Dirty Three

I'm not sure how this one missed my best-of year-end list, but it did, and I'm sorry.

The Dirty Three are a trio from Australia that make hauntingly beautiful instrumental music based around drums, violin, and guitars. They first entered my world as the band behind Chan Marshall's voice and songs on Moon Pix, far and away my favorite Cat Power record. Dirty Three were no small part of that record's beauty, playing perfectly off Marshall's ethereal, breathy, captivating vocals, conjuring worlds for her to sing within.

They brought out a new record last year called Cinder, and it's a thing your ears will not be able to get enough of. At times dark and moody, at others buoyant and celebratory, at all times this record embodies musicians at the heights of their powers, working with material that offers them space to do their thing with no intrusions or interruptions. You just wish you could be in the room when they get together to practice.

As a bonus, Ms. Marshall appears for vocal duties on one song, called Great Waves, that is one of my favorite tracks of all last year. I dare say it could stand up to anything on Moon Pix, and wouldn't be at all out of place on that record.

Remodel

Don't do this. Leave your home as it is, keep your life your own, and maintain the solidity of your marriage. I'm serious. This is a bad idea.

We're nearing the end of a month and a half or two month remodel process on the whole upstairs of our house. We're very close--it should all be done by the end of the week--but it has not come without cost. The financial, obviously, but also the mental, the spiritual, the marital. It's been tough. Life has been hectic and rushed and cluttered and hectic, and we've both seen the ends of our ropes come frighteningly close. But we've survived.

Our house will be transformed. The results will be dazzling. We will be much happier. But, if I had it to do over again, unless some things were drastically changed, I wouldn't. I'd slap some paint on and leave it the hell alone.

Anyway, this nonsense comes by way of an excuse as to why this blog has been so lame and inactive lately. I've been gathering loads of new music, I've had some great outdoor adventures, I've sort of got a new job, and there's been plenty to write about, I just haven't had time. But, come next week, hopefully, I will. That is, if the friggin house is done.

Much too much

Busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

More folks fighting the odds than on payday in Jackpot, Nevada.

More shit to work through than the squeegee man at a hog farm.

Sometimes life throws so much at you that you don't even know where to begin. This time, life's taking pot-shots at friends and family, leaving me alone but fucking with damn near everyone else I know.

All you can do is all you can do. Help out, be there, keep your own shit together.

Treading water.

Meanwhile, dig this track:

http://www.myspace.com/builttospill

That's right, chirdrens, new Built to Spill is finally visible on the horizon. Keep your eyes peeled. It's gonna be a good one.

Bovaflux

Bovaflux

When There Was Nothing

This is a new one I just picked up after hearing a track on KEXP's morning show. (Incidentally, this is where I get turned on to loads of new music, so check out John in the morning on www.kexp.org. It's out of Seattle.) I've listened through a couple times and am definitely digging this. They've got it on emusic.

It's pretty lush, fairly chill electronic music along the lines of Boards of Canada. The songs feel like songs, melodies emerging from the loops and blips and moving along of their own volition, repeating phrases and evoking moods as slyly and smoothly as can be.

This is mood music. Sitting on a train, rolling through foreign countrysides, perhaps watching rain clouds gather or clear, feeling alone but alive--that's where this music takes me.

Happy New Year

We had a fantastic time out in Driggs ove rthe weekend, alpine skiing up at Grand Targhee, going nordic up Teton Canyon, and snowshoeing in and around Darby Canyon. The cabin we stayed in was out of this world--the perfect mountain getaway, and far more posh than rustic. We were blown away by the place when we got there, and we spent lots of time lounging in pajamas and slippers.

We rang in the new year watching Scarface and playing the millenium edition of Trivial Pursuit.

We're old.

So, hope y'all had as refreshing and rejuvenating a new year's as we did. Here's to a good, healthy, adventurous 2006.

New Year's

This will be me for New Year's this year.


















At least, that's how I hope I'll look, as opposed to a giant tumbling snowball with skis and poles poking out in all directions. Cathy and I are headed to Driggs, ID, way over just this side of the Grand Tetons, to spend a long New Year's weekend. Grand Targhee resort is just a few miles from where we'll be staying, so we plan to spend at least one day there. The above pic was taken there yesterday.

Both of us are pretty inexperienced skiers. Cathy's been doing it for some years, though never more than once or twice a year--not quite enough to get really good. I just learned how to ski last February, and have only been out twice this year, once up at Bogus, and once at Brundage. Both times felt great; both made me feel like I was learning and doing better than the time before. And while these trips were both in decent snow, I'm really looking forward to great snow.

So, we'll be out of town and largely out of touch until next Tuesday. Hope y'all have a happy new year's, and a great 2006.

Taking Time

I'll be honest: It's all to easy to rush and cut corners when putting together a show for Radio Boise. I'm busy, it's late, it runs tomorrow, I'm tired, blah blah. I've done it--though I know those of you who have listened to Range Life will find that shocking. I'm very sorry. I'll try my best to do better.

And, for that last part at least, I mean it. I put time into these shows. I read about music a lot, I search out new music, I log hours and hours both mobile and stationary listening to new music, and I love it all. Nowadays, I especially love the process of assembling a version of Range Life, the show. I love firing up the iBook and the Creatures and setting out in my office/bike shop for hours on end, listening to track after track and assembling playlists and listening to them and changing them and trying to create a good flow, with good transitions, with a healthy balance of new stuff and old stuff and brand new stuff and not so old stuff and whatever else grabs my attention.

So, why would I cut corners? Why would I spend less time on it than I could or should? Because I'm stupid, that's why. And so are you. We all are. We lose sight all too easily not only of the big things that give life meaning, but the little things that give each moment of life purpose and contain the potential to turn into big things or to alter or affect big things. We avoid things that make us happy for things that don't. I'm no hedonist, but I do think this happens far too often. And when you can make a small change that you're damned sure will affect big change, you do it. Or you should.

I'll be spending more time on this. It'll be better. And by this I mean both the radio show and this blog. If this is starting to sound like your run of the mill resolution, so close to New Year's as we are and all, I suppose maybe it is. I didn't set out to do it, but I think it's a natural thing to put things in order at this point of the year, to think of what was and what could have been, and to take the next step and start planning for the next year. This is just one way I'll make it better.

On Thursday, we're heading for Targhee. Friends of ours have a family cabin that we've been granted permission to use, and we're spending New Year's there. Not sure who-all yet, but it's coming soon. We're very excited. It's nice to be excited about New Year's. Staying at the cabin, taking the dogs for romps in the snow, skiing Grand Targhee, celebrating New Year's with a mess of other friends who will be out there, all of it. Can't wait. I've never skied powder before. This seems like the perfect time and place.

Top 10 of 2005

Since everyone else on the planet is doing it, why not me? In the time-honored tradition of end-of-year wrapups, here it is, my very own Top Ten Albums of 2005.

I preface this list by saying that, for me, this year has been remarkable for the depth of new music. So many great records have come out, so many exciting new bands have popped up, that it was extremely difficult to choose just ten. (So, of course, there will be a long also-ran list here.)

Perhaps this has been simply an effect of my re-awakening.

As I've written about here before, the first part of this year saw me wake up and walk out of my deep, dark, musical hole. I was and am still amazed at what I've found. I was so totally engaged in music for so long, so focused on finding it and writing about it and thinking about it and acquiring it and sharing it, that when I got married and left Austin, I just stopped paying attention. It was nice for a while. And during that time I sort of forgot what it was like to care so much about it.

Now I remember. And what a fantastic year it's been.

So, without further ado, here they are.

CHess' Top Ten Albums of 2005

1. Broken Social Scene ~ s/t
2. WHY? ~ Elephant Eyelash
3. Four Tet ~ Happiness
4. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ~ s/t
5. 13 & God ~ s/t
6. Wolf Parade ~ Apologies to the Queen Mary
7. Animal Collective ~ Feels
8. The National ~ Alligator
9. The Decemberists ~ Picaresque
10. Brazilian Girls ~ s/t

Honorable mentions in no particular order which, in a lesser year, would have made this list easily: Okkervil River (Black Sheep Boy), The Books (Lost and Safe), Stephen Malkmus (Face the Truth), Spoon (Gimme Fiction), Art Brut (Bang Bang Rock and Roll), Wilderness (s/t), Sleater Kinney (The Woods), Boards of Canada (The Campfire Headphase), Bloc Party (Silent Alarm), Franz Ferdinand (You Could Have It So Much Better), New Pornographers (Twin Cinema), Beck (Guero), MIA (Arular), Caribou (Milk of Human Kindness), Iron and Wine & Calexico (He Lays in Reins), Death Cab for Cutie (Plans), American Analog Set (Set Free), LCD Soundsystem (s/t), Jeff Parker (Relatives)

So, there you have it. I'd love to see your lists, to hear criticism, or to share music with any of y'all who are interested.

WHY?

WHY?

Elephant Eyelash

(Anticon Records)

OK, so I've been sitting with this one for a while, soaking it up, marinating in it, and while I'm not so sure that it's "the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain of our modern indie times" (Filter Mini, 10/05), it's a pretty damn good slab of music. Labels are lazy, but this band just invites you to try. Folk-rap? Avant-hop? Indie artrock hip-hop experimental freak folk... all of it comes into play during a listen to this record from front to back.

Yoni Wolf, who was Why? as a solo project for a few years and now heads up WHY? as a band, comes up with verse after verse of totally accessible everyman-as-freak lyrics, rolling them out in a near-deadpan singspeak that, after the necessary acclimatization, is just really cool. It's like my internal dork has found voice and form at long last.

The sound of light rain and burning leaves is the same... I'm fucking cold like a DQ blizzard, you act like a slut but you're really a freezer... Inhaling crushed bones through a dried up white out pen and writing the backwards racer in hot June rain in a matching blue and gold plastic bag poncho raincoat... In London where the sirens yelp like a helpless dog with his paw stepped on...

He goes from smart and sharp rap lyrics to weirdo free-association all a microsecond behind the beat, shifting the layers off time just a bit, making the music more dense and busy and turning the beat into a jarring shuffle that's tough to nail but wonderful to listen to.

The appeal of this record is, so far, for me, tough to put into words. If you don't think this is your kind of thing, just listen. Suspend judgement for the first few trips through, then listen to it again.

Chris Loves Macha: Macha Knows Chris Not

Alright, so I'm a little slow on this one, but in all honesty I didn't know this band was still making music.

Back in the day, when Macha and Bedhead sort of teamed up for the little indie lovefest Macha Loved Bedhead: Bedhead Loved Macha, I thought for sure that this would end up being my next favorite band. They brought the chill, but they threw down some cool crazy drums and Asiany percussion, putting a crashy ambient vibe onto the narcotic haze of Bedhead's style. F'ing brilliant.

Then they went away. Or at least that's the way it seemed.

And now (or, more accurately, last year) they're back with Forget Tomorrow, a gorgeous record full of exactly the stuff that made me love them: at turns ambient and lush, at others raw and spare, at all times totally unique and affecting. They have a gift for melodies that don't smack of melody--of tunes that are both immediately catchy and yet subversive enough to not fully reveal themselves until you've spent some time with them.

Thanks to Harlan for laying this on me. I heart Macha.

Freaky Friday

Hot times in Les Big Bois. Tonight, the queens of the country dirge, Freakwater, hit the Neurolux for some much needed good, dark, country music. This is good. Nothing can better reawaken a passion for a certain type or genre of music than catching a great show. It's been a while since I've felt like I give a rat's ass about country or country-related music, possibly a backlash to my ODing on it in Austin as well as a normal response to the lack of good music of this type up here in Whitaho. It'll be good to want to seek it out again.

Then again, I've seen Freakwater play a couple times, and although I love their records, and I wouldn't say either of the shows was 'bad,' I would say they did not blow me away. For whatever reason, I came away both times thinking that I expected it to be better. But, I go tonight with a clear head (well...) and an open mind (ahem), and in not expecting the world, I may come away with a renewed love for this music. At the very least, I'll get to hear the gorgeously rusty pipes of Catherine Irwin and the beautifully clear and high crooning of Janet Bean. (And I'll get to stare at the lovely Ms. Bean for at least an hour or so, which ain't so bad on its own.)

But anyway.

Their new album, Thinking of You (listen here), was made with the help of the fine fellows of Califone, and I'm anxious to hear how they'll pull that off live.

Art Brut

So, y'all ready for the next Brit band that's about to storm the US with a newer, sillier, snottier take on rock and roll? Like it or not, they're coming, and you are soon to hear the name Art Brut bandied about by hipsters and music geeks as the next Franz Ferdinand.

That statement may be a bit misleading, especially if it conjures thoughts of new and improved disco rock or dance punk or whatever the hell you want to call that pop-rock with the infectious backbeat and judicial use of high hat that the boys from Glasgow made so famous. You know what I'm talking about. Art Brut aren't doing that. They're doing something far sillier, far more basic--far more rock and roll, really.

They're ridiculous. Their songs are about themselves being in a rock band, themselves partying, themselves being themselves. It's absurdly self-referential, but that's the thing about it. As the singer says in "Formed a Band," "We're just talking... to the kids!"

Check out that track plus a couple others at their website.

http://www.artbrut.org.uk/release.html

I downloaded this CD from emusic because I was in a weird mood. (Apparently it's not available in stores in the US yet--ah, another great thing about emusic. And by the way, if you check out emusic and want to join, contact me first, that way you get a sweet trial offer and I get 50 free tracks for getting you to sign up. Everybody wins. Especially me.) I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, except for the obvious: It's silly; It's full of great hooks and catchy basic riffs; it's silly; and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Check it out. It'll also be in the rotation over at RangeLife this week and, likely, many weeks to come. (RangeLife airs Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 3pm, mountain time.)

Animal Collective

Animal Collective
Feels


I've resisted this band for a while now, based on a couple tracks I'd gleaned from various compilation CDs. It's weird. Its sounds are strange and delayed in ways that are hard to describe. The songs are assembled like they're a joint math-music project by genius kids on acid. Seemed to me that the tunes were either scary fairy tales that screeched in the night or teletubbyesque slackjawed daydreams.

But, I just downloaded the new album, and I may be changing my mind.

I'm on first listen as I write this, but man--and now I mean it in a good, intriguing, innovative sense--this shit is WEIRD.

Admittedly, I'm listening to this on crap computer speakers and haven't yet given it full attention or full stereo treatment, but so far, I'm being sucked in to this strange childish zap-brained netherworld. More to come, for sure.

Meantime, check out the first track, Did You See the Words, at the FatCat Records site, here. There are more to listen to, too. Flesh Canoe? WTF? And it's too bad Purple Bottle isn't one of the free listens. This is quite a track.

Statement

TV On the Radio, about whom I've written here before, have posted a free track and a very potent political statement.

Check it:
http://www.tgrec.com/bands/album.php?id=367

It's a track called Dry Drunk Emperor. Here's the chorus:

all eyes upon
dry drunk emperor
gold cross jock skull and bones
mocking smile,
he's been
standing naked for a while!
get him gone, get him gone, get him gone!!
and bring all the thieves to trial.

Guess who it's about...

Oh, and while you're there at the Touch and Go Records site, get ya a little learning on Dirty Three. I just got their new album, Cinder, and it's a good one. More to come on that later.

Back to the Life

We're back from the Big New Orleans Adventure, and it's now time to get back to normal life. Strange and hard to do so after all this, but it'll be good to get stable in the brain again.

So: Music.

I've gotten the big dump from friend Allison through her connection in Oregon, a certain someone involved in radio who's hooked me up to many a new band or latest CD. And all this from someone I've never met. God, I love this whole sharing business.

Cream of the crop so far: Lali Puna's offering of remixes and rare tracks, called I Thought I Was Over That. Fantastic stuff, much chill electronic beatifying and reworking of strong tracks by folks like Two Lone Swordsmen and Dntel. You can listen to a good bit of it at the Morr Music website. Lali Puna's take on (This is the Dream of) Evan and Chan is really something to get lost in. Taking the ethereal melody out and laying it on some skittering beat and nice effects, the track surprisingly does not suffer from the absence of trance-like fuzz or Ben Gibbard's vocals.

Other standouts include Koushik, some more chill deep thought electronic music that lives in the hazy fog between rock and dance music.

The most surprising thing to have captured my attention is the new album by Blackalicious, The Craft, which I'm really enjoying diving into. I've been through it a couple times now and it seems there's not a down or weak moment to be found. Great great beats and some outstanding vocal work. I know as much about hip hop as Brownie knows about disaster relief, but I'm enjoying checking this release through ears untainted by knowledge. Ignorance is bliss here.

Alright, back to normal. This ain't so bad.

Travel Blog

This week sees Cathy and I embarking on a different kind of trip. With the support of the Idaho and US Humane Societies, we are headed to New Orleans to help clear some dogs out of a temporary shelter that's about to close down. We'll be loading the dogs into a U-Haul and driving them from N.O. back to Boise where they'll either be adopted or placed in shelters until they're ok to be adopted.

None of you will be surprised to learn that Cathy's the one who's gotten us into this. However, I think you'd also agree that this is at least a worthwhile endeavor, and could be at most an adventure that will change our lives.

So, with camera and laptop in tow, we head out tomorrow morning on a flight for Houston. I hope to blog it at the travel blog, so check in over there if you're curious.

Okkervil River

There's something about seeing bands from Austin play up here in Idaho that makes me very happy and also profoundly homesick. The Gourds? Sure, that's obvious. There are strong connections to my life in Texas and, really, to my development as a human being that go along with seeing that band play. But Okkervil River? I've seen them a handful of times, I've got a couple of their records, and while I do like them quite a bit, I wouldn't consider myself attached to them or their music in any meaningful way.

Still, seeing them this past Saturday night at the Neurolux had a strange effect on me. They put on an outstanding show, full of their hallmark energy and abandon and yelling, and the respectable-sized crowd responded with enthusiasm, staying with the band even through the quieter moments of their loud-quiet-loud roller coaster ride. They were into it. So were we.

The strange thing is how familiar it all sounded. I mean, I'm familiar with their work, but I mean this in a larger sense. Back when I wrote for the Austin Chronicle I interviewed Will Sheff for a SXSW edition of the paper. When I asked him about whether moving to Austin has made a difference to the music he makes, he replied that he'd be making the same music no matter where he lived. I was surprised at this then, and I think I attributed it more to him not wanting to credit the scene more than he or his band's inherent creativity. In hindsight, I think I was at least partly correct. There is something Austin about that band, something buried deep that surfaces as part of the murky characteristics of Mood or Tone or Aesthetic or something indefinable like that. It's in the way the keyboards and the lap steel fit together, or in the way the rest of the bandmembers sing all the songs whether they have mics or not, or in the narrative quality of the lyrics or the sense of unrehearsed style they all had. Note: This is a good thing. It is a measure not only of style but of quality.

And stranger than this recognition of roots or pedigree was the effect it had. When the show was over, I was sad. Not in the sense of not wanting a good thing to end, but in the sense of leaving a place that I love. Oddly enough I don't really even get this feeling from seeing the Gourds play. Maybe I'm too close to their music. Seeing Okkervil River was less a big event than just a good show, more a feeling of being transported to Austin to see any one of hundreds of bands that would give me this same feeling. When it ended, I was only beginning to recognize it. Then it was too late.

I don't know what this all means. Just another layer on my already complex and freaky relationship with Austin, TX, I suppose.

Dramatics aside, the show really was very good. If you get a chance to see these guys, take it. Whenever you have songs this good, a band this solid, and a level of passionate engagement this high, it's not something to be passed on lightly.

I'm Too Much

Trouble

Only about 6 weeks back in the country after a wonderful trip abroad and already I'm reading through the travel blog every day.

I find it's getting harder and harder to stay content. I love where I live, I like my job more than I've liked most jobs, and all parts of life seem to have fallen into their proper places. But, still, the restlessness prevails, the wanderlust seeps into the front of my mind, and I find myself checking air fares and weather in far off places and just constantly wishing I were somewhere else.

Travel is good like that. It gets in your nose and your bones and creates a permanent place in the mind, a room off a main hall that you pass by often, where you can poke your head in and see how things are going and look back at trips gone by. But this, this is something else. It's distracting and troubling, a feeling that sends small tremors through the beams and mortar of everyday life.

On our last trip, I approached the day to day with the idea of just pretending I lived in a place. In Paris, or in Amsterdam, in this case. It was wonderful, a whole different style and pace of traveling, and I enjoyed it so much that I think I took it too much to heart. Now I actually do want to live there. Somewhere. And it seems so plausible. That's the trouble.

Wedding Bell Rung

The weekend is over. My little brother is married.

It was a hell of a time, starting with family arriving all last week, a bachelor party on Thursday, and the wedding weekend up in Stanley. Lots to report, from seeing family and friends to riding the totally burnt out Fisher Creek trail, but it'll have to wait. I'm now buried at work and have yet to get my head back together from the damage of all the festivities.

Brother married.

Fisher Creek scorched.
















Family gone now.

More later.