The Mountain Goats :: "The Sign" [Live]

For the past month we've been on the road and today we return home. Many thanks to those of you who put us up and put up with our antics; we are eternally grateful. Thanks to the publicists and bands who hooked up our shows. Thanks to America for being so incredibly enormous, unflaggingly weird and famously awesome.

Of course, the end of such an journey brings about the essence of its start. In some small way, I am reminded of John Darnielle's live cover of Ace Of Base's seminal hit, "The Sign." He finds at the end of the first chorus that too few audience members sang the words. In what is certainly a thesis statement, Darnielle breaks into a faux-tirade about how he knows these people know the song, knows these people know the words to this song and knows they secretly want to sing this song. He rails at their insecurities, their fears of looking uncool, their fears of dancing and singing, finally settling on the blithy put, "well, no one's gonna tell and there's no film in that camera!" Of course, this is all preserved through the wonders of concert recording, but in the last chorus, the crowd screams the lyrics with exactly the abandon that Darnielle suggested was possible.

Not everyone gets it. The recording is shitty and it is, after all, a cover of a Swedish dance hit from the 1990s. But the underlying message is about finding truth in the moments of letting go. Without of shred of grandiosity, Darnielle's words are more true than ever, even if someone told and there was film in the camera.

Listen :: The Mountain Goats - "The Sign" [Live Ace of Base Cover]

PS I Love You :: "2012"

The future might reasonably assumed to be dreadful. Even without fantastic predictions of melting cities, debt crisis and tidal waves, it seems we live in an age fascinated by future fatalism. Ontario's PS I Love You address this round-the-bend distopia directly with a feedback heavy anti-anthem, "2012." Singer Paul Saulnier yelps forever into the melody of the guitar line, following the sheet music exactly like a Sunset Rubdown off-shoot with more attitude and less of a penchant for Dramamine. What else could make you forget about European debt, Chinese currency fluctuations and import/export imbalance? A volcano in the middle of your American city? Fair enough; and that is just what this sounds like.

Listen :: PS I Love You - "2012"

The Delta Mirror :: "He Was Worse Than The Needle He Gave You"

This is straight poison. Like one of those Lifetime movies where the suburban kids are huffing pens or paint thinner in their parents basement, The Delta Mirror's "He Was Worse Than Needle He Gave You" is one part depressing and two parts riveting. Distant atmospherics and lo-fi, packaged drums create a catchy, hook-filled slow-grind, like a fully-rendered Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. The central lyric, "goddamn, I've got too much time on my hands" is as listless and crushing as an unmanned and apathetic oil tanker sliding into the side of a coastal city. At the 3-minute mark, with a shrug and an emotionless expression, the band finds a second movement in the fuzz. It is moving, even if the point is to just drift.

Listen :: Delta Mirror - "He Was Worse Than The Needle He Gave You"

New Yorkers, the band plays Union Hall and Cake Shop on August 14th and 15th

Black Mountain :: "The Hair Song"

Black Mountain, sounding every bit their name on their third LP, (Wilderness Heart, due on September 14) seem hell bent on cranking the aggression up to the point where a multi-story shark graces their album cover. Second single, "The Hair Song," is a frustrated corner of the garage rock neighborhood, taut with enough pop hooks to not slum it entirely. The shark, well, this is another matter entirely. This is rock and roll and it will rip you in half.

Listen :: Black Mountain - "The Hair Song"

Listen :: Black Mountain - "Old Fangs"

Magic Kids :: "Superball"

In one of those moments that you remember unironically loving, the culmination of a childhood supermarket trip sometimes ended in putting a quarter in a vending machine and getting a rubber ball. When you're eight things are simple, and highly elastic petroleum products are about as fun as fun gets. Over time this love of simple things dies; you learn multiple layers of meaning, begin saying disingenuous things for reasons you don't completely understand and, in short, become a jackass. You lose these small loves. Magic Kids aren't childish but they are rooted in those moments of deeply uncritical happiness. Somewhere between Belle and Sebastian covering a lost Beulah record and Beulah covering a Belle and Sebastian A-side, "Superball" is effervescent and entirely full of life. This is blurry, multicolored nostalgia. Remember?

Listen :: Magic Kids - "Superball"

Arcade Fire :: 2003 and 2010

Arcade Fire sold out two nights at Madison Square Garden, and they will broadcast the second show live tonight over the Internet at 10pm EST. There was a time in 2003 where they played rock clubs and wondered if "Wake Up" and "Keep The Car Running" would ever light anyone on fire. This video is from that time, before they were capital letter anything, before anyone arbitrarily loved or hated their albums. This video below is the first known Arcade Fire performance put to tape. This was a time when they packed against each other and played a tiny rock club; Tonight, they'll take 20,000 people to The Suburbs.

ARCADE FIRE Live 2003 from Bennett on Vimeo.

My Other Friend :: "Collectors"

Brooklyn's My Other Friend just released their debut record, the aptly dubbed, Burning Bright Tonight. With one single loose, "Forty Years," the band offer album burner, "Collectors" up for download. Lost somewhere between an under-wrought Arcade Fire and some of the same troubled sonics that make the current Wolf Parade LP so satisfying, the band have tapped into something raw and powerful, with just enough entropy to excite.

Listen :: My Other Friend - "Collectors"

Arcade Fire :: The Suburbs [LP]

Arcade Fire's latest long-player, The Suburbs, released tomorrow morning, will be as frustrating and amazing a record as 2010 has to offer. The band's fans will be forced to choose if they like 2004's Arcade Fire or if they can accept a version of the band that is at once evolving, reflective and undeniably more adult. Gone are the rebellious (Lies, Lies!) statements of grief and youth, unless you count the suggestion in the middle of "Month of May" that kids should uncross their arms and, well, dance more. In their place is a record about growing up, about getting older and coming of age in a sprawling and intentionally fake American empire. In 2003 Win Butler, just 23, wrote Funeral about death and anger in the eyes of youth. In 2009, Butler, on the edge of 30, wrote The Suburbs about his childhood, getting out and that something inside us all that just might implode.

The Suburbs is not just an older man reflecting on his youth, it is a richer, more fully-realized version of a band coming to grips with its power and methodology. The rapid and drastic arrangement shifts that defined Funeral are noticeably absent here. There are no severe second movements, save the satisfying builds on "Rococo" and "Suburban War," and this iteration feels more logical than necessary. These are inward glances, not rocket-propelled marching orders, even during the haunting coda to "Suburban War" where Butler intones, "All my old friends/they don't know me now," as a church of thudding drums and strings builds behind him. There isn't always a twist here, sometimes just a mid-tempo reflection on things stuck deep in the schisms of the American psyche.

This is not to say the record has no soul. "Month of May" is a thundering statement of purpose, both outlining the meta-reasoning behind the record ("2009, 2010/wanna make a record how I felt then") and a State of the Union for the children of this disjointed, strip-mall America the band finds so horrific and fascinating. If there is a moment of direction, of easy answers, it is certainly when Butler moans, "I know it's heavy, I know it ain't light/but how you gonna lift it with arms folded tight." If the kids are going to make it out, they'll need to get on their feet and move around first.

Of the many lyrical motifs that tie the album together like all these pieces of knotted string, Butler is most transfixed by stasis, the time wasted and lost. We rode around in cars. We waited for something to happen. Our youth was protected and patient. The band finally suggests something different: that we dive into our consciousness, explode our myths, our upbringing and find connections in the maw of pseudo-idyllic suburban life. For a group that has been so outwardly expressive, so unrestrained, this marks a different pathos. Before we raise our fists, we must turn in on ourselves, find the beginnings we deny and settle the rebellion within.

On The List :: LESANDS @ Echo Curio [7.28.10]

Wednesday night we continued our Pan-American journey and headed to Echo Park's Echo Curio to catch one of our favorite new bands, San Diego's LESANDS. Much of this favoritism was based on the strength of one song, "Pretenders" and a lights-out EP their management sent over a few weeks back, leaving us in search of the live iteration. The Echo Curio might not have seemed like the perfect location for a band on the rise (no stage monitors, about the size of your parents living room, all tile) but it turned out perfectly: sweaty kids, a good crowd and enough decibels to vibrate your drink in your hand.

After a surprisingly loud and stunningly good set by LA's Roughed Up Folk, and a quick trip across the street for $2 Margarita night (Echo Park has downs but she has ups), LESANDS hit the stage around 11. A four-piece plus sampled synths and loops, the band is a wall of sound live. Of course, this says nothing of the live (and studio) strength of the song-writing on "Pretenders," the night's second song and a dead-ringer for a dubby version of Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition." The band also played "Glowing," even more enjoyable in echoing, shuddering volume. The lead singer apologized before their second-to-last song because he felt it was a little, "hip-hoppy." It wasn't, but it was absolutely enormous with peeling loops and samples washing over the audience like a well-directed and favorable swell.

The crowd spilled out onto Sunset and waited for the final band of the night to play. LESANDS packed their gear and you had to feel this band won't be playing 500 square-foot storefronts much longer. They didn't play like they were above this, but soon it will certainly be behind them.

Listen :: LESANDS - "Pretenders"

On The List :: GROUPLOVE @ The Troubadour [7.27.10]

GROUPLOVE have a story that would put most bands to shame, an updated, rock-music Kerouac. Lead-singers Hannah Hooper and Christian Zucconi met in New York, took to Greece after only a few days, met the rest of the band (I'm paraphrasing here), began making music, ultimately tattooing the word, "GROUP" on their forearms before deciding to all throw away their private pursuits and move to Los Angeles to become a band. This means a lot to these five people. Zucconi stares at Hooper before their last song of the night at Los Angeles' famed Troubadour and kisses her flush on the mouth. It is a moment of raw, unfiltered emotion, something between the joy and lust of youth and people who have nothing to lose because they've given it all away.

Of course, if GROUPLOVE were just a dramatic story, a chance meeting of fresh-faced, agreeable people, it would end in that moment. As it happens, this story of mortgaged futures and unbridled hope comes with a stunning first single, an excellent EP and a next 12-months as bright as any band in the United States. On this night in LA, the band is tight and loud, with Zucconi's vocals alternating between the soaring yips from the Issac Brock catalogue and a richness and purity all his own. Over a seven song set the band will play 80-percent of their self-titled EP, plus a stunning version of new cut, "Close Your Eyes And Count To Ten" and a few others we presume will show up on a full-length in 2011. Zucconi works himself into a frenzy, pushing the limits of what this writer has ever seen anyone do while holding an acoustic guitar. All of this leads, nearly inexorably, to the band's best song and set closer, "Colours."

Predictably, "Colours" is a broadly cast, meta-analysis shot through the rosy hues of youth. Unpredictably, it might be the best unsigned song of 2010. As a visual intro, Zucconi kissing Hooper is one of those shocking moments that feels desperately appropriate after the fact. "Colours" proves stunning, complete with the band screaming, "We call it ... life!" in one of those this-is-everything moments that feel like you're being pushed back in your seat by the acceleration of an airplane. And that's what this is, the moment before take off for a band on the verge of something seriously big, having cut themselves loose all just to get up in the air.

Listen :: GROUPLOVE - "Colours"

Eastern Conference Champions :: "Bloody Bells" [M.Zero Mix]

Eastern Conference Champions were a favorite before we ever heard their music, their name seeming to invoke an age of the 1990s where the Knicks, Bulls, Heat and Pistons beat each other over the head to win their eponymous moniker. However, since, we've fallen for their music, dating back to 2007's "The Box" and all the way to their more recent work on the Twilight Eclipse OST. Surprising, and still good. The band is set to release a new record while still touring off their Sante Fe EP. Up for download is a synth-heavy, sped-up version of "Bloody Bells." It's excellent and propulsive, but it is entirely up to you whether this makes you think of Alonzo Mourning.

Listen :: Eastern Conference Champions - "Bloody Bells" [M.Zero Mix]

On The List :: Delorean @ The Empty Bottle and Pitchfork [7.16-17.10]

On Friday night Delorean took the stage at Chicago's Empty Bottle just after midnight. They walked off to raucous applause just before after 1am. Thirteen hours later they were taking the stage in the surface-of-the-sun heat in front of thousands of fans at the Pitchfork Festival. From the depths of a dank rock club with Kurt Vile and Neon Indian looking on (and rocking out) to the bright lights of indie rock's most hand-picked and arguably relevant festival, it was nothing short of a whirlwind weekend of the boys from Barcelona.



The band bends to its surroundings, sounding like live club music one minute and crushing airy, summer jams the next. At the Empty Bottle they were the former, providing thudding beats (and even a synthesized fog horn) and bright melodies that had the late-night Chicago kids bouncing. The next afternoon, their music washed over Union Park like an achingly sunny wave. The music didn't change, nor did the set-list in any grave manner. The movers, "Grow," "Stay Close," and "Deli" burned the crowd up in both venues. The tone may have been different, but the change was not in qualitative value, proof of a band growing untouchable in their sound and methodology.

Listen :: Delorean - "Stay Close"

On The List :: LCD Soundsystem @ Pitchfork Music Festival [7.17.10]

LCD Soundsystem took the stage with the sun firmly in the ground as the headliner. Of course, as the crowd of 15,000 packed against the stage, sightlines were bad, legs were tired and bodies worn and dehydrated. James Murphy looked conflicted, delivering truth like improvised lyrics about his neighborhood, Williamsburg, or about the bands' catalogue, "It's like, we have these 12-minute songs and the lyrics aren't in rhythm." At other moments he looked troubled, like a man tired of sound techs who can't get it right, and exhausted with being the spokesperson of an age that is now 15 years his junior. It was a divided set, the highlight being the generational thesis statement, "All My Friends." The band closed with the typical "New York, I Love You," but this was Chicago and it wasn't clear the invitation or emotion extended this far west. Murphy and his band were great as always, but it wasn't the same and somehow, even with thousands of friends, it didn't feel a lick like being at home.

"All My Friends" (Live @ Pitchfork 2010)

On The List :: Wolf Parade @ Pitchfork Music Festival [7.17.10]

Even as the undercard to LCD Soundsystem, Wolf Parade still managed to level Chicago during Pitchfork; actually, the Sub Pop kids might have been better. Playing head-first into a blazing and rapidly setting sun, Wolf Parade ripped through half their new record and some old favorites noting, "We're not going to say much. We'll just try to play as many songs as we can in the hour they gave us." They did, closing with a furious, thrashing 10-minute, 90-degree-heat jam.




Listen :: Wolf Parade - "What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had To Go This Way)"
Listen :: Wolf Parade - "Ghost Pressure"

In Which We Prepare For Pitchfork

Grand Lake - "Spark"

Grand Lake drive at the roots of folk-rock with the effort, if not the angularity of Foreign Born. With some of the soaking reverb of Grand Archives and some homegrown giddy-up, the band hits its stride in the final movement of lead single, "Spark." With the lyrical couplet, "you are the spark/the light in the dark" on flat repeat and the arrangement growing to a full stomp behind them, Grand Lake find a battle cry in something wistful, a long forgotten axiom for people much in need of a lift.

Listen :: Grand Lake - "Spark"

Jaill :: "The Stroller"

There is more than a hint of menace in Jaill's debut, That's How We Burn. On "The Stroller", shabby, whip-smart, sawing guitars back an arrangement that is equal parts Thermals and Death From Above 1979, with a little of personal favorite The Mess Hall thrown in for good measure. The pre-chorus asks tense, rhetorical questions, "When you're panicked, do you count to ten? When you're surrounded, do you hold your breath?" The band's second LP and Sub Pop debut is due on the 27th. See if you can survive until then, unless you plan on holding your breath.

Listen :: Jaill - "The Stroller"
Listen :: Jaill - "Everyone's Hip"

32ft On The Road, An Invitation

Last summer, we took the blog to LA for a month. We were welcomed with open arms. But it was one city, one location, easily navigable. This summer, starting on July 14th, we're taking this project on the road, cross-country into the month of August. Some of this is scheduled and some of this is open. We will be in Chicago for Pitchfork in mid-July and we'll be in LA around the end of the month. Basically, if you're a band (or if you know a band you think we might want to see), and you exist between New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Sante Fe, Austin, New Orleans, Charleston, DC, and Philly, let us know. 32feet(at)gmail.com. We'll try to make it work. Otherwise, thanks for your ridiculous patronage of this continually absurd project.

Last summer we raced to see if California readers or New York readers would tip the scales and take the title as 32feet's home. This summer, it's America. We're expecting a lot out of you.

Listen :: Marina and the Diamonds - "I Am Not A Robot" (Clock Opera Remix)

Pallers :: "The Kiss"

This is a long drive for someone with too much too think about. And that's not a sonic reference to Modest Mouse because Pallers couldn't be further from Brock but it does refer to the cruise-control synthetics of "The Kiss," a song so built for dusky drives on lonely roads, it practically begs to soundtrack a remixed narrative (coming of age story this time?) of David Lynch's terrifying Lost Highway. Synth peel-offs jog in place as airy keyboards lay on each other like leotard-clad modern dancers in one of those downtown shows you got talked into going to and are secretly totally freaked out by. But "The Kiss" isn't terribly experimental, just a slow-build, weaving across three empty lanes of asphalt before shifting into fifth gear at the 3.15 mark. The yellow lines whip by and you stare into the vanishing point with both too much and too little on your mind.

Listen :: Pallers - "The Kiss"