Category Archives: Shorties

Shorties

New Escape-ism video: Nothing Personal

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Video: Escape-ism – “Nothing Personal”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gENLLtSSWWY

Directed by Alexandra Cabral. From The Lost Record, out September 7 on Merge.

Ian Svenonius is prolific. It was only November when he introduced the world to his new project, Escape-ism. And now there’s a second album coming due in September. “Nothing Personal” continues with Introduction‘s minimalist soul.

The video features Svenonius scowling and snarling and flanked by Los Angeles artist Ariana Papademetropoulos and Black Lips saxophonist Zumi Rosow.

Only ten months after he provided us with an Introduction to Escape-ism, mythic rock ’n’ roll provocateur / theorist / revolutionary Ian Svenonius is back as Escape-ism with The Lost Record, a classic destined to bewitch the minds, hearts, and dancing shoes of any rock ’n’ roll fan who happens to discover it, for as long as such creatures exist. Without the high-octane hype machine of the mind-control minstrels who hypnotize the hapless through the mass media, The Lost Record is bound for inevitable obscurity, but—with its timeless tunes, poignant message, and innovative sound—rediscovery and immortal status is equally assured! The Lost Record, being what it is, has enormous selling potential. Music enthusiasts will be thrilled to be the ones clever and kind enough to have rescued this platter from oblivion.

Recorded in four different studios—Gaucho in Los Angeles, Flat Black in Iowa, Tonal Park in Takoma Park, MD, and at Club Blasé in DC—the record is the culmination of humanity’s attempt at something poignant, perverse, and poetically imperfect.

Escape-ism: bandcamp, fb, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Shorties

New T-Rextasy video: Girl, Friend

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Video: T-Rextasy – “Girl, Friend”

Single out now on Danger Collective.

When I was in college we brought a kids pool to campus. We named it Tony and filled it up on the quad next to the chapel. Shortly after we got it all set up, somebody was having a wedding and asked us to move our pool. I was outraged and indignant at the time, but now I can see that it was a fairly reasonable request. You don’t want a bunch of obnoxious, half-naked lunatics photo-bombing all your wedding pics.

T-Rextasy has a kids pool in their new video. They named theirs the “T-Rextasy Pool-O’-Luv” which is a pretty good name too.

Why don’t you come over and we’ll hang out?
Oh just give me a time and place
Be my friend, girl
Be my girlfriend
I don’t know how I want this to end

I like the call and response vocals and the crunchy guitars. “Fun rock,” indeed.

T-Rextasy: bandcamp, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Shorties

New Jon Spencer video: Do The Trash Can

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Video: Jon Spencer – “Do The Trash Can”

From Spencer Sings the Hits due this fall on Shove Records/In the Red.

Jon Spencer recorded his first solo album at the Key Club in Benton Harbor, Michigan with Sam Coomes from Quasi and drummer Mike Sord from Kalamazoo.

Spencer told Rolling Stone, “Sam is someone with whom I have crossed paths many times over the years, I have always been a fan of his wild keyboard style and twisted tunesmith-ery. In fact we kicked around the idea of a collaboration way back in the early Aughts. I got to know Sord from many projects done at the Key Club (Andre Williams, JSBX, & Boss Hog), he was the handyman and assistant engineer that turned out to be a great drummer.”

“Do The Trash Can” has everything you’d want in a Jon Spencer song: snarled vocals, caveman drums, Stoogey guitar riffs, and incitement to get down and dance. You can also hear them banging on old car parts.

“Nothing like digging the gas tank from an old Chevy out of a Michigan junkyard snow bank in January. Junkyard owner kept asking me if the metal was for a school project, but as a bluegrass player he could understand the possible use for a recording session.”

Jon Spencer: twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading New Jon Spencer video: Do The Trash Can →

Shorties

New Claire Morales video: “No Telling”

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Video: Claire Morales – “No Telling”

From All That Wanting, her independently released album out now.

Classic rock guitar tones and reverbed hand claps combined with smart lyrics delivered in a conversational deadpan and I’m sold! What more could you ask for?

“No Telling” is a song about crush feelings. A crush never realized. Hands are the real stars in this video. Costars include sugar, confetti, dancing band members, the colors of summer, and the phone you’re no doubt yoked to right this moment, waiting for their call. If you’ve ever sat next to your crush, alive with anticipation about all that could be, heart racing, palms perspiring, lips absolutely incapable of speech, this one’s for you babe.

Claire Morales is an independent songwriter from Texas who’s been performing since she was 13. All That Wanting is her second independently released full-length, but she’s recorded other stuff with friends, including a cool series of cover songs originally performed by Leonard Cohen, Nancy Sinatra, Patsy Cline, and the Everly Bros.

Claire Morales: web, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading New Claire Morales video: “No Telling” →

Shorties

New Welles video: Hold Me Like I’m Leaving

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Video: Welles – “Hold Me Like I’m Leaving”

Directed by Mafalda Millies. From Red Trees and White Trashes, out now on 300 Entertainment.

Jesse Allen Wells calls his band Welles. He used to call himself Jeh Sea. So spelling is a loose concept for him. As is originality.

Wells told Billboard that, “I had this Beatles ditty in my head from The White Album, ‘Cry Baby Cry,’ that’s been stuck in my head all these years. So I just wrote (‘Hold Me Like I’m Leaving’) from that, added a melody, chorus and pre-chorus and wrote the song.”

The song that was stuck in his head was clearly Paul McCartney’s hidden track “Can You Take Me Back,” tagged on to the end of John Lennon’s “Cry Baby Cry.” And Wells totally re-purposes its melody for his verses. Nevertheless, he retains 100% of the songwriting credit. Talent borrows, genius steals, right?

Despite the outright theft, or maybe because of it, this is a jam.

“I’m not trying to bring rock and roll back or anything like that. This is just how I talk. This is my musical language, and if you want to have a conversation with me you’re gonna have to listen to some rock and roll, I reckon.”

Can you dig it?

Welles: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading New Welles video: Hold Me Like I’m Leaving →

Shorties

New Mitski video: Nobody

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Video: Mitski – “Nobody”

Directed by Christopher Good. From Be The Cowboy, out August 17 on Dead Oceans.

I really loved Mitski’s song “Your Best American Girl” with its epic rock and roll crescendo and its sad lyrics (“You’re an all-American boy / I guess I couldn’t help trying to be your best American girl”). I love the video, too, and its message that if you can’t be with the one you love then the next best thing is to bang the shit out of your guitar.

In “Nobody” she trades her Les Paul for a disco Strat, but she’s still lonely.

And I don’t want your pity
I just want somebody near me
Guess I’m a coward
I just want to feel alright

This video is cool. It reminds me of some of the artwork of Yoko Ono, especially the bit with the magnifying glass and the tiny writing. In Yoko’s piece, the message was affirmative.

That’s the piece that made John Lennon fall in love with Yoko. He later admitted, “It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘fuck you’ or something. It said ‘yes’.”

But in Mitski’s video, the message is: “Nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody.” Which, of course, is way darker.

Mitski: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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Shorties

50 Years Ago in Rolling Stone: Issue 13

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Rolling Stone issue #13 had a cover date of July 6, 1968. 24 pages. 35 cents. Cover photo of Tiny Tim by Baron Wolman.

This is a weird issue. There’s no “Perspectives” column by Ralph Gleason. The only thing written by Jann Wenner is his pseudonymous John J. Rock column. And there are two big features by San Francisco disc jockey Bob McClay, whose byline hadn’t been seen since a piece in Issue #1 about Murray the K and would never appear in another issue after this one. Maybe the regulars were on vacation.

Features: “Industry’s All-Stereo Push Puts the Needle in Consumer Instead of Inbetween the Grooves” by Bob McClay; “Othello in Rhythm & Blues: Jerry Lee Lewis with Willie Shake” by Donald F. Roth; “Listen to Joseph Cotton: He Sounds Like Butterfield” by Kevin Greenwood; Tiny Tim interview by Jerry Hopkins; “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Bob McClay.

News: ‘Beggar’s Banquet’ is New Stones LP; Fleetwood Mac Rolls Into Town; Cream Separation Is Denied; Little Willie John Dies in Prison; King of Soul [James Brown] Visits Africa; Dave Mason Rejoins Traffic; Donovan Splits with Manager.

Columns: “Aretha” by Jon Landau; John J. Rock on the latest goings-on with Mike Bloomfield, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison’s sister-in-law. And also this:

The Strawberry Alarm Clock, one of those one-hit Top 40 groups whose only meaning is their meaninglessness, got busted two weeks ago on dope charges in East Peoria, Illinois. Wait–not even East Peoria, in a small town outside East Peoria. Sensing that a dope bust is a real publicity break, their record company (UNI) hires a flamboyant lawyer, Melvin Belli, flies in some reporters, and holds a press conference for television cameras, etc. etc. So what does this mean (aside being a real “new style” hype?) It means that if you get busted for dope, you can be co-opted into the establishment! (The final irony is that this group’s last LP was titled “Sit with the Guru” with a big drawing of the Maharishi on the cover, and they are actively publicizing their dope arrest, a habit the Maharishi condemns.)

Which pretty much sums up the tone of Wenner’s John J. Rock gossip column. It was his vehicle for his snotty editorializing and it’s where he could pontificate his point of view most articulately. But he hides behind a pseudonym. He clearly knew he was a dick. And he didn’t want to spoil any opportunities with advertisers or relationships with artists.

Continue reading 50 Years Ago in Rolling Stone: Issue 13 →

Shorties

New Father John Misty video: God’s Favorite Customer

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Video: Father John Misty – “God’s Favorite Customer”

Directed by Emma Tillman. From God’s Favorite Customer, out now on Sub Pop.

Another bummer from Papa John Misery.

I’m out here testing the maxim
That all good things have to stop
The bar closes at 5
But the big man is just opening shop

Once again, Tillman’s voice sounds great and the song is pretty but the lyrics are lamenting a period when he was “all bug-eyed and babbling” and separated from the woman he loves. Or, as it’s stated in the press release, “being caught between the vertigo of heartbreak and the manic throes of freedom.”

Of course, he’s reflecting on that experience with disgust. Which is not fun. Why does Tillman fear fun now? He might as well drop the “Misty” persona and resume recording as “J. Tillman” if he’s going to be this humorless and self-lacerating…

Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe the “Misty” thing has peaked anyway. Look at his first-week sales history:

• Fear Fun: 4,000 sold (May 2012)
• Honeybear: 28,000 sold (February 2015)
• Pure Comedy: 33,000 pure album sales (35,000 equivalent album units) (April 2017)
• Customer: 19,000 sold (22,000 equivalent album units) (June 2018)

Maybe he’s overdue to gobble up some mushrooms, climb a tree, and contemplate the absurdity of his life again. It worked last time. Stop being so serious. Time to drown old Neil down on the beach one more time.

Father John Misty: web, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Shorties

Number One Records: I Like It

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Video: Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin – “I Like It”

Directed by Eif Rivera. From Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, out now on Atlantic.

“I Like It” is the first fun number one since Camila Cabello’s “Havana” back in January. (I guess “Nice For What” was upbeat, but Drake is so whiny that I can’t consider him fun.)

Cardi just makes you happy.

They call me Cardi Bardi, banging body
Spicy mami, hot tamale
Hotter than a Somali, fur coat, Ferrari
Hop out the stu’, jump in the coupe
Big Dipper on top of the roof

That’s fun!

Plus she samples “I Like It Like That” by Bronx boogaloo pianist Pete Rodriguez, so it’s got that funky 1967 Latin hook. I don’t know anything about Bad Bunny and J Balvin but all my favorite pop hits since we’ve been doing this series have had some Latino flavor, so I welcome and encourage our neighbors to the south to take over our pop charts entirely.

“I Like It” sold 44,000 downloads and had 37.5 million U.S. streams in the week ending June 28, and 80 million in radio audience in the week ending July 1.

Cardi B: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading Number One Records: I Like It →

Shorties

New Tomberlin video: Seventeen

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Video: Tomberlin – “Seventeen”

Directed by Zach Xanders. From At Weddings, due August 10 on Saddle Creek.

You always say that I look so tough
But it’s because I’m tough

Sarah Beth Tomberlin is a 23 year old songwriter from Kentucky who records for Saddle Creek. Her dad’s a strict Baptist pastor. She was homeschooled. One of the first secular albums she owned was Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. And now she writes her own lovely acoustic songs about love and connection.

She told the Fader: “The whole point of music is to be honest with people and tell stories and bridge a gap that maybe shouldn’t be there. No matter where you stand religiously or politically or socially, people interact with all sorts of art. I’m based in Louisville now, but I wasn’t when I was writing the stuff. I kind of just felt like, There’s no way this will ever get to anybody. I’m not a part of a scene. I’m not in Brooklyn or Philly or Chicago. I was just doing music for myself. I legitimately never thought a lot of these songs would come out. I was doing it to become a better writer and to process my experience.”

At Weddings was originally released last year on Joyful Noise as part of their 2017 White Label series limited to 500 hand-numbered vinyl copies. Saddle Creek is giving it a wider release and adding three brand new songs.

“Seventeen” is one of those new songs (along with “A Video Game” and “I’m Not Scared”), and it’s really good.

Tomberlin: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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