PAPERMOONS TAP BDM FOR BOON BOPPER!

File this under collaborations hotter than a Brangelina offspring (yes we did, in fact, DVR Mr. and Mrs. Smith on FX last night), Mr. Benjamin Davis Murphy (Bright Men of Learning, Panic in Detroit, Lucky Motors, etc etc etc) is going to be playing some of his sweet solo pop jams next Monday with the able assistance of Matt Brownlie (Bring Back the Guns) and the old kings of the new Rhythm and Blues, the Papermoons. bdm, as he is known in situations where provisions have been made for only three-letter naming schemes, will play some songs to open the show, before turning over the stage for the ‘Moons for their non-stop body rock of gentle jams.

And we’ve got the inside scoop on the setlist for this rare instance of the King of the Murpheltones playing some of his solo penned material! Yes, none other than the Skyline Network’s Chief Audio Engineer did some session time with the Emperor of Gearswaps in the vaunted Skyline Network World Recording Laboratory Emporium Studio 1a loading some “do not try to reproduce live” audio snippets onto a sampler hilariously still equipped with a Zip Drive. We won’t give away all the Sport Beans on this one, but we can say that fans of last year’s bdm Grey Ghost won’t be disappointed.

Paaarty call me.

As for the Papermoons, well, if we were Bette Midler, it’s a fair bet to say that the song we might sing about them would not be From a Distance, cause we’ll be right up front. You're the Rose babies, the Rose.

Catch Papermoons with special guest BDM Monday, Feb 4th at Boondocks. Free Show. 21+. Peep the wicked flyer.

THE SKYLINE 50: PART THREE

Part Three of our all-week series sharing our 50 favorite tracks to come out of the city this year.

Hearts Break – Hearts of Animals
Lemming Baby
We’re not entirely convinced that Mlee Marie didn’t just get dropped off by some well meaning spirit in the sky, complete with a back-story, back-catalog and pointy auburn guitar. A year ago, we didn’t know her from Eve, today, we can’t turn around without stumbling upon some new project she’s involved with. But this was the song that got it started for us – simple, sweet, coy; freight trains and hearts you really believe are broken. Yes, it's true, we made a Doctor and the Medics reference.


Hello Boss!!! – Fatal Flying Guilloteens
Quantum ****ing
Remember when you were a kid and there were still tapes and it always seemed like the first thing you did when you tore one out of its shrink-plastic was fast-forward it to the first song on the second side – like it was the FCC mandated position for the most bangin’ radio single of all times of that week. OH SNAP! MOTOWN PHILLY BACK AGAIN! Now somewhat older, possessed of more wisdom perhaps but less likely to act on it, we tend to listen to our records straight through. That’s why we love a break you off somethin’ lead off like this one. (Excluding the intro, of course. By the way, what ever happened to that original French Kiss name-checking intro that had the back bacon references?) A total next-level departure from previous Guilloteen full lengths is stuffed in the ballot box from the get go, and isn’t it great to hear McManus in action one last time?


Honesty – Papermoons
Papermoons 7”
Sitting on a grassy little embankement watching a girl you’ll never get teach the neighborhood kids how to play kickball is not how one should spend their Sunday afternoons. You should be at home with your mates planning a tour where you take a day off to catch the Superdrag reunion show and coaxing worthwhile sounds out of an accordion you bought for a dollar off the wall of a bootmaker’s shed at a flea market. Pinhole cameras, pinwheels on beachbikes and songs like this are antidote to the too much of anything we are all sometimes seduced into feeling. Grab your kite.


I Drempt of a Terrible Adieu – Listen Listen
Listen Listen
The Listen Listen ep is made of wood. The packaging anyways. Sometimes we wonder if perhaps this is because, once the recording was complete, they chopped their instruments up with axes so as to exile the demons that had no doubt taken residence inside during the creation of such a melancholy opus. Prolly the saddest song on our countdown (oh and bonus – suicide lyrical content), only a master along the lines of Kacey Kasem could ever segue between this banjo plucking dirge and, say, an Arthur Yoria song that happened to have the same instrument in the background.


I Told You Not To Write Again – Arthur Yoria
Handshake Smiles
Here’s a tip on how to get into this countdown every year. Be Arthur Yoria. Write a song about some impossibly common aspect of the human condition that had somehow not occurred to anyone was an impossibly common aspect of the human condition. Add some egg shakers. Play a banjo in the background. Arthur: please record another record soon, we need more insight into our own lives. kthanx


In Piles/Files – Bring Back the Guns
Dry Futures
ATTN T-PAIN: We got your next remix ring-tone right here. Piles/Files is a rock club shredertainer that is to the 2007 live show what apple is to strudel and unfortunate berry combinations is to Kosher wine. If this jam was cattle, it would be an entire cow made of whips pre-seasoned center-cut fillet (is that even possible?) served on a solid 28” platinum plate to Kanye West in his V inspired mothership hovering above the Source Awards. PARTY CALL ME.


James Ralph Brown Part II – Riff Tiffs
Afflictinnitus
Judging by the reaction of their fans to our review of their full length, there is an entire legion of the Riff Tiff Army that does not think it is a compliment to have your music designated as the eternal soundtrack to Puff Daddy’s voyages through the ocean depths should he ever be transformed into a Dolphin. Whatever. Those people have no idea what they’re even talking about. If they can think of a better song to glide along to should you ever awaken to discover you’ve been metamophesized into a marine mammal named Franz, we’re all flippers to hear what it is.


Legion of Serpents – Fatal Flying Guilloteens
Quantum ****ing
We heard this uncharacteristically long and tempoed song was the first ever Roy Mata Guilloteens composition. This is no doubt why we are so GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT. (rewind) GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT GET INTO IT (rewind). (Realize we have drive all the way to Juarez with this song on repeat when our intent was only to goto La Tapatia.)


Lonely Goodbye – Paris Falls
Lonely Goodbye (single)
It says something when a local band goes to the trouble of self-releasing a two-song single when they’ve just dropped one pretty aces full length and have a second all wrapped up and in shop-around mode. It’s a special song to them, to be sure - one they had to get out there in the intra-release interim for whatever reason (if we were a thoughtful site, it might have occurred to us to ask them before this moment what that reason might be). It’s a tender and warm lullaby; a blanket of leaves in a rural yard beyond the times. It’s why more musicians should get married and till death do they record.


Lucky – Paris Falls
Vol. I
Paris Falls has their own lighting rig, complete with the ability to trigger it for choreography with what they’re playing at the moment. If you have such a setup, you’ve got to bring the minerals to the water, or else you’re just going to be that group of wankers who thought they were too good for the illumination options the rest of the bands were ok with. But here’s the key – PF aren’t just great musicians and songwriters, they’re great showmen too. Not in the spandex pants kick and splits jump vein, mind you, but in the fact that they see a gig as more than just a thing – as something more akin to the original meaning of the word ‘show’. The whole thing tells the tale of a quartet who take things a bit further than just showing up. The same care went into their Vol I, and this song especially.

THE SKYLINE 50: PART TWO

Part two of our all week series of the best tracks to come out this year

Eight For Eight - The Dimes
Wires and Buttons (Grey Ghost #47)
We love the Dimes. We love this song. We love the man who recorded it. But treading as gently as possible on the feelings of all those involved, a much tighter version of it is begging to exist. The springing and sprightlyness of the guitar lead, which screams, “we may have developed a new form of cowboy rock” plays along like saddle soap with the souza march of the snare, both flowing well into the sort of SEND UP THE ROCK breakdowns we’ve come to expect from this soon to be differently-named foursome. But secrets – re-record soon.


Everyone is Gay – Black Math Experiment
All You Need is Blood
We hope that you never find yourself wandering aimlessly through the falling snow on the grounds of an empty ski resort in the Utah mountains, asking yourself if you have made the right relationship decisions and if maybe burying things in the snow to try and find later was a good idea. Never question yourself like that. You made the right decision. Put this song on repeat, go wander around in the woods for awhile and feel better. It’s so catchy and fun you’ll completely overlook the fact that it’s bemoaning how much other people do not rule, but you rule even less. But isn’t that the job of a good pop song? To confront you with temporary truths of your life and make you feel better about them?


Exist – Papermoons
Papermoons 7”
This is such a delicately beautiful song on such a delicately beautiful ep. Timid little guitar strokes and drums low in the mix, with vocals telephoned and dialed down to being barely audible during the breaks. On record, this perfect little warbler is a bird in the nest, asking why we can’t just live. On the stage, Papermoons are a rockier and a rollier, and this song tells you unequivocally that you are living, and that this is one of the best expressions of it you’ve heard all year.


Fire For Wings – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Sometimes we wonder if the brushes in the opening verses of this song are on a drum, or maybe a little bit of percussive time-keeping a loathed step-daughter makes as she sweeps the cold and foot-worn wood floors; wanting release, wanting to let go, wanting to go to the ball. Making an afternoon of mope and the way the light filters through the blinds and dust into her own private waltz, Gretchen’s voice Huck Fins you into her chores with equal parts husk, soult and unknowing.


Goodnight, Goodluck, Godspeed and Goodbye – Listen Listen
Listen Listen
The Listen Listen formula for (whips!) songwriting is to start with an instrument raid on the store-room of the Grande Old Oprey. Make a getawy in an olde time medicine huckster’s covered wagon/traveling stage horse-drawn contraption. Trot lazily through the night, drinking every brown bottle of snake oil rattling on the shelves until you fall asleep. Pick up an extra few wandering musicians by the side of the road. Stop at a revival tent near dawn. Be forgiven. Sleep through the day in the light of the Lord.


Goons, Hired Goons – Blades
Who’s the Creampuff Now
Quick! Make for the exits! Lock the doors! Watch out for snakes! Beware the CBS Saturday Murder Mystery! This empire is not Holy, or Roman, or even an empire! Who’s the center square! Stay out of Wollworths! This song has a way of running its riffs through your memory bands, connecting one thought to another in ways unaccustomed. It’s a hard one to concentrate on any one thread throughout it. Presumably, it’s about goons – but there’s nothing particularly menacing about it. Neither does it lumber and disappoint like so many Homers. BEHOLD, THE FACE OF HELEN!


Granny Clampet’s Pure Grain Know-it-All – Dizzy Pilot
**** Out the Bones
ROCK YEAH! Lest the last few tracks make you think otherwise, we are into things that get the heart a pumping and fist a shakin’. We can’t make word-one out of the vocals on this banger, but we’re totally content with any song where the don’t put down the phone and spell things out to us. The perfect soundtrack for sketchy 80 mph cab rides down the back-streets of Lafayette, Louisiana in a car whose head-liner is being ripped away by the pummeling gust-stink from the open windows and which hasn’t been washed since the meter stopped working four years ago.


The Grey Call – benjamindavismurphy
Grey Ghost #43
One of the best things about the Grey Ghost series (there could be no one best thing, cause it’s about as whips an idea as soup in a breadbowl) is all the old tracks clamoring around on people’s four-track tapes that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day. Like this minute and a half jangler from friend of the Skyline Ben Murphy, for example. It’s a reminder that the best chicken is nuggets, and that it’s generally pretty chell to go ahead and put your stuff out there.


The Guards – Gretchen Schmaltz
Laced Up Tightly
Were it not for this track (and, in fairness Elaine Greer as of late), you wouldn’t be able to ever convince us that there are any solo-flying songstresses out there that weren’t on the sad train to bummersville. Not that this sort of expression doesn’t have it’s place, but just like every rose has it’s thorn, so too must it want nuthin but a good time (and it don’t get better than this).


He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed to – By The End of Tonight
He’s Home With Bones that Grow the Way They’re Supposed To
To paraphrase our own review, it’s like a bunch of miscreant school-yard jump-ropers from planet Angry Purple Sun got together and tried to tell the story of the Bayeux Tapestry through a combination of freaking you out and stealing your lunch money to buy you pomegranates they later hide under your pillow. If this song was accidentally swapped out with whatever was on the phonograph record they put on the Voyager spacecrafts, an entire terrified universe is going to preemptively invade us just so their children can sleep at night.

REVIEW: PAPERMOONS 7"

From when much younger, perhaps not quite old enough to be doing it, perhaps barely so, fond and distinct memories of riding around in a faux-wood sided station wagon in rural Wisconsin still remain. Brown County to be exact. Up rolling knolls on dirt and gravel rolls, occasionally intersected with pavement, all bordering farmland and none running too far before requiring a short perpendicular jaunt to make allowance for the ever-rectangular, never-aligned edges of property ownership. Past red barns and green field, and palisades of trees guarding hidden streams; past small towns and smaller cemeteries, Lions Club Halls in parks with wood and metal swings and see-saws. A world too Rockwell to be real, but too immediate to be sentimental.

We have no memory of what we listened to in the Chevy as it sped so fast that the world stood still. Probably it was loud; possibly it was angsty or goofy or both. But if it had to be re-enacted, and in my life I would like it to be (though no measure of Neverland could ever make this man boy again), we would bring along the Papermoons’ 7” for the soundtrack.

Gentle, almost doe-eyed; immune to the rush of the wicked window wind who detracts from the scenery outside. Simple elegance with nuance, each part working toward a whole, as though the shaft, stock, silk and husk of the corn. Musically, there are reminders to pack your harmonica for the next campfire and to throw your guitar in the back seat for when you venture off the road to sit idle in a fallow field. Lyrically, there are truisms that might seem platitude coming from a less skilled pen and mouth.

This seven inch goes a long way towards stacking up to the duo’s sometimes hushing, sometimes romping, entirely blissful set at Walter’s last month. Exist, for example, is no contest one of the best songs to come out of the city this year. The fact that a recording in which no fault can be found but yet still doesn’t quite measure up to them on the stage has us entirely in the sun about their full length, due out next year. Recommended.

The Papermoon’s next show is at the Skyline Network-approved HOOTENANNY!, January 5th, where they’ll be playing as Pedro the Lion.

Stream: Papermoons - Various Tracks

ROAD UPDATES: GUILLOTEENS, GUNS GO CMJAZY! WESTERN CIV TAKE A SHOWER! PAPERMOONS SLACK FOR SUPERDRAG!

Well it must be Fall, because CMJ, New York’s considerably more leaf-turned version of SXSW (but with larger distances between venues) is kicking off this very day. And two of our own have forked over the dough to Jet Blue for a little fun in the Big Apple sun. Specifically, we’re talking about Bring Back the Guns and the Fatal Flying Guilloteens, who both decided that October was the month to release a pair of knock-out party rockers. The Guilloteens have up to four shows that they can take the wrong subway to, while the Guns have a single show. So, all you Houston exiles, get yr ass out and see what these kids have been up to. Also, lend them a floor and a place to shower.

Guilloteens Shows:
Oct 17 – Soundfix Records (Brooklyn) w/The Big Sleep
Oct 18 – Paino’s (Manhattan) w/The Big Sleep & Cut Off Your Hands
Oct 19 – R Bar (Brooklyn) w/ Islands, Saturday Looks Good to Me, Black Kids and Other Passangers
Oct 19 – Galapagos (Brooklyn) w/Jay Retard, Foreign Born, A Place to Bury Stranges , Holy Hail and More

Bring Back the Guns
Oct 20 – The Annex (Lower East Side)

Speaking of taking a shower, we got word from Reggie of the presently free-agent Western Civilization that, as of Monday, they had finally broken down, gotten a hotel room and taken their first shower in seven days. HOT. Can’t wait to hear the b-side about that. The kids who make the birds sing were holed up in Baltimore and should be back on the road by now. They’ve still got a few shows left before they return in the big white van to the 713, so if you happen to cross their paths, stop in for a listen:

Oct 17 - TBA - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oct 22 - TBA - Cleveland, Ohio
Oct 23 - The Nite Owl - Dayton, Ohio
Oct 26 - MEMORIAL UNION - der Rathskeller (UW Campus) Madison, Wisconsin
Oct 29 - The Way Out - St. Louis, Missouri
Oct 31 - The Gypsy - Fayetteville, Arkansas
Nov 1 - Convergence - Oklahoma City
Nov 3 - Emo’s – Austin

Also out on the road at present are none other than the Civ’s kindred spirits, the Papermoons, who knocked our socks off last month at Walter’s. We’ve been studying their 7” ever since and think that you should to, if for no other reason than that this drifting duo is taking a day off from their current tour to see a Superdrag reunion show. Yep. Superdrag. If there is anyone we love as much as Spacehog, it may well be the Knoxville power-poppers, and had we known about this event, it might be possible that we’d be driving their van. Check the rest of their scheduled romp through some of John Cougar Melloncamp’s favorite parts of the country.

Oct 17 - The Matinee - Highland Square, Ohio
Oct 18 - The DAAC - Grand Rapids, Michigan
Oct 19 - 403 Kling St. - AKRON, Ohio
Oct 20 - Day off for SUPERDRAG reunion!
Oct 21 - Old City Java - Knoxville, Tennessee
Oct 22 - The Mug - Mobile, Alabama
Oct 28 - 1982 Bar - Gainesville, Florida

That’s all we have on their schedule right now – not sure what they’re up to between Florida and here. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. Maybe a Better than Ezra reunion in New Orleans. Who can say. Drive safe everyone.

Van Photo by IwateBuddy.