Out the Other

Inbound: Bands coming to Nashville

If you've been keeping an eye on the OtO list of upcoming Nashville gigs, I'm sure you already know about the big shows coming through town in the next few months.  We have King Khan and the Shrines this Thursday at Exit/In, Vampire Weekend at the Ryman on Monday, My Morning Jacket at the Municipal Auditorium April 21st, Phoenix and Passion Pit at Rites of Spring the weekend of April 23-24, Julian Casablancas at the Cannery on April 27, Beach House at Mercy Lounge April 28, Dr. Dog at the Cannery May 6, and the New Pornographers with The Dodos way out on June 27 at the Cannery Ballroom. 

But what you may NOT know about is a pretty strong lineup of unfamiliar names coming through Nashville in the next two months.  Let's take a look at what the deeper, darker corners of the concert calendar have to offer:

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Who:  The Strange Boys
What:  An Austin garage rock band of "juvenile-delinquent Nuggets types"
Where:  Glenn Danzig's House
When:  Saturday, April 3 with Daniel Pujol, Heavy Cream, Natural Child and others; 7pm, $5, all ages
Why:  I missed Austin's The Strange Boys a week and a half ago in Atlanta, cause a cracked radiator meant our road trip landed us at the Spoon show well after the scrappy openers had wrapped up their set.  But their new album Be Brave might make me risk the awful "damn, I am seriously an old lady" feeling that accompanies attending a house show as a 28 y/o, because the dirty sax on the title track is something I'm just dying to hear in person.  Listen to "Be Brave" and "Friday In Paris."

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Who:  Power Animal
What:  The musical alias of Philadelphia HS dropout Keith Hampson
Where:  Little Hamilton
When:  Monday, April 5 with Pineapple Explode and others; $5
Why:  Having evolved from its roots as a bedroom recording project for a bored dropout who didn't have anything else to do during school hours, Power Animal is now a blog-ready live band with a formidable tour schedule which will see them playing almost 40 shows between now and May 6. Lots of voices, lots of instruments, lots of textures, lots of things going on - it's enough to make me really surprised I didn't about their album, People Songs, from a million different sources when it came out last week. Check out "All I Can Hear Are the Bees" and "Summer Came From Nowhere."

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Who:  Suckers
What:  A Brooklyn art-pop quartet recently signed to Frenchkiss
Where:  The Basement
When:  Friday, April 30 with Local Natives
Why:  You should 100% already be planning on going to this show to see OtO faves Local Natives, who sold out two shows at the Bowery Ballroom in NY and will be coming to town to play an ACTUAL BASEMENT WHICH IS INSANE.  But even if my repeated and deservedly shining endorsements of Local Natives haven't sold you on checking out this show, maybe Suckers will.  Try "Black Sheep" and "It Gets Your Body Movin'."

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Who:  Mr. Gnome
What:  A "phenomenally seductive and powerful guy-girl Cleveland duo"
Where:  Springwater
When:  Wednesday, May 5
Why:  May 5 is of course cinco de drinko, and if you'd prefer to skip the margarita-swilling crowds that night, I think Springwater is your best bet.  Silly little fantasy-fic name aside, Mr. Gnome was a pleasant surprise amidst the dredges of my inbox - likened in the PR email to Karen O meets Queens of the Stone Age - but, you know, a hell of a lot more interesting and enjoyable than that.  Give "Vampires" and "Cleveland Polka" a listen.

Out the Other is FIVE!

Would you believe that I started blogging on Out the Other five years ago today?  Seriously, I can't believe you guys keep reading, and tuning in to the radio show, and pretending to care what I babble about as long as you get to hear the good, good tunes. 

So happy birthday, Out the Other.  You've been good to me these past five years.  And lieu of gifts, I will happily welcome stories about good bands and tunes you were introduced to via this humble little blog.

In honor of the occasion, I dipped into the archives (yowza, some of those early posts are painful) and pulled together a selection of songs that were posted in the first few months of OtO's existence.  Some things change, and some things never do.

[ download .zip ]

1.  Wheat - I Met a Girl (mp3)
2.  Say Hi To Your Mom - Laundry
3.  Bleu - I Won't Go Hollywood
4.  Hot Hot Heat - Goodnight Goodnight
5.  Andrew Bird - A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left
6.  !!! - Hello? Is This Thing On? (mp3)
7.  The Black Keys - Grown So Ugly (mp3)
8.  Kyle Andrews - Amos In Ohio
9.  Stars - Calendar Girl
10.  Ben Kweller - In Other Words
11.  Robbers On High Street - Spanish Teeth
12.  Bloc Party - Banquet  (mp3)
13.  LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House
14.  Brendan Benson - Tiny Spark
15.  The Cloud Room - Hey Now Now (mp3)

FREE Live Phoenix Album!

Still haven't been swept up by Lisztomania?  Not sure if you're on board with Phoenix?  Haven't gotten around to listening to one of the best albums of 2009 - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix?  Well, kids - you've run out of excuses, because the French popsters have gone ahead and released a free-free-free digital live album of Wolfgang tracks.  Live In Sydney can be downloaded here.

This is practically the entire studio album done live, from "Lisztomania" to "1901" to OtO fave "Rome."  I fell in love with Phoenix the first time I saw them live and realized how capable they are of ramping up the rock - and not that Wolfgang needs any rocking-up live, but this album showcases how masterfully Phoenix translates their music to the stage. These gents have their shiz together in front of a crowd - which was just as evident five years ago when I saw them at Vanderbilt's Rites of Spring as it was at last summer's Bonnaroo.

And speaking of Rites of Spring and Bonnaroo - Phoenix will be hitting Middle Tennessee twice in the next few months to play both festivals.  While the Rites schedule hasn't been officially announced yet, the Paris quartet penciled in Friday, April 23 into their tour schedule, so you should probably pencil it in as well.  I swear they're worth every penny of the festival ticket price.

"Armistice (live)"
"Lisztomania (live)"

Go get the live album. You know you want to listen to the rest. And you can thank me at Vandy next month.

**Update - Looks like too many people tried to DL the album from Phoenix, and the link isn't working. But I love you, so here's the download!

[ Live In Sydney download .zip ]

Bonnaroo Preview: Mumford & Sons

This post is from Out the Other's 2010 Bonnaroo Artist Previews, where I will be posting previews of all the musical acts playing the 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Please check out and subscribe to the full site to learn more about all of this year's performers.

Mumford & Sons are a quartet (delightfully posed in a barbershop above - get it?) that hails from West London, though their sound couldn't be planted more firmly in the heart of America.  Rustic and rootsy with an old-timey feel, it's Americana a la the Avett Brothers and The Tallest Man On Earth, for fans of the Dr. Dog, Felice Brothers and even Fleet Foxes variety of indie folk rock. Be-vested and bango-strumming, they appeared on David Letterman back in February to perform "Little Lion Man," a pretty stellar single from their full length debut, Sigh No More. And while the performance is great, my favorite moment comes in the moment after they complete their song and Letterman asks "what is this, exactly?" of the instrument the electric banjo player is holding - leaving two members of the band grinning incredulously at each other as the host moves on.  I just love the "holy shit" moments that sneak through when bands are doing something they have to think is pretty insane, like appearing on Letterman.

Hey guess what? I started Bonnaroo previewing!

Slow and steady wins the race, right? With that in mind, knowing full well that I plan on attending this year's Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, I thought I'd start previewing the artists performing in Manchester this June 10-13.  So check it out - Out the Other's 2010 Bonnaroo Artist Previews. 

Kicking off the project early means a few things - better, more in-depth coverage of the festival in general as it gets closer, plus the odds of me finishing this year will drastically improve!  I will probably recruit additional and super talented assistance as we get closer to the festival (just like last year), but I'll most likely be covering a lot of these artists myself, because I'd really like to familiarize myself with the new (to me) faces. 

I'll cross-post a lot of the previews here as I get them up (you've already seen Wale and The XX), but not all of the artists will make it to OtO proper, so make sure you subscribe to the preview blog.

As always, you can find my updates both Bonnaroo-related and absolutely-everything-I-find-interesting-related on my twitter.  And look! I made a twitter list for all the artists I could track down that are playing the 'Roo, plus the official @bonnaroo feed and other helpful twitter-ers I find:

Bonnaroo Preview: The XX

This post is from Out the Other's 2010 Bonnaroo Artist Previews, where I will be posting previews of all the musical acts playing the 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Please check out and subscribe to the full site to learn more about all of this year's performers.

I like to think that I have a good handle on new music, which is why I was surprised at the end of 2009 when I started reviewing everyone's "best of" lists for the year.  Sure, here and there I noticed a few stray albums that I hadn't really heard about, but that happens - especially on the internet, where bloggers have their local favorites and own obscure discoveries.  But over and over, again and again, I noted the high placement of one particular album on list after list.  The self-titled debut by a band called The XX had bowled over seemingly everyone who heard it in 2009, and somehow it had entirely slipped by my radar. How was that possible?

Bonnaroo Preview: Wale

This post is from Out the Other's 2010 Bonnaroo Artist Previews, where I will be posting previews of all the musical acts playing the 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. Please check out and subscribe to the full site to learn more about all of this year's performers.

The older I get, the more frequently I find myself becoming alarmed when I discover that famous people - athletes, actors, musicians - are younger than I am. At 28 years old, I shouldn't be that surprised - I mean, everyone on MTV these days is younger than I am as a rule - but still, it's that brief moment of "shit, what have I been doing with my life" when you encounter someone whose celebrity somehow equates to "older than me" in your brain.

Olubowale Folarin, better known on stage as Wale, is 25.  And though my ability to judge the success of hip-hop artists is sincerely lacking, it doesn't take a genius to realize he's doing pretty well for himself at a reasonably young age. 2009 saw the release of his proper solo debut, Attention Deficit, and it comes with a list of impressive producers and guests - from Cool & Dre, Mark Ronson, The Neptunes, K'naan and Dave Sitek (who charmingly enough produced a track called "TV in the Radio") to Lady Gaga, who sings on the track "Chillin'." Doesn't even take a hip-hop fan to recognize those names equal a certain Stereogum-approved level of success.

Heavy Rotation: Electric President - The Violent Blue

Surprisingly enough, even though I find myself becoming wildly jealous every time someone tweets about something exciting that I'm missing in Austin, I really don't regret skipping SXSW this year.  I did it three years in a row, and I thought a year off was appropriate for a number of reasons.  There ARE a few bands that I'm super bummed I won't have a chance to see this week though, and one of them is Electric President.

It's pretty much a given at this point that I will love anything Ben Cooper is involved with - from Electric President (his recording project with Alex Kane) to OtO favorite Radical Face, to random b-side-ish project Patients.  Cooper has a knack for melody and mood and atmosphere that always seems to put his music a head and shoulders above whatever else I seem to be listening to at the time, and the new Electric President album, The Violent Blue, is no exception.  Somehow I missed its release back at the end of February, but promptly downloaded a digital copy when I heard about it through the grapevine, and it seems like I've listened to it at least forty times since.  I'm not kidding - I can listen to this album over and over, and last night I even listened to just the track "Safe and Sound" on repeat for my entire drive home from work.

Anyway, Electric President - Cooper and Kane - will be performing at SXSW this week, plus Cooper will be doing a solo Radical Face set while he's in Austin as well.  Sigh.  Part of the life of a music lover means knowing you're always going to be missing something.  Always.  Perhaps we can one day get Cooper to stop in Nashville?  In the meantime, at least we can listen to The Violent Blue.

"Safe and Sound"
"Mr. Gone"

The Violent Blue is out now on Fake Four Inc. You can also pick up their self-titled first album, their 2008 release Sleep Well, or the Radical Face album Ghost, which was one of my favorite releases of 2007.

I also encourage you to spend some time on the Radical Face website, which is Cooper's online home for all of his musical projects (and other projects as well).  The music stands quite well on its own, of course, but part of what makes Cooper's output so fascinating to me is the stories behind it.  He just wrapped up recording the first of a trilogy of new Radical Face albums, all centered around the story of a fictitious family, and his most recent update details his reasons for embarking on this project, as well as outlining the other challenges he keeps issuing to himself.  I love that there's a project-y, experimental aspect to what Cooper does (I mean, bands are called "recording projects" all the time - but something like Mother's Basement? That's a real project, assignments and all.), and I particularly, selfishly love the fact that the output isn't just self-indulgent and academic - it's actual, enjoyable, emotionally connecting and usually gorgeous music. 

For example, the Patients track "Body Song" began as a Mother's Basement assignment - use your body as the soul sound source for a piece.  Tell me this isn't as good as anything you've heard recently (in fact you may recognize the song, because it appeared on an episode of Weeds last season):

"Body Song"

And one more Patients track, since clearly this has turned into a post about more than just Electric President:

"Mind Ur Manners"

Lucky for you, the Patients album is available for free on MusicFloss.  Check it out and check out Electric President, and then feel free to come back here and thank me profusely.

Playlist - March 15 - Apollo Up!

I think I can safely call a guest DJ slot a complete success when I spend half the show laughing and the other half of the show rocking out to some really great tunes.  Mike, Jay and Jereme from Apollo Up! joined me on Monday's Out the Other, and if you missed it you can go ahead and:

Stream the March 15 edition of Out the Other

They brought all kinds of awesomeness that was new to me - France Gall (one of my new favorites), Pretty & Nice, Fang Island, and Obits, plus some classics like The B-52s, XTC, and Devo, not to mention a few offerings from their own local projects.  Here's the playlist, with some bonus mp3s and that Chavez video we were talking about:

1.  Apollo Up! - Guilty Fever (Walking Papers) (mp3)
2.  The Whole Fantastic World - Fawn (unreleased)
3.  Tinted Windows - Messing With My Head (Tinted Windows)
4.  Pretty & Nice - Tora Tora Tora (Get Young) (mp3)
5.  Future of the Left - Arming Eritrea (Travels With Myself and Another)
6.  The B-52s - 52 Girls (The B-52s) (mp3)
7.  France Gall - Cet Air La (Baby Pop) (mp3)
8.  XTC - Life Begins at the Hop (Coat of Many Cupboards)
9.  The Futureheads - Area (News and Tributes)
10.  The Young Knives - Coast Guard (Voices of Animals and Men)
11.  Sunset Bros - Dirty Talk (Dirty Talk)
12.  Devo - Auto Modown (Hardcore Devo Vol 1)
13.  Devo - Space Girl Blues (Hardcore Devo Vol 1) (mp3)
14.  Fang Island - Careful Crossers (Fang Island)
15.  The Night Marchers - Whose Lady R U? (See You In Magic)
16.  Obits - Back and Forth (I Blame You) (mp3)
17.  The Carter Administration - Der Camino (Mount Rockmore)
18.  Field Music - Working to Work (Tones of Town)
19.  The Records - Paint Her Face (Smashes Crashes and Near Misses)
20.  ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Festival Thyme (Festival Thyme)
21.  Apollo Up! - The Heartbreak of Victory (Walking Papers)
22.  Man or Astro-Man? - Universe City (1,000x) (mp3)
23.  Chavez - Wakeman's Air (Better Days Will Haunt You)
24.  Arabian Prince - Panic Zone (Innovative Life) (mp3)

Playlist - March 8 - Frightened Rabbit

On Monday night, I actually got to the station an hour early, so I got a chance to do a rather extended show with almost a whole bonus hour on the front end.  Unfortunately that first hour didn't archive, but you can still check out the regular 10-midnight portion of the show:

Stream the March 8 edition of Out the Other

This week was HUGE for new releases, and I didn't even get a chance to play samples from all of them.  But we did hear from Gorillaz, Broken Bells, JJ, Miles Kurosky, The Morning Benders and more, with a special focus on Frightened Rabbit, which brought us our featured album of the week - The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Frightened Rabbit have become one of my favorite bands in recent years, and I've spent an absurd amount of time with their last release, The Midnight Organ Fight. I can see the same thing happening with Mixed Drinks - it's phenomenal, and it really makes me wish the band will swing through Nashville again in 2010.

1.  Frightened Rabbit - Things (The Winter of Mixed Drinks)
2.  Jookabox - You Cried Me (Dead Zone Boys) (mp3)
3.  Jookabox - Phantom Don't Go (Dead Zone Boys)
4.  Pomegranates - Corriander (Everybody, Come Outside!)
5.  Beach Fossils - Desert Sand (Daydream/Desert Sand)
6.  Tobacco - Truck Sweat (Fucked Up Friends) (mp3)
7.  Gorillaz - Superfast Jellyfish (f. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul) (Plastic Beach)
8.  Gorillaz - Empire Ants (f. Little Dragon) (Plastic Beach)
9.  Tanlines - Real Life (Settings)
10.  Frightened Rabbit - The Loneliness and the Scream (The Winter of Mixed Drinks) (mp3)
11.  JJ - Let Go (No. 3) (mp3)
12.  The Besnard Lakes - Albatross (The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night)
13.  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo (Beat the Devil's Tattoo)
14.  Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside (Broken Bells)
15.  Broken Bells - The High Road (Broken Bells)
16.  Miles Kurosky - She Was My Dresden (The Desert of Shallow Effects)
17.  Jason Collett - Love Is a Dirty Word (Rat a Tat Tat) (mp3)
18.  Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can't See Land (The Winter of Mixed Drinks)
19.  Bear in Heaven - Wholehearted Mess (Beast Rest Forth Mouth)
20.  Cymbals Eat Guitars - Indiana (Why Are There Mountains)
21.  Freelance Whales - Generator 2nd Floor (Weathervanes) (mp3)
22.  The Morning Benders - Excuses (Big Echo)
23.  The Morning Benders - Promises (Big Echo) (mp3)
24.  Aloha - Moonless March (Home Acres)
25.  Frightened Rabbit - The Wrestle (The Winter of Mixed Drinks)