Well, radio folk, it's that time again: time to bring back all your checked-out CDs and vinyl albums so we can get them filed and ready to go for next term. Today (Sunday, 11/15), no more checkouts will be available to DJs. The Record Library will officially close its door on this coming Wednesday the 18th.
I implore all of you to bring back your albums ASAP. The Record Libe is an amazing resource for music, and it's completely hamstrung if its users don't return what they borrow. (Plus, you don't want to make the librarians hunt you down and charge you ridiculous late fees for having albums out over break.) So please, make sure you bring everything back NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY. If we have not received it by then, bad things will happen. :)
Thank you all for a wonderful term! Good luck with finals, and enjoy your last broadcasts of term!
Pysch – folk bands are always at a risk of becoming unorganized jam bands playing with obscure instruments and too many effects, but MV & EE manages to avoid this fate by coupling their woozy sound with sparkling guitar riffs and determined lyrics. Their new album Barn Nova is definitely their best. MV & EE is one of the many projects of Matt Valentine and Erika Elder and the album is somewhat of a romantic psychedelic trip between them. The guitar duel in the track “Summer Magic” will perk you up from the muted, dreamy mood of the first few tracks and shortly after the album reaches its pinnacle with “Wandering Nomad”. In the next track MV & EE become the wanderers in a hazy musical landscape in the eleven-minute long “Bedroom Eyes”. The album ends with “Fully Tanked” and “You Feel” as they slide back down into a gentler mood similar to that of the opening tracks.
My favorite track of the album is the nostalgic “Fully Tanked”. It stands more on the folk side of the psych – folk spectrum with a harmonica and plucky guitar line, but it’s backed by electric reverb droning that becomes stronger through out the track. There are many lyrical gems throughout the album but one of my favorites is in this track where Matt Valentine lackadaisically croaks “Can you turn your back on the ocean door/ and search with me for the tides/ and never break or change your ways/ we’ll hang out in the sky.”
I recommend listening to this album late at night in the midst of a sleep deprived delirium whilst trying to do homework or just in a laid back atmosphere where you can let yourself drown in the sound.
I echo Michael's comment. Great review. It should be mentioned that MV & EE are coming to First Ave. on Nov. 18th with Dinosaur Jr.
on November 12, 2009 @ 2:38 PM says:
But that's the same day as Fuck Buttons - decisions, decisions...
Aurora on November 13, 2009 @ 4:26 AM says:
ah decisions, decisions indeed
Michael on November 13, 2009 @ 10:44 AM says:
I should be supporting the cave, but it's really awesome that MV&EE are touring with Dinosaur Jr.
dan on November 13, 2009 @ 11:06 AM says:
j mascis is on that hippie tip, he's buds w/ thurston & always books ecstatic peace bands at the front end of dino shows. i saw them with awesome color at the triple rock, couple years before that they were playing with magik markers. if you poke around the ecstatic peace website there's a bunch of videos of that tour including an awesome one of a markers set w/ both mascis & nolan on drums. also for mv/ee fans there's a video of them playing w/ samara lubelski.
Cold Cave is the phoenix that has risen from the ashes of likeminded synthpop revivalists Xiu Xiu and Prurient. The group recently released "Love Comes Close" on Matador Records, and the band's gloomy, barebones electronica captures the detached aesthetic characteristic of early Factory Records, the Manchester based label that transformed the heretofore gritty, impoverished industrial wasteland into the epicenter of the British music scene in the early eighties. Cold Cave is based in New York and perhaps this invocation of this signature sound reflects New York's current malaise in midst of America's financial crisis. As James Murphy aptly said, "New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down." (Also see the enduring relevance of this prescient Joan Didion essay:Goodbye to All That)
The album's title track evokes "Corruption, Power and Lies" era New Order, and fully ensconces the listener in a aural milieu of modern despair. Caralee McElroy (formerly of Xiu Xiu)gives the following track "Life Magazine" an infectious sweetness with her melodic, feminine vocals, which is redolent of the decidedly more upbeat Saint Etienne. In sum, Cold Cave encapsulates a sophisticated, urban world-weariness in their music that is both the perfect soundtrack to the current economic downturn, and provides a glimmer of hope that an end is indeed in sight.
Doug, bassist for the Bratlanders and Carleton College Employee, provides us with this account of tonight's show:
Johnny Cash died in September, 2003. Two months later, Singer Matt Arthur and a backing band of siblings Doug, Don, and Bev Bratland held a tribute show at Northfield's Contented Cow where they performed 50 Cash covers they'd worked up in the previous 60 days. Six years later, the band has a few new members and dozens of original songs amid their four hour repertoire of rootsy, electrified Americana. The Bratlanders' first full-length, full-band recording, "How Time Passes," will be released in late 2009.
“Singer Matt Arthur has a whacked-out growl like something grown in a petri dish swabbed with cells stolen from the esophagus of Jim Morrison and Boxcar Willie.” - City Pages
Imagine an alternate universe where Patsy Cline met Johnny Cash at a truck stop, then gave birth to a daughter who one day met Journey's Steve Perry at a truck stop and later gave birth to a daughter who grew up to be Jennifer Markey.
Jennifer Markey and the Tennessee Snowpants are a Minneapolis-based five-piece roots country band who play original music, traditional songs, and an impressive number of countrified covers of some decidedly un-country tunes. Their new album "We're All Going To Hell!" will be released this winter.
Find more information about both bands and preview their music on MySpace:
Duck Hunt is one of the early 90s K records bands that have fallen through the cracks. While other bands from that period -- Beat Happening, Teenage Fanclub, etc. – are still in musical circulation, Duck Hunt is no where to be found. This 45 has that classic K Recs sound. It has been sitting in the record library for years just waiting to be played.
Part two of Cave Week has arrived. Tonight we are lucky enough to host the unforgettable live presence of lovable goofball Dan Deacon. For those of you expecting an experience similar to Tuesday's incredible Atlas Sound/Broadcast/Selmanaires show, you are sorely mistaken. Let me suggest you dress as you would for the gym. It's best to keep an open mind when going to a Dan Deacon show, but one thing is always a certainty: You will get sweaty. For a further description of a typical Dan Deacon experience, click here.
We are also extremely fortunate that Nuclear Power Pants are opening for Mr. Deacon. Their shows have been described as "absurdist carnival freakshows from the surreal and paranoid tail-end of an acid binge." NPP just released an LP last month, "Wicked Eats the Warrior" on Deacon's label, Wham City. Synth-driven songs with plenty of feedback? This band was made to play at the Cave.
Here's a video of one of their tracks, "Teeth of a Lion":
Anyway, doors open tonight at 9pm, NPP start playing (hopefully) at 9:30, and Mr. Deacon takes over at 10:30. It's cold and rainy outside, but it may be a wise idea to dress in a t-shirt and shorts; apparently at the last Dan Deacon show here two years ago it got so hot in the Cave that sweat literally condensed from the ceilings onto Deacon's equipment.
KRLX-FM 88.1 * 507-222-4102 (office / record libe) * 507-222-4127 (request / live)
300 North College Street, Northfield, MN 55057-4000
KRLX is a service of Carleton College in Northfield, MN
Hello Kids,
Pysch – folk bands are always at a risk of becoming unorganized jam bands playing with obscure instruments and too many effects, but MV & EE manages to avoid this fate by coupling their woozy sound with sparkling guitar riffs and determined lyrics. Their new album Barn Nova is definitely their best. MV & EE is one of the many projects of Matt Valentine and Erika Elder and the album is somewhat of a romantic psychedelic trip between them. The guitar duel in the track “Summer Magic” will perk you up from the muted, dreamy mood of the first few tracks and shortly after the album reaches its pinnacle with “Wandering Nomad”. In the next track MV & EE become the wanderers in a hazy musical landscape in the eleven-minute long “Bedroom Eyes”. The album ends with “Fully Tanked” and “You Feel” as they slide back down into a gentler mood similar to that of the opening tracks.
Doug, bassist for the Bratlanders and Carleton College Employee, provides us with this account of tonight's show:
Thanks for a great Fall season. I have enjoyed listening in from far away. Here's to 2010!