It’s pretty much safe to say my life is complete now. This year alone I’ve had the pleasure of crossing two of my favs off the ol’ concert list. First Radiohead, and as of last Wednesday, Tom Waits. Actually the fact that I’ve seen Tom Waits live is just now starting to sink in. It’s like I was in sort of a daze during the entire show and since the moment it ended I’ve been trying to replay it in its entirety in my head. Thanks to YouTube I don’t have to try all that hard. I’ve also been thinking about how I would describe this show to someone who wasn’t able to attend and I keep coming up blank. Basically what I’m saying is that I’m going to write a bit about it, but in reality I could never put an experience like this into words.

Every ticket purchased was will call and you had to enter the venue immediately after you picked up your ticket. This was fine because I enjoy seeing artists making an effort to minimize scalping. As you can imagine the line was quite long, but in actuality the process was handled quite efficiently. What I didn’t like was not being able to step outside and smoke. I quickly got over this because after all I was going to see Tom Waits Live. Oh yeah, did I mention I had 4th row seats? They were absolutely kick ass! Quite possibly the best seats I’ve have for any concert ever.

Read the rest of the review, grab some mp3’s, check out some more poorly taken pictures, and watch some videos after the jump…

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This concert review is courtesy of SDM’s friend Sara Dean. She is in the process of moving to Portland so hopefully she will be able to provide us with many more reviews.

While in Portland for the weekend we caught The Submarines live at the ultra-cool Doug Fir Lounge. First off I have to say the Doug Fir Lounge is an amazing venue, if you ever find yourself in Portland go to the Doug Fir Lounge to see a show, even if you don’t know the act performing, and with some shows at cheap at $5 it is totally worth it. I don’t really know how to explain it but it is like a super modern, hip log cabin and fits perfectly with the feeling of Portland (outdoorsy, hip)

The opening act was Heloise and the Savior Faire from NYC. They have a disco/80s pop sound, which was totally high energy and fun for a Sunday night. Heloise has an amazing voice and a couple of very entertaining dancers although I must say the man in the red jumpsuit completely out danced the girl.

The Submarines (John Dragonetti & Blake Hazard). I have never seen them live but I have listened to both of their albums enough to know every word, and I must say they sounded even better live. They played guitars and sang. Blake played a pretty mean xylophone on several songs. The only thing they didn’t play was the drummers, which they had an awesome drummer by the way but I don’t know what his name is. They played most of the songs off their new album, Honeysuckle Weeks, and few ‘classics’ from their first ablum, Declare a New State!. The highlights were “You, Me & the Bourgeoisie”, “Wake Up Song”, “Peace & Hate”, and the encore “Brigher Discontent”. Apparently the band had been turned away at the Candian border a few days prior to the Portland show and Blake talked about how she tried to talk to the border agent and how the lady just wasn’t having any of it. She said she even try to qoute the candian 20 dollar bill, which I guess said something about the power of art but the border agent was really not impressed with that. John added that it was probably all the cocain that Blake had brought with her that kept them from getting into Canada, which was funny and a guess a rare comment from the usually quiet John. It was a small crowd about 50 or so people, Blake refered to us as “…small but mighty…” because the crowd cheered, laughed, sang along and even joined in on a little Canada bashing.

 It was really a fun show, we even talked to them band after the show while we bought their CD (yeah I know we were “those people”) and they are super nice. They just wrapped up their tour but keep your fingers crossed they will tour again soon because they put on a great show. I hope the pictures look ok but with such a small crowd I didn’t dare use my flash.

Submarines - You, Me & The Bourgeoisie (mp3)

More pics after the jump…

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It’s Tuesday already again and that means new releases. This week is quite a treat. Wolf Parade and Silver Jews are absolutely great albums, but don’t immediately discard the new Coldplay, it’s actually pretty good. It at least merits a few listens. It’s heads above X&Y. Let us know what you think.

New Releases, Album art, streams, and MP3’s after the jump…

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Well the Old 97’s have just earned an immeasurable amount of respect as far as I’m concerned. No, it’s not because of how great their latest album, Blame it on Gravity, was (even though it’s really good). The reason they have earned so much respect is because they found a brilliant way to incorporate Battlestar Galactica into their latest music video for “Dance With Me”. Not only did they incorporate BSG, but they went as far as having the gorgeous Tricia Helfer (or  6 for those cool enough to be in the know) star in the video. As an added bonus there is plenty of kick ass kung fu fighting.

After further review i’ve come to the conclusion that this could easily be the perfect video. Lets see: Good song? Check. Level-30 Alchemist? Check. Battlestar Galactica? Check. Number 6 looking hotter than 1000 suns? Check. Kung Fu? Check. Yep, it definitely has all the makings of the perfect video. Touché Old 97’s, Touché!

Oh yeah, did I mention how badass Battlestar Galactica is? No? Well it is! Right Logan?

Old 97’s - Dance With Me (mp3)

Blame it on Gravity is out now on New West.

Rainbow Around the Sun will make its Oklahoma premiere tonight (Wednesday, June 11th) as part of the deadCENTER Film Festival. Should be pretty good stuff. 

Head over to OklahomaRock for all the details.

Former SDM band to watch Colurmusic are set to release their first full length LP, f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13, (Yep, that’s really the name of the album, nice!)  September 9th.

“Put in a Little Gas” is the first single from the new album, and it’s filled with plenty of crunchy driving bass. I’ve been looking forward to this album for some time now, and this is definitely getting my hopes up.

Here’s a little more information regarding  f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13, via World’s-Fair.

There’s a concept behind the album — the relationships between colour and notes and emotion, a modern take on Newton’s Colour Theory — but this is not a concept album. Instead, f, monday, orange,february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13 is spawned from a collaboration of good friends, strong hooks, and organically layered arrangements, an album that’s both practiced and spontaneous, an album that captures both the unadulterated passion found in Colourmusic’s incendiary live show and their consummate musicianship. It’s a complete work, one that truly shows off their unbridled energy and unbounded creativity, a fully-realized portrait of what the band really is, which, when it’s all said and done, ends up being much more than enough.

I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing these guys live numerous times and each show is pretty amazing. So if you get a chance make sure you hit them up.

Colourmusic – Put In A Little Gas (mp3)

Website
MySpace

Tour Dates and album art After the Jump.

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It’s Tuesday and that means new releases. So if you’re heading to your local record store here are a few we recommend.

Make sure you pick up the new My Morning Jacket album Evil Urges. Despite its P4k rating it isa pretty good album. Yeah a few of the songs sound dramatically different than previous MMJ, but it would be pretty selfish to ask them to put out At Dawn fifteen more times.

I am curious what you guys think of “Highly Suspicious.” This could easily be the most controversial song of 2008. I’ll bet you a peanut butter pudding surprise it kicks ass live. Actually I bet all of the songs are going to absolutely kick ass in a live setting.

If we’ve left anything off the list let us know.

New Releases, Album Art, and MP3’s after the jump…

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Weeding through emails and press releases can, at times, be tedious and tiresome. That is, until you stumble upon something you immediately know has potential to be amazing. This is the type of experience I recently had when I clicked on an email about a band from the United Kingdom donning the moniker, Vanilla Swingers.

Perplexed by the name, which turns out to be influenced by the book Straw Dogs by John Gray, I hurried to over to their MySpace page and was immediately greeted with the opening lyrics to the more than beautiful “Goodbye Lennon”. When I heard the opening line “Its thirty years since ‘85/ Robbie’s dead but Pete’s alive/ or so the weblogs say” I was immediately entranced, which ultimately led me to do a little more research about the group.

As it turns out Vanilla Swingers is the tandem of Anne Gilpin and Miles Jackson. A little more research added some meaning to the haunting lyrics above. They are readying their first LP for a July 28th release date, and throughout its 9 songs the album details a story of two people, who meet, run away, go back in time, lose each other, and meet again in the year 2015. According to my math 1985 to 2015 is thirty years, makes sense huh? I enjoyed the lyrics to the album immensely. They came across as dark and haunting, but at the same time they were never without a sense of hope.

So musically and lyrically this album is a gem, and it should be a crime if it’s overlooked. Truthfully, I think this album has the makings of 2008’s great underground success story.A little insight on how new Vanilla Swingers are to the game, they played their first live show on May 27th (yeah just a few days ago) at the 12 Bar in London. I would have loved to have been in London that night.

Vanilla Swingers - Danger in the Past (mp3)

Vanilla Swingers - Goodbye Lennon (mp3)

photo by Nick Befort

Check out the first single from David Vandervelde’s forthcoming album, Waiting for the Sunrise. The song is entitled “I Will Be Fine” and is definitely a step in a different direction than last year’s SDM approved Moonstation House Band. The song definitely has a 70’s soft rock feel to it. Still cool though, and definitely gets me stoked for the album.

Waiting for the Sunrise is out 8/05/2008 on Secretly Canadian.

David Vandervelde - I Will Be fine (mp3)

Locust Avenue formed in Norman, Oklahoma after the guys got together as a Kinks tribute band, Locust Avenue went their separate ways, reformed, and eventually joined up with guitarist, Todd Walker (Defenestration). Led by the strong songwriting talents of Jeff Richardson (guitar/vocals) Jeff Cooper and Blaine Palmer provide bass and drums to a soundtrack of pain, love, and longing – you know all the things of solid musical fodder.

Three O’Clock Target (a reference to the victims of after-school bullies) is nine tracks of rich, Guided By Voices-tinged guitar and Ray Davies influenced storytelling. In the opening song, “Frenzy”, we begin to get a picture of Richardson’s optimistic protagonist. The pace continues to an almost explosive point on the third track, “Skeletons”, a fuzz addled ode to past lives and love. It all wraps up with “Get Off the Farm” a nearly eight minute psyched out tribute to perseverance.

Three O’Clock Target was recorded in Late 2007 by Chris Harris (Subatomic Pieces) at Atomic Sound with additional tracking by Trent Bell (Chainsaw Kittens) at Bell Labs, Norman, OK

You can pick up the new album here. 

MP3’s

Locust Avenue - Skeletons (mp3)
Locust Avenue - Curtains (mp3)

MySpace