The Real History of The Source – Part One. “The Source is lying to readers about its own history in every single issue, by listing Raymond ‘Benzino’ Scott as a co-founder of the magazine alongside David Mays.”
Garfunkel Charged With Pot Possession
Art Garfunkel busted for marijuana possession. While we’re at it, please free Tommy Chong, who was put in prison for selling pipes.
Cutler, Mark – Wrecking Ball
Mark Cutler – Wrecking Ball via projo.com. By way of Fingertips.
Great day for customer service
RIAA sues 532 more music fans. CD-Wow forced by the British music industry to raise their prices. What a great day for customer service!
My Morning Jacket loses two members
Two members of My Morning Jacket jacket quit the band.
Rocky Votolato – Suicide Medicine and The Light and Sound
Rocky Votolato – Suicide Medicine and The Light and Sound EP (Second Nature Records)
Rocky Votolato is a man cloaked in the kind of duality found only in nature and lore. His voice is unpolished but resistant, his music can be soft as wax, while also tough and sturdy like a cedar rooted to a mountainside. His voice too, like fresh timber, occasionally oozes sap, but not too much. Inside Rocky, as in a cedar’s needled branches, are flitting birds with insulating feathers and powerful wings: enough to withstand a cold season, and strong enough to return every New Year.
Votolato is known for his duality: he performs with the rock group Waxwing (not to be confused with Detroit’s the Waxwings -ed.), and also solo acoustic. Seth Warren (Red Stars Theory), Casey Fobert (Pedro the Lion) and mixer/engineer Chris Walla provide assistance on his latest solo efforts, but in all his endeavors, Rocky is unmistakably the fearless leader—even amidst his solo work’s nakedness and Waxwing’s electrification.
Suicide Medicine and The Light and Sound EP reflect the rippling aspects of humanity in songs about love, murder, and warm blood, and his voice’s liquidity provides a tranquil feeling, but also evokes a hidden central current.
On these two cds (The EP was released on May 20, 2003, and the LP was released September 16) the songs alternate and blend like seasons. Votolato makes it truly possible to get the uncommon—and best—of both worlds without seeming overdone: he evokes the pain of cold as well as spring’s rejuvenation, and he experiments on all levels: within the album, within the song, within the verse. Truly, he and his band have found a way to successfully move from knuckle-scraping guitar chords to delicate fingerpicking while maintaining a smooth and intuitive, yet complicated sound.
Votolato is a self-proclaimed “hardworkin’ guitar pickin’ man” who belts ’em out above his drummer’s brushes and in perfect harmony with the backup vocals. On Suicide Medicine‘s “Death – Right,” he sings, “Inaction acts as a blade across the throat.” And as he plucks his way though cavernous orchestration, it becomes evident that Votolato needs no guide: he chooses his pains and pleasures, and balances them like nature’s blind justice.
The Light and Sound EP complements Suicide Medicine in many ways, and both discs are connected like tree and earth. In A Discourse on Killing, Votolato sings, “So I want to hit somebody / With a baseball bat / Break his fucking knees / And take pleasure in it / And I know it is not right.” Lyrics like these help prove that Votolato is a modern songwriter set in old ways, and his words echo the dark traditions found in “Delia’s Gone” and “Little Sadie.” Votolato, just like the old folk singers, breathes love, murder, and sometimes politics.
These are Votolato’s strongest releases to date. They should not be considered perfect or necessarily accommodating, but his relationship with unsettling traditional music both exhibits and foreshadows a positive natural growth. This is to his benefit, as he must realize, because he leaves room for future challenges.
When You Rock, Rock. When You Vote, Vote.
As the election season is now on us like a barrel of famished leaches, we thought that we’d take a look at the outfit that is ostensibly meant to get the youth of America off the streets and into the voting booths: Rock the Vote. While this is certainly a laudable endeavor—after all, if you don’t vote, then some fat, rich, stupid bastards/bitches are the ones who are going to be deciding on who runs what (and given the facility of the Florida voters in the 2000 presidential election to use a little tool to punch holes in paper, we should all be very afraid of the consequences)—the Rock the Vote website (www.rockthevote.com) seems to be set up by those who are more interested in commerce than in politics.
Morpheus 4
Morpheus 4 is here and legal. “The only American file-sharing software ruled legal by a U.S. federal court.”
Audio Outsend – …Or Does it Explode?
Audio Outsend – …Or Does it Explode? (Flashcard)
“His bare feet were blue and ivory. It was all right somehow, his
being dead. So it goes.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
When the apocalypse comes, Audio Outsend will stare at us all. They will gaze blankly upon us as we scream and pray, wondering why we’re upset about the inevitable—they’re not. As they expound insistently in their music, all change leads to the same end, so why not accept the rapture? In the end, we’re all just rolling heads – and no one will care if God saves the queen.
The placid quartet’s first full album, …Or Does It Explode?, delivers leisurly electronica folk pop with stoic passiveness. The Oakland, California, group (formerly named Lazy Bones) dances around medium-to-slow tempos with concentrated transition, offering a soothing meld of acoustic and electronic sounds. Gentle melodies allow their sound to stay mild and familiar as the vocals lightly offer cryptic commentary that ultimately falls flat and glacial.
Audio Outsend seems determined to try for clean synthesis but still get in some art-school oddity without reason. The band’s musical structure is a familiar step from Radiohead, Lake Trout, and even the acoustic leanings of Bon Jovi. “Rolling Heads” features pretty finger-picking, hissing bottle rocket sound effects, and what seems to be a bewitching pan pipe solo – it’s a fluid song until the middle break, when a garbled male speaker rambles on without any clear purpose (a similar problem to the interlude in “Calling On the Girl”).
“Imagining Things?” opens the album and ends with the unsettling jangling of either jingle bells or metallic rain, an effect so loud it ends in a roar.
“Steereo” sounds unevenly mixed; the distorted vocals can barely be heard over the loud backing guitars and drums – but in contast, “A Racket of My Spine” is balanced delicately with a clever scale pattern that ends in quickly-resolved dissonance.
Most of the album lacks variance. It froths in the same general tempo, with the vocals repeating their own patterns. The vocals are dispassionate musings and generalities, ambivalent in meaning and impersonal in direction.
Ben Jenning’s lyrics, sleepily content to “let the glory of the quiet fill my day” (“Stand Tall Little Wall”), seem randomly compiled and lack genuine insight. In the most arresting song of …Or Does it Explode?, “The Great Lawn Competition,” he muses “so it goes” with the clear resignation and heavy-lidded view of the Vonnegut novel the phrase originated in; the sad understanding of the sigh speaks for how much Audio Outsend takes in and how little they wish to interpret. The words, so general and emotionless, paraphrase the entire album.
…Or Does it Explode? contains moments of loose, flowing beauty that suggest interesting directions for Audio Outsend but no defining element. If they really start caring, it might all go their way.
Sun Kil Moon – Carry Me Ohio
Sun Kil Moon – Carry Me Ohio via Rolling Stone. By way of Fingertips.