Posts Tagged ‘Beach Boys’
Clip Job: Five Records Made in Cabins (Other than Bon Iver)
Thanks in part to Don DeLillo’s 1973 novel Great Jones Street, it didn’t take long for the rock-star-toiling-away-in-seclusion narrative to go from the stuff of critical legend to obvious fodder for parody. Nevermind that two years later saw the release and instant canonization of Bob Dylan and the Band’s long-buried The Basement Tapes—the inspiration, in fact, for the DeLillo character Bucky Wunderlick’s “The Mountain Tapes.” And so for listeners, the brilliant, hermetic artist has persisted, both as a reductive, suspect concept and as an undeniably seductive one. Listed here, some examples of the latter.
The D.C./Baltimore psych-folk act Le Loup retreated to a cabin in North Carolina to record much of its latest album, Family (out now on Hardly Art) and the result is druggy, country-fried, and poppy. Take “Grow,” which sports what might be the best pairing of Beach Boys harmonies and the “Be My Baby” beat since, well, the Beach Boys. But the real innovation here is space: Where past Le Loup songs were concise and linear, Family’s breathe and frolic and expand. The band—which performs Saturday at the Black Cat with Pree—recently recorded a session for All Our Noise. Check it out:
More records made in wooded seclusion after the jump: Reluctant backwoods Svengalis, some latter-day Johnny Cash, and brassy mountain ditties!
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9:30 Two-fer: Fleet Foxes and M. Ward
I’ve heard the Name Game play out in many contexts, but at a concert—between the drummer and some guy standing ten rows into the audience—was a new one. “Do you know Rebecca Callahan*?” shouted a tall kid in a white Polo. “She was, like, two grades ahead…”
“Rebecca, oh, yeah,” replied Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman.
This, one supposes, is the fate of stage banter at a show when the drummer admits he grew up in a nearby suburb (Rockville) and is pressed upon to kill time between every song while the lead singer re-tunes his 12-string guitar and the rest of the band hangs out in unhelpful silence. But that was the sort of casual vibe Fleet Foxes brought to the 9:30 Club on Wednesday, breaking down the distance between the band and the sold-out audience in such a way that it felt less like a crowded concert hall than the living room of a buddy who makes you pay $9 for a Guinness. Other topics of band-audience banter included the menu at Rockville pastry shop The Fractured Prune, frontman Robin Pecknold’s bad haircut (hidden beneath a red knit hat, which he refused to remove), and whether Tillman more closely resembled Jesus Christ, Charles Manson, or Rob Zombie.
What’s New @ Red Onion
Oh, it’s time to get out your X-Mas LPs. Two nights ago, Mingering Mike was having me track down “White Christmas” by the Drifters and a sweet James Brown yuletide favorite. Thank G-d for iTunes as the Drifters track was AWOL on Amazon. And thank G-d for Red Onion, the record shop just got in a batch of X-Mas favorites from the Beach Boys, Ernest Tubb, and Lou Rawls. Not to mention the Charlie Brown Christmas LP that everyone must listen to. If that’s not your bag, he’s got a special sale on most Numero LPs which make great gifts! And of course, tons more new arrivals:
