Califone & Michael Hurley-Two Tracks

Happy February! These aren’t exactly brand new, but I’ve seriously been getting into these two CDs lately, and I had to pass them along.

The first is a Califone record called Roots & Crowns released in October of 2006, which has been on plenty of “Best of 2006″ lists.

The second song is by a man called Michael Hurley who apparently was discovered by a Jazz and Blues Historian. His debut record, appropriately called First Songs, was released in 1965 by Folkways Records. It’s an incredibly intimate record, with both vocals and guitar rusty as weathered nails, yet they possess such an emotional familiarity that it’s impossible to avoid being entranced. Hurley belts out chillingly beautiful and delightfully simple American Folk songs that leave one filled with a sense of “less is more”, and humility is kingly.

Califone – Tea Song[.m4a]

Michael Hurley – Burned By The Christians[.mp3]

Mixtape

Here’s a mix I made for a friend, and I thought I’d share it with anyone who wanted it. Some new, some older.

album leaf – writing on the wall

aqualung – easier to life

grizzly bear – on a nick, on a spit

joanna newsom – sawdust & diamonds

the rosebuds – leaves do fall

the rapture – callin Me

tokyo police club – nature of the experiment

xiu xiu – boy soprano

the zombies – what more can i do

emily haines and the soft skeleton – doctor blind

devotchka – we’re leaving

the clientelle – (i can’t seem to) make you mine

beirut – postcards from italy

someone still loves you boris yeltsin – i am warm + powerful

>>>mixtape.zip

Emily Haines @ the Magic Bag (Metro Detroit)

A friend and I ventured down to Ferndale on Thursday to see Emily Haines in concert at the Magic Bag.  Granted there are a few okay songs on her album Knives Don’t Have Your Back, for the most part I haven’t been digging her solo project.  I’m much more of a Metric fan.  But she ruined both for me after seeing her live.

Between songs she spoke to Detroiters in a drunken or drug-enduced stupor, periodoically taking swigs from her flask that she kept on top of her grand piano-keyboard.  She told stories of her previous times in Detroit, using the word “like” every chance she could, and “totally”, as if she were some weird hybrid mix between musician, sorority chick, valley girl, hipster, and drunkard.  Touring as Metric, she said that the last time she was in Detroit someone gave her guitarist a hash brownie, which he in turn forgot he had eaten, and was staring at the moon “contemplating, like, what it all meant”.  Deep, Emily.  Profound.

I don’t mean to turn this into a bash fest about Emily Haines, but it was so disappointing to hear her speak, after hearing how well she can write lyrics.  As someone at the concert put it, “whatever childish crush I had for her has been ruined, but the music is okay”.  I couldn’t agree more.

Out back after the show I asked about her line in the Metric song, “I wish we were famers//I wish we knew how to//grow sweet potatoes//and milk cows”, and she stated, “I’m totally gonna buy some land, man…”

“Oh?  Where?”

“Like northern Ontario, yeah”

I’m pretty sure you can’t grow sweet potatoes in northern Ontario.