Flotzam - Podcast

Jane’s Addiction–The Great Escape Artist [album review]

admin@flotzam.com — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:17:00 -0400

The Great Escape Artist is a damn good rock record. Standard Jane’s Addiction formula: some balls out rockers, some ballads, some meandering epics, a few duds, a few unforgivable lines, a few great lines. Dave Navarro’s guitar heroics are laudable, awash in effects. Bet he’s big at Guitar Center. His Tumbler page is kinda creepy. Perry Farrell can still hit the high notes. The production is amazing. And, most importantly, it rocks. Think Twisted Tales is a cool track:

Twisted Tales

Dragon Boy Suede - I'm Not Paying $500 to Watch Douchebags Eat Turkey

admin@flotzam.com — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:24:00 -0400

Heard this on the Who Charted podcast #48 with Doug Benson which was pretty damn funny, with Benson ripping bong hits as they quiz him in a new game called Chart Cheeba. Wishing I'd caught them doing Who Charted live with Sir-Mix-A-Lot. You can listen to that podcast here:

Emotional Luggage

Anyway, Dragon Boy gets some good lines in...

Hermit Thrushes

admin@flotzam.com — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 01:57:00 -0400

Fallen for Hermit Thrushes. Inventive, melodic, complex. Avant-pop in the truest sense. Not many bands live up to that moniker. A rarified bunch, numbering the likes of early Mommyheads (Acorn, Coming Into Beauty, Flying Suit), Orchestraville (everything they made – they even pledge allegiance the genre on their website), Thinking Fellers Union 282 (not everything but definitely Strangers From The Universe), a smattering of others.

Avant-pop isn’t exactly math rock. Though they share affinity for dropped beats, tacked-on beats, odd time signatures, syncopation, sharps, flats, chromatic runs and complexity. Avant-pop has vocals; math rock usually doesn’t.

Hermit Thrushes embody avant-pop. Check out the four songs below, which come from a smattering of different records (Mystery Ocean, Wooded Blankets, Slight Fountain, Benaki).

Ancient Wing

You're Gone, You're Gone

Black Cat

Fourth

All of these bear repeat listening; they hold up. They deserve more attention, more accolades. They’re the real deal.

They are on tour right now and play Seattle next Sunday night at 2020 Cycles with Lake and Lazer Zeppelin.

The Parson Red Heads—Yearling [Album Review]

admin@flotzam.com — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:58:00 -0400

The Parson Red Heads: every now and then they get the formula just right. They’ve got a new record out, Yearling. Best tune is “Seven Years Ago” which right 1-2-3 of catchiness-groove-sentimentality. Yeah, when they get it right, it’s really good, hittin 3 part harmonies, let the pedal steel rip and tuggin at the strings just like so. Listen to it here:

Seven Years Ago

”When You Love Somebody” is pretty good too, going for that classic rock rousin moment. There’s something kinda funny about “Unemotional” for as emotional as it is.

Said it before and will again: love the drummer for those Ringo-like on-the-beat beats.

They are playing The Triple Door on September 9th with Viva Voce. Will always have a soft spot for The Parson Red Heads since I saw ‘em at the small and friendly Amnesia in SF a couple years ago. When they miss, it can be rough, but every now and then they write a gem.

Portugal. The Man--In The Mountain In The Clouds [Album Review]

admin@flotzam.com — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:44:00 -0400

Portugal. The Man is one of the hardest working bands out there right now. They’re seemingly constantly touring. They develop and freshen their sound with every release and In The Mountain In The Clouds is their sixth album in six years. How many other bands are as proficient in the studio as they are? I can’t think of any. Their new album is their first on a major label but that hasn’t changed the progression they’ve been working on since the beginning. It has everything you expect from Portugal The Man; John Gourley's piercing falsetto, memorable hooks, and colorful guitar solos but it also takes their sound to their next level.

Portugal The Man have experimented their whole career. They were known for going into the studio without much preproduction and recording whatever music came out of their feelings, often resulting in prog-rock noise and free flowing jam outs. Their mainstream breakthrough The Satanic Satanist changed this with traditional song structure and very sunny and catchy tunes. In The Mountain In The Clouds takes their mixed bag of tools and sounds and turns it into a cohesive flowing piece of work. They take the cleaner mainstream structure and play with it, creating an album with layers and depthThe progression of the albums shows with by opening with “So American” an ironic rock-ballad and closing with “Sleep Forever” a mesmerizing psychedelic landscape. Along the way The Man uses every instrument they have to create diversity in their songs.

So American

Sleep Forever

If you’re a fan of psychedelic guitars and catchy songs, Portugal The Man is a band to invest in. They’ll keep you interested by always morphing their sound in respectable ways. They’re always fresh with new material and around for tours. The question is: are they going to be able to make it seven albums in seven years? Either way, does that matter? For a band who works as hard as Portugal The Man, it shouldn’t have to.

Unreleased Elliott Smith Song - "The Real Estate"

admin@flotzam.com — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 01:52:00 -0400

Just stumbled across this unreleased Elliott Smith track. The guitar solo is rippin. And the song is classic Elliott Smith

The Real Estate

Below, read a letter from compilation curator and Smith friend Kevin Moyer about the origin of the song originally posted on Pitchfork:

Elliott Smith and I went to the same high school in downtown Portland. Sometimes he would skip class and retreat to the music room to practice playing the drums, which always struck me as kind of funny because the drums are not exactly a quiet instrument so it was not too hard for anyone looking for a MIA student to figure out where he might be. Other times we would go downtown, since we had an open campus, and just down the street was a charity called Outside In which provided various community assistances and programs for people in need. This is the charity that the Live From Nowhere Near You effort directly benefits.

Back when I was working on Volume One, I had reached out to Elliott about contributing something-- but he was in Los Angeles and out of touch with most of his Portland area friends. I think this was either smack in the middle of his downward spiral or during his subsequent rise and recovery from it. Either way, we never connected and I figured we would just try again for the next one. Sadly, a few months after the charity record was finally released, I got the news that Elliott had tragically and unexpectedly passed away. I was completely and totally devastated, and still am.

Years later, while working on Volume Two of the Live From Nowhere Near You album and with the blessing of Elliott's family, I met up with friend Larry Crane whom owns the Jackpot! Studio here in Portland. Elliott had recorded there often, even helping to put up drywall and paint when Larry was first building it. When I first met up with Larry, he had just finished mixing the posthumous Elliott release New Moon and was hard at work archiving Elliott materials as well as packing up the studio for its move to a new location.

As we sat there listening to various unreleased songs and alternate versions for inclusion consideration, there was one that Larry had found that was a surprise to everyone, and it really jumped out at me... a mystery track with no labeling or notes associated that was found just sitting there between two other known songs on a DAT tape. Neither Larry nor Elliott's family nor I had ever heard this song before finding it, and to our knowledge no one knew that this song even existed... frequent collaborators like Neil Gust and Sam Coomes had no idea what it was either, it was never played live, and even his rabid fan base had no idea!

Because of the instrumentation used and also from the reels that the track was found on, we initially figured that the recording dated from around the time of the Heatmiser House sessions, perhaps in preparation for Either/Or (my favorite album of his, by the way) or maybe even a Heatmiser album... but, we really had no idea and little to no clues at all to speculate from. Elliott plays every instrument on the track, and of course the vocals, but we are unsure of who hit the record button since he would often record alone and, again, there was no record of this song in any log or notebook to be found. It seemed that this song was recorded completely, once, and then completely forgotten.

I will never forget sitting at the mixing board in a place that Elliott used to practically call a second home, listening to his much missed voice beautifully swirling around us, as the studio was packed up into boxes. He was gone now, and the studio that he helped to build was also on its way out the door... but this last session and the circumstances of the mystery track was so surreal and fitting, I half believe that he was there.

This was the song that I decided to include.

So, then it came down to the paperwork and mixes. Larry is a champion for and a good friend to Elliott, so he likes to keep and do things as close to what and how Elliott would have likely intended them to be, so when we had to decide what to call the mystery track he suggested calling it "Untitled" or "No Name", because it was exactly that, but my concern was that the "No Name #" and "Untitled" song titles were something that Elliott had already used on past albums and I didn't think we should confuse it or suggest this track as having any lineage to those other songs. Still, appreciating the sentiments and reasoning of Larry I suggested that we indeed name the track as it was left, Untitled, but include a lyric that he repeated twice reflected after in parenthesis within the name. So, the mystery song was called "Untitled (Mailman Thinks Me Dumb)" for the first few years of our knowing that it existed.

A good while later, Larry Crane contacted me telling me that while doing more archiving, he had run across some of the old cassette tapes that Elliott had made while still in high school with his band at the time called Stranger Than Fiction. I vaguely remembered Stranger Than Fiction playing at a high school talent show and also the tapes that they had made and passed out to our friends. These tapes have since become some of the most sought after and rare of Elliott recordings, with only a song or two having turned up for the public ear. To our surprise, one of the songs on one of the tapes was this song... originally titled "The Real Estate" and co-written with high school friend Garrick Duckler. It seems that Elliott had brought the song back out and recorded it that many years later by himself for reasons unknown.

Really, I thought? Back to high school, are we going full circle here?

Larry had also found the source audio and expressed desire to do a new and better mix of the Elliott version for inclusion on the Live From Nowhere Near You: Volume Two album. This final mix-- now correctly titled as "The Real Estate"-- is the official version that appears on the benefit concept CD release.

Oh Land at SxSW

admin@flotzam.com — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 11:31:20 -0400

Danish pop star Oh Land all over SxSW! Oh Land is Denmark's Nanna Øland Fabricius, new pop diva. Look out Robyn!

Sun of a Gun

Fol Chen at The Vera Project January 26 2011

admin@flotzam.com — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 11:45:00 -0400

Liking Fol Chen a lot. A sweetness, a pop sensibility. In the vein of Solex, The Blow. Keyboard heavy. Synth-centric. Git yr pop hooks with a dash of complexity. Their song “In Ruins” got featured on network TV (CSI), but don’t hold that againt em. (Reminds me of The Black Keys/Vampire Weekend sell out showdown on The Colbert Report.) They are on the label, Asthmatic Kitty. Makes sense. Download an EP fer free with a bunch of remixes of In Ruins. Also really like their song Holograms prob cause the 7/8 dropped beat:

Holograms

Hologram

Love the website btw -- cryptic and crafty.

Adam caught them at The Vera Project on January 26 and got some great pics of a band that likes to keep their faces hidden. Check it:

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Pickwick at The Columbia City Theatre December 17 2010

admin@flotzam.com — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 21:16:37 -0400

Pickwick is a band with the potential to be extravagant and the knowledge to be innovative, but chooses to pull back and make American minimalist music. They perform with nine people on stage; lead singer, guitarist, keyboard, bass, drummer, a xylophone percussionist, and a choir of backups ready to belt vocals, clap hands and shake tambourines. Are all of these people necessary? Maybe not, but it gives the band a real authentic feel. When bands these days could loop or create any sound using electronics, Pickwick makes their show more like a spectacle, giving everyone a job, and having fun with what they’re doing. Pickwick reminds me of a group of friends, everyone willing and wanting to be apart of this project.

While you can hear their funk influences, their songs are driven by simple chord progressions coming from either the keyboard or the guitarist. Don’t get me wrong though, this band knows how to rock it, and is willing to get loud and put their songs to strength. They’re the opposite of a “showy” band, they hold back, and write great songs. They’re going in the same direction as a band like Spoon, with incredible potential but a strong pop sensibility.

They’re releasing their new material as a series of EPs, called “Myths”. They’re available to buy on vinyl and/or a digital download. They’re a band capable to make whatever kinds of sound they want, but smart enough catch the attention of fans. I wonder where the “Myths” will take them.

Here’s some tracks and some pics:

Hacienda Motel

The Round

Interview With Rene From Hacienda

admin@flotzam.com — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:44:12 -0400

Got a chance to chat with Rene from Hacienda before their show at The Crocodile on Saturday. Listen here:

Interview With Rene From Hacienda

Here’s a taste of what they are about: