listen.

newsflash: Perfect (again) from now on -- live in NYC!

There's something really awesome about bands performing studio albums in their entirety live in front of an audience.  (don't believe me? go download the live concert recording of Belle and Sebastian's "If you're feeling sinister".)

and it's even more exciting when it's one of your favorite bands, doing one of your favorite albums of all time (see above).

so, is anyone else flipping out over the fact that Idaho's favorite indie rock sons Built to Spill will be performing their 1997 album Perfect From Now On from start to finish this coming September?  Because I am.

So the shows are September 25 and 26 at Terminal 5 (which I actually haven't been to yet but I hear it's awful but I don't care where it is i'd even cross the Hudson to Jersey to see this show).  Tickets went on sale yesterday. Who wants to join me?  Buy them here (thursday) or here (friday).

In case you forgot how good the album is, let this track jog your memory:

Built to Spill - Out of Site

>ben

those unison voices in your head

so, i've been meaning for a while to write a post about the use of double-tracked unison lead vocals.  which might sort of be like writing a post about "the use of the acoustic guitar", or "the use of piano", seeing as how it's not all THAT uncommon (though admittedly, less common than the acoustic guitar or the piano), but still.  when it's done well, the effect can be truly intense, lush and beautiful. 

not that i know a whole lot about the process, but it's basically when a singer records two takes of a melody and layers them on top of each other, so the slight differences in nuance or inflection add a real texture to the line. it's one of my favorite things, and three of my fave bands of late (all previously featured on listen.) have used it to great effect. it's best appreciated on headphones!

First of all, i refuse to stop inundating you all with the gorgeous music of Horse Feathers. [side note: i just discovered HF's daytrotter session, which included alternate takes of two of my favorite songs from the album, and two unreleased tracks. please go, listen, download, enjoy.]  Justin double-tracks his vocals a lot on the album, and this song is double-tracked throughout.  it's another of my faves from the album, and probably my favorite when we saw them live: at their most dynamic and intense.

horse feathers, falling through the roof

loney, dear is another recent discovery-then-obsession, and he does a lot of double-tracking. it's interesting on this song because the double-tracking comes in and out pretty subtly. i hear it first about 0:37 in on "i've been counting on it since ten".  then of course on "time, i had a chance, i had a chance..." it's pretty in-your-face. beautifully so. anyway:

loney, dear, the meter marks ok

and i'll try and spare you the redundancy of how much i generally love sleeping states (see here, here, and here) but this is my favorite song from the new album.  except i can't listen to it without feeling (more than) a tad melancholy.  it's all about the beginning of a new relationship, promising to take it slow:

i won't rush things, i'll be your friend first.
i'll take you out for lunch and i'll ask you those things i forget:
like, would you like to go for a walk? and,
would you like to take my hand?
and i'm asking you, please? come on, please? 

Of all these songs i'm posting today the double-tracking is probably most obvious on this one because Markland's voice is SO front-and-center in the mix, it's like he's singing inches from your ear. you can hear him open his mouth before he starts each line.  and then, on the second refrain of "please..." (which he hears back from the chap he's courting), the double-tracking multiplies and expands into full harmony. gorgeous. heartbreaking. genius.

sleeping states, the next step

i really can't do a post about double-tracked vocals without including the song that first introduced me to the concept, and which, as far as i'm concerned, is still one of the gold standards for the effect. i could go on and on about the beauty of this song (not to mention the entire album), but instead i'll just say that Jeff Mangum's precision in singing unison with himself is kind of mindblowing.  and the part at the end when the double-tracking (like in the sleeping states song above) expands into a multi-part harmony is amazing. one of my favorite songs of all time.

neutral milk hotel, king of carrot flowers part 1

>ben

live! music! tonight! in brooklyn! awesome!

so, yeah, as geo mentioned we've been on a live music blitz so far this week, and it's been totally awesome.

monday night we saw sleeping states, who i've seriously been waiting for ages to see, at mercury lounge. and he's so good!  and kind of surprisingly experimental. he did a lot of crazy guitar business, tapping the strings and pressing odd contraptions against them to make all kinds of discord. and, incredibly, he even did that dionne cover i'm obsessed with:

and a pretty song called london fields:

and then last night, horse feathers really kind of blew us away. and i know i might be biased because the frontman Justin Ringle is a friend from high school and we had the same summer job during college processing frozen peas at twin city foods in lewiston, idaho, but seriously, it was one of the best live shows i've seen in a long time. a really intimate space (at knitting factory tap bar) and they were just really on. Aside from Justin on lead vocals and guitar, Heather Broderick was on cello, celeste and backing vocals, Sam Cooper on banjo and backing vocals, and Nathan Crockett on violin and saw. all the arrangements i thought were really terrific, faithful to the album (Words Are Dead) but fleshed out and adapted beautifully and simply.

here's them playing Dustbowl.

And get this: they're playing tonight out at this loft in Ridgewood called Silent Barn (off the Halsey L-stop) with Karl Blau, another Northwesterner.  I like this song of his.

Karl Blau - My Johnny

I'll be there tonight.  Who wants to come?

>ben

not ALL idahoans are despicable, lying, self-loathing republican hypocrites!

some are. Senator Larry Craig, for example.  After decades of rumors and allegations of homosexuality, concurrent with a senatorial track record that gives the most conservative congresspersons a run for their money in terms of supporting legislation that has contributed to an environment of intolerance and oppression of gays, Craig got caught in an airport bathroom trying to have an "encounter" with a plainclothes cop.

now. i have complicated feelings about this. i'm troubled by cops actively hunting down gays, even though i don't think anyone should be having sex in public restrooms. i'm troubled by the fact that much of the national dialogue on this will probably focus more on the fact that he was trying to have gay (read: perverted) sex than on the hypocrisy of this in relation to his anti-gay voting record. i'm troubled by the fact that no one will point out that some of the responsibility for gay men looking for sex in bathrooms has to rest on the society that doesn't really want to let them have sex in their own bedrooms.

but i still think larry craig is a pathetic liar.  and i feel the need to say that he doesn't represent all idahoans.  some idahoans are self-respecting idahomos (like me), and some idahoans make REALLY GOOD MUSIC.

so i'll end the tirade here, and move onto some good tracks from native idahoans:

i'd actually never heard of Josh Ritter until last week, which is sort of strange considering he's currently based in Moscow, Idaho which is about 30 minutes from where I went to high school.  Anyway, pretty straightforward good folky country.  I read somewhere this song got really popular in Ireland, which makes a weird sort of sense.

Josh Ritter - Me and Jiggs

speaking of high school, one of my favorite albums of last year was from the portland duo horse feathers -- frontman justin ringle was a friend of mine in high school and post-high school, before i moved to nyc and he moved to portland.  it's a pretty genius album (entitled "words are dead") and i love this song in particular.

Horse Feathers - Walking and Running

and it's basically impossible to have a post about idaho musicians without mentioning built to spill.  these are two of their older tracks: one about young love in twin falls, idaho; the other an epic masterpiece from their best (in my opinion) album "perfect from now on".  it includes one of my favorite lines of theirs: "we're special in other ways. ways our mothers appreciate."

Built to Spill - Twin Falls

Built to Spill - Kicked it in the Sun

and then doug martsch, the built to spill frontman, did a solo album a few years back. it's really good. all folky slide guitar and the like.

Doug Martsch - Dream

go idaho!

>ben