I'm probably the least qualified person in this lineup

Vol. 1 Brooklyn’s Birthday Party: The Greatest 3-Minute Record Reviews Ever

Vol. 1 Brooklyn Presents

The Greatest 3-Minute Record Reviews Ever

With special musical guests: Xray Eyeballs

Aaron Lefkove (LiveFastDie/Creator: Summer of Megadeath)
Adam Wilson (The Faster Times)
Andrea Bartz (Stuff Hipsters Hate)
Ben Greenman (The New Yorker, new book called What He’s Poised to Do)
Bill Pearis (Sound Bites NYC/Brooklyn Vegan)
Brenna Ehrlich (Mashable/Stuff Hipsters Hate)
Brandon Stosuy (Stereogum/The Believer) Canceled/had a baby/mazel tov!
Claire Shefchik (The Faster Times)
Emma Straub (Author)
Jared Bloom (The Full Ginsburg)
Jason Diamond (Vol. 1 Brooklyn)
Jason Orlovich (Brooklyn the Borough)
James Yeh (Gigantic Mag)
Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride)
Jens Carstensen (Limewire/The Giraffes)
Jeremy Krinsley (Impose)
Jesse Hlebo (Swill Children)
Maggie Serota (New York Press)
Maris Kreizman (Slaughterhouse 90210)
Marisa Meltzer (Author of Girl Power: 90′s Revolution in Music)
Marty Beckerman (Online features editor at Esquire/author)
Maura Johnston (The Awl)
Rob Tannenbaum (Playboy Magazine/Rolling Stone)
Sara Jaffe (Writer/musician)
Scott Lindenbaum (Electric Literature)
Tobias Carroll (The Scowl/Vol. 1 Brooklyn)
Zachary Lipez (Freshkills/Author of “Please Take Me off the Guest List”)

At: Bar Matchless – 557 Manhattan Ave. Greenpoint, Brooklyn

7 PM, no cover

Espers @ The Bell House, 12/5/09

For a band based in Philly, an NYC visit by Espers is tragically rare, which explains why their show at The Bell House last night was so well-attended. Singer/guitarist Greg Weeks is an unapologetic, all-out hippie, complete with fringed buckskin belt-bag, moccasins, round glasses and bell-bottom trousers. The lightning rod of the band is singer Meg Baird (her first solo record, 2007's Dear Companion, would be a shoo-in if I was making a "Best of the Oughts" list, which I'm SO not). Her voice is instantly recognizable on every record she makes, and even though people like to compare it to Vashti Bunyan and Sandy Denny, she doesn't really sound like either of them. It's just that her style of singing doesn't have much of a context that current audiences can relate to. Which is sort of why it's great.

Much of Espers, in fact, is rooted in past styles that may or may not ever be relevant again. Their earlier recordings were more acoustic based and more or categorizable as freak-folk or freak-folk adjacent, but they've expanded. Their October release, Espers III, incorporates as much electric as it does acoustic (not to mention precise work from Vetiver drummer Otto Hauser) and achieves a kind of late-sixties psych-pop feel, reminsicent of Fairport Convention or even Fleetwood Mac. It's the type of music that you never really hear anymore, ever. It's too bad, too, because a couple of songs they played last night, like Tomorrow from 2005's The Weed Tree, "Children of Stone" from Espers II or "Caroline" from III, I could actually see being radio hits at a very, very specific point in musical time.

Mp3 - Espers - Caroline

Literary folk

Since I'm reading Rick Moody as we speak (Garden State, his first) I was interested when I learned that if I want, I can listen to him, too, being that The Wingdale Community Singers, his Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters collective, just released their second album, Spirit Duplicator, on Secret Shame. Moody and the rest of the foursome share the songwriting duty equally. This includes Hannah Marcus (who's played with American Music Club, Red House Painters and Godspeed You Black Emporer), David Grubbs (of Red Krayola, Squirrel Bait, and Bastro) and Nina Katchadourian. Moody also recently served as guest editor for an issue of Magnet Magazine.The album manages to sound remarkably old-timey without being cloying, exemplified by "Give it a Kiss," with its instantly memorable hook.

Since I spent the better part of semester researching the NYC folk scene for a grad school class, I've taken personal interest in the survival of folk music in New York, After the '60s revival waned, it seems most folkies have moved far away from this admittedly hyper-ironic scene. The Wingdales (like Sharon van Etten) are an incredible treasure located right here, and I'm glad they're carrying the folk torch for New York.

Actually, after, a while I realized that the Wingdales' music, springlike and rustic , full of old-fashioned harmonic singing, doesn't exactly match up to Moody's book, with its gloomy industrial spaces and early-twentysomething ennui set to the backdrop of northern New Jersey in the '80s. But hey, I prefer The Carter Family anyway, their beautiful, spare cover of which is below:

Mp3 - Wingdale Community Singers - Death is Only a Dream

Small Black at Market Hotel, 11/7/09

Saturday night, the four members of Small Black spent so much time setting up their various electronic tools and toys onstage at Market Hotel that you couldn't help but bristle with anticipation of what sounds these local dudes (whose self-titled EP came out this fall on CassClub, and who I kept trying and for various reasons failing to see during CMJ) might come up with. Happily, they energetically run the gamut from cute, plinking piano trills and chippy electronic riffs, with the lyrics unintelligible most of the time. The showpiece being "Despicable Dogs," not nearly as neat as it sounds on the record, but rather a lilting drunken Irish pub-crawl melody, punctuated by a dizzy merry go round calliope accompaniment.

Mp3 - Small Black - Despicable Dogs

If friending the author of bad-ish review of your book on Facebook is inappropriate, then I take everything back

So my review of "How to Be Inappropriate" by Daniel Nester went up early this morning on Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and before I'd even gotten a chance to look at it, the author had already posted a link on Facebook and sent me a message thanking me for writing it, apparently before I'd even woken up. Indeed, not everything in the review is glowing, but for the record, he perhaps thought I disliked the journalistic pieces more than I actually did. In any case, he was gentleman enough to not take it personally. Is that the ultimate impropriety? Or is it perhaps, actually, old-fashioned politeness? In any case, well played, Mr. Nester.

CMJ Saturday: Sini Anderson and The Roulettes at Bruar Falls

Bruar Falls' unofficial CMJ day show/BBQ (lovely in the garden during the five or so minutes it didn't rain) Saturday. Sini Anderson, formerly of feminist spoken word collective Sister Spit, is up to her old tricks with new friends. Violins literally play, whenever she speaks about her search for a place in the sun.

Portland transplants The Roulettes are back big (frontwoman Rebecca (Keith) Roulette is a poet and also co-hosts the Mixer Reading and Music Series). The four-piece are riot grrls for a less riotous age, their old-fashioned musical grammar taking us back to when groups like The Ronettes were tough and so, so pretty (it's no coincidence that The Roulettes covered Phil Spector), while underneath concealing comically voracious sexual appetites (case in point: "Hot Ticket," below). Disbelief St. and Red Wire Black Wire performed afterward, but no photos, alas (too many $3 Bloody Marys?)

Mp3 - The Roulettes - Hot Ticket

CMJ Wednesday: Broadcast and Atlas Sound at Music Hall of Williamsburg

My entire Wednesday night ended up devoted to this show, and it didn't disappoint for comprehensiveness or novelty. Though Atlas Sound (Deerhunter's Bradford Cox) seemed to be the draw, Broadcast was first on the bill. The English band (a boy-girl duo, now), behind them, projected choppy, vaguely creepy abstract film clips in time with the music, a result of their latest collaboration with graphic designer Julian House (The Focus Group), "Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age." Together it all resembles the soundtrack to a 1970s children's TV show -- from Neptune. The strange and talented songwriter behind Microcastle and the recently released Logos, Cox, when his acoustic guitar string broke halfway through, proved himself a wizard of patter, joking about CMJ coke parties and striking "sensitive" and "rock star" poses for the cameras. He remained upbeat, even when the show had gone way over schedule and the half the hall had walked out. Also, I, meanwhile, still have a bruise on each kneecap from falling down two stairs at the Music Hall. Believe me, it was a long night.

Mp3 - Broadcast and The Focus Group - The Be Colony

Mp3 - Atlas Sound - Criminals (Electronic)