Fallopia

Ready for something new? Gray skies giving you the let’s-get-on-with-spring blues thing?

For free streaming music, and insider updates on new and old favorites,  check out the blog “add salt” by music journalist/critic Nyssa Grazda. She’s based out of Montana, but she covers music the world over.

You’re feeling hipper already. And that’s a little closer to chipper, right?

>>> add salt__________________________________

Yesterday on WNYC I heard yet another public radio plug for the 2010 Census. In my ignorance, I was really surprised to see how much effort goes into getting people to fill out the census. Isn’t everyone incredibly excited about this? I’ve been practicing writing my name on forms for weeks, getting ready for the big day when I’ll check my very own mailbox, and see something other than bills.

Anyway, back on topic. I was listening to Brian Lehrer interview people about how politically contentious the census can be, and he ended the show by playing a ridiculous 2010 Census pop song with their hip slogan and priceless lines like “pursue it, theres nothin to it, every woman and man, they can do it“…

I’ve done some research now, to find out if there is really an official 2010 Census Song. I can’t find <the one I heard closing Brian Lehrer (skip to the end) but these are equally amusing.
Enjoy:

Yellow Girl, 2009 Chitra Ganesh

Sundays in Harlem.

I choose this title for this post to first bring attention to the fact that this album can not be found! I’ve looked everywhere for even a hard-copy of the CD, if not a digital version. It appears to no longer exist.

But first things first. Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions is the name of vocalist/songwriter Melody Gardot’s first self-released EP (2005), and I can’t find it anywhere. This is surprising, considering the spectacular circumstances under which the EP was created. Melody Gardot’s car accident has gotten her a lot of critical acclaim, and (unfortunately), probably helped propel her to semi-stardom. Nonetheless, I am eager to hear what her most naked and unaffected attempts at recording sound like. (Mostly for very self-absorbed, self-motivating reasons), so if anyone knows how to get their hands on it, do let me know!

Even without access to her first recordings, there is a lot of great new music to be heard by this Philadelphia based vocalist. Her first full length album Worrisome Heart was released in 2008, and contains the perfect track “Love Me Like a River Does” that first drew my attention.

On many occasions she successfully recaptures Nina Simone’s signature vocal shudder, a warble so steeped in emotion that your hands fall to your lap, your productivity grinds to a halt, and you’re struck by the moment of being so urgently human.

“Gone” is an excellent example of Melody’s signature style of songwriting. The song carries a lot of country/folk undertones, but she brings back the old school jazz vocalisms when she scats over a simple guitar line. Speaking of guitar lines, I wish she played more often. The guitars presence in each of Miss Gardot’s tracks is refreshingly simple, open, and honest. It shapes a collection of songs made to be sung, and the voice is given its full due respect as an instrument that Melody has cultivated with the utmost taste and delicacy.

My One and Only Thrill, released Spring of last year, is her second and most recent studio album to date.

Not all of the songs are as musically successful in my opinion. She’s still a new artist, finding her voice. Tracks like “Our Love is Easy” & “Quiet Fire” miss their mark, mostly I think in the quality of sounds chosen to compliment her voice. I think she needs the right producer (not Larry Klein) to really compliment her talents, instead of overshadow them. There are more minimalist tracks, like “Goodnite”, “Who Will Comfort Me”, and the magnificently delivered “If the Stars Were Mine” that really make want to believe in Melody’s potential to generate an outstanding repetoire of original music.

My only real complaint may be the frequent presence of Vince Mendoza’s orchestral “strings”, (see “Baby, I’m A Fool”. It smacks of a tacky, overly zealous producer. I recognize however, this aversion may be a strictly personal sentiment, and for many listeners the strings may touch on that romanticism I believe he was working towards, rather than dragging the recordings down into the over-sentimentality and excess I think they bring.

Certain vocal textures, imagery and production will definitely channel the monumental successs of Norah Jones in 2002. These two artists, along with Madeline Peyroux (equally “french” and sensitive), and even my favorite of the present set, Mirah, fit rather neatly into a category of acoustic female vocalists that I fear might get reduced too quickly to coffee house acoustic wallpaper. I wonder if the music is overly effeminate? Perhaps, but I’m interested in hearing from some men whether or not these new female vocalists pack enough punch to reach a non-gendered audience, like the potent, fiery women (Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald) who clearly paved the way for their success. I have a feeling that lot of men might find themselves equally moved by these “bedroom sessions” that are so intimate, so arousing, and yet innocent as daybreak.

Moving has been a consistent theme of my life for the past few years. It is a process that always brings with it a tinge of nostalgia for what is lost in the between spaces that accumulate, particularly when those times are so numerous.

February is not exactly the most ideal time to be moving when you live on the east coast, but somehow the promise of creating a new home is enough reason to trudge out in the cold through the earlier hours of the morning with all the belongings you can stand to hold dear and get into the shady freight elevator.

Life is just full of surprises sometimes. Surprises like 3,000 square feet of apocalyptic, post-industrial space perched over the future of on-coming trains and a new school. Everyday, walls and foundations are tumbling next door to me, shaking the walls of my feeble factory-conversion, illegal residence. I moved in a dragonfly pull-out couch, painted the walls sage, crushed velvet, and chalkboard.

A few years back someone tagged “detox the ghetto” on the side of this building that, to the uneducated eye, might very well epitomize the ghetto. The tag is facing the railroads that take commuters between suburban New Jersey and New York City 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. “I know that building,” my friend John tells me when I point out the tag, “DTG,” with a smirk on his face.

On a clear day, around 5pm the sun shines with a distinct orange light that only shines at this repose during Januaries and Februaries in the northern hemisphere that illuminates the name of the place I call home. I can feel the eyes of all the men and women traveling by on the locomotives who look up at the bold letters illuminated by the heaven light that (sometimes) shines on Newark, New Jersey.

That light shines in my windows, welcoming me home.

The kids went outside first. They know how to take advantage of a good thing.
I lay in my bed, belly down, elbows propped, watching boys collecting the midnight offering off the stones, the stoops, and roofs of cars. Two pretty young girls in fur-lined coats and knee high boots prance by aristocratically, unaware they’ve been delivered into enemy territory. Balls of slush propelled from all sides, mostly hitting their mark and the two girls shriek and rush off, their shrill voices hanging in the air as homage to the winter warriors.

I promised to spend my snow day in bed, reading with Holden Caufield and drinking Peppermint tea, but after 30 minutes, I’m restless, anxious. I find my gloves.

I like the way the snow covers up mistakes. Bundles up insecurities. The snow blankets the sidewalk and fills in the cracks. Everything is made equal. The city the virgin. In her pristine presence, everyone covers themselves to the point of suffocation. Children sweating and overheating like small vocal radiatiors. Begging their mothers to let them take of their hoods, their scarves, their sweaters. Mothers pull strings tighter, tuck corners deeper. It’s too warm for this weather. The rain and the snow fall together like cousins. Dancing some incestuous dance, they slop on my cheeks, her hands, his hat. There are men pushing the slush around, away from their doorsteps, with red shovels and plastic bags tied over their knotted hands.

I’m feeling mighty and defiant. I could fill my emptiness with soggy wanderlust, fill in my vacanices with snowy vagaries. My boots are the champions of the day, staunch and brown and determined. Let us march they say. Let us.

Block after block, the scenery stays the same. Fifth Avenue is as ugly as the rest in this sort of storm. Some of the people are outside, but nobody is rushing. All of us are taking advantage of the opportunity to be late, and wet, and sour. To blame it on the weather. Communal worship. We don’t even make eye contact. Such modesty.

It’s treacherous, this holy wonderland. There are vast oceanic puddles the slate gray of the concrete, disguising themselves to the weary traveler. Under the newest down there is old black ice that’s been around for hours and learned the tricks of the trade. City streets are not for dancing. After hours of trudging, my face stings like fire and my hands stiffen like ice. My boots are darker, wetter, stronger. A certain gust of wind blows me into a blue and white cafe, where I immediately pull off my hat and gloves, and take a seat, wondering if I might pull off my boots in public. I am approached by a waitress who looks warm and pale and lovely. I ask for coffee and an egg. She brings me both, and a bagel, and some fried potates. “House Special” she says, and I wonder how I so often elicit others pity, even my own. Here I am again, feeling sorry for myself. I deserve to be out in the rain with such soggy setimentality still filling my thoughts.

If it has stopped snowing, I can’t tell for the wind. It’s too hard to open my eyes, and through my squinting I can see the street lamps have come on to illuminate the shapeless, shifting gray. There is a woman in a puddle outside the Louis Vuitton glass front. Just laying there, eyes wide open in a goddamn puddle like a frozen duck. She has a dark gray blanket and no hat. I notice she has no hat because someone else noticed it first, and he was busy pulling his own hat off his head and jamming it down over the ears of this sad lonely duck in the pond.

Someone sometime on the radio had said if you call 311 in New York city, they’ll come pick up people with nowhere else to be. I couldn’t help but think about the ducks, and the fish, frozen there, protected by “God” till spring. All the while, I’m just standing and she’s just looking. The man I love decides to call me just then, just for that moment, and any sort of self-pitying I may or may not have been engaged in seemed foreign and unnatural. I can’t even tell him about it, and he’s the one I tell. I call the number, and after 30 minutes of robotic redirection and tacky hold music, there is a bright, kind voice on the other end. Says they’ll be right there, they have a lot of beds in the womens shelter. Never thought maybe I was jumping to conclusions, until I hung up the phone. Maybe she didn’t want to be picked up? But she was just lying there. Other people were starting to get the same idea, stopping to ask her if she needed a ride. I got to thinking she was awfully brave, making all these uncomfortable people so uncomfortable.

The whole time she never takes her eyes off me. I don’t know what to say to her, I couldn’t think of anything at all. It all sounded stupid in my head, so I just try to smile some gray, winter smile, and then I walk off. I think she may have smiled too, or maybe her teeth were chattering. I’m no hero. I don’t know.

I was gonna go home, but I was all soggy in the brain, so I went down into a subway station to finish the book. Not even a train passed by. “I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful.”

If you’re looking for the next best thing to getting everything you ever wanted, check out the newest studio album of brassman/troubadour/party-maker Bryan Highhill’s musical collective Lumpy coming out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The album is titled “From Wilderness Cove“.

From the first stretch of the first track, you know it is going to be all foolishness. Then you’re right, and my birds how delicious it is. There’s a swoony loony sort of urgency to this album, like a drunken elephant stumble-rumble-dancing around the rim of a volcano. At any given moment everything is about to collapse in on itself or burst. Hard to say which.

Take the fourth track on the album “Not The Same Man“. Thematically it’s almost embarrassingly super-pop, and you can’t help but feel like Bryan is making fun of you for being so into it. Nevertheless, into it you will be. That’s it. See your head, bopping up and down? It’s sexy and silly…now that’s an accomplishment.

My absolute favorite is the rocking, raucous “Southern Plantlife” (Track 6). This is one of those tracks that leaves you breathless, sweaty, and angry at your mom in a deliciously indulgent, adolescent sort of way. Play the track again, a second time, only louder. Maybe it’s not your mom after all, but who gives a damn. The point is that you’re half-hitting pitches, screaming words you don’t quite understand and driving too fast. It’s all the beauty of teenage angst that you were too “chill” to let out when you were younger. Go head. Do it again.

If you’re not in love with Lumpy yet, pump Track 10 “Owls” through your speakers and take a little vacation. The entire Lumpy collective shines, reminiscent of The Polyphonic Spree or some epic Sufjan Stevens composition.

Whether it is the stomp-your-feet determinism of “Tell You So” (such fun!) or the pulsing party sing-along “I’ll Bring You Down“, you can’t deny that the feverish horn lines carry this music. As a classically trained trumpet player, Highhill really lets the instrument serve as the mouthpiece of the album, even though the tracks all have vocals. Bryan is playing his own percussion as well, which really serves as a rhythmic interpreter of your heartbeat, doing all the things your organ cannot. Don’t put this album on and expect to do something else. It is all very noisy and distracting and Bryan’s signature voice is one you can’t ignore. But- if you’re ready to give yourself to one man, now is your chance.

You can preview the entire album here at bryanhighhill.com but I’m warning you now that the 20 second taste-bytes won’t scratch the itch. You might as well buy the whole damn album now. Listen to it twice. The rest is history.

from the horses mouth:
“Tracking was started in October of 2008. Most of the tracking was done at the College of Santa Fe recording studio using pro-tools. But some was also done in my bedroom. Everything was done one instrument at a time and some of the parts and structure were improvised during the recording process. The mixing was done with Apple Logic and the project was completed December of 2009. ” - B.H.

(Now just in time for Valentines Day. Nothing says I love you more than sweat & ecstasy.)

Was looking for a cool idea and stumbled upon this one:

Functional and fun. Makes horizontal libraries look so 1897.

Ideas.

A day of pure American celebration. January 8th, the King from Memphis (not Gary) entered this great world.

Take a little time, put on your favorite song and do your best undulating pelvic thrusts.

Here’s a Fallopia favorite.

Because I love you too much, baby.

Can’t forget Jarmusch: