As of yesterday, it’s out in Europe, where they live.
Given that Capsula is The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band In The World (Circa 2011), and that they actually hail from B.A., it makes sense to feature a recent photo from our Buenos Aires correspondent — again!
Leica D-Lux 4.
UPDATE: For those looking for In The Land of The Silver Souls go here.
Baltimore’s Wye Oak is a band so ambitious that it’s produced its (first) masterpiece while there are still no more than five rings around its arboreal trunk. Civilian builds on 2009’s The Knot in unexpected ways, and reveals that The Decemberists choosing of Wye Oak as the opening act on its winter tour was recognition of a sapling now grown into a mighty tree.
We’ve never been big fans of two-person bands, from the Method Actors to the White Stripes, because live the sound of drums and guitar without the flaps tied down by the bass imperfectly protects the music from the buffeting of sonic wind. But Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack aren’t just ambitious, they’re visionaries too, and rather than compromise with a third musician, they’ve come to the Centaur’s solution of having Stack play both drums and bass (keyboard.) Um, at the same time. At the Beacon Theater in January, when they opened for The Decemberists, we marveled at how well it worked, Stack holding down, if not a heavy bottom, at least a sufficiency of rhythm, one arm bashing the drum kit, the other stretched to the keyboard. We’re guessing he’s also good at simultaneous translations of English to Mandarin, can program in C++, and never was bored as a child, since he could play catch without needing another kid to come over.
Wasner can also do circus tricks. She can strum like Peter Buck and head into Distortionland like Thurston Moore. On perhaps Civilian‘s most brilliant song, “The Alter,” Wasner embellishes upon Air’s “Surfing On A Rocket,” which itself was a take on Eno’s “St. Elmo’s Fire,” with a sudden efflorescence into Frippertronics. Wow. We dare you to listen to “The Alter” and not go download this whole amazing album. Wasner’s voice starts in Lida Husick alto depths, and can maybe range a little too far into Cranberries territory, but the effect of her singing, the mastery of her guitar textures, and Andy Stack’s utility infielding should, with Civilian, introduce the proverbial wider audience to the charms of The Free State’s greatest gift to music since David Byrne.
Unfortunately their show Friday night at the Black Cat is sold out. (Although for those of us with day jobs going to see Mary Timony play in Wild Flag Thursday night, maybe that’s a blessing.) This isn’t the last chance we’ll have to see Wye Oak, though next time it’s likely them headlining at The Beacon. Amazing.
iPhone, found art.
These crazy cats sure seem to get the joys of the season.
Leica M8, MATE, 2009
Depending on whether or not you’re a purist when it comes to considering which is the beginning and which the end of a given decade, PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, released late in 2000, was either the first great album of the ‘aughts, or the last great album of the ’90s. The same folk who can tell you precisely which decade owns the rights would also probably tell you that Stories From The City isn’t Harvey’s greatest album. They would be wrong. Yes, Dry bowled us over, and in a near 20-year career there have been other high points, but Stories From The City was a perfect album, and there aren’t many of them. Stories From The City was one of the greatest New York punk albums of all time, which is pretty cool considering Harvey was born and bred in rural England.
Since then, though, we’ve been disappointed. Uh Huh Her had some magic, but was a step down, and Harvey’s collaboration two years ago with John Parish had one delightful song, “Black Hearted Love,” but even by the standards of her off-albums a single winner constituted a low point.
So when Sasha Frere-Jones — who aside from being a gorgeous writer, generally writes only about music he likes — yawningly put down Let England Shake as pretty much a bore, we accepted that. But of course still listened. You have to listen to an artist like PJ Harvey — there is no oversupply of such artists, and you have to follow the great ones into the bushes to at least see what they’re up to.
And when we listened, we were moved to declare, Wrongo, Sasha! No, there’s not a lot of guitar bashing, and there’s nothing to get the blood moving like “Sheela Na Gig” or even “The Whores Hustle and The Hustlers Whore,” and yet this odd album, Albion-historical in nature, but still possessing a back beat, is actually filled with quiet greatness. It doesn’t quite rock, but it is both melodic and dynamic. In fact, it reminds us quite a bit of Stories Of The City. Go listen to “In The Dark Places,” which could easily fit onto her opus of 11 years ago. In fact, listen to the whole damn thing. Odd and lovely, which only partly defines Polly Jean herself, Let England Shake deserves an audience as great as the artist who made it.
Leica D-Lux 4. Nice respite from the long winter. Nice image from a very well-trained photographer.
In The Land Of The Silver Souls by Capsula, unquestionably The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band In The World* circa 2011, drops on 3/11/11. Plus, they’re playing at SXSW. Pack your bags…
*Don’t believe me? Want a taste? Download the song here, for free.
If you think of the North Mississippi Allstars as just a blues power trio, or as folks fishing the same pond as, at some times, Southern Culture on the Skids and, occasionally, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, you will in no way be prepared for their magnificent new Keys To The Kingdom. The Dickinsons pay homage to their late dad Jim, whose piano lightened the Stones’ “Wild Horses,” and whose production of Big Star introduced a uniquely off-kilter sound to the world (Wilco said thank you with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), and they do so in a manner wholly fitting the old man’s legacy. This is not contemporary blues rock — you wouldn’t expect to hear this on Alligator Records — more like a time capsule recording a tryst between Exile on Main Street and Ry Cooder’s Into The Purple Valley. This may be an unfair comparison, but for those who’ve listened to each of the 60 albums released by the Drive By Truckers — another band of offspring from famed Muscle Shoals musicians — and wondered if they’d ever do something that sounds, you know, different, well, Keys To The Kingdom is an affirmation of growth, and a minor rebuke to the NoMi AllStars’ closest competition. The year is young, and we’ve barely thrown a worm out there, and already we’ve landed a keeper.
Fresh off the release of their strongest album, The King Is Dead, The Decemberists kicked off their new tour last night at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan.
They played with as little affect as their new album of straightforward, homespun roots rock, plunging in with “Down By The Water.” Much has been made of the way, following their folk-rock opera The Hazards of Love, the band has simplified, even countrified their sound, and it’s true. Trading nods to The Smiths for declared reverence to R.E.M. is a big step forward, especially for a product of Portlandia.
Too many bands with a decade’s work behind them will rush through their new album to get to the old stuff, which is guaranteed to please the crowd. But by sprinkling much of The King Is Dead across the span of a 90-minute set, The Decemberists invited comparisons of the new songs to the old, and showed how strong the new ones are. “Rise To Me” was a highlight of the concert, as much as it is the highlight of the new album, and while the Gram Parson/Whiskeytown pedal steel orchestration isn’t new — it’s as time tested as an old growth forest in the Columbia River basin — the simple reach for beauty shows a songwriter with a lot less to prove, comfortable in his own skin.
The Decemberists are a good band, bordering on a great band. So good, we did not miss Gillian Welch, whose vocals so gloriously mix with Meloy’s great voice on The King Is Dead; for the tour, the band has added a multitalented woman (did not catch name — readers pitch in here…) who plays fiddle, guitar and sings clear and true. What we got was a band that has worked its way through an ambitious youth and for the moment at least, has found sustenance in the traditions of its own country (not the folk rock imported from the Fairport Conventions of Old Europe), a band that serves up tasty helpings of artisanal nourishment, wholesome, healthy and fresh.
This tour is one to catch.
(All photos Leica X1, cropped.)
Sold to the first bidder for $38,000,000 in cash.
Leica M9, Noctilux, whaddayathink, wide open.
Tulip Frenzy 