probably get a lot of different names thrown around, from Jawbox and Fugazi, to Muse and The Secret Machines to Pelican and Explosions In The Sky.

Where some bands influenced by the Sunny Day Real Estate sound gradually steered it towards the emo we know and loathe today, there were other bands who expanded on the musicality of emotional hardcore, retaining insightful and affecting lyrics while avoiding the temptation to become self-loathing, whinny saps. Hum may have been the epitome of this “post-emo” movement which I totally just invented, but The Life and Times certainly continue to carry that flag in their own unique way. There are very few bands I can think of that rock out in what seems like slow-motion, saturating the entire sonic spectrum while writing well-formed songs that actually invoke emotions.

Like many of my favorite albums, Tragic Boogie begins with a short track; two and a half minutes that lay down the foundation for the rest of the album but leave you wanting more. The opening “Que Sera Sera” has a very straightforward guitar part with a bass line that works it’s way around the repeated chords to create melodic musical phrases. The thick effects on the bass leave no need for additional rhythm guitar, while the drums are steady, driving and unapologetic. Even though you may want to bob your head to the rhythm, the vocals drag you back into a steady sway. The voice is often processed to give that megaphone effect – both distorted and in a narrow bandwidth – and is treated with a healthy amount of echo and delay.

The Life and Times - Que Sera Sera (mp3)

The production on Tragic Boogie is engaging without being a distraction to the core elements of the band. There are distant-sounding segues, sampled drum fills, vocal harmonies, even some harp glissando, and all these elements emerge from the distortion and static, floating in and out of the music, like harmonics that eventually reveal themselves in a room filled with noise. There is a singular vision and sound throughout the record resulting in an album that begs to be experienced from start to finish.

With all this focus on sound, don’t beigin to think that the lyrics are throwaway. Paired with such beautifully aggressive music, they leave you wondering whether all this energy is being directed towards pleasure or pain. In “Dull Knives”, “fools in love… choose to believe each other’s lies… it gives you what you need to stay alive”. And within this dichotomy, the oxymoronic title of the album begins to make complete sense. Elsewhere the lines “You’re all I never wanted/You’re all I ever wanted” play against each other.

There is however one point on Tragic Boogie that feels like a rough edge. While most of the lyrics on the album are presented as a collection of loosely related, suggestive phrases, there is a clear storyline that persists throughout “The Politics of Driving”. Although metaphoric, the narrative engages a part of my brain that was perfectly happy to hibernate throughout the rest of the album.

I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t be so excited about this album if I had never seen The Life and Times play live. When you realize that it only takes three people to create such a huge sound it only becomes more impressive. The lighting at their shows is stark as floodlights project their shadows on the back wall. Their energetic performance is neither contrived nor distracting. No single instrument is more or less important to their sound and no one member draws attention to himself on stage. They are firmly rooted in their aesthetic but they allow themselves to be carried away by their own sound. They are perfectly balanced in a way that few bands truly achieve.

This is my favorite picture of The Life and Times, taken by my buddy Bryan for Prefixmag.com after I dragged him to their show at SXSW:

more pictures at: Prefix Mag

The Life and Times play The Studio at Webster Hall on Saturday April 18th. Tickets here.

Additional tour dates and music on The Life and Times myspace page including “Old Souls” and “Let It Eat” from Tragic Boogie.

Buy Tragic Boogie from insound or direct from Arena Rock Recording Company

On Friday night at Bowery Ballroom, The Wrens were not in rare form. They did not play the best show of their lives. They were exactly The Wrens we all expected to see. And it was the most incredible show I’ve attended in well over a year.

There was an undeniable camaraderie among the crowd - a common feeling that we were lucky to be there. Thankful to whomever introduced us to this band who has so graciously distanced themselves from the rest of the music industry. The disaffected and emotionally detached rock persona that we’ve come to expect from our “indie bands” was refreshingly absent. It all boiled down to something so elementary, so primal, that the other shows I’ve attended in the past year became tedious and contrived by comparison. What I witnessed was nothing more than four human beings, physically manipulating wood, metal and plastic to create sounds - magnified by electricity - that expressed their collective thoughts and personality.

The Wrens have written some of the most intimate and affecting break-up songs you’ve ever heard, including “Happy” and “She Sends Kisses”. They delivered the words of these heart-wrenching songs like they were penned just yesterday. At one point during “Happy”, I turned to my buddy Bret and remarked, “I don’t know exactly when he wrote this song, but he still fucking means it”. Charles and Kevin have a keen ability to conjure up their own inspirations and describe them so vividly that they might as well be your own.

If you are already a fan of The Wrens then you probably know about how they split with their label in the mid-‘90s when offered a huge contract to become a more radio-friendly band. You know that they spent seven years creating “The Meadowlands” with little financial and creative support outside of their friends and families. The first time I saw The Wrens I wasn’t aware of this back-story, but it was still obvious that these guys were on stage because they loved sharing their creative efforts with other people, not because they needed to recoup album costs or support a lavish lifestyle.

You don’t necessarily need to understand The Wrens history to love The Wrens music. But the path they’ve traveled does help to explain why they’re a band that doesn’t worry about whether or not they’re wearing the proper outfits on stage or whether their guitars are perfectly in tune. Like any great band, their instruments reflect their personality - battered, adored, and slightly dissonant - yet capable of forming a union that is far more powerful than just wood, metal, plastic and flesh alone.

The Wrens play their second New York show in two years at the Bell House on April 10th. Tickets here. See you there.

My favorite (favourite?) band from Australia is finally headed back to the states for SXSW and a few other shows in New York and LA. The Grates are often mentioned in the same breath as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs because of singer Patience’s energy and delivery. I supposed I’ve just perpetuated that comparison, but dare I say that The Grates are even more fun? Yes, I dare. Their enthusiasm is completely infectious - on their records but especially on stage. They could make Robert Smith grin from ear to ear.

But don’t take my word for it. Click here —-> clickity-click to download the three song Burn Bridges EP (I’d call it a “single”, but then again it does have more than one song…)

The Grates are still the only band I have ever interviewed. I’ve also just obtained a fabulous Woody Allen brooch from sniffle corp a.k.a. John from The Grates. You just have to see it to understand the awesomeness.

If you’re in New York and you aren’t going to SXSW I think the next best thing would be this upcoming show at the Bell House:

Thursday 3/26: 6pm / $12 / comes with BBQ and more
THE AUSSIE BBQ: AUSTRALIAN MUSIC SHOWCASE
THE DRONES / THE FUMES / YOUTH GROUP / THE GRATES / THE RESIGNATORS / THE RED RIDERS / THE BOAT PEOPLE / INFUSION / HELL CITY GLAMOURS.
Free Baron’s Beer!!

BBQ? Free Beer? Nine bands on one bill? Sounds like Austin loves The Grates so much it’s going to hide in their luggage when they leave for New York. They also play Mercury Lounge on the 23rd and Pianos on the 25th.

I’ve been waiting a long time for Land Of Talk’s first full-length. It was over two years ago that I recorded a “new song” at The Syrup Room. That song is now “Give Me Back My Heart Attack”. Part of the delay might be attributed to the departure of drummer Bucky Wheaton, who was replaced by Eric Thibodeau in 2007. But I like to think they were just making sure the album was sufficiently awesome before it came out.

Land Of Talk’s show at Mercury Lounge was split evenly between songs from their 2006 EP “Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss” and songs from the brand new “Some Are Lakes” (buy: LP, CD) released by Saddle Creek.

On all of Land Of Talk’s recordings, Liz Powell’s voice is doubled in a very obvious way. It leads to an effect which I personally love. At the live shows there’s only one of her, but she’s still amazing. The vocals were a little low on the first few songs, but the sound was great after that.

Three-piece bands are my favorite because everyone needs to pull their weight at all times and there is little room for error. Even though Liz’s vocals are the most pronounced element of Land Of Talk’s sound, each instrument plays a unique role. Eric’s transitions to the off-beat hi-hat are seamless and he is always in sync with Chris’s bass playing which carries as many melodies as the lead vocals. The chords that Liz chooses to play on her guitar are perfectly dissonant and she knows just when to pluck out arpeggios and when to strum away.

Land Of Talk are currently on tour with Broken Social Scene. Liz often joins them on stage for 7/4 Shoreline and other songs that Feist and Emily Haines are too busy to sing.

Land Of Talk live at Mercury Lounge - September 11, 2008

01 Yuppy Flu
02 Summer Special
03 Some Are Lakes
04 Give Me Back My Heart Attack
05 Sea Foam
06 Speak To Me Bones
07 Death By Fire
08 Young Bridge
09 Street Wheels
10 Breaxxbaxx

Yay! I posted something besides an After The Jump announcement!

After The Jump wasn’t content just sponsoring shows in our own country so we decided to involve ourselves with Canada’s shows as well. If you’re heading up to Pop Montreal this weekend to gain some foreign policy experience be sure to check out the show at Petit Campus on Saturday.

Cafe Campus/Petit Campus
57 rue Prince-Arthur est
Near bd. St-Laurent, Plateau Mont-Royal
Métro: Sherbrooke
www.cafecampus.com

Mother Mother sound promising. They’ll be down for CMJ later this month, playing Mercury Lounge on the 24th. By the way, I just realized that the myspace music player has been revamped. The sound quality of the music still leaves something to be desired, but at least the moving EQ bars are actually reacting to the music and are not completely random. Audio dorks care about this stuff.

Here is the first of many recordings from this year’s SXSW festival. I mentioned Jukebox The Ghost briefly last summer and promised you’d hear from them again. Here they are performing at After The Jump’s Backyard BBQ in Austin, Texas.

Jukebox The Ghost hail from Washington D.C. and their first full-length album “Let Live and Let Ghosts” hits stores on April 22nd. They are touring quite a bit this spring and I recommend that you catch them live. I had trouble believing this sound came from only three people until I saw it with my own eyes. All tour dates are listed here.

photo by irockiroll

01 Hold It In
02 Beady Eyes On The Horizon
03 Victoria
04 My Heart’s The Same / Lighting Myself On Fire
05 Under My Skin
06 End Of The World Trilogy
[Fire in the Sky -> Where Are All Your Scientists Now? -> A Matter of Time]
07 Good Day