Emmy The Great in Liverpool

After the weird rap night, I wake up on my laptop with two new albums in iTunes, a ticket to a show and a train ticket to get to that show. The albums are from Emmy The Great and the ticket for the show is the same in Liverpool. Time to go, this train leaves in two hours and the departing station is across town. What have I done, who the hell poisoned me and why is there a fork in my hand?

Next things next, the great city of Liverpool, known for that one band, funny accents, and being cold and wet. It's an unusual place where speaking understandable English is optional, but I'm not noticing so much as I'm in a rush to get to the Liverpool Guild of Students where the gig has already started. In some hall half the size of a basketball court is a quiet group of young Brits watching the last song from the opening act, Stealing Sheep, who are gypsying around with their harmoniously hippie voices on an uncommonly large stage. There's an empty bar to the left (there's booze everywhere over here) and I'm relieved I didn't miss the main course. It's a three hour train, I missed the first one by stupidness mistake and I'm anxious.

Emma-Lee Moss is more of an emanating force from a far away magical planet than an actual real-life person. That sounds like a huge over-exaggeration for such a small-framed, half-Chinese, half-English twenty-something with a wispy voice and an affinity for 90s rock music, but as it pertains to a commanding presence on stage, turning mortals into drones with wide-open paralyzed mouths, then it's just something you'll have to experience for yourself to understand.

From the moment she floats on stage, alone with her big gold necklace and freshly-paid-for Iron Maiden t-shirt, the crowd is entranced. I stare at the muscles in her thighs (I think she's a runner) just under her black skorts ('cause I'm a perv, you know that) as she pulls up her customized acoustic guitar and begins to sing like an angel. She has an Irish folk singer feel to her, but it's less country and more something else.

In fact, her first album, First Love, plays almost entirely like a folk album aside from a few progressive electrons. That's when people started to notice her east of the states, but something tells me with the newly edged-up record, Virtue, all will change for the bigger and better. It's a more well-rounded and put-together taste of dark and magical flavors occasionally dipping into melodic drones and distant pulses that take my weird mind into Fantasyland. Not a far cry, really, with her lyrics singing of fairy tales and dinosaur sex. It's deeper than it sounds.

The rest of the band comes out in this mostly sold out gig and they jam with Grace in front of what is still a quiet crowd. For some reason, even in this small place and high stage, they've filled the floor with chairs. You can either sit in one or stand by the bar in the back. I sit to be close, but I hate the idea of all that energy being strapped to a seat. The crowds in England are reserved anyway and when I look around, I'm the only soul bobbing my head. They're not bored, they've just been zombified by her spell and into it. Their wooing cheers in the relenting breaks say so. I guess I'm supposed to stare into her eyes more and not so much at her legs to get the full effect.

She occasionally jingles what looks like a dream catcher with bells and crucifixes attached to it to ward off the demons. Song after another, this is hypnotic and blissful. Em to The G are an incredible live performance and while they can be mellow, there's plenty of opportunity for foot tapping. All is taking me to a distant place and I'm thinking about the empty seat next to me where someone I know should be. Then suddenly my buzz is jolted loose by a cover of Weezer's "Island In The Sun" (RIP Mikey Welsh) and I might as well be in a Sonic drive-thru. I don't figure out this decision until later when Google tells me Emma is a huge fan. Her choice, but it doesn't seem to suit her voice or sound and I'm left with curious eyes. She could've at least chosen "Crab," instead.

Luckily, she and the band don't end there and continue on with more velvet vocal volume and my space world starts to sneak back again. In between songs, Emma tests the crowd with some throw-away one-liners you have to be listening to to catch. She's a funny girl, gifted in voice, smart with her writing, and ain't too shabby in the looks department, neitha'. I'm thinking this is one of the best shows I've seen in a while and, later on, I confirm that with my sober memories. Will I see her/them live again? Yes. Liverpool? No.

Catch ETG's upcoming Christmas thing with Tim Wheeler from Ash (whom she's rumored to be dating. Pffffsssshhhhtt). It's called Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler present This Is Christmas and the first track sounds like, well, Ash.

Photo stolen from Facebook. LaZers added by ES out of necessity.

Emmy The Great // North
Emmy The Great // Sylvia
Weezer // Crab

My Morning Jacket

One of my most-clicked articles this year from SPIN.com listing some of Yim Yames' influencer tracks fueled the soul-fire and got my hands rubbing evilly. Eagerly. For the next release from Kentucky-reared My Morning Jacket. Circuital, dropping May 31 with Sauron-reminiscent album art, {...I may have just Middle Earth dorked myself outta here} continues to carry the soul torch back to rock n' roll. Start growing your hair out, because you're gonna want to wetdog shake your head to the majority of this album. There's moments of Pentecostal revival, Navajo war bellows, 50's doo-wop, shimmering waters of reverb and maybe even a little bit of a middle school social. Boys on one side, girls on the other.

FIRST pre-order THEN get the free release of title track "Circuital" here. NOW you can dig into the brassy wa-womp and gospel kindergarten growl of "black metal."

My Morning Jacket // Holdin On To Black Metal

Penny & the Quarters

{we just got personal, people}

Penny & the Quarters are a lost soul band from the '70's, recently revived by Ryan Gosling's attention and inclusion on the Blue Valentine soundtrack. The group, assumed to be teens at the time, were invited to audition and record three demos at Columbus, OH's Harmonic Sounds Studio. The songs were discovered after label co-owner Chem Price's death in 2006.

A few years and change of hands later, "You and Me" was released by Numero Group. With the growing popularity of throwback insta-vintage, they're doing the honorable thing and actively looking for the vanished members to pay them their due. I almost don't want them to be found. I almost want to pretend this song just immaculately came into being; created for the singular purpose of weaving your fingers through somebody else's.

Penny & the Quarters // You and Me

Raphael Saadiq

I've been dancing with abandon in socked feet across my hardwood floored hallway, and it's all because of this guy.

Raphael Saadiq is no stranger to the scene, with forays of touring with Prince in his teens and collaborating with some of the biggest R&B/soul names in the business {Lucy Pearl, Tony! Toni! Toné!, etc}. He's a producer, singer, songwriter, guitar thrasher and instant vintage. Did you watch the Grammys? Did you see Mick Jagger's performance? Did you wonder who the fresh-faced, bespectacled chap in the cardigan hot-heeling it across the stage was? Well, three guesses and the first two don't count.

Stone Rollin', released yesterday, is all late 60's soulful Stevie Wonder orchestration and retro-distressed lyrics. Reach out and The Four Tops will be there. Sashay your modern high-waisted flares while bobbing your old school head. The album is solid from top to bottom, taking you from the assured swagger of "Good Man" to wig-out twisting of "Radio." Sweet and favored "Go To Hell," with it's ghostly Greek Chorus and soaring strings, was track two and all it took to book two tix to see Saadiq at LGBG later this month. If you need a little more convincing, stream the whole album here.

Raphael Saadiq // Go To Hell
Raphael Saadiq // Heart Attack

Irma Thomas

imma dance this one out, real quick-like.

___________________________________________________

I was the best man at a wedding a couple weeks back, floating amidst the mixed emotions that weddings sometimes bring, and then this song happened. Though I am pretty well versed in New Orleans Funk music, I had never heard of the Sweet Soul Queen Irma Thomas.

This song uses a favorite device of mine: singing about something tragic with fun poppy music that completely clashes (I used to LOVE the Unicorns for this. … What the hell happened to the Unicorns?).

Needless to say there was a lot of kick-stompin' and finger waggin' on the dance floor when this came on. Pick up "Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans" if you'd like to smile at your latest worries.

-da

Irma Thomas // Breakaway

Adele - chanteuse inferno

Since calling for her "Hometown Glory" on 19, Adele has forged her own path amongst the teenyboppers and pill-poppers of the diva scene. With 21, she lunges like a steam locomotive back into the charts with tracks produced by hitmakers Rick Rubin and Paul Epworth. You can hear her resonating vibrato for miles through the fog of "sophomore slump," not a bit of which seems to apply.

Had she made a dance album? Bleached her hair platinum and lost the bouffant? Tried to fit the pop-princess cookiecutter? Chances are this searing album of hearts rippedraw&bleeding that's going to have the lot of us condemning our deserter for lovers and exclaiming I FEEL that wouldn't exist for exorcisms.

Goddamn do I love a breakup album.

A favored peachy track and her gospel affirming performance on the 2011 Brit Awards.



Adele // Set Fire to the Rain

Timber Timbre

Take Tom Waits and remove his lifetime smoking habit and you might get a born again grown baby that sounds somewhat like Timber Timbre. Soulful, haunting, and laced with a dizzying chemical that spirals the spirals in my pupils, this experimental Toronto duo led by space alien Taylor Kirk will likely have you moaning for more.

Lately, I've been getting into organs. Mainly boob organs. But this kind is good, too. Very good.

Timber Timbre // Lay Down In The Tall Grass

Junior Boys

These Ontarians blew up, whatever that means these days, right off the bat in 2003, when they released something good enough for Christian Fennesz to remix.

The song Fennesz really liked.

Their new album is Begone Dull Care, on Domino. It is named for the short film by animator Norman McLaren.

As usual, it was difficult for me to choose just one new track to share. One I really like called "Work" was recorded in Berlin and sounds like DJ Hell a bit-- I didn't want to beat you over the head with Hell any more-- and another is basically electro RnB ("Sneak a Picture"). The song I choose is like neither of those.

Junior Boys // Dull to Pause

Two Fingers

If you've ever listened to Amon Tobin you know he can go deep and tribal. He was spreading Brazilian sound around before Crookers and the Twelves took over blog house.

His new project with Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman, Two Fingers, takes that deep down to the next level of the inferno, mixing that DEEP (did I mention it's deep? and tribal) sound with a lavish recordful of British and American MC's. They. Bring. It.


Two Fingers and the MC, Sway, recording in Montreal

Two Fingers // High Life featuring Sway

Forced Exposure

The IDM boat draweth nigh, along with a bunch of other stuff. For real, WRIR got this massive shipment in from my favorite music distributor of all time Forced Exposure.

I won't bore you with the details, but my love for Forced Exposure is so great that I as an audience member once made David Day, another audience member and at the time Forced Exposure's college radio contact, stand up in a room of maybe 200 at a CMJ panel discussion to talk about his company.

In the 80s and early 90s Forced Exposure was a zine published out of Boston (on newsprint), focusing on punk and obscure music as well as literature, with contributers like Lydia Lunch, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth.

Now they distribute music, ranging from rereleases of 1920s fiddle music from Baghdad to the entire Shitkatapult catalog to re-pressed Norwegian psychedelia from the 60s to free jazz and composers and ambient noise to English warehouse bangers. Look at their index of releases for March. Dazzling.

Basically half my career as a music director has been spent begging FE to send me stuff. Incidentally, they supply a lot of the electronic vinyl to Plan 9, too.

So anyway I am fulfilled, and guess what, I consider it both my job and my pleasure to share my musical joys with you. My next several entries will all draw from this boomshower of sweetness that arrived in the mail last week.

So there, too, music distro isn't dead after all, is it? Just shitty music distro. Thank you, Forced Exposure.

Circlesquare

Do people mention INXS ever when they're talking about Dance Rock?

This guy, Jeremy Shaw, is from Vancouver but lives in Berlin. Whenever music people talk about moving to Berlin I think of Stephen Daedalus in Paris with puce gloves carrying a flower. Ha.

Anyway this is fucking sick. What I'm listening to is Circlesquare's new release from !K7, Songs About Dancing and Drugs. Apparently his previous album, Pre-Earthquake Anthem, was like "a molasses drip laced with codeine" so I'll have to check that out, too.


The children of scientists are more predisposed to have Asperger's.

All Live But the Ending

tUnE-YaRdS

Eventually from Portland's Marriage Records. This chick, Merrill, was into anarchy puppets and Christmas music when she was younger. You can actually hear that in the music. She attended Smith and sang in a "brazen" all-female a capella group, too, and later went to Kenya, all of which you can also hear.

She recorded her whole album, BiRd-BrAiNs, on a hand-held voice recorder. She also booked her own tour all last year, which led to the thing with Marriage and this past month to opening for Beirut.



Sunlight

Mr Scruff

Mr Scruff draws cartoons and named his new album Ninja Tuna. Plus he started his own tea company.

Ninja Tuna is Mr Scruff's first full-length since 2002. He's been on Ninja Tune records since 1999 and been dj'ing famously since the mid-90s, when he blew up in Manchester.


Flyer drawn by Mr Scruff for Keep it Unreal, his monthly at Manchester club The Music Box. Scruff normally dj's the entire night (six hours).

Here's what he says about dj'ing:

Although I am a fairly technical DJ, it is vital to remember that the most important skill for a DJ is to play great records in the right order. Each record must complement the one before, and introduce the one that follows. Beatmatching is an obvious way of linking records, but there are other common factors, such as lyrical themes & complimentary keys that a DJ can use to aid the transition. Each piece of music has a mood and an energy level, and orchestrated carefully, you can create an atmosphere where every record that comes in is precisely right for that moment.

Hairy Bumpercress

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears

Just put on the advance Black Joe Lewis ep, which contains 4 tracks:

1) Gunpowder
2) Bitch, I Love You
3) Cousin Randy
4) Master Sold My Baby

The Black Joe Lewis collective is based in Austin; you can catch em at SxSW if you're headed that way, but if not they'll be doing a tour following the album launch. The full-length comes out on March 17th, called Tell Em What Your Name Is! from Lost Highway.

Otherwise, I haven't found too much press on Black Joe Lewis or the Honeybears, though the promoter did tell me that Obama has endorsed them.


Cousin Randy

Why not send your valentine a "Bitch, I Love You" e-card?