please turn off your dance music

this, if i know me, may well end up as one of those meandering and utterly pointless exercises in the documentation of catching up with all the other cool kids. so i may as well just come right out and admit that until last year sometime, i was not familiar with the work of julie doiron.
i am sorry. does that help? to be fair, i'm really the one who's been missing out, not you. trust me, i'm boring at shows. i wouldn't buy you a whiskey. and i just shuffle there, with my arms folded. getting into the music, y'know?

well. now i'm clued in. of course i'd heard doiron's name before, and that of her previous band, eric's trip. considering the copious stacks of indie material i accumulate, it would have been an act of will to avoid hearing about them. but, as so often happens when other bands fall to the wayside of some other obsession du jour, i never actually got around to listening.
until last fall (?–this date may be erroneous, can anyone remember when i got the big pwelverum & sun order? that's when; yknow, for those keeping track...), that is. that's when i got the mount eerie/julie doiron/fred squire record, "lost wisdom." i listened to it one time, and thought, not for the last time, "my god. i truly have a shitty needle on my record player." however, i also at this time downloaded a recording of many of these songs performed at the 2008 primavera sound festival, at the parc del forum in barcelona. (if said recording is still up on archive: get it.) i have listened to this recording any times, and am here to tell you, it is damned swoonable. the set features julie doiron's earthily fresh voice prominently, whereupon she compliments the weary boyish voice of phil elvrum to a remarkably effective degree, particularly with a strong-yet-empathic forwardness to his reticence. what was even more remarkable, was the song breaks, though, when this sensual and masterly voice broke into the most girlish giggles imaginable, ephervescent without being "bubbly," belying not a ditziness, but a great and holistic joy.
determined to delve more deeply into the discography of this person, i was distracted almost immediately by something else. that something was probably related to one of the three ridiculous eps that the mountain goats have recently, semmingly grudgingly released. i accept that i have a problem, can we move on? once i remembered that there were other albums in the world that desperately required my acquisition, i began to think about julie doiron again. as if by the intervention of fate itself, i "had" to order something from jagjaguwar/secretly canadian/dead oceans anyway, and thought, oh, i should get some julie stuff too! i imagine since i have been out of work, small labels and distributors have been starving...
so there i found myself ordering a handful of julie doiron cds, and sat back for the refreshingly old-school label to take the order, find the discs, pack and mail them, all without the urgent reassurances of normal e-commerce. i had to wait a little, and i must say, it actually whetted my appetite. not that i'd want to do that all the time though...
eventually, "broken girl," "lonliest in the morning," "goodnight nobody," and "i woke myself up" arrived at my door, and found their way into rotation on my stereo, with "broken girl" asserting itself most surely. sadly, i missed ordering the most recent album, "i can wonder what you did with your day," my order placed a week shy of its release. i figured then that i would order it in a month or so, but then i found myself out of work. it leads the list of "things to buy when re-employed," a long list, i'm afraid. happily, the wealth of material on these recordings is immensely satisfying, and is work i go back to often for inspiration, but also for its sheer beauty. much has been written about the qualities of julie doiron's voice and material, so i won't re-remark on those, but i will say she was one of my happiest discoveries of last year, and would certainly urge anyone to look into her work. for an easy first step, daytrotter has a lovely set from this year's sxsw session. or you could check out julie's site, which features taster-mp3s from a good portion of her work. oh, and there are lots of those youtube thingees.
i found the experience of searching out julie doiron's work, and the resulting rewards, as being akin to going out to the grey and cooly damp woods, with heavy boots, and and a sturdy vest over a wool sweater, to hunt for wild mushrooms, turning corners to find wild, beautiful and delicious growths nestled in unexpected places. happy foraging.

in addition to below:

i was racing yesterday to finish the post about the hollow earth benefit, and as time before an appointment grew shorter i was getting to the part i really wanted to discuss, but ended up barely hitting the pitch i wanted. so i thought just as a supplement i'd add something to the mix: the subject of mount eerie, specifically the album lost wisdom with julie doiron and fred squires, came up on a forum i sit in on, and after the show i posted the following:

update: overcame extreme anxiety and saw mount eerie last night (although technically it is now monday morning; so saturday night, then).
tiny vipers and a trio including lori goldston (who played cello for nirvana back in the day) opened: both acts very good.
but then phil took the stage and made the floorboards in the old church we all were in tremble and shake. there were bearded kids with flasks lying down on the floor, and people in chairs and people standing.
the stacked amplifiers practically shimmered with feedback that harkened to sonic youth and metal equally. phil 's body contorted and twisted, following the energy of his guitar like a dowser's twig on water's trail. his hands left the strings and arced throught the air like a modest diva as his body responded to both music and the emotion of his singing (slightly high-pitched, earnest and fervent).
i have seen very few performers, [the mountain goats] included whose emotional pitch reaches such an apex.
if anybody out there has a chance to see mount eerie live, i would certainly recommend it.

not really new information, since i covered most of this in yesterday morning's post, but i kinda like the phrasing in this; i was drunk at the time (highly) and tend to wax poetic in those instances. there's no real reason to add it i suppose, except that it's my blog and it amuses me to indulge myself...

...

mount eerie revealed

in what could become an (un)alarming trend, i went out again to a show! huzzah, my anxiety has been quelled once more. *knocks wood*

again, it was at the fremont abbey mere blocks from my home, but it was kind of special. it was the eve of dailight savings enforced sleep-loss, after a ten-hour bartending shift, and with another looming at 6:00 (no, make that 5:00) the next day. i had wanted to go to this show, a benefit for hollow earth radio with mike dumovich (who i'd not heard of) and lori goldston (who used to play with nirvana(!)), with tiny vipers (whom i had heard on the youtube but not in the desert of the real), and with mount eerie (over whom i've been mildly obsessing for about six months--this was my first oppurtunity to see him live).
i had wanted to go this show, but was convinced to the penultimate percentage that i would not be doing so. as it happens though, the restaraunt where i eat every saturday night is twenty feet away from the abbey, and as i left i thought, "oh what the fuck; i'll check it out."
i got up to the door as the h.e.r. emcee was opening the evening and found a solitary folding chair at the edge of the crowd and i settled in. i was gassy. sorry if anyone noticed...
but the show was well-worth the worry, and even worth the sleep i lost.

the dumovich/goldston/anne marie ruljancich trio was a nice solid opener, with acoustic guitar, cello and viola? violin? (i honestly couldn't see) combination taking full advantage of the excellent acoustics of the performance space to create longish lulling harmonies. goldston's cello work impressed me as much as it did when i saw her on perform with that other band a long while ago, with her proficiency creating dense sounds for her partners to ply into. anchored by dumovich's lead and ruljancich's accompanying vocals, the trio had a depth and feel that i intend to hear more of.

i first heard about tiny vipers, née jesy fortino, in the ramblings of kazutaka nomura, aka pwrfl power, when he interviewed himself for the stranger. since then she'd been on the back burner: i wanted to check it out, but hadn't got around to it. then a couple weeks ago when i was writing about cumulus, i noticed a concert bill with both of them, and i started checking out what was available on the world-wide double-yoo. i like what i heard, and that only added savor to my desire to attend this show--it also added bitterness to my surety that i wouldn't make it.
as for the show, fortino stepped quietly up to the chair set out for her, a small woman with a large guitar, which she hunched intently over, pulling back only when her songs required the full bore of her voice. she played long intense songs with a voice much older than her appearance, rich, soulfull and with a sense of fragility and damage whisping at its edges, set against the harmonics of seemingly every one of her steel strings, which seemed to resonate impossibly. i don't know if that was her sexy fender amp or the dynamics of the space, but the sound was overwhelmingly beautiful. i was pretty skint, but i bought an ep from the merch table (manned by phil (mount eerie) and genevieve (ô paon)--i felt shitty that i was buying someone else's record! but i didn't have nearly enough for his book, and i had almost all of those records already; i still felt churlish), and i'm looking forward to listening to it a few times.

as for mount eerie, phil elv(e)rum stepped up to the stage, solitary with an well-beaten electric guitar and massive amp stack, and smashed the acoustic ambience of the evening with a massive, powerfully distorted, sonic barrage. he writhed and contorted himself over his instrument, coaxing his lyrics out of himself with operatic gestures and obvious emotinal presence. his sound, a little metal, a little less folk, and just the right amount of sonic youth, was a great deal like his recorded material, but far more emotionally cohesive in person. the old church's floorboards shook and one felt almost lost. the songs were short, and many of them (apparently) new, but the immediacy and intimacy of both the songs and the singer were astonishing in their frankness and accesability. it was an awesome performance, and one of the most impressive i've seen i would even say that the ability of phil to entrance the audience was up there with john darnielle of the mountain goats. which is saying something, considering the rapid nature of his fans!

all in all, very happy to have gone. now if only i could get time off for what the heckfest...

Shut the f*ck up

this is just a quick note, but it regards a long-time problem that has been on my mind of late: the incessant talking at shows. i have been listening to a shit-ton of boots lately (mostly mountain goats and mount eerie--woo!), and people just won't fucking shut up. why is this people? i mean, i usually don't go to shows alone, and between songs i am likely to be overheard saying something along the lines of "oh, holy shit, i can't believe he played neon orange glimmer song" but in that particular case, i also am paying attention to the onstage intro/banter/what-not, and will keep my own commentary to a minimum.
but you people, o you bastards, who prate and snigger while the songs are being played, seriously, why are you [t]here?
if you want to have discourse, a fellow like myself would position himself far from discouraging it, but there are inappropriate times for it, like when they are putting your mother into the cold hard ground, or when colin meloy is singing red right ankle.
it's aggravating in person, but reaches a sublimely new level of inanity when it's preserved for posterity on a bootleg. an example: a fellow asking a particularly chatty girl to please be quiet during the songs, her saying what? what? me? ohsuresorry. then immediately slagging him off with her chums and using the sad justification that she paid to get in [too].
i have apparently been fortunate to have found myself in a life where i have not needed to pay a cover charge to have a conversation, so obviously my heart goes out to these deprived kids. poor dears.
another example: phil elverum politely pointing out at a show that the venue has a front room where conversationalists might be able to hear each other better, where they won't be distracted by the music he's playing.
sooooooo:
shutupshutupshutup.
thank you.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

oh, holy shit, i just received the pile of vinyl i ordered from p.w. elverum & sun (source of wind). shit, shit, shit, it's amazingly gorgeous and i haven't even listened to it yet... as soon as i wipe the drool from my self i'll lie down on the floor and absorb it. omnibus blog coming soon...