Three Albums You’ve (Probably) Never Heard, But Really Should

By Ian Minor

Lets not beat around the bush, no one can listen to every album, but fear not.
I’m here to offer you three albums not many people have heard of.

Voltaire - To The Bottom Of The Sea

Voltaire is best described as a gothic classical musician. He plays the violin, accordion and acoustic guitar. His most recent album was a concept album of a collection of sea songs and shanties. He hits several songs out of the park, most notably “Accordion Player,” the tale of a musician who refuses to go to war. Also the title song, which is about the sad, slow sinking of a ship. As Marty described it, “it’s quirky as hell.”

“Accordion Player” by Voltaire (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

That Handsome Devil - A City Dressed In Dynamite

Combining rockabilly and blues, That Handsome Devil knows how to make some great songs to bob your head to by using a wide array of instruments and old movie clips. Godforbid’s voice is excellent (yes that is his name) and the bass lines are impressive. The highlights are “Rob The Prez-O-Dent”, which is their biggest hit after getting on Rock Band 2, and “Squares” a fast-paced lounge song.

“Rob the Prez-O-Dent” by That Handsome Devil (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

Mindless Self Indulgence - If

A punk/goth band, because no one in this myspace generation can be just one genre, that hits fast and hard. To me, they are one of the last bands that still subscribes to the old punk gospel of destruction and anarchy. This album is rude, disturbing and rocking and it’s frontman is nicknamed Jimmy Urine. You can tell they care about nothing else except having a good time. The highlights are “Never Wanted To Dance” a surprisingly good dance song, and “Get It Up” a song which is about exactly what you think it is.

“Get It Up” by Mindless Self Indulgence (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

Heading Out with The Avett Brothers

It has been said that there are only two stories - a stranger comes to town and someone goes on a journey.

With The Avett Brothers' major label debut, I and Love and You, the boys take the latter. Actually, there are multiple journeys. The engaging album mines the familiar territory of documenting the journeys contained in romance and relationships. A topic that takes full use of the brothers' harmonies and orchestrations.

But, there is more going on here.

The album also represents the band's current journey from its North Carolina roots to a much wider audience. From its bluegrass beginnings to its new mixture of pop/alternative folk. To put it simply, less banjo, more piano and strings. And the piano is not a rootsy Garth Hudson, but more like fellow Tar Heel Ben Folds' hard-driving piano.

However, there is still a trace of the band's bluegrass background. The disc's second track, January Wedding, is a beautiful banjo stroll. But make no mistake, The Avett Brothers are no longer a bluegrass band.

A large part of this musical advancement coincides with the group's jump to Sony and the accompanying Rick Rubin production. The album is, at times, beautiful. The harmonies soar. The strings rise and fall. There is definitively a sheen with this bunch. Not much of the grittiness that helps define other hirsute harmony fanatics, such as Fleet Foxes and Blitzen Trapper.

That is not a complaint. The album has been on a steady rotation in my house for weeks and it will be there awhile.

Perhaps the best song of the album, or even in the group's burgeoning career, is the opening title track - an anthem about "heading north" (another journey!) and out into the world. The chorus is impossible to resist. Nor do you want to.

The Avett Brothers head out on the road at the beginning of the year. No Florida dates yet.

“I and Love and You” by The Avett Brothers (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

The Nightlight Who Watches Over You

By Ian Minor

20 years ago an album came out that would later be called “a landmark release in the evolution from college rock to alternative.” The third release of rock group They Might Be Giants, Flood would give them their big hits and fame worldwide. It would also be the immortal and ever important first album for me.

It’s a little shocking that my first album came out a full two years before I was born. I first heard They Might Be Giants of a mix tape (remember those) that my uncle made. I believe the first song I heard was their mega hit Birdhouse in Your Soul. It’s hard to describe their impact they’ve had on me. It would be like describing the times before one learns to walk. There is no before TMBG, only after.

I do remember not understanding why their lyrics were so captivating, so compelling and heartfelt when they really said nothing. One lyric read “I came back as a bag of groceries accidently taken off the shelf before the date stamped on myself.” Trying to understand that is hard for a young adult like myself, so I imagine it broke my brain when I was twelve.

That’s why I think They Might Be Giants, they don’t have to worry about their message staying current. Because their is no message. Their music is timeless, which is helped that the two Johns have not aged since the mid-90s.

I went to a show of theirs not to long ago and it’s refreshing to see that no matter how giant they get, they’ll still joke and talk to the audience. True, they may be Grammy winners, but they’re not scared to bust out the sock puppets if they need to. Watching them preform one of the lesser known Flood songs, I was transported back in time, to a small club, where they had just released the album. Where they were just the musicians who had always been there for me, not stars, not one hit wonders, they were just my first band.

And it was pretty awesome.

“Women & Men” by They Might Be Giants (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

"Corn Flakes": Food For Thought About Rock Criticism And The Music's Preeminent Figures

By Duncan Strauss

"Corn Flakes With John Lennon And Other Tales From A Rock 'N' Roll Life," the new book by Robert Hilburn -- who spent more than 35 years at the Los Angeles Times, most of those as chief pop music critic -- manages to at once be a breezy, fun, fascinating read while prompting me to view rock criticism in a whole new light.

Which is really saying something, considering I dispensed rock criticism myself for many years, including a decade-long stint in the 80s at The Times under Hilburn's auspices. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Corn Flakes" is nominally a memoir. We learn a bit about his formative years (and his budding passion for music), we learn about a bit about his family -- fleeting mentions of his kids, brief references to the obsession with work and the attendant demands of being out nightly and frequent travel that helped crumple his first marriage -- and we learn a bit about how a non-smoking teetotaler functioned in a world often partly defined by personal excess and self-destruction.

But you only have to travel a handful of pages into this book before it becomes apparent Bob Hilburn isn't really interested in talking about Bob Hilburn. But he does want to talk, expansively, about another Bob -- Dylan.

From the way he scribbled out a setlist in Israel that Dylan used in a concert there, to the way he had often rejected Hilburn's interview requests, to the way -- in the twilight of Hilburn's career at The Times--he agreed to sit for extensive interviews in 2003 about his songwriting process across the arc of his career, a sprawling and revealing piece called "legendary" by Mojo magazine, and the initial installment in a wildly ambitious songwriting series that, Hilburn notes, helped him win a Times award and his third Pulitzer nomination.

But Dylan represents just one of the preeminent pop music figures that forms the core of "Corn Flakes." It's chock full of wonderful stories about Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Johnny Cash (among the great photos included here is one of Cash at Folsom Prison in '68, standing next to Hilburn, who's clad in a dark business suit and tie), Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, Chuck D, Jack White, et al.

The book also offers a handful of nifty sidebar-like elements, like "My Rock 'N'' Roll Dinner Party Guest List," "Some Favorite Quotes," "Favorite Road Trips" and the like. It's an unusual book, by a writer-critic with an unusually long tenure at a publication, and unusual access to rock's most important, influential artists.

The book sports an introduction by Bono that makes it clear he admires, if not adores, Hilburn, including the phrase "He made us better." Both that introduction and various parts of Hilburn's narrative indicates there were numerous encounters with Bono/U2 over the years, starting with Bob's momentous review of the Irish band's L.A. concert debut that ran on the front page of The Times' Calendar section in March of 1981.

But it's equally clear that the interviews Hilburn conducted with Bono (and sometimes, his bandmates)--and the informal, sometimes off-the-record conversations--with the Irishman had the most profound impact, probably on Times readers, but certainly on Mr. Hewson and the rest of U2.

A notable example: In the wake of the explosive success of "The Joshua Tree," and the fervently mixed response to the "Rattle And Hum" film, Bono and Hilburn had breakfast and the singer mentioned a handful of projects he was contemplating, including a screenplay, a novel, some short stories and essays.

Hilburn viewed this as a red flag, fearing Bono ran the risk of spreading himself too thin at a pivotal career point, and unleashed some heavy ammo: He asked Bono how many great songs he'd written thus far -- and in the same breath, asked how many great songs Dylan, Cole Porter and Lennon had written. We see in a few places the impact of this tactic, including in Bono's intro, where he acknowledges feeling "chastened."

Which brings me back, finally, to the way "Corn Flakes" guided me to a reconfigured take on rock criticism. When people discuss a significant, truly influential critic -- whether that's in the realm of literature, film, music, theater, fine art, etc. -- that discussion typically revolves around that critic's reviews.

What made Pauline Kael, well, Pauline Kael were her reviews. Same goes for Kenneth Tynan. Or Michiko Kakutani. And in contrast to critiquing film or theater or books, in the world of pop music criticism, there are two components that might get reviewed: recordings and performance.

Interestingly, however, although Hilburn was an endlessly prolific critic, writing multiple album and concert reviews damn near every week for more than three decades, the impression that emerges from "Corn Flakes" is that healtered the music landscape, the singular craft of pop music criticism and, in some cases, the creative output of certain artists not by his reviews so much as by his interviews.

Meaning both the conversations themselves, and the resulting published pieces, even if those pieces could only capture a percentage of any given discussion (he retired from The Times before that paper had even an adequate much less stellar online presence).

You get the sense that artists enjoyed--and benefited from--both formal and informal conversations with Hilburn, whether it was someone as irrepressibly loquacious as Bono or as famously media-wary (and world weary) as Dylan. And we, the reader, benefited enormously from those exchanges, brimming as they were--and are in this book--with insights, revelations and great humor.

As another measure of Hilburn's conversational gifts, and winning personality, John Lennon often sought his company, inviting him to dinner and other social gatherings. (Some of those visits explain the "Corn Flakes" title--you'll have to read the book!)

Hilburn's kindness, humility and generosity of spirit come through this book again and again. Not at all a surprise to me. In the late 70s, I was attending college at UC Davis, covering music for the school paper and freelancing for The Sacramento Bee and regional music magazines like BAM.

I sent Hilburn a small sampling of my writing, and to my utter shock and delight, a few weeks later, a short, encouraging note arrived from him, saying, in effect, that I was on the right track, and to keep at it.

About a year and half later, when I was nearing graduation, I sent him another batch of writing. Sure enough, I got a note back, this onealso brief, but huge in the way it changed my life: It said the reviews were "taut and convincing" and that I should be doing this writing for them-- for The L.A. Times -- and could be if I were living in Southern California.

Within a few months, I was living in Orange County, and writing for The Times, thanks to Bob Hilburn. I'd have corn flakes with him anytime.

New Song from The Whigs

After Hours HQ favorites, The Whigs, has just released the title track of their new album, In The Dark, which is set for release in early 2010. The song finds the Athens, Ga. trio stretching out from the straight-ahead Replacement-like sprint of its debut. There is more than a breeze of Franz Ferdinand in the track.

The song, released free by the band, accomplishes its task of stoking excitement for the upcoming disc. Count me in and don't delay. Now, if only they could swing down to FLA for a couple of shows...

“In_The_Dark” by The Whigs (mp3)

TOUR DATES:

*** % indicates shows with The Features as direct support ***
*** # indicates shows with The Dead Trees as support ***
*** $ indicates shows with Mean Creek as support ***

10-28-09: Boston, MA - Middle East % # (also with Mean Creek; 18+)
10-29-09: Syracuse, NY - Funk & Waffles % # (all ages; also on sale at the venue box office and at Soundgarden record store)
10-30-09: Buffalo, NY - The Mohawk % # (16+)
10-31-09: Akron, OH - Musica % # (all ages; early show)
11-02-09: Cincinnati, OH - Madhatter % # (all ages)
11-03-09: Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall % # (all ages)
11-04-09: Indianapolis, IN - Birdy's % # (21+)
11-05-09: Nashville, TN - Cannery Ballroom % # (18+)
11-06-09: Chicago, IL - Bottom Lounge % # (18+)
11-07-09: Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock % # (18+)
11-10-09: Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater % # (16+)
11-13-09: Vancouver, BC - The Media Club % # (19+)
11-14-09: Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern % # (21+)
11-15-09: Portland, OR - Doug Fir % # (21+)
11-17-09: San Francisco, CA - The Independent % # (21+)
11-18-09: Costa Mesa, CA - Detroit Bar % # (21+)
11-19-09: Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour % # (all ages)
11-20-09: Las Vegas, NV - Beauty Bar % # (21+)
11-21-09: San Diego, CA - SOMA (sidestage) % # (all ages)
12-01-09: Austin, TX - Emo's % (all ages)
12-02-09: Dallas, TX - The Loft % (all ages)
12-04-09: Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse % (all ages)
12-05-09: Chattanooga, TN - Rhythm & Brews % $ (21+)
12-08-09: Charlotte, NC - Visulite Theatre % $ (16+ w/ ID, under 16 must have parent)
12-10-09: Washington, DC - Black Cat % $ (all ages)
12-11-09: New York, NY - Fillmore @ Irving Plaza % $ (all ages)
12-12-09: Philadelphia, PA - North Star % $ (21+)
12-14-09: Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506 % $ (18+)
12-15-09: Charleston, SC - Pour House % $ (18+)

The Sweet Sound of The Sounds

The catchy pop of Swedish new wave revivalists, The Sounds, always finds a happy little corner in my central cortex. A little spot, with a whiff of nostalgia, that allows me to still enjoy Blondie and Missing Persons and move my ass to newer artists like Lykke Li.

After spending much of the summer opening for No Doubt, The Sounds are the now the headliners on a welcomed swing through South Florida. On Tuesday, September 29th, the band will be in Tampa performing at the Ritz Ybor. After the show, the party moves down the street to Gaspar's Grotto for a listening party for The Sounds' new album.

After Tampa, they will move on to The Revolution in Fort Lauderdale on the 30th and Rokbar in Miami Beach on October 1st. Joining the group through the Sunshine swing is the Cincinnati-based Foxy Shazam.

“No One Sleeps When I’m Awake” by The Sounds (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

Bruce @ 60

Bruce Springsteen turned 60 this week.

A marker of time noted by many including none other than Brian Williams on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News. Perhaps a fitting tribute for a man who was introduced to the world through dueling covers of Time and Newsweek. Still, Bruce is the only "Next Dylan" to have matched the hype.

I found Bruce in high school when I traded an LP of Queen's Jazz to a friend for an 8-track of Born to Run. (Best Trade Ever!) From the opening harp of "Thunder Road," lights flicked on where none had existed. My life had changed in a chord change. The next week I went out and bought his first two albums and signed up for the journey. Bruce didn't disappoint. It continues to be a great ride.

As an artist, he has always pushed himself to greater limits and musical exploration through the years. Not always successful. I still find Devils & Dust dreadful. However, Tunnel of Love and Lucky Town have grown to become beloved additions to my collection after an early dismissal.

His music is true. The shows, even now, are blissful 3-hour marathons testifying to the power of rock n' roll. I've had the pleasure of seeing Springsteen and the E Street Band perform several times and each time they deliver on the promise of rock and roll. The promise of passion, rebellion, freedom, faith and community - with a thundering beat. Just as when they started out along the Jersey Shore, Springsteen and friends remain the World's Greatest Party Band.

For your listening pleasure, Bruce explains how he chose rock as his profession during the legendary 1978 Agora Ballroom concert in Cleveland. It is a Big Smile.

“Growin' Up (Live)” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (mp3)

A Great Album About Cricket - The Game - Seriously

For an ardent fan of wooden bats striking pitched balls, I've never understood the game of cricket one iota. With that in mind, listening to The Duckworth Lewis Method's self-titled release - an album symphonically devoted to the sport had all the trappings of a long slog.

What emerged is an engaging English pop gem that is, at times, captivating in its swings from Ziggy Stardust-style rock to chamber music with voiceovers and nearly everything in between. This collaboration of The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon and Pugwash's Thomas Walsh is named after a unfathomable cricket calculation that soars over my head like a steroid-pummeled baseball.

The album's best track, "The Age of Revolution," employs an infectious roots rock groove about the game's format change to promote a quicker match. Yes, it is a very serious cricket album.

For us non-fans of the game, don't focus on words - just enjoy a well crafted album of eccentric English pop.

“The Age of Revolution” by The Duckworth Lewis Method (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

Future Film Soundtracks from Chi-town

In honor of AH contributor Ian's imminent departure to film school and a bevy of new adventures in the Second City, we present three offerings for his future film soundtracks. As we are in the business of opinions, also offered are suggested sequences to accompany these instrumentals or damn-near instrumentals.

“Torpedo” by Hawaii Mud Bombers (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

Nothing sparks your indie cred like placing a Swedish surf punk group on your play list. In "Torpedo," the Hawaii Mud Bombers channel Dick Dale and provide the perfect getaway music.

“Knife Chase” by Tom Waits (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

A little darker than the upbeat "Torpedo," "Knife Chase" by AH deity Tom Waits screams of grittiness, back alleys and too many late nights. Save this for your film noir.

“Mosquito” by the Mosquitos (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

With this little indie rock/bossa nova, the NYC/Brazilian trio provides a quirky little ditty that evokes the seductive rhythms of summer. Or, if you are feeling a little Tarantino-ish, match this song up with a frightening mosquito attack in a classic horror style.

Have fun. Explore your art. Create big smiles.

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.

Robert Altman

There are more than a couple bands, largely British bands, who should be saying a deep prayer of thanks to filmmaker John Hughes.

Hughes, the premier chronicler of 80s teenage angst, died this past week of a heart attack on the streets of New York. Not only did Hughes make some of the more memorable comedies of the 80s, he introduced scores of new bands to a bevy of midwestern teens. I know, I was one of them.

More than a few times did I head to the record shop immediately after staying for the soundtrack credits for the latest Hughes flick at the multiplex.

The closing scene of The Breakfast Club, where a not-so-convincing sensitive, tough guy Judd Nelson puts Molly Ringwald's earring in and throws his fist into the air, left an army of testosterone-fueled teenagers humming the movie's theme song. For the popular British band, it was their stateside break. The scene still soars.

“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

In another finale, OMD was featured at the prom in Pretty in Pink (which was inspired by the Psychedelic Furs classic). As a result, the British bank Orchestral Manoeurvres in the Dark immediately became a staple for proms across the nation. Still, Duckie got hosed.

“If You Leave” by OMD (mp3)(iTunes)(Amazon)

In perhaps my favorite John Hughes film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Hughes give Matthew Broderick a break of a lifetime. In this classic school-skipping flick, there are numerous memorable tunes - remember Danke Schoen - but the obscure "March of the Swivelheads" by The Beat drove the film to its finale.

“March of the Swivelheads” by The Beat (mp3)