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Hymies’ Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#1): Songs to Love and Die To by Southside Desire

December 21, 2012 in Awesome-ness!, GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012 | 23 comments

So it’s come to this – we have been posting our favorite local LPs of 2012 for the past couple weeks, along with a separate list of our favorite short releases. Included on that second list is the Places EP by Pennyroyal which is, yes, our favorite local record of the year. This link will take you to their bandcamp page where you can hear it and then buy a copy and then ask them when their next show will be. We hope you’ll click on it and do all those things.

Compiling our list of favorite records was more difficult than ever this year – there were so many too choose from and the quality of local music was consistently very high this year. We recalled an editorial in the Star Tribune by some woefully peripheral “Prairie Home Companion” contributor that argued we in the Twin Cities take too much pride in our music scene, and we couldn’t disagree with the author more.

The Twin Cities has an extraordinary legacy in popular music dating back decades – the Secret Stash compilation of 60s/70s funk and soul released this year is just a slice of that legacy. The enormous diversity of record stores and venues (yes, some smaller than the *yawn* Fitzgerald Theater) is further evidence. Instead of “dial[ing] down that pride” we here at Hymie’s think we oughta dial it up!

Our “top 10″ list is below, followed by our favorite album of the year, Songs to Love and Die to by Southside Desire. Sometime soon we’ll post a few tracks from other albums just as good as these ten – including this year’s debuts by BNLX and the Prissy Clerks, the long-awaited realization of El Le Faunt and his Traveling Circus on vinyl, and albums that we just discovered a little too late this year, like Chastity Brown’s Back Road Highways and Charlie Parr’s just-out Barnswallow.

Here are the records that spent an awful lot of time on our turntable (and in our cd player) at the record shop in 2012:

Unclouded Day by Adam Keisling
Cos – The Original Motion Picture Score by Grolar Bears
Witching & Divining by Swallows
Story of the Sea
Magic Castles
Colored Emotions by Night Moves
For my Mother by Big Cats
III by Is/Is
Mississippi Roll by Jack Klatt and the Cat Swingers
Songs to Love and Die to by Southside Desire

And here is our favorite record of 2012. We’ve already worn out our copy, which gets almost daily play here in the shop and has been brought out to several venues for a spin DJ nights and between sets at shows – even at a wedding!

Craig Drehmel – known to many as “Pabst Craig” – is a pretty astute critic of pop music, although he’d probably deny it. While Marvel Devitt and her incredible new band Southside Desire were performing here in the shop he said to us, “There’s going to be a lot of bands that sound like this next year.” He’s probably right, but we’re pretty confident another band isn’t going to “hit the spot” in the same way Southside Desire did with their album, Songs to Love and Die To.

So here’s the record you’ve been looking for ever since you started asking why nobody writes good songs anymore; why bands don’t cook like the Stax rhythm section anymore; and why digital recordings might sound better on the surface but miss something your old 45s have.

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“When I Was Your Queen”

You might have heard “When I Was Your Queen” on the Current recently. It’s pretty awesome that a self-released and self-promoted band is getting good airplay, and it’s a testament to how good the song is, too! Southside Desire bills themselves as “Femme-fronted Northern Soul … from the littered alleyways from Southside Minneapolis,” but they derive their sound from a wider range of music than the overused misnomer “Northern soul” (a term, faithful reader, you know Hymie’s already despises – it’s a term used by people in a different country to refer to a uniquely American form of music, which we should be proud of and which were happy calling simply “Soul” for decades) – Devitt and her husband Trevor E (an over-booked member of about a half-dozen bands) both grew up watching parents in Strange Friends, whose first disc, Fireside Recordings, we happened by and listened to this week by strange coincidence. Devitt’s back-up singers, Gloria Iacono and Jenny Hatfield Blonk, are old friends. Her taut rhythm section features husband Trevor E, Paul Puleo and Damien Tank, have all played together in various settings for years.

The result is a band that works together intuitively, and one of very few bands that could have recorded an album like Songs to Love and Die To, which has a spontaneity and drive that deserves our earlier comparison to the legendary Stax rhythm section. Fitting, too, because the album was recorded by Mike Wisti in his mysteriously magical analog studio, Albatross. The band was recorded in one room, leading to a lot of bleed between tracks and forcing them to hone their performances down to clean, tight arrangements. The result has the sort of sound you could get lost in, the kind of album you could climb inside of and stretch your arms. You can hear it all here, by the way. You could even, while you’re there, buy a copy of it direct from the band and it will be delivered to your door (though probably not in time for Christmas).

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“Tired of Worrying About You”

Rhythm section and rich backing vocals aside, Songs to Love and Die To, is really built around the fabulous voice and captivating songs of Marvel Devitt – a genuine soul diva one moment, rock and roll star the next. Some tracks are hilariously confrontational (“The Will,” “Tired of Worrying About You”) and others achingly personal (“Keepsake,” “The Ballad of A Flickering Flame”). The original songs and the band’s great arrangements would be lost without her performances, as much Mary J. Blige or Lauryn Hill as Dusty in Memphis or Lady Soul. Throughout the album, even on the torchy ballads, Devitt is a really fun singer to listen to.

Songs to Love and Die To is the sort of music that made us love records in the first place – each track jumps out at you like the awesome song you’d been waiting to hear on the radio while you’re stuck at work hearing “Baracuda” for the goddamn millionth time. And there’s something very fun about the beginning and the end – Trevor E plays the same bass line at the end of “The Ballad of a Flickering Flame” as he did at the beginning of the album (“The Will”). The album ends just as it started, or as Marvel sings in another track…

“Thank you, come again.”

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“Keepsake”

[Here's a strange fact: the reason Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music is a rare item on 8-Track is because there is no gap between the programs, so you can play it continuously. We don't really understand who would want to do that (but the guy who bought a copy here and explained this to us was REALLY EXCITED). We'd rather create an endless loop of Southside Desire. Hopefully they're planning an 8-Track reissue.]

Could Songs to Love and Die To have been better recorded? Maybe. Their entirely analog approach doesn’t appeal to everyone – we personally prefer the implicit intensity that comes from a more “live” sound of a band recorded in one room on actual tape, but there’s certainly record collectors who don’t agree. Could the jacket be a good deal fancier? Certainly. Now the really heavy question: Could the music be any better? It’s hard to imagine how they could. And if you’re buying records for the “sonics” or the fidelity you’re going to be disappointed by this one – you’ll probably want to stick with albums that sound like Genesis, or worse, albums by Genesis.

Songs to Love and Die To has an endearing DIY aesthetic, and even though it’s (thankfully) pretty removed from punk rock, it has the same “back to basics” appeal. Here’s an album to make you laugh and cry, and give you reason to shadowbox or dance or bounce around because it’s fun to listen to. Or if you just need to listen to a friend pour her heart out for a little while, here you go. You’re going to love this record.

Hymies’ Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#4): For my Mother by Big Cats

December 18, 2012 in Awesome-ness!, Aww..., GREAT ALBUMS series, Inspirational, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012, Videos | 22 comments

Starting last Monday we’ve been posting our top ten favorite local albums of 2012 – you can read our first six choices by scrolling down. You’ll also find Saturday’s post, a round-up of our favorite local EPs (which includes our favorite local release of the year.

The past twelve months saw so much great Minnesota music that this list has been re-written and revised a dozen times since we started working on it after Thanksgiving. Without a doubt there are ten more LPs or CDs of new music by Minnesota artists worth the same recognition.

This list represents not just ten of the best local albums of the year, but ten albums we listened to here in the shop A LOT. The comments section on our site hasn’t been working lately because of the abundance of spam comments, but we welcome your additions to our “top 10″ list. Send ‘em to dave@hymiesrecords.com, and if there’s a few gems we missed we’ll add them to our list next week!

Of all the records on our “top ten” list of local favorites, Big Cats‘ For my Mother is one of the few that has been played the most here in the shop. The album bursts out of the stereo from its dreamlike opening through the following nine instrumental jams. It is a surprisingly rich work based on the relatively simple sampling aesthetic, filled with the fervor of live music and the hypnotic appeal of classic hip hop. It keeps our feet moving while we’re working around the shop, and as an instrumental album it keeps our imaginations running.

The album was recorded in honor of Spencer Wirth-Davis’ mother, who passed away after battling ovarian cancer. Wirth-Davis was awarded a composer’s fellowship grant from the McKnight Foundation – an unprecedented accomplishment for a hip hop producer – and set out to create the sort of music his mother enjoyed listening to when she was undergoing grueling (and boring) chemo treatments. To this end he recorded more than ten hours of Motown-style classic R&B with a diverse group of musicians and sampled the sessions. The end result is a beautiful tribute to the person who encouraged Wirth-Davis to play music (and as an additional tribute he has donated 75% of the album’s proceeds to Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance, who you can learn about here).

The extraordinary group of musicians even performed the final Big Cats arrangements at an October release show at the Cedar Cultural Center, one of the most memorable live performances here in town this fall. Performers with rock, hip hop, jazz and classical backgrounds came together to realize Wirth-Davis’ dream. This incredible, moving performance was captured on video.

Aside from his successful solo album, 2012 was a watershed year for With-Davis, who as Big Cats produced sweet beats for K. Raydio and City Pages “Picked to Click” winners the Chalice, as well as entire albums with longtime collaborators the Tribe and Guante. One might be underwhelmed by his quiet solo project if it weren’t a work of such unusual grace and depth. It is, after all, amazing how much can be expressed without words (or at least with very few of them).

As noted up above, there is a dreamlike quality to the first track, “One” (the album’s ten tracks, by the way, are simply titled in numeric order, adding to the album’s open, zen-like feeling) The keyboards and vocals are effervescent and airy, while the beats are firmly grounded. This introduces an ongoing conflict between the keys (and later the saxophones and guitars) and the beats that move the music, as though the light melodies have to be held down.

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“One”

Wirth-Davis spent years performing classical music on the string bass, and his experience comes across in several arrangements, like the dramatic string arrangement in “Seven.” He also has a musician’s sense for finding and using keyboard parts along with string arrangements, as in the album’s shortest track, “Five.” The piano here has the same beautiful sound as some of the gritty sampled piano parts he used on Space, his most recent album with the Tribe.

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“Seven”

There has already been one remix of a track from For my Mother (here) and we’re fairly certain there will be many more. As it is this album really bursts out of the turntable with a warmth and energy that one can’t easily put into words. We hope hip hop producers take heed of Big Cats’ distinctive, laid back sound but we doubt any one else could have made a record like For my Mother. Not only a tribute, it captures Wirth-Davis’ genuinely good-natured personality and his ability to collaborate with musicians. It seems likely that his work in the future will only get better.

(You can hear the entire album on the Big Cats bandcamp page here.)

Hymies’ Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#6): Story of the Sea

December 14, 2012 in Awesome-ness!, GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012 | 24 comments

One of the best perks of running a record store is that sometimes I come into the shop and find an awesome new album. Here’s one that greeted me a couple weeks after I read a great story in City Pages about the band (here it is) and had been meaning to find a copy. Rob van Alstyne really captured Story of the Sea’s confident, easy-going attitude in his interview. “I’d rather work my day job and get to do what I love at night than be in a [commercially successful band] making something I felt no connection to,” says drummer Ian Prince, at the end. Fortunately, Prince, his brother Adam and John McEwan have kept at their labor of love, releasing for their third album an audacious double disc of instrumentals and outtakes, and fortunately for me there was a copy waiting on my desk.

Story of the Sea presents an the instrumental program on the first disc and a White Album-like series of varied but complimentary tracks on the second disc. Like yesterday’s pick, the awesome Magic Castles double LP, this self-titled semi-retrospective features tracks recorded years apart sequenced together to have a cohesive ‘album’ feel.

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“E Major Tom”

After a forty-second noisy introduction (recorded “on a boombox circa 2002″) the first disc really takes off with “E Major Tom,” a grungy rocker that moves forward like a perpetual motion machine driven by Dinosaur Jr. There’s still a lot of 90s rock in Story of the Sea’s sound – Pixies, Nirvana, even a little Fugazi a la Instrument (in “Argo Pelter”) – but they’ve picked up a capacity to create compelling vamps since 2008′s Lunar Co. LP. In spite of the variety of recording sources (ranging from the boombox for “Launching” to a spare bedroom and one actual recording studio) Ian Prince’s drums sound great throughout, just as they did on Lunar Co. The simpler, instrumental arrangements push him to the forefront.

One of Prince’s best contributions to the double disc is the hits-the-spot combination of live drums with a machine track on “It’s Real Science” – absolutely everything about this track comes together perfectly.

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“It’s Real Science”

The instrumental disc also features a huge range of guitar and bass work, from the suspenseful “Coffin Dodger” and “El Nuevo” to the evocative and beautiful “Unicorn,” before closing with the experimental, Man or Astroman?-ish “Landing.” You can stream the entire album on Story of the Sea’s bandcamp page here.

The first disc of Story of the Sea calls to mind a claim made by one of the Twin Cities’ most impressive instrumental acts, Wizards Are Real, that instrumental music doesn’t need to be “melodramatic, bombastic or apocalyptic.” It should just be good.

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“West Bank”

The second disc is a career-spanning compilation of alternate recordings and unissued tracks, including rockin’ gems like “West Bank” and the anthematic “Better Off” as well as a couple of acoustic tracks recorded this year, notable a re-recording of “Future Subterfuge” from the band’s debut, Enjoying Fire. Where the band on that 2004 disc was all tenacity and drive, the remake sounds tenacious but no longer needing approval.

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“Future Subterfuge Alt”

Story of the Sea had a sense of “next big thing” about them as the 00′s wound down, especially with the release of the radio-friendly Lunar Co. There’s a sense of resignation to the self-titled . Commercially doomed, maybe – Nobody expects a mostly-instrumental album to propel them to stardom. Story of the Sea is an artistic triumph. Few bands would find so many gems on the floor of their practice space.

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“Better Off”

Hymies’ Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#7): Magic Castles

December 13, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012, Uncategorized | 71 comments

Mellow psychedelic rockers Magic Castles were just featured on the Hymie’s blog a few weeks ago, but that was because I accidentally posted a draft of this “top ten” piece about their album instead of clicking “save.” I guess the music was so good I was distracted. Some of what follows is a “re-run” but the songs themselves are surely worth another listen.

Magic Castles is a sort of early retrospective on the bands’ brief career of relatively obscure releases. The dreamlike, hypnotic “Songs of the Forest” was the title track of the band’s sole release for the awesome cassette-based label, Moon Glyph (who were rightfully named the Twin Cities’ best record label by City Pages in 2012), and I assume a number of the remaining tracks come from Magic Castles’ earlier, self-released albums (the band also appeared on Moon Glyph’s awesome, entertaining compilation LP, Regolith Vol. 1, in 2010, but that track is not here).

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(“Songs of the Forest”)

The double LP is consistently reminiscent of my favorite 60s psychedelic albums without becoming bogged down in outdated styles or weird instruments. In fact, most of the album is the standard instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums and farfisa or hammond organ. Okay, there’s a trombone on one track, but as another local psych rock band (Panther Ray) proved earlier this year, trombones are fun!

“Now I’m a Little Cold” was my favorite track the first time I heard this album – it could have come off an obscure record like the teenage psych trip Suddenly One Summer by J.K. & Co, and the wispy vocals throughout could have been lifted from the Gandolf album (both rare records recently revived by reissue label Sundazed). In a couple of other tracks Magic Castles could be compared to the 70s Beach Boys albums we were listening to on the blog this fall (here‘s one of those posts).

Not everything feels like it’s from four decades ago – “Imaginary Friends” and “10 100″ are in the same style as Lambchop’s lush chamber pop, and “Emery Memories” could be any of a number of contemporary garage pop bands, most of whom spend a lot of time and money trying to sound this genuinely lo-fi.

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(“Imaginary Friends”)

I didn’t keep a copy of the Magic Castles tape when we had it in stock and I wish I had. I always take for granted that we won’t sell out of the Moon Glyph cassettes and then when I want to listen to them they’re not only sold out, but out of print! There were only 100 copies so I guess its not easy to find or likely to just turn up around here. Some types of music are just destined to become fleeting and rare, I guess (Fact: People take tapes for granted but they treasure LPs. Tapes are sadly only a little bit above CD-Rs).

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“Big Sur”

The sort-of garage-y, sort-of lush and Beach Boys-y “Big Sur” slowly became my favorite track after I’d listened to the album several times – I think it’s because of the second half, which starts with a driving drum and bass riff and grows, keeping my feet moving along the way.

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“Ballad of the Golden Bird”

But the track that captured the attention of A Records, who released the double LP, was “Ballad of the Golden Bird.” That starts with a long, spooky vocal introduction (a minute and a half altogether) before jumping into the band’s brightest, catchiest melody. It’s sort of amazing to imagine one song bringing such a great opportunity as having a mid-sized label make and distribute your album and the support that comes with that (A Records is the pet label run by the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe). Magic Castles makes great use of that opportunity.

If the band has the opportunity to produce a second A-distributed album, it will be very exciting to see what they do starting from scratch with new songs and perhaps a single series of recording sessions. As with the first few records on our “top 10 favorites” of 2012, this one leaves me eager to hear what’s next.

Hymies Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#8): Witching & Divining by Swallows

December 12, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012 | 48 comments

We’re posting our favorite local albums of 2012, adding a new one to the blog each day until we reach #1 next Friday. The past twelve months saw so much great Minnesota music that this list has been re-written and revised a dozen times since we started working on it after Thanksgiving. Without a doubt there are ten more LPs or CDs of new music by Minnesota artists worth the same recognition.

This list represents not just ten of the best local albums of the year, but ten albums we listened to here in the shop A LOT. The comments section on our site hasn’t been working lately because of the abundance of spam comments, but we welcome your additions to our “top 10″ list. Send ‘em to dave@hymiesrecords.com, and if there’s a few additions we’ll add them to our list next week!

Here is an album we praised on the Hymie’s blog after its release (here), and a band long ago adopted as a local favorite. Swallows are Minneapolis music veterans, when it was a band long ago adopted as a favorite. This band is good enough to have survived being called Swallows for more than four years, and on Witching & Divining, they’re a band that’s settled successfully into an impressive, original style.

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“Roam”

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“The Winnowing”

A little prog rock, a little classical, a little old Sabbath-type metal, a little Old World folk. Here’s an album with the same feeling as a 70s classic and the same sound as a 90s epic. It has the best and worst features of each, and reminds this record nerd how much fun the worst can be. Even the overwrought, melodramatic moments on Witching & Divining are invigorating. The album is an amazing alchemy of roots music, often dark but never depressing and consistently exciting.

Our review linked above mentioned the album’s production as an improvement over the band’s previous releases, but it’s worth mentioning again. Swallows produced the album themselves (with assistance from Randy Gildersleeve at GilderSound in Forest Lake) – capturing their unconventional instrumentation very smoothly. Throughout the album cellos and guitars work together, rather than playing over each other; you really get a sense of the collaborative sound in “Roam.” Drummer Justin DeLeon’s integral performance is captured perfectly, and it is often the drums that make the arrangements so exciting. This is an album that sounds great on vinyl and on a big stereo. “Roam” and the albums bombastic opener “Long Hard Road,” for instance, are fun songs to hear loud.

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“Long Hard Road”

If Noiseland produces another compilation LP like last year’s American Buffalo to capture the great-sounding albums they’ve made for local artists, I hope they will consider including a track from Witiching & Divining.

Also worth a moments’ consideration is just how good this band sounded at their release show in October. Swallows, like a lot of local bands, suffers because their sound relies on a member who lives out of town.Tyson Allison’s multi-instrumental contributions are integral to the band’s sound, especially in the songs from this new album.

The band perfectly frames Crandall’s rootsy lyrics and give rise to his moving performance. Witching & Divining never really feels like it’s his show but he is often at its heart – he is handily compared to Tom Waits at times, although the songs have an older, folkier feel. In places Crandall croons like a 70s arena rocker, and he certainly has the passion and emotion of Robert Plant or Roger Daltry, if not the range. He and cellist Aaron Kerr have been playing together for around a decade, but neither has sounded as good on record as they do here.

The Star Tribune compared the album’s sound to “autumnal weather” but as we’ve passed into winter it seems less to me about a season and more about our relationship to the natural world around us. It seems like an album you should listen to in the woods, but I guess it would be a lot of work to drag your stereo out there.

Hymies’s Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#9): Cos-The Original Motion Picture Score by Grolar Bears

December 10, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012, Videos | 36 comments

We’re posting our favorite local albums of 2012, adding a new one to the blog each day until we reach #1 next Friday. The past twelve months saw so much great Minnesota music that this list has been re-written and revised a dozen times since we started working on it after Thanksgiving. Without a doubt there are ten more LPs or CDs of new music by Minnesota artists worth the same recognition.

This list represents not just ten of the best local albums of the year, but ten albums we listened to here in the shop A LOT. The comments section on our site hasn’t been working lately because of the abundance of spam comments, but we welcome your additions to our “top 10″ list. Send ‘em to dave@hymiesrecords.com, and if there’s a few additions we’ll add them to our list next week!

“You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire, all you’re doing is recording it.”
-Art Buchwald

When I first heard about this project from a mutual friend I didn’t expect we’d ever see the actual record – after all people come into the shop with all kinds of wild-eyed schemes and dreams, and this one sounded entirely too complicated to reach any kind of completion. A soundtrack? Is there a movie? No, just a trailer, but the soundtrack is real. And there’s fifteen or twenty people playing on it, and it’s going to sound like a 70s blaxploitation score. Impossible.

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“Dr. Afwho’s Strange Adventure”*

But producer and arranger Jonathan Kramer finished the project and the album he made is really fun for a lot of reasons. It’s recorded in an unusual way, it’s an instrumental album with great performances, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Using a portable recording studio he called “the suitcase” Kramer captured the talents of a total of nineteen young local musicians, recording in practice spaces, auditoriums and churches. Kramer and keyboardist David Afdahl wrote choral and string arrangements and several artists turned in remarkable performances – notably Owen Tucker, saxophone and Andrew Myers, percussion.

Cos claims itself “pay[ing] tribute to the scores of early 70s Blaxploitation movies,” but often crosses from tribute into satire. Bernard Rogers’ melodramatic spoken role and the sometimes bombastic arrangements feel very much like a lampooning of the genre, while at other times Cos sounds like an awesome, unheard sequel (Son of Son of Shaft, perhaps? Cos and the Casino of Gold?). Not as good as the original, but at least it’s something. It’s hard enough to love movie soundtracks (there are woefully fewer awesome records in the soundtrack section than any other), it’s harder to find fun ones anymore. Here’s a fun one that’s as much Quincy Jones as you’re going to find in a movie score anymore.

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“Turtle Revenge”

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“Peachy PG”

The mostly-instrumental album sounds very much like Shaft or Cotton Comes to Harlem, but doesn’t seem entirely grounded in the short-lived genre (Incidentally, we all learned how Shaft composer Isaac Hayes felt about satire a few years ago when he left South Park over concerns with the cartoon’s lampooning of scientology, even as previous religious satires didn’t offend him – here‘s a story from before Hayes’ passing in 2008). Myers’ creative percussive contributions suggest a wider range of 70s soul and funk influences in bands like Osibisa and Mandrill. Kramer’s production which uses various recording sources without stumbling, calls to mind the 60s albums and soundtracks produced by David Axelrod and Quincy Jones.

What distinguishes Cos where a similar project might fail is the enthusiasm behind it. Kramer offered a brief description of the recording process in his an interview (here) and reading it give the impression of a labor of love more than anything else.

Cos brings elements of pop, classical, funk and jazz to the table without really putting one to the fore above the others. As a result each performer is captured doing what they do best. Kramer tells us Grolar Bears have started recording their next project – a series of 7″ singles – and that he’d like to continue to play the same kind of music (they are sure to appear here on their Bandcamp page). We hope the new records will be as much fun as this.

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“Funk Brothers and Sisters”

Hymies’ Ten Favorite Local Albums of 2012 (#10): Unclouded Day by Adam Kiesling

December 9, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs, Top 10 Albums 2012 | 29 comments

We’re going to post our ten favorite local albums of 2012 starting today. The past twelve months saw so much great Minnesota music that this list has been re-written and revised a dozen times since we started working on it after Thanksgiving. Without a doubt there are ten more LPs or CDs of new music by Minnesota artists worth the same recognition.

This spring there was an editorial in the Star Tribune by some bitterly peripheral Prairie Home Companion contributor about how we in the Twin Cities are too enthusiastic about our music scene (you can read it here or you can just type “a few minutes with Andy Rooney” into google). There’s no way I could possibly disagree with the writer more – we should be proud of the diversity and originality of the music we can hear in the Twin Cities on any given night.

This list represents not just ten of the best local albums of the year, but ten albums we listened to here in the shop A LOT. The comments section on our site hasn’t been working lately because of the abundance of spam comments, but we welcome your additions to our “top 10″ list. Send ‘em to dave@hymiesrecords.com, and if there’s a few additions we’ll add them to our list!

Our choice for #10 is certainly one of the quietest local albums of 2012, even as it has a feeling of epic grandeur as timeless as the vintage Library of Congress photographs that grace its package. Adam Kiesling released Unclouded Day, his second album, with characteristic modesty in May and it created little stirring in the huge and fractious Twin Cities music scene. Fortunately for us a copy made its way to Hymie’s Records and became a mainstay in our CD changer until someone broke it (pretty sure it was this guy).

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“Black Dog Blues”

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“Down in North Carolina”

We wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of this disc, although if you’ve been around the record shop the second half of this year there’s a good chance you’ve listened to it. Kiesling is best known as a member of Pert Near Sandstone and Corpse Reviver (a group that isn’t named for the super-gross cognac cocktails old timers drink in the morning, but because they exclusively perform songs found on the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music). He performed here at Hymie’s on Record Store Day 2011 as part of the East Lake Pavers, a one-off band formed out of members of the Town Hall Stompers. You can see him perform on Thursday evenings this month at the Dubliner Pub with Corpse Reviver, and if you’re familiar with the fabled Anthology the band may be able to perform your request (we’d suggest following Adam’s facebook page if that’s sounds like fun). You certainly can’t go wrong with happy hour at the Dubliner.

Earlier this year I posted a link to the Bandcamp page for Unclouded Day and wrote: “If some dinosaur rocker released this as his ‘back to roots’ project Rolling Stone would be swooning over it. He’d tour and it would cost thirty-five bucks to see him.” I still think that’s true although after watching ticket prices this year for big-name artists I’ve come to the conclusion that thirty-five bucks is unrealistically cheap.

Unclouded Day identifies sixteen of the seventeen tracks as “traditionals” but further identifies source material old enough for an old timer like our own Papa John to consider it a classic.

The only non-traditional is Bob Dylan’s “Hollis Brown,” a ballad from The Times They Are a-Changin‘, its melody based on an English ballad popular in Appalachia called “Pretty Polly” (according to Michael Gray, author of the gigantic and surprisingly-no- boring Bob Dylan Encyclopedia). That song is not on the Folkways Anthology, but it was recorded for the label by veteran folk singer Doc Boggs around the same time, and Dylan performed it at the Gaslight in 1961. Bootleg collectors are probably familiar with that performance on “The First Gaslight Recording” (it is not on the officially released Gaslight performance that you had to buy at Starbucks). In a sense, even that track is part of an ongoing, evolving tradition.

On “Hollis Brown” Kiesling plays a banjo much as Boggs did in his recording of “Pretty Polly,” although the tempo is very different. In many ways it’s a recording that leapfrogs over Dylan into the past. That’s what makes Unclouded Day such an impressive contribution to the ongoing tradition. I’m proud to have met Adam Kiesling and sold him some records from time to time because one day a musician maybe not yet born will adopt “Stepstone” or “Get Up in the Morning” having heard his performance. The songs will survive and probably sound more alive and vibrant to me than “I Want to Hold Your Hand” ever will.

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“Old Parnell”

Unclouded Day is not a “solo” album in the specific sense that it features additional musicians Kiesling has performed with in all of these settings. Some of the most memorable moments are Kiesling’s performances on the banjo and guitar, often as not unaccompanied by even his own voice. Two of these – “Half Shaved” and “Get up in the Morning” – are taken at a uniquely leisurely pace. Kiesling’s credits the source material for his “Get Up” to “most likely Bugs Bunny” and it’s certainly removed from the jaunty “Git Up” as presented in the mid-nineteenth century Briggs Banjo Instructor. In Kiesling’s hands the melody is so achingly beautiful and well-played as to make me want to throw my banjo away, like the composers who simply quit trying after they heard Beethoven work (don’t worry, I didn’t – I’ll keep torturing the poor thing).

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“Half Shaved”

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“Get up in the Morning”

These fine tracks do not distract from the feeling of lively collaboration that distinguishes the disc. Meghan Dudle plays fiddle on a number of songs and hers is the only voice besides Kiesling’s that is heard – It is impossible to imagine this album without her contribution. On “Down in North Carolina” and “Old Parnell” her playing is so fun and dance-able as to jump out of the stereo at you, and on the title track she is subtle and supportive of Kiesling.

Kiesling’s co-producer Dakota Dave Hull is heard playing his distinctive baritone guitars on two tracks, as are a number of other outstanding local musicians (Eric Lind, Gary Powell, Liz Draper and Collin Harris). Nowhere on the disc, however, are more than two or three musicians playing at once, giving the album the casual feeling of a get-together of old friends.

Traditional music is not only alive in the Twin Cities but over the past couple years it has flourished, as shown by the huge crowds of college kids that turn out for Charlie Parr and Trampled by Turtles and the various venues that eagerly host up-and-coming bands like Jack Klatt and the Cat Swingers or the great Jake Manders. Kiesling’s music is rooted more deeply, given his enthusiasm for the Folkways Anthology and the classic melodies and stories found in it, but not so far into the past as to be inaccessible – in fact, quite the contrary, Unclouded Day makes the music more accessible and alive than ever.

Tomorrow we’ll post our #9 choice, and another each weekday until we’ve shared them all – this should leave just enough days to post some hilarious and weird Christmas records before the holiday. Thanks for reading!

Album review: Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon by Murder by Death

November 19, 2012 in Events, GREAT ALBUMS series, New Arrivals, Songs | 61 comments

When I was a kid I’d sneak out of the house after my mother had fallen asleep. I’d walk my bicycle to the curb and ride all over creation with my best friend. Sometimes we were satisfied to circle the city’s chain of lakes and other nights we’d ride without a second thought for the ride home, ending up at Midway Park or lost in Lowertown.

I loved the lakes at night and the reflection of the moon on the water and the serenity of their unchanged character. These were, after all, the same paths my parents had surely walked me along when I rode in a stroller. There’s a tree on Lake Calhoun which is in a photograph of my brother and I as little boys. It’s bigger now.

And there is a bridge on Lake of the Isles off which we’d jump into the dark water below. Every summer I was terrified I’d hit the bottom and die, even though just a year earlier I’d made the same plunge safely. I guess we’d go home after that, but I don’t know. The only thing I remember clearly is the feeling of anxiety mixed with the need to feel that free fall. I remember my feet on the ledge like they belonged to someone else.

“Hush now creature, dry your eyes / I know a place where a body can hide,” sings Adam Turla on the new Murder by Death album, Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, an album full of mysterious places and memories. Whether it’s a glimpse of a deer’s glassy eyes or an unknown grave under a tree, Bitter Drink brims with the untold and the unknown. The fleeting images we keep to ourselves (who would want to know, anyhow?) sit beside the secrets that burn our souls. Just a few tracks after lamenting the fate of a 20 year old woman buried under a tree, Turla ask “can I … redeem myself for everyone I’ve buried with these hands?” as though perpetrator and victim suffer the same wretched fate.

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(“Lost River”)

Reviews reliably compare Turla to Johnny Cash, following the lazy formula that drives most music journalism. Turla has not always sung in such a deep baritone, and Murder by Death has consistently built narrative arrangements much more complex than Cash’s one dimensional, faux-outlaw ballads.

Turla uses the range of his voice more like another gloomy singer, Richard Thompson. I thought of him first because it seems like the figures in Murder by Death’s drunken non-anthems might have sat at the same bar. Bitter Drink‘s boldest track, the funeral lament “I Came Around”, is what I always wished the songs on I Want to See the Bright Lights would sound like.

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(“I Came Around”)

Throughout the album seems more at home with England’s folk traditions than our own, with Turla as often driven by Sarah Balliet’s cello as by the rhythms of the New World. One you’re using an electric cello you’re moving outside of country music and into less American folk traditions, as we heard here in the Twin Cities last month on Swallows’ new album, Witching & Divining (our review is here). Cellist Aaron Kerr had this to say when I interviewed them about their roots for City Pages:

There’s a significant between English folk music and American folk music. It’s like the difference between listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. There’s a structural, compositional difference that’s hard to pinpoint. It’s like an accent. You can trace it back to renaissance classical music. There’s a different emphasis on beats, on phrasing and melodic structure that has survived.

Dark songs about death, guilt, fear or murder have a long tradition on both sides of the Atlantic, but American folk has always synthesized roots into an ever evolving tradition, comfortable exploring new sounds and harking back to 78s as old as, say Ernest V. Stoneman’s “Wreck of the Old 97″ or “Goodnight Irene”.

And Bitter Drink incorporates what are new sounds for the band – Murder by Death’s newest member, Scott Brackett, joined the band last year on the tour to support their breakthrough album Good Morning, Magpie. His contributions to the new album – on keyboards, accordion, cornet, theremin and mandolin – can’t be overstated. It’s his crashing keyboard that distinguishes “Hard World” from just any Tom Waits-ish lament about murder victims, and his accordion that takes us to the pub and back in “I Came Around.” Much of Bitter Drink‘s second side is as sparse as Murder by Death’s earlier sound, but even there Brackett’s presence contributes movingly to each track. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Oh to be an Animal”, in which Brackett plays an electric keyboard that plods steadily along Balliet’s mournful cello.

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(“Oh to be an Animal”)

The bands’ musicianship is exceptional throughout, running the range from the bass-driven “Straight at the Sun” along the lines of traditional-rooted English rockers the Levellers to the slow, gothic arrangements that fill the second side with an atmospheric spookiness similar to the Cowboy Junkies in spirit if not in style.

Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon is distinguished as having been the subject of the third most successful Kickstarter campaign. The band raised over $180,000 from fans. Let’s set aside Kickstarter politics – I am not a fan of the site and would prefer if people stopped sending me links to their Kickstarter pages since I do not want an autographed copy of their album, nor the opportunity to have dinner with them. It’s remarkable that Murder by Death has such a devoted following – I think if they were ten years older – if they had begun their career at the same time as bands like the Levellers and the Cowboy Junkies – they wouldn’t have found the same success.

Murder by Death is surely a band at the right place at the right time, delivering with authenticity and confidence a new standard for alt-country, or gothic Americana, or whatever we’re going to let Rolling Stone and Spin call the genre this year. Each track has that mixed feeling of anxiety and excitement I remember from the bridge we’d jump off at night, and with each track there’s a compelling desire to plunge into the darkness below.

Murder by Death is playing Saturday and Sunday at First Avenue in support of the Hold Steady. Tickets are $25!

Murder by Death will also visit Hymie’s for an in-store performance on Sunday afternoon at 3pm, where you can also buy a copy of their new album, Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, including a deluxe edition that comes with a trippy zoetrope and a Japanese lantern.

“With this I freed myself from my first love”

October 31, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Songs | 82 comments

There are few things in my record collection as consistently rewarding as the ten or so albums I own of Johannes Brahms music. It seems every time I listen to his quartets and quintets I am moved by something I have never noticed – I have sat quietly in my living room for a half an hour and become lost in the 1968 Rubenstein/Guarneri Quartet recording of his Piano Quintet in F Minor (Op. 34) – this is when my kids aren’t home, of course - yet I still feel like I haven’t heard everything on the record. It is one of those records so achingly, heart-breakingly beautiful that you just want to turn it back over when you get to the end of the second side.

Brahms has been described as both a traditionalist and an innovator, and in that his work parallels that of many of my favorite musicians in other fields such as jazz (Roland Kirk) and traditional music (John Hartford). The Piano Quintet in F is distinctive in that he started work on it as a quartet, and it follows, in many ways, Beethoven’s late quartets (my favorite of which has already been featured in the Hymie’s blog here). This is especially true of the moody fourth movement, which until it’s robust conclusion demonstrates Brahms’ enormous debt to the great maestro.

One of my favorite pieces Brahms composed was completed only shortly after the more famous Piano Quintet in F Minor, but is not likewise considered one of his essential works. His second string sextet is not even as famous as the first, which is more often played and was even used in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. To my ear it is one of his most impassioned chamber pieces and the one which least suggests Beethoven’s influence (Beethoven’s seldom-heard sextet (Op. 81) was for a string quartet with two horns – he did not write a string sextet).

There are, in fact, very few string sextets from the 19th century, and none as memorable as Brahms’ second (except Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht, which is undeniably influenced by Brahms). The earliest evidence of the second sextet in Brahms writing is in a letter to Clara Schumann, wife of the great composer Robert Schumann, written during the latter’s self-imposed institutionalization, while Brahms (then twenty-two) was caring for their children. He sent her four measures of a quartet which can be recognized today as the opening of the second quintet’s third movement. In a previous letter to Clara, he wrote: “How seldom I succeed in getting my thoughts out of my heart and onto paper. I think and I feel, without being able to hit the right note.”

It’s believed today that Brahms composed as many as twenty string quartets that ended up in wastebaskets. Some, like the four bars he sent to Clara Schumann, may have found new life in new works. What remains unheard inspires the imagination.

The String Sextet in G (Op. 36) may suggest a distant relationship to Beethoven regardless, in it’s expression of unrequited love – Brahms concealed the name of his secret crush, Agathe von Siebold, well into the first movement, with the notes A G A D H E in succession. Brahms and she were briefly, secretly, engaged in their youth.

I have always felt the evocative third movement was a portrait of a woman of grace and uncommon beauty (you know, like Laura). I think for the composer it was more about a first love and it’s enduring legacy (like John Hartford’s “First Girl I Loved” on Aeroplane perhaps). He once pointed to the passage with Agathe’s initials and told a friend, “With this I freed myself from my first love.”

Here – for you to enjoy and interpret in your own way – is my water-damaged, sorta-moldy copy of Brahms second sextet. It is performed by the Cleveland Quartet with Pihchas Zukerman (viola) and Bernard Greenhouse (cello).

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(Allegro ma non troppo)

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(Scherzo: allegro non troppo - Trio: presto giocoso)

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(Adagio)

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(Poco allegro)

“Nobody’s savior”

July 20, 2012 in GREAT ALBUMS series, Photos, Songs | 40 comments

Most of the pictures we took last summer when the Taxpayers played here at Hymie’s turned out like this. We turned the lights down, and we don’t have a very good camera to begin with. I’ve never been the person to bring a camera to special events, anyway, because I’m more comfortable with the way my brain nestles memories into little cozy little neuronic nests than the way photographs define extraordinary events with a mere fraction of a second.

Last summer the Taxpayers were touring on their album, To Risk so Much for One Damn Meal (I call it the “rabbit album” because – as I have often mentioned – I forget the name of albums and give them my own titles based on what’s on the jacket). They had slowly grown from a traditional punk rock trio to an eight or eleven piece band incorporating folk melodies, ska, and shades of jazz. Although they seemed to have tapped a deep reservoir of riffs and hooks from the Operation Ivy cache, the memorable thing about the album was Rob Taxpayer’s gift for intense, challenging narratives. “Everybody Just Stood There” lamented indifference and “My Brother Isn’t Dying” celebrated empathy with distinctive look-you-in-the-eye intensity.

And tomorrow the Taxpayers will return to Hymie’s Records. They’re halfway through what has got to be the least successful tour since Buddy Holly left Mason City in a 1937 Beechcraft Bonanza 35, but there’s nowhere to go but, um, up. This year they’re touring to support a new album, God Forgive These Bastards: Songs from the Forgotten Life of Henry Turner, which is complimented by a 125 page book by Rob Morton (ie, Rob Taxpayer) of the same name. Each was inspired by Rob’s relationship with a homeless man he met at a bus stop – The album’s liner notes describe it as “an amalgamation of the stories Henry told”.

The band’s sound is hardly changed so much as it’s evolved. I found the addition of horns on the “rabbit album” entirely unappealing (my favorite track was the good old fashioned “Geodesic Prison Song”) and longed for the grittier sound of A Rattling in the Cages. With their new record the Taxpayers’ arrangements and use of horns are closer to 70s “new thing” jazz than 90s ska punk, a welcome change. They’ve also retained their distinctive traditional folk base by shifting between loud, fast arrangements and stripped down, sometimes simple acoustic numbers. The new album continues to use innovative instrumentation – tasteful accordion, subdued and oftentimes hidden banjo, and robust, low register horn arrangements.

(Instead of streaming a few tracks from the album I have added the player above, which allows you to play the entire record if you’d like – clicking on it will take you to the Taxpayers’ bandcamp page where you can purchase God Forgive these Bastards along with their other albums. In the couple weeks we’ve had a copy of it in the shop, I have found I enjoy listening to it most all the way through, rather than skipping around which is what I often do.)

Like the blurred photograph above, the image of Henry Turner on the cover of God Forgive these Bastards doesn’t present a clear picture but a simulacrum of something lost to the ages. Yep, simulacrum. People die everyday forgotten leaving behind little evidence beyond the movement of a few grains of sand. There’s nothing I can add to the memory of Henry Turner because I only know him through Rob’s retelling of his rehearsed stories, but I can recognize the horrible anonymity of death. Just a few days ago I posted a Bill Cosby record and a story about my brother, who is (in a roundabout way) the reason you’re seeing these words at all. There is not a scale large enough to measure what my brother did for me in his life and in his death, and I think about it every day.

But he was not an important man, in spite of the amazing things he did here on this Earth and in the lives of the people who loved him. I struggle to stifle my desire to tell his story because I know what we really want here – you and I - is super weird songs and super weird records.

My brother lived a far better life than Henry Turner, even if it was half as long. He was insightful and soft-spoken, an extraordinary combination, and to the very last day of his life generous to a fault. Still, I empathize with Rob’s “utter entrancement” with Henry Turner and the stories he told of his life.

My first impression of God Forgive These Bastards was repulsion. The last thing I needed was to have some middle class punk tell me about their awesome homeless friend – I’ve been down that road and everybody ends up looking like an ass except the homeless man.

But God Forgive These Bastards doesn’t lionize or canonize Henry Turner – In fact it does the opposite. If the sanctimonious biopics about Johnny Cash and Ray Charles presented their subject as candidly as Rob Taxpayer did they would have been box office bombs, even as they may have been great art. Our personal failings and weaknesses are at the core of all great art “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone when we’re uncool,” says the fictional and awesome Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. Another quote, simple as it may be, comes to mind – It’s the last verses of my favorite Tom T. Hall song:

The miles were good but the mileage is turning my hair gray
I’ve met some people that knew me and called me friend
Ain’t no sense in wanting my life to live over
I’d find different ways to make those same mistakes again

So let me say this, I never tried to hurt anybody
Though I guess there’s a few that I still couldn’t look in the eye
If I’ve got one wish I hope it rains at my funeral
For once I’d like to be the only one dry.

Was there even a Henry Turner? At times – for instance “God Damn these Hands of Mine” – it’s hard separate Rob Taxpayer from Henry Turner. If you’ve been listening to the Taxpayers for a while you know Rob has a knack for autobiographical storytelling and the forgotten theatrics of the classic rock era. His knack for autobiographical storytelling was especially evident on the last album, To Risk So Much for One Damn Meal, and it is much stronger here.

In the liner notes to God Forgive These Bastards Rob writes that he met Henry Turner in 2007, around the time the Taxpayers started recording. God Forgive These Bastards collects his interpretation of stories told by Turner, but carries themes threaded throughout the band’s five year run. The album’s gem, “Hungry Dog in the Street”, recalls their shout-along anthem “No Lodging for the Mad” (from 2009′s A Rattling in the Cages) while much of the album focuses on the ambiguous relationship between compassion and complacency.

But was there really a Henry Turner? Despite Rob’s claims there’s not a lot of evidence out there (you know, on the internet). I figure there’s a couple explanations:

- There’s no Henry Turner. Rob found inspiration in a character from some dusty corner of his brain. Or he’s so batshit crazy that there’s a homeless man nobody else sees who tells him stories. That would explain the dozens of songs he wrote on the albums that precede God Forgive These Bastards.

- Henry Turner was so fucking awesome he didn’t need Facebook or the internet. He was a real man and this is a weird, sad tribute to his awful life.

Either one of these is inconsequential because in either scenario God Forgive these Bastards is the very best concept album in decades. It’s an eerie celebration of fallibility, miles from Phil Ochs’ “There but for Fortune” and hopelessly, achingly removed from even the ethereal – “No religion can save me,” laments Rob’s Henry Turner, only moments after telling us he’s been “praying nightly every single week”. I defy you to find any reference to the Lord in this album that isn’t uttered in anger or abandonment.

The lazy listener might take from God Forgive these Bastards a simple lesson of forgiveness and understanding. I suppose that can’t be a bad thing, but the fact is that nobody forgave or understood Henry Turner. The Taxpayers made the unusual choice of including two interviews (set to music) which provide us with a passing glimpse of Henry Turner. One casually captures his absolute wretchedness while the second – “Let the Seconds Do Their Work”, the last track on the album – goes beyond anything I’m prepared to write about.

Over the past couple of years I have had my dreams come true but also experienced losses I don’t think I could have ever prepared for – I have buried friends and family without the opportunity to say goodbye and I have held my wife as my two beautiful children came into the world. I have also been fortunate enough to meet a personal hero (Mick Jones), but been vilified for the way I choose to run this record store – Nothing in my thirty-four years gives me any hope of explaining what God Forgive these Bastards means in the long haul. I don’t think Rob Taxpayer could explain it, but he had the capacity – and, yes, the compassion – to put it together, to collect Henry Turner’s stories into a book and a record so that when we’re all older it might make a little bit of sense.

The Taxpayers will perform here at Hymie’s Records tomorrow after an opening set by Tyler Haag at 3pm. We will be grilling in front of the shop until we’re distracted by the awesome music inside.

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