That Was The Show That Was: Neko Case, Crooked Fingers

[PHOTO CREDIT: Flickr User SetOutRunning | We are pleased to welcome to these digital pages D.P. Dean, our former bandmate, schoolmate and all-around cool guy. We had hopes of leveraging Mr. Dean's recent stint of unemployment into some excellent Philadelphia-based reportage, but alas even in this economy Deano is far too skilled and credentialed to stay out of the game long, and as this item goes online he is prepping for the first day of the rest of his life at a new job. -- Ed.]

One of the disorienting side-effects of being on the wrong side of 30 is the feeling, at times, that your taste in music is getting "old." Or, rather, that what once was young and hip has evolved (or has been repackaged) to fit into the "adult contemporary" bin at your local Borders. Friday night's sold out Neko Case/Crooked Fingers show at the Keswick Theater had all the trappings: plenty of grey hair in the audience, ubiquitous WXPN flyers, assigned seating.

Any worries about the music itself were easily dispelled as Ms. Case treated the Keswick crowd to a 90-minute set that leaned heavily on her new long player Middle Cyclone and 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Case has really come into her own as a solo performer in recent years (and has also become quite a supporter of retired racing greyhounds, endearing her both to this correspondent and our renowned editor-in-chief [True dat -- Ed.]). She bantered easily with her bandmates and the audience, providing a fluidity to the set during her frequent guitar changes. But the key to the performance was the power of Case’s voice -— not always obvious in her work with the New Pornographers -— and the strength of her songwriting. Case's new material continues the trend away from the simple country/honky-tonk of her early solo work toward a more difficult-to-define blend of Americana.

Throughout the set, Case transitioned easily from older favorites like "I Wish I Was the Moon' and "Deep Red Bells" to newer cuts such as "Star Witness," "The Pharaohs," and "Prison Bells," while the band laid a groove behind her, buoyed particularly by Kelly Hogan on backing vocals and Jon Rauhouse on the pedal steel. Of note was Eric Bachmann jumping in on guitar for "This Tornado Loves You" to close out the pre-encore portion of Case’s set.

Bachmann and the current incarnation of Crooked Fingers (Miranda Brown playing occasional bass and adding backing vocals, Tim Husmann on keyboards and drums) had opened the show with a nine-song set featuring a smattering of tunes from Red Devil Dawn and the band’s self-titled debut, Bachmann’s recent solo record, and of course last year’s Forfeit/Fortune [review here]. Though your correspondent was hoping to hear "The Rotting Strip," or perhaps "New Drink for the Old Drunk," Bachmann more than atoned with a rollicking rendition of "Angelina," and a spirited performance of "Your Control" (which was conspicuous for the absence of headliner Case, who added backing vocals on the album version). Truly the highlight of the set (and perhaps the entire evening) was the band’s reworking of Red Devil Dawn's "Bad Man Coming." Husmann pounded out an insistent beat on the drums, while Bachmann and Brown's a cappella harmonizing turned the song into a haunting, almost-Appalachian tub-thumper. -- D.P. Dean

[Ms. Case's tour continues through April 26. Full tour dates can be lingered over here; note that these dates are selling out like crazy, so if you'd like to see the tour, you'd best act quickly and decisively.]

Neko Case: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr
Crooked Fingers: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

YouTube Rodeo: The Answering Machine's "Obviously Cold"

A wonderful new video for Manchester, England-based indie pop upstarts The Answering Machine's forthcoming single "Obviously Cold." The video is a terrifically geeky send-up of the sporting life, focusing on the curious (to we Americans, anyhow) ice sport known as curling. Heist Or Hit Records releases The Answering Machine's debut full-length Another City, Another Sorry May 25 in the UK. We reviewed it here, and it is going to be huge. There is as yet no release date for the "Obviously Cold" single, the second pulled from Another City, Another Sorry, nor do we know what the b-side or -sides will be. The undeniable first single, "Cliffer," was released March 9. Hope the band is selling those blue t-shirts it wears on the ice in the clip -- those are ace.

Footage: Dananananaykroyd Destroy On Channel M

More WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow: "God Bless The Last Words Of An Amateur Historian" And "Sword Buried"

And so let's continue our trip across the unreleased first Johnny Foreigner record, shall we? We're up to tracks seven and eight from the set WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow [which we reviewed in full here a month ago], and next week we'll cover nine and ten, and then we'll be done, as we've already covered album closer "A Slow Song For The End" in the initial review, yeah? Hard to believe we are almost through this, and we've got to say we've enjoyed spending so much time with this collection, which as we reported many times before was recorded by a nascent, pre-Kelly Southern Johnny Foreigner line-up in the trio's practice space in 2005 and released in a hyper-limited edition of 40 handmade copies.

Perhaps more than any other track on WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow, "God Bless The Last Words Of An Amateur Historian" hews closest to the Birmingham, England-based trio's more recent work. It touts expansive guitar arpeggiation accented by Junior Laidley's uptempo drumming and accents, with bass work -- or at least bass notes played on a guitar, a la the SM and Spiral Stairs-only line-up of Pavement -- lacing the two together with a firm melodic backbone. The song is crying out to be re-recorded by the band, it's that good. The ba-da-das and breaks in the denouement are as catchy as any contemporary Johnny Foreigner, and there is even a female vocal part subtly appointing the final moment that Ms. Southern could appropriate. All around an ace track. The second tune we'll focus on today is "Sword Buried," the exceedingly curious electro-trance instrumental we mentioned here as exhibiting what would seem to be a pretty heavy Aphex Twin influence. The track is wholly uncharacteristic of the rest of the Johnny Foreigner oeuvre, but is still a very satisfying pastiche of styles that still is clearly a Johnny Foreigner track. Download both tunes below.

Johnny Foreigner -- "God Bless The Last Words Of An Amateur Historian" -- WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
Johnny Foreigner -- "Sword Buried" -- WeLeftYouSleepingAndGoneNow
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[buy in-print Johnny Foreigner records here and here]

Today's Hotness: Johnny Foreigner, Projekt A-ko, The Beatles

>> The wait is over, and it was surprisingly short: the first single from the planned sophomore set from Birmingham, England noise-pop titans Johnny Foreigner will be for the new tune "Feels Like Summer." The single, which will be issued by Best Before Records in the UK in May, is likely to appear on the forthcoming record, which according to our intrepid KSDS colleague Luke Cotton will be released in September or October. Mr. Cotton, who saw Johnny Foreigner Monday night at Islington Academy in London, also reports that the tune "Custom Scenes And The Parties That Make Them" has definitely been re-christened "Criminals," as first reported by another KSDS correspondent last week. Johnny Foreigner's fourth and final single from their smashing 2008 debut Waited Up Til It Was Light was the double A-sided, digital-only "DJs Get Doubts" b/w "Lea Room," which was released in January. The band completed its planned second full-length last month; it was recorded in Brooklyn with Alex Newport, who is most famous to us for recording Knapsack's This Conversation Is Over Starting Right Now.

>> As we typed today's post last night we were obsessing over how amazing the Projekt A-ko full length Yoyodyne is. We received it in the mail Tuesday and are blown away by the tracks that are new to us. We also think the mixes for the promo tracks are jazzed up and ring clearer somehow -- maybe we just ripped higher quality MP3s than what the promos offered? But anyway, you must stop at nothing in your efforts to acquire this record. We hear from band fronter Fergus that after the album's official release date (April 20), the free MP3s and free worldwide shipping go the way of the dodo bird, so make certain to avail yourself of his waning largesse. When you are rocking out to awesome tracks like "Xavier," "Scintilla" and "Utopia" (the latter of which seems to name-drop our favorite Versus record) you will thank us. Repeatedly. It is only 10 pounds, you can buy it via Paypal, and this very well may be dollar-for-dollar the best thing you buy this year. Maybe -- let's not forget about that Johnny Foreigner record in the pipeline.

Projekt A-ko -- "Molten Hearts" -- Yoyodyne
Projekt A-ko -- "Supertriste Duxelle" -- Yoyodyne
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[buy Yoyodyne from the band right here]

>> There's really nothing left to be said about The Beatles, so we'll say little beyond the fact that we've started to listen to their records before bed again -- as we did when we were about six or seven years old -- and have been enjoying it immensely. So much so that we are currently beaming Magical Mystery Tour to our still in utero baby via the IPod as we type this. You've likely seen the reportage from Tuesday about The Beatles catalog finally getting reissued in remastered form this coming September. If you haven't read said reportage yet, we think the most complete write-up is this one at WogBlog. The 14 remastered albums will be sold in a few different configurations, including a boxed set, and we expect a lot of people will get that boxed set come the year-end holidays. We hope we are one of those people, even tho we already have a lot of the CDs already. Curiously, we have no copy of Revolver on CD. Just vinyl. Weird.

There Used To Be A Post Here About The Rumble Strips, And Their Sparkling New Track "London," Which Was Sent By A Publicist, And Now There Is Not

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You Were Warned: Dananananaykroyd's Hey Everyone! Next Week

We've tried to prepare you for the forthcoming full-length debut from Glaswegian fight-pop goliaths Dananananaykroyd. Hey Everyone! will be released in the U.K. April 6, and we've been hyping it for a while. We wrote here about the transcendent preceding single "Black Wax," issued March 23. We wrote here about the recording of the full-length. We relayed here the fact that the Scottish septet is widely considered to be the best live act in the U.K. right now. And yet we're not sure any of that will prepare you for the proverbial kick to the head we expect this album to deliver. Take for example the track below, "Chrome Rainbows." According to a track listing at Amazon.co.uk, the tune is not included on Hey Everyone! It was, however, released as the flipside to the "Pink Sabbath" single issued last October, and it is a monster, and we're grateful to the helpful publicist who sent it along. So have a listen, save your nickels, and get yourself prepared for Dananananaykroyd being all anybody will be talking about this summer.

Dananananaykroyd -- "Chrome Rainbow" -- "Pink Sabbath" b/w "Chrome Rainbow"
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[buy Dananananaykroyd music from EMusic right here, or BanquetRecords right here]