Signs of Life 2008: Best Music
Leona Naess - "All is Fair"
the everybodyfields - "Worth Keeping"
Life, Camera, Action: Movie Hopping While Rome burns
Live at Paste: Whitley
If there's one thing I have in common with the fourteen-year-old indie girls of America, aside from the inability to properly apply eyeliner, it's that I can credit Zooey Deschanel's involvement with She & Him with introducing me to the duo's inarguably more musically established half, M. Ward. His dreamy, bottom-of-a-deep-dark-well crooning on "You Really Got A Hold On Me" and "I Should Have Known Better" on Volume One gave me the long-overdue push to explore his solo catalog. It's proved to be an absolute revelation but also a never-ending source of guilt for not listening sooner. I've been actively atoning all summer and decided to further pursue absolution by seeing him live this afternoon on the WaMu (R.I.P WaMu) stage.
He started out with two solo acoustic songs that only further reinforced my revelation/guilt complex-- just like I'm still amazed that that voice comes out of such an unassuming, seemingly slight man, I could not believe the things his fingers were doing. Maybe I haven't witnessed enough truly great guitar-playing in my life, or maybe what usually passes for great these days isn't so much, but watching him, my mouth was agape (and not just because my sinuses are still totally blocked and unbreathable through). From the third song onward, he was joined onstage by an equally crackerjack band that included (I believe) Mike Coykendall on acoustic guitar and Rachel Blumberg as one of two drummers. First up was a "Poison Cup"-- which I've been listening to kind of non-stop all summer, a Hail Mary of sorts for my atonement-- followed by the smoldering blaze of "Right in the Head," "Chinese Translation," "Reqiuem" and a John Fahey instrumental cover. After a few more, they closed up shop-- god I hate these 45-minute festival sets sometimes-- with a cover of Austin's own Daniel Johnston, Post-War's lovely, rollicking "To Go Home."
After a sandwich in the media stake-out, Kate, Kevin and I headed 'cross the grounds to the AT&T Blue Room stage, which is neither blue nor a room. In just three months, The Swell Season has outgrown the relatively modest environs of Bonnaroo's This Tent: As we came over a rise of the hill tonight, we stopped to survey the massive crowd only to then realized we were already at the back of it. Separated from the stage by the thousands of fans that had clustered in the far corner of the park to watch Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova sing the sun right down behind the trees, in theory we had the JumboTron to rely on for shots of the action onstage, but a giant peace flag heaved into the air midway through the crowd kept flapping and fluttering across our view of the screen. We forgave it.
Though I was rightfully chided for leaving the band's Bonnaroo set before they covered Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic," tonight we sadly had to cut out early, too-- and, wouldn't you know it, just as we turned to make our way back through the crowd, they started to play "Madame George," probably my favorite Van Morrison tune. And so the penance continues.
On tap for tomorrow, assuming this sinus crap doesn't get the best of me: Fleet Foxes, (maybe maybe) Man Man, Roky Erickson, Beck.
After a sandwich in the media stake-out, Kate, Kevin and I headed 'cross the grounds to the AT&T Blue Room stage, which is neither blue nor a room. In just three months, The Swell Season has outgrown the relatively modest environs of Bonnaroo's This Tent: As we came over a rise of the hill tonight, we stopped to survey the massive crowd only to then realized we were already at the back of it. Separated from the stage by the thousands of fans that had clustered in the far corner of the park to watch Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova sing the sun right down behind the trees, in theory we had the JumboTron to rely on for shots of the action onstage, but a giant peace flag heaved into the air midway through the crowd kept flapping and fluttering across our view of the screen. We forgave it.
Though I was rightfully chided for leaving the band's Bonnaroo set before they covered Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic," tonight we sadly had to cut out early, too-- and, wouldn't you know it, just as we turned to make our way back through the crowd, they started to play "Madame George," probably my favorite Van Morrison tune. And so the penance continues.
On tap for tomorrow, assuming this sinus crap doesn't get the best of me: Fleet Foxes, (maybe maybe) Man Man, Roky Erickson, Beck.
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