100for2000 – Page 10 – Leaps And Bounds

14
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #9. Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #9. 78 Saab – Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound
(Ivy League)

The coolest label in Australia at this time was Ivy League Records. This was before the Vines broke and the company changed. They had a stable of young guitar bands, who loved melody and experimentation, mostly hailing from Canberra. 78 Saab was by far the biggest band on the label in those early days. Picture A Hum, Can’t Hear A Sound was their first album.

I’m not sure how the guys met, or how the band got started, but I thought they were pretty great. They had this great EP out, Hello Believers, and a couple of songs on radio. By the end of ‘99, they had a pretty big hit (in alternative circles) with a song called ‘Sunshine’. It was dreamy, psych pop – a bit of a departure for them. It was the soundtrack to that millennium summer. I still think of that summer when I hear that song.

I would never miss a 78 Saab gig. Partly though, I was going out to see bands almost very night of week, and catching all the support bands as well. I even got to know the guys, I’m sure we must have done a show with them at some point. But that would be years later. At this time, I was a follower.

And it’s important to remember because so many have forgotten. I can barely find an image for the album online. No-one listens to this album according to Last.fm. But I have friends who would spend every weekend in Newtown catching an Ivy League band. And that time was important to us.

Debut albums are so exciting – the promise of a new band. 78 Saab had that. Sure, they had catchy pop with songs such as Like It Was Before. Then, at some gig, they’d debut Sunshine. Then, a later gig, the great, great Smile (best track on the album). Karma Package Deal was their best rock song so far. Two even greater, country influenced ballads – Jack Frost and Don’t Know Much – promised more.

That’s the thing. You’d listen to each song and think – wow, there is more of this to come.

There was more, but it didn’t come quickly. For whatever reason, the next album was delayed, as was the album after that. They stayed well respected amongst musicians, but they never broke through. By then, the Vines and Jet had changed the game anyway.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #8. Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #8. Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues

For as long as I can remember, I have always had some genre I was obsessed about and exploring. Punk and hardcore at 15, power pop and garage rock at 17, and in my late teens early 20s it was all about alt-country. By 2000, that obsession was dying down. With that, this is the last of a string of Steve Earle records that I loved. In the man’s own words, Transcendental Blues was a big record – a record so big he could take a break from making records for a while after this.

Earle, for my money, was flawless from when he made his big return from drugs and darkness with Train A Comin’ until this record. In those five records he brought a reckless rock ‘n’ roll spirit to the country adage of ‘four chords and the truth’. I was aware had a more commercial career before all this, but those records were tough to find – and I didn’t really try that hard.

Transcendental Blues feels like a best of those records. In the same way the U2 album of that year (All That You Can’t Leave Behind) was the boiled down classic elements of U2, this record was Steve Earle at his simplest. Only lightly bluegrass in places, it rocks and bit not too tough. The ballads are sad but you don’t slash your wrist. It makes the record sound watered down, but it’s actually it’s strength. It’s solid as a house.

The title track is one of Earle’s best. A hymn for rednecks. Steve’s Last Ramble and Another Town are two of his best, escapist rockers. That escape theme, or as Earle puts it in his liner notes – the feeling of going through something (like a divorce or a windscreen). I returned to this album in the middle of the last decade when I was planning my own escape.

They really got the sound down by this time. A long standing producer relationship with Ray Kennedy (as a duo they were known as ‘Twangtrust’) was really red hot now. One of the reasons we asked Michael Carpenter to produce our albums was because he was a big fan of the production on these records. Also Twangtrust was too far away.

This is also the album that has Galway Girl, which has became a standard in Ireland and I know see it in Irish beer ads.

At the time there was a huge controversy about Over Yonder (Jonathan’s Song). Its a song about a person Earle knew and knew well who was on death row. He made a film clip for the song with the mug shots of every person sentenced to death under GW Bush’s time as Governor. Ballsy stuff, and I couldn’t wait to see it, the left wing pinko that I am. But once you see it, you realise…it’s mostly black men. They left that off the press release.

I moved on from alt-country after this (and yes I still call it that, why not, it’s like people who say Television were not punk). And I never really felt the same way about another Steve Earle record. Or Son Volt. Or Slobberbone. Or a lot of those bands. The grass roots honesty and values of country bands went away.

But if you were going to start with Steve Earle, I would without a doubt say this is where to start.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #7. Elliott Smith – Figure 8

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #7. Elliott Smith – Figure 8

What do I say about Elliott Smith? The guy meant so much to me. I love all his records.

So Isabelle Trolio turned me onto Elliott. She told me she was listening a lot to XO. I went out and got it, and fell in love immediately. Talking about sad-sack music, he’s the king of the scene. I went back from XO, and waited for the Happiness single, then for Figure 8 to be released. I stayed up and watched the Son Of Sam clip on Rage. I was hoping he would be huge.

Do we really need to discuss what’s so great about this album? His amazing musicianship and style had found a major studio budget with XO, and this follow up was even more widescreen. Some think it’s a bit too long. Some think it’s a bit too produced. But I don’t know anyone who’s heard it that doesn’t love it quite a bit.

So there’s four things I want to say about this record, and Elliott.

One – why wasn’t this album huge? I guess it lacked singles, and I guess those singles were weird. But Triple J didn’t play him, and he only toured once. He didn’t do TV shows or anything either. I guess I feel like we dropped the ball on this. All of us. We all loved the guy, how come he didn’t make the cover of some street press when this album came out? Why didn’t radio put a track on light rotation?

There was an attitude around that, sure, he was great. But he’s not cool enough, and we can’t support him. Maybe the next thing he does. Then he died and he’s a cult figure. Even back in 2000, every said he was as good as Jeff Buckley. Why wasn’t he treated better in his lifetime?

Two – out of every musician who’s ever died in my lifetime, this one affected me most. A mix of being young, and one of the first musicians I loved to die, and how much I just loved the guy anyway – I’m not sure I will ever feel that way again.

I helped to organise a couple of tribute shows in Australia. I was never a part of the Elliott Smith forums world, but I got on there and offered a few spots to people on there who wanted to play a song or two. Tapes and CDs turned up at my parents house from people who barely go to shows, from all walks of life, who loved Elliott and wanted to strum a few songs in his honor.

It was very touching to see the ones I chose actually play. They weren’t part of the Sydney scene. One guy never knew a single soul in person who liked Elliott’s music.

When I played the Melbourne show, I saw two girls crying down the front. Geez, it was just so sad.

Three – it was such a fucking cliche. His songs about his troubled soul, his worried mind. It just puts him in a certain box now. A suicide musician. Lets look for clues in his songs. Kind of crap.

Four – the Halloween after Elliott died, my mate Gumby dressed as Elliott Smith with a plastic knife in his chest, and a bad beanie. It was quite funny actually.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #6. Eels – Daisies Of the Galaxy

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #6. Eels – Daisies Of the Galaxy
(Dreamworks)

I was 19. I was very drawn to sad sack records. And man is this one of the all time great ones. I moped and moped to this album. So did the Eels themselves. It’s an album born of tragedy. But like all my favourite sad sack albums, there is a fair bit of hope in there as well. Ladies and Gents, I give you Daisies Of the Galaxy.

In truth, it seems the record before this one – Electro-Shock Blues – is the really tragic album. Lead Eel (named ‘E’) lost his mother to cancer. His sister committed suicide. He lost most of his band and several other friends past away. Another failed relationship.

But it’s the follow up to all that – the sad and lonely reflection on what has come, that really punches me in the gut. Because the sadness doesn’t come from wallowing – it comes from childlike hoping. The cover says it all. Thinking so many songs must be about his Mother and Sister, E sings of missing people, and missing homely things like wooden nickels and picnic blankets.

Even the angry title of It’s A Motherfucker is really just a tender ballad. For me, the image that really sticks out for the album is the title of A Daisy Through Concrete. That’s what this album is – a crooked, out of shape flower trying to get through all the heavy shit someone put on top of it.

So where was I in all this? I don’t know. Another failed relationship too. Before I started playing in a band, and I really didn’t know what to do with my life. My friends were in Uni, and I just made the jump from working in a supermarket to working part time at a record store. I was pretty sure the suburb of Campsie would pretty much be it for me.

The only happiness I got was music, and going to gigs. Books. I withdrew myself and got on with it, until a couple of wonderful chances to prove myself were given to me. Life got better quite quickly. But I listen to this record, I remember how much things felt like one big fail.

Years and years later, when I was in my own band called the Reservations (we were amazing by the way), Casey suggested we cover the most popular song on this album – Mr E’s Beautiful Blues. It was a brilliant way to end such a sad record – with one of the most joyous songs I’ve ever heard.

Maybe we’ll get around to doing a version one day. It will be a nice place for my relationship for this record to go. To check back in on that crooked daisy and enjoy the fact it became a big beautiful flower.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #5. Jon Brion – Meaningless

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #5. Jon Brion – Meaningless
(no label)

Tim Byron turned me onto this record. I’m not sure where the conversation started. Maybe Elliott Smith. Tim was a bigger fan than me, being a Fiona Apple fan. But Jon Brion is a key piece of the puzzle. He was behind the dials for so many artists I love – Badly Drawn Boy, Aimee Mann, Beck, Elliott Smith and later Rhett Miller, Finn Brothers and more (like Kanye West!!). I guess at this time, Brion was trying to balance being a producer or a singer songwriter. As this is the the only album he’s ever done, I’m guessing producer won.

When I started raving about this record, all my pop friends were already there, it seems. People had gone to LA to see him perform (he performed every Saturday at the Largo for years, with lines around the block). People were into his old band, the Grays. I’ve had long conversations about this album with the CEO of a major record company. It was Brad Shepherd from the Hoodoo Gurus who told me the last track was a Cheap Trick song.

Knowing this record was like a special club. Which makes sense as it’s so fucking obscure (but also so great). Story goes that this was to be a major label debut. The label (Lava, owned by Atlantic Records) decided not to pick up the album, and Brion self released it on his website. I eventually paid through the nose for a CD copy, having decided the CDR I had wasn’t enough.

(The package, by the way, is shit. Just get a CDR, really).

So – it has a great release story. The guy is very interesting. But what about the songs?

Well, they are great. It’s adult contemporary pop – a sound and a style Brion kind of owns. It’s not retro, or as straightjacketed as power pop. It’s a timeless sort of good songwriting, with good lyrics, well performed and sounding great. It’s like Crowded House – they are pop songs but not for kids.

Highlights abound. Rhett Miller would cover I Believe She’s Lying, but the weird drum sample and urgency of the original still trumps it. Walking Through Walls is a thumper, Brion’s guitar playing comes to the forefront. Ballads, blissful pop, some hardrockers all lead to the finale, the Cheap Trick song. Re-imagined as a ballad, Voices is one the best things Jon Brion has ever done.

Brion went on to be Mr Soundtrack. His work for Punch Drunk Love produced my favourite Brion song ever – Here We Go. He also did I Heart Huckabees and Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind.

We’ve lost him to production, but if he ever does another record, I’m there. And this ‘adult pop’ thing – well that would be big news for the next decade for me.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #4. Darren Hanlon – Early Days

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #4. Darren Hanlon – Early Days
(Candle)

It was at a Sounds Like Sunset gig at the Lansdowne Hotel, Sydney. It was an early one, and in between the bands, a friend of the band got up and did a song. Just two songs – one between each of the three bands. Just two songs and they were both brilliant. The young singer songwriter was Darren Hanlon. He year or two later he would release his first CD, a 7 track EP called Early Days.

I’ve followed Darren ever since. He will pop up a lot over the writing. But this musical relationship begins here.

After that show, I asked him if he had a tape or anything to sell (a tape! So 90s). But I remember what those songs were. Beta Losers – which appeared earlier on a compilation – and She Cuts Hair. Both tracks are on here.

Darren comes from Lismore, and later I would find out he was a member of the Simpletons, a great band that I missed out on completely. He’s mainly acoustic, but had that Jonathan Richman/Belle and Sebastian vibe. Witty, clever – maybe a bit too cutesy. But these ‘early days’ of Darren were legendary. He was a storyteller in song, and became a story teller on stage.

His crowds got bigger with every show. Soon he was the biggest act on Candle Records. I went to every gig hoping to hear some wonderful new song. I lived out these 7 tracks.

Early Days opens with the title track, a short quick ditty about the stomach butterflies you get at the start of a relationship. Its a pretty good indicator of what Darren does – sweet songs, with wit and randomness. Beta Losers is about a guy who gets dumped, and feels like the superceded format of the Beta tape.

The big song was the only one I hadn’t heard before the EP was released – Falling Aeroplanes. By then his stock was so high that Triple J even played a song that was essentially a guy and a banjo. It was the only Hottest 100 song in that radio station’s poll not to have a film clip – some live footage was hastily cut together for the show.

It’s such a rush when you love an artist early – and every new song seems to be better than the last. Falling Aeroplanes was just that – the best song he had written up to that point. Based on a fairytale Darren had written, it tells of a boy who wants to give up writing songs because they are of no use. And a girl telling the boy how songs can be just as useful as a “box or a bad or cupboards or shelves”.

It’s very cutesy, but I have thought about that song a lot. I think of my Dad. He’s never written a song – but he can change a car tyre. What good are the songs I’ve written if we are stuck with a flat? I think of this song, even now, when I think of why any song should ever be written again.

I’m not sure how easy it is to find this EP. Maybe in Australia it’s easier. But Darren surpassed it all with his next record. But I still remember asking a stranger if he had a tape, and how I followed him for months, just because I was hoping to hear his two songs.

11
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #3. Phoenix – United

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #3. Pheonix – United
(Astralwerks)

So we thought Beachwood Sparks were cool because they were a band we could be in. But all my friends and I loved Phoenix because they came from outer space. Who the fuck were these guys? In 2000, it was a sweet mystery. It started with their debut album United.

This was a huge album for me, and my circle of friends. The album is fantastic through and through. No two songs sound the same. And that can be said for a lot of albums. But how many go from pastiche-ing the sweet California pop of Bread, then goes into a ten minute space rock jam with crowd noise and vocoders?

It might be odd to say now, but this album reminded me of KISS. The fun-as-hell riffs. It was a rock and roll dance party. There was nothing deep going on lyrically. But from the opening guitar sounds on the instrumental School Rules, it sounds like it was built for stadium rock.

In Australia at least, the album came with a fantastic sticker with a quote from FACE magazine: “Undoubtedly the best post-French house, seventies Californian, country-rock concept album of modern love songs you’ll ever likely to hear.” (I applaud the marketing manager behind that bit of genius).

Too Young and If You Ever Feel Better were indie club smash hits. You would tell people about this great record, and play someone Too Young. And most likely they will say “I know this song!!” followed by ” I fucking love this song!!”

The great thing, the thing that pushed them over the edge for us, was the mystery. They were from France? No photos in the booklet, no website to speak off. No Youtube or MySpace either. Someone told me that they don’t even speak English, that a friend had written the lyrics. I’m not sure that’s true, but I believed it at the time.

It’s such a studio album, you can’t even tell how many members were in the band at all! Of course, now in 2009, with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix such a big hit, we know a lot about them. I sometimes wish we didn’t.

I didn’t care much for the next two albums. If they had stopped with this one perfect album, they would have gone down as the Modern Lovers or something. That band who made one perfect record then never did anything like that again. It’s a romantic notion that only record nerds have.

I still love this record, even though I’ve now read and heard interviews about how it was made. But it’s still a perfect record. 10 tracks under 40 minutes. I wish I had it on vinyl. And it still doesn’t sound like it’s from 2000. Funny how the left field has, by the end of the decade, become the norm.

I am glad that this band is now huge. And they still play songs from this record, and hopefully people are going back.

10
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #2. Beachwood Sparks – self titled

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – #2. Beachwood Sparks – self titled
(Sub Pop)

This was just the coolest record in the world when it came out. Sometimes it feels like they’ve totally been forgotten.It was space cowboy indie country. Nowadays it sounds like MGMT done with slide guitars. That blissful holiday feel and colourful vibe – for a second there, everyone was ripping Beachwood Sparks off.

I exaggerate, of course. I think very few people actually heard this record, and those who did only knew it from alt-country circles. Oh my god, someone was using slide guitar? I’m buying it. It was also the first Sub Pop album I bought in many years.

What can be said about this record? The band name, with it’s reference to the 60s band the Zombies, rocks. The cover is great.

But I don’t know if there’s much I can say that isn’t better summed up by listening to Sister Rose, or Desert Skies. Those high harmonies, and pedal steel everywhere. It took all that stuff from the 60s east coast – Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and all. But I just keep coming back to it – they just seemed so much cooler. You wanted to jump in the combie vans and hang out with these guys.

Pity the guys in the band didn’t feel that way. After such an assured debut record, they failed to take it to the next step with the next, second and final album, Once We Were Trees. One little EP later and the band called it a day, splintering off into several respected side projects (making them the alt-country At the Drive In).

Nice thing is at the Sub Pop 20th anniversary gig, the band got back together. Hopefully more people will go back and hear this band. And did I mention how cool they were? In 2000, if I could join any band, it would have been this one.

Thanks, after all these years, to Danny Allen who told me to listen to this album in the first place. Great call.

10
Dec
2009

100 for 2000 – #1. Clem Snide – Your Favorite Music

categories: music

To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.

2000 – 1. Clem Snide – Your Favorite Music
(Elektra)

Now, I’m pretty sure this record came out in 2000. Wikipedia disagrees with me, but it’s likely it was only in the US that the record came out in 1999. A typical story at the time, where a major label signed a hot indie act, and then didn’t do very much with their record. The band is Clem Snide. The record was their second album proper – Your Favorite Music.

In 2000, I had many albums I didn’t know I had. Between getting the odd freebie from my first steps into the music industry, and a passion for bargain bins and record fairs, I would regularly come home with dozens of CDs a day. I can’t remember where I bought this album, but I remember why I bought it. I thought the cover was funny.

The reason this record sticks out as the first one I want to write about is because it’s not very funny, or fun at all. Many, many nights I laid on the couch in the dark of my studio apartment, smoking my eyeballs out alone with this album (and one other, which I will write about when I get to 2002). Yet, it wasn’t wallowing in that early 20s depression. It was actually helping.

The sound of Clem Snide is unique for an indie band. At least they were on this record. Violins and cellos mix in with a gently plucked guitar. Only the slightest hint of brushes on drums on a few tracks. It was soothing stuff. And lyrically, frontman Eef Barzelay mixed beautiful abstract stuff and moments of thoughtful sadness together in a witty way – if you didn’t laugh you’d cry.

So what I’m saying is – this was my emo.

The title track is a good place to start. Sure, the song is called Your Favorite Music. But the full lyric is;

Your favourite music
It just makes you sad
But you like it
Because you feel like no one else.

There is something very suburban about the record. From album cover in the prom outfits, it seems like its just a hopeless but beautiful struggle. The lovely opener The Dairy Queen glides through a series of such images – sporting good stores, underpasses, young girls drinking ginger ale. And the hopeless protagonist of I Love The Unknown, who’s only escape is to to alight buses at stops he doesn’t know.

The album stays moody and polite throughout, before ending with a heartbreaking version of Ritchie Valens’ Donna (tying up the prom theme quite nicely). As someone who had just finished school and had joined the work force, and had pretty much signed up to work until I died…its an important record.

Your Favorite Music was very much a time and a place. It’s also one of those special records that give me a feeling that no other record does. A bittersweetness. A coping with growing old too young. Of simple, small town things.

I don’t really listen to Clem Snide much anymore. They ended up having a big break with their next album, the single Moment In the Sun used as the theme song to the show Ed. It’s only now, writing about them, that I have bothered to buy their new album online, their first in 4 years.

Unlike other bands I will write about, they lasted one album for me in the decade. I moved on quickly after this from the sad sack stuff.

Tag: 100for2000