What makes you think I'm enjoyin' being lead to the flood?

Matt Berninger of The National, live at the House of Blues, Boston, May 23 2009. Photo by Ian Doreian, Melophobe.

Have I told you lately how much I love The National? They're kind of a little bit amazing, and one of those rare bands that sound like they have a driving need to create music.

To tide you over until their next album (late this year/early next year, hopefully), here is some post-Boxer material, culled from two shows they played in May. All of these songs have gone through various, sometimes extensive revisions, and may change further before the album is released, or they may not appear on the album at all, but they're all basically amazing, so, enjoy.

The National - England (Radio City Music Hall, NYC 03.05.09) (zShare)
The National - Vanderlylle Cry Baby (feat. Bon Iver) (Radio City Music Hall, NYC 03.05.09) (zShare)
The National - Blood Buzz Ohio (House of Blues, Boston 23.05.09) (zShare)
The National - The Runaway (House of Blues, Boston 23.05.09) (zShare)

Gotta say, the "I never married, but Ohio don't remember me" in Blood Buzz gets me every time. Definitely one to get stuck in your head. Of course the others ain't exactly shabby, with England being a perfect illustration of how, to quote Amrit at Stereogum who captured my feelings on it perfecly, "The National are at their best when they push to a climax they never fully punctuate, which is why "England" is the National at their best." Vanderlylle Cry Baby, from the same night, features here a shout-along chorus and an electrifying guitar solo from Mr. Justin 'Bon Iver' Vernon. The Runaway (formerly 'Karamazov', which is apparently a reference to this book which I now feel compelled to read) was probably the slowest-burner of the bunch for me, but after seeing the radio session footage of it below (which also features frequent National collaborator Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman, plus a two-piece horn section which I think was the same one present at the Boston show), I can't stop listening to it.



Pretty sure I could watch Matt sing like that all day.

The National official site
Buy Boxer: CD / Vinyl / iTunes

And in case you forgot how great The National were in the first place:

The National - Fake Empire (zShare) from Boxer

I'm not too comfortable

Jim Ward feat. Tegan Quin - Broken Songs (zShare)

A quiet song; not necessarily sonically, but possessing the intimacy of wide-open country roads and long days spent travelling upon them, acoustic guitar and a lone maraca providing backdrop to the yearnng, beautifully double-tracked vocals, weary-but-hopeful, aided by a rather wonderful turn from the Tegan half of Tegan & Sara. Lyrically a page out of the Springsteen songbook, but Ward delivers the lines with a rawness of his own that doesn't appear so unrestrained anywhere else on the EP.

"I'll build a home, from these broken songs".

[Buy]

Like seemingly half the music I listen to these days, Jim Ward's In the Valley, On the Shores EP was discovered through Tegan & Sara's Twitter (@theteganandsara). I'm not as familiar with Jim Ward as I probably should be, but I do know he played in seminal post-hardcore act At the Drive-in (who I've been meaning to check out but haven't) before co-founding Sparta and the more alt-country Sleepercar. Anyway, the rather excellent five-song EP from which this song is taken can and should be purchased for $7 in your choice of download or CD format (including worldwide shipping) from the link above. Initially the download was a pay-what-you-want deal, but I see that I took too long to write about it and now it's also $7. Still more than worth it, and the physical CD is a gorgeous package, plain blue and gold ink screen-printed on a cardboard sleeve and hand-numbered (at least mine was, not sure if any of those are still in stock). The other four songs are sadly lacking in Tegan, but they're still every bit as good as this one.

Give me one more chance

Wow, so apparently me insomia posting = a bad idea. Who would've guessed? Gonna leave it up anyways, though, cos, why not?

As you may have noticed, I kinda disappeared for a month or two there. Was busy/lazy. But, now that school's out, exams are over and I have long days to fill with nothing but scouring music blogs (not exactly true, but one of the few advantages of my current [hopefully short-term] jobblessness¹), expect things round here to get back to normal (as if they ever were). Probably won't be posting daily, but something close to it. (Like, at least a few times a week. Promise.)

Anyways, rambling, so; here's the new Bloc Party single. I happen to love it. Exactly what you're not expecting, which, with Bloc Party, is basically the point. (And of course, that lyric was too fitting not to use for the title of this post). You should give it a spin. I'd worry about getting a take-down notice for posting a not-yet-released single from a fairly popular band, but honestly, nobody fucking reads this blog, so it really doesn't matter (but of course, as usual, if the label is reading this and do want it taken down, contact me at the address on the sidebar and it will be done). Oh, and feel free to follow me on the Hype Machine. Shiny.

Blco Party - One More Chance (zShare)

By the way, this is not a rip, but it is rather low quality (96kb/s). The single is out 10/08 via Wichita and will be available from their recently refurbished and rather excellent online shop and blocparty.com.

I think I'm gonna start working on a minor redesign that I've been meaning to do since, oh, forever. That should be done by the end of the week. Mark your calenders. Later!

¹I make it sound as if that were some horrible consequence of the recession; in fact I'm just too lazy/pathetic/insecure to go apply at the movie theater down the street that I'm almost certain would hire me.

Boy, what you gonna do with your life?

Image from flotownblogger.typepad.com.

Bloc Party - Rhododendrons (zShare)

This is a song for long nights spent lying awake on top of the sheets with the windows flung open in the humid summer air worrying about not having a job; for sitting on the side of your bed with your head in your hands knowing that she's never going to come running back into your arms; for spending the night out with good friends that you don't see often enough and ending up back at somebody's house at four in the morning passing around the bottle of Jack Daniel's and being completely exhausted beyond the point of endurance and drunk as much on the sheer fucking beauty of the world as the alcohol. Afterwards, is it worth it for that one moment of drunken lucidity, before you finally collapse for the night? Yes. [Buy.]

"Drunk again in the rhododendrons."


Image by G.D. Jewell II on Flickr.

Go Here Now

http://saveterminator.blogspot.com/

I'll Tell You A Secret

Silversun Pickups - There's No Secrets This Year (zShare)

Noisy, loud, catchy and irresistable.

"Who would know, all the reasons you're alone?"

I was going to write a review of this album, Swoon, the second by SSPU (and I still might), but for now, I think ya'll would be better off just listening to this song. Track one, side one, as it happens, and while I can vouch for the rest of the album being every bit as good as/better than this, for now I'm happy to leave this one on repeat.

"I'll tell you a secret, let's make this perfectly clear, there's no secrets this year."

Silversun Pickups offical site / Twitter
Buy Swoon: CD / Vinyl / iTunes

This Is Easy As Lovers Go

Photo by lolo368 on Flickr

I was talking about Dashboard Confessional the other day, so here're a few songs.

Hands Down is magic. All the angst, hopefullness, hopelessness, romance, innocence, wisdom, longing, pain and beauty of being a teenager, rolled into one perfect song. Like I said, my guitar teacher from way-back-when introduced me to Dashboard (and good music in general [meaning music that I cared about, not necessarily music that you'll like, as I'm fully aware of the large number of people who dismiss DC as being devoid of any artistic integrity, on which point I would respectfully disagree]) with this song, and the first time I listened to it was one of the most important musical moments of my life. That version was the opening track on 2003's A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, which (although I didn't know it at the time) marked the first time Dashboard had expanded to a full-band effort from Chris Carrabba's previously solo-acoustic work. Perhaps simply because I heard it first, that remains the definitive version for me, but the earlier acoustic take from the So Impossible EP is still an excellent tune, and it's interesting to hear how the song progressed.

I've probably sung along to As Lovers Go more than any other song in the world. One particular instance some to mind, of a car trip (can you tell I listen to a ton of music on car trips?) soon after I got my first iPod, when the Shrek 2 soundtrack was one of the only things I had loaded on it. I don't know how long I spent alternating between the Ron Fair remix and the original, trying to figure out what the difference was, but it seems to have been enough to drill the song permanently into my memory.

Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down (zShare) from A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
Dashboard Confessional - As Lovers Go (zShare) from A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
Dashboard Confessional - As Lovers Go (Ron Fair Remix) (zShare) from Shrek 2: Motion Picture Soundtrack
Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down (zShare) from So Impossible EP

Dashboard Confessional official website / Buy