Well worth reading: David Edelstein and Alan Sepinwall pay tribute to Paul Newman.

Man, I need to watch Nobody’s Fool again…

So hey, Cake Shop. Tropical wallpaper stretching for a dozen feet as you approach the stage, hanging red garlands and tiny white lights dangling amidst soundproofing foam. It’s become one of my favorite places to see shows in New York — actually, given that I once saw Daphne Brooks read from her book on Jeff Buckley’s Grace, it may well be one of my favorite spots for culture, period.

My main interest here this evening was in Human Highway — I have a review of their album in the next Death + Taxes, and I’ve been an admirer of Jim Guthrie’s work ever since Martin played me a good chunk of his Now, More Than Ever on a road trip in 2005. And co-Highwayman Nick Thorburn’s work with Islands has given me a lot of enjoyment over the last few years as well.

I arrived partway through Becky Stark’s set. It was, much like her band Lavender Diamond, ballooning with emotion to an almost ridiculous extent. Stark and Harper Simon each joined the other on stage; Simon’s set was twangy in places, evoking mid-70s Tom Petty, but never really crossed the line for me to become something fully memorable. Was it solid? Sure, and — don’t get me wrong — I’d happily listen to him again. But something about the set didn’t leave me entirely bowled over.

Human Highway, then. This was their first show, Guthrie and Thorburn along with three other musicians. The playing seemed hesitant at first, and the group’s overall tightness became more apparent as the set went on. Thorburn and Guthrie traded off lead vocals, playing most of Moody Motorcycle, as well as Now, More Than Ever’s “You Are Far (Do You Exist?)”. (I will confess to repeatedly shouting, “Yeah!” when Thorburn announced that they’d be playing a Guthrie song.) And by the end of the set, the closing version of “Duties of a Lighthouse Keeper” — for me, the highlight of Motorcyle — was wistful and bristling and pretty much hit all the proper smart-pop marks. The group moved from intimate singalongs to something a little more poised during their time on the Cake Shop stage, and if Human Highway seems a little smaller in scope than either of its songwriters’ other projects, that isn’t to suggest that they can’t push for widescreen when the occasion demands.

Pianos on a Friday night is a strange place to be. The bar portion, which one has to traverse in order to get to the venue in the back, was on this particular night full of well-dressed, well-off types making loud conversation. The actual performance space, which had added a bar since the last time I saw a show there, had a more recognizably rock-show crowd in attendance. The main draw for me on this particular night was Boston’s Pretty & Nice, whose upcoming Get Young has been stuck in my head in an almost insidious manner since I first heard it.

Playing when I got there were Piegons. I knew nothing about them save that they feature members of Sea Donkeys, about whom I likewise know very little. Whatever I was expecting, though, bore little resemblance to the group onstage: abstract, brittle guitar lines and a general sense of unease. Definitely something that hearkens back to a more bracing era of indie rock; my brain kept flashing “THE SONORA PINE” even though I’m not entirely sure I remember what The Sonora Pine sound like.

(Subsequent research has indicated that Pigeons did, in fact, play the Yeti release party I attended a few months ago. Which may point to larger issues with my memory than simply a Sonora Pine-sized hole therein, or may indicate a more memorable set on this night than back in May.)

Air Bombay were up next. I don’t have too much to say about them, to be honest: they mentioned from the stage that it was their second show, and they did have the sound of a band in their nascent stages. Much of the crowd enjoyed what they were playing, and there was a good, loose, poppy feel to much of their set.

Pretty & Nice toss a change-up at you when you first listen to Get Young, their second album overall. They’re a four-piece fond of giant-sized pop hooks and even quick forays into Vocoder use. And so Get Young opens with…a thick, bristling, fuzzed-out guitar sound; it’s from there that they shift into their catchier mode. This isn’t to say that there isn’t an edge to that pop: there’s as much Braniac/Enon sinew present as there are Squeeze/XTC hooks. And that, I’d say, is their strength: not in reinventing pop but by running noisier elements through a fairly classic sound and leaving in so much unabashed joy. That basic sound differs little between rock club and recording studio, which is a plus. Another plus in the live setting comes from the group’s onstage banter, which may yet give Mike Pace a run for his money in the surreal self-deprecation department. Fine stuff all around.

Currently listening to a quartet of live Bon Iver songs, recorded for Myspace’s “Transmissions” series. Gorgeous and sparsely arranged and mostly heartbreaking. And, hey, downloadable here. Fine late-night music, I’d say.

….to say congrats to two fine people in the city of Portland.

For what it’s worth, I’ve gone and signed up on Indiebound, using the artfully cryptic name tobiascarroll. For more on just what that is, I’d recommend The Written Nerd on the subject.

***

I’ve been meaning to post a lengthy response to this Jennifer Nix piece on print-on-demand and progressive publishing for a while now. As it’s been up for nearly a month, I think it’s doubtful that this response will ever happen, but I do think that one aspect of Nix’s argument — that, essentially, independent booksellers should be actively supporting the Obama campaign — is given something of a wrinkle by a quick glimpse of Indiebound’s bestsellers page. Specifically, the one for hardcover nonfiction, which (as of September 11, 2008) includes both Goodnight Bush and Obama Nation in its top ten– the presence of both suggesting that the politics of the people who shop in indie bookstores is less monolithic than one might think.

(That said, I think Nix’s piece sets off my inherent contrarianism more than anything, given that I am essentially a lefty who shops primarily in independent bookstores. So, yeah.)

In the new issue of Death+Taxes (the one with CSS on the cover), I have a pair of reviews, along with a piece on Oxford Collapse. Two more reviews (of Adem and Bound Stems) are now up on their site, where another two should be joining them one of these days.

The Oxford Collapse piece will lead to a lengthier post around these parts on conflicts of interest, as my own Edelstein-on-Almereyda-esque disclaimer was cut from the published version of the piece, evidently due to space constraints. Nevertheless, thoughts on the subject are forthcoming. I swear.

For now, I’m going to link to a Robert Christgau piece that addresses some of the same issues.

Also, that Bound Stems record I reviewed? I’ll say it again — it’s mighty good.

One: Kevin Smith on movie posters.

Two: Ezra Caraeff on Jenny Lewis and the existential horror of watermarked promotional CDs.

Three: At Pitchfork, Will Sheff on (among other topics) Still Flyin’. I heartily approve.

I wrote about Damien Jurado for the Portland Mercury.

“It’s midnight, and I give up, tired of lying for you,” Damien Jurado sings over neatly strummed chords. That’s how we’re eased into “Gillian Was a Horse,” the opener on Caught in the Trees, Jurado’s eighth album.

For what it’s worth.

Via friends of mine who were recently over there, I had the good fortune to try Kilimanjaro Coffee from The Coffee Shop in Moshi, Tanzania. I’ve already made my way through the pouch I was given, but I can say that it was deeply flavored — rich and dense and pretty close to my platonic ideal of what coffee should be. k

On Saturday, I went along with friends to Greenpoint’s Eat Records. A friend of mine recently took over running their kitchen, and I was curious to see what the new setup was like. The last time I’d been there, the balance between cafe and record store was much more significantly in favor of the latter. Things have changed since then: the actual music selection has become more concentrated and is now entirely vinyl in nature, while the seating — now polished-wood benches — can accommodate larger groups. It’s an interesting shift, but one that makes sense given the emphasis on food there now.

How was the food? I’m not the most unbiased observer, to be true, but I was impressed: a good combo of eggs, fresh tomatoes, bacon, and feta; deviled eggs with just enough spiciness to make things interesting; and a fine cup of coffee. Alex opted for a melon soup which I tried as well — good, rich consistency without losing the essential, um, melon-ness. And even on a crushingly humid morning, their back garden managed to feel comfortable.

Molly Templeton witnesses Les Savy Fav in Portland.

Someone gives Harrington a fork and he combs all available hair (on his own body) with it. At one point, he yelps, “What’s the difference between me and a pit bull?” The crowd responds, “Lipstick!” Harrington says, “I have human intelligence!”

Amazing.

Union Hall is around four blocks from Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope, and on nights when my supply of coffee is low and I find myself bound for the venue in question, I’ll generally make a stop beforehand for a freshly ground pack. And so on nights when I find myself standing in Union Hall’s performance space without company, as I was this evening, it leads to a strange sensation: an overpowering smell of coffee even as you drink your beer.

The show began with the usual, a pre-show mix of assorted songs-of-the-moment from the last year or so. On one of the benches lining a wall, a fellow in a blue shirt warbled along with the Dirty Projectors, his girlfriend amused or appalled. It was hard to tell whether he sang out of devotion to the group in question or ironic contempt. (Ah, Brooklyn.) The lights dimmed slowly, leaving the stage barely illuminated. That wasn’t where the first of two bands was headed, though — The Dutchess and The Duke walked to the area just in front of the stage, picked up their instruments, and began to play.

The unamplified set isn’t something you see all that often. I was towards the front of the crowd, and I suspect that Union Hall is about the largest possible venue where this could work with even those towards the back of the room having no difficulty hearing the set. In contrast with the directness I’d seen the last time I saw the group, this set was more laid-back. Though every nuance of Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison’s playing was audible, the duo (along with Shayde Sartin, from Toth’s band, on percussion) occasionally laughed, dispensed “bless you”s to audience members who sneezed, and came close to cracking each other up more than once.

“I Am Just a Ghost” may have been the highlight: Lortz began the song singing just above a whisper and ended it kneeling, face pointed upwards, at a volume just below a shout. And “Scorpio”, from a seven inch on hoZac Records, may be the prettiest song the group has written to date. Throughout, with a few brief exceptions, the crowd was silent — not an easy feat to accomplish around these parts.

It might have been the contrast in styles, but when James Jackson Toth and band began to play, the roar of notes through speakers sounded huge. The last time I’d seen Toth play was a few years earlier, opening for John Vanderslice and still using the Wooden Wand alias. That set was acoustic and abundant with fire and brimstone; this set brought with it a different kind of haze. Toth’s Waiting In Vain is full of segues to paranoia, to smoke-filled rooms and uncertain memories. (It’s not far removed from The Gutter Twins’ Saturnalia — well-written, ecstatically played rock records that document aspects of life I’d rather avoid if at all possible.) The five-piece setup roared throughout the set, and with four of the five contributing vocals, the layered arrangements heard on Waiting translated to the live setting much more closely than I had expected. And while the maddeningly ecstatic “Beulah The Good” wasn’t on the evening’s set list, I left impressed.

Paper Thin Walls has called it a day. Something of a retrospective is now up.

I’ll miss it. Not only because I did a fair amount of writing for it, but because it cultivated a style of honed-in music writing that I daresay doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Plus, this was pretty damn funny.

Last week, I headed up to Lincoln Center for what turned out to be a pretty astonishing WFMU-sponsored bill. There’s a good writeup on 17 Dots that I pretty much agree with. Said writeup doesn’t go into the pretty stunning set played by The Ex and Gétatchèw Mèkurya. Essentially, it was nine musicians completely in sync with one another, moving from jazz that perfectly swung to jarring, gloriously dissonant feedback — and making it all work perfectly. (Brooklyn Vegan has some good photos as well.)

Which is, I suppose, as good a way as any to segue into linking my Experience Music Project Pop Conference presentation (“I’ve Got a Name: Music, Radical Politics, and AK Press”) from earlier this year, in which The Ex, along with AK Press, Political Asylum, and others, are discussed.