Ugly Music for Beautiful People

The WFMU blog just posted three double dope tunes by Nigerian highlife musician Celestine Ukwu. Holla at that shit.

Sam King is another excellent Arkansas musician. He is currently on tour, so you should check his myspace and see if he’s in your area anytime soon. I’ve seen Sam play live many many times, most of which were at the Dinosaur House, a house show venue in Fayetteville. But, as fate would have it, he recently played Ypsilanti, MI, which is only an hour and a half from East Lansing. So I drove down and saw him play. It was a bit weird seeing him in a different environment like that, but it was good as always.

He has a new self released album out called Two and it is very good. In the two years I’ve been hearing Sam play, he has sharpened songwriting skill, expanded his guitar style and gained more control over his voice. “1980’s Finest” is one his best songs lyrically. Like many of his songs, it’s a vignette about people and interpersonal conflict. “Endless Little Greys” has some lovely slide guitar overdubs that nicely counterpoint the minimal guitar line in the song. If you enjoy singer songwriters that are in the folk milieu who keep their arrangements minimal and focus on the melody, like early Iron & Wine or Donovan, you will enjoy this. And if you want to buy it, visit his MySpace.
Sam King - Endless Little Greys
Sam King - 1980’s Finest

Will-o-the-Wisp are a Greek progressive/psychedelic rock band who I first became aware of when their most recent album, A Gift for Your Dreams, was posted on the blog Lost-in-Tyme. I just now got around to listening to it and it’s very excellent. It recalls 60s & 70s English prog bands like Camel and Caravan or, for a more recent reference, the non-metal work of Opeth. The song I’m posting, “Nature Boy” is a cover. It was written in 1947 by Eden Ahbez for the film The Boy With the Green Hair. Will-o-the-Wisp do the song twice, in fact. The version I’m posting opens the album, but the closing track is an alternate version done with female vocals.

Overpay for the import

Will-o-the-Wisp - Nature Boy (expired)

Genghis Tron’s Dead Mountain Mouth was one of my absolute favorite albums of last year. It was a shocking fusion of grindcore, breakcore, and electro-pop that had no missteps. They’re currently working on a new album to be released on the mighty Relapse Records, but for now, they’ve got the “Triple Black Diamond” EP. It’s a CD-R release limited to 444 copies on Crucial Bliss, the limited run arm of Crucial Blast, GT’s former label. It’s an in-between kind of release, with 3 live tracks, 3 remixes and an untitled demo of a track from the upcoming album. The highlights are the demo and “The Folding Road (Carwash Climax Remix)”. It turns the song into something not that far from M83 track.

Get it while you can

The Folding Road (Carwash Climax Remix) (expired)

What with Amy Winehouse being a pop star and all, I figured Candie Payne would be a bit better known on this side of the pond. Not that they sound alike at all, but they are both retro pop/soul singers from the UK. Candie Payne is more on the pop side (and the talented side), though. She has one foot in the British pop singer tradition of Shirley Bassey & Dusty Springfield, and one foot in the girl group revivalism of the Pipettes or Lucky Soul (who I will discuss in the future).

I first got into Candie Payne through her bombastic Spectoresque UK hit “I Wish I Could Have Loved You More”, but that song is all over the internet, so I’m not going to post that. Instead, I’m going to discuss the slinky torch song “Why Should I Settle for You”. Her multi-tracked vocals have all the emotional punch of Dusty at her best. The arrangement, with its jazz noir trumpets and violin, isn’t that far from Portishead, but without a smooth 60s pop rhythm rather than dated trip-hop beats.

I don’t know if or when this is coming out in the US, but for now you can overpay for the import!

Why Should I Settle for You (expired)

While I’m posting videos, here’s another rad one. It’s for Escort’s new single “All Through The Night”. Muppets!!!

Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me (Crystals cover) (expired here, but still available from Daytrotter)
Caribou - Melody Day (expired)

Eric Copeland of the Black Dice and Terrestrial Tones has embarked on a solo career. I was first made aware of this when he emailed me about setting up a show in September in Fayetteville for him. I don’t live there no more, so I pointed him to the indefatigable Amy of the Dinosaur House. So any and all F-Town readers out there, if the shows happens you need to go. Because Eric’s shit is double dope.

Copeland’s debut album Hermaphrodite is often referred to as being more accessible than Black Dice. Which is true to an extent. But that is due to the sonic palette that he uses here rather than the structure of the songs. Black Dice and Animal Collective have a long history together and have often used each others ideas. Copeland’s use of warped human voices and semi-recognizable instrument sounds often does sounds more like a thornier Animal Collective. But the contextless tones and drones that Black Dice use are here as well. The two tracks I’m posting, “La Booly Boo” and “Spacehead” are the most vocal oriented. “Spacehead” even has something of a traditional song structure.

La Booly Boo (expired)
Spacehead (expired)

Acquire!

Anytime any motherfucker disses on Arkansas, I raise three fingers and say “Johnny Cash, Al Green, Bill Clinton”. Works every time. Of course, there’s lots more awesome things in the awesome A-State, and that’s what “A-State, Rep Your Shit” is all about. This will be a series of posts where I talk about all the awesome music that comes out my home state.

I’m going to start off by talking about Tippy Canoe, the best new band out of Fayetteville, Arkansas in quite a while. They are three friends of mine (Jordan, Melanie and Audrey) who got tired of all Fayetteville bands being all dudes and decided to start a band. And it ruled. Their live shoes are a combination of twee folk pop and dirty-ass booty bass. It’s Tullycraft doing 2 Live Crew or something like that. They have some recordings that focus more on the folk side of the band, but are still pretty awesome. There’s 3 songs and 1 thing. They have them streaming on their Myspace and all are also downloadable, but downloading from MySpace doesn’t work right half of the time, so here are some ‘right-click, save-as” links for ya’.

Heterosexually in Love
Warm My Feet Up
Gag on a Cough
Sorry for Singing So Mean
Expired for now, but if anybody wants, I can repost it as a divshare zip or something. Just ask in the comments.

Bonus!
My friend Stuart (aka Timber aka Jordan’s boyfriend) did a live recording of a Tippy Canoe show from April. The fidelity is pretty raw, as it was done using his handheld tape recorder. But it’s still badass. Here’s the post (which has some other live recordings he’s done) and here’s the direct link to the file

If you know me, you know how much I adore the music of Joanna Newsom. When I was in Chicago, I came across a delightful little minicomic/zine called “To the Mouth of the Source” by Grant Reynolds that is a quasi-narrative collection of whimsical, yet somewhat melancholy, illustrations based on lyrics from Joanna Newsom songs.

Acquire!