Monthly Archives: February 2014

Ed Hamell of Hamell on Trial is one of the most exciting and brilliant songwriters to come our way in years. The New York-based Hamell is a one-man punk band, and what with his frantically strummed and heavily amplified acoustic guitar and wonderful vocal delivery; simultaneously bleak, touching, and hilarious songs; and propensity for telling long and very amusing anecdotes you won’t even notice he’s up there all by himself. You’ll be too busy laughing, or being moved by the man’s incredible empathy for the damaged, the downtrodden, and the damned.

Hamell has released numerous LPs on various labels including his own DIY label and frequent touring mate Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and they’re all great. And while songs like “I Hate Your Kid” and the homicidal “Tough Love” may lead you to think he’s a cynic, nobody could be less so, as songs like the hilarious but ultimately moving “First Date”—and “Blessed,” “Whores,” and “Mom’s Hot” off his forthcoming LP The Happiest Man in the World on New West Records—prove. Ed Hamell has a heart of gold, and I can honestly say he was without a doubt the kindest, funniest, and most knowledgeable musician I’ve ever interviewed.

Indeed, I was so enthralled by Hamell I forgot to ask him (as I do everyone I interview, cuz it usually pisses ‘em off) whether he’d have sooner been a member of Grand Funk Railroad or Bachman Turner Overdrive. Anyway, here goes:

Alternative Folk, Anti-Folk, Folk-Punk, Punk: How do you describe what you do?

I think it’s rock’n’roll. Whenever anybody from a folk magazine calls, they think it’s anti-folk. And whenever somebody from a punk magazine calls, they think it’s folk. To my mind it’s rock and roll. But when I say that, people look at me and think, “You’ve grown two heads. We must kill you.” I saw John Cougar with his 10-piece band and it didn’t sound like rock’n’roll to me. He’s an anti-synergetic artist—the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

I read your article on CS&N and same thing—they’re an anti-synergetic group. Then I saw Neil Young with an acoustic guitar and it was much more rock’n’ roll. My thing is such a tough sell. It’s so idiosyncratic. If somebody told me let’s go see this middle-aged guy who sweats a lot play acoustic guitar, I wouldn’t go either.

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“Vinyl represents an appreciation for artistry that certain people really value and pursue.”

“As modern culture gets more fast paced, quality can easily be drowned out by convenience or immediacy. Vinyl is a medium that makes patience, artistry, and intention a necessity.

Friends Divide is a very personal collection of songs, so Jeremiah and I wanted the vinyl release to be as personal and analog as possible. The design process was a true collaboration that started while we were in Mexico writing and recording. Jeremiah did the initial drawing for the image in the center of the cover, and I drew the text and symbols for the back and front.

For the vinyl release, I took these layouts and carved them into 9″ x 12” linoleum blocks. I did a couple of test-pressings on paper (see video), then printed the images directly on blocks of pine. We hand wrote the lyrics for the songs and photographed them, along with photos taken in the studio. These were arranged on some aged wood that we found on our property. The final images make up the 8-panel booklet included in the album sleeve.

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Manhattan is the debut long-player from the New York City-based outfit Skaters. Due to its swagger and big-label push, it’ll undoubtedly divide audiences like Hipster Moses. Far from a groundbreaking album, it does hold a few strong moments, though in the end it’s not enough to keep the record from registering as a mild disappointment.

I must confess that as I began chalking-up a fair amount of time listening to Manhattan my mind started to wander a bit. Thoughts initially turned to the general health of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll, but it wasn’t long before I was mulling over the band’s point of origin. A few spins later and I was struck like a bolt from the blue by another Manhattan, specifically the 1979 film directed by Woody Allen.

One of Allen’s biggest successes, the movie is also sometimes described as amongst his most charming, though it’s also not without potentially alienating undercurrents; it’s about a group of humans, most in some way artistically inclined and therefore also harboring varying states of emotional imperfection, living in one of civilization’s great metropolises.

Indeed, the cast frequently displays troubling and occasionally quite disturbing behavior, and does so very rapidly, in a span analogous to an LP’s opening track. And yet there’s such a grand sense of scale, as the succession of terrific shots accompanying the narration of Allen swiftly bloom into a gorgeous cityscape made even more beautiful with fireworks and the sounds of Gershwin, that when the film’s problematic characters are revealed the viewer’s resistance to them is, at least possibly, lessened.

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We’re delighted to debut Adventure Galley’s “Cult Classic,” taken from the Portland band’s 2013 full length release, Anywhere That’s Wild. And while we’re at it, we’ve got a peek into the band’s record collections for a dose of vinyl-infused inspiration. 

Modest Mouse, Moon and Antarctica | “My neighbor showed me this album when I was in middle school. It must have been almost 2 years after it was released, but hearing it for the first time really blew the lid off my world in a way. Before hearing it I never knew modern music could be “cool.”

I think as a young teenager most of my experience with modern music was pop so I tended to lean toward classic rock, but discovering this album that was so ornately textured and almost orchestral that moved throughout like a cohesive piece was what really made me decide to pursue music. I had already started learning to play the drums, but hearing The Moon and Antarctica is why I started taking it seriously.”

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand | “This was another album that really hit me. Discovering a guitar rock album that played like a dance record was big for me. It’s so steeped in attitude and the song writing is so on point. After hearing “Take Me Out” and “Dark of the Matinee,” I remember sitting around playing the “disco beat” for hours on drums to perfect the groove. It’s probably why I do it so much now.”
—Brock Grenfell

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“I have been a huge Jack Kerouac fan since the 10th grade. By 19 I had read just about everything he had ever written, when I found Windblown World, Kerouac’s journals from 1947—1954. I decided that any time he would mention an album he was listening to in his journal, I would go out and find the artist on vinyl and experience the music that had influenced and inspired so much of his writing.”

“I was no stranger to vinyl. My Dad introduced me to Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, via vinyl when I was 7. I quickly learned how to handle them carefully, clean them, flip them, stow them away. I relished the process. But I had never actually bought a vinyl record of my own until I was 19, living in L.A., and on the hunt for some of Kerouac’s favorites.

That was when I discovered Counterpoint, a small second-hand music and book shop. Here is where I found everything I was looking for, and then some. My favorite part of the shop was the $1.00 record pile. For $1 an album, there was really no risk in purchasing potentially bad or potentially life-altering music.

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Sometimes you amaze yourself. Or perhaps I should say stupefy, dumbfound, perplex, befuddle, mystify, outrage, and downright disgust yourself. Such was the case when I recently ran over a “little person” in an abortive attempt to pass the D.C. driver’s test. I never saw him; in my defense, he was a very little little person. More like a half-little person. And such was also the case when I decided to review Jethro Tull’s Stand Up, solely as a joke and a chance to pan defenseless Englishman Ian Anderson, who for some inexplicable reason stands poised on one leg while playing the flute, like a hippie flamingo.

Only to discover, horror of horrors, I actually like the damn thing. Who was it that said, “He came to mock but remained to pray”? Because I’ve always considered Jethro Tull, despite a handful of songs I truly like, ridiculous, due largely to Anderson’s flute, an instrument (in my humble opinion) suitable only for tossing out the window. What’s more, Jethtro Tull always struck me as fairly dim. I clearly remember thinking, when they put out 1972’s Thick as a Brick, that it wasn’t the brightest move, touting one’s low IQ on one’s own album cover.

I picked 1969’s Stand Up for the historically important reason that it has a song called “Fat Man” on it. A Facebook friend gave me the idea, and I fully intend to unfriend her. A short history: Jethro Tull (they filched their name from a pioneer of the English Agricultural Revolution) was formed in 1967 as a blues-rock outfit in Luton, Bedfordshire, a town once famed for hat-making. The concrete hat was invented there, and the resulting epidemic of neck injuries very quickly put an end to hat-making in Luton.

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Press Play is our Monday morning recap of the new tracks received last week—provided here to inform your vinyl purchasing power. Click, preview, download.

Japanther – Do It (Don’t Try)
Plateau Below – Riverside
Alana Amram & The Rough Gems – People Like to Talk
The Assyrians – Baobab
Hardkiss – Flowers Blooming
Picastro – Mountain Relief
Arum Rae – 2001
BSBD – Pyramids (Frank Ocean Bootleg)
Earl Boykins – Doves
Cut Copy – We Are Explorers (Larry Gus Remix)

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Meg Myers – Desire

Fat Goth – Sweet Mister Scary
Eternal Lips – Voice (Feat. Kyp Malone)
Rudimental – Free (Matt Nash Remix)
PLOY – Young (The Silver Liners Remix)
Meursault – Tugboat (Galaxie 500 cover)
Confluence – The Line
Chalk And Numbers – Angelfuck (Misfits cover)
Jones Family Singers – Down On Me
Inspired & the Sleep – Fly Low
Smoke Season – The Crown (featuring JacuzziHiDive)

13 more FREE TRACKS on side B!

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Greetings From Kansas City!

I woke up this morning hung over, or should I say “all folk’d up.” Last night I experienced Kansas and folk music coming together at its best. Imagine the crazy energy, excitement, and enthusiasm of SXSW packed into three floors of hotel rooms. Hallways literally bustling, bottlenecked upright—bass to banjo. Rooms with folkies drinking wine, singing, and picking.

A dream? A “don’t look back” dream? Maybe, but for a Thursday night in February, sitting in a hotel room bed listening to Michael Fracasso and John Fullbright with the KC skyline flicking in the background, was the medicine I needed.

More than some Okies in flannel shirts trying to preserve “Woody” old-time music, conference organizers have stumbled on a recipe for real music fans and players of all sorts and skills. Props!

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“My mom was the first person to introduce me to vinyl. I think it may have been a My Little Pony turntable with matching 45. I wore the thing out and wanted to know about the larger discs I’d see her pull out once in a while.”

“She told me these were called LPs and handed me records from The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Elton John. I flipped through them excitedly. I turned the volume way up while dancing and singing along. This was somebody’s job? Someone wrote songs, played them with a band, recorded them, and sent them off into the world? Yes, please. I’ll have that! I became a young rock ‘n roll scholar absorbing knowledge through playing records, reading biographies and watching documentaries. I knew more about The Beatles than most Boomers. It was my field of expertise and my absolute joy set in motion by this formative event.

When I left my hometown of Miami for Boston with Henry in hopes of starting a band, we had no stereo. I was offered an old record player which I gladly took. Like most kids my age at the time I had amassed quite a CD collection, but this used turntable got me right back to where I started. The first new LP I owned was The Strokes’ Is This It. It’s amazing it still plays given how much I spun it. The romance began all over again and slowly my records overtook the CDs I would eventually digitize and give away.

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Who loves The Who? Everybody loves The Who, that’s who. Six billion Chinese people love The Who. That Turkish family that walks on all fours loves The Who. Kim Jong-un loves The Who. The ape at the zoo loves The Who. Okay, I suppose there are lots of people who don’t love The Who, but I don’t understand them. Why, I would even go so far as to say there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with them.

Then again, how much do I really love The Who? I have no use for Tommy, dislike everything after 1973’s Quadrophenia, and have never really listened to their early stuff beyond what’s on the 1971 compilation Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy. And don’t even get me started on the post-Keith Moon Who. Face Dances? Why, I have half a mind to dance on your face, Mr. Peter Dennis Blanford Townshend, for reanimating the corpse of a band that died with its heart and soul, Keith Moon.

So, unlike our friends the quadruped Ulas Family from Turkey, I suppose I’m ambivalent about The Who. But I have no mixed feelings about Who’s Next, the band’s 1971 masterpiece. From its cover of the foursome at Easington Colliery, having apparently just finished pissing on a concrete “monolith” emerging from a slag heap, to “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”—two of the greatest rock songs ever written—it’s a gas, especially when you toss in such odd birds as the hilarious “My Wife” and the cool and amusing “Going Mobile.” It may include some songs I flat-out dislike, but I don’t care. It’s still the best thing to come along since sliced Altamont.

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