SXSW 2010 - Thursday: On Greatness
I thought a lot about it today.
I waited in line that spanned past Eddie V’s to see the second half of She & Him at Cedar Street Courtyard (hipsters fucking cut in line like no one’s business) and I had an angry conversation about 500 Days of Summer.
As much accolade as idiot white kids give M. Ward, I still think he’s an incredibly underrated guitarist and songwriter. I think She & Him is an avenue for him to bring more believers into the fold and it upsets me to a certain degree that Deschanel seems to get most of the attention (though it seemed like the crowd at Cedar Street Street gave Him the loudest welcome).
Such is life, and such is the gender dynamic.
Ducked into 6 Taproom on Colorado to see Joey Ryan. I went up to tell him that I hated him because he was so good. Goddamn, I love SXSW.
SXSW 2010 - Wednesday: Serendipity and Scottish Music
I thought the Merge showcase was tonight at Cedar Street.
It was not.
I almost—ALMOST stayed at home. I know. I KNOW. I’ve been feeling guilty about school and because I had not really planned to see any other bands tonight, I was considering staying at home and working on moot court. I grabbed my directory and flipped through before Mark left for downtown just to make sure there was nothing I was missing and then I saw it: Scottish Arts Council Showcase at Parish.
If you are one of the three people reading this, you probably know of my affinity for the Scots. Needless to say, my experience in Scotland and my friends there have profoundly changed my musical life. I couldn’t pass this up. Last year this showcase was a ball and I was introduced to bands such as Dananananaykroyd and We Were Promised Jetpacks (they also do one of my favorite things which is giving away comp CD’s of tracks from all the bands who played the showcase).
I left our rented house late but was able to see a new band called Codeine Velvet Club, We Were Promised Jet Packs (again, and even more badass than last year), and my favorite of the evening, Frightened Rabbit. All the bands I saw were fantastic and I was able to pick up a comp CD and a great T-shirt with a Highland Cow on it.
And get this:
Who did I see walking unassumingly through the thick, smelly, sweaty, Scottish audience, none other than M. “badass from She & Him” Ward.
M. Ward, people…walking through the crowd…at a Scottish music showcase. I stopped him:
Hollis: Um, sorry…are you M. Ward.
M. Ward (visibly frightened): Um, yeah.
Hollis: I’m a huge fan, thanks for coming to SXSW this year! I’m going to see you tomorrow!
M. Ward: Oh, you’re going to be there?
Hollis: Yeah! I can’t wait! Well, have fun!
And then he ran away, terrified. It was awesome. I got a little bit of M. Ward awesome on my fingers when I touched his shirt.
So, you see folks? SXSW is completely and totally awesome.
Best of 2009 (so far)
Yes, I know Paste Magazine did this already, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in.
Haunting and beautiful and a graduated step up from For Emma. The question now remains: where to go from here? Eventually, the economy will get better and we as a listening public will not want to listen to music that makes us want to hide under the covers and sleep all day.
Beginning to end a superb album. Does a slowed and almost “hula” version of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” and the single “Never Had Nobody Like You” is a worth the cost of the entire record (if we still lived in a time where you had to buy the whole CD to get one song).
Elvis Perkins - Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Sounds like the same vein as M. Ward (perhaps if you had another M. Ward from a different part of the country—perhaps “Bizarro M. Ward?”). There’s not much to say other than you will find this record on a lot of folks’ end of year best of lists. This is my dark horse contender.
Another consistent and solid offering from Chicago. Even when they aren’t innovating the sound of folk or alt country, they still hit it out of the park with unbelievable songwriting and genius and lush arrangements.
A nice mashup and collaboration of a lot of popular indie artists. I particularly like the Bon Iver and the Ben Gibbard/Feist collaboration. Oh yeah, it’s also for charity. That too.
M. Ward - Post - War
2006 was a bad year. 2006 was an awful, no good, terrible year. 2006 was the year that Satan rose from his (or her) layer of destruction and brought torment to me every where I went. I could have done without the whole damn thing. Few good things happened, and the bad things nearly killed me. I suppose it is easy to see why I would have overlooked such a good album, I was too worried about surviving to be able to find any good music. Thanks to my snobby appreciation of the NPR podcast “All Songs Considered” I am honored to be here to present to you M. Ward.
I used to say that California was wasted on Californians. I suppose this is some long held classist belief I have held with me (I also don’t like most Californians). The Golden State however has given us a new Americana folk treasure in the form of Matt Ward, known on his records as M. Ward. Post - War is a brilliant exercise in proving the memory-relationship people unconsciously have with sound; through an analogue and possessive treatment of his recordings (Ward prides himself on having as few people’s hands in the mixing bowl as possible when it comes to the recording and mixing process) Post - War paints a picture of a time when people and the environments that they create were more closely linked than they are today.
In the world of Post - War, young men travel across the sea and are allowed to ask three questions to old men (“Chinese Translation”):
1. What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?
2. How can a man like me remain in the light?
3. If life is really as short as they say say, then why is the night so long?
And this is just a short vignette of the depth that M. Ward searches.
Being Father’s Day, tears gathered in my eyes while listening to “Requiem” and thinking of my own hell-on-wheels father (though I sing no requiems, my father is very much alive, and ornery as old dog). Ward revels: His heart was stronger than a heavy metal bullet/And that’s why I dedicate this song/He was a good man and now he’s gone.
With lyrics, music, and recorded sound so rich as this it is difficult sometimes to get your bearing during the thick of it all. On headphones, Ward’s vocals resonate anywhere from a whisper, to a cackle, to a deeply melancholy and somber moan in a sea of shimmering echo and reverb that sounds more like a concrete floor warehouse in West Texas than a ritzy recording studio in Los Angeles. The guitars both shimmer and buzz ‘round like mosquitos at a lake. This production is wholly perfect, and I am saddened that I could not have heard this sooner.
2006 was a bad year. It was a lonely, hot, desperate year—the beauty of a “period” record like this is that it is so well constructed that it actually links our sense of pathos to those post-war folks that truly know the guts of a bad year. Ward, amazingly enough, has the talent and understands the chemistry behind making these awful and lonely feelings palatable and communicable.
I’ll take 2006 back if I can have this album on vinyl.
Go purchase:
Go purchase the whole damn record—record store, iTunes, Amazon.com, I don’t care…Every tune is good and heartbreaking. Buy the whole damn thing.
