I got a, *ahem*, pre-release copy of Sam's Town a few days ago (I won't tell you how I got it, for fear of getting arrested).

For all the talk about the Killers trying to emulate Springsteenian epic-grit rock on this new album, the attribute that stands out more--at least after my first listen or two--is Brandon Flowers' obvious attempt at channeling Ric Orcasek. That, and the fact that a few tracks sound very Queen-ish.

Not that I'm complaining, Springsteen, Cars, and occasional Queen fan that I am. But best album of the past 20 years? I'mma have to give it a few more listens, 'cause right now I'm not seeing it (sorry, Flowers). There are still some great tracks, though.

Next up: The Decemberists' The Crane Wife, which is the day's new release that I'm really looking forward to hearing.


UPDATE @ 9:43pm: After a few more spins, I've decided that the best song on the album--and maybe their best, period--is the Cars-inspired "Read My Mind." I predict it'll be a monster hit in a few months, so listen to the song now and enjoy it before the radio stations overplay it to death.

UPDATE @ 2:01am: Relax, Mom. I'm not really going to get arrested.

Yesterday's 5th grade music class was one of those life-imitating-art moments. It could easily have passed as a scene from "School of Rock", though I promise it wasn't entirely intentional.

It was my first music class with the 5th graders. They only get music once a week, and last week the period was spent climbing up the hill.

We've taken the class out on another hike or two, which the kids have really enjoyed (despite the fact that one of last week's hikes ended with a terribly unfortunate incident in which one of the girls wound up breaking her arm). So when I came to teach music yesterday--instead of taking them up the hill yet again--they seemed ready to mutiny.

I had to quickly rethink my poorly-devised game plan. I was just planning to start by teaching basic note theory (whole, half, quarter notes, Do-Re-Mi, EGBDF/FACE...you know the drill), but with the mounting opposition, I realized I needed to come up with a better solution to introduce music and music theory to the kids. I needed to come up with a good way to really engage them and pique their interest.

Awkward and fumbling as I was at first, I managed to get the raucous class to begin listing their favorite artists. The list read like a veritable Who's Who of Disposable American Pop/Hip Hop Music, save for the class brainiac's contribution of Beethoven. This led way to a pretty--for a lack of better terms, elementary--discussion on why we like listening to music. My hope was that the kids would understand that music is a combination of different tones, sounds, and rhythms working together...and that the beauty of music comes from that "working together." (Of course, I'm articulating this much better now than I was at the time.)

Running out of ideas about how I would tie all of this together (I swear, I was flying by the seat of my pants after throwing out the original plan), I decided to talk about my experience of playing in a rock band. And wouldn't you know...the kids were awestruck. At one point, after I'd weaved a few tales about my rock n' roll exploits with Mr. Thom, Mr. Anthony, and Mr. Brian, my brainiac ran to the front of the class, and, acting the part of MC, announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. David aaaaaaaaaand... PROFATE!" Oh, how I wish Thom could've been there for that moment! The entire class began to chant "PRO-FATE" for a good 30 seconds.

I'd found my hook.

I spent a good 5 minutes playing air-guitar and talking about the virtues of, as Rev. Lovejoy would say, "rock and/or roll." And then, since the class was now more or less fully-engaged, I let 'em have it: "So...this semester, I'm going to teach you guys to play instruments, and we're going to play in a BAND!"

Another 30 seconds of cheering ensued.

I had to clarify, tell 'em we'd have to start simple and learn to play recorders together. But I liked the idea of getting the kids--some of whom can play other instruments--to put together a little makeshift band as well. I even floated the idea of having an end-of-the-year concert for their parents. The kids were now throwing out ideas of their own...a small vocal ensemble here, maybe a piano-guitar duet there.

I'd won 'em over. They were sold.

Of course, now the real work begins (such as tracking down enough recorders/instruments for the entire class). But no matter: these kids are ready to rock.

Animal Collective - Feels
Beck - Guero
Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
The Caesars - Paper Tigers
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Coldplay - X&Y
David Crowder* Band - A Collision
Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Doves - Some Cities
Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it So Much Better
The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike
The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
Low - The Great Destroyer
M. Ward - Transistor Radio
My Morning Jacket - Z
Nada Surf - The Weight is a Gift
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights
Shout Out Louds - Howl Howl Gaff Gaff
Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft
Switchfoot - Nothing is Sound
The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
World Leader Pretend - Punches
Youth Group - Skeleton Jar

* Nominees for this personal top 10 list are determined by the following criteria: 1) the album must be a studio release from 2005, and 2) I must have obtained said album in 2005. There are several other albums that I would like to pick up before year's end (specifically, Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, Oasis' Don't Believe the Truth, Sigur Ros' Takk, and Ryan Adams' Cold Roses), and if I do, they'll get added to this list.

I can already say with about 99.9% certainty that I know what my top 2 albums are going to be. It's picking the other 8 that's proving to be the difficult task.

See also: the 2004 list

Just doin' what I'm told here:

List 5 songs that you are currently loving. it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether or not they have words, or even if they're any good. However, they must be songs that you are enjoying right now.

Post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your xanga or blog. Then tag 5 other people to see what they're listening to.

The Five I'm Currently Digging:

1. The New Pornographers - "Sing Me Spanish Techno"
2. U2 - "Fast Cars"
3. Ryan Adams - "The Hardest Part"
4. Nada Surf - "In the Mirror"
5. David Crowder*Band - "Secret Ambition" (gotta love the MWS cover!)

I also finally purchased the Wolf Parade cd today, which I'm looking forward to listening to tomorrow.

Oh, and TAG: kuhn, rollotomossey, scmeggiry, helenmelon, and mblgator.

Having just come back from seeing the New Pornographers at Webster Hall, I think it's safe to say that I've fallen in love with Neko Case.

And Carl Newman, for that matter, who's a veritable pop music genius. But definitely, definitely Neko (yeah, I know...me and every other guy who's seen/heard her perform).

There were some problems with the sound tonight, but overall, an excellent show by a band that's fast becoming one of my absolute favorites.

[UPDATE: 2:58 pm, Fri. 10/14] - Matthew P. of Fluxblog was there last night as well, and has posted a nice review of the show along with an .mp3 of "These Are the Fables," one of Neko's finest moments on Twin Cinema, and my personal highlight from the show last night.

I'm about half-way through my crazy month-long concert-hopping endeavor, and this week's shows have not disappointed. A few thoughts and recollections, now, about the pair of Webster Hall shows attended by yours truly:

Interpol - Sunday Night: I raced into Manhattan after the post-sunnyside@seven social hour, and thankfully made it to the venue within minutes of Interpol taking the stage. The place was absolutely, ridiculously packed--I felt lucky not to be completely up against the back wall. Interpol takes the stage, and the crowd goes into a frenzy. A serious frenzy. The last time I saw folks get this fired up for a band was at last year's Franz Ferdinand show at Roseland, and before that, when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show back in '64 (or was it '65? I can never remember anymore).

It was a good set, though I started to get a bit bored during the last third of it. They played nearly every song off of Antics (still my favorite album of '04), and several off of their 2002 debut, Turn On the Bright Lights. The band played proficiently--almost as if they were in a trance--making sure not to get too visibly excited about anything. That said, the whole act did seem to have a sort of pretentiousness to it. Don't get me wrong, I loved that they were all rocking out in their suits with skinny ties (someday I'd like to be in a band that wears suits), but the incessant chain-smoking throughout the evening and the very limited amount of stage banter (not to mention bassist Carlos D seemingly striking a certain pose--head turned, chin up, eyes closed, lips in a self-assured cig-holding sneer--every possible moment; unrelatedly, it hit me at some point during the evening that Carlos D really looks like the hipster version of George McFly)...well, I think maybe it was all a little too cool for me.

But overall, a great show, and one that I enjoyed thoroughly: the music was excellent and translated well live; the stage lighting was, hands down, some of the best I've ever seen at a rock show; and the band pretty much had the audience eating out of its hands from the moment it took the stage. The band members may not have appeared overly excited, but their electrifying music certainly made up for it.

The Decemberists - Tuesday Night: Last night I retured to Webster to see The Decemberists (and like Interpol, this was my first time seeing them live). I got to the entrance and found my friend (and NYU colleague) Jay working the door. He hooked me up with a VIP pass that put me in the lounge on the left-hand side of the balcony. I could look out over the entire floor, and I had a pretty great view of the entire stage. By the time the band took the stage, the floor was again packed (though not as much as it was on Sunday night).

If Interpol was the epitome of cool and calculating, the Decemberists were anything but. Stage banter would go on for minutes at a time, often delving into very silly comments ("It's so hot in here, my water's sweating" violinist Rachel Blumberg said at one point, holding up her bottled water), and various band members would often take a few minutes to re-tune their instruments between songs, allowing for a rather awkward bit of silence here and there.

BUT. In the end, these guys put on one of the most entertaining shows I've seen in a long while. The setlist contained many songs off this year's Picaresque, the stand-out performances including "The Engine Driver," "We Both Go Down Together," "The Sporting Life," and from Her Majesty, The Decemberists, "Song for Myla Goldberg" and "The Chimbley Sweep." All of these songs sounded like faithful and energized interpretations of the lush album versions, and the positive crowd response seemed to intensify with each number. They closed out the main set with a daft performance of "The Chimbley Sweep" that stretched the 4-minute song into something of a 15-minute romp on (and off) stage. Words don't do it justice, but in the course of those 15 minutes, lead singer Colin Meloy (who looks like Charlie Sheen with glasses and an MA in English) did the following things: he picked up a cell phone that was left onstage, called a random number, and had the audience scream for the receiving party; he crowd-surfed for a few seconds; he then waved his arms over each member of the band who, in turn, fell down and played "dead" on the stage (all the while still playing their instruments, breaking out into short renditions of "Smoke on the Water" and that Jewish song where people shout "Le Chaim!"...someone help me out here?); he then turned to the crowd and did the same thing until everyone in the audience was playing dead, and then--and only then--did they finish the song, already being played at a raucous, breakneck speed.

I won't even go into the encore, except that it involved a huge paper whale and the drummer pounding a detached tom in the middle of the stage as hard as he could, as if part of some tribal ritual. By the end of the show, the crowd was going absolutely nuts--it even seemed to eclipse the noise level of the crowd at the Interpol show two nights prior. Again, a serious frenzy.

I really enjoyed both shows, though I think you can tell which one I preferred just a bit more.

- The New Pornographers @ Bowery Ballroom 9/15
- The White Stripes / The Shins / M. Ward @ Keyspan Park 9/25
- Interpol @ Webster Hall 10/2
- The Decemberists @ Webster Hall 10/4
- U2 @ Madison Square Garden 10/11
- The New Pornographers @ Webster Hall 10/13
- Death Cab for Cutie / Youth Group @ Hammerstein Ballroom 10/19

On the wishlist:
- Oasis, The Killers, Interpol, British Sea Power, Jet, etc @ Richmond Park 10/1-2 (too expensive and conflicting schedule)
- Sufjan Stevens @ Symphony Space 10/07 (sold out!)
- Franz Ferdinand @ MSG Theatre 10/17 (too expensive)

As you can imagine, when a guy gets to thinking that he might not be able to see rock shows for a long while (because, oh, I don't know, he plans on going to Iraq), he goes hog wild and tries to get tickets for as many as possible, Ticketmaster service charges be damned. I'm actually quite amazed that I was able to squeeze seven shows into the next month without any conflicts--though I really really really wish I could see Sufjan again...and no, not just because of Xylophone Girl! Ah well, thankfully the lovely and talented Neko Case is expected to play at the next NPs' show, and that'll make my heart glad.

Speaking of the New Pornos, I was meaning to write a review of their show at the Bowery Ballroom last Thursday during the CMJ Marathon, but I went into my mini-hibernation and the review didn't happen. The short version: I was disappointed that Neko wasn't there, but they still put on a decent show. Incidentally, they played a spot-on cover of The Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl" (uhh, hit close to home, you ask? Absolutely. But the song's way too much fun to get depressed over). It brought the house down half-way through their 90-minute set. That, and the drummer looked like a cross between Animal (from the Muppets), the Tazmanian Devil, and Green Day's Tré Cool--just watching him go crazy was incredibly entertaining.

More to come on various topics, I guess. I think I'm done temporarily hiding.

1. Majesty (Here I Am) - Delirious?
2. Animal - R.E.M.
3. Bigger Than My Body - John Mayer
4. NYC - Interpol
5. Hey Ya! - Outkast
6. Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley
7. Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) - Elton John
8. Backstreets - Bruce Springsteen
9. Out of Control - U2
10. Inside Outside - Delirious?
11. Every Little Thing - Delirious?
12. Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie

( pointless commentary follows )

Believe it or not, this Sunday marks a pretty significant milestone for yours truly: it will be the 2-year anniversary of my moving to New York City.

And you know me; I'll go on needlessly and melodramatically about my time here (just like I did last year), wax philosophical about the ups, the downs, yada yada yada...just thinking about how gratuitously-sentimental it'll all be is making me sick!

But. It really is a big deal to me. And so, to commemorate my two years here, I'm going to share something I've been meaning to share for a while now. (No, not the big announcement...that'll come soon enough, though. Promise.)

This week, I'll be posting my personal NYC "soundtracks." I did this thrice a year during my time at USC--one for fall, for spring, and for summer (and, like the complete nerd that I am, posted those for all to see). But upon leaving school and moving to NYC, the year divided more naturally into two parts (Fall-Winter / Spring-Summer) instead of three. Hence, I have four NYC soundtracks.

I always like doing this project, because I find that songs can serve as little aural snapshots of life. Listening to certain songs--like glancing through old photographs--can instantly bring one back to specific moments in time, specific places, and specific emotions, all of which may have been buried just beneath one's consciousness. It doesn't seem to matter if you heard a song at a specific place and time, or if you heard it everywhere, constantly, during a general period of time--the combination of melody, rhythm, lyrics, and sound somehow captures the essence of our lives at a particular moment and recreates that moment in a sort of Pavlovian response when we hear the song again. All that to say, I do this for the same reason that one puts together a photo album.

So, like a friend who insists on showing you a slideshow or photo album from a recent trip, I will post these soundtrack listings, one at a time over the next few days. Hopefully you won't fall asleep reading them.

I'm excited about today's release of Plans, the new Death Cab for Cutie album (and their first on a major label, specifically, Atlantic Records).

I, like countless others, came to enjoy Death Cab at some point in the past two years, through hearing their previous album, the wonderful Transatlanticism, (an album that will forever remind me of my first winter/spring in New York City). So while I admittedly did jump on the DCfC bandwagon late in the game--not long after Transatlanticism was released in Fall '03--I'm proud to say that I didn't discover them from watching "The OC" (and yes, I do say this with a great deal of needless hubris).

With the release of Plans comes all the buzz about Death Cab--arguably one of the biggest names in indie rock band over the past few years--jumping to the "bigs." All of this reminded me of another band, and at least two publications seem to concur; in both Spin and Entertainment Weekly, the leap to a major label that the boys from Bellevue, WA are taking is being likened to the one that another indie rock (sorry, college rock) band, from Athens, GA, made back in 1988. "Death Cab for Cutie is the R.E.M. of our generation," seems to be the theme that many rock journalists are (cynically?) pushing, but with good reason.

And that's probably why I'm so interested right now in Death Cab's ascension to a major record label. I was only 7 years old when R.E.M. moved from IRS Records to Warner Bros., and by the time I actually formed my own pop/rock music listening habits and picked up on R.E.M. seven years later, their popularity in the States had already peaked. So I'm interested to watch (or hear, rather) firsthand how a band that I like evolves from underground to mainstream artist. Time will tell, of course, if Death Cab's transition proves to be as commercially successful as R.E.M.'s (who sold somewhere in the vicinity of 30 million albums in the four years after they signed to Warners).

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here; I'm just looking forward to hearing this new album and seeing them live when they play the Hammerstein Ballroom in October.

A'right, as promised, more pics from the gig:



And there's more where that came from...Selina took a ton of great shots, so I picked out 15 for your enjoyment. Lemme know what you think!

It was a great gig, a wonderful first show in Manhattan, and a lot of fun. Minutes before we were supposed to go on, one of Sin-é's folks (the booking agent?) came out and told us that the 9 o'clock band had just canceled, so we were able to play for longer than originally anticipated. We quickly added five songs to the set to make it a 12-song deal.

We went on around 8:20, and pretty much blasted through the set--I think it took us less than an hour, which was quite surprising. The sound was pretty good--Sin-é has a great sound system and the acoustics of the room are excellent--but we were told afterwards that the guitars were still too overpowering (a recurring issue for us, it seems).

On a personal level, I did a decent job...except for "Governor," which I blew starting with the opening guitar riff. A bit disappointing, but what can you do? My personal highlight--which is a bit graphic, so you may want to skip this part if you're easily grossed out--was looking down at my guitar after the third or fourth song and noticing that it was splattered with blood. Whoa! Cool! (I know, typical guy response, right?) I looked at the back of my pick-holding finger, and sure enough, it was pretty mangled after my intense strumming during the last few songs. It didn't really hurt, though, and I managed to play through the rest of the songs without making a mess. It wasn't 'til after the show that I showed off the guitar and my finger to the boys; it was as if I was a kindergartner showing off a painting, I was so proud of myself! They were all duly impressed.

I hope we get to play in the City again relatively soon, but in the meantime, it's cool to finally be able to say that we did it. I promise to post more pictures soon.

The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema.

I can't wait to pick it up after work. Pitchfork gave it a 9.0, saying that it's "their most consistent, confident, and best album to date."

Plus, I've listened to the album's infectious single "Use It" more than any other song on my iPod for the last month and a half, so you can imagine how optimistic I am about this record.

A review of last night's gig will follow sometime later, probably this evening when I'm not so busy with work.

I'll be uploading several more to my FotoBuilder account and posting a quick report...all in due time. For now, sleep awaits.

What a great evening.

So apparently my inability to go up to strangers and say "Hi" extends beyond cute girls.

I had two tix to see Sufjan on the second night of his five-night residency at the Bowery Ballroom, so I invited Thom to come along and, as Sufjan might say, come on and feel the Illinoise! (No, seriously, that's what he would say).

( Read the rest of the story... )