Plants and Animals

In honor of the upcoming national holiday, it's Ooooooo! CAAAA-na-daaaaa for this one.

They know I'm a patriot, ok? It's cool.

Plants and Animals play to one and many things, all stitched together with their record to tape sound, swirling up 1972 nostalgia and an appreciation for rum and cokes. Warren C. Spicer, Matthew "the Woodman" Woodley and Nicolas Basque recorded 2010's La La Land in both their hometown of Montreal, The Treatment Room and Paris, Studio La Frette.

Apparently we've been watching the same Jane Fonda tapes.


Making the second track my vacation anthem in the lowcountry. 'Cause I feel like it. And hey, about that, I'll be casting shrimp nets and swimming in salty South Carolinian seas all next week, so I think ES is taking some vacay-time.

Dunno though, I'll miss you guys too much to REALLY stay away.

The Week's Once Over

Looking awfully cute together, Mirah & Thao
Rolling tumbleweeds in Other Lives
Reviving the Wrens {Dustin Artz}
Under the Covers: coming down from my Bon Iver high

remember your baby oil-n-iodine this weekend. makes you look real sexylike in those wayfarers.

xx, chirgo

Plants and Animals // Kon Tiki
Plants and Animals // Jeans Jeans Jeans

bluegrass bonanza

Across the amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty, Becki Hoehn guests posts for us from the wilds of Auburn, CA. When not tromping about in cargo shorts and SmartWool socks, she's catching shows and schooling roadies on the finer points of soil chemistry.

xx, chirgo
___________________________________

Brown Bird


Devil Makes Three

Bluegrass - their roots can be traced back to the Appalachians, so why did it take me moving away from the Appalachians to start appreciating bands with banjos and upright bassists?

I recently went to a show where two bands just blew my mind with their talent. The opener, Brown Bird, is a duo from Rhode Island who plays more instruments than The Arcade Fire has band members. Their dark bluesy country music had me drop-jawed, and luckily for you RVA peoples they are going to be in town May 22nd, location to be determined.

The Devil Makes Three had me upon sighting an inked chick on upright bass,{Lucia Turino}...but seriously I think these guys just want you in your dancing Toms, uh...boots?
What's the typical fashion for bluegrass, I'm too new at this?
Regardless, everyone in the venue was bouncing around to their "badass backporch blues," me especially.

-B

Brown Bird // Danger and Dread

Devil Makes Three // Aces and Twos

The Man Who Would Live

You'll notice my name isn't the sole listing as contributor to this 1-Trick Pony of a posting vessel. David Mckay, who posts about as often as I wash my hair on the weekends, has been a hard-working sonova this past year. He quit his safe and comfy job as an art director in the advertising world and proceeded to pour blood, sweat and tears into a black void known to a choice few as Endie Filmmahkin'. His own, and a number of poached liters from a number of cute & cuddly creatures.

Countless iterations of a script, sinkholes of WTF-am-I-doing, blistering moments of soul-sustaining creativity, several months worth of frustrated outbursts from his girl {cough.} and a spontaneously combusting credit card brings him to this precipice - the finish of the film is just within reach.

It took a group of fantastic people, true dedication and artistic vision to make it happen. If you have a few quarters in your pocket, help him see this through at his Kickstarter page. Maybe then I can stop carrying him piggyback on ES, and would get a datenight some place other than Arby's. If I have to eat any more curly fries, I will punch a baby.

Dominant Legs

A quickety-split trick to leave you with this Friday. SF native Ryan William Lynch leads with the right with his ramble-jangle reedy sound. Funky jazz with some carribean 80's flat-top, pop razor lines on the side over the ears. Slick it back with some melancholy LA Looks gel and head out the door. I could think of a handful of artists to relate him to, but the sound is oddly more of his own. How often does that happen? How often does a guy look far better with a flower over his ear than I do? Crap.

Dominant Legs // Just Silly Ones

To add fuel to my defeated flames, an old friend from ago turned me on to this bobo blog. It has stanky hepster written all over it. Maybe if I stop wearing babypowder fresh deodorant I can funk it up like them one day.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums

This wasn't a first listen in love experience for me. Mariam Wallentin's deep, almost asexual vocals - peppered with yelps, keens and scatting - weirded me out. Husband Andreas Werliin's spooky, roiling percussion made me paranoid. Add the backing vocals of the Schola Cantorum Reyjavik Chamber Choir and I'm practically walking up the stairs of the Bates mansion.

Then I told myself to be cool for once in my life and got in the campfire circle of Swedish husband and wife's August release, Rivers.

The University of Gothenburg music school dropouts have an incredible talent for maintaining tension in their music. Experimental, native rhythms, abstract storytelling and, clearly, jazz press the record in to being. Attention is easily drawn to the lyrical imagery sung by Wallentin, who's classically trained voice
morphs to whatever shape the song calls for. And Werliin's barely tethered kit is the binding agent, only occasionally allowed to crash down the steep grade. Incoming.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums // Fight for Me

Club 8

No one expects slinky samba and bombastic bossanova buttshaking beats from a pair of frosty Swedish blondes. Well, guess what? Those aren't highlights, people. And white kids can occasionally dance, providing the moon is in the waxing gibbus phase and it's the fifth Thursday of months that end in "ary."

Dream-pop duo Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård of Club 8 took a trip to South America for love, for inspiration, for cassava. Full of heat and humidity, they returned to Sweden to produce an album in homage to their tropical muse. Albeit surreally - while they sweat it out in the studio their countrymen walked around in their earmuffs and mink stoles during the dead of winter. The result of feverish brazilian beats with vocals that dip&soar on the warm updrafts of West-Afro guitars have you ready for summer, sugarsnake!

Now dance whitey, DANCE

Club 8 // Shape Up

KiD CuDi

Scott Ramon Segring Mescudi
Kid Cudi. Kid Cuddy. King Cuddler. Maybe?

This Ohio-originated, Brooklyn-based rapper has been on the tip of many a tongue as of late and is pretty deserving of it. Yeah, that means I'm a little late to add my thumbs up to the roster, what of it?

For those who are equally belated, you may internally muse..
"hmm, well then...this kinda sounds like Kanye?"

Not that surprising - Kanye signed CuDi to GOOD MUSIC at the ripe old age of 20, which explains easy album cameos by fellow label artists such as Common. He certainly has the this/side/of/left/hip-hop appeal as his mentor - but CuDi isn't making a jackass of himself yet, just good music.

Hip-hop may not have oft appearances on ES, but one of my favored tracks features MGMT and Ratatat which should keep any irate calls from mckay at bay. Fingers crossed.

KiD CuDi // Pursuit of Happiness (f. MGMT and Ratatat)

ocdj

BALTIMORE. ocdj's album Hooray came out back in 2007 but the label, Wildfire Wildfire, just sent it (along with rest of their entire catalog) to WRIR.

ocdj is Dan Gaeta. Independent radio fact: Gaeta started volunteering at WFMU at age 14 and eventually became a dj there.

He's toured with Dan Deacon, Video Hippos, Jana Hunter, and DJ Dog dick, and when he performs he wears stuffed animal masks. Goof.

However, he's not performing much right now because he's traveling around the Atlantic on a sail boat. He previously circumnavigated the globe as a hand on this guy's yacht.



More downloads here.

Au Revoir Simone

Anyone for a foursome? Hahahahaha, I’m dirty. Here’s another remix, what am I thinking? I like to jazzercise to the second half of this song.

A Violent Yet Flammable World (Montag Remix)