1. Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile
2. Stories Don’t End, Dawes
3. Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies, Volbeat
4. Give Up (10th Anniversary Edition), Postal Service
5. Music is You: A Tribute to John Denver, Various Artists
6. Pool Party, Ponderosa
7. Shaking the Habitual, The Knife
8. Tooth & Nail, Billy Bragg
9. The Heist, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
10. Searching for Sugarman, Soundtrack
11. Some Nights, Fun.
12. The Beast In Its Tracks, Josh Ritter
13. Overgrown, James Blake
14. Cold Fact, Rodriguez
15. Comedown Machine, The Strokes
16. Wolf, Tyler the Creator
17. The Next Day, David Bowie
18. Old Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
19. Born To Die, Lana Del Rey
20. Victim of Love, Charles Bradley
HERE'S THE METAL: FREE JACKET PATCHES WITH PURCHASE OF ANY OF THESE FACE-MELTING NEW CDs!
Our Here’s the Metal program, which highlights select metal titles each month and offers you a free gift with purchase, continues in April with a fine selection of face-melting titles!
Purchase any of the following sale-priced titles and we’ll give you a free collection of Here’s the Metal jacket patches!
Beyond the Shore Ghostwatcher $12.99
Intronaut Habitual Levitations $13.99
Jungle Rot Terror Regime $12.99
Lordi To Beast or Not $12.99
Nero di Marte Nero di Marte $12.99
Terror Live By the Code $12.99
Thy Art is Murder Hate $10.99
Warbeast Destroy $12.99
PONDEROSA IN-STORE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 — ONLY SHOW IN TOWN!
Ponderosa will perform live at The Record Exchange (1105 W. Idaho St., Downtown Boise) at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 10 — this is the band’s ONLY SHOW IN TOWN! This free, all-ages Record Exchange in-store is sponsored in part by Boise Weekly. RSVP HERE.
ABOUT PONDEROSA
In the low light of the hut the old man sat quietly puffing on his mapacho. “You must disengage from your…continuity,” he said, referring I’m sure to my earbuds, which, with apologies, I cranked. As I tapped the last drop out of the clay cup and laid back on the ragged foam mat I saw that the old man’s face was no longer his, but a hawk’s. The spirit-world comes on like that.
The music I came to see with my third eye, Ponderosa’s Pool Party, started with a voice, a silver highlonesome in a mist (or maybe the mist was the voice), an electric guitar that identified itself (verbally, and I’m translating here) as He-who-makes-things-sprout, then a convergence at something analogous to a rain dance, as if conducted (in lapis lazuli) by Keith Moon. Pianos and guitars and harmonies breathed into existence tetrahedrons, Spanish friars, bird-lions, machine elves, Quetzacotl, so forth, and landscapes, always the sweeping, rolling variety. No point going on about what the music looks like. To paraphrase the giant, blazing eye that cries honey, you must see for yourself.
Hearing Ponderosa’s previous album for the first time was a no less illuminating experience if a very different one, involving a trampoline, two bottles of rye, and a sack of possum. Another facet of Ponderosa, another method to ascertain its nature. That album, Moonlight Revival, belongs in the Southern rock canon as much as anything by the Crowes or Little Feat, but more crucial is that with it Ponderosa delivered the first successful fusion of straight Southern rock and Revolver-era Beatles, utterly seamless and genetically sound, not a Frankenstein. This is the musical equivalent of mapping the genome, drunk, using only a monocle. Impossible, yet Ponderosa demonstrated that “a thing that cannot be done can be accomplished by not-doing it.” And because that sounded more conclusively relevant when it was told to me by a stag with no mouth, let’s add that Ponderosa’s clear m.o. is following its bliss.
NEW DVD/BLU-RAY: AVETT BROTHERS 'LIVE VOLUME 3'
PREVIEW/BUY THE DVD HERE
PREVIEW/BUY THE CD HERE
The sheer unpolished energy, notes teetering on the edge of musical chaos, the raw feel of the music, may be what attracts fans initially, but eventually the band needs to find a way to stay true to those elements while at the same time progress musically. God forbid, maybe they actually learn to play their instruments, creating a sound that keeps the honesty but polishes some of the edge.
Many bands are unable to harness that early energy into forming a cohesive career. The ones that do manage to grow hone that energy into a sound unique to themselves. The Clash during the 80’s come to mind. The Sex Pistols on the other hand became a self-parody and flamed out. More recently the Felice Brothers struggle to find cohesion as a unit. The Low Anthem, on the other hand, seem to be on a fast track, volunteers picking up trash at Newport two years ago to get in, this year playing the major stage alongside John Prine and Levon Helm with a sound unmistakably their own. This fall they will open for Emmy Lou Harris.
The Avett Brothers are certainly another band to make the leap, the evidence heard on their new CD/DVD, Live, Volume. The band returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, playing this time for thousands, to again document their music before a home town crowd. This time the sound was fuller, adding the estimable Joe Kwon on cello, and Mike Marsh on drums.
Rick Rubin’s production is crisp and clean, each instrument heard individually. The lyrics are allowed to stand out prominently where they should. Crowd noise is always present so you get the feel of “live” but not obtrusive.
Recorded in August of 2009, just before they released “I and Love and You” and began a year of non-stop touring, the CD/DVD captures the band just prior to making the jump to the Top 20 and larger venues. It reveals a band ready for the move up; they’ve been serious about perfecting their craft, working out their music night after night on the bandstand. Scott and Seth’s voices at times blend harmoniously, other times crashing against the other, battling in the best call and response tradition, each voice playing off the other. Scott’s vocals have developed the power of Rod Stewart circa “Maggie May”, while Seth’s tend to float almost fragilely above his brother’s baritone.
The set draws more or less evenly from their catalog. As might be expected, a third of the 15 songs were from the not yet released “I and Love and You”, four from “Four Thieves”, and the rest pretty evenly scattered among their other recordings. The evening began with “Pretty Girl From Matthews”, an early country tune from the 2002 CD Country Was, then quickly hit an early energy peak with the manic “Talk On Indolence”, drums pushing Scott’s banjo and the vocals on an ever faster pace. The band settled in behind the vocals, Bob Crawford’s bass providing the bottom and Joe Kwon’s electric cello playing rhythm or improvising fills behind the vocals. Scott plays banjo and he and Seth alternate on guitar, piano, and drums.
Critics have said the measure of a live recording’s worth is whether we regret missing the show. I’ll add another, whether hearing it makes us want to catch the band on its next swing through town. Live, Volume 3 should induce that notion for many. Their tour lasts through the fall, watch for sell-outs. –Glide Magazine
THE VINYL WORD: KURT VILE IS 'WAKIN ON A PRETTY DAZE'
PREVIEW/BUY THE VINYL HERE
In most photos, he hides his face behind his hair. Long, dark, nappy in the summer months—Kurt Vile’s wavy strands fall like drapes over the edge of his microphone. His beady eyes rarely catch a square gaze with a camera lens, an audience member or an interviewer. Through most of his career, Vile’s voice, too, was but one element of a multi-layered mix; masked.
So, when Vile sings his first line some 40 seconds into the first song on his new record, Wakin On A Pretty Daze, and when those lyrics are as clear and bright and crisp as the dawn that he describes, you know something is intrinsically different about this album. While his early releases, namely 2008’s Constant Hitmaker and 2009’s Childish Prodigy, were more a collage of loose ideas organized around a singular, murky sound, Daze presents 11 carefully composed tracks with beginnings, middles and ends.
Producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Phosphorescent, Son Volt) is back with a fresh strip of sandpaper. Agnello’s touch helped make Vile’s previous record, Smoke Ring For My Halo, one of 2011’s unexpected breakouts. On Daze, Vile’s amorphous, ambient drones continue to solidify into sharp shapes with defined edges. While he was always a contemplative songwriter, Vile’s lyrics are now more ponderous and worldly rather than navel-gazing. (He’s married and a father of two.)
Themes of movement and escape are the bedrock of this album. Vile’s dreamlike crooning on “Girl Called Alex” precedes the punchy, more direct sentiment of “Never Run Away.” With its multiple breakdowns, songs like “Pure Pain” recall the better moments of Crosby, Stills, Nash and & Young’s “Déjà Vu,” among other cornerstones of the Laurel Canyon scene of the 1960s and ‘70s. Subtle pedal steel swells are a welcomed addition to the live mix, more atmospheric than country or kitschy.
“There is but one true love within my heart,” he tells us on “Snowflakes Are Dancing.” It’s a continuation of a theme from Smoke Ring, wherein Vile proclaimed, “There is but one true love in my baby’s arms.” There’s a calming balance to this record—lyrically, thematically, sonically. It closes exactly as it begins, with a long, winding, peaceful melody—one of the prettiest Vile has ever penned. “In the night when all hibernate, I stay awake, searching the deep, dark depths of my soul,” he says. He describes his process of finding that one moment, the “golden” tone. It’s a beautiful song about—what else—the nature of writing a beautiful song.
Things are different now. His voice is in the foreground. His eyes meet the camera in the press photo. He’s alert, aware. Awake. –Paste
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