YACHT: Darkness, Light, Duration

Stupendous super duo springs from Portland, Oregon and launches their stylized techno-geek mantra across the globe. After a handful of European tours and smaller appearances in the U.S. Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans have managed to create a monster nothing short of lovable. YACHT's hyper chopped music made me jump up and shout so the least I could really do was sit back and let this novel act wiggle their way onto my heavy rotation list.

For an xtra treat check out their Twitter page for almost daily uploaded photos and videos from their trek around the world and their unusual love for triangles (?).

PANDA BEAR'S PERSON PITCH

If you are at all like me then you enjoy finding bands you can just put on and sit out by a river sipping a whiskey and soda to while it's blazing hot outside and be in perfect harmony with your drunkenness. Well, friends, I have have found another such band to add to that blissful roster, or should I say person?

Animal Collective's Noah Lennox (A.K.A. Panda Bear) beat's the heat with his Brian Wilson harmonized chanting over a washed ultra edited sonic landscape of sound in his latest solo effort, Person Pitch. Released in 2007, I am just now arriving at it and I hope, if you have not yourself, then you'll join the banks.

A Musician and A Filmmaker
Take Pills

Possibly The Greatest Debut Album Ever

Every once and a while, a fan of music may run across some tunes that he or she thinks is "the greatest." It takes something special to do that to me personally - and certainly - I feel the timing must be right. I acquired Elvis Costello's debut album a few months ago; and upon first listen, I thought it was a great work. Though at the time, I didn't know it was that great.

In allmusic.com's five-star rating, S.T. Erlewine says My Aim Is True has a unique mass appeal, for it is "the most idiosyncratic of all classic punk debuts because it's not cathartic in sound, only spirit." True, at first it may seem too versatile, yet by the tenth time around Costello will trap you into his world whether you like it or not. His fast lyrical draw and wide range of melodies are contagious, and it is no wonder that so many listeners have become avid fans.

Nearly every form of music exists in the 13 tracks, but it doesn't jump around: it's a punk fusion that will spin your head and shake your limbs. There's down and dirty rock n'roll ("I'm Not Angry" "Blame It On Cain"); sounds of the 50's ("No Dancing" "Welcome To The Working Week"); vanilla reggae ("Watching The Detectives" "Less Than Zero"); classic, everyday tunes ("Alison" "Miracle Man"). This blend gives all thirteen songs fresh appeal - not to mention bleeding originality.

Heed my advice. This is an album to own and cherish. It's music you can feel in all five senses, with lyrics that are provocative to say the least ("Everything means less than zero"). The deluxe edition (1993) offers a bonus disc with Live tracks and "Honky Tonk Demos." In these songs, Costello is in rare form, playing songs that sound like tributes to some of his influences: Randy Newman, Van Morrison, and Gram Parsons (highlights include "Jump Up" & "Radio Sweetheart"). Enjoy...

Copacabana Club

Just Do It from copacabana club on Vimeo.

My new-found obsession from Brazil. Enjoy!

Dan Deacon @ the Orange Show, Houston

It's be raining in Houston for the past few days and it started Thursday, a night I'd been looking forward to for some time. Dan Deacon was coming to the Orange Show. The coolest venue in Houston, if not the contiguous United States (and I've been to a great many). The rain subsided, however, for the few hours Dan Deacon performed- as if the rain gods looked down on us and said "Alright. I don't give you too much in the way of beauty and while 95% of your city has no soul, I'll allow you few dedicated hipsters to rock your socks off for a night."

Dan Deacon is a hyper-intelligent (dare I say nerdy) electronic musician. Hailing from Baltimore, he was a classically trained in composition at SUNY Purchase. While his first album, Spiderman of the Rings (2006) is traditionally thought of as a "party" album (tribalistic electronic pop), his latest effort Bromst (March 2009) its a much larger (in scope and content), compositional project he has been working on for 3 years. The sounds are less hard-pounding, wasted-jumping and more like a small avant-garde symphony. To quote Pitchfork, "If Spiderman was for dancing on sticky floors, Bromst feels better suited to sleeping, or contemplating the sublime, or anything else that happens mostly between your ears."

A strict vegan, Deacon converted his school bus/tour bus to run on vegetable oil and he hopes to abstain from supporting the economy of hotels by finding places for his 20 person "orchestra" to crash. He even released an announcement telling fans if you brought 5 gallons of veggie oil the his show, you would be granted free entry. Unconventional to say the least.

Deacon has an uncanny ability to turn his shows into spectaculars, like blogger Michael Byrne said in his XLR8R piece, "Dan Deacon is very, very good at making people do shit." Without so much as a suggestion he got 75% of the Orange Show attendees to leave the venue (myself included). Literally everyone snake-chained out of the place and formed a tunnel only to be standing on a residential street. (In the 3rd Ward. And for those readers who are unfamiliar with Houston, that shit is the straight up GHETTO.) As Deacon himself explains it, the audience is “something that can be composed for and improvised with, manipulated in the most positive sense into doing something they wouldn’t normally do.”

And for those of you who hate on Houston (and believe me, up until a few months ago I was one of you too), even Dan Deacon seemed impressed. "Holy shit, Houston, I wasn't expecting much, but this place and you guys are AWESOME!" (I might be paraphrasing, I was a lil drunkers.)

Case in point being: Go See Dan Deacon Live. A++



this is kind of shitty quality uploaded to blogger but you'll get the idea.

Lonestar Posters

I bought a screenprint from this guy a few months ago...

His collection is top notch. Old and new.

check it out: lonestarposters.com

Andrew Bird

I feel like a total fanny for not listening to a friend 3 years ago who said "Eby you will LOVE Andrew Bird." I didn't take much of it to heart and now, yup, I LOVE Andrew Bird.

The 2009 album Noble Beast is nothing short of lovely. Bird's voice is somewhat reminiscent of Thom Yorke's. Its soft, melodic and makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The music aspect is just as pleasant - using violins, acoustic guitars, whistling and some sweet percussion.

Andrew Bird es de Chicago. He was a classically trained violinist in the Suzuki method (a nurturing educational philosophy whose primary goal is to create "beautiful character" in its students through music education on a specific instrument), which sounds like just about the coolest thing ever. Noble Beast is his fourth solo studio effort, and was released January 20, 2009. I can't get the songs "Anonanimal" and "The Privateers" out of my head. Did I mention he is gorgeous?

Bird even said to the New York Times' Measure for Measure, "I listened to my record recently and I'm concerned about how much I like it."

-Eby Harvey