Space and the City
Posts tagged Jenny Westbury
THE 2008 SKYLINE 50 – PART FOUR
Dec 18th
Part four of our series! Don’t forget, voting for the Sammies closes tomorrow at noon!
Runin Down – Fired For Walking
Fired For Walking (Self Released)
You know the whispers in the back of the room when people talk about this track are usually about Pearl Jam so screw that we’re just going to come on out and do it. Remember back before Eddie Vedder cut his locks and suddenly became a prime target for defrizzing hair product and he was all “THOUGHTS ARRIVE LIKE BUTTERFLIES?!” Yeah well at some point he became all save the surfers or something, and look at me I’m playing drums in Hovercraft how edgy an ooh laa laa, and we’ve got all these acoustic guitars and we clearly, from the photos in the center spread, hunkered down in some sort of log cabin to record this next one, so it has a lot of introspection, like we invented Bon Iver before he even existed. Yeah forget about that crap. We’re talking about Ten here. It’s not that “Runin Down” is some sort of grandma’s preserves copy of the songs on that record (though there certainly are welcome parallels in the guitar approach), it’s more the spirit, the fire, the attitude. Like we totally expect when they’re playing this that Joel is going to take this opportunity to swing like a crazy person from the rafters during the guitar solo instead of swinging some douchebag political banner off a bridge because someone indigenous canoe race is threatening the majestic wonders of Puget Sound. Ripping!
Saved by the Bell Was a Super Good Show – O Pioneers!!!
Neon Creeps (Asian Man Records)
Congratulations on winning best song title of the year. Praise the Skreech this track is good, because otherwise we would have had to figure out some way to get it in the countdown somehow and it would have just ended up making us look like a bunch of jerks who judge merit by Weird Al-dian criteria alone (but real talk: Weird Al has been killing it lately). With trademark jangly guitar and bro,-consider-taking-the-night-off vocals Bell (and the rest of the album) contradicts our previous claims that a bass would just get in the way in this band. Somehow, O Pioneers!!! have cubed the rubix of making something catchy and hard while still authentic and damaged; tough and yet sensitive. The AC Slater of songs.
Shake It – The Caprolites
Grey Ghost #55 (Grey Ghost)
There are pretty much four stages we went through with this song. Stage One: Ugh. Is that it? Just the same thing over and over? Stage Two: Heh, ok we’re being a grouch this is kind of fun. Stage Thee: (Hums riff quietly to self during long morning meeting). Stage Four: Song is officially added to most extreme party call me get pumped up for Saturday night pre-party playlist. It’s true, this hand clappin’ party pogo of a song is kind of irresistible, (if a little longer than most party anthems). Scrawnly like a baby bird, it’s kind of easy to picture the entire band as hatchlings rocking it out in a little nest in the forest. That is a seriously random metaphor.
She Said She’s Sorry (Touch Me) – Powerhouse
Yeah! (Self Released)
You know how in the bizzaro world things aren’t really the opposite, just kind of a weird version of ourselves. Like maybe pizza is made with cornmeal crusts and has the cheese under the sauce or Detroit made cars that people wanted to buy, but instead of being located in Michigan, motor city was built on a magical floating barge that cruises from pier to pier on Lake Huron. Or perhaps all cab rides included free milk and haircombs. Sometimes when we listen to this song and contemplate that it’s not a super megahit and available as a bonus level on guitar hero and there are no Powerhouse action figures we start to seriously asses whether we are, in fact, actually living in the bizzaro dimension on accident.
Shelter – Paris Falls
Volume II (Paper Weapons Records)
You know, probably our favorite thing to do is go to Big Star Bar, find a smoldering ember of a log left over from the night before, and then use it to build a fire from scratch. No matches. No lighter fluid. Just leaves, kindling and the concerted application of our own windbaggery towards the materials. When you have the right collection of leaves on the source heat, there is a moment where it just combusts into flame. Not a slow burn or a little itty bitty flicker, just BANG FIRE. Like fuel source and ambient temperature were like “oh say man lets do this thing” and then they just click. That’s kind of how we imagine this song came together, like the elements for it were there in Paris Falls’ repertoire and someone sat at the Rhodes and hit a few keys and then BANG SHELTER the whole band was playing it.
Soup John Dot Com – Jenny Westbury
Jenny French and the Pelican Wrench (All Star Power Up Records)
One thing that much of Pelican Wrench doesn’t do very well is convey how light hearted time spent with Jenny Westbury is. Especially when she’s on the stage, she’s got a knack for making things fun even when there’s a thin slice of gloom on top of her goofy meatball sandwich. What this track does is remind us of that, it even puts the album as a whole into a more proper context of “oh yeah, just because this is someone playing an acoustic guitar alone doesn’t mean that every moment is all serious serious and the serious seriousnesses.” Besides, its a song about making soup, and who doesn’t like to make soup. CROCK POT CITY! PS: Jenny come home for the holidays KTHNX.
Spanish In Jazz – Wild Moccasins
Diamonds for Constellations (Grey Ghost)
We remember the first time we heard about Wild Moccasins it was because Elaine Greer’s drummer was all “nuh i gotta go play in this other band” and then we heard Nick Cody did the same thing and we were all WHO ARE THESE ASSHOLES AND WHY ARE THEY LEAVING THE ELAINE GREER BAND BECAUSE ITS LIKE THE BEST THING GOING RIGHT NOW ALL CAPS SHOUT OUT OUT LOUD! So, to say that we didn’t like this band before we ever heard them is kinda putting it mildly. But you know what, we gotta say, even before they completely sold us on their live performances, we were taken aback by this song and that’s saying alot.
Swans – Indian Jewelry
Free Gold! (We Are Free Records)
See below.
Too Much Honkey Tonking – Indian Jewelry
Free Gold! (We Are Free Records)
We have this fantasy where the Mucky Duck books Indian Jewelry sound unheard just cause their name sounds like they would be a country band and they are mid set and absolutely sandblasting the place to the point where a rip develops in spacetime and out steps 1987 Bono midway through his Rattle and Hum Sunday, Bloody Sunday rant right when he shouts “FUCK THE REVOLUTION” and the whole place goes hog wild and all the tables and chairs are destroyed and carried out to the street for a massive bonfire and then Bono buys everyone there an Audi from the dealership across the street and a massive Ronin-esque car chase ensues and everyone ends up at Blanco’s when the sun starts to rise and are feeling the weight of the evening on them as they eat breakfast tacos and a sassy barmaid kind of stands there in disbelief and utters “Geez. Now that’s what I call too much honkeytonkin.”
Two Ways – The Gold Sounds
The Gold Sounds (Self Released)
No song has ever, ever made us look East. Actually, we can’t think of a song that anyone has ever BSed their way through a description of where their heart or mind turns East (except maybe to be destroyed by the sunrise rather than run from it). It should say something about the power the concepts of Manifest Destiny and Go West Young Man still have in the collective uncousness of us as Americans. There’s no one even alive anymore that knew anyone that rode in a wagon or gave a mountain its European name or etched out a quiet and satisfying living on a piece of land they owned only because no one else did. And yet, the west, as both a physical space and even more abstractly as just a direction, still connotates optimism, opportunity and a chance to start. Sometimes, everybody needs a little bit of a rebirth. When we do, we put this song on and watch the sun set, in the west and hold tight to its perfection. Of all the things we might change about ourselves, its comforting to contemplate them to the sound of something we wouldn’t change one bit.
The 2008 SKYLINE 50 – PART TWO
Dec 16th
The second installment in our look at the 50 songs that, to us, were Houston this year.
Dawn Dipple – Two Star Symphony
Love and Other Demons (Self Released)
Most of Demons is a superb specter, a chamber quartet of violins, cello and viola that covers the sounds of monsters stealing into the rooms of children afright under their covers. “Dawn Dipple” especially is pure fear. Horror of an old man’s memories, on a park bench alone in his garden, collar turned up to the cold spending too many moments trying to remember if the leaves on his crepe myrtles turned so decayed a pallet of peach and pink last December. Losing his key, locked out of his home, scaling a fence he cannot survive a fall from. Teetering flat footed on the presipice, a thin sail of might-have been at the mercy of winds and the pull of Issac’s apple. Horror.
Don’t Tell Me, I Know – Born Liars
Don’t Tell Me, I Know 7″ (Ditchwater Records)
We know it’s only rock and roll – but we like it. We love rock and roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby. We wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day. Everybody’s talking bout that new sound, funny – it’s still rock and roll to us. We wanna rock. ROCK OF AGES. Even if there are a million rock-related chicklets that pulse-pound a horse to death with a stomp of the kick pedal, we’ll still never get tired of straight-up straight-on straight-through rock anthems.
Fear the CIA – No Talk
Invade Iran 7″ (Rescued from Life/Psychowolf/AG82 Records)
When we were kids, we used to watch hella episodes of the Cosby Show, and had a distinct memory of Cliff’s character having a nickname from his days as a track and field athlete: Combustable Huxtable. We imagined his lanky form rushing so quickly around the track that his feet literally burst into flames. It gave us an enduring chuckle, and was a visual image that carried us through much the poor decision making later in his career. Dear lord, is Leonard really using special meats acquired from a gypsy to fight an evil vegetarian overlord? Feet on fire. Another pudding commercial? Feet on fire. Do kids really say the darnedest things, or are they just kinda annoying? Feet on fire. Recently, a whiskeyed night fever caused us to dream out a supposed Leonard VII in which, finally, his feet did indeed catch on fire. There he was, dancing around a castle made of legos and occasionally high-kicking a mischievous intelligence goon while “Fear the CIA” played in the background. Go Leonard, Go!
Feed the Ghost – The Wiggins
Feed the Ghost 7″ (Dull Knife Records)
There’s a distance to The Wiggins. Be it the ubiquity of Jonny Reeves’ darkened spectacles, the fact that he enjoys the company of no others in his retinue of rock, the sheer performance volume that necessitates a spectator’s distance, or even the affectation of his voice – there is always something that is keeping you apart from the man, the music and the performance. “Feed the Ghost” sounds of another time (maybe past, maybe future), but certainly not the one you’re experiencing it in. And yet, it feels completely of this place. A town that relishes in the bizarre; that birthed to the world the world its Jandek and Daniel Johnson and Rusted Shut and Pain Teens and Indian Jewelry and Jana Hunter and Richard Ramirez and Insect Warfare and DJ Screw. What’s surprising is only that The Wiggins sometimes seem like a smaller fish in this pond than they should be. Feed the Ghost may seem otherworldly and distant to others, but it sounds like the very heart of home to us.
Follow the Sun – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
There aren’t enough good songs about giving in to love anymore. Thank blog for the Papermoons and this slow tempest of a temptress that has us roaring west towards mountains and the purples and pinks and reds of a dusty sunset with the windows down shouting GIVE INTO LOVE in blissful unknowingly ironic aping of a behavior we’re probably too chicken shit to even attempt again but fuck the torpedoes we’re no Hesseian steppenwolf and are living in this moment like it’s the last and dear God please put a stalled semi into our path so we can die with this smile on our face and these perfectly interwoven gentle three guitar parts and midas drums in our ears. We give in. To Love. This song is so beautiful that it shifts our whole aesthetic and makes us feel like whores with hotels for hearts.
Genocide – Teenage Kicks
Aesthetic vs Substance (Self Released)
This is a teenage anthem, though best we we can tell it isn’t about Darfur or the Eastern Congo or north Niger or any other people or place in the hells of Africa specifically (just the teenage nation. Teenajistan?). It’s not that we think Teenage Kicks can’t or shouldn’t follow in the footsteps of punks who melded social consciousness into catchy riffs. But frankly, it’s just as well in this case because we would totally feel Simpson guilty if we were all “Yeah Yeah Rock Rock Dance Dance” and this song was about the use of rape as a military tactic or something horrific like that.
GG249 – Alkari
Kubli Khan (Self Released)
This one time we flew across the rockies to San Francisco (hiss) to hang out with a friend and check out this band that was playing one of their first US shows after having developed a small but growing following in their native London. Their CD had come out stateside and in the time between when we booked the ticket and arrived at the box office, the show had sold out and their first single was catching on like wildfire. It was catchy, popy modern rock that reminded us why we were never so terribly turned off by even the weakest parts of the U2 catalog. So yeah, we were there for Coldplay’s second stateside performance cause we’ve always had a soft spot for music that was done for its own sake and who gives a damn if it sounds too conventional to most people and like we care if it accidentally becomes popular. Oh, btw, this sounds nothing like Coldplay.
Holy Cow – Papermoons
New Tales (Team Science Records)
You know, in spite of the fact that the bulk of the Papermoons catalog (especially our favorites) have a distinct gleam of melancholy, we really don’t get bummed out when we listen to them. In fact, though songs like this couldn’t find a major chord with a tone tube and James Love’s presumably perfect pitch, we’re decidedly Guy Smiley the whole time these notes ring out and glisten like dew on the leaf pile. Even when that sad as dead ducks harmonica cuts a roman candle across the pond moments after hearing “All we are now is past tense”, we still can’t help but smile a knowing smile. Someone has taken a great universality, distilled it down to a paste, made a candle out of it, and put it there for us to enjoy its flickering. How can you not love that?
Hornless Unicorn Anthem – The Mathletes
#$@% You and Your Cool (Asaurus Records)
It’s certainly not possible to label any one Mathletes song as typical, regardless of whether you are talking about music in general or their catalog in particular. Channeling the best of Elvis Costello on this outing (which means, by default, the fantastic Radio Radio keyboard vibe as well), we’re taken along at a hard gallop for the tale of, surprise, a hornless Unicorn. Full of earnest goof that charms the wizard cloak right off of you, we’re just way too into this song to throw it in the pigeon coop of poor man’s indie rock ‘Dick in the Box.’ Yeah, it’s funny as hell and quite possibly the only thing that could make it better might be a video featuring Justin Timberlake as the Unicorn, but this is more than gimmickry. It’s wickedcry.
I Heard You’re Having a Baby – Jenny Westbury
Jenny French and the Pelican Wrench (All Star Power Up Records)
Most of Pelican Wrench is Jenny along with a guitar, miniature or otherwise. For this ditty, her own coos, chants and ba ba dahs providing the instrument track, more choir than barbershop. Actually, not barbershop at all. Its lovely, haunting, celebratory, endearing and evocative of the more layered approach she is taking with the new recordings that have been showing up on her MySpace since her recent move to the great Northeast. Perhaps people move away to do their best work in places new and strange, but it’s good to hear the root of it play out with simple, fragile grace in bedrooms and quiet spaces here at home.
TSN ON THE RADIO! TONIGHT! 8PM!
Aug 12th
It should go without saying that every Tuesday 8-10pm you should have your hi-fi dialed and locked into 91.7fm for The Local Show on KTRU (or you can stream it online here). This week is no exception, as we are pleased as Guyana Punch to be able to announce that The Skyline Network’s own adr will be guest hosting for the first hour. While he’s wearing cans on his ears and sitting behind the gold plated KTRU microphone, no doubt committing a number of gaffes proportionate to his unfamiliarity with the equipment, Ian, the mastermind and weekly host behind it all will be prepping the studio for a live performance by none other than The McKenzies. Strange brew indeed.
Though KTRU bylaws strictly prohibit any of his personality from shining through, he’s packing up his crate of records now and we can say definitively that you are in for a treat, including OH SO HOT sneak peek tracks from The Wild Moccasins, The Monocles, Tod the Fox and more! Plus, new stuff from all the aces records to come out in the past few months and weeks (including quite possibly the out-today new Jenny Westbury record – sure to cause sizzling no-he-did-unt gossip as adr seems incapable of uttering the words “Jenny Westbury” without following them with “will you marry me.” Now THAT is some news on the march! Sadly, you won’t get to hear any POWERHOUSE!, a band in adr’s current (and pepetual) top 5 local acts due to their affinity for bad words and the FCC’s distaste for the same. UNFUN!
UPDATE: Turns out one of our fav POWERHOUSE! songs doesn’t have any bad words so adr ended his set with it. Brilliant.
