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October 6, 2009
Shorties (Califone, Vic Chesnutt, and more)
Flavorwire interviews Califone's Tim Rutili about the influence of film on the band's music.
FP: Are there certain filmmakers who have influenced you, or certain films that set the path for Funeral Singers? There’s a song on the album about Luis Bunuel, so he’s one that comes to mind.
TR: Well, I guess for this film a lot of it is magical realism. Bunuel is in there for sure, but there’s a film called The Spirit of the Beehive, another Spanish film from the early ’70s, and that’s in there a lot. A film called After Life, which is a Japanese film from about 1995; that was a huge influence. Then there’s almost a campy element, like Fellini, in there too.
The A.V. Club interviews singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt.
The Phoenix New Times interviews Wavves' Nathan Williams about his next album.
UP: So is this your big goodbye to the "low-fi" sound? Is it all ProTools? Does it sound like a Journey record?
NW: It sounds like a Journey record. It sounds like grated melted cheese on top of nachos. It sounds like fish tacos.
The Guardian examines Edwyn Collins' struggle with MySpace and Warner Music Group to stream his own song online.
"MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright," complained Grace Maxwell, Collins's wife and manager. Maxwell made the unpleasant discovery after trying to upload A Girl Like You, the singer's 1994 hit, to his own MySpace page. "Lo and behold," she wrote in a blog, "it would not upload. I was told Edwyn was attempting to breach a copyright and he was sent to the Orwellian MySpace copyright re-education page. Quite chilling, actually."
PopMatters interviews Gossip's Nathan Paine.
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats talks to The Skinny about his new album, The Life of the World to Come.
But Darnielle's seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the scriptures is enough to put the most devout Christian to shame. For a confessed atheist, it's a peculiar specialist subject to have. John, however, refutes that claim. "I have a selective knowledge of the parts that resonated with me. If you were to quote to me a verse that I hadn't been using, I wouldn't know where it came from, unless it was pretty clear. I have a working knowledge of the scriptures."
Aversion and the Diamondback Online review the album.
The National Book Foundation has named its list of "5 under 35" fiction writers. Congratulations to Largehearted Boy Book Notes contributors C.E. Morgan, Lydia Peelle, and Josh Weil.
Four Mojo Nixon albums free at Amazon MP3:
the 20-track Frenzy
the 13-track Mojo & Skid
the 13-track Root Hog or Die
the 13-track Bo-Day-Shus
Madewell Newsletter posts my list of the 10 best female singers today.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Ian Frazier has won the 2009 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his novel, Lamentations of the Father.
NPR is streaming the new Flaming Lips album, Embryonic, in its entirety.
Seattlest interviews Nick Hornby about his new novel, Juliet, Naked.
Juliet, Naked, your new book, features a Bob Dylan or Springsteen-like songwriter named Tucker Crowe. You have Crowe putting out one acclaimed album in the 1980s and disappearing quite suddenly from the public eye. It’s hard to picture a modern musician enigmatically dropping out of the public eye today. The day of the carefully crafted mix tape made lovingly in real time is over, and you’ve written about how MP3 blogs perform the same function as independent record shops. How do you think the changing nature of music has affected what it means to be a fan today?
Well music itself hasn't changed much, not yet, but becoming a fan has become a whole lot easier. Every single thing your favorite band has ever recorded is available for free in a box on your desk. The odd thing though, is that it looks to me as though this hasn't added to the sum total of music fans. The people who couldn't be bothered to walk down to their local independent store to explore new music can't be bothered to find mp3 blogs. It has, however, become easier to spend all day talking to people with exactly the same tastes as you. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
John Vanderslice plays a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR Music.
The Brooklyn Rail reviews Stephen Elliott's memoir The Adderall Diaries.
What separates Elliott from other writers on this subject is his willingness to disperse with any authorial distance. Elliott doesn’t attempt to escape self-recrimination by exploring violence solely in the lives of others. Where many memoirists choose to wait several years before writing about their vices, so that they may claim (or leave open the possibility) that they are now on the straight path, Elliott makes clear that he has made no successful attempts to end his addictive behaviors. He also hasn’t “recovered” from the traumas of his childhood. That’s the point. People don’t always get better; the road doesn’t always lead to redemption.
IGN ranks Jay-Z's albums from worst to best.
Win a copy of Nick Hornby's new novel, Juliet, Naked, in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.
Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
tags: music books popculture indie
